command from grabbing the Marines. Deliver the goods.

Okay. Sim and his boys were about to assume the leading role in the attack. Given the new determination the Jihadis were showing, that promised to be a bloody mess. Especially given Montfort’s evident impatience. Harris hoped that his old acquaintance, the man who’d succeeded at virtually everything he’d ever undertaken, wouldn’t fall into the trap of overconfidence now. The combination of overconfidence and impatience had defeated no end of generals in the blood-soaked terrain in which they found them-selves.

Harris rose. Stiff. Old. He bent to rummage through the kit bag his aide had placed by the foot of his bunk. His body seemed to him a rusty machine, hammered into action. Fishing out an emergency ration stashed for times like this, the general sat back down and began to eat a foil packet of chicken a la king. Cold. The spoon came up with solid white grease. But Harris didn’t care.

Where was Willing? He was usually so prompt. Had he fallen asleep himself? Or was he in the field latrine with the runs? Like half the G-3 shop.

A weary fly scouted the ration pouch. More from an insect’s sense of duty than from real interest. Harris’s shooing gesture was equally halfhearted.

How much sleep could he allow himself? The window of his room had been blackened and blastproofed by his security detail, but Harris sensed the sky lightening beyond the walls. Three hours? He knew he needed four to keep on functioning on overdrive. But he didn’t want to miss his own morning briefing. And rescheduling it just screwed everybody else.

Everything was on track. He could let Mike Andretti run the show. They’d come get him if any critical issues came up.

Or would they just let the old man sleep? He could hear the G-3 saying, “He’s been through a lot.”

Harris didn’t want anybody’s pity. Three hours. He’d make do with that.

If Willing didn’t turn up soon, he wouldn’t even get that.

Killing a billion people. Sim was certainly ambitious. And utterly mad. But history was made by madmen.

Would his own kind really attempt such a thing? Or was Sim more interested in the process, in the ambitions a lengthy struggle might fulfill? How much did Montfort really mean? Even now? And how much was sheer calculation?

With the acid clarity at the end of a sleepless night, Harris realized that Sim Montfort was a great man and he was not. Montfort certainly wasn’t a good man. He reeked of evil. But Montfort was, undeniably, a great man. And Harris knew that he lacked greatness himself. He was a competent soldier and a first-rate commander. As dutiful as anyone could ask. And honest. Or so he liked to think. But there was no greatness in him, and he recognized, ruefully, that a part of him was jealous of Sim Montfort.

But it was only a small part of him. The rest of Lieutenant General Gary “Flintlock” Harris just wanted to see the mission he’d set himself through to the end: The preservation of the U.S. Army and the defense of the Constitution of the United States.

He laughed at himself. With a weary, broken laugh that ended with a sour burp of grease. Who did he think he was? To assign himself such grand ambitions? Flintlock Harris, Savior of the Army and the Constitution?

Putting it in those terms made him feel like a fool.

Had he been as vain, in his way, as Sim Montfort?

And yet. Somebody had to do it. Didn’t they? Who else would have even tried? Poor old Schwach? Who was left to fight them, on both fronts? Here, in the shooting war. And in dubious battle on the plains of the Washington Mall, if not Heaven.

So many had fallen by the wayside. So many of his comrades had just quit. There was so much darkness now. And not just the shade that was slowly eroding his vision, but the darkness that infected souls and defined entire ages.

Harris scraped out the last lumps and smears of chicken a la king, streaking white grease across his knuckles. Then he stood up, defying his joints again. He dropped the foil envelope into the burn bag meant for all his trash, classified and unclassified, and, a bit cranky, turned toward the door to look for his aide.

Just then, Major Willing knocked at last and came into the room.

“Sorry, sir. I dozed off.”

“What have you got for me, John?”

“I pared it down, sir. But these can’t wait.”

Harris held out his hand for the papers. “Get some sleep. Tell the adjutant — whoever’s on duty over there — to have a runner wait outside my door.”

“Sir, the document with the blue tab has to go straight to the Three shop.”

“Have them send a runner, too. I hate to say it, but there are times I miss my old computer. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” But the aide didn’t leave. He looked at the floor, then looked back up. “Sir… I’m glad you—”

“Me, too, John. Now get some sleep.”

But as the aide was leaving, Flintlock Harris had a moment of weakness.

“John?”

“Sir?”

“How are we doing on long-range comms?”

“Back to Washington?”

“To the States.”

“We had some open channels earlier, sir. I can check.”

“Before you turn in, see if they can get my wife on the line.”

HEADQUARTERS, 2-34 ARMOR, 600 METERS WEST OF PHASE LINE LONG BEACH

As the world emerged from the darkness, restoring the contrast between solid forms and empty space, Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell felt a relief so intense it was almost joy. The night had been hellish. But they’d made it through. Most of them. Even though the lightening sky to the east promised only another day of combat, Maxwell felt an unreasonable confidence that things would be better now.

He had grown up in a world where armor ruled the night, when magic night-vision devices and perfect communications had made his kind masters of the midnight hour. But this was a different world. First, the jamming had gone crazy again. Then a tank in Alpha Company and a Bradley in Charlie had each run over an EMP mine, wiping out every electronic system on their company property books.

For almost two hours, Maxwell had remained unaware of the company-level crises. Waiting in his command post and listening to slivers of the war, he’d blamed the jamming for the lack of updates from his subordinate commanders. Meanwhile, his forward companies had been fighting for their lives. Even Bravo Company, with intact comms gear, had been hard up against it, infiltrated by commandos wearing cool-suits that masked the body-heat signatures that should have registered on Bravo’s thermal sights. With the noise of battle all around and artillery fire falling like an endless avalanche, Maxwell had lost control of his battalion without realizing it.

Only when he grew restless and went forward on a personal recon — half to keep from dozing off — had he encountered the Alpha Company first sergeant, who’d peeled off from the fight to alert battalion.

Maxwell had turned around just in time to warn his command post to be prepared for a knife fight. Suicide commandos had penetrated the line. The TOC got hit just minutes after he got back.

After that, it hadn’t been a question of commanding his battalion but of survival. The Headquarters Company clerks and jerks had gotten their chance to kill or be killed in pitch darkness, guided only by tracer streams and cries. Maxwell would’ve retrieved his sword, on practical grounds. But there hadn’t been time. The Jihadis came out of the darkness in waves. Screaming and hurling grenades. Firing wildly. After breaking his carbine while beating a Jihadi to death, Maxwell had scavenged a weapon from a dead soldier. After that, he fought with short bursts and the bayonet. When he wasn’t fighting for his own life, he tried to impose order on the free-for-all.

Where Jihadis had tangled themselves in the wire, they blew themselves up as Maxwell’s men approached. After that, his soldiers shot anything that screamed or even rustled.

One of the commandos had gotten inside a tank. That set off a razor fight in a locked closet. Out of ammunition, another soldier fought with his bare hands for the cab of his V-hull truck, finishing the job only by biting through his enemy’s neck and thumbing out an eyeball.

Neither side took prisoners.

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