The War After Armageddon

“Then you will give my message to the general. Tell him why you poison us, I don’t know. We are not making jihad. We are educated peoples. Why America will poison us?”

“Maybe somebody’s been feeding them our rations,” Banks said. “I’d be pissed, too.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Garcia told the old man. “And I don’t know anything about any poison.”

The old man swept his hand toward the trench, toward the stink, the dust, and the sunlit day beyond. “This is the poison making us dead. The poison you bring us. Why? Why? There are no guilty peoples here. Why? Why?”

“Look, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I have no idea. And I don’t know anything about any poison. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to move out of our way. For your own safety,” Garcia said.

“Why? Why America brings us poison in the water? You have done this! You are seen doing this. We know. We hear. We are told. You put this poison in the water. But we are not Jihadis. There is no need to poison us. We are friends.”

“Yeah, you’re my fucking best pal,” Banks said.

“Shut up, Banks.”

“Why does he call me ‘fucking’? This is a bad word. What do I do that is fucking? You take my daughter. My little daughter. To this place. Look at this!” Again, he waved his arm toward the trench, the backhoe, the sacks of flesh thudding into the pit. “You take my daughter away, so I cannot bury her! You kill my daughter, now you take her body.” He began to weep. Exploding with tears. “You do this to my daughter, put her with strangers, with men she does not know. For all the times. This is a bad thing, you understand?”

Garcia caught the flash of complete misery in the man’s eyes. It spooked him for a moment.

“Listen, sir… I’m sorry for your troubles. I mean, whatever you’re talking about. I’m sorry if anything happened to your daughter, man. But we’re just trying to do our job. You can’t just leave bodies laying all over. You’d all get sick. Do you understand that? You understand ‘sick’?”

Garcia wondered what it had been like when they went through and disposed of all the bodies in Los Angeles. At least his mother had lived long enough to be buried right.

“I know this word, too,” the old man said. “I know every word. But why do you do this? For the Jews? You do this for the Jews, I think? We ask only for the good burial…”

Garcia was out of things to say. But he decided to keep the man talking, after all. The rocks weren’t flying as long as the talking went on. The other rags seemed to respect the guy. Garcia considered sending a man to bring up the first sergeant or Captain Cunningham.

And then Garcia heard the shot. Distinct and enormous, standing out with perfect clarity against the distant, lessened sounds of war.

He turned about in time to see Marines rushing toward a fallen figure.

His own Marines were down on their knees, weapons up, scanning.

“Anybody see where that came from?”

“Negative.”

“Negative, Sergeant.”

“Corporal Gallotti. Your squad covers those windows. Corporal Banks. Your squad has the crowd.”

The sniper’s second shot killed Captain Cunningham as he jogged toward Garcia’s position. It was fired from the crowd. Then the real killing started.

ASSEMBLY AREA, 2-34 ARMOR, VICINITY AFULA

Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell watched the last MOBIC element leave 2-34’s assembly area and head toward the reignited battle. He felt a mixture of relief, jealousy, and fury toward the departing vehicles.

Division or corps had dropped the ball on coordination and terrain deconfliction. 2-34 Armor’s assembly area had been invaded first by fuel trucks from the Corps Support Command, then by a succession of MOBIC combined-arms “Martyrs” battalions of the ilk Army regulars had nicknamed “the MOBIC Mujaheddin.” The confusion and crowding offered the Jihadis a perfect target, although they never seemed to have identified the site, since no artillery fire landed and no drones swooped in. But the glitch over turf was only the start of the problems.

Several fights had broken out while the MOBIC soldiers loitered about, waiting for their vehicles to be topped off. The MOBIC troops mocked Maxwell’s tankers for their lack of progress while they themselves had swept into Jerusalem, on to Jericho, then up the Jordan. The language used by both sides fell short of the Christian ideal.

Maxwell had to sort through complex emotions himself. On one hand, any Armor officer had to admire the power and depth of the MOBIC advance, which seemed to have been one long cavalry charge. On the other hand, nothing Maxwell had heard about MOBIC behavior charmed him. And he had yet to see one thing in this godforsaken landscape worth fighting for.