The War After Armageddon

smiling. “If we’re up secure, tell him we’ve got five crews back out of seven. We’re in business!”

Now if only Dawg Daniels would show his ugly mug.

MT. CARMEL RIDGES

“Welcome to the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, Colonel. Glad y’all could drop in.”

The young officer’s face was streaked with camouflage paint that sweat and wear had smeared. He nonetheless qualified as one of the top five most-beautiful human beings Dawg Daniels had ever seen — and the only male on the list.

“We picked up your buddy, too,” the lieutenant continued. “He broke his leg.”

“Well, we’re not supposed to lose our jets.”

“Yes, sir… Sir, if you don’t mind me saying… y’all flying like that… I mean, God bless you.”

Daniels took a deep, wonderful, glorious, gorgeous breath. “We Marines have never been accused of an excess of intelligence,” he said. “I’d be grateful for a drink of water, if the Army has any to spare.”

SIX

NAZARETH

Every living thing got out of his way. Nasr limped and staggered up the lanes of Nazareth, dried blood lurid on his clothing. His face was so swollen it limited his field of vision. The people he encountered stared at him for an alarmed instant, then quickly looked to the side and veered from his path. Only the children, silent under the sound of the distant guns, kept their eyes on him: the bogeyman.

Yet, more than a few of the local children were little bogeymen, deformed by radiation in the womb. During the Great Jihad, Nazareth had lain within the fallout zones of Haifa to the West and Zefat to the north.

Nasr was in no condition to feel much sympathy. He kept thinking of the old Army expression, “a world of hurt,” repeating it to himself almost hypnotically. Although he’d taken a round in the hip in Nigeria, the only part of his body Nasr had worried about in the past had been his knees, which had gone a few hundred jumps beyond their warranty. Now everything seemed to hurt. His testicles ached so badly that he imagined himself walking like a sailor in an old cartoon. His ribs punished him with every breath. Back and front, right and left, everything seemed to be broken. Pains flashed through his abdomen, as regular as warning beacons. His head was the least of it. That was just a matter of weird vagueness, as if a few inches of the air around his skull had become a no-man’s-land.

The doctor had pawed his ribs and shrugged. They might as well have called a cleaning woman, because just about all the doc did — if he actually was a doctor — had been to clean up his face a bit, splint two broken fingers together with all the skill of a Cub Scout, then offer him a glass of orange juice. When Nasr tried to drink it, the acid burned his smashed-up lips and the inside of his mouth like liquid fire. He spit up blood.

Another miracle of modern medicine. Avicenna, call home.

“I’m going to make it,” Nasr told himself as he climbed a narrow alley that reeked of cooking grease and urine. “I’m going to fucking make it. Been through worse than this.”

But that was a lie. He’d never been through worse. And he wasn’t going to make it.

They knew who he was. That one single thing was clear to him. He’d imagined that he was the Invisible Man, Mr. Cultural Affinity, blending in seamlessly. Pride of Man, he told himself, oh, pride of Man. He’d been a horse’s ass. They all knew who he was.

As he watched, a bearded man grabbed a falafel sandwich from a boy — who fought to get it back as the thief danced about to avoid his victim’s hands, all the while stuffing the food into his maw.

No one interfered. Everyone was afraid. Weary. Famished. In despair.

Welcome to the club, Nasr thought.

He’d never believed that despair was in him. But he had a fullblown case now. He veered between disgust at himself and troughs of indulgence when he tried to cata log his damaged parts. For the first time in his life, he slipped into self-pity. And he hated himself for it.

Nasr stumbled, but righted himself. A bout of dizziness stopped him for a moment, and then he trudged on. Not certain he was doing the right thing. But unable to think of anything else.

They knew. His first impulse had been to avoid returning to the closet of a room he’d rented on the western ridge. But that was stupid. If they knew all the rest, they certainly knew where he was bunking. And the transmitter wasn’t there, anyway.

He climbed a few more steps, through a played- out avalanche of garbage, and stopped again. There was no obvious alpha pain. Everything hurt. The doc had given him a small handful of pills. For the pain, he said. But Nasr feared taking them. He had to stay clear. As clear as possible. To think.

It hurt to breathe. But when he tried to fuel himself with shallow breaths, the dizziness threatened to drop him. And he couldn’t halt the flashes of remembrance, the vivid recollection of a fist coming down into his face or the precise feel — the instant replay — of a boot going into his ribs.

“You’re getting soft, Ranger,” he told himself. “Never make it through Dahlonega. Forget that SF tab, sissy- boy. You’d wash out of the Q Course in a week.”

Sarcasm didn’t give him the boost he needed.

What the hell did you do when you knew — when you knew—that they were only waiting for you to make your transmission before they killed you?

They’d never spare him. That was clear. They didn’t have it in them to let him off with a beating.

Did they know he knew?

Now that was a question requiring a bottle of single malt.

Nasr began to walk again, imagining himself marching, but aware that his every movement was a mockery of his past being. Pride of Man, pride of Man…

Who wanted what? That was the thing he needed to figure out. The old man hadn’t recognized him on his own. He’d been put up to it. But by whom? Where did one scheme end and another plot begin? The old man had threatened to spoil the game that was going so well for the rival team — the team that wanted Nasr to keep on transmitting as the American forces approached. At least one more time.

Had the security boys who beat him up been in on either deal? Or were they just stupid Arab cops doing what they did best?

When the badge-flashers in clean khakis dragged him out and pushed his parts back together, their head honcho had been all too profuse in his apologies and his insistence that a mistake had been made, that everyone was sorry. Arabs were never sorry for violence. Nasr knew that. He was one of them. Christian or not.

“Get over that self-hatred thing, bro,” his best friend had warned him years before. Nasr had thought it was a nutty thing to say. But he got the point now.

Didn’t listen. Didn’t take his vitamins. Bad, bad boy. Had to be the number-one grad in every Army school. Just to prove… what, exactly? That a Maronite Christian could do more pushups than Presbyterians?

So they wanted him to transmit. But what did they need him to say? The only news from the Nazareth home team was that educated refugees were being bussed in and dumped. Thousands of them. Bad Guys X wanted him dead right now, but Bad Guys Y wanted him to tell mama first.

He stopped again and shook his head. Instinctively. As if the act would clear his thoughts.

All it did was hurt his neck.

Ain’t no lucky lady going to share my Arabian nights for a while, Nasr told himself. No, sirree. Mr. Pulp Face. And check those teeth. Bad dentistry.

What was his duty? To transmit. Were they capable of monitoring and breaking the transmissions? The techies said no way. But what were the techies going to say? They believed in technology the way the MOBIC pukes believed that Jesus was God’s Little Gangster.

When I get a three-day pass, I’m gonna kick old Jody’s ass.

Or maybe not. Not going to kick anybody’s ass. Not now. Maybe never again.

Self-pity stinks. Got it, sir. But dying hadn’t been a near-term goal. Even Fayetteville was looking good now. Unlike his enemies, Nasr didn’t regard death as a promotion. He’d dutifully attended St. Michael’s and St. George’s right through high school. For his mother’s sake. But he hadn’t exactly come to terms with the after-life. SF studs