The War After Armageddon

Now Sim had religion. Some said he was America’s coming man. Well, he hadn’t come in her. That was one thing. Better a scumbag lawyer than Sim Montfort. She’d never trusted him an inch. Even before he showed up at her door and got it slammed in his preening snout.

Ashamed of herself, of her weakness, Sarah stopped crying and got up to wash her face. The telephone stopped her halfway down the hall.

“Hello?” Tentative. Wary of yet another harassing phone call.

It was her younger daughter, Miranda. Hysterical.

“Mom, Mom, it’s Emily… You’ve got to come… please…”

“Miranda, calm down. Stop it. What’s—”

“Mom, I’m at the hospital. It’s Emily. They beat her up so bad… Mom, I can’t even recognize her. Mom, you’ve got to come…”

Lieutenant General Gary Harris’s wife put some steel in her voice. “You just calm down. Right now, young lady. Do you hear me? We can’t let your father know about this.”

HEADQUARTERS, 2-34 ARMOR, EASTERN OUTSKIRTS OF AFULA

Less than fifteen minutes after the land lines had been laid to the battalion’s tactical operations center, a tank recovery vehicle backed over the wires and cut them again. While waiting for the sergeant from the signal platoon to finish the splices, Lt. Col. Montgomery Maxwell VI sipped from a cup of lukewarm, ass-drizzle coffee and tried to concentrate on the map laid out before him. He had a great deal of lost time to make up.

But his mind kept flapping away from the map and returning to roost on the leaflet his recon platoon leader had brought in. The Jihadis were firing artillery rounds filled with the slips of paper throughout the brigade sector.

The leaflet bore a photograph of crucified soldiers above the printed warning: This death comes to all infidel Crusaders who profane the Emirate of al-Quds and Damaskus.

The reproduction quality wasn’t first-rate. But you got the message.

Annoyed at his inability to focus on the tactical problem at hand, Maxwell reached out and turned the leaflet face down. But the map before him had become a text in an incomprehensible alphabet.

“Three!” he called. “Any comms yet?”

“No, sir. Jamming’s so thick I’m surprised we can hear each other talk out loud.”

“Sergeant Escovito say anything about those goddamned land lines?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“I need to talk to every company commander the instant we’re back up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, screw this shit. Sergeant Perkins? Where’s my damned driver? Tell him to get my V-hull ready to roll.”

“You going forward again, sir?” the S-3 asked.

“They can’t hear me from here. And I need to get everybody right with Jesus.” He reached for the leaflet, flashed it, then slapped it down again. “We’re going to have soldiers wanting to take scalps and collect hides once they see this goddamned stuff.”

“Don’t you want to go out in a big boy, sir? It’s getting nasty out there.”

Maxwell shook his head. “Lieutenant MacDonald’s going to need his full platoon if we get a shit-storm around the TOC.”

But that wasn’t the true reason Maxwell didn’t want to go forward in a tank. It had more to do with the fact that, for the first time in a war zone, he’d taken off his great-grandfather’s saber and stowed it with his personal gear.

He didn’t want to be tempted to get back in the fight himself. Maxwell realized that he’d been an ass. Saber Six should’ve reached down and relieved him of his command for his shenanigans. Oh, he knew the story was already making the rounds about how he’d taken on the Jihadis with a sword. Chop-chop. The battalion’s commander’s a real stud. Just hours before, he would’ve reveled in such admiration, calling it good for morale and letting it feed his ego.

But something had happened to him after the streetfight in Afula. As his battalion pushed through the far side of the town and ran into unexpected re sis tance that brought the order down from brigade: “Assume a hasty defense and consolidate present gains.” After he’d lost six tanks in twenty minutes of stumbling into a serious enemy defense. After the exhilaration of fighting had evaporated and left him exhausted, with countless duties left undone.

In a moment of revelation, he’d seen what a fool he’d made of himself. All that macho b.s. about leading from the front and positioning himself in the first rank of the attack… What it really amounted to was that he’d lost control of his battalion as soon as the fight got serious in Afula. He’d waged his own private war in the streets, losing his entire tank crew in the process. He’d had fun.

Fun. His men had died so that he could have fun.

And yes, it had been fun. For all the combat he’d seen over the years, he’d never felt more alive than in those streets. And then, literally “on the road to Damascus,” he’d seen himself with indisputable clarity as a fool. Unfit to be a lieutenant.