The War After Armageddon

NINETEEN

“Just stay back,” Chief Warrant Officer Culver yelled. Lowering his voice, the physician’s assistant said, “You, too, sir. Let me figure this out.”

“He’s dead, Chief?”

“Yeah, he’s dead. Dead dead. Y’all get back, in case this is some Black Plague from Outer Space.”

Doc Culver began stripping off the soldier’s uniform.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” Pat Cavanaugh asked him.

“Yeah, but I’m not. If DeSantis here has anything that could kill him since I saw him doing pushups a half-hour ago, I’m already dead meat.”

He tore off uniform parts and undergarments, ripping them with his Buck knife. When the reinforced cloth resisted, Culver’s roughness increased. He didn’t want anyone to see that his hands were shaking.

Black flies settled on white flesh, scornful of attempts to shoo them.

“Who saw him last? Who was with him? What was he doing? Anybody?”

The dead soldier’s skin looked unblemished. Culver yanked down the trousers, looking for spots, glandular swelling, discoloration where it would mean something other than a combat bruise.

All he found was a heat rash, raw pink inside the soldier’s thighs. “What was he doing when he ran out of the house? Tell me again. Anybody who saw him.”

“Grabbing at himself. His gut, his throat,” Bratty said. The Command sergeant major surveyed the gawking soldiers. “It’s no-bullshit time. Tell Chief Culver what you know. Who was with him in that house? What was DeSantis doing?”

A specialist looked away. Bratty caught it. “Prusinski. You in there with him? What was he up to?”

Cavanaugh inched closer to the physician’s assistant, speaking quietly. “Chief, it sounds like we’ve got an epidemic in the city.”

“You told me that, sir.” The physician’s assistant turned away from the battalion commander and the corpse to glare at the soldier Bratty had called on. “Prusinski, speak up. Unless you want everybody to know why you came crawling into my office last month.”

“We weren’t doing anything,” the specialist said. “Just washing up a little. He just washed his face and brushed his teeth. And I’m, like, washing my feet with this hose they got in there, and I look up, and he’s like somebody’s sticking a knife in him.”

“He brushed his teeth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“DeSantis brushed his fucking teeth? In rag water? From the tap?”

Specialist Prusinski nodded.

“Jesus Christ,” Chief Culver said. Then he turned to Cavanaugh. “It isn’t any kind of plague, sir. It’s worse. The water supply’s been poisoned.”

HEADQUARTERS, III (US) CORPS, MT. CARMEL RIDGES

“Trouble in Nazareth, sir,” Mike Andretti told Harris as soon as the general walked in for the morning go-round.

That woke Harris up. Helped by the piercing smell of insecticide recently sprayed.

“What kind of trouble? Talk to me.”

“Looks like, before they left, the Jihadis poisoned the water supply. Big-time. The rags have been drinking it. And there’s a soldier down in 1-18.”

“Jesus.”

“General Scott’s got his PSYOP folks and the Civil Affairs straphangers running some loudspeakers into Nazareth. To warn the population. Meanwhile, Pat Cavanaugh’s using locals as town criers. We’re pushing up engineers to turn off the system.”

“How bad is it?”

“Still unclear, sir. Hundreds dead, at least. Cavanaugh believes there’s more of them in the houses. Corpses, I mean. Probably a lot more to come, before the word gets to everybody.”

“They poisoned the water supply. On their own people. They knew we wouldn’t drink it. And they did that to their own kind.” Harris shook his head in reluctant awe of the level of ferocity that took. Maybe old Sim was right: An enemy who would do that couldn’t just be defeated but had to be eradicated. Immediately, Harris crushed the thought. But he understood why Montfort’s arguments were so seductive.

“Sir… The Jihadis wanted those people dead.”

“Yeah, got it, Mike. But they wanted us to do it. Guess they were afraid we’d be unreliable, that the MOBIC boys wouldn’t get here in time. Pretty good assessment of the situation on their part. So… What’s the good news? Got any this morning?”

“Yes, sir. 1st Cav’s got Golani Junction. Raised the flag over the ruins of the old McDonald’s.”

“Blue casualties?”

“Don’t sound bad, sir. General Stramara’s fighting smart. And the J’s aren’t. They’re just throwing bodies into the mix now. Tough fighting, but they don’t have quite the edge some of their units were showing last night. And we’re whacking them. General Stramara’s Deuce thinks al-Ghazi’s pulling his best units off line. Maybe forming a counterattack force.”

“Val?” Harris turned to his G-2.

“We’ve got some drone imagery. Pretty patchy, but it looks like al-Ghazi’s preparing a second line of defense. On the ridge just west of the Sea of Galilee. And running north.”

“Doesn’t make sense. If we—or the MOBIC forces—pushed them off that high ground above Tiberias, they’d have no line of retreat. Just that one road following the lake. It’d be a shooting gallery.”

“Yes, sir. But they’re digging in up there anyway.”

“Well, file that one under ‘What the fuck?’ See if your folks can figure out the logic behind it. Al-Ghazi’s just not that dumb.”

“Yes, sir. But al-Mahdi might have ordered him to do it.”

Harris folded his arms. Bucking himself up against the not-enough-sleep hangover. “Al-Mahdi’s not that stupid, either. There’s got to me more to it, Val.”

“We’ll stay on it, sir.”

“Any more bad news?” Harris looked around the briefing room. Tired faces. But plenty of energy, nonetheless.

“Ship got hit last night by stealth drones. Crew got off, but it was a catastrophic loss. Lot of 155 mike-mike ammunition on board. And some haulers.”

“Shit. What else?”

“Two electromagnetic-pulse mines confirmed down in General Scott’s First Brigade sector.”

“So the Jihadis did have some, after all.” Harris glanced at his G-2, then returned his attention to the G-3. “Which units got hit?”

“2-34 Armor took both mines.”

“How bad?”

“Two combined-arms companies without any working electronics.”

“The shielding didn’t work at all?”

“Powerful mines, sir.”

“I want to know, immediately, if we run into any more of them. It’s hard enough to communicate as it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What else?”

“The MOBIC elements pushing up the west bank of the Jordan linked up with General Scott’s forward Cav elements at 0445. They’re flowing in behind our front lines now. Preparing for the forward passage of lines and reentry into battle. At which point they assume responsibility for the attack in sector.”

“Got it. Any more static from HOLCOM?”

“No, sir.”

“The MOBIC outfits have an LD time yet?”

“The forward passage of lines is set to commence at 1800.”

“Going to be some tired hombres. We refueling them?”

“They’ve requested it.”

Harris pivoted toward his G-4. “Real-Deal? Can we top ’em off?”

“Yes, sir. Although I hate to do it.”

“Well, they’re on our side. And we all need to remember it. But I suspect some of those boys are going to be falling asleep at the wheel by the time they go into action.” He shrugged. “We have enough back-up comms gear to fix those two companies down in 2-34 Armor? Get them back into the net?”

“We’re checking it out now, sir. Lot of that stuff still hasn’t come over the beach.”

“Cannibalize any vehicles deadlined for major components or significant battle damage.”

The G-4 raised his eyebrows. “Going to be a property-book nightmare. And the tactical units will fight it. But I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“Write off any systems you lift as combat losses. Blame me. Just get 2-34 talking again.”

“Roger, sir.”

“Okay, Real-Deal. Now for the major-league question: How do we keep an entire city that’s crowded with refugees and has a poisoned water supply from dying of thirst?”

“Sir, depending on the level and kind of poison, there’s a chance we can use water-purification units—”

“Assume the worst. That the water can’t be processed.”

“Jesus, sir… There just isn’t enough bottled water. Even if we stopped bringing everything else ashore, there’s not enough loaded on the ships.”

“How many water-purification sites do we have up and running?”

“I don’t have a current number, sir. But we don’t have the spare tankers, anyway.”

“Solve it, Sean. Make it personal.”

Colonel Sean “Real-Deal” McCoy gave Harris the polar-bear salute. “Sir, I honestly don’t know—”

“Solve it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harris turned back to his operations officer. “Mike, what about General Morris’s Marines? When do we get road clearance down to them?”

“Already done, sir. At zero-six. The Marines are road-marching north as we speak, with lead elements putting the pedal down east of Haifa. We’re moving them over the lowest-threat roads, and we’ve got the hot stretches marked to get their attention and keep them moving. Got some potential bottlenecks, though.”

“Vehicle decon? The Marines don’t have much capacity in-theater.”

“Our chem folks have three hasty-decon sites waiting for them up north. Best we can do. Overall, I’d say Marty Rose’s planners did a first-rate job.”

“Just keep ’em moving. Double intervals between the serials, as we discussed. Keep the Mike-Papas on them about maintaining distance. His Marines won’t like it, but Monk Morris will understand. We don’t want units backing up while they’re in the hot zones.”

“Yes, sir.”

A captain slipped into the room and made his way between chairbacks and a parapet of knees to hand a scrap of paper to the G-2.

“Val? Anything hot?” Harris asked his intelligence officer.

Val Danczuk began his answers by saying to himself, in a low but audible tone, “The motherfuckers.”

“That covers a wide array of characters these days,” Harris said. “Exactly which Mike-Foxtrots are we talking about this time?”

“The Jihadis,” Colonel Danczuk said. “They didn’t waste any time. This is an intercept from a radio station in Baghdad, a big regional sender. They’re telling the world that we’re poisoning all of our ‘captives’ in Nazareth.”

Harris whistled. In disgust mixed with admiration. It was the same emotional mix he felt toward Sim Montfort.

REAR HEADQUARTERS, I MOBIC CORPS, COMMANDER’S SANCTUM

General of the Order Simon Montfort focused on the only officer seated at the planning table who didn’t wear the black cross of the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ or the red Jerusalem Cross of his Guardians.

“Forty-eight hours,” Montfort told the Air Force three-star. “You have forty-eight hours. Then you need to be in complete readiness to smite the Jihadi forces with every manned aircraft and drone you have in this theater or capable of flying into this theater. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant General Micah said. “You realize, of course, that there are airspace deconfliction issues, and we need to do our weaponeering based upon specific target pa ram e ters to maximize—”

“The targets will be al-Mahdi’s forces. Wherever they are when I give you the order. Stationary and on the move. We believe that a wide array of high-value targets will be strung out along the highways and secondary routes leading east to Damascus and beyond to the old Iraqi border. Focus your planning on the road network. Use your intelligence resources to identify possible assembly and staging areas. We’ll provide whatever intelligence we develop ourselves. Just be ready to fly. When I tell you to.”

“They’ll be in retreat, you mean?”

“They’ll be marching east. They won’t expect you.”

“How can you be sure?”

Montfort, who was fighting twinges of nausea, straightened his back and turned a practiced gaze on the Air Force officer. “The Lord granted me a vision. Is that sufficient? Be prepared to fly. To do the Lord’s work. Be ready to fly at a moment’s notice, forty-eight hours from now.”

“I can’t keep aircrews on alert indefinitely, you realize. We have crew-rest requirements and—”

“If my men can fight for days without sleep, driven only by their commitment to our faith, surely you can do your part, General Micah.” Montfort offered the man a friendly smile that did not quite mask the warning behind it. “After all, I need to return to Washington with strong reasons why the Air Force should maintain its independence. When I testify before God and the United States Congress on the conduct of this war.”

“The Air Force will do its part. Of course.”

“And your part will consist of destroying al-Mahdi’s forces as thoroughly as possible. Your mission is to annihilate them. Their equipment must be destroyed, and no Jihadi should be spared. No target will be off-limits, including their field hospitals—which we believe are being used for military purporses. Read the Book of Joshua, if you have any questions.”

“Yes, sir. The Air Force is here to help you. You can count on us.”

Montfort subdued a grimace before it could weaken his expression. The belly pang faded into queasiness. “And one other thing. My targeting cell will give you the coordinates of a compound a short flight east of the Jordan River. We’ve identified it as the personal property of Emir-General al-Mahdi. It’s a refuge of his, a hide-out. I want the compound destroyed, with not one trace left of it on this Earth. It will be on your initial target list.”

The Air Force officer seemed relieved. “That one’s easy.”

“Good. Go with God, General Micah.”

The Air Force officer rose and saluted. No one returned his salute.

When the outsider had left the room, Montfort hunched over, grimacing. Through much of the meeting, he’d warred against bursting pains that worsened by the minute, unwilling to display any kind of weakness in front of the Air Force general. Now he groaned aloud.

“Get my doctor,” he barked. “Get him. Now.”

“No, sir. You haven’t been poisoned. Put your mind at rest on that count. I’ll run some stool tests to be one hundred percent certain, but I’ll tell you right now you’ve got viral gastroenteritis.”

“Dates. I ate dates.”

“Local? That was a mistake.”

“The person I was with… I have reason to believe… that he… Lord! Can you give me something for these cramps? And to clear my head?”

“I’ll do what I can. But we’re just going to have to keep you hydrated and let this run its course. Antibiotics can only do so much.”

“Maybe poison… be sure… the person I was with… I don’t think he got sick…”

“From the dates? Sir, all it takes is one bad one. One microscopic speck on one date. And this is a very septic environment.”

“You’ve got to get… I’ve got to be able to think clearly… I keep going dizzy.”

“Sir, you’re going to have to take it easy.”

“I’ve got to go again. Help me up.”

“There’s a bedpan under you.”

“I’ve got to get up.”

The doctor stiffened. “Do you want to get up, or do you want to get better? Now just use the bedpan. I’ve got to get an orderly in here, anyway. I’ve got to start an intravenous bag.”

“I’ve got to get up.” Montfort tried to raise himself but only unsettled the bedpan before collapsing. Stunned. With the world swirling, stopping long enough to tease him, then swirling again. Cramps yanked his knees up toward his belly. He felt as if barbed wire were being dragged through his intestines. His body poured vile liquid.

Had al-Mahdi done this to him? No matter what the doctor had to say? Yes or no, he was going to pay. Al-Mahdi was going to be ground into the dirt, the dust. Into filth. With his face shoved in a bedpan.

“… God…” Montfort said. But he wasn’t praying. When he’d been wounded in Nigeria, the pain had been nothing compared to this. He hated to show weakness, even to his doctor. But his body had betrayed him. And now it refused to follow his commands.

Montfort tried to think clearly. And he spoke, unsure of whether the doctor was there to hear him. “Got to get better… tomorrow morning. Got to get up there… Everything’s set… Can’t happen without me.” Lucid for a moment, he saw the doctor staring down at him. With an inscrutable expression. Was the doctor the enemy, too? There were enemies everywhere. Montfort asked, “Can you fix me up by tomorrow morning?”

“Unlikely. I’ll do what I can. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s not viral. We’ll see what the test results say. If it’s just Mohammed’s Revenge… then maybe.”

Montfort grasped the doctor’s forearm with a soiled hand. “You’ve got to get me to where I can fly in a helicopter… early tomorrow morning. Do you understand me?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand you. But your body may not be listening.”

“My body… will do what I tell it.”

“Well, that will make it easier on both of us.”

“I will stand where my Savior stood… tomorrow… all arranged.”

The doctor broke free and called in the orderly to clean up the mess.

“Get my chief of staff,” Montfort called after him. “I need to know that everything’s on schedule.”

“Yes, sir. We just need to get you cleaned up first. You don’t want him to see you like that.”

“Get him now. And doctor? No one can know… no one…”

“We’ll keep it quiet, sir. Now you need to rest.”

“Can’t rest…” He was half-aware of being manhandled, then of being cleansed with a warm, wet rag.

“The waters of the Jordan!” Montfort cried.

And he blacked out.

HEADQUARTERS, III (US) CORPS, MT. CARMEL RIDGES

“The old man’s going to go through the roof when he hears this,” Mike Andretti told the G-2.

“That’s just Sim Montfort making sure Flintlock doesn’t get any credit. Him, or the Army.”

“It’s just damned crazy, though. Nuts. We’re hammering them. We stop now and it just gives them…” The G-3 looked at his watch. “It gives the Jihadis over six hours to get their act back together. And that’s if the MOBIC units cross their line of departure on time.”

“We could’ve punched through, Mike,” the G-2 said. “You don’t even have to look at the reports we’re getting in. You can feel the J’s thinning out, weakening. We could’ve rolled them up. And gotten to the Sea of Galilee ourselves.”

Andretti nodded. “I guess that wouldn’t have fit in with what-ever plans Sim Montfort’s got in mind. Praying and slaying, and posing for posterity all the while. Makes me fucking sick. That we’ve come to this. I’d better go tell the old man.”

“Better you than me. You know, though,” the corps intelligence officer said, “I swear to God something’s going on. Things just don’t make sense. The J’s are weakening their own front lines, giving up good defensive terrain… Yet they’re busting ass to throw up a hasty line of defense back where they’ll be in for Mohammed Custer’s Last Stand, guaranteed. Al-Ghazi has to see it. He’s the best field commander al-Mahdi’s got. Trying to hang onto the heights on this side of the Sea of Galilee… That’s an amateur-hour stunt. Any Jihadi unit he leaves up there isn’t going to live to fight another day. I just can’t get inside the logic of it. It’s like they’re setting themselves up to lose.”

“I’ll let you figure it out, Val.” Andretti half-crumpled the order he held in his hand. “Christ, the old man just doesn’t need this.” But before the G-3 could exit the field operations center, Harris walked in.

“You don’t look like a happy camper, Mike,” he said.

“Sir… We just got another order from HOLCOM. It’s not enough that they pulled us back from Golani Junction. Now we’re under orders, effective immediately, to disengage. To pull back and just wait for the MOBIC corps to start passing through.”

“Know what tomorrow’s headline is going to be back home?” Harris said. Confounding Andretti’s expectations, the general’s voice was calm. Almost mellow. He was even smiling, if only slightly. “It’s going to read, ‘Army Forced To Retreat, MOBIC Comes To Rescue.’ I’ve got to hand it to Sim Montfort. He’s outmaneuvered us all on the PR front.” Harris’s smile faded into a look of infinite bitterness. “He’s probably laughing his head off right about now.”

“Are we just going to let him—”

“Issue the order, Mike.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind me saying—”

“I’m giving in too easily? No, Mike. I’m not. All this sanctimonious bullshit and screw-your-buddy crap brings out my latent serial-killer tendencies. But we’re going to concentrate on the battles we can win. And we’re not going to let ourselves be distracted by friendly fire. Issue the order. Then get Real-Deal hustling. I want every unit that’s been in the fight resupplied with ammo, topped off, fed and ready to go the minute they get the order. Old Sim’s not in Damascus just yet.”