The Living Will Envy The Dead

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “Stacy, Patty, take them out,” I ordered. I should have left them alive, perhaps, in the hopes that it would convince the remainder of the Warriors to give up, but the noise had been too much to bear. They died, one by one, and it was probably a relief to them, after everything they’d been though. The remainder of the Warriors kept advancing, now under the cover of their own mortars, and I realised that they were going to push through the second defence line. They had detonated almost all of the mines.

  My radio crackled. “Boss, this is eye in the sky,” it said. The balloon had gone up again at first light, in more ways than one. “They’re bringing up more vehicles and hundreds more soldiers…and they’re targeting all three gates.”

  I nodded, too tired to swear. The enemy strategy might have been cold-blooded and utterly ruthless, but it made an evil kind of sense. They’d pinned us down, forced us to divide our strength to defend all three of the routes into Ingalls…and forced us to expend all of our antitank ammunition. They might have problems getting the tank-like vehicles over the mines, but if they had some left when they broke through the final defence line, we would be reduced to rolling grenades under the vehicles and praying.

  “If we get out of this alive,” I said, to Mac, “remind me to get the Constitutional Convention to make it a law that everyone has to have plenty of weapons and ammunition in their homes. If we’d had a much bigger ammunition dump…”

  “We would have broken the Warriors like twigs,” Mac agreed. “Should we make it legal that everyone has their own tank as well?”

  “You’re not helping,” I said. The thought reminded me of an old retired Marine somewhere east who’d had his own private museum of former military vehicles, all still in working order. We’d looted a set of vehicle museums and used them to outfit part of our army, but we hadn’t recovered any working tanks. There had been a set of tanks on display, but a brief examination had revealed that – owing to safety regulations – the innards had all been removed. I just hoped that the stupid bastard who’d come up with that idea had been killed in a most horrible manner when the bombs went off. He’d doomed us all. “We may have to pull back to the town itself.”

  My radio buzzed. “Another truck bomb approaching, sir…”

  The explosion shook the ground, blowing both a massive hole in the defences and the Warrior ranks. It was yet another display of their fundamental lack of concern for their own people, but this time, as they swarmed through the gap, they ran into a carefully-prepared minefield. This minefield didn’t explode until they were almost at the third wall, despite the presence of strands of barbed wire and other nasty surprises, and then detonated, with every mine going up simultaneously. We’d primed it just right. They lost their legs, but they survived the blasts…if only for a given value of survived. Their screams echoed out on the air.

  “Poor bastards,” Mac said. The Warriors seemed almost to be wavering, as they had before, but their leaders sent another line of fanatics into the breach before their wavering could turn to outright mutiny. The two sides duelled mortars rapidly as the next set of vehicles emerged, only to be bracketed by my mortars and brought to a halt, burning merrily away. If the drivers survived the first shots, they died horribly, burned to a crisp or killed when the ammunition started to detonate. “How many of the fuckers do they have?”

  I keyed my radio. “CP1, CP3, report,” I ordered. “What’s happening to you?”

  “Holding them at the first line,” CP1 reported. “They’re holding back, sir; they’re just keeping us pinned down!”

  “They’re snared in the second line,” CP3 said. “We’re killing them by the bucket load, sir!”

  “Oh, good,” I said. That meant that the Warriors, having forced a practicable breech at CP2, were concentrating their efforts on making the hole wider and breaking through. It was almost reassuring to know that they had some limits on their manpower; as odd as it might seem, I hadn’t believed it beforehand. “Mac, we may need to go nuclear.”

  Mac gave me a sharp glance. “Are you sure you want to use the gas?”

  “I think we’re running out of options,” I said. The Warriors were continuing to bombard us with mortar fire and their shells seemed never-ending. Their targeting wasn't that good, but as a distraction, it was hellishly effective. It was also killing our people behind the lines, despite our best efforts, and setting parts of the town on fire. It might even prove decisive in the long run. “Give them enough time and they’ll be through the walls and into the town. If that happens…”

  “We’re fucked,” Mac agreed. Even if we drove them back out of the town, the resulting damage would finish Ingalls. “Is there anything from Richard?”

  “Nothing new, but he wouldn’t have sent anything,” I said. We’d agreed on a series of communications codes for transmission, if there was a problem, but the system was limited. The Warriors would probably be listening in to our transmissions and, despite our best efforts, we didn’t have a properly secure net. “We can only hope that he’s coming as we planned.”

  A mortar shell landed near enough for us both to feel the wave of heat. “I know,” Mac said. “I’ll give the order at once.”

  I peered through the growing haze of smoke and fire surrounding the defence line. “Wait a moment,” I said, as a line of Warriors spilled over a wall and into one of the manned positions. There was a brief and savage hand-to-hand fight, and then the Warriors were forced back out again. “Give the order to fall back to the final line now, and then order the mortars to go to rapid fire, danger close.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mac said. He keyed his own radio and started to issue orders. “They’re on their way, sir.”

  I nodded. Danger close is a military term for calling in a strike – air or artillery, mainly – significantly close to your own forces. It’s not something regarded as a good idea – back during the war, you needed to get authorisation at first from higher up before you could do it – because of the risk of a blue-on-blue, a friendly fire incident. It had been chancy enough in Iraq, but far more so here, without any of the precision weapons we’d deployed in the sandbox. I wouldn’t have taken the risk, but we needed time to evacuate the outer defence lines and the only way to get that time was to hammer the Warriors silly.

  The explosions grew louder and more constant, hacking away at the remains of our own defences as well as the Warriors who were swarming over them, but it provided enough cover to get our men out of the area. I watched as Warriors, stunned out of their fanatical trance by the blasts, staggered around, looking as if they were wondering what the hell they were doing there. Shell-shock had probably brought them back to their senses, but in their current state, they were not going to survive long enough to rebel against their former masters. I considered, just for a moment, trying to rescue them, but it was too late. The Warriors had sent in a massive line of fanatics, pushing through the gap we’d opened for them.

  I took a long breath and keyed my radio. “Section Ten,” I said, feeling as if I was going to be sick, “you are cleared to open fire. Four shells only, I repeat, four shells only.”

  The problem we had faced with deploying the gas was that deploying chemical weapons of any kind isn’t quite as easy as the media makes it sound. Sure, you can pump them out of the air vents, if you happen to have air vents (we didn’t), but it’s a lot harder to deliver them by artillery fire. It’s actually worse for biological weapons. Use the wrong delivery system and you’d end up destroying your own weapon. Section Ten had a pair of specially modified mortars and I was sweating even that. A lucky enemy shot and we’d be hoisted on our own petard.

  “Shells away, sir,” the mortar team sent back, finally. “Holding further fire.”

  I watched, as dispassionately as I could, as the gas started to billow around the Warriors. We’d chosen something simple enough – I won’t go into the details, for obvious reasons – that had to be breathed in to be effective. The chemists had claimed that they could produce a genuin
e nerve agent, one that would kill even if it touched a person’s bare skin, but I had rejected that concept with horror, not least because it might be just as effective at killing us. The gas we’d produced had to be breathed in and didn’t have a long life. It required a certain concentration to be effective and that wouldn’t last for long. The Warriors didn’t see the gas or didn’t recognise the danger and kept coming forward. They died in twitching agony.

  “We’re going to burn for this,” I said, watching their struggles. They didn’t stand a chance. They didn’t even have facemasks, let alone any other kind of protection. Daniel had hinted that the Warriors had gas programs of their own, but they hadn’t prepared for it at all, or maybe they just hadn’t rated the Warriors they’d sent against us as worth saving. How many of them, I wondered desperately, did they want to die?

  The irony was darkly amusing. I’d spent part of my career trying to ensure that such weapons would never fall into the hands of a lunatic with a grudge against America or the rest of the world, and here I was trying to use them. How could I condemn Saddam, or Kim, or one of the other bastards who turned chemical weapons on their own population when I’d used it on my fellow Americans? The only answer I found, and it wasn’t a very good answer, was that they were trying to kill me, my town and my people.

  On second thoughts, perhaps it was the best answer of all.

  “They’re still coming,” Mac said. I swore. The gas was dispersing already, but the Warrior preachers were still driving the Warriors onwards to battle, despite their increasingly desperate resistance. I was watching the entire Warrior movement coming apart in front of me, but it might yet take us down with it. A pair of truck bombs drove right into the gassed area and detonated, scattering the gas far and wide, dispersed too much to be dangerous. “Shit!”

  Another wave of Warriors appeared, lunging at the final defence line. This was it, the final battle. My people sensed it as clearly as I did, launching every weapon they had into the midst of the enemy force, no longer caring about running dry as they struggled to kill the Warriors before they killed them. The Warriors kept coming, climbing over the dead bodies of their comrades in a desperate attempt to get at us, piling up their own dead like matchwood. It was madness, unholy madness; they were killing themselves just to bring us down with them…

  “It’s been nice knowing you,” Mac said, as he unslung his assault rifle and prepared to go join the final defence. The stink of burning flesh reached us as a flamethrower did its evil work. “I wouldn’t change anything for the world.”

  “I would,” I said, darkly. Mac blinked at me. “I would have brought more weapons here.”

  The Warriors howled as they broke into our lines, slashing into the midst of the defenders…

  And then the cavalry arrived.

  Chapter Forty-One

  No proceeding is better than that which you have concealed from the enemy until the time you have executed it. To know how to recognize an opportunity in war, and take it, benefits you more than anything else. Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many. Discipline in war counts more than fury.

  -Niccolò Machiavelli

  There are only two ways to defeat an army composed of fanatics; kill them all, or break their faith. We’d employed both in Iraq. An army that has a sublime belief in a certain overwhelming victory, regardless of the losses and setbacks, can only be broken by being broken of that belief, or by being annihilated. The Warriors of the Lord, I had decided after the defeat near Summersville, could be broken if we could hit them hard enough. The trick had been hitting them hard enough to break their faith in victory and their leaders.

  You’d have thought that their rough handling at the FOB, their treatment of prisoners and their own treatment by their leaders would have broken their soldiers’ faith in them, but they’d had terrifying lives ever since the bombs had fallen. They weren't the type of people to complain about bad treatment – it was better than trying to survive on their own, or becoming a slave for the Warriors – and hell, there were rewards. As for the treatment of prisoners, particularly female prisoners…so what? They didn’t have any fear of possible future consequences, while the consequences for not joining in the mass rapes and punishment sessions would be severe. It was one of the many reasons why the idea of an overarching legal code to cover warfare was doomed from the start. There was nothing that a vague future court could threaten the soldiers with that could contrast with their suffering in the here and now. Alone, placed in extreme danger, they did as they were told and didn’t worry about the rightness of their cause…and, after all, if they won the war, they would write the history books. I never liked the theory of war crimes anyway. The war criminal is only a war criminal if his side loses. How is he to know what is a war crime and what was a perfectly legitimate tactic? Answer; the other side would tell him, once they’d won the war. How could that be fair or legal?

  “They’re here,” Mac said, in relief. They’d arrived in the nick of time. “The Warriors are going to be fucking broken!”

  We’d prepared as many vehicles as we could and sent them to Stonewall, accompanied by our best drivers and gunners. (We hadn’t thought of primitive tanks, though; that had been a Warrior innovation.) They’d waited there, behind the walls in the sealed vehicle park that also held some armoured trucks that had been used to transport prisoners, in happier times. They’d been armoured to levels that made some of the military vehicles I’d seen look unprotected, just to ensure that the prisoner’s friends couldn’t liberate him on his way to the courtroom for the umpteenth appeal. It had been known to happen. Richard had been given command of the detachment with instructions to bring the vehicles right into the flank of the Warrior lines, supported by assaults from high above. We were throwing everything we had into one final battle.

  The noise was terrifyingly loud as the vehicles opened fire, raking great streams of tracer into the massed ranks of the Warriors. They’d lost their caution, such as it was, when they’d pushed their way into the final defence lines and their men had been lined up like cattle, hundreds of them. They were easy targets for the machine guns mounted on the vehicles and most of them didn’t even hit the ground or try to defend themselves.

  I keyed my radio. “Rose,” I said, “bring up the women.”

  The noise grew louder as the women emerged from their revenants to join the defenders, who were pushing the Warriors back as they realised that they’d been outflanked. I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t even bothered to watch for threats from outside Ingalls, but perhaps they had and the message had simply gotten lost in the confusion. Some historian would probably draw up a complete plan of the battle and swear blind that I had had a definite battle plan, rather than something I’d just pulled together in a hurry. The Warriors would probably find themselves the heroes, then the villains, and then the heroes again. That’s how historical revisionism works.

  “They’re breaking,” Mac shouted, in delight. We could see it now; the massed ranks of the Warriors, once so united for a purpose, were breaking apart. The dead and dying littered the battlefield everywhere as their lines collapsed into bloody chaos. Here and there, holdouts were still fighting desperately, but they knew that it was a losing game, even if it were the only one left to them. They probably expected that we would kill them on the spot. Others were running for their lives, doubtless fearing that we would put a shot through their backs if they didn’t run fast enough, although I wondered where they would go. I doubted that the Prophet would be so happy to see them after they had lost the war.

  I found myself humming Jonnie Cope under my breath and forced myself to stop.

  “Good,” I said. The disintegration process was growing rapidly as other warriors attempted to surrender, throwing down their guns and putting their hands in the air. Several of them were shot down by their preachers for daring to surrender, but a single burst of machine gun fire sent most of them to their lord. I was sure that he had prepared a wa
rm welcome for them, after everything they’d done in his name. I keyed my radio and called Richard. “Richard, hit them with the surrender demand, now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Richard replied. His voice boomed out over the battlefield. “SURRENDER NOW. THROW DOWN YOUR GUNS, KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND YOU WILL BE SPARED!” The noise had to be heard to be believed. Some of the Warriors had probably been struck deaf by the racket, if they hadn’t been deaf already firing their weapons. “SURRENDER AND YOU WILL LIVE!”

  The fighting was starting to die down as the pockets of resistance were quickly eliminated. Hundreds of warriors – former Warriors, I guessed – wanted to surrender, allowing us to wipe out the pockets of hardcore fighters quickly and brutally. Some of their preachers, I wasn't surprised to see, had broken along with their men, pleading for mercy and fearing that it would never come. Others had tried to flee and had been shot in the back. I liked to think, later, that some of their own soldiers had killed them as they fled. The hardcore fighters had probably accounted for most of them.