The Lotus Eaters (27 page)

"My commander and my president wish me to inform you that this mobilization is not aimed at you or your forces," said the senior tribune. Janier was startled to see the name "Carrera" above the tribune's right pocket.

"He's my brother-in-law," David Carrera explained. "He says to inform you that this mobilization is not aimed at you. He also says to inform you that it would be very easy to adjust his aim. Lastly, he says, do not mobilize your forces or he
will
adjust his aim."

Mierde
, thought Janier.

* * *

Later, after David Carrera had left, Janier called his logistics, intelligence and operations officers into his office. The toad, Malcoeur, was excluded since there were no flies to be caught.

"Gentlemen," Janier said, civil among his social peers, "the fact of the Balboan mobilization, the speed and secrecy of the thing, makes me think we need something more here."

"We don't have room for any more ground troops," said the Log officer. "All the barracks are stuffed to overflowing and putting troops, long term, in tents is both expensive and unhealthy."

"Would it be sufficient to bring in another squadron or two of air?" de Villepin asked.

"No," answered the logistician. "Half the barracks at the air base are full of ground troops, too, and even were they not, the base is in range of more artillery than I care to contemplate. We'd just be giving the Balboans more targets with no commensurate increase to our power."

Operations poked a tongue into teeth turned yellow from smoking. His face indicated he was searching for an answer that was almost at the tip of his tongue. Janier looked at that face expectantly. His operations officer was handpicked, and came with rather a good reputation.

"The
Charlemagne
," ops said, suddenly. "Same airpower as a squadron . . . or rather more, really. No need for barracks. Nuclear powered so no fuel expense. And it's something the Balboans really don't have a good way to strike at."

"They do have an aircraft carrier," de Villepin objected. It was not stated very forcefully.

The ops officer shrugged. "They've got an old carrier, converted to a coastal raider, with a fair defensive suite, true, but with no high performance aircraft. It is not a match for
Charlemagne
, not nearly."

Janier nodded. The Gallic carrier would be a help. "Inquire," he said. "Paint a dire picture. Get me in a position where I do not have to worry about the shit the Balboans pull."

De Villepin looked museful for a moment. "Speaking of pulling shit," he said, "this might be a good way to bring in the commandos we need to assist
our
Balboans in their little project, without tipping anyone's hand. And, then too, the
Charlemagne
would be extremely useful in ensuring that no troops come from
Isla Real
to the mainland during those events."

I am so tired of this shit
, thought Cara, as she leaned against the doorframe of the house she shared with Cruz and watched her husband's back recede into faint light of the streetlamp. Cruz had his rucksack slung over one shoulder and his rifle gripped in the opposite hand. He placed both in the trunk, then walked to the automobile's door. He stopped to wave, once, and then opened the door and sat down, closing the door behind him. The car started with a muffled roar.

Cara Cruz sighed and shook her head.
How many times have I seen you off like this, standing alone in a doorway? I wish I understood what it is that calls to you. I wish I understood the smile you try to hide when going on active service.

Of course I
don't
understand those things, not for a minute. All I understand is that there is a call, that you do love your work . . . and that I love you, you bastard.

Oh . . . and I understand that you know I'll be waiting here for you when you come home. Please come home.

The early morning sun lit the sea, but only lightly upon the top and the edges of the coastal jungle. Centurion Ricardo Cruz rested his hands on the chain railing to one side of the ship's stern, looking at the shore as the ship made way parallel to it. Near his feet rested his pack and rifle. Around him, likewise seated on the deck, rested the men of his platoon.

It wasn't much of a port, Cruz thought. And, he surmised, it could never do as a homeport for a major warship. It didn't have much of an airstrip. It was not much of a town. Indeed, if one took and weighed every building in the town, plus the weight of the asphalt on the airstrip, and the two rock jetties that defined the port, the light aircraft carrier laying two miles off shore would still have outweighed the entirety of what was on land.

"No, it isn't much," Cruz mused. "And yet it is still ours, and no foreigners may walk in and take it from us."

I wish I could tell you, Cara, that that's the reason I'm here. But that would be a lie. The fact is that I love it, the action, I mean, and that I need it.

Cruz sensed the presence of another standing nearby. He turned to look and saw one of the swabbies of the
classis
.

"Centurion Cruz?" the sailor asked.

"Yes."

"I'm to lead you to the helicopters scheduled to take you in."

"Lead on, then, sailor," said Cruz, turning away from the shore and towards his men. "On your feet, boys."

* * *

Fosa, too, was quite unimpressed with the sleepy, mostly ramshackle town. "On the other hand," he mused from his bridge, watching his Yakamov helicopters boarding and launching chalk after chalk of foot soldiers to deposit them in and around the town and further into the jungle, "it does have some buildings; it does have an all weather airstrip, and—even if the port isn't up to sheltering the
Dos Lindas
or the
Tadeo Kurita
—it can still deal with small merchies, the escorts, and landing craft. So it's good enough for our purposes."

Suarez, standing to one side of Fosa, nodded. He also looked at a chart which showed how much of his force, a mere fraction of one infantry legion, was ashore. With a single tick mark on the chart from one of Fosa's sailors, Suarez stood to attention, saluted and said, "I relieve you, sir." That tick mark indicated that half of Suarez's force was now ashore.

It's a small enough force to begin with
, Suarez thought,
given the size of the area we have to reestablish control over.

Fosa returned the salute and answered, "I stand relieved, sir." From that moment on, until and unless the fleet retired, operational control of both had passed to the land force commander, just as it had previously resided with Fosa, the commander of the naval force.

"Good luck,
compadre
," Fosa added. "We'll support from here as we're able."

As if to punctuate that statement the four triple six inch turrets of the BdL
Tadeo Kurita
rotated slightly. The center gun of number two then spoke in anger, flames and smoke shooting out over the water. Even as stunned or dead fish began floating to the surface, the entire ship barked out a twelve-gun broadside.

"Seems your boys have made contact with
somebody
," Fosa observed.

If the town of
Puerto Jaquelina de Coco
wasn't much, FNLS Camp Twenty-seven, twenty odd miles to the south of it, was even less than that. At least Jaquelina had one paved road and some rooftops of solid material. The camp had mud and more mud, with open latrines dug none too deep and far too close to the well, some half falling apart
bohios
roofed with rotting leaves, hammocks strung between trees and altogether too many flies and mosquitoes. That latter, especially, droned in swarms outside the nets slung by the denizens of Camp Twenty-seven as protection against them.

On the plus side
, thought one of those denizens, "guerilla fighter" Esteban Escobar, as he glanced about at the surrounding squalor,
the work load ain't much. And there's pussy.

The sun barely penetrated through the thick canopy overhead. Still, the mottled shadow hid little of the camp from those, just awakening, who inhabited it.

Esteban had once been a rather bright student at the national university in Santander's capital, a "dull, middle class, grind," as some of his classmates had called him. Then he'd fallen in with a very pretty and very radical girl from the upper classes. She'd made certain introductions, first to her body, then to some illicit substances, and then finally to some friends. He'd left school—
Well, why not? My grades were going to shit in favor of sex anyway
—and joined the Movement.

His life as a guerilla had started out poorly and gone downhill from there. First there'd been the Army of Santander, hunting him and his comrades like vermin through the mountainous jungles. And they'd gotten progressively better at it, too. Even that wasn't the worst of it, though. The worst had been the things the police had done to break the guerilla's support networks in the towns and cities.

Little food, no money. And pussy—even, maybe especially, upper class pussy—will only carry you so far
, Esteban mused, swinging slowly from side to side in his hammock. Absently, the guerilla's hand reached up lightly to caress a small crucifix hung about his neck. With so many Catholic priests in support of the Movement, it was perhaps the only Tsarist-Marxist inspired guerilla group on Terra Nova where the rank and file were required to keep their religion.

There was a buzz in his ear. Esteban let go the crucifix and swatted at a mosquito that had found a hole in the netting he'd spread over his "bed."
Dammit. Missed the little bastard.

In a quest for survival, Esteban and his "company"—never more than about sixty-five fighters anyway—had moved on. They'd had to move forward because the "liberated zone" the government had temporarily granted the FNLS as part of a ceasefire arrangement was already at carrying capacity. There'd been no going back.

And wasn't that fucking brilliant
, the guerilla thought.
Vigilantes everywhere, within days of our showing up. Fucking
Autodefensas!

In time, after many fights, few of them victorious, the guerilla band, now reduced to thirty-seven, found itself on the Balboa-Santander
frontera
, with no place to go but into Balboa.

And here we prosper, for certain very constrained values of prosperity. The
jefes
back in Santander send us processed drugs; we send them on; we get a cut of the take. All in the interests of the people's struggle against oppression, of course.

And all of which buys us some worn out, tumble down huts, a shitty well, some muddy trails . . . and some food and an occasional piece of ass from the locals.
Viva la Revolucion!

"La Revolucion
, Esteban mentally sneered.
What
is
the revolution? Some upper class pussy? A
jefe
smelling faintly of cologne that comes by every half year to lecture us on the dialectic? Running drugs to keep that
jefe
in style in Belalcázar? A priest who pretends to be a Catholic? Chinga la Revolucion. The Revolution is nothing but taking the drugs to Puerto Jaquelina and transshipping them to some assholes in Ciudad Balboa.

I want to go back home and start school again. I'm tired of this shit.

I want . . . what the fuck was that?

* * *

The aircraft—a Turbo-Finch Avenger—was basically a modified crop-duster; armored, upengined, with thirteen hardpoints for ordnance, and a fair electronics suite. They were cheap; they were tough; they were highly maneuverable. They also, with their comparatively fuel-sipping turbo-prop engine, had a very impressive range and loiter time. The one hanging over Esteban Escobar and his unwashed comrades had taken off from the military strip on the
Isla Real
some hours ago.

"Well, that's that," said Montoya into his radio, just after dropping the last of his original load of four electro-magnetic pulse bombs and gunning the engine of his Turbo-Finch to get the hell out of range of the bomb before it fried all his electronics and left him at a very unpleasant "one with nature."

A voice answered; Montoya thought it might be the commander of the Air
Ala
, Lanza, himself, but couldn't be sure for all the static.

"Well done, Rafael. Head to the strip at Puerto Jaquelina de Coco. They're not ready to refuel and rearm you yet but they can receive you well enough. And the carrier's choppering in some fuel pods and ammunition pallets as they can."

"Beats a carrier landing," Montoya answered. "I'll be along."

Several kilometers behind and below Montoya's aircraft, a bright flash and somewhat muffled boom told of an EMP bomb doing its bit to fry every radio and satellite phone within a fairly large circle on the ground.

* * *

Lightning? Thunder?
Esteban listened carefully for a while over the sounds of the jungle and its creatures.
No. Thunder and lightning aren't generally accompanied by the sound of an aircraft engine . . . or . . .
—he listened more carefully still—
maybe two or three of them. That I can
hear
. And . . . helicopters? Time to wake the
jefe
, I think. And I think maybe we're in neck deep shit.

* * *

God, I
love
this shit
, Senior Centurion Ricardo Cruz thought to himself as he led his platoon through a neck-deep swamp twenty miles southeast of Puerto Jaquelina de Coco. Cruz, average height for a Balboan, which is to say, medium short, helmeted, dressed in pixilated jungle tiger stripes, sloshed along as quietly as possible, his F-26 rifle held above his head.

The platoon had been choppered in to a spot over the jungle onto which had been dropped a tree landing platform. This platform, basically a hexagon of pipes with six longer pipes leading from it to a larger hexagon, the whole connected by wires the better to catch on the foliage, and topped by chain link fencing, allowed helicopter-borne infantry to land atop the jungle, rather than try to find a large enough landing zone. The men descended from the TLP by ladders hooked to the sides and let down through the thick canopies.