The War After Armageddon

“Whose side are you on, Sergeant?” Cropsey demanded. “ They don’t matter. What? We got two squads’ worth left out of a platoon? You going to send Corporal Gallotti back with prisoners? And the lieutenant doesn’t even know where we are?”

“He’s dead. And you listen. Carefully, hombre.” Garcia leaned close. “You think you’re a bad motherfucker? My sister would’ve torn off your head and shit down your throat.” Garcia felt the other Marines approaching, and he lowered his voice. Without dropping his intensity. “You’re going to follow orders. Or you can go to the rear yourself. Under charges. You understand?”

Something in his tone of voice worked. He could feel Cropsey curling inward. Like a slug you tossed salt on. Maybe surviving Montebello was worth something, after all.

“Yeah, Sergeant,” Cropsey said. “I got it.”

JERUSALEM

Lieutenant General of the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ Simon Montfort stood on a ridge overlooking the flames as the suburbs of Jerusalem burned through the night. He could tell from the excited expressions exactly what his staff had come to report, but he let them wait a little longer. Illustrating his imperturbability, his destiny to command, his place in history. He understood the impression he made as the distant flames glinted off the three onyx crosses on his helmet. Tall, erect. The model of a Christian soldier.

At last, Montfort turned. Smiling calmly at his chief of staff. “What is it, James?”

“Sir, we’ve taken the Temple Mount.”

Montfort nodded. His smile neither widened nor weakened. The sounds of battle from the middle distance were, indeed, far weaker than they had been even an hour earlier.

Montfort fell to his knees, setting his right fist over his heart, in the attitude of a MOBIC soldier in prayer. Eyes turned Heavenward. Into the red-tinged darkness.

“Lord God of hosts, we give thanks unto You for the glory of this day. Accept this, Your city, as our humble offering. Amen.”

“Amen,” his staff echoed.

Montfort rose. Taller than any of his immediate subordinates.

All of whom had been carefully chosen. For a number of qualities beyond their zealous faith.

“When the sun rises,” he said, “I want no stone, no brick — not one splinter — left standing where the enemies of Christ erected their temple. We will erase the Dome of the Rock from history. Praise the Lord.”

“Praise the Lord!” his staff echoed. The Guardians, well-armed, repeated the phrase from the shadows.

“Go now,” Montfort said. “Each man to his toil in the vineyards of the Lord.”

And after each had gone but one, that man came to Montfort. His eyes asked if he might approach.

“What is it, James?”

“Sir… I need a decision about the locals. We’ve got at least twenty thousand of them on our hands. Maybe as many still hiding in the city. We can’t put it off any longer. We need to decide where to move them.”

“We’re not going to move them,” Montfort said.

“But… Jerusalem was to be purified…”

“It will be. And it shall be. Kill them all.”

His chief of staff recoiled. His mouth hung open, robbed of speech. At last, he stammered, “But… there are still some Christians… Orthodox, Syriac, Chaldeans…”

“Kill them all,” Montfort said calmly. “God will know his own.”

TEN

PHASE LINE DEL REY, JEZREEL VALLEY

“Would you be careful, sir?” the gunner said over the tank’s intercom. “You’re going to put somebody’s eye out with that thing.”

Lieutenant Col o nel Montgomery Maxwell VI resettled his scabbard around his waist. The commander’s weapon station in an M-1A4 tank wasn’t the ideal place to wear a saber, but Monty Maxwell wasn’t about to break a family tradition. The M-1913 cavalry saber had been given to his great-grandfather by Georgie Patton himself… although the family glossed over the circumstances, which involved the suppression of the Bonus Marchers. Maxwells had worn the sword with Abrams in northern France and in Vietnam, under McCaffrey in Desert Storm, and under Wallace on the march to Baghdad. At West Point, Maxwell had been the captain of the fencing team, and later, he’d worn the saber himself during the Abuja campaign.

The sword was an incon ve nience, but so was taking a crap during a battle. A man had to do what a man had to do.

As the tank plunged across the fields, buttoned up and attacking east toward Afula, Maxwell wondered if the whole plan wasn’t madness. He veered between picturing blue-jacketed ancestors riding with Kill-Cavalry Kilpatrick or leading Buffalo Soldiers against Apaches and wondering what on earth he himself was doing charging up a wide-open valley into the morning sun. With orders to switch off his countermeasures and those on every tank and infantry fighting vehicle in Task Force 2-34. At exactly 0621. For exactly forty seconds.

It occurred to Monty Maxwell that the traditional hatred of staff officers was fully justified.