“But ‘Holy War,’ Monk? I can’t think of a greater contradiction in terms.” He raised his eyes again and saw the glory of the sun upon the valley. The earth gleamed in the April light, and the puffs of smoke where artillery struck in the distance seemed no more than small, low clouds. He hated the thought that his country had sent him and his soldiers to fight here.
The seductive landscape spread before him was nothing but one mass grave.
“All right,” Harris said, turning to business. He stretched out his right hand to orient his companion. “The glimmer at the end of the valley’s Afula. The sprawl up on those hills to the left is Nazareth, although the old town sits down in a bowl. The gum-drop shape straight on is Mt. Tabor. Just out of sight, you have the Jordan Valley to the right and the Sea of Galilee — Lake Kinneret, if you prefer — to the left. The line of mountains in the distance is Gilead. Where I am told there is no balm.”
Morris looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You’ve been here before?”
“We all have,” Harris said.
FOUR
Lost souls, they stumbled from the buses. In the distance, the sounds of war throbbed, an irregular heartbeat. The men, most of middle age, appeared bewildered, gripping suitcases or dabbing the sweat from their foreheads with fouled handkerchiefs. Their women struggled down the steps behind them, clinging to possessions gathered in haste. A few of the women led children into the chaos, but most had long since passed the fertile years. Those children who had been dragged along wept or shrank into silence. Young or old, everyone looked soiled and worn. And they stank. The buses did not stop for human needs.
Major Michael Nasr watched the human parasites surge past the guards and swarm the new arrivals. Offering food, drink, or a place to sleep. At prices that would break a rich man in a week. There were no tourists in Nazareth now, and none had come for years, but the touts hadn’t lost their persistence. They set upon the refugees like fleas.
Refugees? What could you really call them? Nasr wondered. Men and women forced from their homes by their own kind, driven toward a war rather than away from it. He tried to piece the logic of it together. Obviously, there was a purpose to the actions of the Ji-hadis. But the purpose wasn’t obvious to him.
Lifting his robe as he stepped through filth, Nasr noticed the old man again. Not a refugee, but a local. The shriveled character with the goat’s beard had popped up repeatedly to scrutinize him, then disappear again. Nasr didn’t know what that might be about, but it worried him. His Arabic had been learned at home, in a Christian emigre family in Sacramento, and his father’s Lebanese accent came as easily to him as his mother’s born-in- Nazareth dialect. He understood the dress, the body language, the insider rules. He’d fooled the officials and the mullahs, and the only problem with his Arabic was that it was too grammatical for the identity he’d chosen.
Had something given him away? A word? A gesture?
If so, the cavalry wasn’t going to ride to the rescue. A U.S. Army Special Forces major detailed to a black program, Nasr was on his own. In Indian country.
He smiled at the utterly American phrase. He never felt more American than when he was thrust into the world that had forced his parents to flee. For the crime of being Christians. And yet, the Muslim role came to him easily. As if you inherited knowledge of your enemies.
Well, he was just glad that his parents had found the get-up-and-go to get up and go. Anyone who criticized the United States of America needed to get a good whiff of the Middle East.
The old man was up to something. But then, everybody between Casablanca and Karachi was up to something. Everybody had an angle. Every seven-year-old worked a grift.
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
“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
“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
“There is no god but God,” Nasr corrected him. “And Mohammed is his Prophet.
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.
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
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.
