The War After Armageddon

TEN

“Would you be careful, sir?” the gunner said over the tank’s intercom. “You’re going to put somebody’s eye out with that thing.”

Lieutenant Col o nel Montgomery Maxwell VI resettled his scabbard around his waist. The commander’s weapon station in an M-1A4 tank wasn’t the ideal place to wear a saber, but Monty Maxwell wasn’t about to break a family tradition. The M-1913 cavalry saber had been given to his great-grandfather by Georgie Patton himself… although the family glossed over the circumstances, which involved the suppression of the Bonus Marchers. Maxwells had worn the sword with Abrams in northern France and in Vietnam, under McCaffrey in Desert Storm, and under Wallace on the march to Baghdad. At West Point, Maxwell had been the captain of the fencing team, and later, he’d worn the saber himself during the Abuja campaign.

The sword was an incon ve nience, but so was taking a crap during a battle. A man had to do what a man had to do.

As the tank plunged across the fields, buttoned up and attacking east toward Afula, Maxwell wondered if the whole plan wasn’t madness. He veered between picturing blue-jacketed ancestors riding with Kill-Cavalry Kilpatrick or leading Buffalo Soldiers against Apaches and wondering what on earth he himself was doing charging up a wide-open valley into the morning sun. With orders to switch off his countermeasures and those on every tank and infantry fighting vehicle in Task Force 2-34. At exactly 0621. For exactly forty seconds.

It occurred to Monty Maxwell that the traditional hatred of staff officers was fully justified.

One click to go. Two brigade combat teams attacking abreast, and still no incoming. Were the J’s sleeping in? Or waiting to spring an all-arms ambush when it was too late to make a U-turn? As ordered, he had two armor-heavy companies up, sweeping forward in a skirmish line, with his C Company trailing in a hedgehog column. TF 1-16 to his left and TF 1-34 to his right, with another brigade on the right flank. All of them two up, one back. The Jihadis would be looking at well over a hundred combat vehicles rushing toward them in the front rank alone.

It was the kind of shooting gallery antitank gunners dreamed of. But nobody was shooting. Yet.

The tank took a hard jolt. Severe enough to make Maxwell worry, for an instant, that a track might have snapped. But the big Abrams, a veteran of more overhauls than the face of an aging actress, kept on grinding forward.

As a battalion commander, Maxwell didn’t belong in the front line of vehicles. But when he’d heard the plan laid out at the brigade briefing, he’d decided that he wasn’t going to order his soldiers to do such a crazy-ass thing unless he was in the forward rank with them. The XO could follow behind and sort things out. If the Jihadis were shooting straight.

Maxwell had no target in view yet—just a lot of long shadows and dazzling early sunlight. But he wanted to be ready to engage at the longest possible range.

“Loader! Load Lima-Delta.”

He imagined Specialist Prizzi going about his work, a sailor manhandling a heavy weight on a rolling deck in a storm. The stabilizers and the suspension did only so much.

A long-distance kinetic-energy round had a greater effective range than any imaging system on the tank. It seemed the obvious weapon of choice.

“Lima-Delta up.”

“Prepare to cut countermeasures.”

That would bring out a sweat on everybody. At least two brigades’ worth of soldiers were thinking the same thing: What’s this all about?”

As they charged down the valley, into the sun, Maxwell wondered if the Jihadis could feel the ground shake yet. We’re coming, he told them. Heavy metal. Just for you.

He scanned his battle computer—hoping it didn’t have a parasite in it—then double-checked the time against his watch. Counting down. Although the J’s could see them clear as candy in a dish from the high ground to the north, the attacking units had been ordered to move on radio silence. Until their countermeasures suites were reactivated.

He’d scrutinized the distances on the maps. And he hoped the J’s didn’t have any extended-range surprises in their arsenal. Crazy-ass staff lunacy. Like going naked in a snake pit.

“Approaching Phase Line Watts,” Maxwell said. He was sweating terribly. And he didn’t like it. Fear was not a Maxwell tradition.

Oh, bull, he thought. Every one of them was afraid. Of something. At some point.

The landscape rushed toward his viewer. Countdown. Six, five, four…

Maxwell flipped three switches with one downward sweep of his hand.

“Countermeasures off.”

Sweet Jesus, dear Jesus, don’t destroy my battalion…

Charging ahead. Jolting over neglected fields. Trying to get the speed exactly right.

In the distance, from ten to three o’clock, Maxwell saw dozens of tiny pops of light.

The ATGMs. Headed straight for them all.

Twenty seconds to go. What was the flight time of one of those sonsofbitches?

Sixteen seconds.

Suddenly, all he wanted to do was to max out his speed, to attack, to get at the enemy who was being given this free shot.

Eleven seconds. Another nasty jounce. The hull scraped something hard. After a second’s hesitation, the tank grunted forward.

Eight seconds…

More and more pops of light. As if the J’s had a division’s worth of antitank missiles in the Afula pocket. God only knew what was coming down from the hills at them…

Five seconds…

Maxwell shifted to his thermal viewer just in time to see a black dot with a flare of flame behind it. Heading straight for his tank.

He almost shouted, “Halt!”

He didn’t.

Three seconds… two…

Before he could flip the switches again, the missile plowed into the earth, less than a football field from his tank’s glacis plate. It didn’t explode, but threw a spray of earth to either side.

All across his field of vision, missiles were dropping to earth. Digging expensive furrows in the dirt.

As the countermeasures suites kicked back in across the division’s front, follow-on volleys of missiles went haywire.

“Well, fuck me dead with a reindeer dick,” Maxwell said.

“That an offer, sir?” the gunner said. Relief in his voice.

Now Maxwell was back to being a commander. Wondering if any of his vehicles had been hit. They were off radio silence, but Maxwell figured the jamming would be so heavy that he’d be lucky to reach the tanks to either side of him.

“Hey, sir… Watch the sword, okay?”

It had slipped around again. Maxwell settled its position as best he could.

“Stay quiet on the intercom,” he said, clicking his headset’s control to radio comms.

“This is Stallion Six. Dreadnaughts, unit report. Over.”

To Maxwell’s astonishment, Captain Brickell’s voice came back with perfect clarity.

“This is Alpha. No losses. Continuing mission.”

“Bravo, report.”

“Bravo here. No combat losses. One Bradley tango-uniform. Broke a track. Continuing mission.”

“Charlie, report.”

“Two big boys down in an irrigation ditch. Wasn’t mapped. No combat losses. Continuing mission.”

Hallelujah.

“Gentlemen, draw your sabers.” Maxwell wished it wasn’t just a figure of speech. “And prepare to close with the enemy.”

To the front, splashes of flame and clouds of smoke. Artillery fire dropping on the Jihadi antitank positions. Lots of beautiful artillery. It looked as if every tube in the corps was pumping out rounds.

“A thing of beauty is a fucking joy forever,” Maxwell said, back on the intercom. “Anybody know who said that?”

“You, sir?”

“John Keats.”

“Sir,” the gunner said, “Keats never said—”

“Prepare to repel drones.”

Maxwell had seen the dark forms darting out of the veil of artillery smoke. Well, at least they’d gotten through the first wave of ATGMs.

He unlocked his hatch and pushed the heavy cover open, taking a beating about the rib cage as he stood to man the .50 cal. Against drones, it was useless to try to control it while buttoned up. He just hoped the stabilizer wasn’t broke-dick again.

A shadow flitted over the tank, then another. Coming from behind. Maxwell looked up. Friendly drones. He watched as they soared toward the approaching enemy UAVs.

Any attempt to employ the machine gun would be as likely to bring down a U.S. Army drone as an enemy airframe. Maxwell pushed the lock release and grabbed the handle to button up again. Gingerly. As a captain, he’d smashed his saber hand on maneuvers by shutting a hatch while rolling through broken terrain.

“Gunner. Targets?”

“Negative, sir,” Sergeant Nash told him. “It’s not just our smoke. The J’s have obscurants up. And they’re turning their spectrum jammers on and off.”

Where was the Jihadi artillery? Were they limiting it to counter-fire? Arty wasn’t the best weapon against tanks, especially with the new jammers to divert homing rounds. But it seemed weird that they weren’t dumping steel on the attack formation anyway.

A barrage of indirect fire struck three clicks ahead and off to the flank. Surely, the J’s couldn’t be that weak at target acquisition.

“Panama Canal coming up. One hundred meters.”

This was the second test. While the overhead imagery confirmed that the derelict Israeli irrigation channels were dry, some were wide and deep enough to trap a tank. Maxwell figured that, in the old days, the Israelis had intended the main channels to do double duty as antitank ditches.

The attack had already blown across a series of minor ditches, but the engineers hadn’t been entirely sure about this one.

Even if the antitank missiles weren’t back in the game, his tanks would still be sitting ducks for the drones.

All that Maxwell could see in the sky were occasional black forms. Swooping across his viewer like bats.

The driver slowed the Abrams.

“Sir, what can you see from up there? I can’t see the bottom.”

“Hold one. I’m going up to look.”

Maxwell popped the hatch again, standing on his weapons-station platform. Saber clanking off metal. He could smell the blown-powder stink of the artillery barrage from kilometers away.

“Driver. Slow… Move out. Take it straight on. Gunner. Traverse up, max elevation. Everybody hold on.”

Maxwell braced himself. The tank tipped into the ditch.

It was shallow. A thing of beauty.

Glancing to the right, then left, Maxwell saw another thing of beauty. Third Brigade, faced with no ditch, was surging forward on the flank. His own vehicle and the rest of the 1st Brigade tracks were climbing out of the ditch. Monsters rising from graves. Dozens and dozens of war machines clawed their way forward.

The front of his tank rose skyward as its rear dropped into the ditch.

Perfect time to hit us. Belly shot, he told himself.

But the friendly artillery continued to dump on Afula, and if the J’s were shooting at all, their gun-bunnies were up for the world’s-worst prize.

Glancing skyward, Maxwell saw that the drone count had dwindled, too. Why weren’t the J’s sending in every drone they had?

“Let’s go. Get us out of this ditch, Specialist Vasquez.”

“Yes, sir. Trying not to throw a track.”

As the tank slammed down on the far bank, Maxwell watched a Bradley tip onto its side. The vehicle commander was crushed against the concrete wall of the ditch.

Maxwell flashed on an old commander, a veteran of Iraq, who’d spoken of war’s caprices.

To the right, a missile struck a surging tank and exploded. There was no secondary blast, but the M-1 jerked to a stop. As if someone had yanked an invisible leash.

Maxwell buttoned up again. “All stations, all stations. We’re entering their secondary kill zone. Let’s punch it. Three clicks, and we’re on ’em. Bravo, move into the lead. Alpha, echelon left. Dread-naughts, acknowledge. Over.”

“Alpha, roger.”

“Bravo, roger.”

“Charlie, roger.”

The radio remained beautifully clear. What on earth was going on? No Muslim artillery. A handful of drones. No jamming. Was it some kind of trick? Was it all going to come down on them at once?

They entered the veil of smoke and tuned obscurants. Even the late-model thermal sights revealed only ghosts. It was a fistfight through a curtain now.

The LD-KE had been the wrong round to load. They were moving into HE country. Antitank defenses, but no Jihadi tanks reported in Afula.

Were they holding them back? For a counterattack? Was the blow coming? Maxwell decided he’d just plain called it wrong.

“Loader. Reload HE.”

“Safe,” Specialist Prizzi shouted into the intercom.

Maxwell heard the breech clank open.

A target registered hot in Maxwell’s thermal sight. He punched a button, and the gun slewed around.

“HE loaded. Up!”

“ATGM. Two-two-hundred.”

“Identified.”

“Fire.”

“On the way!”

The gun’s recoil, too, was a thing of beauty.

The target bloomed.

Maxwell decided to load sabot. For another click, Jihadi vehicles would register as the principal targets. And sabot would get the attention of any ATGM gunners using buildings, too.

“Up.”

The gunner, who had a hunter’s high-tuned senses, called, “Identified. PC.”

“Fire.”

“On the way.”

The targets came swiftly after that, nebulous forms and shapes, slowly refining themselves. Twice, another tank’s rounds struck the chosen targets just before Maxwell’s gunner fired.

“Loader up!” Prizzi shouted. He was already hoarse.

“Stallion Six, this is Charlie. Ammo compartment burning. Passing the stick to my Niner.”

“Roger. Stay in the box. Break. Charlie Niner. Keep your victors tight with Rapier Six’s. Don’t let a seam open up over there.”

“Roger. We’re grinding sprockets.”

“Gunner. Target. Seven hundred.”

“On the way.”

The target exploded. One secondary blast followed. A third eruption raised a wall of flame.

“Good shootin’ this morning, Sergeant Nash,” Maxwell told his gunner.

“Sir, would you watch that fucking sword?”

The tank jumped a small berm and shot across the north-south highway.

“Up!”

“Driver, hard left.”

An invisible fist punched the turret, knocking Maxwell’s head-gear against steel. “Everybody okay?”

“Roger.”

“Clear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Driver, hold your right track. Let’s get back on course, Specialist Vasquez.”

“Stallion Six, this is Bravo. Green. Lead elements Phase Line Pasadena now. Two big boys down. One cat-kill. Minefield vicinity Checkpoint Rosie.”

“This is Stallion Six. If you’re in it, just keep going. Bull through.”

“Wilco.”

“Stallion Six, this is Saber Six. Status report.”

The brigade commander. Clear as a bell.

“Green. Seven victors down. Lead elements Pasadena. We’re closing on the first line of buildings. Continuing mission. Gunner. ATGM. Fire. Getting interesting down here. Over.”

“Good job, Stallion Six. Give ’em hell. Out.”

“Target!” the gunner shouted.

“Driver. Punch it. Straight ahead…”

The gunner fired into an antitank position. Or what was left of it. Every visible Jihadi emplacement was attracting attention from multiple tanks.

The artillery had lifted, and the Jihadi obscurants were fading. Now it was peekaboo in the patches left behind.

“Load canister.”

“Canister up.”

“Gunner, clear that street.”

“On the way.”

The round exploded from the gun tube. A torrent cut down a gaggle of Jihadis—some running toward the fight, others fleeing, some just ambling and stunned.

The tank bit into a low earthen barrier.

Sure enough, a missile thunked against the bottom of the hull as the vehicle climbed over the obstacle. Man-portable, judging by the noise. Too light to penetrate.

As the tank came down again, a heavier missile clanged against the turret.

The vehicle kept moving, but Sergeant Nash shouted, “My sights are gone. You’ve got it, sir.”

“Roger. From my position.”

“Prizzi’s down.”

“Any blood?”

“No, sir. He’s crumpled up.”

“Take over as loader. Now, Sergeant Nash. Canister.”

Maxwell fired the round into a vehicle that looked like an armored pickup with a missile launcher and gunner perched in its bed. The truck had been coming straight at them. Brave, if nothing else, Maxwell thought. He watched the vehicle disintegrate as the center of mass of a thousand metal balls tore into it. The gunner in the bed simply disappeared.

Flames. Smoke. Smoldering metal.

“Driver. Forward.”

The tank crunched over metal, concrete, and bone, grinding through patches of fire. More light missiles bit into its armor, none penetrating. It sounded like a slow-motion hailstorm.

Approaching an intersection, Maxwell told the driver to slow.

“Crew report.”

“Gunner up. Sir, I think Prizzi’s got a broken neck. He’s—”

“Alive or dead?”

“Sir, I don’t know… I don’t—”

“Load canister. Pull yourself together.”

“Stallion Six, this is Alpha. We’re four streets in. One Bradley down. Not sure anybody made it out.”

“Roger. Keep pushing.”

At least a dozen Jihadis—more—rushed from an alley and leapt from adjacent doorways. Several carried shoulder-fired missiles.

“Up!” Sergeant Nash shouted. The canister round was loaded.

When Maxwell tried to turn the turret to level the gun on the attackers, it refused to move.

At least one of the missiles had done its job.

“Driver. Hold the right track. Halt,” Maxwell screamed. “On the way!”

He got lucky. The aim was imperfect, but the canister balls that missed flesh and blood punched into masonry, augmenting their effect with chips and splinters The result was red and ugly.

Something kicked the tank in the rump. The engine died. A hint of smoke rose from the vehicle’s bowels.

“This is Stallion Six. I’m a mobility kill. Anybody have me visual?”

No response.

“This is Stallion Six. Alpha is in command. Alpha, how copy?”

“Lima-Charlie. Cav’s on the way, Stallion Six.”

The smoke thickened inside the turret. It smelled of circuits, not fuel. Looking through his thermal, Maxwell saw Jihadis dodging forward in twos and threes. That probably meant there were others he couldn’t see on his six.

“Nash. Get on the loader’s machine gun. Vasquez. Fight from your hatch. I’m on the fifty. It’s happy hour.”

Maxwell hit the switch to launch his smoke grenades, but nothing happened. Howling curses, he popped his hatch and thrust up behind the heavy machine gun.

“This one’s broke-dick,” the gunner called over the intercom. Referring to the loader’s machine gun.

The turret was porcupined with small penetrators and smudged with blast effects. The bustle racks were torn away or twisted up like pipe cleaners.

“Fight with your carbine,” Maxwell said. Then the intercom died.

With the driver and gunner firing from their hatches, Maxwell opened up with the .50 cal. The bucking bronco. Rounds pinged off the tank, and a missile sizzled by.

“On the roof. Nine o’clock,” Maxwell shouted. But the warning was late, and no one heard. The Jihadi shot Vasquez, the driver. Perfect aim, just below the crewman’s helmet.

Maxwell traversed the .50 cal. and tore apart the roof pediment shielding the gunman. Then he swept the street behind the tank.

The gunner was still firing. With small-arms rounds flashing off the tank’s armor like the sparks from a welding torch. Maxwell put multiple bursts into a window where he glimpsed movement. In what seemed all too short a time, he found himself at the bottom of the ammo box.

Ma Deuce done let me down. Shit.

Black smoke wafted from the inside of the tank and rose from the grills and rear deck. Something was getting worse.

Maxwell reached down for his carbine. It wasn’t there. With the machine gun silenced, a half-dozen Jihadis charged the tank from the right rear.

He looked to the gunner.

Sergeant Nash had slumped down in his hatch. Unmistakably dead.

A thing of fucking beauty is a fucking joy forever, Maxwell told himself. It’s lonely at the top.

It struck him that the Jihadis had stopped firing their weapons. They just swarmed the tank now. Several more appeared behind the first wave.

Why not just shoot me? Maxwell wondered.

In an instant, the light came on. It enraged him to think that any man believed he’d let himself be taken prisoner.

He hauled himself out of the turret and drew his pistol. Firing point-blank into faces and chests. But the numbers were on the Jihadis’ side. They clambered onto the smoking tank. Mob rules. Searching for handholds, two Jihadis scorched their paws and leapt away. But the rest kept on coming, screaming at him. Maxwell continued firing, dropping them one after another. Until his pistol clicked empty.

Three Jihadis made it onto the deck on the far side of the turret.

Maxwell hurled the pistol into a man’s face. And he drew his great-grandfather’s sword.

“Dreadnaughts!” he shouted, and he laid into his enemy with cold steel.

Captain Brickell witnessed a remarkable thing. As his tank swung around the corner, he saw another M-1 stopped thirty meters ahead of him. Atop its smoking deck, his battalion commander was slashing away with a saber as a group of Jihadis swarmed around him.

It looked like a scene from an old pirate movie.

Brickell turned his co-ax machine gun on the Jihadis who had not yet managed to board Maxwell’s tank. The torrent of rounds swept them off their feet like heavy surf toppling children. One Jihadi bravely tried to kneel and launch an antitank rocket. Brickell cut him in half before he could shoot. Brickell’s loader was up in the adjacent hatch and firing too.

The attack on their rear distracted the Jihadis just long enough for the battalion commander to thrust his saber into one man’s torso, draw back, and smash the hilt into another’s mouth, knocking him headlong from the tank.

Suddenly alone, Maxwell looked about wildly. As if disappointed there was no one left to kill.

Behind the battalion commander, one of his crewmen slumped from the loader’s hatch. His posture said “KIA.”

Maxwell leapt from the tank, stabbed a writhing Jihadi, and jogged back toward Brickell. With his face blackened by smoke, the battalion commander’s grin looked like a madman’s.

Still clutching the saber that had been the joke of the battalion, he scrambled aboard the tank that had come to his rescue. Panting, he leaned into his subordinate’s face.

“Isn’t this the most goddamned fun you’ve ever had in your life?” Maxwell cried.