The Lotus Eaters (66 page)

Women. I've got women troops but no women combatants to speak of. And even if I wanted to raise a
tercio
of women fighters, who would train them? Who would . . . hmmm.

He put down the print out and stood. Rocking his head from side to side, muttering—thinking out loud, really—he walked up the stairs to his office. There, he used the secure phone to dial Parilla's office.

"Raul? Patricio. I've had a kind of an odd thought. I think it might be useful. See, I want to raise a regiment of women, and, to train those women, a regiment of gays . . . no, I'm not crazy . . . yes, I've thought about it enough . . . trust me . . . yes, I know it might cause a rift with the Church . . ."

"Pull over there," Pigna said to the driver of his command vehicle, a mottled green painted, one quarter ton, open top and sides, four wheel drive job made by a factory in Volga. The factory was partly owned by the Legion, with a local subsidiary to make spare parts. Eventually, it was intended that the parts manufactory would begin assembling entire vehicles. The troops called them "mulas," or mules.

"By the church, sir?"

"Yes, right by the church."

The driver shrugged, turned on his directional signal, motioned with his hand for the trucks following to keep on going, and turned the wheel. He eased through traffic, in itself no mean feat in the busy square in the middle of the city, made worse by the passing convoy on its way to Fort Cameron. The square was, in fact, the same square where a gringo, Patrick Hennessey, had once shot a number of Moslem, precipitating the wars that followed.

Once the mule stopped, parallel to the curb, Pigna got out and walked the dozen or so steps across the wide concrete sidewalk to the cathedral's main door. This he pulled open, then entered. Even as the door opened he could hear the choir at practice, singing something he didn't recognize but which sounded vaguely Gregorian.

The interior was dark, lit only by early morning light filtering through stained glass windows. The legate took a few moments to let his eyes adjust. Once he could see well enough, he dipped the three middle fingers of his right hand in the holy water font, used his thumb to spread the liquid out, and crossed himself.

He then walked to a rear pew, genuflected, and knelt. With his hands folded together, Pigna began to pray nervously for the success of the coup he intended to launch in a very few weeks. He began,
Thank You, God, that that bastard, Jimenez, will be down in La Palma visiting his troops. Thank You, too, that . . .

But then
why
just a military test? There are so many things of value to society, so many of which are difficult and even dangerous. And where would we be without mothers and motherhood? How impossible a life without the farmers' produce? Civilized life without dentistry is unimaginable, without entertainment so dull as not to be worth living.
And so what? We wouldn't be here without air, either. Shall it vote? By mass or by volume? Or would by molecule be more fair and just? We need meat and bread. Shall the cows and buds of chorley vote?
People pay taxes. Why should they not have a say? Because if paying taxes is sufficient, and not a cover for some other status, like being a warm body with a temperature around 98.6, then logically those who pay more should vote more. And yet where is the civic virtue in wealth?

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral
,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

Though the sun was long down, two of the three moons long up, and the antaniae crying
mnnbt, mnnbt, mnnbt
in the brush that edged the complex walls, a light still shone from the window of Fernandez's administrative office. With his wife long dead and daughter murdered by a terrorist's bomb, Fernandez had no real life outside the Legion. He didn't really feel the lack of that, though he missed his wife and especially his daughter terribly. This was the single best explanation, more than patriotism and more than dedication to the profession, that he worked such long hours, often sleeping on a the couch of the waiting room.

His men and women, likewise, took their cue from their chief. In a sense they had to, given the sheer workload and the relatively small numbers of people able to do the job. The expansion, of late, hadn't helped any. Thus, it was no great surprise when Fernandez's deputy, Legate Barletta, knocked, despite the late hour.

* * *

I don't know how I get into these things
, Barletta had thought to himself as he'd walked nervously down the corridor leading to Fernandez's administrative office. He was certain his chief would be there, because he wasn't in his "secure office" down below.
Yes I do, I acquired a little too much gambling debt, mostly entertaining my secretary, the bitch. That led to doing a couple of favors for money, which led to some more of each, which led to . . . ah, to hell with it. I'm here, now, and I'm stuck. But shit, Omar's my
friend
.

Reaching Fernandez's outer door, Barletta turned the knob and walked in to the waiting area. There he removed a pistol from under his uniform tunic with his right hand, while his left sought out a smallish cylinder contained in the tunic's left hip pocket. The cylinder went smoothly onto the end of the pistol's muzzle, quite despite Barletta's trembling hand.

But then again, friend or not, he'd have me down under that fucking Arab's care in a heartbeat if he knew I'd been turned. So, friend or not, it's him or me.

Barletta walked the couple of steps to the inner door, then knocked with his left hand.

* * *

Fernandez recognized the knock. He said, "Come in," then looked up, nodded a greeting, and turned his attention back to a small metallic or plastic box that sat atop his wooden desk. Barletta's hands were clasped behind his back, but that wasn't anything particularly unusual.

"What's that, Chief," Barletta asked. Since the deputy wasn't cleared for this particular piece of information, Fernandez just shook his head in negation. That could have meant anything from, "you don't need to know" to "I don't know." Barletta was used to that. He waited silently for a few moments until he was certain that the intelligence chief's full attention was back on the box.

"I'm sorry for this, chief," Barletta said, taking aim at Fernandez's chest. The deputy sounded sincerely sorry and also very nervous.

"What?" Fernandez asked, looking up.

Fernandez was short, thus the difference between a pistol aimed at his heart and one aimed at the box was minimal. He didn't think much of his own importance—and there he was quite wrong—but did think the box was important. As Barletta squeezed the trigger, Fernandez grabbed the box and spun around in his chair to his left, placing his body between it and the weapon.

The move was quick, taking Barletta by surprise, enough so that—added to his case of nerves, his first coughing shot went wide of his aim, taking Fernandez in the right side of his back, the bullet passing though the lung on that side, driving blood, phlegm, and tissue out of his chest. The energy transferred set Fernandez to spinning, so that the next two shots went though his spine, in one case, and his gut, in the next. Arms flopping limply back, he was thrown chest forward to the floor, his body falling over the black box.

Nervous almost to the point of hysteria now, Barletta dropped the pistol and ran off through the office door, through the waiting room, and into the corridor. From there he forced himself back to a brisk walk, and began to move to the stairs that led down and to the front entrance where his secretary was supposed to be waiting with the car running.

The police van was the same model as some of those used by the Legion. It was not longer obviously a police vehicle, however, having been given a paint job in legionary colors by one of Balboa's many highly talented body and paint workers. It was also the same model as that used by the guard on Parilla's palace for the changing of the guard, which was rather a less formal exercise in Balboa than it was in, say, Anglia.

In any case, the nine men in the van weren't interested in formality. Nor was the guard on the gate interested in much but that they looked right, their identification cards looked right, their uniforms were legionary, and the van wasn't inherently suspicious. He passed them through with a smile and a wave.

Only when past the gate did this portion of the hostage rescue team remove their heavier arms from bags sitting at their feet. Magazines were quickly loaded into the side wells of submachine guns and then the bolts were jacked. There were suppressors already screwed onto the muzzles. The weapons were the same Pound submachine guns as used by the close-in presidential guard, in lieu of the more common F-26 assault rifle that was standard Legion issue.

The team had opted for the unsubtle. As soon as the van stopped in front of the palace, the side sliding door popped open and a half dozen men stepped out. These walked purposefully toward the two guards on the front entrance and shot them down without warning. The only sounds made were the coughing of the submachine guns and the gurgling death rattles of the guards.

Though the "rescue" team had plastic explosive in case the door needed blasting, and a police locksmith, in fact the door was open. They'd had and studied the floor plans exhaustively, but assumed, not unreasonably, that at this time of night Parilla would most likely be in bed with his wife. Two men remained on the door, after pulling the guards' bodies inside. The other four raced upstairs, soft soled, high grip shoes making little more noise than would a cat on the marble steps.

Parilla's door was open as well. As silently as possible, the chief of the kidnappers turned the knob and gave it a slight push, letting it continue to swing open on its own.

Then came the rush, the sudden throwing on of the lights, and a piercing scream from Parilla's wife.

One of the attackers cuffed her into silence, while another stroked the folding metal but of his submachine gun across the president's chin. Parilla, stunned into silence, was quickly turned over and cuffed. The chief of the team then said, "
Presidente
Parilla, you are under arrest, by order of the legitimate President of the Republic, for election fraud, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and narcotrafficking." The man then spoke a code word into a small radio.

"Get him to the helicopter pad."

Nine policemen sufficed to take down the President. It was thought, not without reason, that Carrera would make a harder target. More than twice as many men, and three vans, plus the only other helicopter still under Rocaberti's control, were assigned to his capture and evacuation.

Of course, the
casa
was considerably less hard a target that it once had been, what with Hamilcar's Pashtun Guards gone, and security the responsibility of rotating sections from the Mechanized Legion at
Lago Sombrero
. Moreover, most of the original staff had moved out and moved on as they'd found wives or better housing elsewhere. Perhaps worst of all, with Sergeant Major McNamara living elsewhere with his young bride and growing brood of children, there was no one single person charged with security and paranoid enough to see it done properly.

Though McNamara and Artemisia were still very frequent guests at the place.

* * *

The children, Lourdes' and Artemisia's, both, were playing upstairs, minus only Lourdes' youngest, Little Linda, who was not only too young to really be willfully difficult but also on the "Lourdes Diet," and would be for some time yet. The others had been impossible at dinner—they always were when they got together—and had been sent away early. In theory, this meant they hadn't eaten much. In practice, it meant the cook smuggled dinner in to them.

Mac leaned back in his chair, stretched, and belched. "Damned fine feed, Miss Lourdes. My compliments to t'e chef." As if to punctuate that, the sergeant major broke of a piece of chorley bread, dipped it in some "Joan of Arc" sauce, and popped it into his mouth, chewing gustily. "Could use a little more 'Satan Triumphant,' though," Mac said. "Just a tad, not enough to take the skin off the tongue."

Artemisia shot him a dirty look, not over the belch, but over the sheer volume of food he'd managed to tuck away. "It just isn't right. I have to diet, exercise, and practically kill myself after I have a baby, and this tall bastard can eat enough for ten men and stay slim. It's not
fair
."

"High metabolism," the sergeant major answered, in Spanish. "And you must admit, love, that this has its advantages in an old man."

"
Some
advantage," Arti agreed, "though
I
end up paying the price for that in the form of a distended abdomen, and eventual rigid dieting."

"Good wit' t'e bad; good wit' t'e bad. It's pretty good, still, ain't it?"

"As a matter of fact . . ."

Lourdes sighed. "If you two are going back to teenage games, I've had a metal plate installed between the headboard and the wall in the number one guest room, so you can pound away. Alternatively, we can move a mattress down to the concrete floor in the basement, though I shudder to think of the damage to the foundations of the house."

"I'm getting a little old for t'at, high metabolism or no," Mac said.

"Not so old," Arti corrected. "Not yet, anyway."

* * *

"Time," announced Moises Rocaberti, nephew to the soon to be full president and younger brother to that Rocaberti who had been shot for cowardice years before, in Sumer.

Moises was, his uncle thought, a happy choice. He was, indeed all the Rocabertis were, effectively barred from higher office in the Legion by Carrera. Given that, and given a military bent, the younger Rocaberti had joined his uncle's police force. He was bright, handsome, ruthless, loyal to his blood, and had—best of all—an abiding hatred of Carrera and Parilla, which hatred had festered in the long years since his older brother's execution.