didn’t get killed. They did the killing.
The artillery fire swelled again, landing several clicks away. Echoing through the urban canyons. His team wasn’t shelling the city. Just kicking up dirt around it. Because we’re the good guys. Nice to everybody. You betcha.
He thought of the struggle his father had endured the year before to prove that, although Arabs, his family had always been Christians. Since time immemorial, sir. Since that dude fell off his horse on the way to Damascus.
Christian Arabs didn’t have to go into the Providential Communities in Utah and Nevada that the government had established for Muslims, citizens or not, after the Jihadis popped nukes in L.A. and Las Vegas. But it was up to you to produce the paperwork.
Nasr saw his father, sitting on the goddamned couch, the previously undisputed tyrant of the family, with tears rolling down his cheeks, telling his newly promoted-to-major son, “I tell them, I say to them that my son is an officer in the United States Army, that he is in the specialty forces with the green beret. But they only try to trick me with questions about the Book of Revelation. They are men of tricks, like the dev il.”
And Nasr had set out, yet again, to prove that he was not only as good an American as anybody else, but a braver and better one.
Well, not much longer. Fucking Jihadis. They’d gotten what they wanted. The new crowd in Washington just didn’t get it. All the Jihadis cared about, when it came to Muslim emigres, was preventing them from assimilating into Western societies: better dead than freely wed. In the post-nuke panic, his government had done the Jihadis’ work for them. Weren’t going to be any mixed marriages now.
What did it matter? The world was going to shit. Nasr figured it was some old blood instinct telling him that the killing had barely started.
He marched uphill, going like a crippled old man pretending to be a soldier. He intended to allow himself thirty minutes. No more. Thirty mikes. To sit down. And calm down. Then he would go straight to the transmitter. And do his duty.
If he truly was a Christian, Nasr considered, Nazareth wouldn’t be such a bad place to die.
He stopped. An emaciated cat took one look at him and scrammed. Nasr laughed out loud. It hurt. Awfully. But he couldn’t stop laughing.
A good place to die? Nazareth was a fucking pit. No wonder even Golgotha looked better to Jesus.
He hardly noticed that his laughter had faded into tears. Yeah, a world of hurt.
Just as Nasr moved to put one foot in front of the other, to march, he heard a sudden noise that didn’t fit. Followed by answering noises.
Bending his entire torso, Nasr looked up. Just in time to see a lone U.S. jet racing westward. Gunfire, missiles and, doubtless, every djinn in the Middle East chased after it. Before disappearing over the ridge, the aircraft jerked as if hit. But it kept on going.
Nasr swelled with pride.
“Talk to me,” Lieutenant General Harris said.
There were only four officers left in the ship’s secure compartment: Harris, his G-2 and G-3, Col o nels Val Danczuk and Mike Andretti, and the general’s aide, Major John Willing. Beyond the sealed hatch, only three others in the entire corps were cleared for access to STARK YANKEE products, the counterintelligence operation the U.S. Army had opened against the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ.
Even seated, the G-2 was the tallest of the four. Every chair seemed a throne to him.
“Sir, it’s just remarkable,” Danczuk said. The eagerness in his voice was almost juvenile, utterly at odds with the dignified look of the man. “Even the reports coming through standard channels have MOBIC elements fighting in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Lieutenant General of the Order Montfort’s lost most of a division killed or wounded. But they just keep on attacking.”
Harris shook his head in disgust. And not just at the sour smell of the compartment. “The Jihadis are getting a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of fanat i cism. It’s plain as day where al-Mahdi called it wrong: He didn’t take Sim Montfort’s speechifying seriously. Just the way we refused to listen to what the Islamists said thirty years ago. And al-Mahdi counted on Americans being stingy with their blood.” The general readjusted his posture in his chair, trying to soothe a back getting worse with the years. “I suspect al-Mahdi’s in shock at the moment. But he’ll recover. And then Sim’s going to have a real fight on his hands. What else?”
Danczuk dropped his eyes, and the enthusiasm drained from his voice. “Sir… We’re getting a lot of reports of atrocities… pretty ugly stuff.”
“Which side?”
“Both. But mostly the MOBIC forces. A lot of it’s unconfirmed… but it sounds as though a lot of civilians are being killed.”
“Not just collateral damage?”
“No, sir.”
Harris moved as if to slam his hand down on the table but restrained himself before he’d gotten a third of the way through the motion.
“Sim Montfort doesn’t
“Got it, sir.”
Harris turned back to the G-2. “And the answer to my standard question, Deuce?”
“You mean nukes, sir?”
“Nukes.”
“Sir, we still have no indicators for the presence of nuclear weapons. Nothing. No probable hide sites. No special security. No support vehicles…”
Harris smiled. Glancing at the other three men. “I know you all think I’m off the reservation on this one. But I just have a gut feeling that there’s a few stray nukes out there. And not just tactical nukes, either. So pander to the old man’s obsession.”
He looked back toward the G-2. “Keep watching it for me, Val. Take it seriously. Okay? All right, then. Let’s talk STARK YANKEE. What hasn’t made the evening news?”
Danczuk glanced around as though a spy might’ve slipped into the room while they were speaking. “Sir… General Montfort doesn’t seem to worry much about blue casualties, but he’s extremely worried about equipment readiness. The breakdown rate is high and—”
“How high?”
“Sir, I don’t know. Not exactly.”
“Find out.”
“Yes, sir. The worst problems are with the MOBIC’s armored systems, the NexGen tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Basically, everything heavily digitized, anything that came out of the Future Combat Systems initiative over the last twenty years, is next to worthless in this environment. The digital shielding fails. The comms just melt down. And the electronic armor’s a joke.”
Harris had practiced control of his temper for decades. So he managed to keep his voice level, although its tone wasn’t kind. “Well, isn’t that grand. Those sonsofbitches pulled every lever in the United States Government to draw all of the latest combat equipment from the Army and Marine inventories. Left us with the shit that should’ve been retired after we left Iraq, for God’s sake. And now who’s fucked for breakfast?”
“Sir… My point is that, if the breakdown rate’s as bad as it sounds…”
“They’re going to need gear. And it’s going to have to come from somewhere. And we’re ‘somewhere.’ Got it, Val. When their new toys break, they’re going to want the old ones they tossed our way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harris looked toward the G-3 again. “Mike… You see my point? As to why it’s essential to grab Afula as swiftly as we can? I don’t want to throw away lives. But we can’t waste time. We’ve got to keep hitting the Jihadis
