The War After Armageddon

Harris picked up the letter and crumpled it, then pitched it toward a wastebasket. He missed. The uneven ball meandered across the deck.

“Go back to your ship. Just get your brigade ready to go ashore. You’re going to get all the fighting you want. And if you deviate one inch from your written orders, I’ll relieve you and distribute your battalions among the 1st ID’s brigades. You understand me?”

Avi Dorn saluted, turned, and marched out of the compartment.

When the hatch had closed behind the Israeli exile, Harris dropped into a chair. What in the name of God was that all about?

He took a long drink of bottled water, then went to check on his staff’s preparations to move operations to a command post ashore.

* * *

As he was ferried back toward his transport ship, Brigadier Avi Dorn closed his eyes. Shutting out the day and his personal history and the memory of his ruined nation. He just thought about Harris. With regret.

He liked Harris and respected him. And he knew that every word the general had spoken was true. But if the rebirth of Israel meant sacrificing one American general, it would not be the first sacrifice. Nor, Dorn thought, the last.

A renegade spray of salt water slapped his cheek. He opened his eyes again.

Just let them wait until the fighting’s done, Dorn thought. He wanted Harris calling the shots until the shooting stopped.

NAZARETH

All he could taste was blood.

Teeth could be replaced, Major Nasr told himself. He’d lost a canine on the upper left and two teeth below it. A couple of others were loose. But he’d had loose teeth before. He tried to keep his tongue from testing them.

And noses could be fixed. He knew that from experience. Which is why it was bullshit that anyone could recognize him by the nose that ran in his mother’s family. Anyway, he’d had his father’s nose. Broken twice — once playing football in high school and once in Nigeria, in the most desperate brawl of his life. He still had please-wake-me-up-now dreams about that one.

Ribs, too. Just tape ’em up. As long as your lungs weren’t punctured.

Don’t think like that, he told himself. Don’t start thinking like that.

His balls hurt, too. And they’d beat him until his bowels gave out. Which, he figured, just made him stink like their entire goddamned city.

“Holy Nazareth.” Personally, he would’ve been glad to let the Ji-hadis have it. Even Jesus had packed up and left as soon as he cleared the back orders at the carpentry shop.

The police team came back in. One of them turned Nasr over with his boot. Shining a heavy flashlight in his face. Nasr had gotten intimately familiar with that flashlight.

What surprised him was how crude they were. He would’ve expected more sophisticated forms of torture. But his captors were content just to beat the hell out of him.

“Who are you?” the officer with the deeper voice asked. For the hundredth time.

“My name is Gemal. I come from Sidon. I was only looking for work. In the lands Allah has given back to his people.”

The boot tip found a soft spot in Nasr’s back. And it went in hard. Twice.

Kidneys were not so easy to fix as noses.

“You shit-eating dog. Are you laughing at us? You think we don’t know who you are? You piece of filth.”

“Allah knows the truth of what I say. I swear—”

The boot went into his ribs. More blood came up. Nasr gagged, choked, finally spit out the clot. Or whatever had come loose.

“You’re a Christian spy. We know this. Speak the truth. Maybe we’ll let you live.”

“Brothers… My name is Gemal. I come from Sidon. I—”

A fist rebroke his nose, smashing the back of his head into the concrete. Nasr didn’t want to go out. To lose consciousness was to lose control.

He almost laughed. At himself. As if he were in control.

“You understand,” the deep-voiced officer said, “that we’re only preparing you. The men who will question you seriously are on their way. Better to tell us the truth. What they do to a man isn’t decent.”

The other laughed. “And what they’ll do to a Christian… I don’t like to think of such things…”

“Get him up,” Deep Voice commanded.

Through the ringing and hammering inside his skull, Nasr heard a door open. Or thought he did. Then he dreamed that an overhead light went on and several figures stood over him.

“You asses,” a new voice said. “Who gave you permission to do this? To an innocent man?”

Deep Voice tried to stutter out an answer. Shocked. Or just confused.

Through one badly swollen eyelid, Nasr thought he saw one man strike another.

“I should do the same thing done to you,” the new voice said. Then, in a tone of still greater disgust, he told the others, “Bring him out. And bring a doctor.”

Nasr was utterly confused. Were they speaking about him? Was there another captive in the room?

Heavy arms lifted him to his feet. But he couldn’t stand.

“Hold on to him,” the new voice commanded. “Or I’ll have the flesh stripped from your bodies and fed to your children.”