The War After Armageddon

dangerous. The human body was loco. You could trip on the sidewalk and die, or live through an artillery barrage dumped on your head.

“Sitrep?” he heard through his headset. The captain. Solid again. Mr. Annapolis.

“Rounds on target. Moving in now.”

“Re sis tance?”

“There’s gonna be. It smells like it smells.”

“Keep moving. Battalion needs that ridge cleared.”

And I need an ice-cold Bud, Garcia told himself.

“Roger. Moving now.”

He waved at the remainder of the two squads he’d rounded up and brought this far. Several streets away, Corporal Gallotti’s squad was still laying down look-at-me fire. Less of it, though. Which was righ teous. No need to waste ammo. Anybody left alive in those buildings was going to play dead until he had somebody in his sights point-blank. Unless his nerves got him. Then he’d fire too soon.

Yeah, triggerman, Garcia thought. We’re coming. Just give me a sign. Squeeze one off early. Just one.

The Marines worked their way forward, with Larsen and Cropsey acting as flankers where the ridge dropped off toward Indian country, the two of them disappearing into the shadows. Twice, Garcia held back when he wanted to bitch at the way his Marines were moving. Perfection wasn’t in the cards. They were all five-o’clock-Sunday- morning tired, running on pure nerves.

He was getting jumpy, thinking too much, he told himself. When it was down to the bone like this, you didn’t get through by thinking. The streets had taught him that much. You had to trust what you felt.

Cold Bud really would do the trick, though. Or a rat-piss Corona, for that matter.

They were good for another thirty meters, Garcia figured. Working their way up the rutted chute that pretended to be a street. Then it was going to go nuts. It was just too quiet. Every back-on-the-block nerve in his body said that the Jihadis left alive were just waiting for them. Watching them. There wasn’t even any crying from their wounded — which would’ve been a sign that the Jihadis had lost their grip on the situation. The battalion Two had briefed that the suicide commandos cut the throats of their own casualties to keep them quiet. So the quiet meant that the bad hombres were still in control.

Garcia wondered if he could do that. To one of his Marines. Cut his throat, if the mission required it. Truth was, you never knew. Until the moment came.

Plenty of shooting farther down the ridge. In another battalion’s sector, maybe another regiment’s. His thighs and back ached from humping all the way up from the beach, a march that, physically, had been worse than the fight. Clambering up those slopes gave you the burn.

Pay attention! he told himself. Jolting himself back from the mind-drift.

Gunshot. No. Lance Corporal Polanski kicking a brick. Lamest Marine in the platoon. But the noise charged Garcia’s battery.

“Everybody down. Now!” he called. Loud. So anyone whose headset was busted would still hear him. “Guns up!”

The Marines scrambled for cover. As they did, a machine gun opened up. From a second-floor window. Or the hole where a window had been.

Too much return fire. Weren’t going to get him that way, unless it was pure luck.

“Aimed fire only!” he said into the mike. “Tell your buddy. Don’t piss away your ammo. Larsen, Cropsey. You read me?” he said into the mike.

No answer.

“Larsen? Cropsey?”

“Yeah, Sergeant.” Cropsey. A kid like a coiled snake. Attitude problem.

“Larsen with you?”

“Roger.”

“You see that machine-gun position?”

“Just the tracers.”

“Hold where you are. I’m coming around behind you. Everybody else, stay alert. Let that asshole on the machine gun get Nervous. And no firing to the left flank, unless you’ve got a one-hundred-percent positive ID. Don’t want no blue-on-blue.”

A few murmurs, plenty of static. Half the headsets were broke-dick. He just had to hope that the rest of them would figure it out. Hate to take a nail from another Marine.

Garcia slipped back into the darkness, then worked around behind a compound wall. At the rear of somebody’s private world, the sloped dropped off sharply. He felt the steepness even more than he saw it in the murk. Working his way carefully, back to the masonry, he ground his heels into the earth as he sidestepped along. Like a duck in a shooting gallery at some rat-bite fair down in Durango, at his grandmother’s. Anybody firing at him now was going to win the prize at the fiesta.

He paused for a stolen moment to kiss the sleeve covering his left forearm. Under the cloth, the Virgin of Guadalupe prayed for him.

“I’ll do the prayers right later,” he told her. “I promise. But you know what I need right now.”

He got around the far corner of the wall. To reasonably level ground.

“Cropsey? Where are you, man?”

“By the twisted-up tree.”

“That’s an olive tree.”

“Whatever.”

“Coming in. On your six.”

The firing to the right, back down in the street, came in short bursts followed by Nervous quiet. Each side daring the other to really open up.

“Cropsey?” he whispered to the form ahead of him.

“I’m Larsen, Sergeant. Cropsey’s over there.”

“Listen up. Either of you got grenades left?

“One.”

“Same here.”

Shit. He’d used all of his own in the street fighting. Two grenades wasn’t much to clear that house. And whatever else was waiting for them.

“Give them to me. You’re going to keep everybody off me while I’m laying these eggs. You can’t see it, but the gunner’s in the second building up there. We’re almost behind him here. And we’re going to try to come in right behind him. But we’re going in there figuring he’s not feeling lonesome.” Garcia fit the grenades to his armored vest. “Larsen, you’re on point until we get to the back wall. Then you’re tail-gunner on the outside. Cropsey, you’re first in. But don’t open up unless you’re damned sure there’s something to open up on. No yelling, no grab-ass. I want to smell that motherfucker before I throw any of these. You’ll have the first deck. I’ll take the stairs. Now move out.”

Larsen was a good shot, just short of sniper level, but this wasn’t a rifle range. It was going to be all close quarters. And Larsen was clumsy as an Anglo on the dance floor. He could watch their backs when they went in. Cropsey was a mean little bastard, though, born for a razor fight in a closet. Almost crazy mean. But not stupid. The kind of Marine who spoiled your Saturday night when the duty officer took a call from the San Diego cops. But good when the killing started.

Garcia gave his sleeve another furtive kiss. He’d taken a lot of grief about the tattoo. But he was still alive. Half the punks he went to high school with were dead. Before the Day of the Dead came early.

He tapped the bottom of his magazine, making sure he had a tight lock. Nervous habit. Everybody had one. Trick was not to let people see it.

They moved up between black trees, trip-me stumps, and small boulders. Everything in this world seemed disordered, messed up. Crazy people. Who started all this. For what? The nuclear blast hadn’t reached his hood in East L.A. But the radiation did. He’d been on Okinawa. His family had been home.

Now the Jihadis were going to get their shit handed to them.