The War After Armageddon

SEVENTEEN

Flintlock Harris sat back down after Montfort left. Drained, he brushed back his hair with his hands, pulling his eyelids open. Trying to think clearly. His body yearned for sleep, but his mind paged from thought to thought, unable to staple them together.

Bored flies drifted past the lamp. The dead air smelled of backed-up drains. One room was much the same as another in Sim Montfort’s Holy Land.

At any moment, John Willing would bring in the paperwork that absolutely had to be signed before Harris could go to sleep. The general dreaded the thought of straining to read anything smaller than a billboard. But paperwork was as much a part of soldiering as the rest of it.

Montfort knew. About his eyes. Enough to make that remark. Who else knew? How would Montfort use the information? Had he used it already? Was it already in the “Fire Harris” file back in D.C.?

On the other hand, old Sim was rattled. Badly. If Harris heard one clock ticking, Montfort heard another. The Christian general who threw away his regiments of believers. How much time did Montfort have? The impatience, the unaccustomed insecurity, was obvious. An assassination really wasn’t Montfort’s style. It wasted too many resources, left too many debts to others, revealed too much. Sim had overplayed that one—and lost the hand. Badly. Harris was confident that his competitor wouldn’t try any similar stunts soon.

The down side was that Montfort, turning hasty on the battle-field, might drag them all down with him. With just one big mistake. Despite Sim’s rapid conquest of Jerusalem, Harris wasn’t ready to write off al-Mahdi as a military commander. Or al-Ghazi, for that matter. Sim would push as hard as he could now, running against a stopwatch only he could hear. And when a leader did that, it was all too easy to lose sight of the enemy’s counterdesigns.

Harris could picture the MOBIC corps charging into a classic Middle Eastern trap, the kind that Muslim armies had used for over a thousand years, first luring the opponent on, and then, when the attacker found himself overextended, sweeping in on his forces from the flanks. He scribbled a note to Van Danczuk to send Montfort the study the G-2 shop had done of historical patterns in Jihadi warfare. And to mark it “urgent.” Montfort and his men were Americans, too. Troublesome, even revolting, as their differences were, they were still on the same side.

Harris replayed the MOBIC commander’s tirade about the centuries of evidence of Muslim viciousness and all the chances the Jihadis had been given. The damned trouble with Montfort, the brilliance of the grift he worked, was that he always started with an ounce of truth. Then he wrapped it in a ton of bullshit. And it worked. Because old Sim told people what they longed to hear.

He’d been doing that since their days at VMI.

Harris didn’t buy Montfort’s logic, of course. But he had to admit that Sim forced him to think. What alternatives did he have to offer? In place of Montfort’s vision of hypergenocide? What strategy could he lay out as a substitute? Just an endless muddling through? More of the same? A succession of wars that only bought time at a terrible cost in blood? Was it true… irrefutably true… that religions were programmed for violent competition, that ac-commodation was an illusion for soft-minded dreamers? Was it, in the end, us or them? And not just on the battlefield?

Harris dreaded what the coming days and weeks and months and years would bring.

Old Sim was right about one thing, though: Right now, they had a war to fight.

So what was to be done? Harris asked himself. What could he do to bring victory on the battlefield? Without sacrificing the fundamental humanity he still ascribed to his country? And without delivering that country to his own faith’s Jihadis?

Keep it rigorous. By the book. Don’t make any big mistakes. Keep the Army clean. Prevent the MOBIC command from grabbing the Marines. Deliver the goods.

Okay. Sim and his boys were about to assume the leading role in the attack. Given the new determination the Jihadis were showing, that promised to be a bloody mess. Especially given Montfort’s evident impatience. Harris hoped that his old acquaintance, the man who’d succeeded at virtually everything he’d ever undertaken, wouldn’t fall into the trap of overconfidence now. The combination of overconfidence and impatience had defeated no end of generals in the blood-soaked terrain in which they found them-selves.

Harris rose. Stiff. Old. He bent to rummage through the kit bag his aide had placed by the foot of his bunk. His body seemed to him a rusty machine, hammered into action. Fishing out an emergency ration stashed for times like this, the general sat back down and began to eat a foil packet of chicken a la king. Cold. The spoon came up with solid white grease. But Harris didn’t care.

Where was Willing? He was usually so prompt. Had he fallen asleep himself? Or was he in the field latrine with the runs? Like half the G-3 shop.

A weary fly scouted the ration pouch. More from an insect’s sense of duty than from real interest. Harris’s shooing gesture was equally halfhearted.

How much sleep could he allow himself? The window of his room had been blackened and blastproofed by his security detail, but Harris sensed the sky lightening beyond the walls. Three hours? He knew he needed four to keep on functioning on overdrive. But he didn’t want to miss his own morning briefing. And rescheduling it just screwed everybody else.

Everything was on track. He could let Mike Andretti run the show. They’d come get him if any critical issues came up.

Or would they just let the old man sleep? He could hear the G-3 saying, “He’s been through a lot.”

Harris didn’t want anybody’s pity. Three hours. He’d make do with that.

If Willing didn’t turn up soon, he wouldn’t even get that.

Killing a billion people. Sim was certainly ambitious. And utterly mad. But history was made by madmen.

Would his own kind really attempt such a thing? Or was Sim more interested in the process, in the ambitions a lengthy struggle might fulfill? How much did Montfort really mean? Even now? And how much was sheer calculation?

With the acid clarity at the end of a sleepless night, Harris realized that Sim Montfort was a great man and he was not. Montfort certainly wasn’t a good man. He reeked of evil. But Montfort was, undeniably, a great man. And Harris knew that he lacked greatness himself. He was a competent soldier and a first-rate commander. As dutiful as anyone could ask. And honest. Or so he liked to think. But there was no greatness in him, and he recognized, ruefully, that a part of him was jealous of Sim Montfort.

But it was only a small part of him. The rest of Lieutenant General Gary “Flintlock” Harris just wanted to see the mission he’d set himself through to the end: The preservation of the U.S. Army and the defense of the Constitution of the United States.

He laughed at himself. With a weary, broken laugh that ended with a sour burp of grease. Who did he think he was? To assign himself such grand ambitions? Flintlock Harris, Savior of the Army and the Constitution?

Putting it in those terms made him feel like a fool.

Had he been as vain, in his way, as Sim Montfort?

And yet. Somebody had to do it. Didn’t they? Who else would have even tried? Poor old Schwach? Who was left to fight them, on both fronts? Here, in the shooting war. And in dubious battle on the plains of the Washington Mall, if not Heaven.

So many had fallen by the wayside. So many of his comrades had just quit. There was so much darkness now. And not just the shade that was slowly eroding his vision, but the darkness that infected souls and defined entire ages.

Harris scraped out the last lumps and smears of chicken a la king, streaking white grease across his knuckles. Then he stood up, defying his joints again. He dropped the foil envelope into the burn bag meant for all his trash, classified and unclassified, and, a bit cranky, turned toward the door to look for his aide.

Just then, Major Willing knocked at last and came into the room.

“Sorry, sir. I dozed off.”

“What have you got for me, John?”

“I pared it down, sir. But these can’t wait.”

Harris held out his hand for the papers. “Get some sleep. Tell the adjutant—whoever’s on duty over there—to have a runner wait outside my door.”

“Sir, the document with the blue tab has to go straight to the Three shop.”

“Have them send a runner, too. I hate to say it, but there are times I miss my old computer. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” But the aide didn’t leave. He looked at the floor, then looked back up. “Sir… I’m glad you—”

“Me, too, John. Now get some sleep.”

But as the aide was leaving, Flintlock Harris had a moment of weakness.

“John?”

“Sir?”

“How are we doing on long-range comms?”

“Back to Washington?”

“To the States.”

“We had some open channels earlier, sir. I can check.”

“Before you turn in, see if they can get my wife on the line.”

As the world emerged from the darkness, restoring the contrast between solid forms and empty space, Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell felt a relief so intense it was almost joy. The night had been hellish. But they’d made it through. Most of them. Even though the lightening sky to the east promised only another day of combat, Maxwell felt an unreasonable confidence that things would be better now.

He had grown up in a world where armor ruled the night, when magic night-vision devices and perfect communications had made his kind masters of the midnight hour. But this was a different world. First, the jamming had gone crazy again. Then a tank in Alpha Company and a Bradley in Charlie had each run over an EMP mine, wiping out every electronic system on their company property books.

For almost two hours, Maxwell had remained unaware of the company-level crises. Waiting in his command post and listening to slivers of the war, he’d blamed the jamming for the lack of updates from his subordinate commanders. Meanwhile, his forward companies had been fighting for their lives. Even Bravo Company, with intact comms gear, had been hard up against it, infiltrated by commandos wearing cool-suits that masked the body-heat signatures that should have registered on Bravo’s thermal sights. With the noise of battle all around and artillery fire falling like an endless avalanche, Maxwell had lost control of his battalion without realizing it.

Only when he grew restless and went forward on a personal recon—half to keep from dozing off—had he encountered the Alpha Company first sergeant, who’d peeled off from the fight to alert battalion.

Maxwell had turned around just in time to warn his command post to be prepared for a knife fight. Suicide commandos had penetrated the line. The TOC got hit just minutes after he got back.

After that, it hadn’t been a question of commanding his battalion but of survival. The Headquarters Company clerks and jerks had gotten their chance to kill or be killed in pitch darkness, guided only by tracer streams and cries. Maxwell would’ve retrieved his sword, on practical grounds. But there hadn’t been time. The Jihadis came out of the darkness in waves. Screaming and hurling grenades. Firing wildly. After breaking his carbine while beating a Jihadi to death, Maxwell had scavenged a weapon from a dead soldier. After that, he fought with short bursts and the bayonet. When he wasn’t fighting for his own life, he tried to impose order on the free-for-all.

Where Jihadis had tangled themselves in the wire, they blew themselves up as Maxwell’s men approached. After that, his soldiers shot anything that screamed or even rustled.

One of the commandos had gotten inside a tank. That set off a razor fight in a locked closet. Out of ammunition, another soldier fought with his bare hands for the cab of his V-hull truck, finishing the job only by biting through his enemy’s neck and thumbing out an eyeball.

Neither side took prisoners.

The first orange crack split the horizon into heaven and earth. As if the night had been slashed open with a saber. Maxwell could see faces. Bodies. Damage.

“Sergeant Major?” he called.

No answer.

“Captain Barnes?”

No answer.

But plenty of his soldiers remained alive. More and more of them emerged, ghostly, from the gray depths between the trees. More had survived than seemed reasonable after those infernal hours. But it was hard to spot one who wasn’t smeared with blood.

Black lumps littered the ground. Lot more of them than of us, Maxwell thought. But it was slight consolation. Behind scorched trees, a comms vehicle smoldered.

In the eternal voice of the eternal sergeant, an NCO asked the world, “Anybody got any fucking coffee? I don’t care how cold it is…”

What was he supposed to do now? Use semaphore? Messengers? In one of the not-quite lulls between wave attacks, he’d managed to raise brigade and report the EMP mines. At least, he thought they’d copied him. Higher had to know about that par tic u lar threat. Before everybody in the corps started running into them.

Call the mental roll: Two companies dead, as far as their electronics went—would they have replacement comms gear somewhere up the chain? Actual casualty figures unknown. A battalion headquarters in shreds. And an enemy who meant business after all.

What was a commander supposed to do under the circumstances?

Maxwell had no trouble answering his own question: Fight.

Sarah Colmer-Harris wasn’t sure she should answer the phone. The crank calls had reached a level of vitriol that shocked her, despite all that she’d heard in her courtroom years. But there was also a chance it would be her daughter calling again. She dreaded that call, too. She didn’t have anything left to give to anyone else just now.

Ready to curse the caller, she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Sarah?”

“Oh, God. Gary? Is it you?”

“For better, or worse. Worse, if you were close enough to smell me.”

“It’s so good to hear your voice. I can’t tell you how good.” She wanted not to cry. But her strength fled. “Is everything okay? Are you all right?”

“I’m tired. Otherwise unscathed. I wake you, darling?”

“No. I hadn’t gone to bed yet.” She glanced across the room to the half-packed, ill-packed suitcase. “It’s just so wonderful to hear your voice.”

“I love you, Sarah.”

“And I love you. God, I feel like I’m back in high school, and the boy I’d been mooning about for months just called.”

“Who is he? I’ll kill him.”

“Only you.” She wiped the wet from her nose with the back of her hand, then rubbed at her tears. “I wish you were here.”

“Wouldn’t mind being there myself. Better than you being here, under the circumstances. Just had one of the memorable meals of my life.”

“Are you all right? Really?”

“Yes, Sarah. I’m all right. Are you all right?”

“Fine. Better now. Since you called.” How much did he know? she wondered.

“Listen, Sarah… I can’t tie up this line. I’m breaking my own rule. But… here it is… the reason I called…”

She cringed. Beginning to shrivel inside. He knew.

“What? Tell me.”

“Sarah… I just wanted you to know that I love you. I needed to tell you that I love you unconditionally, without reservation, and with all my heart. And I have unlimited faith in you. In all things.”

“You’re making me cry.”

“You’ve been crying for the last five minutes. You’ve probably got snot all over the phone.”

“Mr. Romantic.” But he was, he was.

“I love you, Sarah. That’s all. How are the girls?”

She hesitated. Then she forced herself to speak. Before he began to suspect something.

“Gary… I’ve got something to tell you. But promise me you won’t get upset. You’ve got to promise me.”

“That’s hard, Sarah. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing so terrible. I just don’t want you hearing rumors and—”

“What’s wrong, Sarah?”

“It’s Emily. She’s… been in an accident. Nothing terrible, nothing too serious. Miranda’s with her.”

“She’s going to be all right, though?”

“Yes,” she lied. “She should be fine.”

Dear God, she prayed to the being she didn’t believe in, Dear God, just let me get through this. Don’t let him know. Please. He doesn’t need this now. I can bear it for the two of us. Until he comes home.

“Well, if anything—”

“She’s going to be fine.”

“Sarah… I’ve got to go.”

“I know. I love you.”

“And I love you. Give my love to Emily. Tell her she’s got terrible timing. And give Miranda a hug for me. A big one.”

“I promise. Gary… Come home safe.”

“I promise. I’ll be there before you know it. What did the monkey say when he caught his tail in the meat grinder?”

“ ‘It won’t be long now.’ Gary, sweetheart… If your men only knew what a little boy you are…”

“I’m relying on you not to tell.”

“I won’t. Girl Scout’s honor. I love you. I love you.”

“I love you, Sarah.”

Then he was gone. And Sarah turned back to the labor of packing for the flight to her daughter’s funeral.