The War After Armageddon (4 page)

Now what was left of the platoon was his. Until company sent down somebody with a higher rating.

He wasn’t ready for this.

Garcia followed Corporal Banks back across the alley. Machine-gun fire chased them. The Jihadi on the trigger didn’t know how to lead a target.

“Barrett.” He slapped the lance corporal’s shoulder as he passed him. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Where we—”

“Move. Follow me.”

He didn’t want this. Not now, not yet. Goddamned Jihadis. Maybe the MOBIC pukes were right. Only good Muslim . . .”

“Belleau.”

“Wood.”

“Coming in.”

“Hold for covering fire!” Corporal Gallotti. Head screwed on right. In a moment, several guns were up and nailing the darkness to the night.

“Go!”
Garcia told Barrett. He followed. Splashing through muck that smelled like every sewer pipe in the country had broken at once.

The squad was too bunched up. Waiting for somebody to give an order. Gallotti was the natural leader but didn’t have the rank. Everything going to hell.

“Listen up,” Garcia said. Loud enough to be heard. But not too loud. Anyway, the Jihadis were making a noise like Cinco de Mayo in the Plaza de Armas. “We’re going to get our asses unfucked. Right
now. Corporal Gallotti’s in charge of this squad. Because I said so. Corporal, get the roofs covered. Both sides.”

“Pullman’s topside, Sergeant.” He pointed across the street. “With Jamal.”

“I said
both
sides. This is it. We’re not moving back one goddamned inch from here. We’re fucking Marines. We’re going fucking forward, if we go anyplace.”

“Yo, Sergeant Garcia? Anybody ever tell you that you got a limited vocabulary.”

Laughter. That was okay. If they could laugh, they could fight.

“Buy me a dictionary. Now, check your ammo.“

Banks scrambled up along the wall.

“Corporal Gallotti,” Garcia continued, “get your squad set up with proper fields of fire. No more monkey-fucking. Banks, give me that.”

Banks handed over the platoon commander’s headset and drop transmitter. Garcia wrapped it around his skull, feeling the plastic scrape the bristles at the nape of his neck.

Before he could transmit, figures ran up behind them. The right helmet silhouettes and body-armor shoulders. Marines.

It was Captain Cunningham.

“Third Platoon?”

“Yes, sir,” Garcia said.

“Who’s in charge?”

“I am, sir. Lieutenant Delaney’s—”

“Well,
take
charge. You’ve got a squad and a couple of strays a block back playing with their dicks. We’ve got to clean this shithole out
now
. So the Army can go for a Sunday drive.” The captain paused for a moment. Looking at Garcia in the flickering light. “You’re the last E-5 in this platoon?” As if he doubted what he’d been told. Or doubted the man in front of him.

“I’m it, sir.”

The captain nodded, but hesitated. As if something in his head wouldn’t come clear. “Well, you know the mission,” he said at last.

“That a question, sir?”

After another flash-to-bang delay, Garcia realized that the captain wasn’t really thinking about him at all. He was thinking about his losses. One of his platoons shot to shit. Maybe thinking about the mission, maybe about his own future. It was a revelation Garcia would have preferred to postpone, but he saw to his bewilderment that officers had no special magic, after all. The captain was as shaky as he was. And struggling just as hard to hide it.

“No,” the captain said. His voice was firmer now. “It wasn’t a question. You’ve got the platoon. And the mission.”

A mortar round shrieked in. Everybody flattened. It struck in a courtyard behind high walls, close enough to give the earth a shiver. Another screamed toward them, falling short and biting into the street. Shrapnel stung the air.

“They’re bracketing us,” Garcia yelled. “Get out of here, sir. I got it. Just get us some mortars on that line of buildings up on the crest, if you can.”

“Fires on the way in five. Semper Fi.”

“Semper Fi, sir.”

Gallotti looked at him. The corporal’s eyes caught the glow off a fire down-range. “You still want us to—”

“No. Round ’em up and move out.
Forward.
Bring some heat on those sonsofbitches. No Navy Crosses, just keep ’em busy.”

Where did plans come from? The Virgin of Guadalupe? He knew exactly what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. So the Army could go for its Sunday drive.

Buy me a candy-apple-red, extended-cab pickup when I get back . . .

He told Corporal Banks and Barrett to stay with Gallotti and then hustled back to round up the rest of his platoon.
His
platoon. Wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, but life was tough in the big city.

I can do this, he thought. Fuck, yeah.
Go, Marine
.

OFFSHORE

“Okay, Deuce,” Lieutenant General Harris said as he dropped into his chair, “talk to me.”

The G-2, Colonel Val Danczuk, stood up and made his way through the packed wardroom until he reached the screen.

“Sir,” he addressed Harris, “we had a solid imagery feed for almost a half hour. The Third Jihadi Corps has definitely been pulling back and—”

“Plan, or panic?”

“I’d say ‘panic.’ The deception worked. They were locked and cocked to defend south of the ridges. Thought we’d come ashore between Netanya and Caesarea, right on the flank of the MOBIC assault. Now they’ve abandoned Hadera, and it looks like they’ll tie in a new forward line of defense on the Megiddo-Qiryat Ti’von line.”

“Main line of defense?”

“Afula-Nazareth-Shefar’am.”

Harris nodded. “You sure they didn’t stop jamming the overhead link on purpose? To show us what they wanted us to see?”

The G-2 took a quick chaw on his lip. Tall and blessed with the sort of good looks that gray hair only improved, Colonel Danczuk looked like a general from the casting office. It amused Harris, who was five-eight and as plain as a church supper, to think that, if you took off their rank and put the entire staff in a line-up, any right-thinking civilian would pick out the Deuce, not him, as the corps commander.

“No, sir,” Danczuk said. “I wouldn’t ever want to underestimate an enemy, but I don’t think this was on purpose. The highways feeding back into the Jezreel Valley looked like a giant clusterfuck.”

Harris turned to the senior Air Force officer in the room. “And you boys still aren’t flying? We used to call that a target-rich environment, back in the days of the horse cavalry.”

The brigadier general reddened. “Sir . . . We’d like to be flying . . . We
will
fly . . . You’ll get your support . . . But right now, the jamming . . .”

Harris’s entire corps had just a few more artillery tubes than a
division would have fielded a generation earlier. The Air Force was supposed to be the Army’s flying artillery, delivering precision munitions on any enemy foolish enough to fight. Except that now, the smart bombs didn’t work, and the airplanes couldn’t fly.

Harris mastered his temper. Maybe the zoomies would deliver down the road. And the blue-suiter looked sufficiently beaten up. “Yeah, I know. Wipes out your computers. Gonna take up a collection and buy you boys a squadron of old Phantoms from the Paraguayans—Deuce, the Paraguayans still have Phantoms?”

Danczuk took the question seriously. “Sir, I don’t think they ever . . . I mean, maybe some old F-16s. I can check . . .”

“Forget it, Deuce.” He turned back to the Air Force officer. “I still love you, Hank. We
all
love you. But I’d like to put some hot metal on those bad boys before doomsday. Which reminds me,” he shifted his attention back to the G-2, “tell me if I’m coughing up fur balls, but Meggido’s Armageddon, correct?”

“Roger, sir. The tel’s one of the most important archaeological sites in the—”

“And our Muslim friends are digging in
there
? It’s just about high enough for an Egyptian spear-carrier outfit to control a chariot crossing.” Harris got it, but he wanted the others to see the logic on their own, if they could. “
Why
do you think they’re digging in at Megiddo, Deuce?” He scanned the crowded, steaming hot room. “Anybody? Any ideas?”

A Navy captain sitting in for the admiral raised his hand. “It’s a protected site. They figure we’ll be reluctant to attack an archaelogical treasure and—”

“Bingo!” Harris said, pointing a gun made of fingers at the captain. The general turned to his senior Artilleryman. “Chris, I want everybody in this room to hear me giving you this order: If the Jihadis use Meggido Hill as part of their defenses, I want you to hit it so hard that there’s nothing left but a smoking hole. Got that?”

“General,” the pol-mil rep from State jumped in, “we can’t do that, that’s one of the most important sites in the entire Middle East . . . in the world, really . . .” He looked as if he were fighting seasickness. And probably was.

“Cultural Understanding 101,” Harris said. “On my first tour in Iraq, as a lieutenant, we were under orders never to enter a mosque. Know what that accomplished? It guaranteed that mosques were going to be used as insurgent bases and safe houses and to hide arms caches. Because we failed to take down one mosque at the outset, we turned a thousand of them into sanctuaries.” He snorted. “As for Meggido . . . two things: First, if they’re really there—you get me confirmation, Deuce—they’re not going to be there long. Our Jihadi friends are going to get an education in what happens when a commander picks a lousy defensive position just because he thinks we’ll be too limp-dicked to hit it. After that, I suspect we’ll see fewer historical sites occupied in the future. Second,” he looked around, wondering, as he always had to now, which of the officers present were reporting to the MOBIC’s internal intelligence unit, “I want everyone to be absolutely clear on one thing: I will not sacrifice one American soldier or Marine to save a single pile of sacred rocks between here and the Pacific Ocean.” He shook his head. “We’re going to
win
this campaign. And there’ll be plenty of history left over. Okay, Deuce, one more question. Same one as always: Any sign of nukes?”

Danczuk shook his head. “Sir, as I’ve briefed—”

“I don’t want ‘as you briefed.’ I want right now. Listen, Val, you’re doing great.” He swept the room with the commander’s gaze he’d mastered over the years. “You’re
all
doing great.” He turned back to the G-2. “But I want you to watch for any sign of nukes. Any least hint. Maybe they’re just an urban legend . . . but I want you to watch for them.”

“Sir, the DIA and the CIA are both convinced that the Jihadis have no nuclear weapons. The last Ira ni an weapons were expended in the exchange with Israel, and the made-in-Pakistan arms were all detonated during the war with India and in the subsequent terror attacks on the United States. We’ve never seen any indicators of more nukes, sir. None.”

“Yet, the rumors continue.” Harris nodded to himself. “Two, maybe three. Held in deep reserve. Watch it for me, Val.”

“Sir, they would’ve used them on the MOBIC landings down south.
If
they had them.”

Harris wiped a hand across his jaw. “Maybe. Speaking of MOBIC, what’s the latest you got, Three?”

Colonel Mike Andretti, the G-3 operations officer, swapped places with the G-2. “Two divisions already over the beach, sir. Sounds like a bloody mess, but they’re pushing ahead. The latest situation report—the last one that came through from MOBIC—has their forward elements fifteen clicks up the Jerusalem highway.” The colonel shook his head. “It’s all just hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle.”

Harris did what he could to suppress his disgust. Regulars or MOBIC troops, he didn’t believe in wasting American lives.

“Casualties? Any numbers?”

His aide, Major Willing, rushed in. “Sir? General Morris is on the horn.”

Harris jumped up. “Secure or nonsecure?”

“We have him secure, sir. He wants to talk to you ASAP.”

Harris scanned the room. Quickly. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Just hold in place.”

The general hurried to the commo cell next door, footsteps slapping metal. A staff sergeant held out a headset. Harris motioned for everyone to clear the room.

“Monk?”

“Green light. Road’s open as far as Isfiya. Not one hundred percent secure, but I’d call it close enough. We’re pushing down toward Daliyat. First Battalion, Fifth Marines have been tangling with stay-behinds all night. Suicide commandos mostly. One company got hit hard up in a ville. But the Jihadis pulled back their heavy metal. Whatever isn’t broken down by the side of the road.”

“Good work. Great work. Remind me to buy a Marine a beer when this is over. How’s the beach?”

“What beach? Christ, we just put a Marine division-minus over a shingle the width of a sidewalk.”

“When do you think you can get down to Route 70?”

“Recon’s knocking on the back door right now. The Jihadis didn’t expect this one. Even after they figured out that it wasn’t a feint, they didn’t seem to want to risk their armor up here.”

“Their gear’s in even worse shape than ours. Maintenance a
lot
worse.”

“Well, thank God for lazy mechanics. Listen . . . sir . . . from one fancy-pants Marine to one dogface grunt . . . I had my doubts about this. I wasn’t really sure we could pull it off.”

“We haven’t pulled it off. Not yet. But thanks.”

“We caught them with their pants down.”

“So to speak. Okay, Monk. Good work.”

“Tell it to the Marines.”

He clicked off. Immediately, Harris returned to the wardroom. “Three. Green light. Get the Big Red One on the beach. Scotty still colocated with his Fourth Brigade?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You tell him I want Quarter Cav headed uphill by BMNT to coordinate the forward passage of lines. We need to keep punching while the Jihadis are still reeling.”

“Yes, sir.”

The G-3 headed for the hatch, followed by his deputies.

“The rest of you can clear out,” Harris said. “Sorry I kept you waiting. Go do what you’ve got to do, then get a couple hours’ sleep. Let your subordinates earn their pay. Four, you hang back. We need to have a pow-wow.”