The War After Armageddon

“Well, sir, it’s not much of a way to wage a war. Or fight a battle. It really does look as if they’ve just given up, as if they’re quitting. Running.” The G-2 glanced at the map, then reached into his pocket. Only to find his pointer gone. Tracing a line on the western Galilee ridge with his index finger, he said, “All those entrenchments they were digging as fast as they could? The defensive positions all along the ridge? We got a burst transmission through from a special-ops recon element up here, on the high ground behind Tiberias. They report a few stray Jihadis just hanging out and playing with their dicks. And all those vehicles in defensive positions? All those tanks? Junk. Shot up stuff. Old crap left over from the end-of-Israel fighting. Stripped for parts. It looks like the Jihadis had planned some kind of ruse before they decided to take their ball and go home.”

Harris jumped to his feet before the intelligence officer finished speaking. Rushing around the conference table, he shoved first the G-3, then the G-2, out of his way. He had the map memorized. But he needed to see it, anyway. To know.

“Show me where that report originated. Exactly where. Show me, Val.”

“Yes, sir. The recon team’s overwatching this stretch of road and the crest beyond it. By Kefar Hittim.”

Harris no longer cared whether anyone knew how badly his vision had deteriorated. He pushed his nose up against the map, as if sniffing the G-2’s finger. Then he shoved the colonel’s hand away. Staring at the map. With his soul plummeting into the earth.

“Fuck,” he said. Bitterly. Almost quietly. Then he swung himself over the nearest table, running for the door. “Let’s go. Everybody. Come on.”

“What do—”

“Mike. You get everybody you’ve got working every comms channel that’s up. Issue a STRIKEWARN. The J’s are going nuclear. Soon. You, too, Val. Use every channel. Forget the protocols.”

He was shouting. And running. Officers loitering in the hall leapt out of the general’s way. Too stunned at Harris’s tone to decipher his meaning immediately.

As Harris led his war party into the ops center, he barked, “I want every armored vehicle buttoned up. Get ’em in defilade. Every dismount gets into a ditch or takes shelter on the western side of the strongest nearby building. Move, move.”

Harris grabbed the liaison officer who’d arrived from the MOBIC corps. Seizing the colonel’s upper arm. As if arresting him. “ You. Get on the horn and tell your people they’re about to get nuked. They need to pull back, disperse. Immediately.”

Unsettled for an instant, the MOBIC colonel quickly mastered himself. His alarmed expression reorganized itself into a sly smile.

“General Harris… Surely, you don’t expect us to believe any such nonsense. If the infidel enemy can’t stop us, do you think you can? With some concocted story? Are you that embarrassed by our success?”

“Fuck you,” Harris said. “Get General Montfort on the line.”

“General of the Order Montfort is incommunicado.”

“Well, he’s going to be deep-fried like fucking falafel if you don’t listen to me.”

The operations center had come to life around them. It was a rare officer or NCO who recalled the format for a STRIKEWARN off the top of his head and the babble of voices reduced the transmissions to a common message: Take cover, the J’s are going nuke.

“I can’t disturb General Montfort,” the liaison officer said.

“Well, who can you disturb?”

“I won’t be a party to this.”

“I’m giving you a direct order.”

“You have no authority over me.”

“Listen. For Christ’s sake, man. We’re all on the same side. I’m trying to save your comrades, your buddies… your whole goddamned corps.”

The MOBIC colonel looked at Harris dismissively. “You can’t stop us now, General. Your time is over. I’ll file your report in the morning.”

Exasperated as he had never been in his entire life, Harris said, “You really think I’m staging this — all this — to get you to retreat for a couple of hours?”

The MOBIC colonel just smiled.

“Even if you think I’m crazy,” Harris continued, “will you at least report what I’m telling you right now? And let General Montfort judge? Morning’s going to be too late.”

“As of 2100, our attacking forces switched to radio silence. I’m not authorized—”

A terrible roar tore the night, overpowering the common sounds of war, a distant thunder akin to the voice of God.

* * *