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

by FX Holden

  She switched to the JTAC channel. “Lava Dogs, Golani Angel, you there, Patel?”

  “We’re here, Angel,” Patel replied immediately. She knew he would be hanging on the radio, hoping for a lifeline. She couldn’t lie to him.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news, Corporal…”

  There was a reason Bunny O’Hare didn’t just walk out of her trailer at the end of her mission, go back to her quarters, pop the cap off a beer and put her feet up.

  It was called atonement.

  She was only on her first combat tour, but she’d already screwed up, and men and women on the ground – men and women like those Lava Dogs over there – had died. Died horribly.

  She had been running combat air support for the defense of the NATO air base at Incirlik. Syrian troops and tanks were inside the airport perimeter, all other aircraft had been pulled out, and she’d been returning from a Wild Weasel attack on a Syrian electronic warfare unit. She’d spotted Syrian rocket launchers setting up and had requested permission for a strafing run, but had been called off by the AWACS controller and assigned to escort some US B-21 Raider bombers coming in from Germany.

  She’d looked out of her cockpit at the enemy trucks below, and she’d turned away.

  The Syrians had used those trucks to launch a chemical weapons attack on Incirlik and nearly two dozen American soldiers had lost their lives, caught out in the open in a fog of nerve gas. The B-21s she was sent to escort had ended the Syrian attack with a blizzard of cruise missiles, but they probably would have got through anyway, without her.

  So, yeah. Bunny O’Hare had lost a lot of sleep over that. That incident had taught her that the guy in the AWACS, or behind the desk, wasn’t infallible. That having all the intel didn’t mean you always made the right call. That sometimes a pilot should listen to what her gut was telling her and do what seems right because, hell, it probably was. Even if it meant a court-martial later.

  And that sometimes, the only thing standing between the guy or girl on the ground in the desert camouflage uniform and a horrible, gasping death was a troubled pilot who decided to give a target just one more pass.

  Zeidan Amar had heard the strike on his troops up at the intersection and run up there immediately to supervise the treatment and transport of casualties and get some idea of what had happened. It looked like a mortar strike, but the injuries were … not what he’d expected. A mortar caused shrapnel and blast wounds, but these were more devastating. He examined one man who had pinprick wounds to his legs, another who had been hit in the stomach and was curled up in pain, but not bleeding. Others were simply dead, or had been hit in the head, blinded, deafened. The white statue in the middle of the intersection gave him the clue – it was pockmarked with dozens of small pits and lying at its base were what looked like dozens of nails, bent and blunted after striking the stone of the statue. A flechette bomb, designed to cause mass casualties rather than massive property damage.

  Just the thing an IDF corporal who lived in this town would choose to use against an occupying force. His suspicions were confirmed when one of his men ran up with what was obviously the wing of a drone.

  Following the two attacks on his scouts Amar had decided it was time to rid himself once and for all of the Americans. He had planned an assault from two sides … the south-west through the trees, which would allow him to lay down covering fire for an attack by rocket-propelled grenades and grenade launchers, and from the east, where a squad of his best troops would scale the cliff leading from the quarry up to the Marines’ compound and assault them from the rear while they were pinned down by his troops in the south-west.

  It was a sound plan, even though it would mean a regrettable number of casualties among the Israeli townspeople sheltering with the Marines. He had hoped the situation could be resolved without more bloodletting, but the US troops’ continued aggression had ruled that out.

  He watched as a jeep drove off with stretchers bearing badly wounded casualties on its front and rear. Some of his best men had been laid low; there would be no assaulting up the cliff face now. I have shown restraint. No more.

  He’d returned to his temporary command center and issued the orders that had brought forward his plans considerably. He was supposed to wait for a signal from his Syrian contact before calling in the Russian armor, but to wait any longer risked more losses and put his entire objective in jeopardy.

  He called his second in command, a Druze major who thankfully had not been wounded in the attack at the intersection because he was responsible for making preparations for the next phase of the operation.

  “Ayach, has the antenna been mounted on the roof?”

  The major was a compact man with a thick neck and powerful shoulders. He had been a wrestler in the Lebanese Olympic team before agreeing to join the fight for his spiritual homeland. He walked over. “Yes, Zeidan. We’ve set up a comms station on the top floor – you can broadcast on military UHF and VHF frequencies, but also AM, FM, DAB radio and longwave. Internet too, of course. Powered by wind and solar, battery and diesel backup, all hooked up and tested.”

  “And our troops in Majdal Shams, Mas’ade and Ein Qiniyye?”

  “Are just waiting for your broadcast, Zeidan. The local police in all locations have already joined themselves to us.”

  “Good. Make it ready.”

  “Now?”

  “Now, Ayach. I’m bringing the timetable forward.”

  He nodded. “It’s ready. Follow me.”

  They headed for the stairs up to the second floor and the comms specialists working there stopped and stood to a kind of attention … or the closest to it their IDF training allowed. The People’s Army … well, he had the IDF to thank for preparing these men to defend their true homeland. He now had to be sure their courage and sacrifice were not for nothing.

  “As you were, everyone…” he said, walking over to a private sitting by the big radio transmitter. “UHF, I need to contact the Strauss Group in Quneitra.”

  “Yes, Zeidan,” the man replied. He had the encrypted frequency as a preset and quickly dialed it in, then handed a handset to Amar.

  “Strauss Group Quneitra, this is Lieutenant Colonel Zeidan Amar, Buq’ata, for Major Aleksiy Tayukin…” Zeidan checked his watch. The Russian was probably sitting down for his supper. Well, he was about to be rudely interrupted.

  “Major Tayukin, do you have a report, Amar?”

  Zeidan chafed at the man’s arrogance. He was a Major, addressing a Lieutenant Colonel, recently promoted to acting Brigade Commander of an elite IDF brigade. And yet as a Russian, he felt no need to show any respect to his Arabic superior. That would change.

  “Major Tayukin, your forces are under my command, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Zeidan kept his voice level. “Then you will bloody well act like it and show some respect or at the first opportunity I will have my men stand you against a wall and shoot you. Is that clear?”

  He could imagine the man biting down his bile, but he gave the right reply. “Perfectly clear, Comrade Colonel.”

  “Good. Mobilize your troops and armor. I will be making my broadcast in five minutes and I expect your tanks and infantry to be here within the hour.”

  “An hour? I … Comrade Colonel, with respect, the timetable for crossing the ceasefire line was…”

  “The timetable has changed. The situation here is that a squad of UNDOF troops, US Marines, has taken up a defensive position on the outskirts of town and they are conducting offensive operations within Buq’ata. I have suffered several casualties already and we require your armor here, now.”

  “A UNDOF force, conducting combat operations? That is … unprecedented.”

  “As unprecedented as US troops appearing here, but we must adapt. Get your tanks rolling, Major. Report when you reach the Highway 9799 junction.”

  “Colonel, all of my vehicles and troops are under cover in Quneitra. The Israeli Air Force is hitting anything that moves
within twenty miles of its eastern border. If I order my anti-air units to begin operation, there is a high likelihood they will be targeted.”

  “Then call for air cover. What did you expect? That the road from Quneitra to Buq’ata would be strewn with palm fronds and cheering crowds?”

  “We also have reports the Israeli 7th Armored was seen at Kfar Blum, headed east, several hours ago. Do you have an update on their position?”

  One of his men, who had been listening in on the call on a headset, scribbled on some paper and handed it to him. “Yes. They are stalled at HaGoshrim, 12 miles east. The road between HaGoshrim and here is blocked with trucks and IFVs of the Golani Brigade who were ordered by me to withdraw east. The commander of the 7th Armored just radioed that they are going to go south, through Gonen, and reinforce Merom Golan from there. I expect the Golani Brigade will also be ordered to return to their positions on the border as soon as it becomes known in Camp Rabin what is happening. Which makes it all the more important you move now, Major.”

  “Very well, it will take thirty minutes to mobilize, another hour to get around the border obstructions and get to you. Ninety minutes to two hours, if we meet no opposition.”

  “I said you have sixty, Major. I expect to see your tanks here in that time. Out,” Zeidan said curtly. “Asshole,” he muttered under his breath, but making sure the men near him heard.

  They’d heard, and were smiling.

  “How are you planning to do this?” Amar asked the radio technician.

  “I recommend we send sequentially on FM, AM and DAB,” the man said. “That way we will reach most of the civilian population at home and on their car radios. That will enable us to cover all of Majdal Shams, Mas’ade, Buq’ata, and Ein Qiniyye. I will record and rebroadcast every fifteen minutes, including on UHF and VHF, AM and longwave frequencies. Those will be intercepted by the IDF for sure, if the others aren’t. We’ve set up a dedicated internet radio channel; it will run continuously on there too as soon as internet links are restored. And our consul in Syria is waiting to provide your statement to media outlets in Damascus as soon as we send word.”

  “Very good.” Amar pulled the typed statement from his top pocket, almost identical to the media statement he’d provided his Syrian contact the previous evening, but tweaked to reach into the hearts of every Druze civilian in the Golan. “I’m ready when you are.”

  The man began fussing with his console and Zeidan looked around the room. There were about ten soldiers in the command center under Ayach’s command, and they had all stopped what they were doing to listen in. He couldn’t blame them. They were a part of history in the making, and they deserved this moment.

  The man held his earphones closer to his head and held up five fingers to Zeidan. “Alright, live in five, four, three, two…”

  Upstairs inside Amal’s house, she was moving among the small group of frightened townsfolk, trying to reassure them. There was nothing she could do for the two wounded Marines downstairs, and the corporal, Patel, had taken charge of the defense of the compound. The first thing he had done was put two extra riflemen on the roof, while the rest piled her furniture up in front of the south and side-facing windows, knocked out the glass and set up shooting positions covering the southern approaches. Corporal Patel also put one Marine on the roof, looking over the shed at the rear to the quarry and fields in the east and watching for hostiles, or the arrival of the resupply and medevac flight. It hurt Amal to watch them treat her furniture so roughly, some of which had been in her family for generations, but she made no complaint. These men were from a land a world away from hers, and yet they were apparently willing to risk their lives defending the townspeople upstairs. This was not their fight, but they had made it theirs. If they needed to tear her house apart to save it, so be it.

  The house was dark now. The only light was from moonlight leaking through the windows or from the torches on the Marine’s weapons, and the pen light she had lent to the old Druze nurse, Gadeer, so that she could check on the condition of the wounded.

  The townsfolk had the battery-powered radio in her upstairs sitting room turned on, but it had only been playing Israeli emergency broadcasts for the last 24 hours and there had been no real news bulletins. It was like the world outside Buq’ata had simply gone dark.

  Amal was glad to see that none of the wounded had worsened dramatically. She was most concerned about a woman with burns to her arms and torso who was starting to show signs of a fever, and Gadeer, who seemed close to exhaustion. She had just finished taking the temperature of the woman with the burns and Amal motioned her over.

  “Thirty-nine seven,” Gadeer said quietly. “Up a half degree since two hours ago. The Marine medic gave her some painkillers but they won’t prevent infection. We should get her to a hospital, soon.”

  Amal put a hand on the nurse’s shoulder. “What about you, Gadeer? When did you last sleep?”

  The old woman lifted her hand away gently. “I slept last night. And I took another nap this afternoon. Don’t worry about me, I sleep like a cat, every chance I get.”

  Amal shook her head. “Such a sweet face and such a liar.”

  “That is no way to talk to…”

  “Wait!” Amal said, holding a hand up to the woman’s mouth. She heard a change in the radio broadcast, a burst of martial music. “Listen! Turn up that radio!” she said to an old man sitting next to it. He was already reaching for the radio and fumbled with the volume as a man started speaking.

  She recognized the voice immediately. The Druze colonel.

  “Residents of the Golan Heights, my name is Colonel Zeidan Amar, commander of the Druze Sword Battalion. I speak to you from Buq’ata, which today has been reclaimed by loyal Druze soldiers to serve as the capital of a new Druze province in the Golan Heights.”

  “What?” Gadeer asked.

  Amal took the old woman’s hand and pulled her to sit beside her as the Druze officer continued.

  “Druze residents of Majdal Shams, Mas’ade, Buq’ata, and Ein Qiniyye, I call on you to rejoice. In 1967 the homeland granted to us by the United Nations was stolen from us by Israel in an unprovoked attack on Syria. Today, Jewish settlers lashing out in prejudice and with unjustified fear over the situation inside Israel attacked peaceful Druze residents in Buq’ata in a horrific terrorist incident that claimed several lives. Only the actions of the brave troops of the Druze Sword Battalion were able to contain the attack, and the terrorists have withdrawn.”

  “No, that’s not what happened!” the old man exclaimed. “They, they…”

  “The terrorist threat is, however, still present and the terrorists’ actions, supported as they are by all of the military instruments of the Israeli State, threaten all Druze citizens throughout the Golan Heights. Therefore, I have today requested the assistance of the Syrian government, the rightful government of the Golan Heights, to send peacekeeping forces to the Golan. The Syrian government has not just agreed to assist us in this endeavor, but to help the Druze people of the Golan Heights establish a new Druze homeland, with Buq’ata as its capital, to be henceforth known as the Golani Governate.

  “To help the smooth transition of power in our new province, I am required to declare martial law and a state of emergency in the towns of Majdal Shams, Mas’ade, Buq’ata and Ein Qiniyye, effective immediately. A night-time curfew will be introduced with immediate effect, and all movement except by police and the military between 1800 and 0500 is forbidden. Civilians will be required to stay at home, and will be arrested if they break curfew. The following edicts are also in force…”

  “Here it comes,” the old man said, shaking his head.

  “All Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights are to be evacuated immediately. Israeli residents of Syrian nationality may remain in the province. All Israeli residents who do not have Syrian nationality should return immediately to Israel. If you do not leave voluntarily, the police and military of the Golani Governate are authorized to arrest a
nd deport you to Israel.”

  “I wonder if they plan to put us in buses, or behind razor wire…” the old man said bitterly.

  “They would not,” Gadeer said, shocked. “These are our neighbors.”

  “Not him. Sword Battalion? There is no Sword Battalion! He is a self-appointed, jumped-up…”

  “Quiet please,” Amal said. “Listen…”

  “… all Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights are illegal according to multiple UN conventions and agreements and are hereby declared illegal by the government of the Golani Governate. Residents of the following illegal settlements are to evacuate immediately to Israel or you will be forcibly evacuated by the police and military of the Golani Governate: Katzrin, Haspin, Bnei Yahuda, Nov…”

  His voice droned on, listing the more than forty Israeli settlements in the Golan, some of them only a hundred settlers strong. Amal was painfully aware that there were fewer than 20,000 Israeli settlers in the Golan, and more than 30,000 Arabic-speaking Druze and others who still considered themselves a part of Syria and who, unlike her and her brother Mansur, hadn’t taken Israeli citizenship. She had pointed this out to him, but Mansur had told her to think of the future, not mire herself in the past. Peaceful coexistence is the future of the Golan, he’d said. People will see that.

  Apparently not.

  The colonel continued. “Third, all armed members of the Israeli Defense Forces, either active or reserve, are to hand in their weapons to the police or military of the Golani Governate. From tomorrow at midnight, any uniformed member of the Israeli Armed Forces found within the 1967 boundaries of the Syrian Golani Governate will be deemed hostile and may be fired upon.” Amal shook her head. Every Israeli settler in the Golan was a member of the IDF, either serving, or in the reserve. Few would willingly leave their homes in the townships and kibbutzim, and she knew that if they weren’t already, all across the Golan Heights they would now be mobilizing, fortifying their settlements and setting up defenses. What the Druze colonel had just announced was nothing short of a declaration of civil war.