The War After Armageddon

dispersed by individual vehicle, just spread all over the place. No sense of defensive perimeters. It looks like they just blindfolded the drivers and sent them off in different directions. It doesn’t match alGhazi’s command template.”

Something quickened in Harris. Something down deep. But he couldn’t yet put a name on it.”

“And?”

“Well, sir, it’s not much of a way to wage a war. Or fight a battle. It really does look as if they’ve just given up, as if they’re quitting. Running.” The G-2 glanced at the map, then reached into his pocket. Only to find his pointer gone. Tracing a line on the western Galilee ridge with his index finger, he said, “All those entrenchments they were digging as fast as they could? The defensive positions all along the ridge? We got a burst transmission through from a special-ops recon element up here, on the high ground behind Tiberias. They report a few stray Jihadis just hanging out and playing with their dicks. And all those vehicles in defensive positions? All those tanks? Junk. Shot up stuff. Old crap left over from the end-of-Israel fighting. Stripped for parts. It looks like the Jihadis had planned some kind of ruse before they decided to take their ball and go home.”

Harris jumped to his feet before the intelligence officer finished speaking. Rushing around the conference table, he shoved first the G-3, then the G-2, out of his way. He had the map memorized. But he needed to see it, anyway. To know.

“Show me where that report originated. Exactly where. Show me, Val.”

“Yes, sir. The recon team’s overwatching this stretch of road and the crest beyond it. By Kefar Hittim.”

Harris no longer cared whether anyone knew how badly his vision had deteriorated. He pushed his nose up against the map, as if sniffing the G-2’s finger. Then he shoved the colonel’s hand away. Staring at the map. With his soul plummeting into the earth.

“Fuck,” he said. Bitterly. Almost quietly. Then he swung himself over the nearest table, running for the door. “Let’s go. Everybody. Come on.”

“What do—”

“Mike. You get everybody you’ve got working every comms channel that’s up. Issue a STRIKEWARN. The J’s are going nuclear. Soon. You, too, Val. Use every channel. Forget the protocols.”

He was shouting. And running. Officers loitering in the hall leapt out of the general’s way. Too stunned at Harris’s tone to decipher his meaning immediately.

As Harris led his war party into the ops center, he barked, “I want every armored vehicle buttoned up. Get ’em in defilade. Every dismount gets into a ditch or takes shelter on the western side of the strongest nearby building. Move, move.”

Harris grabbed the liaison officer who’d arrived from the MOBIC corps. Seizing the colonel’s upper arm. As if arresting him. “ You. Get on the horn and tell your people they’re about to get nuked. They need to pull back, disperse. Immediately.”

Unsettled for an instant, the MOBIC colonel quickly mastered himself. His alarmed expression reorganized itself into a sly smile.

“General Harris… Surely, you don’t expect us to believe any such nonsense. If the infidel enemy can’t stop us, do you think you can? With some concocted story? Are you that embarrassed by our success?”

“Fuck you,” Harris said. “Get General Montfort on the line.”

“General of the Order Montfort is incommunicado.”

“Well, he’s going to be deep-fried like fucking falafel if you don’t listen to me.”

The operations center had come to life around them. It was a rare officer or NCO who recalled the format for a STRIKEWARN off the top of his head and the babble of voices reduced the transmissions to a common message: Take cover, the J’s are going nuke.

“I can’t disturb General Montfort,” the liaison officer said.

“Well, who can you disturb?”

“I won’t be a party to this.”

“I’m giving you a direct order.”

“You have no authority over me.”

“Listen. For Christ’s sake, man. We’re all on the same side. I’m trying to save your comrades, your buddies… your whole goddamned corps.”

The MOBIC colonel looked at Harris dismissively. “You can’t stop us now, General. Your time is over. I’ll file your report in the morning.”

Exasperated as he had never been in his entire life, Harris said, “You really think I’m staging this — all this — to get you to retreat for a couple of hours?”

The MOBIC colonel just smiled.

“Even if you think I’m crazy,” Harris continued, “will you at least report what I’m telling you right now? And let General Montfort judge? Morning’s going to be too late.”

“As of 2100, our attacking forces switched to radio silence. I’m not authorized—”

A terrible roar tore the night, overpowering the common sounds of war, a distant thunder akin to the voice of God.

* * *

Harris sat alone in the briefing room, face buried in his hands. Waiting for the first casualty reports. His fire- support officer had already assured him that none of the seven reported nuclear detonations had struck within the corps’ lines. But there would be casualties, nonetheless. Harris told himself he could have pushed harder, forced the intelligence system, done more about his hunch about the Jihadis’ nuclear reserves. But he hadn’t done it. And now the two or three nuclear weapons about which he’d worried had turned out to be at least seven. An unknown number of his fellow Americans, MOBIC members or not, had died because he hadn’t done his duty.

He should’ve seen it coming. He knew that. All of the indicators had been there. Every goddamned one. He couldn’t blame it on the G-2 or anybody else. He was the commander. Any failures rested on his shoulders, and his alone.

And this was a great failure, something terrible.

Major John Willing knocked on the door. The aide’s knuckles had the familiarity of a personal ring-tone.

“Come in.”

“Sir, Colonel Andretti has some more data from the fire-support cell. And a number of land-line reports have come in — the radio’s are still out, though.”

“Send him in, John.”

“Sir… The G-2’s with him. Want me to hold him outside?”

“No. Send them both in. And come back in yourself. I may need you to run some messages.”

“Yes, sir.”

How the mighty have fallen! Harris thought. Unable to force his mind beyond the cliche.

The G-3 came in twitchy, as if he’d just been transfused with a quart of espresso. The G-2 zombie-walked behind him.

Before the Three could report, Val Danczuk said, “Sir, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t listen and now—”

“Forget it, Val. Done is done. We’ve still got a war to fight.”

“Yes, sir,” the G-2 said. His voice was dull, almost dead. Harris decided to deal with the man later. And to sack him, at least temporarily, if he couldn’t get a grip on himself.

“Mike?”

“Looks like we got off pretty light, sir.”

Harris rapped the table. “Don’t jinx it. Just give me the details. Whatever you’ve got.”

“Winds are from the north-northwest. Any fallout’s headed down the Jordan Valley and toward Amman. I guess the Jihadis didn’t care about their own—”

“Al-Mahdi did what was smart. He fought to win. And didn’t count the costs. Go on.”

“We’ve got some drones up with radar-imagery capability and some backup infrared. Nobody knows what’ll work and what won’t, but we’ll try to assess how badly the MOBIC corps’s been hit. No comms out there. Oh, and we’ve registered four more nukes. All out of sector.”

“Where?”

“Colonel Tinsley’s gizmos read two down south near the Jordan River crossing sites. East of Jericho. And two