For a long moment, he wasn’t even sure he was at the right place. But it smelled right. Even with his nose smashed up. The local piss lane. He limped into the corridor, the ammonia smell searing his nostrils. Doing the best he could to check that he was alone. Aware that he was incapable of judging whether he’d been followed.
Nasr reached down into a crumbling foundation and jimmied out a brick with his good hand. Wondering if he’d be able to work the stylus on the keypad.
He meant to bend over to hide the tiny glow of the device but found himself on his knees. With the dizziness on him again.
Twelve fragmentary sentences. Begin.
In the beginning was the Word…
And the word was:
Even though he’d reasoned that they wanted him to transmit, he expected to feel a hand upon him. Or a club. To hear footsteps. Anything. Except being left alone to do his work.
He was left alone. He fired the burst transmission, waited, then sent it again. Hoping it would get through.
He didn’t want it all to be a waste.
From sheer discipline, he hid the transmitter again. Because that was how soldiers did things. Right to the end.
And he turned back down the stinking corridor, waiting to die.
Instead of being murdered, Nasr made it back to the house where the lovely bedbugs awaited him. He found the front door open and the landlord trying frantically to find any working channel on an uncooperative television.
Nasr muttered, “Salaam Aleikum,” and, still expecting to die, went to sleep.
“The SeaBees say they can do it, sir,” Colonel McCoy, the corps logistician said. “As soon as the grungies clear the ridges east of the Haifa Gap. They tell me they can lay double flexi-pipe into the Jezreel in twenty-four hours and start pumping. Service with a smile.”
“All right, Real-Deal,” Harris said. He’d stepped outside of the deserted houses commandeered as the corps’ forward command post. Thirsty for fresh air.
The night stank of war.
Harris watched the silhouettes of ammo carriers pass along the road. “All right. But I don’t want any of our soldiers playing chicken with gamma rays. Or sailors, either. No short cuts on the protective gear while they’re on the ground in Haifa. And rigid adherence to dwell times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And remember what I told you last night. I need you. I don’t want you turning into a night-light on two hind legs. Stay out of there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell the SeaBees good work.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell them. As soon as the POL starts flowing.”
“Anything else?”
“Water. The doc and I are tight on this, sir. We’ll get the water down to the troops. But you’ve got to hammer ’em: no drinking the local stuff. I mean, no bottled water from Ahmed’s refrigerator. It’s going to be tempting, if they run into something halfway cold. But the doc’s a hard-ass about this — he’s worried about radiation, not the runs.”
“Got it. But you’ve got to get that water out there. It’s push, not pull, Real-Deal. I don’t want full pallets sitting at division or brigade.”
“I’ll put the fear of God into all the Fours, sir.”
Harris grimaced, although his G-4 couldn’t see the expression in the darkness. “We’ve all had enough ‘fear of God,’ Sean. Just put the fear of Real-Deal McCoy into them, all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You getting any sleep?”
Before the logistician could answer, a helmeted figure loomed from the shadows. The parade-ground posture, even under the weight of body armor, was unmistakable.
“Over here, Scottie.”
The 1st Infantry Division’s commander pivoted as if he were still a cadet captain at West Point.
The G-4 saluted, a dark bird-swoop, and stepped away.
“Evening, sir.”
“What’s up, Scottie? I thought you’d be down in your CP harassing your staff and complicating the planning process.”
Major General Walter Robert Burns Scott took off his helmet and ran his palm over his hair. By the light of day, it was as red as the field of Bannockburn. Now he was a shadow, paler where flesh caught starlight.
“That’s what I need to speak to you about, sir.”
“Talk to me.”
“Sir… The fact is that I don’t have the guts to make a decision. Without running it by you.”
“Doesn’t sound like the leash-snapper we all know and love. Talk to me.”
“My deputy electronic-warfare officer came up with something. Sir, I need you to hear me out before you decide I’m crazy.”
“I’m on receive, Scottie.”
“It’s this: Yes, we’ve got all the corps’ fire support tomorrow. Layered obscurants. Smart rounds, dumb rounds. And enough jamming to melt circuits in Japan. But it still feels a little like being on the wrong side at Cold Harbor. We’re set to take serious losses.”
“I know that, Scottie. But we need Afula. And it isn’t going to get easier if we wait.”
“No, sir. Understood. But this kid… a major, so I guess I shouldn’t call him a kid — Christ, they look so young — pointed out the obvious to start: The two killers we face are the drones, which we can try to jam the shit out of, and the seventh-gen ATGMs. Mostly loophole systems, Russian designs. Explorer and Hunter knockoffs built in China before the Rising and bought in bulk. This kid — Major Sanger — pointed out that, given the intensity of the jamming and spoofing, the Jihadis are going to have their antitank missiles set to take advantage of any windows in the electronic spectrum, any holes in our jamming. You know the drill — the setting takes the man out of the loop completely, and the missile launches automatically when it senses a clear path through the electronic spectrum.”
“Remember you’re talking to an Infantryman, Scottie.”
“I’m Infantry, too, sir.”
“I know that. But at West Point, they actually made you learn things. Go on.”
“Well, it’s a long ride down the Jezreel.”
“Got it. ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ I’m as worried as you are.”
“Here’s the thing. The max range of the Explorer is eight-point-five clicks, but they usually fail at eight. Propulsion issue. But the auto-lock-on goes out an extra kilometer. It’s a flaw in the system. Max for the Hunter is six clicks. Auto lock-on at six-and-a-half clicks, but that’s integrated with flight times.”
“And?”
“Major Sanger suggested that, exactly when our lead formations hit nine clicks out — we’ll use an old- fashioned phase line, call it ‘Phase Line Hollywood’—we turn off every jamming system in the division and every corps asset in sector. Air and ground.”
Harris got it. “How long would they need to be down?”
“He estimates forty seconds.”
“The Jihadis could lock onto a lot of targets in forty seconds. And not just in your division.”
“Yes, sir. But they’re going to be as focused on the Jezreel as we are. And if it works out… They launch three or four hundred antitank missiles down the valley and just splash dirt on our glacis plates.”
“Yes, sir. And here’s the rest of it: We’ll have every target acquisition system we’ve got tuned in, and we’ll
