by Ralph Peters
Harris studied the flies on the ceiling, fighting the thought that the Lord of the Flies was triumphant. After a bit, he said, “I’ll miss the First Amendment. And the exiled children of Israel had better look out when we start using the word ‘providential’ on their behalf. In the dictionary, it comes just before ‘provisional’.”
“Sir… May I ask you something? Kind of personal?”
“Majors don’t ask generals personal questions. But I suppose we can make a war time exception. Shoot.”
“You are a Christian believer. Right, sir?”
“Hoping Jesus will have me, and trusting in His mercy. What’s the question behind the question?”
“Why has this amendment bothered you so much? I mean, I’m just trying to understand…”
Closing his eyes, Harris said, “A nation that’s Christian in its heart doesn’t need to write it into law. Now go get some sleep yourself.”
NINE
HEADQUARTERS, III (US) CORPS, MT. CARMEL RIDGES
“We’ve got a parasite inside the Jihadis’ fire-control system,” the briefer said. The room with the portable screens bore the smell of weary men, of stale breath, sweat, and burnt circuits. “We were able to penetrate them at the corps level. The bug is programmed to activate at 1 ID’s LD time. When the first blue vehicle crosses the line, all Jihadi indirect fire assets netted for autocontrol will reprogram to impact three thousand meters short, with a thirty-degree left deviation.” He paused to make eye contact with the G-2 and the deputy G-3, who was sitting in for his sleeping boss. “We estimate it will take them fifteen to max thirty minutes to identify the problem and a minimum of two hours to fix it.”
“Morphing parasite?” Val Danczuk, the corps intelligence officer, asked.
“Yes, sir. That’s why we’re pretty sure we’ve got two hours.”
Danczuk turned to the deputy operations officer, wondering if Mike Andretti hadn’t made the right decision by catching some sleep. You could run on empty for only so long. “View from the Three side?”
“Two hours should get 1 ID into the Afula defenses. If they’re going to get there at all. What about the drones?”
The briefer shook his head. “Sir, we still haven’t been able to penetrate their network.”
“So the drones, like the poor, will always be with us?” the deputy G-3 said.
There was a slight pause, a half-moment of held breath, before the briefer responded. Mocking Scripture wasn’t safe, even in the Army’s inner circles.
“Sir, for now the only option on the drones is to continue working the spoofers against them,” the briefer told him.
“Which has not,” the deputy Three said, “been a raging success.”
“Best we can do, sir. We’re trying.”
The deputy shook his head and turned to Danczuk. Question mark on his face.
“We’re working it, Bruce. We all want to crack that particular code. But two out of three isn’t bad — indirect fire down and, if things go the way the we think they will, at least a brief window of safety from the antitank defenses.”
“I wish we had air, sir. Where’s the zoomie?”
“He turned in,” one of the staffers said.
“Christ.” The deputy G-3 held up his hands in mock surrender.
“Okay,” Danczuk said, eager to wrap up the briefing, “anything else?” He scanned the tired faces. Even the night-shift officers looked beat. Not much sleep to be had while the headquarters moved ashore.
“Well, I have one last question,” the deputy G-3 said. “Anybody here from commo?”
A major raised his hand.
“We going to be able to talk any better tomorrow?”
The major shook his head. “Sir, we’re doing the best we can. We’re getting jammed on every microfrequency. It’s a miracle we can talk at all. At least they’re getting intermittent comms at company and below.”
The deputy Three looked at Danczuk, who outranked him by one grade. “Sir, I feel like I’m in Korea with my great-grandfather.”
“Well, don’t get frostbite,” Danczuk said. He was getting tired of the deputy Three’s swagger. The man was far more subdued when his boss was present. “All right. A-Shift, get some rack time. B-Shift, back to work.” He looked at an officer who’d been sitting quietly against the wall. “Major Kim, if you still need to talk to me, hang back. But no epic poetry tonight.”
The younger officer nodded. Val Danczuk regarded him as the brightest analyst and reconnaissance officer on his staff. Even if he wasn’t a Steelers fan.
When the room had cleared, the G-2 said, “Watcha got?”
“Mind if I shut the door, sir?”
“Shut it.”
The major closed the door. It was ill-set and had to be forced. Like everything else in this rathole, Danczuk thought.
Major Kim spread a half-dozen imagery culls on the table in front of the G-2. “Sir, I’d like you to take a look at these.”
Danczuk glanced at them. Same target in each one, although the angles and shadows were different: a tented complex in a grove. Some hardstand. The main facilities bore the Red Crescent signature.
“Okay, Jim. Help me out. I’m too tired to play Twenty Questions.”
The major leaned in close enough for the G-2 to smell the last rations the younger man had eaten. “Sir, this site’s in the Upper Galilee. Way up, almost to the old Lebanese border. And if it’s really a field hospital, I’ve got three questions.”
“Which are?”
“The Jihadis have been taking serious casualties. But look at the imagery. We’ve got drone shots and two angles from the DSI-40 satellite. We got those this afternoon, when the downlink punched through for a couple of hours. The other shots are from this morning or yesterday — and there’s an infrared from less than three hours ago.” The major backed off slightly. “Where’s the ambulance traffic? Except for the shadows and the angles, the shots are virtually identical. Hardly any movement. Look at this one: exactly two ground personnel visible. But they’ve got fully manned guardposts down this road.” He pointed with a pen. “There. And over here. And here.”
“Second question?”
“If it’s a field hospital, why isn’t it closer to a main road? Why tuck it off a single-lane side road in the boonies?”
“Third question?”
“If it’s a hospital, why is part of the site camouflaged?” He pointed again. “What looks like trees over here is ghost netting.”
“Chinese?”
“Made in India, sir. Tech transfer from Dassault. If we’re reading the wavelengths right.”
Danczuk nodded. “And?”
“Sir, the J’s are short of ghost netting. It’s a prime commodity. Why use it on a hospital? Which you shouldn’t be trying to hide at all? And by the way, there’s no sign of air-evac activity in any shot. No sign of any patients at all.”
“And Major Jim Kim’s analysis would be?” Danczuk asked. Afraid he knew damned well what the answer was.
“Sir, I believe this is a nuke field-storage site. I believe they’re prepping nuclear munitions in that main tent complex, although I can’t say how many. Just look at those generators. Those aren’t for a hospital. And we don’t know what’s under the ghost netting. Could even be launchers, it could be—”
The G-2 held up his hand. But he didn’t speak immediately after cutting off his subordinate. He gave him a pay-attention stare first.
“Jim… You’re a first-rate officer. Best analyst I’ve got. You read that on your efficiency report. Your pre-landing estimates could be used as models at Ft. Leavenworth. But I need you to listen to me now. Unless you have proof—proof—and more than a hackles-up hunch about this, I don’t want to hear another word spoken about it. And that’s an order. Not a word. Not to anybody.”
“But, sir… General Harris—”
“You’re not listening. I want you to go on receive now. And this is strictly between us. You’ve got a great career ahead of you in MI
. If you don’t fall into the trap that’s taken down more intel officers than straight-ahead bad calls ever did. Don’t get on a hobby horse. Don’t go into target-lock mode.” He gestured toward another man whom they both could envision beyond the room’s mottled walls. “We’ve got to protect General Harris on this one. Nukes are turning into his hobby horse. And every damned agency in D.C. agrees that the Jihadis have no nukes left. Based on the codeword evidence, I agree with the National Intelligence Estimate on this one.”
Exhausted, Danczuk sat back, looking at his subordinate again but not quite seeing him this time. Thinking. About the boss he’d served since he’d been a brigade S-2. Best commander he’d ever seen. Normally.
“General Harris is under a lot of pressure,” the G-2 said. “Not because he’s been wrong about anything, but because he’s been right about so many things. And it’s not just the MOBIC crowd we have to protect him against. Even in the Army, there’s plenty of jealousy toward Flintlock Harris, the general everybody laughed at because he made his lieutenants read maps without the benefit of GPS. Plenty of folks wouldn’t mind seeing him make a fool out of himself now, after he was so damned right.” Danczuk scratched a sudden itch on his scalp. “Even if that meant Sim Montfort becoming the hero of the day.”
“Yes, sir. But couldn’t we just hit the site? It’s obvious that it isn’t a field hospital.”
“Tempting,” the G-2 said. “It’s tempting. Have you considered that it might be their forward command post, by the way?”
Stubborn, Major Kim shook his head. “Not enough vehicular traffic, sir. It’s not a command post.”
“Well, find out what it is, then. I don’t want you on a nuke trea — sure hunt, but if we can confirm that it’s not a field hospital — and I mean ‘confirm’—we can go after it. But I know Flintlock Harris well enough to be as certain as bedbugs in Baghdad that he won’t green-light attacking a Red Crescent site unless we have confirmation from multiple sources that it isn’t what it claims to be.”
“But… If it is a nuke site—”
“But… If it is a nuke site—”
“It’s not. “It’s not. Didn’t you hear one goddamned word I said?”
5TH MARINES, SECTOR EAST
“Sir,” Garcia whispered to the new lieutenant, “we’re on the wrong side of the ridge.”
Garcia could barely see the other man’s eyes in the darkness. But he registered their flash.
“You telling me I can’t read a map, Sergeant?”
“Lieutenant… All I said is that we’re on the wrong side of the ridge. Please keep your voice down, sir. The men don’t need to hear this. Or the J’s.”
“Sergeant Garcia, I’ve been appointed platoon commander. Because somebody at battalion happens to believe this platoon needs one. You don’t have to like it. But I expect you to obey orders. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. This draw leads straight down to our objective. The only reason you can’t see the village is that it’s blacked out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get the men ready to move out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Garcia scuttled back along the trail. He would’ve preferred bushwhacking to the objective, but the lieutenant said he’d had a complete briefing from the S-2 and the trails were clean in the entire southern sector. The Jihadis had been surprised and hadn’t had time to lay mines or booby traps before they pulled back.
Second Lieutenant DeWayne Jefferson. East Coast. Probably D.C. or Philly, Garcia calculated. Whatever the Marines may have taught him at Quantico, they hadn’t taught him how to read a map.
Garcia couldn’t say why, but maps had always seemed clear to him. They just made sense. Like math. The counselor at Monte-bello had pushed him to apply for a scholarship, but Garcia wasn’t having any of that shit. Enough to get through high school and not be jerking off for a GED when you were thirty. He just wanted to be a Marine. Later, the Anglos at the community college he’d dipped into had given him a similar line: Get an education and dump the Marine Corps. But Garcia just wanted their piece of paper so he could make his ratings.
One thing he didn’t need some lecturer with a cheap tie and the whisky shakes to tell him: The lieutenant couldn’t connect a compass and map to his brain.
“Okay,” Garcia hissed. “Let’s go, Dev il Dogs. We’re moving out.”
“Hey, Sergeant. That lieutenant have any idea where the fuck we are?”
“Shut up, Cropsey. You’ve used up your shit ration for the day. Let’s go.”
They were all tired. And blistered. An hour of sleep here and there wasn’t enough. And when there were no gunshots, there was no adrenaline. Once they’d gotten off that mountain road, they hadn’t even heard a drone overhead.
“Maintain combat interval,” Garcia told them. They’d been stumbling into one another for the last two hours.
Garcia crept back up behind the lieutenant. Making just enough noise not to spook him. The new platoon commander was bossy and jumpy, a combination platter that was all beans and no tacos, as far as Garcia was concerned.
And this wasn’t no training exercise. You didn’t get a re-do. “Ready to move out, sir.”
The lieutenant turned toward the long file of Marines, shadows in the night, and asked, too loudly, “Who’ll volunteer to take over point? I want somebody who knows he’s a Marine.”
Nobody responded. Larsen had been walking point, but the lieutenant had bitched him out for being too slow. Garcia hadn’t had a problem with Larsen, though. Larsen was country. Garcia didn’t want him on point down on the block, but he was the best Marine in the platoon in Mr. No-Shoulders’ territory.
“I know you’re all tired, men,” the lieutenant said. “But we’re Marines. And we’ve got a mission. If I don’t have any volun-teers—”
“I’ll take the point myself, sir,” Garcia said.
“No. The platoon sergeant doesn’t walk point. You. What’s your name?”
“Private Barrett.”
“You’ve got point. Move out.”
Garcia could feel the private’s I-am-seriously-unhappy vibes as he brushed past.
“Cropsey, Larsen. Close it up. You’re between the lieutenant and me now.”
The mood in the platoon needed fixing. And Garcia wasn’t sure how to fix it. He didn’t like the new lieutenant and realized he was carrying a grudge. He’d hoped to keep the platoon to himself. But the lieutenant was real as la migra at the kitchen door. You had to deal with it. Get along. One way or the other.
They moved down the trail, with Garcia certain that the platoon was headed almost ninety degrees off course. He’d done what he could. Now he concentrated on the darkness around him, the queerness of too much space. He was confident that he could work any block anywhere in the world. But operating in the Great Wide-Open still made him edgy.
The land mine that blew Barrett apart was only the start of it. The Marine rode a cushion of flames and came apart before their eyes. The night lit up with tracers: Jihadi stay-behinds.
“Charge!” the lieutenant screamed. “Charge into the ambush!”
That was what you’re supposed to do. But Garcia didn’t do it. The hillside was too steep to charge up. The manual didn’t talk about that. And it had taken him only an instant to realize that the Jihadis were overshooting, that they didn’t know how to lay their weapons. The platoon had time to get its shit together, to size things up.
Garcia watched the lieutenant’s silhouette stump up the steep grade. With no one following. Suddenly, the tall officer spun back-ward as heavy-caliber machine-gun slugs tore into him. He went down the slope like a one-man avalanche.
“Cropsey… You got a fix on them?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Larsen. You with us?”
“Here, Sergeant.”
“Go with Cropsey. Cropsey, go back up the line and work them from the top. Take your time. Do it right
. We’ll keep them happy.”
“Mama! Oh, my mama!” It was the lieutenant. “I can’t find my leg, Mama! Mama, I can’t find none of my legs…”
“Fuck him,” Crospey said.
“Shut up. Move out.”
Garcia moved along behind them, checking on the Marines. Who were firing up the hillside. Nobody else down.
“Corporal Gallotti. I want aimed fire from your squad. Keep them busy. And spread your men out, for the love of Jesus.”
The J’s were firing madly, their rounds plunging into the opposite hillside, igniting small brushfires. Garcia made it one crew-served heavy weapon and two men out on security.
“Mama, I can’t find my legs, I can’t find my legs…”
“Sergeant, you want—”
“No. Shit. I’ll get him.”
Garcia scrambled back down the trail, hoping there were no mines short of where Barrett had taken his last steps. With half a mind to let the lieutenant lie and bleed.
He found Barrett first. Or what was left of him. It was the Night of the Missing Legs. And almost everything else from the waist down. Whatever kind of mine it had been had done its job. The blast had sounded like a heavy mortar round.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mama… Mama, I’m so sorry…”
Dude, shut up, Garcia thought. Stop begging them to lower their aim.
Behind him, Gallotti’s squad was laying down good fire. The machine gun had shifted its aim in their direction, but the tracers were still streaking high over the trail. If the lieutenant had just paused to get his bearings, he would’ve been okay. Instead of jumping up like the teacher’s pet and running right into the line of fire.
Goddamned asshole, Garcia thought.
“Oh, Mama, don’t let them take my legs away…”
Garcia followed the voice into a notch just below the trail. After being hit and going down, the lieutenant had rolled. Garcia scrambled down beside him. Praying there were no more mines.
“I’m with you, sir,” Garcia said.
“You tell my mama, you tell her I’m all right…”
