The War After Armageddon

TWENTY-ONE

As the twilight darkened, so did the mood in the headquarters. No end of tasks remained to be carried out: Units had to be resupplied, convoy routes deconflicted, communications shortfalls remedied, plans written, and orders issued. Yet, as the MOBIC forces passed through the corps’ lines to take over the offensive, the air went out of the balloon. And as the reports of impossibly swift progress by the MOBIC lead elements mounted, officers responsible for directing the actions of divisions sank into their chairs, newly aware of their accumulated weariness. The NCOs who made things happen found they had nothing more pressing to do than make a fresh pot of coffee or take an extended trip to the latrine. Radios still crackled, and field phones rang. Printers sawed, and screens glowed. But the network of commandeered buildings and camouflaged tents breathed in the sourness of mourning, as if an unexpected death had occurred and could not be explained. Taking down another report from the front, a captain summed up the collective mood when he put down his headset and demanded of the universe, “What the fuck is going on?”

Flintlock Harris wanted to know, too. As soon as the briefing room door shut on his inner circle—G-2, G-3, and his aide—he said, “Talk to me. Explain how Montfort’s doing this. And let’s go reverse order: Blue situation first, then Val can brief what little the J’s seem to be doing.”

Colonel Mike Andretti swept his pointer up over the wall map, settling the tip just north of the Sea of Galilee, then tracing a jagged line down over the western ridge that protected the body of water.

“Sir, the MOBIC forces are advancing all across the front. It’s as if they’re just out for a Sunday drive. We’ve got unconfirmed reports that their advance-guard elements have already seized several points along the crest of the ridge—they’re already looking down into the Sea of Galilee.”

“And ready to walk on water,” Harris grunted. “Mike, the Jihadis were giving it all they had to hold the line against us. Now they’re just folding their tents and running at the first sight of the MOBIC. Which is the opposite of what you’d expect—they should be fighting to the death against Sim Montfort’s crowd after Jerusalem.” He looked at each of the three other men, then asked, half rhetorically, “Are they that scared of the black-cross boys, or what?”

“Sir,” the operations officer continued, “all I can tell you is that the MOBIC nets we’re monitoring report light resistance. At most. They’re practically road-marching into Upper Galilee. Our own forward elements report MOBIC vehicles lined up nose-to-asshole as far as they can see. No tactical intervals, no march discipline. Just piling on.”

Harris shook his head. Vehemently. “This just makes no sense. It stinks. But I don’t know what the hell I’m smelling.”

“Maybe we just wore them out,” the Three said. “Maybe Montfort just got lucky on the timing. Could be they were ready to crack just when the lead MOBIC units hit them.” The Colonel’s stance remained aggressive from sheer habit, but his eyes were unsteady and frazzled.

“I don’t believe that,” Harris said. “Even Sim Montfort isn’t that lucky. The J’s are up to something. And I wish I knew what it was. Val?” He turned to the G-2. “You’re up. Give us the enemy situation. If there still is one.”

“Sir, as I briefed earlier, it appears they’ve transitioned into an operational retreat. If not a strategic one. The intel’s far from perfect, but we’ve got indicators that units that were slugging it out with us at dawn are already on the highway to Damascus. With some elite elements possibly located east of Damascus—but that’s based on intercepts only. As far as imagery goes, we’ve got some limited satellite coverage and some drone shots from the Golan and points east that just make no sense at all—the Third Jihadi Corps has units dispersed by individual vehicle, just spread all over the place. No sense of defensive perimeters. It looks like they just blindfolded the drivers and sent them off in different directions. It doesn’t match alGhazi’s command template.”

Something quickened in Harris. Something down deep. But he couldn’t yet put a name on it.”

“And?”

“Well, sir, it’s not much of a way to wage a war. Or fight a battle. It really does look as if they’ve just given up, as if they’re quitting. Running.” The G-2 glanced at the map, then reached into his pocket. Only to find his pointer gone. Tracing a line on the western Galilee ridge with his index finger, he said, “All those entrenchments they were digging as fast as they could? The defensive positions all along the ridge? We got a burst transmission through from a special-ops recon element up here, on the high ground behind Tiberias. They report a few stray Jihadis just hanging out and playing with their dicks. And all those vehicles in defensive positions? All those tanks? Junk. Shot up stuff. Old crap left over from the end-of-Israel fighting. Stripped for parts. It looks like the Jihadis had planned some kind of ruse before they decided to take their ball and go home.”

Harris jumped to his feet before the intelligence officer finished speaking. Rushing around the conference table, he shoved first the G-3, then the G-2, out of his way. He had the map memorized. But he needed to see it, anyway. To know.

“Show me where that report originated. Exactly where. Show me, Val.”

“Yes, sir. The recon team’s overwatching this stretch of road and the crest beyond it. By Kefar Hittim.”

Harris no longer cared whether anyone knew how badly his vision had deteriorated. He pushed his nose up against the map, as if sniffing the G-2’s finger. Then he shoved the colonel’s hand away. Staring at the map. With his soul plummeting into the earth.

“Fuck,” he said. Bitterly. Almost quietly. Then he swung himself over the nearest table, running for the door. “Let’s go. Everybody. Come on.”

“What do—”

“Mike. You get everybody you’ve got working every comms channel that’s up. Issue a STRIKEWARN. The J’s are going nuclear. Soon. You, too, Val. Use every channel. Forget the protocols.”

He was shouting. And running. Officers loitering in the hall leapt out of the general’s way. Too stunned at Harris’s tone to decipher his meaning immediately.

As Harris led his war party into the ops center, he barked, “I want every armored vehicle buttoned up. Get ’em in defilade. Every dismount gets into a ditch or takes shelter on the western side of the strongest nearby building. Move, move.”

Harris grabbed the liaison officer who’d arrived from the MOBIC corps. Seizing the colonel’s upper arm. As if arresting him. “ You. Get on the horn and tell your people they’re about to get nuked. They need to pull back, disperse. Immediately.”

Unsettled for an instant, the MOBIC colonel quickly mastered himself. His alarmed expression reorganized itself into a sly smile.

“General Harris… Surely, you don’t expect us to believe any such nonsense. If the infidel enemy can’t stop us, do you think you can? With some concocted story? Are you that embarrassed by our success?”

“Fuck you,” Harris said. “Get General Montfort on the line.”

“General of the Order Montfort is incommunicado.”

“Well, he’s going to be deep-fried like fucking falafel if you don’t listen to me.”

The operations center had come to life around them. It was a rare officer or NCO who recalled the format for a STRIKEWARN off the top of his head and the babble of voices reduced the transmissions to a common message: Take cover, the J’s are going nuke.

“I can’t disturb General Montfort,” the liaison officer said.

“Well, who can you disturb?”

“I won’t be a party to this.”

“I’m giving you a direct order.”

“You have no authority over me.”

“Listen. For Christ’s sake, man. We’re all on the same side. I’m trying to save your comrades, your buddies… your whole goddamned corps.”

The MOBIC colonel looked at Harris dismissively. “You can’t stop us now, General. Your time is over. I’ll file your report in the morning.”

Exasperated as he had never been in his entire life, Harris said, “You really think I’m staging this—all this—to get you to retreat for a couple of hours?”

The MOBIC colonel just smiled.

“Even if you think I’m crazy,” Harris continued, “will you at least report what I’m telling you right now? And let General Montfort judge? Morning’s going to be too late.”

“As of 2100, our attacking forces switched to radio silence. I’m not authorized—”

A terrible roar tore the night, overpowering the common sounds of war, a distant thunder akin to the voice of God.

Harris sat alone in the briefing room, face buried in his hands. Waiting for the first casualty reports. His fire-support officer had already assured him that none of the seven reported nuclear detonations had struck within the corps’ lines. But there would be casualties, nonetheless. Harris told himself he could have pushed harder, forced the intelligence system, done more about his hunch about the Jihadis’ nuclear reserves. But he hadn’t done it. And now the two or three nuclear weapons about which he’d worried had turned out to be at least seven. An unknown number of his fellow Americans, MOBIC members or not, had died because he hadn’t done his duty.

He should’ve seen it coming. He knew that. All of the indicators had been there. Every goddamned one. He couldn’t blame it on the G-2 or anybody else. He was the commander. Any failures rested on his shoulders, and his alone.

And this was a great failure, something terrible.

Major John Willing knocked on the door. The aide’s knuckles had the familiarity of a personal ring-tone.

“Come in.”

“Sir, Colonel Andretti has some more data from the fire-support cell. And a number of land-line reports have come in—the radio’s are still out, though.”

“Send him in, John.”

“Sir… The G-2’s with him. Want me to hold him outside?”

“No. Send them both in. And come back in yourself. I may need you to run some messages.”

“Yes, sir.”

How the mighty have fallen! Harris thought. Unable to force his mind beyond the cliché.

The G-3 came in twitchy, as if he’d just been transfused with a quart of espresso. The G-2 zombie-walked behind him.

Before the Three could report, Val Danczuk said, “Sir, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t listen and now—”

“Forget it, Val. Done is done. We’ve still got a war to fight.”

“Yes, sir,” the G-2 said. His voice was dull, almost dead. Harris decided to deal with the man later. And to sack him, at least temporarily, if he couldn’t get a grip on himself.

“Mike?”

“Looks like we got off pretty light, sir.”

Harris rapped the table. “Don’t jinx it. Just give me the details. Whatever you’ve got.”

“Winds are from the north-northwest. Any fallout’s headed down the Jordan Valley and toward Amman. I guess the Jihadis didn’t care about their own—”

“Al-Mahdi did what was smart. He fought to win. And didn’t count the costs. Go on.”

“We’ve got some drones up with radar-imagery capability and some backup infrared. Nobody knows what’ll work and what won’t, but we’ll try to assess how badly the MOBIC corps’s been hit. No comms out there. Oh, and we’ve registered four more nukes. All out of sector.”

“Where?”

“Colonel Tinsley’s gizmos read two down south near the Jordan River crossing sites. East of Jericho. And two in Jerusalem. Strategic chatter between the MOBIC rear CP and Washington suggests the J’s hit the Temple Mount with a ground burst, followed by an air burst.”

Harris snorted. “If they can’t have it, MOBIC won’t have it. The Holy of Holies is going to be a hot zone for a long time. What about our guys?”

“Like I said, sir: Things don’t look that bad. EMP problems, of course. We’ll have to sort all of the comms out—and see what else is still working down in the line units, if any of the electonics survived. Other than commo, our biggest problem right now is with MOBIC survivors stampeding back into our lines. They’ve lost all sense of organization. They’re just terrified. But neither of our lead divisions reports any catastrophic losses. Or any losses, for that matter. Although I’m sure some casualty reports will filter in. Comms are really—”

“We’ll have radiation casualties. Especially in 1st ID, given the fallout pattern. They’ll catch some of it. But the effects won’t be immediately evident. Everybody’s going to feel fit to fight and ready to go. But they won’t be. So listen, Mike. Get with our decon folks and see how fast they can shift the gear they’ve been using up north on the Marines down to our forward brigades. And I want an assessment by… say, 0600, of which units might’ve been heavily exposed to fallout. They’ll need to stand down. Complete rest. I don’t even want them opening their own ration packs. We’ll do it for them. And we need to round up those MOBIC survivors. They’ve got a much bigger radiation problem than we do. The poor buggers are going to be dying for years, slow and ugly. If they overexert themselves now, they’ll die in a matter of weeks.” Harris looked at his G-3. Sternly. “We’re not going to let that happen, if we can help it. They’re Americans, too. Get them under positive control. Then I want them to receive the same care our own soldiers do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, that’s part one. Part two: Mike, I want both the 1st Cav and 1st ID to task-organize down into battle groups with all the combat units that had no radiation exposure. I’ll accept maximum risk to our front—if the J’s want to counterattack through hot zones and what’s left of the MOBIC forces, let ’em. We’re going to attack. To the north. We’ll adjust Marty Rose’s left-hook plan on the march.”

“Marines in the lead?”

“You got it. They were the farthest from the nuke impacts, so they should be able to move out without any holdups. As soon as you pass on the other orders, get Monk Morris on the line for me. I want to talk to him myself.”

Harris stood up. “Gentlemen, we’re going to Damascus. We’re going to hit the J’s before they can reorganize themselves. And we’re going to do it before Washington can go nuclear.” He considered the other men, then said, “Everyone from the vice president on down is going to want revenge. Maybe from the president on down. I don’t know any more. But I want our lead elements to reach Damascus before it can be targeted.”

“Why save Damascus?” Val Danczuk asked. “After this…”

“Because it’s all we have left of who we are. Once this spins completely out of control, it’s going to be the worst bloodbath in human history.”

“Their blood, not ours, sir,” the G-3 said.

Harris shook his head. “Past a certain point, it’s just blood.” He shifted his attention to the G-2. “Val, see if our STARK YANKEE assets can figure out what’s become of Sim Montfort. Alive? Dead? I need to know.”

“Yes, sir.” The Two looked as if he were coming back to life. “Sir, I’m sorry I didn’t listen on the nukes and—”

“I said, ‘Forget it’.”

“Sir… I’ve got to ask you one thing, though. How did you know? How did you know they were about to go nuclear?”

Harris decided it was time for complete honesty now. About many things. He rose and made his way back to the map.

“Before my vision began to fail, I read history. All I could. Enough to recognize the attachment my enemies might feel to past events, places, symbols… enemies and, for that matter, allies. Sim Montfort, for example, allowed himself to become obsessed with Biblical sites. Gospel sites, above all. For all his reported fanat i cism, alMahdi has a more conventional sense of history—or so you’ve been telling me, Val.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who did you tell me al-Mahdi tries to emulate?”

“Saladin.”

Harris made a pistol out of his fingers and pointed it at the G-2. “Exactly. We knew that. And yet we didn’t see this coming.” He bent toward the map, straining until he found the small black letters. “Kefar Hittim. Westernize the name for me. Anybody?”

Nobody.

“Hattin,” Harris said. “The Horns of Hattin. I don’t know exactly how he set it up, but al-Mahdi just repeated Saladin’s greatest victory over the Kingdom of Jerusalem, when he lured the greatest army the Crusader states ever fielded to just that battlefield, the Horns of Hattin. Where Saladin surrounded and destroyed the Christian knights, the militant orders, virtually all of them. Utterly destroyed.” Harris looked at the G-2. “You’re not the one who should’ve seen this coming Val. I should’ve figured it out.”

“What happened after the battle?” his aide asked.

Harris smiled. Sadly. “Jerusalem fell.” Then he bucked back up. “But the King of Jerusalem didn’t have us backstopping him. It’s time to get back in the fight, gentlemen.”

“But why didn’t he use nukes to stop us? If he had so many in his pocket?” the G-3 asked.

Harris summoned his smile back from its grave. “Because we’re only the Lesser Satan, Mike. The Military Order of the Brothers in Christ is the Great Satan. Destroying the MOBIC corps was more important to al-Mahdi than winning this war. Both Sim Montfort and al-Mahdi see this as a final battle of faiths. We’re just a sideshow, a distraction. To both of them.”

“And now?”

“Find out if Sim Montfort’s alive or dead.”

Simon Montfort woke in slime. He had soiled himself again. Yet, it wasn’t a burst of filth that had ruptured his sleep. The mess beneath him was already cold. Nor was it the troubling, already vague dreams that had come to him. Something beyond the walls, beyond the afflicted self, had summoned him back to reality. Something great and terrible. As if the world had fractured. As if a trumpet had called the dead from their graves.

A small light glowed in the corner of his room. Steady. Unlike his bowels. Yet, he felt a difference in himself now, as if the sickness were only fighting a vicious rear-guard action. As he lay unmoving in his slops, he felt his mind sharpening. Beyond the closed door, a distant hubbub rose and fell. It was too much noise for the depths of the night.

What was wrong? Something was wrong. What was it?

Still weak of limb, he reached for the buzzer rigged to the castiron headboard. But his fingers no sooner located the little cyst of plastic than he drew them away again. Determined to rise on his own. To cleanse himself. Unwilling to let his body’s weakness shame him.

As he rose from the bed, caked with shit and dripping, the door opened. The light clicked on.

His chief of staff stared at Montfort for an instant, then looked away.

“What is it?” Montfort asked. “What’s wrong?”

The chief of staff could not bring out the words.

“What is it, man?”

“Sir… the Jihadis… nukes… They’ve used nuclear weapons on us… They used nuclear weapons…”

Montfort sank back onto the fouled mattress. But he refused to do more than sit. He had to be strong now. To clutch back the pieces of his soul that seemed to be exploding beyond his grasp. He understood that one clear thing: He had to remain strong.

“How bad?”

The chief of staff seemed to shrink as Montfort watched him. “Bad. We don’t know. Communications… We can’t talk…”

“How bad?”

“Sir, they must’ve had ten or a dozen nukes hidden… They hit us… they hit us everywhere…”

“Where? Where’s ‘everywhere,’man? Be precise.”

“Across the front… all across the front… and the crossing sites… Jerusalem…”

Al-Mahdi had betrayed him. He’d been a fool. An ass. A dupe. But instead of worsening his condition, the chief of staff’s news jolted Montfort back into command of himself. He already saw the first things that would need to be done.

“I see a betrayal in this,” he said, his voice a perfect combination of self-righteous anger and confidence in his own judgment. “Don’t you see it yourself, man? General Harris is behind this. He’s been conspiring with al-Mahdi, with the Jihadis, the infidels. To stop us. It’s obvious.”

“Yes, sir.” But the chief of staff seemed unsure, weak.

“This could never have happened without Harris’s complicity. That much is plain as can be. Why didn’t al-Mahdi use his nuclear weapons on Harris and his Philistine Army? Why save them for use against us? General Harris has made a deal with the dev il. And we needn’t keep it a secret.” Montfort straightened his back, overruling the cramps in his abdomen. “Listen to me: I want you to do everything in your power to find out how bad the situation is, the condition of our units. They must keep fighting. We can’t stop.”

“Sir… The only reports we have… The attacking units appear to be combat in effec tive… the level of destruction…”

“Initial reports are always exaggerated. We’ll reorganize. The Jihadis will pay. This is the work of the Anti christ, a sign that we truly are in the final battle. The Lord will not abandon us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go and do as I say. And send in my doctor. Wake him if he’s asleep.”

But when the chief of staff had gone, shutting the door behind him, Montfort slumped. Unsure if the nausea he felt arose from his sickness or from the shock of the news.

How could God let this happen? Hadn’t he been doing the Lord’s work? Why had God blinded him to this treachery? Why had He permitted His armies to be shattered?

Why had he let himself be fooled? Imagining that his own schemes must prevail? Putting his trust in an infidel. Was he being punished for his pride?

Montfort forced himself across the floor to the portable sickroom toilet positioned just beyond the foot of the bed. Unsure whether to kneel and vomit, or sit down on it. The energy he had summoned in front of the chief of staff was all gone now, replaced by an unreasoning terror. Had all of his exertions, his sacrifices, come to no more than this?

He settled himself on the flimsy apparatus, sulfuring the room with his waste. And then, when he was sick and empty and broken in spirit, he saw.

Simon Montfort had a revelation. He understood, with wrenching power, that God had chosen him, even as the Lord had seen fit to warn him that he must rise above all weakness of the spirit. God, not al-Mahdi, had sent this sickness to him. Had the mortal flesh not kept him here, he would’ve been forward with his Christian soldiers, consumed by the Hellfire of Satan, slain in a nuclear inferno.

But God had kept him here. Because the Lord had chosen him, and because he was chosen of the Lord. He had been saved in body as in soul so that he could continue to labor in the bloody vineyards of Midian.

But the Lord had warned him as well. Punishing him with the destruction of his army. For bartering with al-Mahdi, consorting with an agent of Satan. The Lord was telling him that he’d been too meek, a creature of too little faith to put his trust in the Lord. Instead, he had put his faith in men and allowed himself to be soft.

Had Joshua’s Israelites spared the inhabitants of Ai after the Lord commanded their destruction? Joshua had obeyed his Lord, but Simon Montfort had let Harris protect the infidels in Nazareth.

“For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out his spear,” Montfort quoted to himself, “until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai… and Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap forever, even a desolation until this day.”

The enemies of the Lord God had to be exterminated from the Earth to purify it. Harris had embraced abomination. And this abomination was repugnant to the Lord.

Nazareth would only be the beginning. Now was come the Day of Reckoning, the final battle at the End of Days.

His doctor came in, followed by two orderlies. Montfort looked up from the corruption of his body and said, “I need to speak to Vice President Gui.”