The War After Armageddon

Nasr caught himself before he shrugged. He had almost moved his shoulders like a Westerner. Instead, he waved the world away with a dismissive hand. And he entered the crowd, slipping past a policeman who wore his beret straight up from his scalp, like a mushroom cap.

An unshaven man in an old tweed jacket grasped Nasr by the arm.

“Please,” he said, “please… Can you help me?”

“What do you need, brother?” Nasr asked him.

“My wife… she’s… we need…”

A volley of artillery rounds struck beyond one of the city’s ridges. Closer than the other fires had come. The refugee clinging to Nasr’s forearm flinched, almost dropping to his knees.

“Why have they brought us here? Why? Do you know?”

“Where are you from, brother?”

“Why do they bring us here? This is fitna. Madness. I’m a professor. Of physics. My wife is a teacher. What do we have to do with their war?”

“Where is your home, brother? Where did they take you from?”

A woman in the crowd began to scream.

“From Homs. From the university. Why bring us such a long way? Why bring us here? We’ll all be killed. Can you help us?”

“We must pray to Allah,” Nasr said, “and trust in His beneficence.”

The professor looked at him scornfully. Letting go of his forearm. “You’re one of them? You believe that nonsense? After all the world has seen? There is no god… none…”

“There is no god but God,” Nasr corrected him. “And Mohammed is his Prophet. Insh’ Allah, all will be well with you, brother.”

“You,” the professor said in a spiteful rage, “it’s dogs like you who’ve done this.”

Before turning away, Nasr told the professor, “Get away from this place. Or they’ll steal what little you have left. Take your wife and go to the farthest neighborhood your feet can find. Nothing is left down here.”

But the professor wasn’t listening. Fury had blocked his ears.

“Dogs like you have done this,” he repeated.

“And hold your tongue, brother,” Nasr warned him. “Not all Nazarenes are as patient with blasphemers as I am.”

He scanned the shabby crowd but couldn’t spot the old man who’d been trailing him. Pushing on toward the buses, Nasr let himself take in a dozen conversations: pleas, complaints, threats, and furious bargaining, all of it reeking with the stench of shit and fear. Some of the refugees had been brought from as far away as Halab, ancient Aleppo, in northern Syria. And Nasr thought he heard Iraqi accents. Educated accents, all of them.

Why on earth drive your intelligentsia — or what passed for one — into the path of an invading army?

Did the Jihadis want them to be killed?

Nasr stopped. Just below the derelict patch where the Church of the Annunciation had stood. His body felt sheathed in ice.

Was that it? Did the Jihadis want them to be killed?

Nasr had been inserted weeks before the invasion began, but the influx of refugees had begun just two days before a bombardment announced the landings. The Jihadis had known an attack was coming, of course, if not just when and where.

What else had they known?

Major Nasr sat on a broken wall. A half-block from one of Christendom’s holy places — now a ruin used as a public latrine. He wasn’t a party to the detailed plan of invasion, but he knew this much: Even Flintlock Harris wouldn’t have the pull to bypass Nazareth. Whatever else the corps commander’s plan of operations might avoid, the early seizure of Nazareth would be non-negotiable. The vice president, the SecDef, and the MOBIC generals back in the Pentagon would make sure of that.

And the Jihadis were smart enough to figure that one out. Every Christian site would be an objective. Nazareth would be high on the list.

Then why dump their brainpower in the path of the infidel?

Were the Jihadis really so intent on turning back the clock by centuries that they wanted their professors and doctors and scientists exterminated? If so, why not do it themselves? Why go to so much trouble? When they had a war to fight?

Of course, Hitler had made time for a similar distraction. When he had a war to fight.

Nasr knew he was on to something big. But he didn’t know what it was.

There had to be more to it.

He needed to get back to his transmitter. If the damned thing was working. Sometimes the burst transmissions got through, sometimes they didn’t. But he was anxious to send off another report and hand off what he’d seen and heard. Let the brainiacs on the staff figure out what it meant.

Insh’ Allah.

Just as Nasr placed his hands on his knees to lever himself to his feet, he saw the old man again. Pointing at him. A half-dozen Arab policemen accompanied him.

There was no point in running. The only hope was to bluff.

“I tell you, he is a spy, that one!” the old man cried.

Nasr felt his guts churn. But he kept his face under control, letting innocent bafflement spread across his features.

The police surrounded him. Artillery fire landed a valley away, but it wasn’t going to help him.

Nasr touched his hand to his robe, just above his heart. “How can I help you, my brothers?”