John Birmingham - Without warning

‘Bush signing a bit of paper wouldn’t have given you -’

‘Quiet, Jim,’ Lingle snapped at the staffer who’d spoken out of turn. ‘It’s not the time or the place. Go on, Admiral.’

Ritchie ignored the distraction. ‘But in any event, that decision may be taken out of our hands if the Iraqis themselves attack.’

‘Is that likely? It would be suicide for them.’

‘Yes, ma’am, it would,’ agreed Ritchie. ‘But rationality went down the toilet today.’

A few moments’ silence followed, with everyone locked inside their own thoughts.

‘Well,’ Lingle said at last. ‘As I said, you have an intact chain of command – use it as necessary. For now, we have our own problem right here. These islands cannot feed themselves. There isn’t going to be any food coming from the mainland and people are going to starve if we don’t get it from somewhere else, and soon.’

The night-time desert was a crumpled drift of blue-white silk below the chopper, which was all hot metal and grease and the suffocating body odour of soldiers. In the gloom it enfolded him like an unpleasant memory. Bret Melton had jumped out of helicopters and into another war not far from here, not long ago, and at times while riding out towards the line he had wondered if he’d be doing the same thing in another ten years. And ten more after that, forever and ever, amen. Now he knew that he wouldn’t.

The thundering engine and rotors made normal conversation impossible but the four troopers in the cabin with him all needed to talk, to know what was happening back in the real world. In the faint glow leaking through from the cockpit, their faces were hollowed out and haunted. They all knew him, or knew of him. As a former Ranger, Melton was a popular embed. His shit was stowed according to regs and he could be trusted. He was as close to a believer as an outsider could be. Hitching the flight back to 3rd Infantry Division, the questions started as soon as they recognised him.

‘What the fuck’s happening, man?’

‘What about our families?’

‘Is it a fucking attack or what, dude?’

He’d done his best to explain what he knew, but really, what did he know? As Melton had laid it out for them, bellowing over the thump of the rotor blades, the looks on their faces had made him feel like a mental case. They gaped in horror and disbelief as he described what he’d seen and heard – and how could he blame them? He couldn’t really believe it himself. He sounded authentically mad. After twenty minutes they’d all lapsed into silence and the rest of the flight passed in a sort of stunned, half-catatonic state. Melton knew that by the time these guys relayed the news to their friends, it’d be totally bent out of shape, but he didn’t see much point in holding anything back. Everything they were defending was gone. Their homes and loved ones – everything. They had a right to know. In fact, that was the only reason he was still here. He had open tickets back to Paris and could check out any time he wanted, but he could no more fly out to Paris than he could to New York now. He had no immediate family. No steady girlfriend. His relationships had always been short term and contingent. One woman he’d been closer to than most called him ‘commitment phobic’, but she was wrong. Melton wasn’t scared of commitment; he just wasn’t committed to her. Ever since he’d left the army after Somalia he’d had one faith, one love from which he could not be diverted: the telling of soldiers’ stories.

The pilot’s voice came through, a clipped monotone announcing they were five minutes out. Melton craned around on his perch and briefly popped his head out into the slipstream. The 1st Brigade Combat Team’s desert base wasn’t totally blacked out, but it was much darker than the last time he’d come in, three days ago. Even so, under the moon it still glowed as a bed of pearls in the wide vessel of shadows that was the desert at night. On a satellite image, the tent city and masses of equipment would show up as a vast glowing metropolis of blood and iron, but what the hell. There was no sense in making it easy for Saddam, hence the blackout.

They flew in low, flaring and pivoting for the touchdown on a steel-mesh landing pad. A storm of gritty, stinging sand blasted into the cabin, scouring any exposed skin and working its way in through the layers of clothing Melton had drawn tightly around himself. One of the soldiers slapped him on the shoulder and grimly mouthed, ‘Thanks anyway, buddy’, before leaping out and hurrying off, bent double. The Army Times correspondent – or was he a former correspondent now? – followed the others out into the chill darkness, intending to head for the tent where some of the journalists maintained a rudimentary press club with a small stash of carefully hoarded bourbon and beer.

‘Mr Melton? Sir?’

‘Lieutenant Euler?’

Melton recognised him immediately. The platoon commander, who, at six-and-a-half foot, was forced into a very exaggerated stoop by the Blackhawk’s spinning rotors, hurried forward and took Melton by the elbow, steering him away from his intended heading.

‘Captain wants to see you, sir. We’re getting set to roll on fifteen minutes’ notice.’

‘Roll where?’

‘Don’t know, sir. But Captain Lohberger needs you over at headquarters. The squadron commander will want to hear what you have to say as well.’

‘About what’s happened back home?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Both men carefully stood up as they cleared the track of the rotor blades. Melton hoisted his backpack into a slightly more comfortable position and tried to take in as much as he could of his surroundings. Something was going to happen soon and the knowledge of it left a weird coppery taste in the back of his mouth. They hurried down from the rise of the makeshift helipad, diving into a small tent city laid out in a strict grid pattern, much of it obscured by the tan camouflage nets. Away from the overwhelming din of the chopper, he began to hear shouts and curses as non-coms wrangled their squads towards assembly points while junior officers like Euler gathered up platoons and began clicking them into larger units for deployment in the field. He could hear the whine of Abrams gas turbines and the snarl of Bradley fighting vehicles somewhere nearby, and overlaying it all was the ceaseless thumping of rotor blades as dozens of helicopters pirouetted through the inky black sky above them. The metallic, oily taste of diesel mixed with the grit and dust kicked up by the Blackhawk filled his sinuses. He pulled out a rag and blew his nose, knowing that the snot would be blood-flecked from the dirt.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question, sir?’ said Euler, as they double-timed past a tent where a group of men in uniforms and berets he recognised as British SAS were hunkered around a table. One of the commandos levelled a hard stare at him and flicked the tent flap closed. ‘Is it true, sir, what we’ve been hearing?’

Melton squinted against the sand, which was already coating the inside of his mouth and nostrils. ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, exactly, Lieutenant. But it’s gone. Home. Everyone there has gone.’

Euler’s face twisted into a mask of despair. ‘I’d heard it was a jihad attack. Bio weapons or nukes, or something. Took out a bunch of cities.’

They turned a corner, nearly running into a couple of MPs.

‘Watch where you’re going, asshole,’ one of them barked, surprising Melton with a female voice. She was built thicker and closer to the ground than him. He muttered a hasty apology and moved on.

‘No, this is nothing to do with the jihadis. Unless it was merciful fucking Allah, of course, like Saddam is telling everyone. But nobody knows. Some kinda weird energy bubble or something. Seems to have zapped away all the primates inside its boundary.’