The War After Armageddon

lot better when you tell me we’ve got an actual highway open. At the moment, I’m more worried about opening up additional MSRs than I am about the fighting. Get a reconaissance-in-force down toward Jenin as soon as it makes sense, and send a patrol down Highway 6. Your call on the size. See if they’ve really pulled back down there. If it’s clear, set up a coordination point at Tulkarm. Tie in our flank with the MOBIC corps. In case we need to shift forces.”

“I’m more worried about mines than Jihadis along 6. My intel shop puts their new defensive line halfway back to Nablus.”

“Better ground. They’re doing the smart thing. At this point.”

The howitzers barked again, joined this time by other batteries scattered in the clearings amid the groves behind the ridge. It was a good sound, as were the distant thuds that followed fifteen to twenty seconds later. They were going after deep targets. Which meant that no local counterattacks had materialized.

“I never would’ve given up this ground so easily,” Harris told the Marine two-star. They walked up through scents of pine and cedar, their security detachments prowling ahead and following behind, giving the two generals space for a private conversation.

“Well,” Monk Morris said, with a tinge of irritation, “they didn’t just hand it over. But I take your point. Not the sort of blunder I would’ve expected from al-Mahdi. Based on his track record. ‘Conqueror of Jerusalem’ and all that.”

“That’s the point,” Harris said. “It’s all about Jerusalem, al-Quds, at the moment. We’re dinosaurs, the two of us. Thinking like old-fashioned military commanders. This is the age of the believers. Suleiman al-Mahdi may be smarter than Saladin when all other factors are equal. But they’re not equal right now. He wants to hold onto Jerusalem, the third holy city of Islam. After all, this is the Emirate of al-Quds and Damaskus, not the Emirate of Haifa. He sees us as the secondary enemy, the new Lesser Satan. He knows he has to beat Sim Montfort and the MOBIC corps. That one’s a zero-sum game. He figures he can take care of us later.”

“So what does he do? Now? Up here?” Morris asked.

“You tell me, Monk.” Harris shifted his body armor and felt the sweat-grease on his back. “If you were Sully al-Mahdi pulling out all the stops to hang onto Jerusalem and you didn’t have the numbers you’d like to have… What would you do?”

“I’ve been wrestling with that since they started pulling off the heights last night,” the Marine said. “If I were al-Mahdi and running an economy-of-force operation up here, I’d concentrate on retaining control of the key interior roads. I’d tell al-Ghazi, the sector commander, to dig in deep and hard from Afula up through Nazareth, with a swinging-gate defense to the north, from Shefar’am back to Golani Junction.”

“Bingo. He knows he’s going to lose Megiddo Junction. He already has, for all intents and purposes, since he can’t hold it. It’s just a delaying action down there. Testing us.” Harris pushed a low branch out of the way. “I agree with you, Monk. So does history. The junctions in the Jezreel have been strategically vital since the battles in the Old Testament.”

“Probably longer.”

Harris smiled. “Don’t let Sim Monfort hear you say that.”

The artillery let loose again. Which meant that the forward observers were calling in hard targets. If the fates were in a good mood, it might even mean that his recon drones were flying and linking back targets.

The growl of the heavy vehicles climbing the road below them deepened as the breeze shifted.

“I’m told you were at VMI with Montfort,” Morris said. “All those secret handshakes. Any insights?”

“The noble and pious MOBIC corps commander…” A fly the size of a bomber brushed Harris’s nose. He waved it away. Behind the scent of the evergreens, the odor of death teased. “Fact is, Sim’s an extremely talented officer. Truly gifted. Always was. And he just may be the most ruthless human being I’ve ever met.”

“I’d have to measure him against an old girlfriend or two,” Morris, a lifelong bachelor, said.

“Well, Marines do have peculiar tastes. But don’t ever sell Sim Montfort short. Behind all the Bible verses and the Crusader rhetoric, he’s smarter than a billionaire televangelist cross-bred with an entire faculty of Jesuits. Write him off as a nut, and you’ll get blindsided. And you won’t get back up on your feet again.”

“But is he nuts? I’ve known my share of men who were brilliant and utterly crazy at the same time. Not least, in this neck of the woods.”

“I’d call him ‘obsessive’.”

“To the point of being nuts?”

“Monk, did anybody ever tell you that you even look like a bulldog? You make Chesty Puller look like a beauty queen. No, Montfort’s not nuts. He can project a quality of madness. But you never know how much of it’s calculated.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a drinking buddy.”

“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.