“It will be. And it shall be. Kill them all.”
His chief of staff recoiled. His mouth hung open, robbed of speech. At last, he stammered, “But… there are still some Christians… Orthodox, Syriac, Chaldeans…”
“Kill them all,” Montfort said calmly. “God will know his own.”
TEN
“Would you be careful, sir?” the gunner said over the tank’s intercom. “You’re going to put somebody’s eye out with that thing.”
Lieutenant Col o nel Montgomery Maxwell VI resettled his scabbard around his waist. The commander’s weapon station in an M-1A4 tank wasn’t the ideal place to wear a saber, but Monty Maxwell wasn’t about to break a family tradition. The M-1913 cavalry saber had been given to his great-grandfather by Georgie Patton himself… although the family glossed over the circumstances, which involved the suppression of the Bonus Marchers. Maxwells had worn the sword with Abrams in northern France and in Vietnam, under McCaffrey in Desert Storm, and under Wallace on the march to Baghdad. At West Point, Maxwell had been the captain of the fencing team, and later, he’d worn the saber himself during the Abuja campaign.
The sword was an incon ve nience, but so was taking a crap during a battle. A man had to do what a man had to do.
As the tank plunged across the fields, buttoned up and attacking east toward Afula, Maxwell wondered if the whole plan wasn’t madness. He veered between picturing blue-jacketed ancestors riding with Kill-Cavalry Kilpatrick or leading Buffalo Soldiers against Apaches and wondering what on earth he himself was doing charging up a wide-open valley into the morning sun. With orders to switch off his countermeasures and those on every tank and infantry fighting vehicle in Task Force 2-34. At exactly 0621. For exactly forty seconds.
It occurred to Monty Maxwell that the traditional hatred of staff officers was fully justified.
One click to go. Two brigade combat teams attacking abreast, and still no incoming. Were the J’s sleeping in? Or waiting to spring an all-arms ambush when it was too late to make a U-turn? As ordered, he had two armor- heavy companies up, sweeping forward in a skirmish line, with his C Company trailing in a hedgehog column. TF 1- 16 to his left and TF 1-34 to his right, with another brigade on the right flank. All of them two up, one back. The Jihadis would be looking at well over a hundred combat vehicles rushing toward them in the front rank alone.
It was the kind of shooting gallery antitank gunners dreamed of. But nobody was shooting. Yet.
The tank took a hard jolt. Severe enough to make Maxwell worry, for an instant, that a track might have snapped. But the big Abrams, a veteran of more overhauls than the face of an aging actress, kept on grinding forward.
As a battalion commander, Maxwell didn’t belong in the front line of vehicles. But when he’d heard the plan laid out at the brigade briefing, he’d decided that he wasn’t going to order his soldiers to do such a crazy-ass thing unless he was in the forward rank with them. The XO could follow behind and sort things out. If the Jihadis were shooting straight.
Maxwell had no target in view yet — just a lot of long shadows and dazzling early sunlight. But he wanted to be ready to engage at the longest possible range.
“Loader! Load Lima-Delta.”
He imagined Specialist Prizzi going about his work, a sailor manhandling a heavy weight on a rolling deck in a storm. The stabilizers and the suspension did only so much.
A long-distance kinetic-energy round had a greater effective range than any imaging system on the tank. It seemed the obvious weapon of choice.
“Lima-Delta up.”
“Prepare to cut countermeasures.”
That would bring out a sweat on everybody. At least two brigades’ worth of soldiers were thinking the same thing: What’s this all about?”
As they charged down the valley, into the sun, Maxwell wondered if the Jihadis could feel the ground shake yet.
He scanned his battle computer — hoping it didn’t have a parasite in it — then double-checked the time against his watch. Counting down. Although the J’s could see them clear as candy in a dish from the high ground to the north, the attacking units had been ordered to move on radio silence. Until their countermeasures suites were reactivated.
He’d scrutinized the distances on the maps. And he hoped the J’s didn’t have any extended-range surprises in their arsenal. Crazy-ass staff lunacy. Like going naked in a snake pit.
“Approaching Phase Line Watts,” Maxwell said. He was sweating terribly. And he didn’t like it. Fear was not a Maxwell tradition.
Oh, bull, he thought. Every one of them was afraid. Of something. At some point.
The landscape rushed toward his viewer. Countdown. Six, five, four…
Maxwell flipped three switches with one downward sweep of his hand.
“Countermeasures off.”
Charging ahead. Jolting over neglected fields. Trying to get the speed exactly right.
In the distance, from ten to three o’clock, Maxwell saw dozens of tiny pops of light.
The ATGMs. Headed straight for them all.
Twenty seconds to go. What was the flight time of one of those sonsofbitches?
Sixteen seconds.
Suddenly, all he wanted to do was to max out his speed, to attack, to get at the enemy who was being given this free shot.
Eleven seconds. Another nasty jounce. The hull scraped something hard. After a second’s hesitation, the tank grunted forward.
Eight seconds…
More and more pops of light. As if the J’s had a division’s worth of antitank missiles in the Afula pocket. God only knew what was coming down from the hills at them…
Five seconds…
Maxwell shifted to his thermal viewer just in time to see a black dot with a flare of flame behind it. Heading straight for his tank.
He almost shouted, “Halt!”
He didn’t.
Three seconds… two…
Before he could flip the switches again, the missile plowed into the earth, less than a football field from his tank’s glacis plate. It didn’t explode, but threw a spray of earth to either side.
All across his field of vision, missiles were dropping to earth. Digging expensive furrows in the dirt.
As the countermeasures suites kicked back in across the division’s front, follow-on volleys of missiles went haywire.
“Well, fuck me dead with a reindeer dick,” Maxwell said.
“That an offer, sir?” the gunner said. Relief in his voice.
Now Maxwell was back to being a commander. Wondering if any of his vehicles had been hit. They were off radio silence, but Maxwell figured the jamming would be so heavy that he’d be lucky to reach the tanks to either side of him.
“Hey, sir… Watch the sword, okay?”
It had slipped around again. Maxwell settled its position as best he could.
“Stay quiet on the intercom,” he said, clicking his headset’s control to radio comms.
“This is Stallion Six. Dreadnaughts, unit report. Over.”