The War After Armageddon

“He was a model cadet, Sim was. Monk, I realize you think I’m nuts for dragging you up here like this. When we’ve both got plenty to do. But our staffs can handle things for an hour. Commanders need to step back. Talk a bit. Catch their breath.” He grunted. “If I wouldn’t be setting a poor example, I’d take off this goddamned body armor.”

The path steepened just as Harris finished speaking.

“Hell of a way to catch your breath,” Monk said. Then he grinned. “You did not just hear a Marine complain. It was your imagination. Anything else? On Montfort?”

Harris thought about the absent figure for a few steps. He didn’t want to put devils in Monk’s head. But he owed Monk honesty. As much as the moment would bear.

“Sim was one class behind me at VMI. By his second year, upper-classmen had learned to fear him, and even the faculty handled him carefully. Which didn’t stop him from being elected to every office he wanted. Or from being the faculty’s darling.” Harris smiled, not fondly, at the memory. “Sim had one big advantage over the rest of us. We were teenagers, with all that goes with the package, barracks discipline or not. But Sim was born with the mind of a forty-year-old. From day one, he knew what he wanted and concentrated on getting it.” Harris snorted. “It’s probably an exaggeration to say he never let anything distract him from his goals. He was an infuriatingly handsome man. Women chased him from one end of the Shenandoah Valley to the other, then followed him back home at Christmas. We were all jealous as hell.”

“That mean he took your girl?”

Harris laughed. “No woman on Earth could’ve been attracted to both Sim and me. That may have been the only thing that wasn’t a point of contention.”

The smell of death strengthened. Harris glimpsed a break in the trees. He could feel the high ground waiting.

“So… You’d categorize him as pure ambition?”

Harris smiled. “No ambition’s pure, Monk. It’s always muddled up with something.”

“And that should tell me?”

“There’s a kind of ambition… a form of ambition that needs something to believe in. It’s incomplete, unfulfilled, without a cause.” The corner of Harris’s mouth twisted into his cheek. “I don’t mean that Sim Montfort can’t be cynical, when cynicism works. Just that he found his cause, and his cause found him. One feeds off the other, empowering the other. Men like Sim need a great cause to allow their ambition to unfold, to bloom. Their ambition has to have a rationale greater than themselves. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t truly believe in the cause they take up. The human capacity for belief is a very adaptable thing.”

“Sounds almost like you respect him. Despite all his preaching and screeching.”

Harris stopped and flashed a look of utter frankness. “No, Monk. I don’t respect him. I fear him.”

They walked on in silence, approaching the wall of light beyond the trees. The bodyguards on point fanned out more widely. You could feel their hyperalertness notch up yet another degree.

Monk Morris changed the subject. “Your G-2 sent my intel shop some interesting reports this morning. Haven’t seen ’em. Just got a verbal. But I’d like to know what you make of it.”

“About the refugees? The lack of them, I mean?”

“No sign of any heading out of Afula or Nazareth. Or leaving any other Arab towns.”

“The local commanders are probably under orders not to let them leave. Civilians as hostages. The Jihadis have been doing that since you and I were kids playing Army.”

“I played ‘Marines’.”

“Well, at least neither of us played Air Force. They’re probably just trying to complicate our operations. Figuring we’re still jumpy about dead civilians.”

“Those days are gone. Good morning, L.A., good night, Las Vegas.”

“It’s like that defensive position at Megiddo. They’re testing us. Seeing how far we’ll go.”

“I can understand that. But what about the reports of civilians being bussed into Nazareth? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, when you’ve got military convoys to move over those roads.”

“The reports might be wrong. Val Danczuk’s relying on one special operator we’ve got in place up there. In Nazareth. The overheads don’t necessarily corroborate his messages about bussing in civilians. Those buses could’ve been full of troops. But we’re watching it.” He smiled. Wryly. “Val’s the most forward-leaning Two I’ve ever known. Problem is restraining him when he starts painting scenarios with invisible colors.”

“Sir?”

“Monk, can’t you call me ‘Gary’? When we’re not onstage?”

“Marine habit. And, to tell you the truth, you never struck me as a ‘Gary’.”

“It’s the only name I’ve got.”

“Except ‘Flintlock’.”

Harris shook his head. “Never cared for that one, myself. Always sounded like a cartoon character to me.”

They marched through the last stretch of shade, and Monk Morris changed the subject: “You didn’t really mean that, did you? About being afraid of Sim Montfort?”

Harris stopped and looked into the other man’s eyes. As deeply as he could.

“I meant it.”

* * *