The Living Will Envy The Dead (52 page)

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.

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 warm 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.

(The Warriors who were attacking the other two positions melted away when they realised that we had broken the main attack.  They were a persistent pain in the ass – bandits and insurgents – for the next few years.  On the other hand, plenty of people earned their spurs fighting them.)

“We won,” Mac said, astonished.  The dead and dying littered the battlefield; hundreds of bodies, thousands of lives lost or ruined.  “I thought that we were about to die bravely on the battlefield.”

“Me too,” I admitted.  We shared a laugh for a long moment.  It felt damn good to laugh after all the horrors we’d seen.  We had broken the Warriors of the Lord and they wouldn’t have time to regroup before we completed the task of destroying them.  “I suppose we’d better deal with the prisoners.”

I was tempted just to herd them all together and turn the machine guns on them – the reports from everywhere they’d occupied had been roundly unpleasant – but human decency prevailed.  The prisoners looked utterly terrified now that their faith had been broken, a handful muttering away to themselves, others just staring at us as if they couldn’t believe how stupid they’d been.  Part of me felt a little sorry for them, part of me remembered their victims and resolved that it would be a long time before I trusted them enough to let them go back to being free men. 

Richard passed me the megaphone and I put it to work.  “Attention,” I said, loudly enough to be heard right down the valley towards Summersville.  We were going to have to go there next, once we’d secured the prisoners and seen to our wounded, just to liberate them and keep pushing the Warriors until they broke completely.  “Listen very carefully.  It will keep you alive.  You were captured in battle and we have a perfect right to shoot you out of hand if you cause trouble.  Obey our orders, answer our questions, and you might just live to rebuild your lives.  Disobey and we’ll kill you and move on to the next prisoner.”

I wasn't bluffing, either.  One by one, the prisoners were frisked under guard, their pockets emptied of everything from spare ammunition to tiny bibles, including one apparently written by the Prophet Zechariah himself, their hands secured and sent to sit in a field.  Yes, it was rather cruel, but I wasn’t in the mood to take chances with men who had proven themselves to be dangerous, very dangerous, to their victims.  Some of them, broken of the brainwashing and conditioning, might make useful citizens later on, but they had to prove themselves first.  We weren't going to take chances.  A pair of men stood up to protest their treatment – they must have been lawyers before the war, I decided; only lawyers would have been so dumb – and were promptly shot down.  The remainder, after feeling the blood splashing over their bodies, decided to shut up.  It was wise of them.

“Separate the preachers from the rest of them and move them up to Stonewall,” I ordered.  “Put them through a rigorous interrogation program and compare their answers; feel free to hurt them as much as you need to get them to talk.”  Richard nodded.  “Send anything important, such as the number of remaining Warriors of the Lord, down to us through the radio.  Biggles will relay it if necessary, but we can’t stay here, not now that they’re on the run.”

“I understand,” Richard said.  I had wondered if he would feel resentment at me for taking over his flying column – the 7
th
Cavalry, as I had mentally dubbed it, although the original 7
th
Cavalry had been wiped out at Little Big Horn – but he was eager to get the prisoners under control.  We’d taken over three hundred prisoners and killed perhaps ten times that number; minor, on the scale of World War Two, but hellishly significant compared to the number of people left alive after the Final War.  “Good luck, sir.”

I mounted one of the armoured cars – Mac had quietly, but firmly prevented me from climbing into the lead vehicle – and we set off down the road back down towards the FOB…and Summersville.  We were all on tenterhooks, tired, but very aware of the possibility that we might win the war in the next few hours, and that gave us strength and determination to continue.  We passed a handful of Warriors on the run as we drove down, mainly preachers who had abandoned their men, and asked for their surrender.  A pair of preachers tried to fight and were promptly gunned down; the remainder surrendered, were cuffed, and left by the side of the road.  We’d pick them up later.

“Take a swing around the FOB,” Mac suggested, and I nodded.  The FOB might have been in enemy hands, but there might well be some mines and other unexploded surprises in the surrounding area.  The engineers who had prepared the defences had been left behind at Ingalls, deemed too important to risk.  They’d been furious about it, but I hadn’t budged at all.  They were going to be a damn sight more important than me in the coming days.  “Dutch, want to take a look up there?”