The War After Armageddon Read Free

Trailmaster Six. We okay?”
    The voice did not respond so quickly as he would’ve liked. Then the captain, who had struck Harris as solid since the day they docked, repeated, “You’ve got to see this . . .”
    “Your location in five.”
    The sea of refugees parted as he advanced.
    He turned a warehouse corner and passed a plot used as an open-air latrine, as foul as anything he had ever smelled. Before him, at the railhead, a half-dozen
Bundesgrenzschuetzen
sat on the ground by a line of boxcars. The German border police no longer had their weapons, and they looked extremely unhappy. U.S. Army Infantrymen stood over them with their rifles ready.
    Harris ordered himself to maintain his self-control, not to judge before he had the facts. But young Captain Cavanaugh would need a damned good explanation for this one.
    Wiping his face, the captain trotted toward him. Harris realized the man had been crying.
    “What going on, captain?”
    “Sir . . . You’ve got to see this.”
    “You told me that. Twice. What do I have to see?”
    “You’ve just got to see it.” The captain turned back toward the rust-colored boxcars with the white letters “DB” on their sides.
    “Sergeant Z,” the captain called. “Help me.”
    The sergeant shouldered his rifle, reluctantly, and moved toward the first boxcar.
    They opened the door. And the stench hit everyone like a fist. Even the Germans winced.
    The corpses rose almost to the middle of the car’s interior. Men.Women. Children. Stiff. Wide-eyed. Mouths agape. Even a day or two into death, they retained their Turkish pallor. Hands had literally clawed themselves to the bone in their last, desperate moments.
    As Harris watched, a woman’s corpse broke from the mass and began to slide, accelerating as it dropped to the ground. Dead bones broke.
    One cold raindrop struck Harris on the lips.
    “They thought it was funny,” the captain said. His voice had broken to a child’s tone. “Somebody closed all the air vents. They suffocated. And the Krauts thought it was funny.”
    Harris allowed himself a long look. He needed time to master himself.
    When he felt ready, he strode over to the Germans. Half of them looked worried. The rest smirked.
    “Who did this?” Harris asked an
Oberleutnant
, the highest ranking figure he could see among them.
    “I don’t speak pig English,” the officer said. With quite a good accent. He made a spitting sound.
“Ihr sind doch alle Rassenverraeter.”
    A
Feldwebel
spoke up. “We have nothing to do with this. They are dead a long time. Days. We only make the
Sicherheitsdienst
here. Nothing with the trains.
Da ist die Bahnpolizei verantwortlich
.”
    “They knew,” Cavanaugh said. “They knew. They were laughing about it.”
    The German officer decided to speak English, after all. He snickered and said, “Maybe Osama bin Laden is in there.
Was meinst du, Herr Brigadegeneral? Nach dreissig Jahren!
Maybe you should look. If you Americans love these
Dreck-Muslimen
so much. But you have no right to take away our weapons. It is against the agreement. I will make a protest.”
    Harris looked at him. For a moment, he considered shutting the Germans inside the boxcar with the corpses and locking it shut. He would’ve loved to do it. And he wasn’t worried about protests. He would’ve faced a court-martial without blinking. But he realized that anything further done to the German guards would simply be taken out on other Muslims before the next train entered the compound.
    “Give them back their weapons,” he told the captain. “Unless you have evidence of their direct involvement.”
    “But, sir, we—”
    “Just execute the order, Captain.” He turned to the German first lieutenant. “You have the formal apology of the United States Government for this misunderstanding. Now get out of here before I have you shot.”
    The lieutenant kept up his smirk as he met Harris’s eyes.
    “Three,” Harris said, turning back to business,