A Desert Called Peace (65 page)

Brutally, he pushed aside the thought of the unknown, nameless girl to concentrate on his driving. He had a set of Volgan-manufactured night vision goggles on. These were plugged into the tank for juice. They were infrared, the oldest technology, but had the advantage of being able to pick out any mines that the tank's infrared light might illuminate. Jorge saw none but maneuvered around a few suspicious spots anyway, his abrupt movements throwing Perez and del Rio around the turret and certainly pissing off the grunts hanging on over the engine compartment.

Mendoza actually smiled slightly, a sort of schadenfreude, when he thought about the grunts trying desperately to hold on despite his maneuvers. He felt a little ashamed.
It isn't
that
funny,
he told himself.
Well . . . maybe it is.

He heard in his headphones, "Tank, halt. Gunner, coax, eleven o'clock, antitank gunner in building."

The coaxial machine gun began to chatter as Cruz felt the sergeant in the hatch tap his shoulder. "Off now, and get low," the sergeant shouted, then turned to use his own pintle-mounted heavy machine gun to fire forward.

Obediently, Cruz pushed Correa off the tank, then turned to give the boot to Sanchez and Robles. Cruz then dove off himself and rolled to a stop next to Correa.

No sooner had he done so than the tank's main gun spoke, the muzzle blast assaulting Cruz's ears painfully and causing his internal organs to ripple. Downrange a building flashed, then exploded, as a high explosive round with delay set on the fuse burst through its wall and detonated inside. Men and parts of men flew out with the walls. The tank rolled forward, its machine guns still spitting at the buildings opposite.

Even though stunned by the muzzle blast, Cruz stood up to a crouch, Correa doing likewise beside him. He looked to the left and saw Sanchez and Robles doing the same. Cruz pointed at the tank's rear panel and pulled Correa along to get them both behind it. Sanchez and Robles joined them there a split second later.

Advancing with the tank, Cruz leaned out and fired a burst at nothing in particular. He hoped the tracers would remind the commander of the tank that he had infantry following. The only thing more frightening to a foot soldier than a friendly tank lurching about without control is an enemy tank lurching about with malicious intent. And the difference in fear factor is not large.

Other tanks, to the left and the right, fired machine guns and high explosive shells into the town. To these suppressive fires were added those of the Ocelots and the supporting infantry. There was some return fire, but the wall of lead put out by the attackers made it, at best, unaimed.

At the very edge of the town, taking cover behind still smoking buildings, the tanks stopped. Like the other infantry, Cruz and his boys surged into the town, to root out the defenders with rifle, bayonet and grenade.

Her breathing was labored now. No matter, it wouldn't be long and Margot Tebaf already had had a life with much to be proud of in it.

It has worked out,
she thought.
It has worked out as we hoped it would.

The pattern of outworld emigration, demographic flux, and expansion of political control by the United Nations, other supranationals, nongovernmental organizations and their supporters had been intimately linked.

The toughest part had been maintaining a working population sufficient to meet needs while getting rid of only enough useless mouths that the progressives of the European Union could maintain power. Once that power had solidified, though, it had become possible to so undercut the semblance of democracy that the votes of the elderly and indigent, the culturally unassimilated and inassimilable had become superfluous.

Old people don't riot when their pensions are cut or eliminated and their children, if any, refuse to take them in,
Margot thought.
They just die.

Without off world emigration to dump the Moslems, their departures spurred by almost total elimination of welfare and the unavailability of work, it wouldn't have worked either.

Yet their colony on the New World was also a great draw. May they have luck with it.

Better and more satisfying, the cut-off of European immigration forced the United States to accept larger and larger numbers of immigrants as inassimilable as the Moslems were here. Now? Better than half their population owes and feels no loyalty to America, and votes for what it does feel loyalty to. And as we have expanded our power around the world, we have been able to force the United States to accept more and more of our way of doing things. They're still an economic powerhouse, but they can't impose their will anymore.

Even better than that, though, has been the effect of off-world emigration on the Americans. For each one that left has made the place less comfortable for those that remained. And each drop in the comfort level has made more leave. They still think of themselves as a real country. But they're dying. They predicted demographic death for us, but we will be at their funeral.

It was a cheery, if not perfectly accurate, thought for Margot. Thus, when the evening nurse came to check on her, her corpse was smiling broadly.

Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.

—Leutnant Weiner, 24th Panzer Division,
Stalingrad, 1942

Cruz turned and began to throw up at the base of the half-crushed wall behind which he had his team sheltered. It was bad enough seeing the things done to men in the town. But when a donkey staggered by, dragging its entrails on the ground until its rear legs twisted in them and it fell, bleating piteously? That was just too much.

Sanchez apparently couldn't stand it either. He took the Draco he was carrying, sighted it, and put the poor animal out of its misery. Sanchez beat Robles, carrying the light machine gun vice Rivera, by only a fraction of a second.

"How long we been here?" Robles asked.

"
Here,
here,
or in the town,
here? Five days in the town. Here by the square maybe twenty minutes," Sanchez answered. "This time. Last time we got here we lasted a whole hour before they kicked us out again."

"Anyone know how Correa's doing?" Cruz asked through a dry, dusty and overtaxed throat.

"He . . . died, Cruz," Sanchez answered, sadly. "Yesterday. The medics told me last night."

"Damn," Cruz said, too tired to show any emotion. "Kid was only eighteen."

"Hey, Corp," said Robles. "I'll be sure to let you know when being eighteen saves you from anything. Besides, what are you? Nineteen?"

"Yeah . . . almost nineteen," Cruz answered.

As Sanchez had said, the square had changed hands numerous times. The statue of Saleh, the Sumeri dictator, that stood in the center of it was pockmarked and missing an arm. Bodies, both from the legion and from the Sumeri Army, littered it. The bodies, like those of Cruz and his two remaining men, were covered with a mix of dust, minute particles of pulverized adobe, concrete and stone, sweat, explosive residue and—in the case of those lying in the square— blood. There were many times more Sumeri bodies than Balboan, largely a function of the body armor worn by the legionaries; that, and their superior training in marksmanship.

"Heads up," Cruz ordered. "White flag, two o'clock."

"Surrender?" asked Sanchez.

"No . . . don't think so. The Sumeri looks like he still has fight in him. To me it looks like a request for truce to let medical and burial parties in."

Robles lifted his light machine gun as if to fire. Cruz saw this, understood the anger and bitterness that might lead a young man to violate the flag of truce and said, "Knock it off, Robles. We got even for your brother one hundred times over." The private, reluctantly, lowered the weapon's muzzle.

The signifer for the century, a broad but filthy bandage covering half his face and one eye, walked out into the square, a white—well, it had started as white—flag tied onto a pole he held up and ahead. He and the Sumeri met midway, almost at the colossal statue. They nodded at each other in a way that was, if not quite friendly, at least respectful.

The Sumeri made a sweeping gesture which took in the square and all the bodies, living and dead, within it. Then he made something like the sign of the cross, but on one arm, pointing for emphasis at the bandage over the signifer's face.

The signifer nodded agreement, then pointed to his watch. He held up the fingers of one hand, twice.
Ten minutes?

The Sumeri shook his head regretfully, once again sweeping around the square with one arm.
Too many bodies . . . and our people are stretched.

Agreeing, the signifer held up all the fingers of the same hand, and repeated the gesture four times. At this the Sumeri seemed happy . . . or as happy as one could be under the circumstances. He then flashed his five finger sign once again and made as if putting a pistol in his holster.
Start the truce, officially, in five minutes.
The signifer agreed.

The Sumeri then made a sign as if drawing his pistol and firing it three times into the air.
That will be the signal to resume.

At this the signifer nodded, as well. Then both shook hands and walked back.

Five minutes later, parties of legionaries and Sumeris warily entered the square, no weapons in evidence. They searched impartially for the wounded, of which there were a few. These the Balboans took away, irrespective of uniform. They could care for the wounded much better than could the Sumeris' poor medical staff. Moreover, while there was some advantage to making the Sumeris take their own wounded, to make them eat up the little food remaining, Carrera had ordered that starvation was not, in this case, to be used as a weapon.

The dead were taken away by their respective sides, the Sumeri dead to a mosque that had been turned into a morgue not far away, the Balboans to another ad hoc morgue that had been set up in the gymnasium of a captured high school. All the dead were treated with the greatest respect by both sides.

Both sides moved as briskly as exhausted men could be expected to. It was not quite briskly enough. Nearing the end of the truce the original Sumeri officer—lacking decent body armor, generally, they had many more dead to carry away—asked for another ten minutes, which was granted.

Then, exactly thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds after the first white flag was shown, the bagpipes picked up, three well-spaced shots were fired into the air, and the slaughter resumed.

The only way tanks could lead in city fighting was if there was no real fighting to be done, in other words, if the enemy was either nonexistent or worthless. With a brave and
competent
enemy, and Sada's boys had shown themselves to be that, it was generally suicide for armor to lead. In that case, and in this, infantry led while armor followed and supported at a distance, suppressing with machine guns or clearing the way with the main gun. They'd proven particularly useful in clearing streets of the mines and booby traps the Sumeris had laid down lavishly.

The really bad part was that the streets made it impossible to use the armor in mass. Instead, one tank or sometimes two would be attached to one infantry century. Sometimes they'd have an Ocelot or two in support and sometimes not. In either case, though, when the rifle, sniper and machine-gun fire came in the crews had to button up and hope the infantry could keep the enemy's antitank teams away while the tank dealt with the threat that it sometimes couldn't really see very well.

In the close confines of the town of Ninewa, and despite having quite good night vision equipment, Perez, del Rio and Mendoza just couldn't see very well, generally. Not having slept much in days didn't help, either.

Still worse, they had no really good communications with the infantry century they were supposed to support. Their blasted antennae had been replaced; that wasn't the problem. Nor was it negligence on the part of the infantry. The grunts had simply lost so many leaders that a sergeant was leading the entire group with the senior section leader a mere corporal, and only one of those. The century had basically
lost
its ability to coordinate with their supporting tank.

Even worse than that, this century was not the original one. The tanks were in such short supply, never more than sixteen to begin and four had been lost completely, that they had to shunt around from unit to unit.

Neither Perez, nor del Rio, nor Mendoza could remember when they'd slept last. Mendoza thought he might have eaten something the day prior but couldn't be sure. The stewed camel over rice was not something the cohort mess section was really used to preparing, but they'd been reduced to that for the last three days. He might have skipped it yesterday; hard to remember. Too sleepy, too—

"Jorge, back up! Back up! Back up! Gunner, HE, RGL, two o'clock. Jorge, goddammit, back UP!"

Still half asleep Mendoza automatically shifted gears and backed the tank fifty meters. Before he had gone that distance, though, a rocket-launched grenade lanced out from the half-shattered wreck of an adobe building. It missed the tank, barely, and exploded against a wall behind Jorge and to his left. The tank's automatic defense system hadn't fired because all the blocks on the front had been used up and there hadn't been any spares to replace them. Maybe tomorrow . . . 

Del Rio was apparently not half asleep since the main gun roared even before Jorge applied the brakes. That woke him up fully and in time to watch the adobe building to his right front disintegrate to dust.

Ninewa, Command Post,
Legio del Cid
, 6/3/461 AC

A Cricket's engine sputtered outside where it had come to a hasty landing just a few seconds ahead of a heavy machine gun's tracers. A short, dark, and stout man, chest still swathed in bandages, climbed painfully down from its high door.