The War After Armageddon

by Ralph Peters

  “That little cunt,” Cropsey screamed. Then they were both on their feet. Weapons up. Heading for the room into which the girl had fled. Kicking masonry scraps out of the way.

  “In first,” Cropsey yelled.

  “Got your back.”

  “Grenade!” Crospey screamed. He dived forward.

  Garcia hurled himself back out through the doorway.

  As he hit the ground, the concussion slammed him. And he realized what had just happened, as if watching an instant replay.

  Cropsey had thrown himself on top of the grenade.

  Garcia stormed back into the house. There were moans now. A male voice. Not Cropsey. And shouting upstairs. Boots thumping.

  “Everybody stay put,” Garcia shouted.

  He rushed toward the room in which the girl and her family had been promised a refuge. Disregarding everything but the need to spill his rage.

  He emptied one magazine blindly into the darkness. Then he pulled another magazine from his vest and shot it dry.

  He reloaded. But he didn’t pull the trigger immediately. He listened.

  When he heard a stuttering groan, he spent the third mag in the direction of the sound.

  With the room silenced, Garcia dropped to the ground, cradling his weapon amid the dust and smoke.

  * * *

  When the firing stopped, Corporal Tony Gallotti waited for a voice, a command. But all he heard was a faint moan from below: a Marine.

  “Sergeant Garcia?”

  No reply.

  “Sergeant Garcia?”

  Gallotti flipped down the night-vision device on his helmet. Peering through the dust and debris.

  A voice from down below called, “Sergeant Garcia?”

  That was Corporal Banks. Yelling in from the doorway.

  “It’s Gallotti. I’m coming down from the second deck. Tyrrell, take my back. Yon, you’re overwatch. Corpsman! Marines down!”

  As Gallotti felt his way down the stairs, adjusting to the spook-light in his reticle, he spotted Sergeant Garcia. Slumped against the wall. Not moving.

  “Sergeant G? Yo, Sergeant Garcia?”

  Then he saw the body. What was left of it. Through the smoke, he couldn’t identify the Marine.

  He thought he saw Garcia’s chest heave.

  “Corpsman!”

  Moaning haunted the background. It sounded like it might be Larsen.

  Gallotti crossed the hall to where Garcia sat. Breathing all right. No blood-shine. Then the corporal saw that Garcia’s hand rested on a helmet containing a severed head.

  Gallotti flipped up the night-sight and tore the flashlight off his armored vest. With the red light in his face, Garcia looked up. He was crying, but there was no par tic u lar expression on his face. Tears streaked the dust caked on his cheeks.

  Garcia dropped his head again.

  “Sergeant Garcia? You okay? Hey?”

  The sergeant didn’t respond.

  More boots. A lot more boots. More voices. Murphy, the corpsman, spoke from the corporal’s rear.

  “Who’s down.”

  “I think it’s Larsen. In there. Just check it out, Murph.”

  The corporal squatted by Garcia. He passed his flashlight in front of the sergeant’s face. “You okay, Sergeant Garcia? You hit, man?”

  Garcia looked up. So abruptly that the corporal recoiled.

  “That’s Cropsey’s head,” he told Gallotti. “We have to put him back together.”

  Garcia hoisted himself to his feet, sliding up the wall, thrusting his body armor against the force of gravity. He walked outside.

  “Sergeant G? You all right?”

  Garcia didn’t speak again until they were in the courtyard. With Marines gathering from beyond the compound. Captain Cunningham materialized. The company commander had washed his face and shaved.

  The captain rushed up to Garcia and Gallotti.

  “What happened?”

  Gallotti was about to speak for the sergeant, to cover for him, but Garcia’s shoulders relaxed, and he answered for himself.

  “We didn’t check the women, sir. I mean, we kept our hands off them, didn’t frisk them or anything. I was worried about things getting out of hand.” Garcia’s voice was flat, as if he were reporting on missing tent pegs. “She looked like a kid, sir. Not a little kid. But a kid. She tossed a grenade into the room where Larsen and Polanski were bunking. It was quick, sir. Me and Cropsey went after her. I’d been giving him some counseling outside the doorway. Cropsey went in first. And she flipped out another grenade. He jumped on it.” Garcia looked past the captain and into the night. “I think I killed them all, sir. There were three of them, and I think I killed them all.”

  The captain turned to the gathering Marines. “First Sergeant?”

  “He’s checking the OPs, sir.”

  “Gunny Matthews?”

  “Sir?”

  “I want every Arab in this ville strip-searched.”

  “The women, sir?”

  “Girls, women. Give them what privacy you can, and no nonsense. But everyone gets searched. Down to their underwear. Two Marines present at all times. Pass the word.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You all right, Sergeant Garcia?”

  “Cropsey threw himself on the grenade, sir.”

  “You told me that.”

  “I don’t know why he did it, sir.”

  “He was a good Marine.”

  But Garcia was stubborn. “I just don’t know why he did it.” “Make a hole!” The corpsman and another Marine lugged out a stretcher.

  It was Larsen. His face had been erased. His eyes were gone. The cavity where his mouth had been bubbled pink over scarlet meat.

  “I knew the girl was trouble, sir,” Garcia said. “I just didn’t know what kind of trouble. How could she do some crazy shit like that? I mean, she was a kid. Why would she do that?”

  “She’s dead now?” the captain asked. As if he hadn’t heard all that had been said to him.

  “I fucking hope so,” Garcia told him.

  1091ST COMBAT SUPPORT HOSPITAL, ZIKHRON YA’AKOV

  The patient evacuation holding area had gone quiet. Now and then, the sound of a man confused by pain and drugs rose and fell away, but the new calm seemed almost eerie to Major Nasr. Drifting in and out of consciousness, he lay intermittently aware of the battery of clamps, splints, ban dages, and tubes controlling his body, only to find himself back in Nazareth again, being beaten for reasons he couldn’t remember or imagining that he’d pissed himself bloody again.

  Had he pissed himself again? He wasn’t sure. He wanted to know but couldn’t tell for certain. Then he decided, again, that he didn’t care.

  He counted the crucified men. Thirty-six. He counted them again. Thirty-seven. Again. Only thirty-six.

  Why wouldn’t the number come right?

  Where was he? The doctor was there. No, that had been earlier. He was sure it had happened, though. In a lucid moment, he’d asked a doctor how bad his injuries were. The doctor, a lieutenant colonel, told him, “We don’t know. You need tests that we can’t do here. But you’re going to live.”

  To live.

  What would they tell his parents? He wished he could speak to his father first, before they got to him. His father, who had always seemed so strong but wasn’t.

  The pain was so strange. He knew it was there. The way you knew another person was in the room, even though you couldn’t see him. Plenty of painkillers racing through his bloodstream. But the pain was still there. Dressed up in a bizarre costume.

  Guess who I am?

  Pain, in an Arab robe. In a crisp uniform patterned on the British military of a previous century. Only Arabs wore those Sam Browne belts nowadays.

  He was an Arab.

  Was he? What did that mean? Wasn’t being a Christian more important? Being an American?

  It was all in the blood. It would be there after the painkillers thinned out. You knew things with your blood. Things t
hat others couldn’t understand.

  An officer in battle dress had tried to ask him questions, overriding the nurse and then the doctor. It was urgent. What was urgent? “I have to ask you a few questions… I’m sorry… The Corps G-2 needs to know…”

  Who had a need to know? What could be known, anyway? A hundred transfusions wouldn’t change what he knew in his blood.

  I know that I am still alive. In a field hospital. I know… that I’m going to live.

  Nasr wondered if he’d be able to have sex. The boots of Arab policemen gravitated toward testicles. Testicles and kidneys.

  He’d always heard that badly wounded men wanted their mothers. But he found his thoughts returning to his father. Who had seemed so shockingly frail, so bewildered. “But my son… He is in the specialty forces…”

  Dad, it’s going to be okay. You hear me?

  Had he accomplished his mission? In Nazareth? Who had he better served? His own kind, or the enemy? But who were “his own kind?”

  Not them, not them. American. I’m an American. Dad, we’re Americans. They can’t change that.

  A charley horse in his left leg made him cry out. The leg was immobilized, and he couldn’t cock it up to ease the spasm. It seemed worse than the pain he’d felt during his beating. Or after.

  Then it subsided. “These things, too, shall pass away.”

  If he could revisit any old girlfriend, who would it be?

  That didn’t work. For him, it was always the one he was going to meet. The perfect one. Who was waiting.

  The nurse who had come into his field of vision while he was lucid had looked like a pit bull. While he was in ROTC in college, he’d had to read A Farewell to Arms for a survey of 20th-century American literature. It struck him now as the most dishonest book he’d ever read.

  Dad, it’s going to be all right. Don’t worry. They’re not going to take you and Mom to any camps.

  He faded again, swirling in and out of dreams of torture. He was in the snack bar at the bowling alley on Ft. Bragg. He told them they had to stop because there were children watching. Then he was back in the Bradley that had evacuated him from Nazareth. But that was impossible. That had to be a dream, because he was already in the field hospital. He was sure of it.

  I did my duty, he wanted to scream. I did all I could do.

  It wasn’t a bowling alley after all. And he was doing the torturing. With kitchen knives.

  Nasr woke. To the fitful quiet of the evacuation ward. It took him a moment to get a grip on reality. Then, all at once, everything seemed clear.

  He was going to live.

  Dad, I’m going to live. Everything will be okay.

  A man in scrubs loomed over him. The man wore a surgical mask. He held up a syringe.

  “Who are you?” Nasr asked, alerting.

  “A friend,” the man said. He stabbed the needle into Nasr’s forearm.

  A fierce burn spread up Nasr’s arm and over his body. In just under two minutes, he was dead.

  FIFTEEN

  HOLY LAND COMMAND, AKROTIRI, CYPRUS

  “It’s too dangerous to fly,” the Air Force three-star told Harris. The blue-suiter’s deputy nodded in agreement, sliding a paper down the conference table to his boss. General Schwach, the HOLCOM commander, an Army four-star Harris had known for fifteen years, said nothing.

  Harris wanted to reach across the table and smash his Air Force counterpart in the face. But he controlled himself. A complete waste of time, the face-to-face meeting had already cycled through all of the arguments, only to arrive back at a repetition of Lieutenant General Micah’s original position.

  “The MOBIC air’s flying,” Harris said. “Dawg Daniels and his Marines flew.”

  “The air defense environment is different in the MOBIC area of operations. And the Marine sorties were a fluke. They had the element of surprise.”

  “How is the environment different? The MOBIC ground forces are approaching a linkup with my corps. The sectors are merging. The air defense envelopes already overlap. And we need air support now.”

  “Our intelligence shows a different threat environment in the Third Corps area of responsiblity.”

  Harris wiped a finger under his nose. “Come on. MOBIC’s flying. The Marines want to fly. And I have it on good authority that even your own Air Force pilots want to fly.”

  “They don’t have the big picture. We can’t afford to lose irreplaceable, very expensive aircraft in support of purely tactical missions.”

  “Why do you think the taxpayers paid for your ground-attack fighters?”

  “We have to preserve our air power.”

  “For what?”

  “For threats to our national security.”

  Harris leaned in over the table and lowered his voice, attempting to lock eyes with the Air Force general — who studiously looked down at the paper his deputy had passed to him.

  “General Micah, do you understand that we’re at war? Right now? That soldiers and Marines are dying? While the United States Air Force is jerking off?”

  “The Air Force is prepared to do its part. As soon as conditions permit.”

  “But why shouldn’t the Marines fly, for God’s sake? If they’re willing to accept the risk?”

  “The Marines don’t have the big picture. And I object to your taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Exactly what is the big picture? What do you have to ‘preserve the force’ for? Fucking air shows in Orlando?”

  “Our decisions are based on sound intelligence and cost-benefit analysis. Unlike the Army and Marines, the Air Force is a strategic service. We have to think far into the future.”

  Harris leaned back in his chair. Disgusted. And tired. They just wore you down.

  “That much, I believe,” Harris said. “About the cost-benefit analysis. What benefits have the MOBIC bunch promised you? Do you or any of your brethren really believe that the Air Force isn’t next? Do you really think that, if the U.S. Army goes away, and then the Marines disappear, you’re going to get a special dispensation from the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ?”

  General Schwach stiffened as Harris spoke. A decent enough officer, if no lion, the four-star looked as if he’d stacked arms on the matter. And perhaps on other matters, too. He clearly didn’t want to get into a pissing contest over the MOBIC.

  “That’s enough, Gary,” his commander told Harris.

  “Of course, we want to fly,” the Air Force general added. “That’s what we do for a living. We’re just waiting for the threat environment to clarify.”

  “You’re full of shit. You don’t want to fly at all.”

  “Are you calling me a coward, General Harris?”

  “No. You’re not a coward. Cowardice at least has a certain logic. You’re a fool.”

  “That’s enough, Gary,” the HOLCOM commander said. But his voice barely sounded firm. Just drained.

  The Air Force general stood up. His deputy aped his action.

  “This meeting has been counterproductive,” General Micah declared. His uniform was tailored as neatly as a corporate executive’s. “If you’ll excuse me, General Schwach, I have Air Force business to attend to.”

  But Harris couldn’t let go. Even though he recognized the childishness, the sheer spite, in his final remark: “Mark my words: You’re destroying the U.S. Air Force. Without firing a shot.”

  The HOLCOM commander made a steeple of his fingertips and rested his brow against it until the Air Force officers had left the room.

  “Jesus, Gary. That didn’t help anything,” General Schwach said at last. “You’re smarter than that. You’re better than that.”

  Harris leaned toward his boss. Schwach looked at least a decade older, although the age difference between them was only three years. “Sir… This is madness. You know it is. Can’t you order them to let the Marines fly? At least that? My Deuce has a foot-long list of high-value targets even tactical missiles can’t range. That’s what air power�
��s for, for God’s sake.”

  Schwach waved his face back and forth like a flag of surrender. “It’s not General Micah. He’s just a place-holder. Gary, this order comes directly from Washington: No fixed-wing sorties.”

  “But the MOBIC aircraft can fly.”

  “We both know what’s going on.”

  “Sir, we have to do something.”

  “What?”

  “Fight.”

  The four-star glanced toward the door of his office. Making sure it was closed. “Gary… I don’t even know how much I should tell you anymore. This is all uncharted territory… ethically, professionally, practically.” He fortified himself with a deep breath, then continued. “Right now, I’m fighting to keep your rotary-wing assets flying. And I’m not sure it’s a fight I can win. You may even lose your helicopters. And when it comes down to it, we’re lucky the Army’s still able to fly its drones — we’ve got the Navy to thank for that, God bless ’em. They dug in their heels on the drone issue. They want you in the sky between their ships and the Jihadis.” The elder general summoned a last shred of strength and looked directly into his subordinate’s face. “Gary, I’m also fighting to prevent you from being relieved.”

  That knocked the breath out of Harris’s lungs for a long moment.

  “Why? What’s their excuse?”

  “They don’t have one. Yet. But putting a couple of tap shots into the forehead of that Air Force flunky didn’t help your cause any.”

  “But why?”

  The four-star smirked. “Don’t be obtuse. You’ve been doing too well. Sim Montfort’s got a bloodbath on his hands — Gary, he’s lost nine thousand Americans killed in a matter of days. Maybe three times that number wounded. Montfort may have taken Jerusalem, but he’s lost half of the combat power in his corps.”

  “It’s a big corps. The biggest that ever fought under an American flag.”

  “Not big enough, though. And there you are, fighting smart, pulling off a landing that was just short of another Inchon—”

  “That was Monk Morris and his Marines.”

  Schwach waved off the demurral. “And you’ve committed the unforgivable sin of not bleeding enough. What’s your latest KIA figure?”

  “Just over six hundred, sir.”