GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  “I’ve got … I think there were some small explosions…” Kovacs said. She put her finger on the screen showing the surveillance feed. “Here, and … here. See the smoke?”

  Bunny zoomed the feed. “Could be explosions, could also be chimney smoke.”

  “Both chimneys starting up at the same time?” Kovacs asked. “There were flashes, and then smoke.”

  Bunny panned the camera up to the compound where the Marines were hunkered down, but saw nothing unusual. She switched to the JTAC frequency. “Lava Dogs, Golani Angel. All quiet down there?”

  There was no reply. She tried again, panning her camera around the town. There was some movement, hard to see in the dusk light. She switched over to infrared and picked up some bodies moving around town, a small vehicle or two, but nothing that looked like a firefight.

  “More smoke,” Kovacs said. “A lot more.”

  Bunny panned the view out to center on the Marine compound again. “Those are smoke grenades,” she said. “Something is going down.”

  “Golani Angel, Lava Dogs, do you read?”

  “Receiving, Patel. What’s happening down there?”

  “We’re taking sniper fire. One shooter at least. We got two casualties, our Sergeant is down. I don’t know how bad. I can’t see the shooter … I don’t know…”

  “Easy, Patel. I have a bird overhead. Let me have a look.” She switched her other aircraft to AI control, weapons safe, and concentrated on the recon Fantom. “Do you have a bearing from your villa?”

  “West, say two eighty degrees, range fifteen hundred to two thousand yards is my best guess.”

  “That’s a long shot.”

  “Gap between the bullet strike and the sound of the shot was two Mississippi and some. One Mississippi, nine hundred yards. That’s what they teach us.”

  “Wait one, Patel.”

  She switched to infrared and started panning around town looking for prone figures west of the villa with warm rifle barrels. She didn’t see any, but she saw something else.

  “Patel, Angel. You guys didn’t happen to stir up any other trouble a few minutes before now? Two explosions?”

  “Yeah, took out a couple of Druze riflemen with a drone strike.”

  “That might explain why I see a platoon forming up at the road junction where you had your firefight earlier.” Bunny zoomed in. “I count twenty men, all carrying rifles, some carrying … yeah, I got at least two with rocket launchers.”

  “We’ve got civilians here!”

  “Then if there is a cellar, I suggest you tell them to get into it. I can’t do anything for you while they’re in the middle of a civilian area. I can lay down some hurt once they reach your compound, but you’ll be danger close.”

  “Understood. Anything you can do, Angel.”

  “Hold this channel open. Angel out.”

  Huddled over her command unit again, Amal saw the sniper approaching the end of the street, and she saw something else. Men running from the command post up to the junction near her brother’s shop and forming up. Armed men. The sniper had seen them too, and lifted a hand in greeting.

  Amal suddenly had to choose between the greater of two evils. The deadly marksman who had just attacked them, or the platoon of regular soldiers who were very obviously preparing to. As her drone swung around and gave her a better view of the soldiers below, she saw one of them carried a rocket launcher in his arms.

  Crap. That made her decision simpler.

  Using a thumb joystick on her controller, she moved a crosshair into the middle of where the men were standing by the roundabout, an officer of some sort – but not, as far as she could see, the colonel they had met earlier – standing by the statue and addressing them. A pre-battle pep talk maybe.

  Pep this.

  She pressed a button on the controller and two miles away, her drone dropped its nose and made an unpowered dive toward the intersection. She didn’t have to time the detonation, the camera in the drone’s nose worked as a crude proximity sensor and would do that job for her, sending a thousand needle-sharp metal shards into the mass of bodies below.

  There was no telltale shadow. No buzz of electric engines. Abdolrasoul Delavari was twenty feet from the soldiers, still with his arm in the air trying to get the attention of the Druze captain marshaling his forces at the intersection, when he saw a flash of white fall from the sky and explode right in among the troops at the intersection.

  He staggered, but kept his feet. A mortar round? No, too accurate. Drone. As smoke from the blast cleared, he saw the ground in front of him littered with dead and wounded men. And several standing exactly where they had stood moments earlier, in the middle of bodies either horribly still, or trying to crawl away, with stunned looks on their faces, checking their arms and limbs, unable to believe they were alive, unhurt, amid all the carnage.

  For a moment, Abdolrasoul Delavari thought he was one of them. Then he realized he was having a little trouble breathing. Perhaps it was the smoke. He looked down, checking to see if he’d been hit, and saw a tiny circle of blood flowering on his chest above his left tunic pocket.

  His rabbit foot! He didn’t want to get blood on it. Fumbling with his top button, he quickly pulled the gold chain and rabbit foot out. Then frowned at it. It was wet with blood. Looking down at his chest again, he saw the small flower of blood was starting to spread.

  And it was getting harder to breathe.

  Well, that was not good. He needed to find a medic.

  He was still holding his rifle. It was suddenly very, very heavy. He wouldn’t need it again tonight anyway, so he let it drop butt first to the ground as he walked. That was better. He could come back for it later.

  He tried to put his rabbit foot into his right tunic pocket. It wouldn’t get blood on it there. But the damn button was too tight or his fingers not as nimble as they usually were. Well, it was cold. Going to be a cold night.

  He stepped over a man trying to crawl in front of him. Poor fellow. He was bleeding from the ears. That was probably worse than bleeding from a chest wound, wasn’t it?

  Delavari had to stop and lean against a shop wall. He looked up at the sign over the door, written in Arabic, Hebrew and English. “Buq’ata Furniture Repairs. While You Wait.”

  He looked down at his chest again and gave a coughing laugh. Well, he could certainly use a man who was handy with a needle and thread right now. He looked through the shattered window. Perhaps he was inside?

  He didn’t feel the rabbit foot slip from his fingers, or the shattered glass cut him as he fell through the window trying to lean on a window pane that wasn’t there. Lying on the shop floor, gasping for air and unable to find any, he wasn’t scared.

  A wound like this, they would send him home for sure. Where he would tell his family the story of how he’d rescued a hundred civilians.

  James Jensen was also having trouble breathing, but not because he had a hole in his chest. He was holding in his breath so that he didn’t scream. Bell had a finger jammed into the hole in his thigh, right up to the top knuckle. Jensen had never been shot before. Six months under constant sniper and mortar fire in Kobani, and not so much as a scratch. When he’d seen a boot on duty, looking pale or shaky after a near miss, he’d say to the guy, hey, don’t worry about it. If it kills you, you’ll be dead and if it just wounds you, you won’t feel it, the adrenaline kicks in, you’ll just feel numb, so don’t sweat. But keep your damn head down.

  Numb? What a load of horseshit.

  Every time Bell shifted his weight, it was like someone was pushing a hot wrecking bar further into his groin.

  “Goddamn, Bell!” he grunted.

  “Sergeant, I need to find out is all this blood coming from your deep femoral, or your superficial femoral artery, so lie still and stop whining.”

  “What’s the damn difference?”

  Bell was talking through gritted teeth. “The difference, Gunny, is I can use a tourniquet to clamp your superficial femoral a
rtery, pack it hard like I’m trying to do, and you might live. But if it’s your deep femoral artery, then you’ll die about a minute after I take my finger out of the hole in your leg.”

  Jensen lay back, resting his helmeted head on the floor. “Hell … of a bedside manner … Bell.”

  “Yeah, well. Probably only reason you aren’t already dead is the bullet seems to be plugging the hole in whatever artery it is.” The rest of the squad had come galloping in a few minutes earlier, and Bell had grabbed Buckland to help fit a tourniquet around Jensen’s upper thigh. She was winding it tight with a metal rod from his medical kit. “Tighter,” he told her.

  “Any tighter, I’ll sever his leg,” she grunted.

  “I don’t hear him screaming. Tighter.”

  After pushing some more gauze into the wound and satisfying himself the tourniquet was as tight as anyone could get it, Bell looked up. “Sarge, you with us?”

  “Wish … I wasn’t.”

  “Well, depending how this goes now, you might get your wish,” Bell said. “You got any last words?”

  “Yeah. Tell your mother … I had a great time.”

  “I think you mean my grandma, Gunny.” He looked over at Buckland and nodded. “Okay. Here we go. Could get bloody.”

  “I can take it,” the corporal said.

  Bell eased his finger out of the tunnel of Jensen’s wound, hoping the packing would hold and the tourniquet had cut off the flow of blood. Hoping it was Jensen’s superficial femoral that was bleeding, not his deep femoral too. Hoping if it still bled that it was just pulsing, not pouring out of the wound…

  “Ah, jayzus…” Jensen sighed, and blacked out.

  All Domain Attack: Imbalance

  Situation Room, White House, May 19

  “The Russian fleet is showing no signs of slowing, Mr. President,” the figure onscreen was saying. The CO of the USS Canberra, Captain Carson Andrews, was a native of Chicago and had come up through corvettes and mine hunters to destroyers. He was now commanding a ship in what had once been the White Elephant class of the US fleet but, after ten years of upgrades and refits, was now one of the most capable surface combatants in the Navy. And, since passing through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean, the new flagship of Destroyer Squadron 60.

  “How close are they now?” Henderson asked.

  “We’ve already been passed by their intelligence ship, the Yuriy Ivanov. It’s sailing south from Rhodes now, I suspect trying to map how many drones and helos we’ve got in play. At least one Kilo-class submarine was detected, but as ordered we did not prosecute the contact. The main body of ships is eighty miles back. Up front and closest are the two Karakurt-class corvettes, the Mytischi and Sovetsk – anti-air, anti-ship platforms. They will reach our line of control within three hours.”

  “And you will let them pass,” Admiral Clarke confirmed.

  “Yes, Admiral. We expect, though, they will choose to hold station near us and make our lives difficult. The main body of ships is four hours out. Two guided missile frigates, the Admiral Makov and Admiral Essen, sailing either side of the Slava-class cruiser Moskva.”

  “Where are the Iranians?” Henderson asked.

  “Tucked right in behind them. The two Safineh-class missile destroyers, Amol and Sinjan, are more or less sailing line astern in the wake of the Moskva.”

  “Like ducks behind momma duck,” Homeland Security Secretary Price quipped.

  “Yes. If momma duck was an air defense cruiser able to fire eighty surface-to-air missiles at the same time as engaging sixteen surface contacts,” Carmine responded.

  “The Moskva is nearly fifty years old, but its missile and sensor systems got a 2025 refresh, so yes, it’s a big momma,” the Canberra’s captain confirmed. “Bringing up the rear are at least one more Kilo, and their helicopter landing ship, Pyotr Morgunov. It can carry a battalion of troops and a company of tanks, but we believe it sailed as a replenishment ship on this voyage.”

  “So Russia isn’t planning to invade Israel from the sea, only from Syria – that’s a blessing,” VP Sianni remarked drily.

  Henderson winced. “Thank you, Captain Andrews, we appreciate the job you did on that Iranian submarine, and the job you are doing now. Please let your crews know they have our total confidence.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, if I may?” the captain replied. “There is one wild card we haven’t discussed.”

  “The Israeli submarine,” Admiral Clarke guessed.

  “Yes, Admiral. The British sub Agincourt was damn near rammed by the Gal overnight. A clear sign they are keyed up and ready for action. It reported to the Agincourt it was planning to patrol west, to Cyprus, but it was last logged headed north, toward Rhodes and the Russian fleet. Given the air assault on Syria and Iran currently underway, we have to consider the possibility that…”

  “Yes, Captain,” Clarke interrupted him. “The possibility of pre-emptive Israeli action at sea is noted. Alert me if you make contact with the Gal again.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  The connection was cut and Clarke addressed the unasked question. “We won’t be able to get near those Iranian ships without risking a collision with either them or the Russians. And it appears they have little or no intention of detaching from the fleet so we can board and inspect them. Sending a helicopter and boarding party across to board a moving vessel protected by Russian anti-air is also out of the question.”

  “We don’t have to board and inspect them,” Sianni said. “If they enter the Mediterranean, the Agincourt can put a torpedo into the screw of the trailing Iranian frigate and they’ll stop quick enough.”

  Defense Secretary McDonald nodded in agreement. “Simple and clean.”

  “If they don’t depth-charge the Agincourt first.” It was Secretary of State Shrier who said what Carmine was thinking. “Can I remind everyone we still do not have absolute proof that Iran has deployed nuclear weapons on those ships?”

  “They must have,” Dupré said. “Israel’s reaction is too strong. They have attacked nuclear and ballistic missile sites in seven locations in Iran. They have attacked Quds Force troops and armor inside Syria. They have not hesitated to engage Russian fighters over Syria. They have sent an attack submarine out to meet the Iranian ships. They seem willing to start an all-out war with Iran and Russia which I believe they would only do if they have intelligence that an Iranian nuclear attack is imminent.”

  “So because Israel has lost its collective mind, we should lose ours and ask the Brits to put a torpedo into an Iranian frigate?” Carmine asked.

  Henderson rose. “I need some air. You all keep gasbagging. The situation is this. When those Iranian ships approach our blockade line…”

  “In six hours, Oliver…” Sianni said gently.

  “In six hours, yes, Ben … when they do, the good Captain Andrews will demand that they stop and allow themselves to be searched. And only after that will we decide our next course of action.” He looked down the table. “Carmine, walk with me.”

  Carmine got up and followed Henderson out, ignoring the various looks that followed her out of the room, not least that from Tonya Dupré which said, Get me out of here.

  “Goddamn, Carmine,” Henderson said as they waited for the lift to ground level.

  “About the tenth time you’ve said that this week,” she noted as they stepped into the lift.

  “Yeah, well … goddamn just sums it up. Hey, any news on your mother?”

  Carmine did a double take. Had she told him her mother had been hospitalized after a minor stroke? She didn’t think so. She wouldn’t have wanted to trouble him.

  “Thanks for asking, Oliver. Uh, she’s … good, in the circumstances. Some loss of feeling in her left side but the doctors are pretty optimistic that will return. She’s 84, so these things are going to happen.”

  “This mess is over, I want you to take some time. She’s in Atlanta, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You go s
ee her, alright? That’s an order.”

  “I will. How are you holding up?”

  “Had better nights, Carmine, I’ll admit it. You know, when I took over this job, the outgoing President said something to me. Or their Chief of Staff, I can’t remember. Did I tell you?”

  The outgoing President. Henderson never referred to his predecessor by name. He couldn’t abide them when they were in office, and preferred to treat their administration as a historical aberration. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But remind me.”

  “They said, the next big war, it isn’t going to be where you expect it. It isn’t going to be Taiwan, or the South China Sea or Korea, or Russia invading the Baltic States. It’s going to be some pissant little conflict that starts small and gets bigger and bigger and unless you say screw this and back off before you get in too deep, suddenly you’re staring down the barrel of Armageddon, either political or actual.”

  Lewis hadn’t heard that one and she thought about it. Sure, Vietnam fit that bill. Iraq, thirty years of conflict. Afghanistan, the same. Now Syria. It had started in 2013 with air support for the war against Islamic State. Seven years later the US was still there, supporting the Kurdish separatists. Fast forward another few years, we’re sending AWACs aircraft to Turkey, a Marine company to support the Kurds in the north and an Army air defense battalion to the NATO air base at Incirlik. Suddenly we’re putting together a Coalition to oppose a Syrian invasion of southern Turkey and the 1st Infantry Division is shipping out. Next thing, we’re flying US soldiers home in caskets again.

  Now Israel? “I hadn’t heard that one, but I can see how it’s true,” she replied.