The Lotus Eaters (36 page)

"Is it just the Santander people or is Atzlan involved, too?" Fernandez asked.

"Atzlan is . . . interested," Keith said, "but, so far as we can tell, not involved. They're on the other side of the supply chain. What you're doing here doesn't affect them that much, if at all."

And it doesn't hurt
, thought Fernandez,
that I had my wet work people, especially Khalid, exterminate one group of the bastards some time ago. Hmmm. Maybe it's time to put Khalid back to work again; he's my best. But in Santander this time.

Hmmm. Wet work? Have to work on Patricio myself to get him to agree, these days.

The afternoon sun cast long shadows from the trees lining the main thoroughfare on both sides. Striped by those shadows, a dirty white van, old and badly used, pulled into a parking space next to the former headquarters for the Transitway Area Police. The building itself, less than forty feet from where the van parked, was a one story, light brown painted, stucco structure. A group of policemen and women, numbering perhaps twenty-five, stood on the grass fronting the building. Another police officer, this one wearing sergeant's stripes, read aloud from his clipboard the duty instructions for the night shift.

A young police officer, Emilio Alvarez, half ran from a side door of the police station to his car parked a few hundred meters away, opposite the Balboa Knights of Pius V hall. As he passed, Alvarez took little notice of the t-shirted passenger exiting the van. Like all new members of the police force inducted of late, Alvarez was a member of the Reserves, in his case of the 10th Infantry
Tercio
. He hastily tucked a fatigue shirt in as he rushed to be on time for his weekend drill.

Amidst a cacophony of fruitlessly honking horns and mostly good-natured cursing, Alvarez crossed the street, weaving his way through crawling "rush hour" traffic. On reaching his automobile, he bent slightly to unlock the door. Opening the door, he looked up to see two men, one of whom he thought he had just seen getting out of a white van, cross the street at a very fast walk. The men broke into a fast run.

Afterwards, Alvarez was to remember everything which followed in remarkable detail: the approach of two running men toward his car, the way the desk sergeant turned to look at the van, the small puff of smoke that escaped from underneath it, the blinding flash, and then the bodies—and parts of bodies—of the night shift being smashed into the crumbling wall of the police station.

Alvarez was thrown to the ground by the blast. He rolled over to his belly and then arose to all fours. Paying no attention to the cuts on his face and—where his own car's windows had shattered—his chest, Alvarez drew his sidearm and rushed into the street. Now he really did notice the two men, one in a dirty white t-shirt, the other in a cheap looking
guayabera
, that arose from the asphalt, swearing about something. Whatever it was they were cursing, Alvarez was too deafened by the blast to hear. It didn't matter.

One of the two bombers, the one in the guayabera, began to reach under his shirt for a gun. Alvarez quickly took a firing stance. The gunman put both his hands into the air, followed by his companion a moment later.

A female Tauran Union corporal, Gallic by birth, and shapely enough even through her battledress, had also survived the blast. She rushed over to where Alvarez had the two bombers covered. Seeing another uniform, Alvarez beckoned the corporal over with one hand, the other keeping the pistol steady-aimed on the bombers. He handed over his pistol and said, "Watch these two. Kill them if they make a move."

The languages were just close enough. The Gallic corporal nodded, angrily, then took the pistol and held it on the bombers. Alvarez raced for the ruins of the police station. On the way he passed dozens of dead; men, women, and children. Still others cried or screamed. He left those for what aid the other survivors could give them. He had to get to the police station.

When he reached the smoking yard in front of the station, Alvarez began to throw up. He had seen dead people before, but never so many in one place, never so many so completely ruined. Fighting his nausea, Alvarez returned to the wounded on the streets. There he could still do some good.

As reports rushed in—a bombing in Cristobal, another two in
Ciudad
Balboa, a fifth in
Ciudad
Cervantes to the east—Fernandez gently held a framed portrait of his daughter, his only child, killed years before by a terrorist's bomb.

What a terrible world we live in, child. I would have thought—though I should
not
have thought it—that those days were past. Silly me.

The reports of casualties were fragmentary, at best. Even so, there were well over a hundred known dead, and possibly as many as twice that. Of wounded there may have been a thousand. Among the dead were half a dozen elderly tourists from the Federated States, killed while dining at a small and quaint restaurant overlooking the sea. This, of course, had the Federated States enraged.

Fernandez placed the portrait back down on his desk, then stood. His normally ferret-like face twisted into a hate-filled sneer. "Revenge," he said aloud, then repeated, "Revenge."

The boy stood in front of his father's grand desk, hands clutched behind his back and head thrust forward. A sea breeze wafted through the window, bringing with it the not unpleasant aroma of the salt sea to the north. Outside birds chirped in the trees below the balcony. Closer still, on that balcony, a half dozen trixies, plus one, took turns grooming each other.

"What now, Dad?" Hamilcar asked.

"Now we bring the war to them in ways they probably never even imagined," Carrera answered.

The boy frowned, slightly. "Did you know this would happen?" he asked.

Carrera sighed, chewing his lower lip and looking up towards the ceiling of his office. His face scrunched of its own accord. "I knew
something
like this would happen. That's not really your question though, is it?"

The boy shook his head. "No. I really want to know why it's worth it."

"It's complex," Carrera said. The boy looked directly at his father as if to ask,
Do you think I'm not bright enough, even at nine years old, to understand?

The father understood the unstated question. "All right, then," he said. "We are going to war with the Taurans in anywhere from one to three years. We can win that war, provided the Federated States stays at least neutral. To make them stay neutral, we have to deal with their concerns. Of those, a big one is the drug trade."

"But you've told me before that that problem is entirely of their own making, entirely their own fault."

"And I told you the truth, son," Carrera answered. "But the mere fact that it is their own fault has very little to do with whether they accept that it's their own fault. They don't. They won't. Maybe, even, they
can't
. I don't think they can, anyway."

Carrera sneered. "After all, how can they blame the innocent, rich, white stock broker who feeds several thousand drachma a week up his nose when there's a guilty, brown, and dirt-poor huánuco grower iniquitously cultivating the stuff to feed his starving family?"

"Huh?"

Carrera laughed, bitterly. "Never mind. Just accept that people often not only don't think logically, they often can't, and that certain forms of government often make this worse. Accept it, because it's our reality. Just as it's our reality that we are the most powerful of tiny states on this planet, but are still tiny for all that."

"All right," the boy agreed. "So you accepted that some of our people would be killed?"

"Acceptance is perhaps not the right word, son, implying it was a happy compromise. Let's say I understood it would happen, or at least could, and I was prepared to fight it, mitigate it, and retaliate for it."

Hamilcar's eyes narrowed. "That's bullshit, Dad," he said.

"All right then," Carrera said. "Call it 'acceptance,' if you insist, so that we could prevail in an inevitable war—at least I
think
it's inevitable—to recapture all of our country."

"Hard on the people who were killed, Dad," the boy observed. "Some of them were my age . . . or even younger."

"How many would be killed to no purpose if we fight the war that is coming and lose?"

"More, I suppose."

"More and to no good," Carrera said. "And on the subject of people your age being killed, your mother and I are agreed; you are leaving the country sooner than we'd planned."

The boy's eyes narrowed again, even as his little shoulders stiffened. "It's wrong to send your own family out of a danger you've helped bring on everyone else, Dad."

The father nodded slowly and deeply, agreeing, "Yes, it would be wrong. But I'm not sending you away to protect my son. I'm sending you away to preserve my replacement."

Hamilcar thought about that for a moment. It made sense and was possibly even the right thing to do. "Where are you sending me?" he asked.

"You, and your Pashtun guards, and Alena, and her husband, Tribune Cano, are heading back to Alena's people. They will preserve you. And possibly teach you some things you need to know."

"All right then," the boy agreed. While his mother would cheerfully have sent him out of harm's way because he was her son, his father, he knew, would never shame him that way. "Since you're heading east tomorrow, Dad," Hamilcar asked, "and since I'm leaving soon, can I go with you?"

"I wish," Carrera said. "But no, I have to preserve my replacement. Besides, the first part of the day I have to meet with Parilla. You'd be bored to death."

The boy looked crestfallen, enough so that Carrera added, "But in a few days there is a ceremony of sorts I want you to undertake before you go."

Flames arose from torches on the green. The flickering flames cast shadows across the grass. The torches were there partly for their light, partly for the smoke that helped drive off the mosquitoes. Mostly, though, they used torches for the sense of visual drama they lent the proceedings.

Lourdes had not been invited. "Love, in this one thing, you cannot be witness," Carrera had told her.

Her eldest was there, the boy Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez. The boy was wide eyed, half at the spectacle and half at being led kindly by the hand by his father. They walked along a path marked with the flaming torches towards the marble obelisk that marked the grave—though it was more memorial than grave, really—of his dead half-siblings and their mother, Linda.

Before moving to the memorial Carrera had shown the boy pictures of Linda and their children, explaining their names and telling him stories about them in life. He'd also told the boy how they'd been murdered.

"That's why I spent so much time away from home, Son," the father explained, "hunting down the men responsible."

"I understand, Dad," the boy said.

Perhaps he did, too. He was a bright lad, extremely so. Carrera expected great things of him.
Kid will likely be tall, too, given that his mother's 5'10."

Around the obelisk were several close friends: Kuralski, Soult and Mitchell, as well as Parilla. Jimenez, McNamara and Fernandez were in Pashtia. Those present were uniformed and stood at parade rest as Carrera led the boy forward by the hand.

Soult brought out a bible, which he handed to Carrera. Releasing Hamilcar's little hand, the father knelt down beside him, holding out the book and saying, "Place your left hand on this and raise your right. Now repeat after me."

"I, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez . . ."

"I, Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez . . ."

". . . swear upon the altar of Almighty God . . ."

". . . swear upon the altar of Almighty God . . ."

". . . undying enmity and hate . . . to the murderers of my brother and sisters . . . and the murderers of their mother, my countrywoman . . . and to the murderers of all my country folk . . . and to those that have aided them . . . and those that have hidden them . . . and those who have made excuses for them . . . and those that have funded them . . . and those who have lied for them . . . wherever and whoever they may be . . . and whoever may arise to take their places. I swear that I will not rest until my fallen blood is avenged and my future blood is safe. So help me, God."

"Very good, Son," Carrera said, handing the bible back to Soult and ruffling Hamilcar's hair affectionately. "Now we are going to have dinner with my friends, back at the house. The day after tomorrow we go back to getting ready for the next war."

"God," muttered the President. "God, but I would like to teach those people a lesson."

About a couple of hundred slaughtered Balboans the Progressive Party, currently in power in the Federated States, cared not very much. Half a dozen murdered citizens, however, and their friends and relatives, to say nothing of a fickle press baying for blood, were of considerable concern.

The President of the Federated States of Columbia, Karl Schumann, was sufficiently concerned with that problem that he hardly paid any attention to the zaftig intern kneeling between his legs with her raven-tressed head bobbing. Ordinarily, the President would not have been able to think clearly while the intern was so engaged. Under the circumstances, he had no trouble thinking but considerable trouble concentrating on her efforts.

The Office of Strategic Intelligence, Justice and State tell me the Santanderns are responsible. The Joint Chiefs are not so certain some radical group in Balboa didn't do it. Me; I think it was the Santanderns, the drug running Santanderns.

What do I do? Tell the Army to go after the drug lords with special operations people? We don't know which one to go after, which one gave the orders. We don't even know which cartel. Bomb them? Same problem. And if they are this ruthless outside of Santander, what's to stop them from coming after me. The Secret Service reminds me daily, in word and deed, that I am vulnerable. And the drug lords' resources are certainly adequate to get me if I provoked them.