The War After Armageddon

“Sim, if I were a Jew and I heard you say that, I’d run for the trees.”

“Don’t try to create further dissension. Please, Gary. I’ll get down on my knees if you like. Join us. Before it’s too late. We’re doing God’s work. Men follow you. As they follow me. Together, we could do great things.” Montfort leaned in closer than he had yet done, close enough for Harris to imagine he smelled scorched breath. “It’s not too late for you to see the light.”

“I see your light, Sim. It comes from burning heretics at the stake.”

“Don’t wait too long, Gary.”

“I’m still waiting for that cock to crow again. A second time. And a third.”

“Rhetorical flourishes don’t suit you,” Montfort said. “You never had a mind for subtleties. You’ve always been a practical man. Al-beit with some mushy idealism thrown in. It would help you if you behaved practically now. If you can’t believe, Gary, just go through the motions. Faith will come.”

“Isn’t that a Catholic regimen, Sim? Sounds odd, coming from a good old Protestant boy like you. Although I do recall you were a great one for skipping chapel at VMI. I suppose you hadn’t yet traveled the road to Damascus.”

Montfort sighed. “Speaking of roads, I’ll have to get on the road myself. Figuratively speaking.”

“Careful of those helicopters, Sim. They fall out of the sky. Unexpectedly.”

Montfort stood up. Harris followed. The MOBIC commander was almost a full head taller. Charlton Heston, indeed.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Montfort said. “I’ve had a report that a CHART disappeared. In or around Nazareth. Could you look into it for me?”

“You’re not supposed to have any CHARTs in my area of operations, Sim. You know that. As a matter—”

“Just trying to do my duty as a Christian,” Montfort cut him off. “I didn’t think you’d mind. But see if you can find them, won’t you, Gary? For old times’ sake? The officers and men selected for our Christian Heritage Advance Rescue Teams are a little too courageous for their own good. I worry about them.”

“Wheels within wheels within wheels. You really are amazing, Sim.”

“And one other thing. I’ve got an order for you from General Schwach. You’re to detach one armored brigade and put it under my command to reinforce my corps. And not a depletedbrigade, either. One that hasn’t been shot up, that hasn’t been overcommitted. I’ve also got authorization to assume the primary responsibility for the advance into northern Galilee and beyond, once my corps elements have reached your sector. Which should be any moment now.”

“All right.”

Montfort’s eyebrows tightened. “Not even one word of protest? You’re making progress, Gary.”

“You can have your brigade, Sim. And you’re getting one that hasn’t taken any significant casualties. I’m chopping Avi Dorn’s outfit to you. From the Israeli Exile Force.”

“But—”

“Come on, Sim. What did you expect? You’ve been working some scam, some deal, with Avi. I’m not that stupid. I figure it’ll be easier for the two of you to coordinate things when he falls directly under your chain of command.”

“I expected—”

“A U.S. Army brigade? Sim, you’re not prejudiced against the Israelis, are you? After all those speeches you made back home? All those interviews? On your way out, just tell Mike Andretti where and when you want Avi to link up with your people. I’ll let Mike know I blessed it.”

The confident, studied impassiveness that ruled Montfort’s features had disappeared again. For an interval of suspended time, the MOBIC commander looked as if he would fill the room with sulfur simply by breathing.

“Anything else?” Harris asked.

“Goodbye, Gary.” Montfort did not extend his hand. Slowly, as if wearing ankle weights, he crossed to the door. But halfway through the portal, he turned back toward Harris.

“Yes. There is something else. I’m told you’re going blind. I’m concerned that you might be unfit for command.”

“I see you, Sim. Clearly.”

“And one other thing, Gary,” he said. “Did your wife ever tell you I fucked her?”

SEVENTEEN

HEADQUARTERS, III (US) CORPS, MT. CARMEL RIDGES

Flintlock Harris sat back down after Montfort left. Drained, he brushed back his hair with his hands, pulling his eyelids open. Trying to think clearly. His body yearned for sleep, but his mind paged from thought to thought, unable to staple them together.

Bored flies drifted past the lamp. The dead air smelled of backed-up drains. One room was much the same as another in Sim Montfort’s Holy Land.

At any moment, John Willing would bring in the paperwork that absolutely had to be signed before Harris could go to sleep. The general dreaded the thought of straining to read anything smaller than a billboard. But paperwork was as much a part of soldiering as the rest of it.

Montfort knew. About his eyes. Enough to make that remark. Who else knew? How would Montfort use the information? Had he used it already? Was it already in the “Fire Harris” file back in D.C.?

On the other hand, old Sim was rattled. Badly. If Harris heard one clock ticking, Montfort heard another. The Christian general who threw away his regiments of believers. How much time did Montfort have? The impatience, the unaccustomed insecurity, was obvious. An assassination really wasn’t Montfort’s style. It wasted too many resources, left too many debts to others, revealed too much. Sim had overplayed that one — and lost the hand. Badly. Harris was confident that his competitor wouldn’t try any similar stunts soon.

The down side was that Montfort, turning hasty on the battle-field, might drag them all down with him. With just one big mistake. Despite Sim’s rapid conquest of Jerusalem, Harris wasn’t ready to write off al-Mahdi as a military commander. Or al-Ghazi, for that matter. Sim would push as hard as he could now, running against a stopwatch only he could hear. And when a leader did that, it was all too easy to lose sight of the enemy’s counterdesigns.

Harris could picture the MOBIC corps charging into a classic Middle Eastern trap, the kind that Muslim armies had used for over a thousand years, first luring the opponent on, and then, when the attacker found himself overextended, sweeping in on his forces from the flanks. He scribbled a note to Van Danczuk to send Montfort the study the G-2 shop had done of historical patterns in Jihadi warfare. And to mark it “urgent.” Montfort and his men were Americans, too. Troublesome, even revolting, as their differences were, they were still on the same side.

Harris replayed the MOBIC commander’s tirade about the centuries of evidence of Muslim viciousness and all the chances the Jihadis had been given. The damned trouble with Montfort, the brilliance of the grift he worked, was that he always started with an ounce of truth. Then he wrapped it in a ton of bullshit. And it worked. Because old Sim told people what they longed to hear.

He’d been doing that since their days at VMI.

Harris didn’t buy Montfort’s logic, of course. But he had to admit that Sim forced him to think. What alternatives did he have to offer? In place of Montfort’s vision of hypergenocide? What strategy could he lay out as a substitute? Just an endless muddling through? More of the same? A succession of wars that only bought time at a terrible cost in blood? Was it true… irrefutably true… that religions were programmed for violent competition, that ac-commodation was an illusion for soft-minded dreamers? Was it, in the end, us or them? And not just on the battlefield?

Harris dreaded what the coming days and weeks and months and years would bring.

Old Sim was right about one thing, though: Right now, they had a war to fight.

So what was to be done? Harris asked himself. What could he do to bring victory on the battlefield? Without sacrificing the fundamental humanity he still ascribed to his country? And without delivering that country to his own faith’s Jihadis?

Keep it rigorous. By the book. Don’t make any big mistakes. Keep the Army clean. Prevent the MOBIC