The War After Armageddon

SEVEN

“Shit,” First Lieutenant Tom Kosinski said. Then, with a sense that his mother hovered at his shoulder, he added, “Sorry, Chaplain.”

The priest didn’t seem to hear any of it. He gazed in the direction of the mound. Although he was staring into dirt and couldn’t see a damned thing from the shell crater.

Still listening. Hoping. Praying. Expecting a miracle.

But there wasn’t going to be one. There had been no explosion. That meant McGinley was dead or shot up too badly to get the job done. And McGinley had carried the last satchel charge the engineers had brought with them.

Suicide mission, anyway. Chances of getting close enough to the hole, dropping off the charge, and getting away were about zero. The engineer major, dead as dogshit after tripping a mine, had made it clear that he’d brought down the good stuff. Which was also the bad stuff.

“We don’t talk about it much,” the major had briefed, “but these charges were developed for just this kind of target. After the blast itself, they throw off enough gas to kill anything within twenty meters in the open air—or down a hundred-meter tunnel. You don’t want to hang around. The existence of CV-11 is classified, by the way.”

The combat engineer squad the major had brought along was supposed to do the dirty work. Now the engineers were dead, wounded, or scattered out of Kosinski’s control radius. And that radius kept shrinking.

Whatever the hell else the Jihadis had in that tunnel, they had some powerful general-purpose jammers. Strong enough to deflect any precision-guided rounds that might still work. And dumb rounds, which the arty boys had dropped in multitudes, just didn’t do the trick. It reminded Kosinski of what he’d read about the Japa -nese dug in on Pacific islands.

The Jihadis fired a volley of smoke canisters. They were nervous-in-the-service, too. He had to remember that. When the waves of doubt came over him.

The jammers wiped out everything. His headset was worthless. And only five of his soldiers were within visual range—two of them in the same crater as Kosinski and the chaplain. Which made a nice target.

So he couldn’t talk. And the smoke meant he couldn’t get a clear look at the mound. McGinley was KIA or WIA with the last charge up in the mess of blasted shrubs, twisted chain-link fence, wire, mines, and corpses.

It wasn’t like Iwo Jima, Kosinski decided. It was like World War I.

What now, Lieutenant? He mocked himself with the immemorial question. Now that you’ve got a minefield behind you, the enemy’s got clear fields of fire if you go forward or pull out, your chain of command wanted the mission accomplished hours ago, the light’s failing, and, although there seemed to be fewer of them now, enough Jihadis remained alive to dump the wrath of Allah on anything that moved.

Artillery rounds shrieked overhead. But the shells were headed elsewhere.

Okay, okay, Kosinski thought. I can’t talk. But they can’t talk, either. I’ve got the U.S. Army behind me. These bozos are in for Mohammed’s Last Stand, and they know it. The battalion S-2 had briefed them all on suicide units that would never surrender. Roger. But there had to be some damned weakness.

They didn’t cover this at Benning.

Okay. They had to work in closer. Try to get to McGinley. Get the satchel charge. Which the engineer had described as almost a mininuke. And get it into the mouth of the damned tunnel.

I choose Course of Action B, sir.

You are a no-go at this station.

The Jihadis launched a pair of rifle grenades in Kosinski’s general direction. Maybe to check if any Americans were still alive. The smoke from the grenades immediately began to drift off. But the light was going. And with all the flashes on every side, the night-vision gear wouldn’t be worth much.

What now, Lieutenant?

Forward, sir.

Kosinski motioned to Staff Sergeant Wasserman. You. And Winchell. Move out. Left. Then he signaled to Sergeant Baker, Martinez, and Liu. Covering fire, then move. Classic fire and maneuver. Bounding overwatch. Except this wasn’t an exercise with dummy rounds in the Georgia clay.

Let’s go. Follow me.

“Father. You stay here. You’ve done your part.”

The priest shook his head. He took off at a run before Kosinski could get over the lip of the crater.

Okay, follow the priest.

The Jihadis didn’t open up immediately. The smoke grenades might have obscured the tunnel’s defenses, but now the last wisps obscured the Americans.

Were the J’s low on ammo?

No. They’d have plenty in there. Stacked up.

Run. Run.

Kosinski caught up with the chaplain and yanked him into another crater. Just as interlocking fires from two machine guns swept the ground at thigh level.

Kosinski couldn’t see any of his soldiers now. He wondered if any had obeyed his order to move out. Past a certain point, he realized, a lieutenant’s authority reached its limit. The platoon—what remained of it—had probably passed it.

Machine-gun rounds ripped overhead. You could feel the air getting out of their way.

Couldn’t blame his soldiers much if they were still hunkered down. They’d followed him a damned long way. Maneuvering up to approach this Megiddo lump of dirt from the north, they’d hit the first belt of mines. Screams, and men squirming. Lost the weak ones right there, the newbies. Koskinski had watched the engineer major leap into the air like a super-hero. Except that his legs separated from his torso and flew off in their own eccentric directions. For all the noise of battle, he’d heard the thud when the major came back to earth. Anyway, he thought he’d heard it.

Dark coming. Not good news. Mission unaccomplished.

The machine-gun fire ceased. For the moment.

Kosinski looked around in desperation. And found only the priest.

Okay. Game over. Time to pay up. Time to at least look like a leader.

Course of Action C, sir?

It was up to him now. His turn. Go in and find McGinley. And the charge. Give it to the bastards.

Or.

No “or.”

Just give it to the bastards.

He already saw himself running forward, saw it all play out. It did not end well.

The priest had read his mind. He laid a staying hand on the lieutenant, forcing Kosinski back down as he began to rise. Father Powers inched close, until their uniforms met and the warmth beneath their sleeves connected. So human it made Kosinski wince. With the noise and stink of war roiling around them. In the loneliest place on earth.

“Listen to me,” the priest shouted. Or it seemed like a shout. “I’ve been there. I know where the tunnel starts.”

Their eyes met in the dying light. And Kosinski saw something in the other man’s eyes that he never found a word for. Maybe his mom was right and priests knew secrets.

“Stay here,” the chaplain commanded. “I’ll handle it.”

Kosinski felt as though a spell had been cast, as though the priest’s authority superseded that of generals. Later, he sometimes asked himself if he’d just been a coward. But even in his most cynical moments, he knew there was more to it than that.

The priest leapt into the dusk, running forward. Alone.

The machine guns opened up again. Kosinski didn’t dare raise his head to look. No screams. But heavy-caliber machine guns didn’t leave you much to scream with.

One eternity passed, and another began.

Kosinski readied himself. To follow in the priest’s footsteps. Suddenly emboldened, telling himself, “What the hell, I’m a bachelor. What does it matter?”

He refused to think further, to contemplate anything but the mission.

Go.

Just as he was about to climb from the crater, the heavens roared, and the earth shook, and darkness covered the land.

Nasr waited far longer than the thirty minutes he’d granted himself before moving out to make his transmission. After reaching the tiny hole he’d rented and mortifying the landlord through whose rooms he had to pass, he’d fallen into unconsciousness. As soon as he lowered his body onto the mattress. When he woke again, after scorching dreams, the light was going, and it took him several minutes to master reality.

As the shock of the beating wore off, the pain worsened. Yet, the pain itself had an opiate quality on another level, lulling him into a trance he had to resist with his remaining strength.

He decided to wait until full dark to leave again and retrieve the burst transmitter. In the meantime, he constructed his message. Reaching for effective words and eco nom ical formulations he could punch in quickly.

The world seemed about as clear as muddy water. And not just because of the enveloping night.

What could he say that would make sense? When things didn’t make sense?

Brevity, he cautioned himself. Short sentences. Keep it simple, stupid. Just the bones.

At last, he thought he had it. He hoped he would remember it all, since he couldn’t write it down:

Count to remember. Twelve sentence fragments. How many clauses? Too hard. Twelve fragments. Okay, repeat. And repeat again.

He wanted to put on clean clothes but found it too difficult to get the bloody rags off his body. He worried that the pain was beating him down, defeating him. Now and then, he coughed up more blood. But what did it matter? If they were going to kill him?

He tried to reason against his conclusion. Maybe they wanted him to continue transmitting? Maybe they really hadn’t pegged him at all?

No. They knew.

Twelve fragments. What’s number four, stud? Many middle-aged.

You’ll never be middle-aged. And you haven’t even been married and divorced once. To qualify for full membership in the Special Forces, you had to have at least two marriages in your past and an estranged wife with papers on you.

None of that was going to happen now. Should’ve married some allotment-hunter from Fayetteville or Columbus. Just to check the block. While waiting for Daddy’s little trust-fund baby. Found wandering the streets of Chapel Hill.

Too late now, tiger. Jody’s got your girl and gone.

The poetry of it all. He snickered at himself and coughed up more blood.

Ain’t no use in lookin’ back, Jody’s got your Cadillac.

He knew that he shouldn’t think about death. You had to focus on the mission. But it was hard.

Nasr dragged himself back through his landlord’s rooms, where no living thing was in evidence. All of them hiding. From him. Nasr figured the old bugger was going to lock the door the minute he made the street.

Dad, I’m sorry. I screwed this up. Keep Mom straight, okay?

“Died doing his duty.” What a joke. They would’ve been just as happy to put his family in one of the Providential Communities. Call them whatever they wanted to, they were camps. Concentration camps. In the United States of America.

Well, it wasn’t the first time. And his family was still safe in Sacramento. Maudlin for an instant, he imagined his father waving a medal in the face of some Jesus-was-really-a-white-American bureaucrat.

Sorry, Dad.

Nasr lugged his body through the streets. There were no lights now. Blackout conditions. Only the stars and a moon hidden by buildings, and the lightning flashes of shell bursts beyond the ridges. His eyes were swollen almost shut, worse than they’d been before he’d gone unconscious among the bedbugs. An exasperated girl-friend had once told him he was blind. Well, now he just about was.

Tina. Oh, yes. So demure in public.

Tina, Tina. Nicest bad girl I ever met. Carnivorous.

He smiled at himself. Until his lips, gums, and teeth ached. Which didn’t take long.

He’d actually been worried about bedbugs in his room. The truth, which Nasr hid from his comrades, was that he was a clean-freak. Concerned with getting the bedbugs out of his clothing after he exfiltrated. What a joke. Glad to share many more nights with all the little guests in his bed, if only.

The bedbugs would’ve loved Tina.

For a long moment, he wasn’t even sure he was at the right place. But it smelled right. Even with his nose smashed up. The local piss lane. He limped into the corridor, the ammonia smell searing his nostrils. Doing the best he could to check that he was alone. Aware that he was incapable of judging whether he’d been followed.

Nasr reached down into a crumbling foundation and jimmied out a brick with his good hand. Wondering if he’d be able to work the stylus on the keypad.

He meant to bend over to hide the tiny glow of the device but found himself on his knees. With the dizziness on him again.

Twelve fragmentary sentences. Begin.

In the beginning was the Word…

And the word was: Minimum.

Minimum 23 busloads…

Even though he’d reasoned that they wanted him to transmit, he expected to feel a hand upon him. Or a club. To hear footsteps. Anything. Except being left alone to do his work.

He was left alone. He fired the burst transmission, waited, then sent it again. Hoping it would get through.

He didn’t want it all to be a waste.

From sheer discipline, he hid the transmitter again. Because that was how soldiers did things. Right to the end.

And he turned back down the stinking corridor, waiting to die.

Instead of being murdered, Nasr made it back to the house where the lovely bedbugs awaited him. He found the front door open and the landlord trying frantically to find any working channel on an uncooperative television.

Nasr muttered, “Salaam Aleikum,” and, still expecting to die, went to sleep.

“The SeaBees say they can do it, sir,” Colonel McCoy, the corps logistician said. “As soon as the grungies clear the ridges east of the Haifa Gap. They tell me they can lay double flexi-pipe into the Jezreel in twenty-four hours and start pumping. Service with a smile.”

“All right, Real-Deal,” Harris said. He’d stepped outside of the deserted houses commandeered as the corps’ forward command post. Thirsty for fresh air.

The night stank of war.

Harris watched the silhouettes of ammo carriers pass along the road. “All right. But I don’t want any of our soldiers playing chicken with gamma rays. Or sailors, either. No short cuts on the protective gear while they’re on the ground in Haifa. And rigid adherence to dwell times.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And remember what I told you last night. I need you. I don’t want you turning into a night-light on two hind legs. Stay out of there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell the SeaBees good work.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll tell them. As soon as the POL starts flowing.”

“Anything else?”

“Water. The doc and I are tight on this, sir. We’ll get the water down to the troops. But you’ve got to hammer ’em: no drinking the local stuff. I mean, no bottled water from Ahmed’s refrigerator. It’s going to be tempting, if they run into something halfway cold. But the doc’s a hard-ass about this—he’s worried about radiation, not the runs.”

“Got it. But you’ve got to get that water out there. It’s push, not pull, Real-Deal. I don’t want full pallets sitting at division or brigade.”

“I’ll put the fear of God into all the Fours, sir.”

Harris grimaced, although his G-4 couldn’t see the expression in the darkness. “We’ve all had enough ‘fear of God,’ Sean. Just put the fear of Real-Deal McCoy into them, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You getting any sleep?”

Before the logistician could answer, a helmeted figure loomed from the shadows. The parade-ground posture, even under the weight of body armor, was unmistakable.

“Over here, Scottie.”

The 1st Infantry Division’s commander pivoted as if he were still a cadet captain at West Point.

The G-4 saluted, a dark bird-swoop, and stepped away.

“Evening, sir.”

“What’s up, Scottie? I thought you’d be down in your CP harassing your staff and complicating the planning process.”

Major General Walter Robert Burns Scott took off his helmet and ran his palm over his hair. By the light of day, it was as red as the field of Bannockburn. Now he was a shadow, paler where flesh caught starlight.

“That’s what I need to speak to you about, sir.”

“Talk to me.”

“Sir… The fact is that I don’t have the guts to make a decision. Without running it by you.”

“Doesn’t sound like the leash-snapper we all know and love. Talk to me.”

“My deputy electronic-warfare officer came up with something. Sir, I need you to hear me out before you decide I’m crazy.”

“I’m on receive, Scottie.”

“It’s this: Yes, we’ve got all the corps’ fire support tomorrow. Layered obscurants. Smart rounds, dumb rounds. And enough jamming to melt circuits in Japan. But it still feels a little like being on the wrong side at Cold Harbor. We’re set to take serious losses.”

“I know that, Scottie. But we need Afula. And it isn’t going to get easier if we wait.”

“No, sir. Understood. But this kid… a major, so I guess I shouldn’t call him a kid—Christ, they look so young—pointed out the obvious to start: The two killers we face are the drones, which we can try to jam the shit out of, and the seventh-gen ATGMs. Mostly loophole systems, Russian designs. Explorer and Hunter knockoffs built in China before the Rising and bought in bulk. This kid—Major Sanger—pointed out that, given the intensity of the jamming and spoofing, the Jihadis are going to have their antitank missiles set to take advantage of any windows in the electronic spectrum, any holes in our jamming. You know the drill—the setting takes the man out of the loop completely, and the missile launches automatically when it senses a clear path through the electronic spectrum.”

“Remember you’re talking to an Infantryman, Scottie.”

“I’m Infantry, too, sir.”

“I know that. But at West Point, they actually made you learn things. Go on.”

“Well, it’s a long ride down the Jezreel.”

“Got it. ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ I’m as worried as you are.”

“Here’s the thing. The max range of the Explorer is eight-point-five clicks, but they usually fail at eight. Propulsion issue. But the auto-lock-on goes out an extra kilometer. It’s a flaw in the system. Max for the Hunter is six clicks. Auto lock-on at six-and-a-half clicks, but that’s integrated with flight times.”

“And?”

“Major Sanger suggested that, exactly when our lead formations hit nine clicks out—we’ll use an old-fashioned phase line, call it ‘Phase Line Hollywood’—we turn off every jamming system in the division and every corps asset in sector. Air and ground.”

Harris got it. “How long would they need to be down?”

“He estimates forty seconds.”

“The Jihadis could lock onto a lot of targets in forty seconds. And not just in your division.”

“Yes, sir. But they’re going to be as focused on the Jezreel as we are. And if it works out… They launch three or four hundred antitank missiles down the valley and just splash dirt on our glacis plates.”

“If it works out.”

“Yes, sir. And here’s the rest of it: We’ll have every target acquisition system we’ve got tuned in, and we’ll activate every artillery spotter and amateur bird watcher in the corps. We’ll get tech readings, live imagery, and visuals on all those points of light around Afula when the launchers go hot. And you know their tactics, sir. They always pair up their Explorers and Hunters, long-range and mid-range systems. Hit the Explorers, you kill the Hunters as a bonus. The plan would be to dump every round the corps can shoot right smack on the bad guys.”

Harris could feel his subordinate watching him through the darkness. He sensed how badly the man wanted reassurance, approval, a blessing.

“What percentage does your Red Leg figure we could take out?”

“At least thirty. Forty, if we’re lucky. We’d get disruption of the others, as well. As soon as the arty hits, we’ll go pedal to the metal.”

“Hell of a risk, Scottie. Leaving the entire corps buck naked for almost a minute.”

“Yes, sir. But I’m looking at the difference between twenty percent blue casualties and maybe getting it down to ten percent.”

“Guess this is why I get paid the big bucks. Okay. Let’s go inside and work it out with the gun-bunnies and Mike Andretti.” As they walked, he drew his forefinger back and forth across his nose a single time. “God help us if it doesn’t work. And God help you if you’re not in Afula by noon, Scottie.”

Harris smiled in the darkness. He liked the boldness of the idea. Major Sanger. Have to remember the name, if it worked. Sometimes, fortune really did favor the bold.

Thinking out loud, Harris said, “You’d damned well better make sure your boys hit that phase line right on the money. Or that valley’s going to be a junkyard.”

“Sir, I have considered that possibility.”

“By the way, tell Pat Cavanaugh he did a good job clearing Megiddo. I understand it got ugly.”

“Yes, sir. We’re still sorting it out. 1-18 took some hits.”

Harris put a hand on the taller man’s shoulder but felt only body armor.

“And one more thing, Scottie: It’s not going to be Phase Line Hollywood. To be honest, I never felt a great deal of sympathy for those folks. Let’s call it Phase Line Watts.”

As they were wrapping up the corps-level changes to the next day’s plan, Major General Scott took a call from his division on the land-line. When the 1st ID commander came back into the plans cell, Harris said, “Scottie, I thought you’d be on your way back to your division by now. They’re probably enjoying your absence much too much.”

“Yes, sir. May I have another minute? In private?”

“Let’s go.”

Instead of putting his body armor back on and stepping outside again, Harris led his subordinate into his makeshift office, a bedroom that smelled more of sheep than of people.

“Talk to me.”

“Sir, I just got a summary of the debriefings on the Megiddo fight. The man who actually got the charge into that tunnel was the 4th Brigade chaplain. Apparently, he’d been there on a pilgrimage a while ago. Back before. The platoon leader said they were pinned down and the chaplain took off at a run. After three previous attempts had failed.”

“Hell of a chaplain.”

“He was killed. He must’ve dived right into the tunnel’s entrance with the charge.”

Harris shook his head. But he said nothing.

“Sir,” General Scott continued, “if the other debriefs confirm his actions, I’d like to submit him for the Medal of Honor.”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t waste your time, Scottie. Put him in for a Distinguished Service Cross. That should get him at least a posthumous Silver Star.”

“But—”

“Congress isn’t going to award anybody in this corps a Medal of Honor. The MOBIC supporters on the Hill would kill it. Especially since they haven’t yet amended the law, and MOBIC troops aren’t eligible, by my reading. Oh, they’ll change the law, once they figure that one out.” The corner of his mouth twisted. “Sorry if I sound cynical, Scottie, but between our new SecDef and this Congress, they’ll make sure we’re just a footnote to the MOBIC annals of the brave.” He sighed. “Now go back to your division and gird your loins for battle.”

General Scott made a wry face. “ ‘Girding loins’ always sounded goddamned uncomfortable to me. I’ll have Charlie Kievenauer write the chaplain up for a DSC.”