The War After Armageddon Read online

  “That mean he took your girl?”

  Harris laughed. “No woman on Earth could’ve been attracted to both Sim and me. That may have been the only thing that wasn’t a point of contention.”

  The smell of death strengthened. Harris glimpsed a break in the trees. He could feel the high ground waiting.

  “So… You’d categorize him as pure ambition?”

  Harris smiled. “No ambition’s pure, Monk. It’s always muddled up with something.”

  “And that should tell me?”

  “There’s a kind of ambition… a form of ambition that needs something to believe in. It’s incomplete, unfulfilled, without a cause.” The corner of Harris’s mouth twisted into his cheek. “I don’t mean that Sim Montfort can’t be cynical, when cynicism works. Just that he found his cause, and his cause found him. One feeds off the other, empowering the other. Men like Sim need a great cause to allow their ambition to unfold, to bloom. Their ambition has to have a rationale greater than themselves. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t truly believe in the cause they take up. The human capacity for belief is a very adaptable thing.”

  “Sounds almost like you respect him. Despite all his preaching and screeching.”

  Harris stopped and flashed a look of utter frankness. “No, Monk. I don’t respect him. I fear him.”

  They walked on in silence, approaching the wall of light beyond the trees. The bodyguards on point fanned out more widely. You could feel their hyperalertness notch up yet another degree.

  Monk Morris changed the subject. “Your G-2 sent my intel shop some interesting reports this morning. Haven’t seen ’em. Just got a verbal. But I’d like to know what you make of it.”

  “About the refugees? The lack of them, I mean?”

  “No sign of any heading out of Afula or Nazareth. Or leaving any other Arab towns.”

  “The local commanders are probably under orders not to let them leave. Civilians as hostages. The Jihadis have been doing that since you and I were kids playing Army.”

  “I played ‘Marines’.”

  “Well, at least neither of us played Air Force. They’re probably just trying to complicate our operations. Figuring we’re still jumpy about dead civilians.”

  “Those days are gone. Good morning, L.A., good night, Las Vegas.”

  “It’s like that defensive position at Megiddo. They’re testing us. Seeing how far we’ll go.”

  “I can understand that. But what about the reports of civilians being bussed into Nazareth? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, when you’ve got military convoys to move over those roads.”

  “The reports might be wrong. Val Danczuk’s relying on one special operator we’ve got in place up there. In Nazareth. The overheads don’t necessarily corroborate his messages about bussing in civilians. Those buses could’ve been full of troops. But we’re watching it.” He smiled. Wryly. “Val’s the most forward-leaning Two I’ve ever known. Problem is restraining him when he starts painting scenarios with invisible colors.”

  “Sir?”

  “Monk, can’t you call me ‘Gary’? When we’re not onstage?”

  “Marine habit. And, to tell you the truth, you never struck me as a ‘Gary’.”

  “It’s the only name I’ve got.”

  “Except ‘Flintlock’.”

  Harris shook his head. “Never cared for that one, myself. Always sounded like a cartoon character to me.”

  They marched through the last stretch of shade, and Monk Morris changed the subject: “You didn’t really mean that, did you? About being afraid of Sim Montfort?”

  Harris stopped and looked into the other man’s eyes. As deeply as he could.

  “I meant it.”

  * * *

  The two generals stepped out of the trees into glaring light. Beyond an empty parking lot, a ruin crowned the mountaintop. Beside the ruin lay a pile of corpses. The bodies were naked. The stench announced that the dead had been rotting for days.

  “Welcome to Mukhraka,” Harris said.

  Someone had taped out a perimeter around the ruins. Harris’s lead bodyguard was deep in an argument with two men in Army uniforms.

  Then Harris spotted the black crosses sewn onto the left breasts of the officers who were giving his point man a hard time.

  “What the hell?” Harris said. He looked at Monk Morris.

  “I have no idea,” the Marine said. “We didn’t have any MOBIC troops with us. Just the two liaisons at headquarters.”

  In the background, other soldiers wearing the MOBIC black cross puttered in the ruins.

  Harris strode up to the scene of the argument. A MOBIC major, supported by a captain, waved a finger in the face of the Special Forces sergeant first class who was second-in-command of the general’s personal security detachment.

  “What’s going on here?” Harris demanded.

  Before his NCO could speak, the major turned on the general. “This is a Christian heritage site. It’s been reclaimed. No one can enter without authorization.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Harris asked. In the quiet voice he used when truly angry.

  “Yes, sir. You’re Lieutenant General Harris.”

  “And who are you, Major?”

  “Major Josiah Makepeace Brown, commander of Christian Heritage Advance Rescue Team 55.”

  “There are no CHARTs authorized in this corps sector at present.”

  “We have authorization orders from General Monfort.”

  “Lieutenant General Montfort does not command this corps. I believe you’ll find him a couple of hours south of here.”

  To Harris’s bewilderment, the major wasn’t the least bit intimidated, but seemed to be talking down to him.

  “You’ll have to take this up with General Montfort, sir. We have our orders.”

  Harris was tempted to arrest the lot of them. He was angry enough. The team’s presence was a violation of painstaking agreements and published orders. But you had to pick your battles. And Harris didn’t believe for an instant that Montfort had slipped CHARTs into his area of operations just to preserve Biblical heritage. The atmosphere was paranoid enough to make him wonder if his old classmate were trying to draw him into an act that could later be used against him.

  “Major,” Harris said, trying a different approach, “we all have our missions. My mission is to defeat the Jihadi corps facing us. I’m sure you’ll agree that the Jihadis are our mutual enemies. We’ve come up here to have a quick look at the terrain because we have to refine the next phase of our operation. Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to spend about ten minutes up on that pile of bricks where the church used to be.”

  “This is the site,” the major announced, “where God used the Prophet Elijah as his instrument to shame the priests of Ba’al and slay them.”

  “And we’re trying to slay the Third Jihadi Corps. May we pass, Major?”

  The major eyed them as if he were a drill sergeant examining two suspect recruits. “Are you both Christians?”

  Again, Harris restrained himself. “Yes, Major. We’re both Christians.”

  “Your bodyguards will have to remain outside the perimeter.”

  The SF sergeant jerked his head around. Harris made a sign for him to keep quiet.

  “That’s fine. Whose bodies are those?”

  “The monks. They were living up here secretly, even after the forces of the Anti christ conquered this dwelling place of the Lord. The local infidels protected them. Probably for mammon. But a Judas betrayed them. We found them.”

  “Piled up like that?”

  “No. Crucified.”

  * * *

  Morris said, “I would’ve liked to knock that little prig’s teeth down his throat.”

  “Not worth it, Monk. Pick your battles. That CHART’s bait. Although I’m not quite sure what Sim Montfort’s fishing for. But look at this.”

  They had picked their way past the toppled statue of Elijah and climbed as high as they could on t
he remains of a staircase hugging a scorched wall. Harris truly didn’t intend to stay long. The Jihadis would have observers watching the site from across the valley — they would’ve been crazy not to keep an eye on such a vantage point. And Harris didn’t intend to become anyone’s free target.

  But he had needed to see this. And he wanted Monk Morris to see it, too. The splendor of the Jezreel Valley.

  “Well, fuck me,” the Marine said, with a short, sharp whistle. “Nuclear war, rampage, and neglect,” Monk said, “and it is still one beautiful place.”

  “Always has been,” Harris said. “God knows, it shouldn’t be. So much blood has been spilled down there for so many centuries that the whole place ought to sink under the weight of all the death.”

  “Well,” the Marine said, “we’ll see how much more weight we can add.”

  And yet, the scene before them was strangely unwarlike. Despite the thousands of military vehicles dug in or creeping about and the distant eruptions of smoke, a stillness wrapped the mountaintop, a sense of standing briefly apart from time. The artillery fire and the complaints of hundreds of gear boxes shifting on mountain roads might have been echoes from a parallel world.

  “You know, Monk, I’ve never believed that God cared about dirt, that He valued one patch of soil more than another. Years back, when I was a lieutenant, I read an article that said America was blessed because God didn’t lay claim to any real estate in our country. I always thought that was true, that we were lucky to be free of the need to tie God down to some patch of dust like Gulliver.” He looked away from the splendor before him, lowering his eyes to the rubble. “Now here we are.”

  “People are always going to find something to fight over, sir. That’s why we’ve both got jobs. If it isn’t about the name you give God, it’s about what you called their sister.”

  “But ‘Holy War,’ Monk? I can’t think of a greater contradiction in terms.” He raised his eyes again and saw the glory of the sun upon the valley. The earth gleamed in the April light, and the puffs of smoke where artillery struck in the distance seemed no more than small, low clouds. He hated the thought that his country had sent him and his soldiers to fight here.

  The seductive landscape spread before him was nothing but one mass grave.

  “All right,” Harris said, turning to business. He stretched out his right hand to orient his companion. “The glimmer at the end of the valley’s Afula. The sprawl up on those hills to the left is Nazareth, although the old town sits down in a bowl. The gum-drop shape straight on is Mt. Tabor. Just out of sight, you have the Jordan Valley to the right and the Sea of Galilee — Lake Kinneret, if you prefer — to the left. The line of mountains in the distance is Gilead. Where I am told there is no balm.”

  Morris looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You’ve been here before?”

  “We all have,” Harris said.

  FOUR

  NARAZETH

  Lost souls, they stumbled from the buses. In the distance, the sounds of war throbbed, an irregular heartbeat. The men, most of middle age, appeared bewildered, gripping suitcases or dabbing the sweat from their foreheads with fouled handkerchiefs. Their women struggled down the steps behind them, clinging to possessions gathered in haste. A few of the women led children into the chaos, but most had long since passed the fertile years. Those children who had been dragged along wept or shrank into silence. Young or old, everyone looked soiled and worn. And they stank. The buses did not stop for human needs.

  Major Michael Nasr watched the human parasites surge past the guards and swarm the new arrivals. Offering food, drink, or a place to sleep. At prices that would break a rich man in a week. There were no tourists in Nazareth now, and none had come for years, but the touts hadn’t lost their persistence. They set upon the refugees like fleas.

  Refugees? What could you really call them? Nasr wondered. Men and women forced from their homes by their own kind, driven toward a war rather than away from it. He tried to piece the logic of it together. Obviously, there was a purpose to the actions of the Ji-hadis. But the purpose wasn’t obvious to him.

  Lifting his robe as he stepped through filth, Nasr noticed the old man again. Not a refugee, but a local. The shriveled character with the goat’s beard had popped up repeatedly to scrutinize him, then disappear again. Nasr didn’t know what that might be about, but it worried him. His Arabic had been learned at home, in a Christian émigré family in Sacramento, and his father’s Lebanese accent came as easily to him as his mother’s born-in-Nazareth dialect. He understood the dress, the body language, the insider rules. He’d fooled the officials and the mullahs, and the only problem with his Arabic was that it was too grammatical for the identity he’d chosen.

  Had something given him away? A word? A gesture?

  If so, the cavalry wasn’t going to ride to the rescue. A U.S. Army Special Forces major detailed to a black program, Nasr was on his own. In Indian country.

  He smiled at the utterly American phrase. He never felt more American than when he was thrust into the world that had forced his parents to flee. For the crime of being Christians. And yet, the Muslim role came to him easily. As if you inherited knowledge of your enemies.

  Well, he was just glad that his parents had found the get-up-and-go to get up and go. Anyone who criticized the United States of America needed to get a good whiff of the Middle East.

  The old man was up to something. But then, everybody between Casablanca and Karachi was up to something. Everybody had an angle. Every seven-year-old worked a grift.

  Nasr caught himself before he shrugged. He had almost moved his shoulders like a Westerner. Instead, he waved the world away with a dismissive hand. And he entered the crowd, slipping past a policeman who wore his beret straight up from his scalp, like a mushroom cap.

  An unshaven man in an old tweed jacket grasped Nasr by the arm.

  “Please,” he said, “please… Can you help me?”

  “What do you need, brother?” Nasr asked him.

  “My wife… she’s… we need…”

  A volley of artillery rounds struck beyond one of the city’s ridges. Closer than the other fires had come. The refugee clinging to Nasr’s forearm flinched, almost dropping to his knees.

  “Why have they brought us here? Why? Do you know?”

  “Where are you from, brother?”

  “Why do they bring us here? This is fitna. Madness. I’m a professor. Of physics. My wife is a teacher. What do we have to do with their war?”

  “Where is your home, brother? Where did they take you from?”

  A woman in the crowd began to scream.

  “From Homs. From the university. Why bring us such a long way? Why bring us here? We’ll all be killed. Can you help us?”

  “We must pray to Allah,” Nasr said, “and trust in His beneficence.”

  The professor looked at him scornfully. Letting go of his forearm. “You’re one of them? You believe that nonsense? After all the world has seen? There is no god… none…”

  “There is no god but God,” Nasr corrected him. “And Mohammed is his Prophet. Insh’ Allah, all will be well with you, brother.”

  “You,” the professor said in a spiteful rage, “it’s dogs like you who’ve done this.”

  Before turning away, Nasr told the professor, “Get away from this place. Or they’ll steal what little you have left. Take your wife and go to the farthest neighborhood your feet can find. Nothing is left down here.”

  But the professor wasn’t listening. Fury had blocked his ears.

  “Dogs like you have done this,” he repeated.

  “And hold your tongue, brother,” Nasr warned him. “Not all Nazarenes are as patient with blasphemers as I am.”

  He scanned the shabby crowd but couldn’t spot the old man who’d been trailing him. Pushing on toward the buses, Nasr let himself take in a dozen conversations: pleas, complaints, threats, and furious bargaining, all of it reeking with the stench of shit and fear. Some of the refuge
es had been brought from as far away as Halab, ancient Aleppo, in northern Syria. And Nasr thought he heard Iraqi accents. Educated accents, all of them.

  Why on earth drive your intelligentsia — or what passed for one — into the path of an invading army?

  Did the Jihadis want them to be killed?

  Nasr stopped. Just below the derelict patch where the Church of the Annunciation had stood. His body felt sheathed in ice.

  Was that it? Did the Jihadis want them to be killed?

  Nasr had been inserted weeks before the invasion began, but the influx of refugees had begun just two days before a bombardment announced the landings. The Jihadis had known an attack was coming, of course, if not just when and where.

  What else had they known?

  Major Nasr sat on a broken wall. A half-block from one of Christendom’s holy places — now a ruin used as a public latrine. He wasn’t a party to the detailed plan of invasion, but he knew this much: Even Flintlock Harris wouldn’t have the pull to bypass Nazareth. Whatever else the corps commander’s plan of operations might avoid, the early seizure of Nazareth would be non-negotiable. The vice president, the SecDef, and the MOBIC generals back in the Pentagon would make sure of that.

  And the Jihadis were smart enough to figure that one out. Every Christian site would be an objective. Nazareth would be high on the list.

  Then why dump their brainpower in the path of the infidel?