John Birmingham - Without warning

‘Hooah, Rangers lead the way.’

Lohberger had a Ranger tab on his uniform and thus, in Melton’s mind, the right to talk like one. Still, Bret winced anyway while Lohberger continued.

‘The plan is that Coalition air power will conduct the air war as before, going for command and control. They’ll take out the bridges as well, which should make our life a bit easier. Close air will stomp anyone who gets over those obstacles, then our arty engages them. Whatever is left is our meat, Bret.’

Melton didn’t ask the obvious question – why?

Why the hell did any of them have to be here now? Saddam was no longer a threat to America, was he? And if the wing-nuts were right, and it was all just about the oil and fattening up Halliburton’s balance sheet so that Dick Cheney could retire in comfort… well, again, so what? Cheney was gone. And Bush. And the hundreds of millions of Americans they said they were defending. Melton had to shake his head to clear the buzz of conflicting thoughts crowding each other out. Why the hell didn’t they just pack up and leave the whole sorry mess behind?

Of course, that begged the question of where they might go. Hawaii? Alaska? The Pacific Northwest? Frankly, he couldn’t see anyone staying there if they could find a way out. Not with that hungry fucking bubble buzzing away just down the road.

Lohberger finished and let the air force liaison start his portion of the briefing. Bret found his thoughts drifting once the ALO, a major who liked to dip Oreos in his scotch, had taken over. His private thoughts, a tangle of confused memories and fresh trauma, were interrupted by Jaanson and Euler.

‘You all right, sir?’ Sergeant Major Jaanson asked.

The briefing was over. Melton blushed at having been caught out so badly. He’d seen plenty of others zoning out through the day. Men and women just standing, staring into the middle distance, eyes unfocused and faces slack. The worst ones looked like they’d come out of a session of electroconvulsive therapy. It was a mild form of shock, he supposed, as the rational mind shut down its higher functions to let the hindbrain deal with the violation it had experienced. In millions of years of evolution, humans had never been confronted by a threat like the energy wave. It was going to take some adapting, some getting used to – assuming the goddamn thing didn’t end up swallowing the whole world, of course.

‘Sorry,’ he replied. ‘It’s been a helluva day. I’m a bit out of it.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Lieutenant Euler, who looked to have recovered a good deal of his composure since their conversation on the way to the tent. ‘You’ll have time to shower, change and get some food into you, sir. Then you’ll need to get your gear together and find my Bradley. We’re on thirty minutes’ readiness, but I want my guys ready to rock in ten.’

‘Outstanding.’ Melton’s voice was flat with weariness and just a touch of sarcasm. The meeting was breaking up around them as Lohberger’s men set to their duties with almost discernible relief that they had something to keep them busy.

‘I’ll send someone to get you from the reporters’ billet, Mr Melton,’ said Jaanson. ‘Don’t stray from there, okay?’

‘Okay. I won’t take long. I was already packed to move anyway.’

As they left the tent he could see that a change had come over the camp. The activity he’d noted on arriving had greatly intensified. Hundreds of men, all of them in full combat harness, hurried about in regimented groups, raising thick clouds of dust. The rattle of their equipment and the dull thudding of boots was loud enough to nearly drown out the shouts and curses of their NCOs. Nearly, but not quite. Humvees snarled and rumbled and a flight of jet fighters turned long, lazy circles high overhead.

Melton hurried back to his tent. He’d spent more than enough time in camp to move with confidence through the organised bedlam and located the six-man canvas shelter without trouble. Inside he found that his colleagues had already departed. There was a note from Patricia Mescalon on his cot, but otherwise nothing to show for the small civilian community they’d built up over the weeks. He slumped down on the bed and allowed himself a few moments of rest. He would need to eat, and a quick shower wouldn’t be a bad idea. It might be weeks before he could wash again. Instead of moving, however, Melton found himself immobilised by a bone-deep lassitude.

What the fuck is the point of any of it now?

His throat tightened up and he felt tears beginning to well. Sitting up quickly, he rubbed the moisture from his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Now was not the time to be falling to pieces. Chances were, things were gonna get a shitload worse in the next few weeks. Even if that bubble didn’t move an inch, you couldn’t punch a hole in the world like that and expect life to continue as normal. How long could the military hold together, for instance? They couldn’t be resupplied for very long. And who was going to pay for them? Who was going to pay for him?

His paper was gone. He could ride out with the Cav and dutifully file his copy. For now the net was still working and his emails would zip through the myriad channels of fibre and copper wire all the way back to the Army Times server. But there they would sit, unread, forever. He had no idea whether his pay had gone into his account as scheduled. Possibly it had, if the process was automated. But how long would that last? And how long would anyone go on accepting US dollars anyway? For that matter, could the world economy even expect to survive the sudden disappearance of its beating heart? He didn’t think so. Not when he gave it any real thought.

Sayad al Mirsaad had been right. This was the end of things.

Monique screamed as the windscreen crashed and bulged inwards, threatening to shatter. Rather than hitting the brakes, Caitlin sped up, awkwardly pawing inside her stolen leather jacket for one of the pistols she’d taken back at the hospital. The wheel jerked in her free hand and a dramatic shudder ran through the body of the Volvo as they struck something with a loud thud. She heard a cry and sensed, rather than saw, a dark shape fly through the air. The dense spider’s web of cracks in the windshield made it impossible to know exactly what was going on outside. Caitlin hammered at the safety glass with the butt of the gun, using her peripheral vision and one-handed driving to keep to the road.

‘Would you shut the fuck up and help me out here!’ she yelled at the screaming Monique, eliciting a couple of ineffectual taps at the glass from the girl in the passenger seat.

The windscreen popped out just as they struck the tail end of a Mercedes with a massive metallic crash and a sudden jerk back into the middle of the road. Both women could now see dozens of people scattering from the roadway in front of their moving vehicle. They seemed to be fighting amongst each other, although a healthy number were focused solely on their car. Monique huddled down as more rocks came flying at them, one bouncing off the bonnet to slam into her shoulder. She cried out in pain and Caitlin reached across, grabbed a handful of her jacket and violently jerked the girl right down so that she was no longer exposed to the improvised missiles flying directly at them. The American enjoyed no such luxury and had to drive while dodging and weaving.

They had come around a sharp bend into a street fight, or riot. A normal person would have slowed down, fearful of injuring or perhaps killing a pedestrian, even as they were targeted with a fusillade of torn-up cobblestones, bottles and broken bricks. Caitlin set her mouth in a grim line and, hunching behind the wheel for the minimal protection it offered, she deliberately pointed the Volvo into the centre of a mass of youths blocking the road ahead of them. She didn’t sound the horn or wave them away. She simply drove at them, implacably increasing her speed as they drew closer. A few of the braver (or dumber) among them hurled a couple more rocks, but they were poorly directed and none managed to hit the body of the car. The group lost its coherence rapidly as the men – they were all young, dark-skinned men – dived for the relative safety of the footpath. One, his head swathed in a black and white keffiyeh, was a fraction too late and the car’s headlight caught his foot in midair, spinning him off the arc of his dive and into the side of a grocery van. His scream was snatched away by the speed of their passage.