Without Warning (21 page)

The leadership cadre was otherwise speechless. Outside the slowly billowing walls of the tent in which they stood, the squadron continued to gather its strength. Yesterday it had seemed utterly formidable. Now Melton felt like a bug sitting on a mound kicked over by laughing, moronic gods.

“Thanks anyway,” said Lohberger at last. “It’s been hard not knowing anything.”

Bret shrugged helplessly.

“I’m only telling you what I got off the satellite feed and web. I wouldn’t call it gospel, but… you know …”

The men were all younger than he, the platoon commanders by a considerable margin. Some of them would have young families of their own. Lohberger, at thirty, was something of a grand old man. He sucked in a deep breath and looked at the map as though he’d found some kind of nasty porn stash in his daughter’s bedroom.

“Okay. There’s nothing we can do about it from here, not right now anyway,” he declared. “We know a lot more than we did ten minutes ago, but nothing that changes what we have to do in the next couple of hours.”

His voice and manner were hard. Melton observed a stiffening of postures and facial expressions among the other men in the room, a turning away from anxiety and doubts, as men jammed them down somewhere deep, at least for the next little while.

“Do you mind if I ask what’s gonna go down here?” said Melton.

“Nope,” Lohberger replied. “You’re gonna be in on it soon enough.”

He jabbed a finger at the map table. Melton read the map plan, named OPLAN Katie. It looked like someone’s joke of a Cold War–era Forward Defense at Fulda Gap write-up. He started to feel ill. Katie bar the door indeed, Melton thought, not seeing the humor in the battle plan’s name.

“Saddam’s moving toward us. He’s pulled a lot of his guys out of those useless fucking trenches they dug and put them on the road heading this way.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Like we don’t have enough to think about.”

Melton leaned forward to examine OPLAN Katie on the transparent acetate. The basic plan had all coalition forces moving forward out of Kuwait as originally planned. On the map was one phase line, a graphic control measure called Phase Line Katie, that ran through the Sulaybat Depression. All of the units in the coalition were to hold that phase line and attrit any Iraqi force approaching it. The Brits with the First UK Division were still assigned the chore of dealing with Basra. Melton choked back any criticism of the plan. Getting into an urban firefight, especially now, didn’t seem to make any sense at all. It negated almost all of the coalition forces’ technological and military advantages.

5/7 Cav’s objective was Jalibah Airfield, marked as Objective Marne.

The Mog all over again,
he thought. It explained why everyone in the tent looked pale and sweaty.

What idiot came up with this plan?
He kept that question to himself and asked a different one. “Any idea which units?”

Command Sergeant Major Jaanson volunteered the answer. “The crap ones. Militia. Fedayeen. Reserve forces. A couple of Republican Guard units, but from the way they’re moving they look like their job is to keep a gun at the back of those other guys heading into the meat grinder.”

The
Army Times
reporter glanced at Lohberger for confirmation and received a brusque nod. “We’ve seen a couple of firefights break out within the Iraqi ranks. Guard units chewing over militia who tried to break off the advance.”

Melton couldn’t help it. He pointed at Phase Line Katie. “Surely you are not going to attack them, are you?”

Captain Lohberger shrugged as his squadron commander, a lieutenant colonel, left the tent for a meeting with the brigade commander.

“Well, the Kuwaitis don’t want us fighting on their soil. So that is why we are moving forward. They are taking positions on the coalition’s western flank inside Iraqi territory just on the other side of Wadi al-Batin. These base camps are not the best defensive positions anyway, so we may as well follow the first tenet of warfare,” Lohberger said.

“Engage the enemy as far forward as possible,” Melton said, nodding.

“Hooah, rangers lead the way,” said Lohberger, who did have a ranger tab on his uniform and thus, in Melton’s mind, the right to talk like one. Still, Bret winced anyway while Lohberger continued. “The plan is that coalition air power will conduct the air war as before, going for command and control. They’ll take out the bridges as well, which should make our life a bit easier. Close air will stomp anyone who gets over those obstacles, then our arty engages them. Whatever is left is our meat, Bret.”

Melton didn’t ask the obvious question.

Why?

Why the hell did any of them have to be here now? Saddam was no longer a threat to America, was he? And if the wing nuts were right, and it was all just about the oil, and fattening up Halliburton’s balance sheet so that Dick Cheney could retire in comfort… well, again, so what? Cheney was gone. And Bush. And the hundreds of millions of Americans they said they were defending. Melton had to shake his head to clear the buzz of conflicting thoughts crowding each other out. Why the hell didn’t they just pack up and leave the whole sorry mess behind?

Of course that begged the question of where they might go.

Hawaii? Alaska? The Pacific Northwest? Frankly, he couldn’t see anyone staying in Seattle if they could find a way out. Not with that hungry fucking bubble buzzing away just down the road.

Lohberger finished and let the air force liaison, also known as the ALO, start his portion of the briefing. Bret found his thoughts drifting once the ALO, a major who liked to dip Oreos in his Scotch, had taken over. His private thoughts, a tangle of confused memories and fresh trauma, were interrupted by Jaanson and Euler.

“You all right, sir?” Sergeant Major Jaanson asked.

The briefing was over. Melton blushed at having been caught so badly. He’d seen plenty of others zoning out through the day. Men and women just standing, staring into the middle distance, eyes unfocused and faces slack.
The worst ones looked like they’d come out of a session of electroconvulsive therapy. It was a mild form of shock, he supposed, as the rational mind shut down its higher functions to let the hindbrain deal with the violation it felt. In millions of years of evolution humans had never been confronted by a threat like the energy wave. It was going to take some adapting, getting used to. Assuming the goddamned thing didn’t end up swallowing the whole world, of course.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a helluva day. I’m a bit out of it.”

“That’s fine,” said Lieutenant Euler, who looked to have recovered a good deal of his composure. “You’ll have time to shower, change, and get some food into you, sir. Then you’ll need to get your gear together and find my Bradley. We’re on thirty minutes’ readiness, but I want my guys ready to rock in ten.”

“Outstanding,” said Melton, his voice flat with weariness and just a touch of sarcasm. The meeting was breaking up around them as Lohberger’s men set to their duties with almost discernible relief that they had something to keep them busy.

“I’ll send someone to get you from the reporters’ billet, Mr. Melton,” said Jaanson. “Don’t stray from there, okay?”

“Okay. I won’t take long. I was already packed to move anyway.”

As they left the tent he could see that a change had come over the camp. The activity he’d noted on arriving had greatly intensified. Hundreds of men, all of them in full combat harness, hurried about in regimented groups, raising thick clouds of dust. The rattle of their equipment and the dull thudding of boots was loud enough to nearly drown out the shouts and curses of their NCOs. Nearly, but not quite. Humvees snarled and rumbled, and a flight of jet fighters turned long, lazy circles high overhead.

Melton hurried back to his tent. He’d spent more than enough time in camp to move with confidence through the organized bedlam and located the six-man canvas shelter without trouble. Inside he found that his colleagues had already departed. There was a note from Patricia Escalon on his cot, but otherwise nothing to show for the small civilian community they’d built up over the weeks. He slumped down on the bed and allowed himself a few moments of rest. He would need to eat, and a quick shower wouldn’t be a bad idea. It might be weeks before he could wash again. Instead of moving, however, Melton found himself immobilized by a bone-deep lassitude.

What the fuck is the point of any of it now?

His throat tightened and he felt tears beginning to well. Sitting up quickly, he rubbed the moisture from his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Now was not the time to be falling to pieces. Chances were, things were gonna get a
shitload worse in the next few weeks. Even if the bubble didn’t move an inch ever again, you couldn’t punch a hole in the world like that and expect life to continue as normal. How long could the military hold together, for instance? They couldn’t be resupplied for very long. And who was going to pay for them?

Who was going to pay for him?

His paper was gone. He could ride out with the Cav and dutifully file his copy. For now the Net was still working and his e-mails would zip through the myriad channels of fiber and copper wire all the way back to the
Army Times
server. But there they would sit, unread, forever. He had no idea whether his pay would go into his account as scheduled. Possibly it might, if the process was automated. But how long would that last? And how long would anyone go on accepting U.S. dollars anyway? For that matter, could the world economy even expect to survive the sudden disappearance of its beating heart? He didn’t think so. Not when he gave it any real thought.

Sayad al-Mirsaad had been right. This was the end of things.

Monique screamed as the windshield crashed and bulged inward, threatening to shatter. Rather than hitting the brakes, Caitlin sped up, awkwardly pawing inside her stolen leather jacket for one of the pistols she’d taken back at the hospital. The wheel jerked in her free hand and a dramatic shudder ran through the body of the Volvo as they struck something with a loud thud. She heard a cry and sensed rather than saw a dark shape fly through the air. The dense spiderweb of cracks in the windshield made it impossible to know exactly what was going on outside. Caitlin hammered at the safety glass with the butt of the gun, using her peripheral vision and one-handed driving to keep to the road.

“Would you shut the fuck up and help me out here?” she yelled at the screaming Monique, eliciting a couple of ineffectual taps at the glass from the girl in the passenger seat. It popped out just as they struck the tail end of a Mercedes with a massive metallic crash and a sudden jerk back into the middle of the road. Both women could now see dozens of people scattering from the roadway in front of their moving vehicle. They seemed to be fighting among themselves, although several were focused solely on their car. Monique hunched down as more rocks came flying at them, one bouncing
off the hood to slam into her shoulder. She cried out in pain and Caitlin reached across, grabbed a handful of her jacket, and violently jerked her down so that she was no longer exposed to the improvised missiles flying directly at them. The American enjoyed no such luxury and had to drive while dodging and weaving.

They had come around a sharp bend into a street fight, or riot. A normal person would have slowed down, fearful of injuring or even killing a pedestrian, even as they were targeted with a fusillade of torn-up cobblestones, bottles, and broken bricks. Caitlin set her mouth in a grim line and, hunching behind the wheel for the minimal protection it offered, deliberately pointed the Volvo into the center of a mass of youths blocking the road ahead of them. She didn’t sound the horn or wave them away. She simply drove at them, implacably increasing her speed as they drew closer. A few of the braver or dumber among them hurled a couple more rocks, but they were poorly directed and none managed to hit the body of the car. The group lost its coherence rapidly as the men—they were all young, dark-skinned men—dived for the relative safety of the sidewalk. One, his head swathed in a black and white kaffiyeh, was a fraction too late, and one of the car’s headlights caught his foot in midair, spinning him off the arc of his dive and into the side of a grocery van. His scream was snatched away by the speed of their passage.

“What is happening? Who are they?” cried Monique in distress.

“Arabs,
“ shouted Caitlin, over the roar of the wind pouring into the car. Youths from the city’s outer suburbs, who were normally never found in the old quarters in such numbers. In a few mad moments the car was through the confrontation and back into clear space, as Caitlin swung through a roundabout and took the exit farthest from the direction in which they’d just come. She tried to organize her impressions in a coherent fashion, organizing a random series of images into something she could understand and maybe even use. It wasn’t just a riot. It was a brawl. The crowd, which she would have put at somewhere between seventy and one hundred strong, seemed almost evenly split between young white men and women, and perhaps a slightly larger number of African-and Arabian-looking youths. All of the latter had been males, as far as she could tell. The clash appeared undirected, and was probably a fight between the sort of moronic drunks she and Monique had encountered a little earlier, and a pack of Muslim yahoos, stoned on kef or possibly drunk as well. In her experience, for all of their sanctimonious posturing, many of the thugs from Paris’s Muslim districts liked a drink as much as the next hoodie.