The War After Armageddon (10 page)

Same exhaust stink, too.

Garcia just didn’t want to come out of this with any kind of injury that would put him out of the Corps. Instinctively, he lifted
his forearm to kiss the Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo underneath his sleeve. But he caught himself. And just made like he was wiping the sweat from his face and resetting his helmet. Dying would be okay. He could handle that. He had what the skinny redhead instructor bitch at the community college called “Latin fatalism.” Like the name of some perfume you paid five bucks for off a street vendor. To give to some
chica
so new to the hood she still thought in pesos and didn’t know perfumes were all about serious labels.

Yeah, Latin fatalism. Splash it on me, dude. Just don’t let me end up a geek crapping himself in a VA hospital.

He knew now that he didn’t ever want to leave the Corps. Since the nukes came down, the Corps was his only home. He sure wasn’t going to take off his boots for very long down at his grandmother’s. If anybody else wanted to be a full-time Mexican for a living, let them. He was an Angeleno. Even without his city.

And he was a Marine.

He saw the firelit face of the Jihadi he’d shot. Clear as any photograph. Clearer. And he just wanted to pull the trigger again.

Garcia wondered if he was some kind of psycho. Were you
supposed
to get this buzzed?

Hand signals relayed back from the head of the column. Take ten. Garcia passed it on. But he didn’t want to stop. He was exhausted. Beat. But he didn’t want to stop.

He walked back to check on each of his Marines and told Barrett to change his socks. Barrett got blisters just looking at a combat boot. And Garcia made sure everybody had water.

Dodging back between two Abrams tanks that would’ve qualified for antique-vehicle plates, Garcia dropped to the ground. And as soon as his ass hit the grass, he knew he’d made a mistake. The weariness came over him like a drug. First, he’d been riding the cosmic meth; now, the downers had him.

He made himself breathe deeply. And got just fumes. The column of vehicles had come to a halt. A tank idled in front of him.

The crew had given the big boy a name, painted down the gun tube: “Compton’s Revenge.”

Garcia looked up at the turret. The tank commander was a black dude. Couldn’t see his rank. But he looked right off the block.

Probably a lieutenant, Garcia figured. The Army didn’t have standards like the Marines.

Garcia threw the TC a home-boy sign. Just to check him out.

The TC hesitated. Then he grinned big and threw it back.

Garcia smiled and nodded. They understood each other. Let bygones be bygones. Compton, Watts, they were all gone now.

Garcia gestured toward the fighting below and signed again:
We’re going to give them a fucking they’ll remember.

The TC signed back:
Righ teous
.

The column of vehicles began to move again. The Marines up ahead rose from their spots by the roadside, rolling to their feet, top-heavy, readjusting packs and straps before gripping their rifles at the ready again.

There was no alarm, no warning. Nobody heard the drones coming in. Until they shrieked as they plunged into the column. Garcia watched the tank with the TC from Compton get hit and explode.

Two Bradleys got it farther down the slope. A burning soldier leapt from one, then fell. Marines rushed to roll him over. But he was a crisp.

The Army didn’t screw around. Say that for them. They pushed the burning vehicles out of the way and kept on moving.

All in all, Garcia decided he’d rather walk.

OFFSHORE

“For God’s sake, Avi,” Harris said, “you’ll get your chance.” He snorted to himself. “You’re going to get more chances than you want.”

“I still protest. As commander of the 10th Israeli Armored Brigade, I had the right to lead the first assault.”

Harris had to discipline himself. He needed sleep, and his temper was on a short fuse.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We needed an infantry-heavy force to get up on the heights. Tanks wouldn’t have gotten off the beach. The road wouldn’t—”

“And now? My brigade is still in your ships. And the battle has moved into the Jezreel.”

“First of all, they’re not my goddamned ships. Second, you know you’re scheduled to go ashore tonight. There’ll be plenty of Jihadis left for you and your men. What’s this really about, Avi?”

“I protest.” The brigadier from the Israeli Exile Force pointed at the letter he had laid on Harris’s desk. “My brigade had a moral and military right to take precedence. We’ve been treated with prejudice.”

“Jesus Christ,” Harris said, instantly wishing he’d chosen different words, “your brigade would’ve been shot to bits going up that single goddamned road. The operation would’ve been a disaster. And I would’ve been accused of using your brigade as cannon fodder. Along with sixteen kinds of anti-Semitism. And you damned well know it. Now, to hell with rank. Man to man, I want you to tell me what this is all about.”

“You have my letter.”

Harris picked up the letter and crumpled it, then pitched it toward a wastebasket. He missed. The uneven ball meandered across the deck.

“Go back to your ship. Just get your brigade ready to go ashore. You’re going to get all the fighting you want. And if you deviate one inch from your written orders, I’ll relieve you and distribute your battalions among the 1st ID’s brigades. You understand me?”

Avi Dorn saluted, turned, and marched out of the compartment.

When the hatch had closed behind the Israeli exile, Harris dropped into a chair. What in the name of God was
that
all about?

He took a long drink of bottled water, then went to check on his staff’s preparations to move operations to a command post ashore.

As he was ferried back toward his transport ship, Brigadier Avi Dorn closed his eyes. Shutting out the day and his personal history
and the memory of his ruined nation. He just thought about Harris. With regret.

He liked Harris and respected him. And he knew that every word the general had spoken was true. But if the rebirth of Israel meant sacrificing one American general, it would not be the first sacrifice. Nor, Dorn thought, the last.

A renegade spray of salt water slapped his cheek. He opened his eyes again.

Just let them wait until the fighting’s done, Dorn thought. He wanted Harris calling the shots until the shooting stopped.

NAZARETH

All he could taste was blood.

Teeth could be replaced, Major Nasr told himself. He’d lost a canine on the upper left and two teeth below it. A couple of others were loose. But he’d had loose teeth before. He tried to keep his tongue from testing them.

And noses could be fixed. He knew that from experience. Which is why it was bullshit that anyone could recognize him by the nose that ran in his mother’s family. Anyway, he’d had his father’s nose. Broken twice—once playing football in high school and once in Nigeria, in the most desperate brawl of his life. He still had please-wake-me-up-now dreams about that one.

Ribs, too. Just tape ’em up. As long as your lungs weren’t punctured.

Don’t think like that, he told himself. Don’t start thinking like that.

His balls hurt, too. And they’d beat him until his bowels gave out. Which, he figured, just made him stink like their entire goddamned city.

“Holy Nazareth.” Personally, he would’ve been glad to let the Ji-hadis have it. Even Jesus had packed up and left as soon as he cleared the back orders at the carpentry shop.

The police team came back in. One of them turned Nasr over
with his boot. Shining a heavy flashlight in his face. Nasr had gotten intimately familiar with that flashlight.

What surprised him was how crude they were. He would’ve expected more sophisticated forms of torture. But his captors were content just to beat the hell out of him.

“Who are you?”
the officer with the deeper voice asked. For the hundredth time.

“My name is Gemal. I come from Sidon. I was only looking for work. In the lands Allah has given back to his people.”

The boot tip found a soft spot in Nasr’s back. And it went in hard. Twice.

Kidneys were not so easy to fix as noses.

“You shit-eating dog. Are you laughing at us? You think we don’t know who you are? You piece of filth.”

“Allah knows the truth of what I say. I swear—”

The boot went into his ribs. More blood came up. Nasr gagged, choked, finally spit out the clot. Or whatever had come loose.

“You’re a Christian spy. We know this. Speak the truth. Maybe we’ll let you live.”

“Brothers . . . My name is Gemal. I come from Sidon. I—”

A fist rebroke his nose, smashing the back of his head into the concrete. Nasr didn’t want to go out. To lose consciousness was to lose control.

He almost laughed. At himself. As if he were in control.

“You understand,” the deep-voiced officer said, “that we’re only preparing you. The men who will question you seriously are on their way. Better to tell us the truth. What they do to a man isn’t decent.”

The other laughed. “And what they’ll do to a Christian . . . I don’t like to think of such things . . .”

“Get him up,” Deep Voice commanded.

Through the ringing and hammering inside his skull, Nasr heard a door open. Or thought he did. Then he dreamed that an overhead light went on and several figures stood over him.

“You asses,” a new voice said. “Who gave you permission to do this? To an innocent man?”

Deep Voice tried to stutter out an answer. Shocked. Or just confused.

Through one badly swollen eyelid, Nasr thought he saw one man strike another.

“I should do the same thing done to
you
,” the new voice said. Then, in a tone of still greater disgust, he told the others, “Bring him out. And bring a doctor.”

Nasr was utterly confused. Were they speaking about him? Was there another captive in the room?

Heavy arms lifted him to his feet. But he couldn’t stand.

“Hold on to him,” the new voice commanded. “Or I’ll have the flesh stripped from your bodies and fed to your children.”

Out in the corridor, as they dragged him along, Nasr was able to make out a few things. White walls. Daylight through smudged windows. A scarred floor. And the old man who had been his accuser. He was being dragged in the opposite direction.

The old man was slopped with blood, and he whimpered. His nose had been cut off. It made him sound like a cartoon character.

OFFSHORE

“Our Air Force brethren claim it’s suicide,” Harris said. Behind him, soldiers packed up the last odds and ends required to stand up the corps forward command post on solid ground.

“Well,” Andretti, the G-3, said, “the Marines are willing to give it a try. They think they can put in one wave of deep air strikes behind EW drones and count on local surprise. Since nobody’s flying on either side.”

“Except the damned UAVs.”

The operations officer shook his head. “I’d trade every missile system we’ve got for a platoon of those old Vulcans, sir. Or Navy chain guns.”

“So which targets does Monk Morris rate as important enough to risk a chunk of his air group?”

“I’ve got them on a map.”

A specialist carrying a display screen bumped the general from behind and excused himself.

“Just talk me through the missions.”

Colonel Andretti nodded. “First, he wants to use 2,000-pound bombs and fuel-air explosives on the Umm el Fahm pass. Before the lead Marine battalion gets there—and they’re on the way. General Morris believes that, given the no-fly environment, he really can take the Jihadis by surprise.”

“Serious defense down there? Or just a blocking position?”

“The latter. Big one, though. General Morris thinks it could get messy. He doesn’t want to risk unnecessary blue casualties.”

“That pass is heavily built-up. Locals still there?”

“Morris’s Two thinks they’ve headed for the hills.”