The War After Armageddon Read online

  “We have been betrayed,” Colonel al-Masri told his deputy. It was the only idea that came to him. Saying it aloud made him feel better.

  MONTEZUMA FIELD, CYPRUS

  A lone F/A-18 landed on the strip at the old British airfield on Cyprus. And then there was nothing.

  Major Jenks climbed out of his cockpit, followed by his weapons systems officer. Down on the apron, the two of them just bent over, hands on their knees. As if about to vomit.

  One aircraft out of seven. Lieutenant Colonel Randall “Wicked” Wilkes, the group’s XO, decided, with galling bitterness, that the blue-suiters had been right. It was impossible to send manned aircraft into that electronic stew.

  Wilkes watched as Jenks sat down on the tarmac and buried his face in his hands. The XO decided to give him one more minute, after which he would tell him to get up, grow up, and act like a Marine.

  One crew out of seven. Jenks was a lucky bastard. Him and his goddamned buddy on the self-pity express.

  Then a miracle occurred. Four dots appeared in the heavens. Moments later, four F/A-18s flew over the airfield in perfect formation, taking a victory lap. They disappeared, reappeared, and came down one after the other, clean as if they were landing at an air show.

  “Get on the link to General Morris,” the XO shouted. Then he lowered his voice again. But he couldn’t stop smiling. “If we’re up secure, tell him we’ve got five crews back out of seven. We’re in business!”

  Now if only Dawg Daniels would show his ugly mug.

  MT. CARMEL RIDGES

  “Welcome to the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, Colonel. Glad y’all could drop in.”

  The young officer’s face was streaked with camouflage paint that sweat and wear had smeared. He nonetheless qualified as one of the top five most-beautiful human beings Dawg Daniels had ever seen — and the only male on the list.

  “We picked up your buddy, too,” the lieutenant continued. “He broke his leg.”

  “Well, we’re not supposed to lose our jets.”

  “Yes, sir… Sir, if you don’t mind me saying… y’all flying like that… I mean, God bless you.”

  Daniels took a deep, wonderful, glorious, gorgeous breath. “We Marines have never been accused of an excess of intelligence,” he said. “I’d be grateful for a drink of water, if the Army has any to spare.”

  SIX

  NAZARETH

  Every living thing got out of his way. Nasr limped and staggered up the lanes of Nazareth, dried blood lurid on his clothing. His face was so swollen it limited his field of vision. The people he encountered stared at him for an alarmed instant, then quickly looked to the side and veered from his path. Only the children, silent under the sound of the distant guns, kept their eyes on him: the bogeyman.

  Yet, more than a few of the local children were little bogeymen, deformed by radiation in the womb. During the Great Jihad, Nazareth had lain within the fallout zones of Haifa to the West and Zefat to the north.

  Nasr was in no condition to feel much sympathy. He kept thinking of the old Army expression, “a world of hurt,” repeating it to himself almost hypnotically. Although he’d taken a round in the hip in Nigeria, the only part of his body Nasr had worried about in the past had been his knees, which had gone a few hundred jumps beyond their warranty. Now everything seemed to hurt. His testicles ached so badly that he imagined himself walking like a sailor in an old cartoon. His ribs punished him with every breath. Back and front, right and left, everything seemed to be broken. Pains flashed through his abdomen, as regular as warning beacons. His head was the least of it. That was just a matter of weird vagueness, as if a few inches of the air around his skull had become a no-man’s-land.

  The doctor had pawed his ribs and shrugged. They might as well have called a cleaning woman, because just about all the doc did — if he actually was a doctor — had been to clean up his face a bit, splint two broken fingers together with all the skill of a Cub Scout, then offer him a glass of orange juice. When Nasr tried to drink it, the acid burned his smashed-up lips and the inside of his mouth like liquid fire. He spit up blood.

  Another miracle of modern medicine. Avicenna, call home.

  “I’m going to make it,” Nasr told himself as he climbed a narrow alley that reeked of cooking grease and urine. “I’m going to fucking make it. Been through worse than this.”

  But that was a lie. He’d never been through worse. And he wasn’t going to make it.

  They knew who he was. That one single thing was clear to him. He’d imagined that he was the Invisible Man, Mr. Cultural Affinity, blending in seamlessly. Pride of Man, he told himself, oh, pride of Man. He’d been a horse’s ass. They all knew who he was.

  As he watched, a bearded man grabbed a falafel sandwich from a boy — who fought to get it back as the thief danced about to avoid his victim’s hands, all the while stuffing the food into his maw.

  No one interfered. Everyone was afraid. Weary. Famished. In despair.

  Welcome to the club, Nasr thought.

  He’d never believed that despair was in him. But he had a fullblown case now. He veered between disgust at himself and troughs of indulgence when he tried to cata log his damaged parts. For the first time in his life, he slipped into self-pity. And he hated himself for it.

  Nasr stumbled, but righted himself. A bout of dizziness stopped him for a moment, and then he trudged on. Not certain he was doing the right thing. But unable to think of anything else.

  They knew. His first impulse had been to avoid returning to the closet of a room he’d rented on the western ridge. But that was stupid. If they knew all the rest, they certainly knew where he was bunking. And the transmitter wasn’t there, anyway.

  He climbed a few more steps, through a played- out avalanche of garbage, and stopped again. There was no obvious alpha pain. Everything hurt. The doc had given him a small handful of pills. For the pain, he said. But Nasr feared taking them. He had to stay clear. As clear as possible. To think.

  It hurt to breathe. But when he tried to fuel himself with shallow breaths, the dizziness threatened to drop him. And he couldn’t halt the flashes of remembrance, the vivid recollection of a fist coming down into his face or the precise feel — the instant replay — of a boot going into his ribs.

  “You’re getting soft, Ranger,” he told himself. “Never make it through Dahlonega. Forget that SF tab, sissy- boy. You’d wash out of the Q Course in a week.”

  Sarcasm didn’t give him the boost he needed.

  What the hell did you do when you knew — when you knew—that they were only waiting for you to make your transmission before they killed you?

  They’d never spare him. That was clear. They didn’t have it in them to let him off with a beating.

  Did they know he knew?

  Now that was a question requiring a bottle of single malt.

  Nasr began to walk again, imagining himself marching, but aware that his every movement was a mockery of his past being. Pride of Man, pride of Man…

  Who wanted what? That was the thing he needed to figure out. The old man hadn’t recognized him on his own. He’d been put up to it. But by whom? Where did one scheme end and another plot begin? The old man had threatened to spoil the game that was going so well for the rival team — the team that wanted Nasr to keep on transmitting as the American forces approached. At least one more time.

  Had the security boys who beat him up been in on either deal? Or were they just stupid Arab cops doing what they did best?

  When the badge-flashers in clean khakis dragged him out and pushed his parts back together, their head honcho had been all too profuse in his apologies and his insistence that a mistake had been made, that everyone was sorry. Arabs were never sorry for violence. Nasr knew that. He was one of them. Christian or not.

  “Get over that self-hatred thing, bro,” his best friend had warned him years before. Nasr had thought it was a nutty thing to say. But he got the point now.

  Didn’t listen. Didn�
�t take his vitamins. Bad, bad boy. Had to be the number-one grad in every Army school. Just to prove… what, exactly? That a Maronite Christian could do more pushups than Presbyterians?

  So they wanted him to transmit. But what did they need him to say? The only news from the Nazareth home team was that educated refugees were being bussed in and dumped. Thousands of them. Bad Guys X wanted him dead right now, but Bad Guys Y wanted him to tell mama first.

  He stopped again and shook his head. Instinctively. As if the act would clear his thoughts.

  All it did was hurt his neck.

  Ain’t no lucky lady going to share my Arabian nights for a while, Nasr told himself. No, sirree. Mr. Pulp Face. And check those teeth. Bad dentistry.

  What was his duty? To transmit. Were they capable of monitoring and breaking the transmissions? The techies said no way. But what were the techies going to say? They believed in technology the way the MOBIC pukes believed that Jesus was God’s Little Gangster.

  When I get a three-day pass, I’m gonna kick old Jody’s ass.

  Or maybe not. Not going to kick anybody’s ass. Not now. Maybe never again.

  Self-pity stinks. Got it, sir. But dying hadn’t been a near-term goal. Even Fayetteville was looking good now. Unlike his enemies, Nasr didn’t regard death as a promotion. He’d dutifully attended St. Michael’s and St. George’s right through high school. For his mother’s sake. But he hadn’t exactly come to terms with the after-life. SF studs didn’t get killed. They did the killing.

  The artillery fire swelled again, landing several clicks away. Echoing through the urban canyons. His team wasn’t shelling the city. Just kicking up dirt around it. Because we’re the good guys. Nice to everybody. You betcha.

  He thought of the struggle his father had endured the year before to prove that, although Arabs, his family had always been Christians. Since time immemorial, sir. Since that dude fell off his horse on the way to Damascus.

  Christian Arabs didn’t have to go into the Providential Communities in Utah and Nevada that the government had established for Muslims, citizens or not, after the Jihadis popped nukes in L.A. and Las Vegas. But it was up to you to produce the paperwork.

  Nasr saw his father, sitting on the goddamned couch, the previously undisputed tyrant of the family, with tears rolling down his cheeks, telling his newly promoted-to-major son, “I tell them, I say to them that my son is an officer in the United States Army, that he is in the specialty forces with the green beret. But they only try to trick me with questions about the Book of Revelation. They are men of tricks, like the dev il.”

  And Nasr had set out, yet again, to prove that he was not only as good an American as anybody else, but a braver and better one.

  Well, not much longer. Fucking Jihadis. They’d gotten what they wanted. The new crowd in Washington just didn’t get it. All the Jihadis cared about, when it came to Muslim emigres, was preventing them from assimilating into Western societies: better dead than freely wed. In the post-nuke panic, his government had done the Jihadis’ work for them. Weren’t going to be any mixed marriages now.

  What did it matter? The world was going to shit. Nasr figured it was some old blood instinct telling him that the killing had barely started.

  He marched uphill, going like a crippled old man pretending to be a soldier. He intended to allow himself thirty minutes. No more. Thirty mikes. To sit down. And calm down. Then he would go straight to the transmitter. And do his duty.

  If he truly was a Christian, Nasr considered, Nazareth wouldn’t be such a bad place to die.

  He stopped. An emaciated cat took one look at him and scrammed. Nasr laughed out loud. It hurt. Awfully. But he couldn’t stop laughing.

  A good place to die? Nazareth was a fucking pit. No wonder even Golgotha looked better to Jesus.

  He hardly noticed that his laughter had faded into tears. Yeah, a world of hurt.

  Just as Nasr moved to put one foot in front of the other, to march, he heard a sudden noise that didn’t fit. Followed by answering noises.

  Bending his entire torso, Nasr looked up. Just in time to see a lone U.S. jet racing westward. Gunfire, missiles and, doubtless, every djinn in the Middle East chased after it. Before disappearing over the ridge, the aircraft jerked as if hit. But it kept on going.

  They were flying. His guys. Americans. It seemed unreasonably important to him, as if the jet had been on a mission just to do a fly-by for his benefit.

  Nasr swelled with pride.

  OFFSHORE

  “Talk to me,” Lieutenant General Harris said.

  There were only four officers left in the ship’s secure compartment: Harris, his G-2 and G-3, Col o nels Val Danczuk and Mike Andretti, and the general’s aide, Major John Willing. Beyond the sealed hatch, only three others in the entire corps were cleared for access to STARK YANKEE products, the counterintelligence operation the U.S. Army had opened against the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ.

  Even seated, the G-2 was the tallest of the four. Every chair seemed a throne to him.

  “Sir, it’s just remarkable,” Danczuk said. The eagerness in his voice was almost juvenile, utterly at odds with the dignified look of the man. “Even the reports coming through standard channels have MOBIC elements fighting in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Lieutenant General of the Order Montfort’s lost most of a division killed or wounded. But they just keep on attacking.”

  Harris shook his head in disgust. And not just at the sour smell of the compartment. “The Jihadis are getting a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of fanat i cism. It’s plain as day where al-Mahdi called it wrong: He didn’t take Sim Montfort’s speechifying seriously. Just the way we refused to listen to what the Islamists said thirty years ago. And al-Mahdi counted on Americans being stingy with their blood.” The general readjusted his posture in his chair, trying to soothe a back getting worse with the years. “I suspect al-Mahdi’s in shock at the moment. But he’ll recover. And then Sim’s going to have a real fight on his hands. What else?”

  Danczuk dropped his eyes, and the enthusiasm drained from his voice. “Sir… We’re getting a lot of reports of atrocities… pretty ugly stuff.”

  “Which side?”

  “Both. But mostly the MOBIC forces. A lot of it’s unconfirmed… but it sounds as though a lot of civilians are being killed.”

  “Not just collateral damage?”

  “No, sir.”

  Harris moved as if to slam his hand down on the table but restrained himself before he’d gotten a third of the way through the motion.

  “Sim Montfort doesn’t want peace. That’s the goddamned thing. Old Sim really is on a crusade. And it isn’t going to make any part of this easier.” He turned to Andretti. “Mike, I don’t want RUMINT taking over. No copycat behavior. You make it damned clear through ops channels that we’re here to fight armed enemies, not civilians. I don’t want any contagion. There’s not going to be any killing for Jesus in this sector.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Harris turned back to the G-2. “And the answer to my standard question, Deuce?”

  “You mean nukes, sir?”

  “Nukes.”

  “Sir, we still have no indicators for the presence of nuclear weapons. Nothing. No probable hide sites. No special security. No support vehicles…”

  Harris smiled. Glancing at the other three men. “I know you all think I’m off the reservation on this one. But I just have a gut feeling that there’s a few stray nukes out there. And not just tactical nukes, either. So pander to the old man’s obsession.”

  He looked back toward the G-2. “Keep watching it for me, Val. Take it seriously. Okay? All right, then. Let’s talk STARK YANKEE. What hasn’t made the evening news?”

  Danczuk glanced around as though a spy might’ve slipped into the room while they were speaking. “Sir… General Montfort doesn’t seem to worry much about blue casualties, but he’s extremely worried about equipment readiness. The breakdown rate is high and�
�”

  “How high?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. Not exactly.”

  “Find out.”

  “Yes, sir. The worst problems are with the MOBIC’s armored systems, the NexGen tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Basically, everything heavily digitized, anything that came out of the Future Combat Systems initiative over the last twenty years, is next to worthless in this environment. The digital shielding fails. The comms just melt down. And the electronic armor’s a joke.”

  Harris had practiced control of his temper for decades. So he managed to keep his voice level, although its tone wasn’t kind. “Well, isn’t that grand. Those sonsofbitches pulled every lever in the United States Government to draw all of the latest combat equipment from the Army and Marine inventories. Left us with the shit that should’ve been retired after we left Iraq, for God’s sake. And now who’s fucked for breakfast?”

  “Sir… My point is that, if the breakdown rate’s as bad as it sounds…”

  “They’re going to need gear. And it’s going to have to come from somewhere. And we’re ‘somewhere.’ Got it, Val. When their new toys break, they’re going to want the old ones they tossed our way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Harris looked toward the G-3 again. “Mike… You see my point? As to why it’s essential to grab Afula as swiftly as we can? I don’t want to throw away lives. But we can’t waste time. We’ve got to keep hitting the Jihadis while they’re still reeling. I need the Dragon Brigade to winkle out the last buggers dug in around Meggido tonight.”

  “1-18 Infantry has the mission, sir. Good unit. They’ll do the job.”

  “Tonight, Mike. Come first light, I don’t want one more antitank missile hissing down toward that crossroads.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay,” Harris continued. “That imagery the Marines downlinked makes Afula look tough. We’d all rather bypass it and come in from behind. Nobody’s crazy about doing a Charge of the Light Brigade down the Jezreel, with the Jihadis up on those heights around Narzareth. But we don’t have the time. And the Afula defense is just mobile systems for the meantime. They haven’t had time to prep the ground, to really dig in. They weren’t expecting customers that far back in the shop, so we’re facing a hasty defense with some pretty good anti-armor equipment. But I don’t see any serious revetments or any concrete being poured.”