The War After Armageddon

“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.”

TWENTY

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: