The Lotus Eaters (20 page)

Further down in the bowels of the ship a different crew kept track of the movements of the fleet, which fleet consisted of one heavy cruiser, the
Barco de la Legion Tadeo Kurita
, mounting twelve six inch, long range guns in four triple turrets, three corvettes, equipped for air defense and anti-submarine work, two patrol boats, and several service ships carrying everything from parts to petrol, from beans to bullets.

It was a nice little fleet and, if it was small compared to some well—

"It's still the size of the fight in the ship," muttered Fosa, "not the size of the ship—or fleet—in the fight."

Not that the ship was heading to a fight. Oh, no. It was ostensibly headed to an anti-drug patrol, in support of and in concert with the Federated States Navy and Air Force.

"And I'll perform that mission," Fosa muttered, even as he contemplated the
real
mission, the stealth mission.

* * *

There are three primary factors that affect an aircraft's radar cross section. These are size, materials, and shape. Although it is the least important factor, if two aircraft have exactly the same materials and shape, but are of different size, the larger will have a greater radar cross section. For shape, the important things are to have no sharp edges, no flat surfaces pointed toward the radar. For materials, there are tricks that can be used. The first trick is, construction wise, the tougher. Radar 'notices' the change in density of an object in the air. To the extent that that difference is tiny, radar is apt not to notice. The second trick is to make the aircraft 'lossy,' a chemical property referring to the conductivity of a material. Lossy materials convert radar energy to heat. In the case of the Condor auxiliary propelled gliders developed by the Legion, lossiness had been achieved by use of a spun carbon fiber and resin shell.

The heat was, of course, itself a problem and had been on Old Earth for over five centuries. Even on Terra Nova, thermal imagers had made it possible to detect even fairly faint heat differences at considerable distance.

Without knowing the real capabilities of all their potential enemies, the Legion has assumed the worst, made a virtue of a vice, and created what was probably the stealthiest aircraft, if one of the lowest performing ones, on the planet. Outside of that spun carbon fiber and resin shell, they had built up a thick layer of one of the best insulating materials known to man, polyurethane foam. That foam was fairly dense toward the shell, but became increasingly less dense as one moved outward from the shell. Indeed, the 'dielectric constant' of the things was, where foam met air, no more than 1.01, which is to say one percent more dense than the air surrounding.

Moreover, since overkill was one of the Legion's core values, within that foam were embedded a very large number of very tiny concave-convex chips. These, arriving at their final position within the aircraft randomly, tended to reflect and diffuse whatever radar energy they met, or collect and then diffuse that energy . . . and in directions as random as their own random placement. Objects on the glider which could not be made of carbon fiber or polyurethane had been more carefully designed—no randomness permitted—to be most likely to direct radar energy away from any transmitter. For propulsion the Condor had a pusher propeller, smoothly polished and made of the same carbon fiber-resin material as its shell. Heat from the engine was further dissipated by being mixed with cold air and released from dozens of small vents on the upper portions of the wings.

It had been just such a glider—albeit one under self-guidance—that Carrera had used to carry the bomb that destroyed the Yithrabi city of Hajar, effectively closing out the war with the
Salafi Ikhwan
.

* * *

"This is just a recon mission, Montoya. You understand that?"

Warrant Officer Rafael Montoya, tall, brown and skinny, nodded his answer to Fosa, then added, "Yes, sir, I know that. And the sooner it's over the better."

"Well, we won't be in position for you to launch for three or four days. Sleep well beforehand."

Montoya laughed, white teeth shining in his brown face. "Skipper, if you were going to recon someplace, someplace where you had absolutely
no
idea about the defensive capabilities, the sensors, the weapons, the rules of engagement . . . tell me, sir, how well would
you
sleep for the few days before?"

Fosa did not smile, but then he rarely did. "Warrant Officer Montoya," he said, "if you find that you cannot sleep at least eight hours in every twenty-four until you launch, let me know and I will have you drugged to sleep. And the rest of the time, except when eating or defecating, I expect you to be in a flight simulator."

"Aye, aye, sir," Montoya answered. Fosa wasn't the kind of man to argue with.

Fosa turned a glaring eye to the warrant. "Mr. Montoya, you have your orders and yet you are still here. Now run along, like a good lad, and follow them, while I continue with the ostensible counter-drug mission that is our excuse to get you to where you can launch."

"No,
mon general
," said Villepin, the intelligence officer. "I don't think—"

Janier held up one hand to silence his G-2. The general's eyes tracked a buzzing annoyance, winding low over his desk.

Someone had let a fly in through an open door. It was an unavoidable incident of life in the tropics, and as annoying as it was unavoidable. Screens on the windows could only keep down the numbers, even as they ensured that those flies that got in couldn't leave. This was what flypaper was for.

Janier sneered at the fly. He then picked up his telephone and punched in the number for his chief medical officer. "Kouchner, you filthy swine! The flypaper report you showed me said we had the fly problem under control! Why, then, is there a fly in my office?"

Janier slammed the phone down, apparently without waiting for an answer, and shouted out, "Malcoeur, you toad, get in here."

When the short, tubby, frog-faced major made his appearance, Janier said, "You are a toad, descended from toads." His finger lanced out at the buzz. "Follow your genes and catch that fly."

As Malcoeur scurried off to find a flyswatter, Janier said to de Villepin, "Continue."

The intel officer sighed. "As I was saying, no,
mon general
, I don't think we can use the drug trade to entice the Federated States into invading Balboa again, joining us in invading, or in supporting our invading Balboa. The ties are too close for that. Worse, the Federated States under its current regime is almost as casualty averse as our political 'masters.' And, if nothing else, the Balboans would make them bleed a great deal. Just as they will make us bleed unless we are very, very clever.

"We
can
, however, use the allegations of drug trafficking to confuse the Federated States, to make them ambivalent about both Balboa and the partition they inflicted on us some years ago in the interests of peace."

The conference room, though large, was empty but for Janier and Villepin . . . and the fly. Air conditioners hummed at two of the windows. It was as well they were working, since Janier was wearing his favorite uniform, the reproduction blue velvet and gold-embroidered informal dress uniform of a marshal of Napoleonic France. Hundreds of golden oak leaves covered the facings, the collar, the shoulders, and ran down each sleeve. But for the air conditioning, the combination of velvet and beastly-uncomfortable, stiff, high collar would have made the thing life threatening in Balboa's tropical clime.

Idly, Janier tapped his, likewise reproduction, marshal's baton, with its thirty-two gold eagles, on the broad, wooden conference table.

"Do you think that will work?" Janier asked, "Do you really think it will work when, if anyone is trafficking in drugs, it is our allies in the old government, cowering in fear in their little quarter and desperate for money?"

Villepin nodded. "
Mon general
, it is
precisely
because the rump government is involved in the trade that I am most confident that they can arrange to make it look as if it is Parilla and
his
government, aided in every particular by the Legion del Cid, that is running the whole enterprise."

Janier stopped tapping the table with his baton, raising the thing to rest against his shoulder and cheek. "It
is
elegant, I admit."

The baton began to tap again, this time against the Gallic general's cheek. He chewed on his lower lip while slowly nodding. Plainly he was weighing the pros and cons of Villepin's plan.

"All we really need," the general finally said, "is to get the Federated States or one of the TU's high courts to take out drug trafficking charges against either Parilla or Carrera. Both would be nice but either will do. At that point, the FSC's hands are tied while ours will be left free." Tap. Tap. Chew. Chew. Tap. Chew. Mull. Ponder . . .

"Do it. Set it up. As quickly as possible." Janier mused a bit more. "It would really be a help, you know, if somehow we could split the enemy's ranks, so that it looked as if he were falling apart and we, and our clients of the old government, would have to step in for the sake of law and order."

Villepin answered, "Well, it's still a bit uncertain but now that you mention it . . ."

The ship was moving fast enough to cause spray to rise and wet the bronze figurehead that graced the bow under the flight deck. There was a popular theory that the ship's name, "Dos Lindas," came from the figurehead's two perfect breasts. The setting sun, reflected from the waves, danced and played over the bronze of the figurehead, making it seem a thing not merely alive but divine. That an artificial rainbow from the spray framed the bronze only added to the illusion of divinity.

Higher than the figurehead, and much further back, on and around the rear elevator that connected the hangar deck with the flight deck, a well-rehearsed deck crew worked under an awning preparing an auxiliary-powered glider for flight. Above the deck, on the fenced open space atop the conning tower, Legate Fosa and Warrant Officer Montoya watched final preparations.

"Remember," Fosa cautioned Montoya, though his eyes remained fixed on the glider, "you're job isn't really to map a bloody thing. If this works, we'll be sending more missions out to recon the place. You have only to get there, overfly the island, and see if they notice you."

"I'll know that they'll have noticed me when they blast me out of the sky, right?" Montoya chided. He, too, had eyes only for his aircraft.

"We'd prefer that didn't happen," Fosa answered, still serious as cancer. "Now what do you do if they do notice you and happen to shoot your ass down? Assuming you live, of course."

"I push the button on my global locating system that will change its settings to make it appear to have malfunctioned," Montoya answered without hesitation. "I try to ditch at sea, and swim ashore. Thereafter, I try to avoid capture. If captured, I insist I was on a counter drug reconnaissance mission, suffered a malfunction and was blown off my patrol route. The prevailing winds will support that story. I tell them I tried to avoid capture because people who shoot down an aircraft engaged in legitimate law enforcement mission are unlikely to treat the pilot of that aircraft too very well."

"Very good," Fosa answered. "Now go do it."

The two turned to face each other, Montoya tossing off a typically ragged Air
Ala
salute, which salute Fosa returned with the comment, "Fucking aviator slobs. Git!"

* * *

The sun was just down. None of the moons had yet risen. In the darkness, with a headwind of eleven knots, and the carrier doing another eighteen, take off wasn't a question of speed to become airborne. It was a question of the deck crew removing the lashings that held the Condor to its cradle on the flight deck and jumping back. Montoya's Condor, with its fifty feet of wingspan, instantly lifted above the flight deck.

It was then that he gave a little gas to the engine, just enough to stay well above the flight deck as it moved out from underneath him. This was a little tricky as the sheer bulk of the
Dos Lindas
, moving underneath, displaced enough air to tug at the broad-winged glider, pulling it downward.

Despite the turbulence, Montoya kept well above the flight deck until the carrier was safely away. Although he kept his aircraft aloft easily enough, the pilot's spirits sank as the carrier left him to his mission. Indeed, seeing through his night vision goggles as the stern of the ship rapidly moved away gave Montoya one of the loneliest feelings he'd ever had in a life that had had its share of loneliness.

"Nothing for it, though," he said to himself, pulling his stick back and to the left to turn toward the southern coast of the western triangle of Colombia del Norte. It was there that he would find the updrafts from breezes blowing across the Mar Furioso and up the great chain of mountains they called the
Atacamas
. Those, if taken both ways, would extend his fuel to the UEPF lodgment on Atlantis Island and, "God willing, back again."

It was over a hundred and fifty miles before the Condor would cross the coast.

Two hours, near enough
, Montoya thought.
And, if I learned nothing else during
Cazador
School it was, 'don't sleep when you're tired; sleep when you can.'

Montoya's fingers played over his control panel, setting a wakeup call for an hour and a half and confirming his preprogrammed flight plan. The autopilot then took over, throttling down the engine to a speed of seventy knots and settling in to a flight altitude of one hundred meters over the sea. The pilot released the stick as soon as he felt the autopilot take control. Tossing his head to move the night vision goggles, or NVGs, up on their frame, he then settled back, crossing his arms over his chest.

Gonna be a looong flight
, was Montoya's last thought before sleep took him for, at least, a short time.

* * *

Before the third wake-up
ping
, Montoya's hand was reaching for his stick even as he tossed his head down to reposition his NVGs. His left hand sought out and found the on switch for the goggles, twisting a quarter turn clockwise to turn them on.