The War After Armageddon

by Ralph Peters

  Thousands of people were doing their best, he knew that. But Cavanaugh still wanted to punch something. A commander had to appear stoic, to control his emotions, to set the example. At times, that seemed the hardest part of his job.

  Why wasn’t anything moving? The beach was getting as crowded as a stadium lot on homecoming weekend. Soon even the blind missiles wouldn’t be able to miss.

  He’d sent his XO forward, on foot, to find out what had blocked the road. But for all they knew, the stoppage might be a dozen clicks up the line, on the high ground. The XO could be walking for a while.

  And then what? Cavanaugh could talk intermittently to his companies lined up ducks-in-a-row and to those still afloat, but brigade forward had disappeared into the hills and the electromagnetic spectrum.

  Old Flintlock Harris had trained them for this, for the day the make-it-easy technologies would fail them. But no amount of training could lessen the sheer frustration. You grew up in a force accustomed to talking secure to anyone, anytime, and now, the inability to reach over a ridge for information made you want to break things.

  Well, they’d get to breaking things soon enough.

  He wished he’d marched up the road himself, instead of sending the XO. Just to have the illusion of accomplishing something. But Cavanaugh knew his place in the great scheme of things: The commander had to remain where he could exercise maximum control over his unit.

  To the extent he controlled anything.

  His earpiece crackled and made him jump.

  “Bayonet Six, this is Five.” The XO.

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Tank retriever lost its brakes. Not one of ours. Went over the side dragging an M-1. Then a drone hit the goat-rope on the road. Big ammo fry. They’re clearing it now.”

  “Estimated time to movement?”

  “Christ if I know. It’s a mess up here. I’d guess at least thirty mikes.”

  “Roger. Stay there and hitch a ride with Bravo as they pass. Break, break. Bravo, you copy?”

  “Good copy. We’ll watch for him.”

  “All right. Break. Net call, net call, this is Bayonet Six. When we get this unscrewed, I want march discipline back in force. Keep your distance from your buddies, no snuggling up, no matter how slow you’re moving. If the drones come again, I don’t want any sympathy detonations. Out.”

  Cavanaugh saw two GABs that had been holding a thousand meters out begin to head toward the beach. Others appeared to be jockeying for a place in line behind them.

  The beachmaster had to be crazy. There was no room for the rest of his battalion until the road opened. He wasn’t going to have them lined up hub to hub on the beach as if it were inspection day in the motor pool.

  Cavanaugh strode down from the roadway and across the rutted dirt strip that led to the beach. It struck him out of the blue that he had not had anything to eat since the middle of the night. Without slowing his pace, he fished a ration fruit bar from his pocket, tore it open, and chomped on it as if biting into a living thing he meant to kill.

  The GABs were coming in, all right. Goddamn it. Somebody with a stopwatch trying to keep to a schedule that no longer made any sense.

  On most days, he loved being in command. On others — not least, today — he felt like an impostor. Pat Cavanaugh realized full well that he would not have gotten his early promotion to lieutenant colonel or a prompt command billet had it not been for the migration of so many field-grade officers to the MOBIC side.

  He’d never considered such a move himself. Cavanaugh was all Army. As for religion, he went to Mass on most Sundays and checked that block. He believed that he believed in God, he had doubts about the Vatican, and he had meant his marriage vows to a wife who dumped him for one of his Leavenworth classmates who switched to the MOBIC side early on and got a double jump, from major to colonel. He hoped Mary Margaret was happy. And eating ground glass.

  She’d blindsided him utterly. And Pat Cavanaugh was determined that no one would ever do that to him again.

  His kids. With that shit-faced ass-kisser. And his wife.

  Whenever he came up against the MOBIC types, they made him uneasy, as if he were being sold a thing it made no sense to buy. He had no patience with “car-lot religion,” as his sergeant major put it. Maybe he wasn’t a real believer, after all. He certainly wasn’t one by MOBIC standards.

  He’d thought seriously about killing the man who stole his wife.

  What was left to believe in? Not “reclaiming the Holy Land.” He was here because he believed in the U.S. Army, which had never let him down. And he believed in Flintlock Harris. Who should have booted him out of the Army as a captain in Bremerhaven, back before it all went nuts. Instead, he’d gotten a glowing efficiency report and a private, undocumented counseling session that left him with invisible third-degree burns.

  Cavanaugh’s front boot reached the pebble-and-sand mix that passed for a beach. Just as he came alongside a burned-out Marine track, the alarm sounded.

  Drone attack. He hadn’t seen a single manned aircraft from either side, except for a couple of friendly helicopters risking low-level flights from ship to shore and back. But the drones ruled the skies.

  He ran back toward his lined-up vehicles, unable to do one damned thing to help them except be with them. He watched machine guns swivel up, despite the risk that they’d draw kamikaze drones down on top of themselves. Then he saw the wave of drones break over the ridge, chased by angry surface fire and a few hapless ground-to-air missles.

  Even as he ran, he could pick out the various shapes and sizes against the hard blue of the sky. All Chinese-built, bought in large quantities before that country slipped into turmoil. Less sophisticated, but sturdier and more dependable than anything his own military fielded, the unmanned aircraft were deadly. The informal motto he’d adopted for his battalion applied: “Fuck Finesse.”

  The escort drones came in high, with the hunter-killer drones behind and below, accompanied by a swarm of “expendables” programmed to detect ground fire and dive into it.

  The Navy’s robotic interceptors had been up much of the morning, covering the landing. But they were nowhere to be seen at the moment. And the Army’s air-defense drones still didn’t seem to be operational.

  Soldiers who weren’t manning weapons or buttoned up in armored vehicles ran for any cover they could find: ditches, overhangs, blasted buildings by the roadside. Cavanaugh heard the first explosions but kept on sprinting, weapon clutched in both hands, body armor lightened by the adrenaline rush.

  Couldn’t even let a man eat a fruit bar in peace.

  The gunfire aimed skyward sounded like a full-scale battle. Which it was. Cavanaugh worried about the rounds falling back to earth. Multiple deployments to the Middle East had taught him the danger of that. The locals shot automatic weapons into the air as a substitute for getting laid. People died at random.

  Whatever programs the Jihadi drones were running, they were shielded well enough to punch through all the jamming and erasure signals his own side was putting up. Manned aircraft had become as delicate as teacups, but hardened, mission-programmed drones had become the terror of the battlefield for both sides. The situation was especially tough on the Army, since its air defenses had been neglected for decades as the Air Force assured Congress it could sweep the skies.

  We could use a little sweeping now, Cavanaugh thought, as the blasts at his back chased him.

  “Spread out! Spread out, goddamn it!” The soldiers in the ditch didn’t even look up at him. His men? He hoped not. Probably loggie strays.

  The noise and shock wave from the next explosion clapped his ears and thumped his back. He turned to look. Couldn’t help himself.

  A drone had struck a Marine ammo load down the beach. A No. 4 GAB struggled desperately to reverse its engines as secondary explosions at the water line sent metal flying in every direction. There were only two kinds of human beings left alive on the beach: those who had already slapped themselve
s face-down on the earth, and those who were running as fast as they could go.

  Overhead, dozens of drones swooped and curled in dogfights: The Navy interceptors were up again. A flaming drone fell seaward, exploding halfway to the surface. Cavanaugh wasn’t sure which side it belonged to.

  Nothing he could do about the duel in the sky. But the continuing explosions on the beach made him feel the weight of his gear again and the burden of too little sleep. He trotted on toward the line of his battalion’s vehicles and saw Jake Walker and the sergeant major waving their arms, berserk with urgency, as they guided the ancient Bradleys off the road into a herringbone formation.

  I should’ve done that, Cavanaugh thought. An hour ago. Jesus Christ. I am screwing this up worse than a lockjaw epidemic at a cocksucker’s convention.

  He banged on the side of the nearest Bradley, then smacked the driver’s helmet to get his attention. Behind his goggles, the specialist’s eyes looked paralyzed by shock.

  First time under fire.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Cavanaugh pointed to the left, into the bit of open space by the roadside.

  After a five-second eternity, the driver jerked the big vehicle into motion. The engine was one of the new “miniaturized” power-packs, but the adjective exaggerated. The Bradley still snorted and belched like an angry bull.

  The driver oversteered, and Cavanaugh had to leap out of the way. He moved on to the next track, but realized, on time-delay, that he had not heard any further explosions and that the ground fire had dwindled to intermittent bursts.

  The attack was over. Cavanaugh looked back down along the beach. The ammo fire was still cooking, but the noise had fallen to popcorn level. Offshore, a GAB burned, flames toasting the sky. Small figures ran madly across the deck.

  It wasn’t one of his GABs. His battalion was still intact. Some other commander would report the loss and figure out how to reorganize his unit. Cavanaugh knew he shouldn’t feel good on that count, since they were all in this together. But he did feel good. In a crummy sort of way he doubted he’d ever explain to another human being. Now that Mary Margaret had become the colonel’s lady, instead of Rosie O’Grady.

  The loss, the shock of betrayal, still had the power to twist his stomach after more than two years.

  Betrayal. The most shit-rotten word in the English language.

  He took off his helmet and ran a palm over the stubble that passed for hair. Combat trim. Like a worn-down toothbrush. Overhead, the sky was clean and clear and impossibly blue. Under other circumstances, he thought wryly, it might’ve been a nice day at the beach.

  As he looked up the road that led onto Mt. Carmel, Cavanaugh saw vehicles inching forward.

  All right, he thought. Let’s move ’em out.

  He turned back to the labor of command.

  MT. CARMEL

  Harris marched along the shaded path that traced the military crest. He still felt queasy from the helicopter’s outlaw maneuvers on the flight up. To avoid any prowling drones, the pilot had taken them on a tree-clipping ride through a succession of ravines, popping over intervening ridges and dropping again until it seemed they’d smash into the boulders that flanked the seasonal streams. They had swooped over a site where a vehicle accident and the debris of an attack had blocked the road at a hairpin turn, holding up one of his brigades. There had been no spot level enough to set down the light helicopter, and Harris was glad of it now. He would only have been in the way. But it was hard not to go hands-on when you saw your war machines backed up all the way to the beachhead, burning fuel and serving as perfect targets.

  One of his 155mm batteries fired from a meadow behind and below the path, close enough to send shock waves through the air. Sending the guns forward had been the right thing to do, even though it played hell with the landing schedule. But the First Infantry Division’s entire chain of command would be cursing him for the foreseeable future.

  He caught himself. There was no “foreseeable future.” This was war.

  When the firing paused, Harris turned to his companion and said, “All right, Monk. Good. But I’ll feel a whole lot better when you tell me we’ve got an actual highway open. At the moment, I’m more worried about opening up additional MSRs than I am about the fighting. Get a reconaissance-in-force down toward Jenin as soon as it makes sense, and send a patrol down Highway 6. Your call on the size. See if they’ve really pulled back down there. If it’s clear, set up a coordination point at Tulkarm. Tie in our flank with the MOBIC corps. In case we need to shift forces.”

  “I’m more worried about mines than Jihadis along 6. My intel shop puts their new defensive line halfway back to Nablus.”

  “Better ground. They’re doing the smart thing. At this point.”

  The howitzers barked again, joined this time by other batteries scattered in the clearings amid the groves behind the ridge. It was a good sound, as were the distant thuds that followed fifteen to twenty seconds later. They were going after deep targets. Which meant that no local counterattacks had materialized.

  “I never would’ve given up this ground so easily,” Harris told the Marine two-star. They walked up through scents of pine and cedar, their security detachments prowling ahead and following behind, giving the two generals space for a private conversation.

  “Well,” Monk Morris said, with a tinge of irritation, “they didn’t just hand it over. But I take your point. Not the sort of blunder I would’ve expected from al-Mahdi. Based on his track record. ‘Conqueror of Jerusalem’ and all that.”

  “That’s the point,” Harris said. “It’s all about Jerusalem, al-Quds, at the moment. We’re dinosaurs, the two of us. Thinking like old-fashioned military commanders. This is the age of the believers. Suleiman al-Mahdi may be smarter than Saladin when all other factors are equal. But they’re not equal right now. He wants to hold onto Jerusalem, the third holy city of Islam. After all, this is the Emirate of al-Quds and Damaskus, not the Emirate of Haifa. He sees us as the secondary enemy, the new Lesser Satan. He knows he has to beat Sim Montfort and the MOBIC corps. That one’s a zero-sum game. He figures he can take care of us later.”

  “So what does he do? Now? Up here?” Morris asked.

  “You tell me, Monk.” Harris shifted his body armor and felt the sweat-grease on his back. “If you were Sully al-Mahdi pulling out all the stops to hang onto Jerusalem and you didn’t have the numbers you’d like to have… What would you do?”

  “I’ve been wrestling with that since they started pulling off the heights last night,” the Marine said. “If I were al-Mahdi and running an economy-of-force operation up here, I’d concentrate on retaining control of the key interior roads. I’d tell al-Ghazi, the sector commander, to dig in deep and hard from Afula up through Nazareth, with a swinging-gate defense to the north, from Shefar’am back to Golani Junction.”

  “Bingo. He knows he’s going to lose Megiddo Junction. He already has, for all intents and purposes, since he can’t hold it. It’s just a delaying action down there. Testing us.” Harris pushed a low branch out of the way. “I agree with you, Monk. So does history. The junctions in the Jezreel have been strategically vital since the battles in the Old Testament.”

  “Probably longer.”

  Harris smiled. “Don’t let Sim Monfort hear you say that.”

  The artillery let loose again. Which meant that the forward observers were calling in hard targets. If the fates were in a good mood, it might even mean that his recon drones were flying and linking back targets.

  The growl of the heavy vehicles climbing the road below them deepened as the breeze shifted.

  “I’m told you were at VMI with Montfort,” Morris said. “All those secret handshakes. Any insights?”

  “The noble and pious MOBIC corps commander…” A fly the size of a bomber brushed Harris’s nose. He waved it away. Behind the scent of the evergreens, the odor of death teased. “Fact is, Sim’s an extremely talented officer. Truly gifted. Always was. And he just may be the most r
uthless human being I’ve ever met.”

  “I’d have to measure him against an old girlfriend or two,” Morris, a lifelong bachelor, said.

  “Well, Marines do have peculiar tastes. But don’t ever sell Sim Montfort short. Behind all the Bible verses and the Crusader rhetoric, he’s smarter than a billionaire televangelist cross-bred with an entire faculty of Jesuits. Write him off as a nut, and you’ll get blindsided. And you won’t get back up on your feet again.”

  “But is he nuts? I’ve known my share of men who were brilliant and utterly crazy at the same time. Not least, in this neck of the woods.”

  “I’d call him ‘obsessive’.”

  “To the point of being nuts?”

  “Monk, did anybody ever tell you that you even look like a bulldog? You make Chesty Puller look like a beauty queen. No, Montfort’s not nuts. He can project a quality of madness. But you never know how much of it’s calculated.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a drinking buddy.”

  “He was a model cadet, Sim was. Monk, I realize you think I’m nuts for dragging you up here like this. When we’ve both got plenty to do. But our staffs can handle things for an hour. Commanders need to step back. Talk a bit. Catch their breath.” He grunted. “If I wouldn’t be setting a poor example, I’d take off this goddamned body armor.”

  The path steepened just as Harris finished speaking.

  “Hell of a way to catch your breath,” Monk said. Then he grinned. “You did not just hear a Marine complain. It was your imagination. Anything else? On Montfort?”

  Harris thought about the absent figure for a few steps. He didn’t want to put devils in Monk’s head. But he owed Monk honesty. As much as the moment would bear.

  “Sim was one class behind me at VMI. By his second year, upper-classmen had learned to fear him, and even the faculty handled him carefully. Which didn’t stop him from being elected to every office he wanted. Or from being the faculty’s darling.” Harris smiled, not fondly, at the memory. “Sim had one big advantage over the rest of us. We were teenagers, with all that goes with the package, barracks discipline or not. But Sim was born with the mind of a forty-year-old. From day one, he knew what he wanted and concentrated on getting it.” Harris snorted. “It’s probably an exaggeration to say he never let anything distract him from his goals. He was an infuriatingly handsome man. Women chased him from one end of the Shenandoah Valley to the other, then followed him back home at Christmas. We were all jealous as hell.”