by Ralph Peters
“No,” the captain said. His voice was firmer now. “It wasn’t a question. You’ve got the platoon. And the mission.”
A mortar round shrieked in. Everybody flattened. It struck in a courtyard behind high walls, close enough to give the earth a shiver. Another screamed toward them, falling short and biting into the street. Shrapnel stung the air.
“They’re bracketing us,” Garcia yelled. “Get out of here, sir. I got it. Just get us some mortars on that line of buildings up on the crest, if you can.”
“Fires on the way in five. Semper Fi.”
“Semper Fi, sir.”
Gallotti looked at him. The corporal’s eyes caught the glow off a fire down-range. “You still want us to—”
“No. Round ’em up and move out. Forward. Bring some heat on those sonsofbitches. No Navy Crosses, just keep ’em busy.”
Where did plans come from? The Virgin of Guadalupe? He knew exactly what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. So the Army could go for its Sunday drive.
Buy me a candy-apple-red, extended-cab pickup when I get back…
He told Corporal Banks and Barrett to stay with Gallotti and then hustled back to round up the rest of his platoon. His platoon. Wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, but life was tough in the big city.
I can do this, he thought. Fuck, yeah. Go, Marine.
OFFSHORE
“Okay, Deuce,” Lieutenant General Harris said as he dropped into his chair, “talk to me.”
The G-2, Colonel Val Danczuk, stood up and made his way through the packed wardroom until he reached the screen.
“Sir,” he addressed Harris, “we had a solid imagery feed for almost a half hour. The Third Jihadi Corps has definitely been pulling back and—”
“Plan, or panic?”
“I’d say ‘panic.’ The deception worked. They were locked and cocked to defend south of the ridges. Thought we’d come ashore between Netanya and Caesarea, right on the flank of the MOBIC assault. Now they’ve abandoned Hadera, and it looks like they’ll tie in a new forward line of defense on the Megiddo-Qiryat Ti’von line.”
“Main line of defense?”
“Afula-Nazareth-Shefar’am.”
Harris nodded. “You sure they didn’t stop jamming the overhead link on purpose? To show us what they wanted us to see?”
The G-2 took a quick chaw on his lip. Tall and blessed with the sort of good looks that gray hair only improved, Colonel Danczuk looked like a general from the casting office. It amused Harris, who was five-eight and as plain as a church supper, to think that, if you took off their rank and put the entire staff in a line-up, any right-thinking civilian would pick out the Deuce, not him, as the corps commander.
“No, sir,” Danczuk said. “I wouldn’t ever want to underestimate an enemy, but I don’t think this was on purpose. The highways feeding back into the Jezreel Valley looked like a giant clusterfuck.”
Harris turned to the senior Air Force officer in the room. “And you boys still aren’t flying? We used to call that a target-rich environment, back in the days of the horse cavalry.”
The brigadier general reddened. “Sir… We’d like to be flying… We will fly… You’ll get your support… But right now, the jamming…”
Harris’s entire corps had just a few more artillery tubes than a division would have fielded a generation earlier. The Air Force was supposed to be the Army’s flying artillery, delivering precision munitions on any enemy foolish enough to fight. Except that now, the smart bombs didn’t work, and the airplanes couldn’t fly.
Harris mastered his temper. Maybe the zoomies would deliver down the road. And the blue-suiter looked sufficiently beaten up. “Yeah, I know. Wipes out your computers. Gonna take up a collection and buy you boys a squadron of old Phantoms from the Paraguayans — Deuce, the Paraguayans still have Phantoms?”
Danczuk took the question seriously. “Sir, I don’t think they ever… I mean, maybe some old F-16s. I can check…”
“Forget it, Deuce.” He turned back to the Air Force officer. “I still love you, Hank. We all love you. But I’d like to put some hot metal on those bad boys before doomsday. Which reminds me,” he shifted his attention back to the G-2, “tell me if I’m coughing up fur balls, but Meggido’s Armageddon, correct?”
“Roger, sir. The tel’s one of the most important archaeological sites in the—”
“And our Muslim friends are digging in there? It’s just about high enough for an Egyptian spear-carrier outfit to control a chariot crossing.” Harris got it, but he wanted the others to see the logic on their own, if they could. “Why do you think they’re digging in at Megiddo, Deuce?” He scanned the crowded, steaming hot room. “Anybody? Any ideas?”
A Navy captain sitting in for the admiral raised his hand. “It’s a protected site. They figure we’ll be reluctant to attack an archaelogical treasure and—”
“Bingo!” Harris said, pointing a gun made of fingers at the captain. The general turned to his senior Artilleryman. “Chris, I want everybody in this room to hear me giving you this order: If the Jihadis use Meggido Hill as part of their defenses, I want you to hit it so hard that there’s nothing left but a smoking hole. Got that?”
“General,” the pol-mil rep from State jumped in, “we can’t do that, that’s one of the most important sites in the entire Middle East… in the world, really…” He looked as if he were fighting seasickness. And probably was.
“Cultural Understanding 101,” Harris said. “On my first tour in Iraq, as a lieutenant, we were under orders never to enter a mosque. Know what that accomplished? It guaranteed that mosques were going to be used as insurgent bases and safe houses and to hide arms caches. Because we failed to take down one mosque at the outset, we turned a thousand of them into sanctuaries.” He snorted. “As for Meggido… two things: First, if they’re really there — you get me confirmation, Deuce — they’re not going to be there long. Our Jihadi friends are going to get an education in what happens when a commander picks a lousy defensive position just because he thinks we’ll be too limp-dicked to hit it. After that, I suspect we’ll see fewer historical sites occupied in the future. Second,” he looked around, wondering, as he always had to now, which of the officers present were reporting to the MOBIC’s internal intelligence unit, “I want everyone to be absolutely clear on one thing: I will not sacrifice one American soldier or Marine to save a single pile of sacred rocks between here and the Pacific Ocean.” He shook his head. “We’re going to win this campaign. And there’ll be plenty of history left over. Okay, Deuce, one more question. Same one as always: Any sign of nukes?”
Danczuk shook his head. “Sir, as I’ve briefed—”
“I don’t want ‘as you briefed.’ I want right now. Listen, Val, you’re doing great.” He swept the room with the commander’s gaze he’d mastered over the years. “You’re all doing great.” He turned back to the G-2. “But I want you to watch for any sign of nukes. Any least hint. Maybe they’re just an urban legend… but I want you to watch for them.”
“Sir, the DIA and the CIA are both convinced that the Jihadis have no nuclear weapons. The last Ira ni an weapons were expended in the exchange with Israel, and the made-in-Pakistan arms were all detonated during the war with India and in the subsequent terror attacks on the United States. We’ve never seen any indicators of more nukes, sir. None.”
“Yet, the rumors continue.” Harris nodded to himself. “Two, maybe three. Held in deep reserve. Watch it for me, Val.”
“Sir, they would’ve used them on the MOBIC landings down south. If they had them.”
Harris wiped a hand across his jaw. “Maybe. Speaking of MOBIC, what’s the latest you got, Three?”
Colonel Mike Andretti, the G-3 operations officer, swapped places with the G-2. “Two divisions already over the beach, sir. Sounds like a bloody mess, but they’re pushing ahead. The latest situation report — the last one that came through from MOBIC — has their forward elements fifteen clicks u
p the Jerusalem highway.” The colonel shook his head. “It’s all just hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle.”
Harris did what he could to suppress his disgust. Regulars or MOBIC troops, he didn’t believe in wasting American lives.
“Casualties? Any numbers?”
His aide, Major Willing, rushed in. “Sir? General Morris is on the horn.”
Harris jumped up. “Secure or nonsecure?”
“We have him secure, sir. He wants to talk to you ASAP.”
Harris scanned the room. Quickly. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Just hold in place.”
The general hurried to the commo cell next door, footsteps slapping metal. A staff sergeant held out a headset. Harris motioned for everyone to clear the room.
“Monk?”
“Green light. Road’s open as far as Isfiya. Not one hundred percent secure, but I’d call it close enough. We’re pushing down toward Daliyat. First Battalion, Fifth Marines have been tangling with stay-behinds all night. Suicide commandos mostly. One company got hit hard up in a ville. But the Jihadis pulled back their heavy metal. Whatever isn’t broken down by the side of the road.”
“Good work. Great work. Remind me to buy a Marine a beer when this is over. How’s the beach?”
“What beach? Christ, we just put a Marine division-minus over a shingle the width of a sidewalk.”
“When do you think you can get down to Route 70?”
“Recon’s knocking on the back door right now. The Jihadis didn’t expect this one. Even after they figured out that it wasn’t a feint, they didn’t seem to want to risk their armor up here.”
“Their gear’s in even worse shape than ours. Maintenance a lot worse.”
“Well, thank God for lazy mechanics. Listen… sir… from one fancy-pants Marine to one dogface grunt… I had my doubts about this. I wasn’t really sure we could pull it off.”
“We haven’t pulled it off. Not yet. But thanks.”
“We caught them with their pants down.”
“So to speak. Okay, Monk. Good work.”
“Tell it to the Marines.”
He clicked off. Immediately, Harris returned to the wardroom. “Three. Green light. Get the Big Red One on the beach. Scotty still colocated with his Fourth Brigade?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You tell him I want Quarter Cav headed uphill by BMNT to coordinate the forward passage of lines. We need to keep punching while the Jihadis are still reeling.”
“Yes, sir.”
The G-3 headed for the hatch, followed by his deputies.
“The rest of you can clear out,” Harris said. “Sorry I kept you waiting. Go do what you’ve got to do, then get a couple hours’ sleep. Let your subordinates earn their pay. Four, you hang back. We need to have a pow-wow.”
The staff members cleared the room, moving through air so humid the next stage would’ve been swimming.
“Okay, Real-Deal. Talk to me. How you going to make this work?”
The colonel responsible for logistics, Sean “Real-Deal” McCoy, threw up his hands in the polar-bear salute. He had worked for Harris at battalion, brigade, and division, and he still played the staff-clown role that Harris had tacitly agreed to tolerate a decade before.
“Work? We’ve got less than a quarter of the force ashore, and I’m already holding things together with chewing gum and baling wire.”
“POL?”
“Over-the-beach will keep the tanks full for three, maybe four days. Then we’re up against it. Basic physics. Once we’re down in the Jezreel, we’re not going to be able to move enough fuel over those ridges without asking the engineers to spend a year or two building pumping stations.” He waved his arms, as if the world were ending. “Eighty-four percent of the big boys and about seventy percent of the infantry tracks have been refitted with the miniaturized engines. But ‘miniaturized’ is still relative.”
“Got it.”
“Sir, I need your permission on something.”
“Talk to me.”
“The SeaBees want to play. They’re good guys.”
“And?”
“They want to suit up and go ashore at Haifa, check out the condition of whatever’s left, see if we can run any of the old pipelines…”
“You’ve seen the radiation charts. Most of Haifa’s a dead zone. It was hit even harder than Tel Aviv.”
“They’d just be in and out. Suited up. The radiation’s patchy. Or so Tolliver tells me. Once we’ve taken a bite out of the Jezreel, we might be able to run a line and keep it going with robotics.” He waved one arm, then the other, a scarecrow on a caffeine jag. “Beats trying to pump enough POL over those ridges to get us to Damascus.”
“I just want to get this corps ashore, at the moment.” Harris sighed, something he did only when he was too weary to catch himself. “All right. If the ‘High Lord of the Admiralty’ has no objections, the SeaBees can go in. And God bless ’em. But Sean…”
The Four perked up. Harris used his given name, rather than “Real-Deal,” only when things were deadly serious.
“… I don’t want you going ashore at Haifa. Not now. I need you.”
“Doesn’t sound like my kind of town, anyway, sir.”
“And ask me, before you decide to go in the future. No surprises. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I could piss on my boots for saying this, but you’re the indispensible man on this one, Sean. We can fight blind, if we have to, and we even can fight without a plan, if it comes to that. But those soldiers and Marines can’t fight without bullets, water, POL, chow, and Band-Aids.”
“And T-and-A mags? Ah, for the good, old days of the Internet…”
“I’m serious, Sean. You know my priorities on this one: ammo, potable water, POL, then chow. As long as they’ve got something to shoot and something to drink, we’ll at least survive.”
“Loggie Basic for the Middle East, sir: warm water, cold rations, rounds in the chamber, and fuel in the tank.”
“Don’t carry this load yourself. Come to me if you need supporting fires.”
The G-4 looked at the man he had served for half of his career. “You’re not carrying a few short tons yourself?”
Harris smiled. “That’s what I do for a living, Real-Deal. Beats working. Try to get some sleep yourself, all right? I don’t want to see a thousand-mile stare at tomorrow night’s briefing.”
“Which will be where, exactly?”
Harris smiled. “In the Land of the Bible, as our MOBIC brothers put it. Now, march, soldier.”
Flintlock Harris signed nine papers, then dismissed his aide and walked two bulkheads down to his stateroom — which reminded him of a room in a motel bypassed by the Interstate in the last century. The moment he shut the hatch, he let his shoulders sag. And he closed his eyes where he stood, touching them lightly, as if probing for damage.
After washing his face and brushing his teeth, Harris took off his uniform blouse to sleep. He kept his trousers on, though. In case he had to move fast. But before he dropped onto the bunk, he got to his knees, just as he had done since his childhood.
His prayers were never long, but always earnest. This night, he was as brief as he had ever been and didn’t even pray for his wife and two daughters. He just said:
“Dear Lord, give me the strength to see what’s right and the strength to do what’s right. Help me be a just man. Amen.”
MT. CARMEL RIDGES
A male form emerged from the burning house and ran toward the Marines.
“Peace! Peace!” he cried. “America good!”
“Halt!” Sergeant Garcia yelled. “Stop!”
The man kept running through the darkness, shifting his course to head straight for Garcia and repeating, “America good!”
“Halt!”
Garcia pulled the trigger at the same instant the suicide bomber detonated himself. He felt the shock wave, but the bomber had not gotten close enough to do any damage. Garcia hoped.
/> “Everybody okay? Check your buddy.”
No casualties. This time.
“Drink some water. Everybody. Now. If you’re out of water, piss in your hand and drink it.”
Bad enough to lose good Marines to the Jihadis. Garcia wasn’t going to lose them to dehydration. But the fact, which he did not broadcast, was that his own camelback was empty. He figured most of his men were in the same boat.
Drink it, if you got it.
They had flanked the Jihadi positions on the ridge as mortar rounds, then serious artillery fire, thumped down on the houses the Mussies had turned into rent-a-forts. In the flame-scorched night, twisted rebar scratched the air, and the block-shaped buildings looked like the faces of junkies with their teeth knocked out.
The street bums back home. So far gone on one drug or another that even their families didn’t want any part of them. Could’ve joined that outfit, too. One more road Garcia had never gone down. No gang tattoos, either. Just the Virgin of Guadalupe. And she’d done okay by him so far. Patron saint of the Marine Corps. From the Halls of Montezuma. The brass just hadn’t figured that one out.
“Larsen, Cropsey. Take the flank. Move out!” Garcia pointed toward the backside of the ridge.
The Marines worked forward, maintaining good combat intervals. No one fired at them. But Garcia had his street sense turned on. There were still bad guys up in that mess, behind the remaining walls. Armed and dangerous. The human body was loco. You could trip on the sidewalk and die, or live through an artillery barrage dumped on your head.
“Sitrep?” he heard through his headset. The captain. Solid again. Mr. Annapolis.
“Rounds on target. Moving in now.”
“Re sis tance?”
“There’s gonna be. It smells like it smells.”
“Keep moving. Battalion needs that ridge cleared.”
