The War After Armageddon (39 page)

“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.”

CHECKPOINT MAVERICK, JUNCTION OF HIGHWAYS 70 AND 66

Major General “Monk” Morris stood by the roadside and watched another convoy serial pass as his Marines headed north. Standing in their hatches, the vehicle commanders looked hard and fierce, as if they wanted just one slight excuse to start fighting on the spot.

As the tracked vehicles growled past, Morris saw the many ghosts that trailed them—not the foul spooks of this bloody landscape but the spirits of two and a half centuries’ worth of Marines. He wouldn’t let anyone see it, but the vision moistened his eyes.

If he was secretly a sentimental man—as so many Marines were when the hatches closed—he was also an angry one. The MOBIC general who had paid him an unannounced and sneaking visit in the night, spouting Scripture and trailing slime, had laid it out for him:

“Our blessed nation can’t support two armies,” the brigadier general of the Order had told him. Too well-groomed for a combat zone and wearing a well-pressed uniform with a black cross on the left breast, the MOBIC officer continued, “The Military Order of the Brothers in Christ clearly obviates the need for the U.S. Army.
Which, in any case, has been worrying our elected leaders with its recalcitrance on a great many issues—hardly a thing to be tolerated in a democracy. Please hear me out, General Morris. Hear me out, then judge. Now, the Army, you’ll have to admit, hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in this campaign. The weight of the endeavor and the casualties have been borne by our MOBIC forces, by men who know what they’re fighting for, who believe in something far greater than themselves.”

“You fight smart, casualties are lower,” Morris said.

“But you have to
fight
,” the MOBIC officer responded. “And
if
you fight, if you
really
fight—well, higher casualties are inevitable.”

“Just tell me what you want,” Morris said. Although he already knew where things were going.

“You’re blunt. One expects that from a Marine. Forthrightness. Our Savior was forthright.”

“Jesus Christ spoke in more riddles than an insurance salesman.”

The brigadier ignored the remark. “You know, General Morris, our MOBIC high command has no problem with the Marine Corps. The Corps is . . . a national treasure. What patriot would want it to disappear? And the Corps is hardly a competitor with us. It’s the Army that continues to drain resources from the soldiers of the Lord. Why should the Marines be tarred with the same brush as the Army? Hasn’t the Corps thrived on its rivalry with the Army over the years? Hasn’t the Corps always done more with less? Fought harder? And had less thanks? Might it not be . . . wiser . . . for the Marines to rethink their present loyalties?”

“I once overheard one lieutenant tell another that the reason they call us ‘generals’ is because we only speak in generalities,” Morris told his visitor. “Get to the point. What exactly do you want?”

The MOBIC brigadier looked at him as if calculating just what it would take to get him to sign the contract to buy the used car.

“Send a request to Holy Land Command for your Marines to be subordinated to First MOBIC Corps. Justify the request by stating that the Army’s Third Corps and General Harris misused your Marines, then restrained you from fighting.”

“And what—exactly—do my Marines get in return?”

“I told you. The Military Order of the Brothers in Christ has no quarrel with the Marine Corps. We simply need to put an end to the current duplication and waste of our nation’s resources caused by the continued existence of the Army.”

“That’s still not an answer.”

“If you require more specificity, I’m authorized to tell you that the MOBIC high command is prepared to guarantee that it will do everything in its power to ensure the survival of the Marine Corps.”

“The same assurance that you gave the Air Force, I take it?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about such matters. My focus is on finding a way to preserve the Marine Corps. As I said, the Corps is a national treasure.”

“Then why should preserving it be contingent on lining up with you against the Army? Or on anything?”

“We live in a practical world. A world of finite resources. Everyone needs allies. Your help at present would obligate us to help you later.” The visitor tried to summon a reassuring smile. “I realize the sort of feelings you must have. Military men are loyal to one another. Even across service lines. I know—I used to wear an Army uniform myself, before I decided to better serve my country by bearing arms for the Lord. I don’t expect an immediate answer. I can give you twelve hours. But then we’ll need your answer. And, if you’ll allow me a personal note, I’d be deeply sorry to see a tragic rift develop between the Order and the Corps. When we’re natural allies.”

Morris wanted to grab the overgroomed brigadier by his shining hair and hammer his face into the table. And not just once. But Morris recognized that he had a duty to control himself. And to think, hard, about what he was being offered.

He didn’t believe the man’s elusive promises for an instant. But he also wondered what he
did
owe to the Corps, under the circumstances, and what his responsibility really was, given the current climate back in Washington.

He already knew his answer, or thought he did. He saw that this was just a downright insulting attempt to drive a wedge between the Army and the Corps, then to defeat both in detail. Nor did he
think he could live with himself if he betrayed Harris at a juncture like this.

But it was, nonetheless, his duty to think the offer through, to analyze the situation as dispassionately as he could and to burrow into every nuance, to overcome his personal and professional prejudices to judge what truly was best for the country.

“Twelve hours?” he said.

His visitor perked up. “You’ll think about it then? Good. Grand. I’d love to see the Marine Corps and the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ embrace each other in loving friendship.”

Morris almost asked, “And after the embrace, we get fucked, right? In front, or from behind?”

Instead, he told the brigadier, “You’ll have my answer in twelve hours. Now I’ve got work to do.”

But he accomplished little after his visitor disappeared back into the night. As soon as the dev il with the black cross evaporated, Morris could say with certainty that he wouldn’t do as asked, wouldn’t betray the Army or Flintlock Harris. The MOBIC creeps wouldn’t honor the bargain, anyway. They’d howl with laughter at his stupidity, the gullibility of a dumb-ass Jarhead.

And yet . . . What did it all mean? Would he go down in the books as the man who destroyed the Marine Corps? Was that how Major General Morton Morris, USMC, would be remembered?

Yes, if the MOBIC crowd wrote the history books. And, increasingly, it looked as if they would.