Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  The machine gun, of course, had a trigger. Normally, this model could hardly be said to have had a hair trigger, what with ten to twelve pounds of pull required to fire it. A lever system and a cam, with the cam sitting in front of the trigger, effectively dropped that to about one pound. A small framework, likewise of wood, kept the lever and cam in place.

  From the lever ran a length of wire, stout stuff, pulled from some damaged electronics. The level also extended down past the cam. This had a quarter-pound or so rock at the bottom end.

  The wire at the top of the lever ran first to a fairly good-sized rock, maybe a pound or so, around which the wire was wrapped. From there it went to a bound-together wooden apparatus, two tripods with a crosspiece. The wire then went over the crosspiece and down to a roughly one-quart can, scrounged from the mess, with a make-do wire handle running connected on opposite sides, just a tad above the midway point. A piece of cord was further attached to the can, extending up from the bottom, and affixed to a higher stake. such that it would tip the can at some point in its descent.

  The can was connected to the handle by the wire. Over that, a twenty-liter water can released water in a steady drip, drip, drip. Testing had shown that the can would be filled about every forty minutes.

  As it filled, it pulled on the rock, lifting it from the ground. Eventually, the rock was pulled enough that between it and the water can, enough force was applied to the trigger, via the lever and the cam, to activate it.

  Brpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrp.

  At that point the can ran out of slack to its bottom cord, which tipped it, spilling much if not all of the water. Then the rock fell back to earth, pulling the can up and leaving enough slack for the gun to stop firing and the trigger to reset. Then the can started filling with water again.

  Chiarello and Borroni had been busy engineers. They’d also had help, once they’d figured out how to do it. Maybe five minutes later, a different machine gun threw a burst at a different copse of woods. And a few minutes after that, a rifle fired. Sometimes, a single mortar shell lanced out, to fall among the guerillas’ positions with a thunderous blast. The mortars used a very different arrangement and could only fire once, each.

  Somewhere down range, a young Santa Josefinan guerilla crossed himself and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Almighty that it hadn’t been him in that machine gun’s sights. Or the sights of the other one. Or those of any of the riflemen. Or under the mortar’s deadly, indirect gaze.

  Of course, no one was in the machine guns’ sights really. Neither was anyone in any of the other sights. Nor, except maybe by fluke, was anyone downrange of the rifles or in the burst radius of the mortars’ shells.

  Indeed, the machine gunner was currently at the beach, awaiting his turn to be picked up by either a rubber boat or a commandeered fishing boat; you never really knew until the transportation showed up and you were directed to this stop or that. Likewise standing by was the crew of the other gun, rather, all the other guns, plus a large number of riflemen, and more than a few mortar crews.

  The engineers were going to be among the last out. This was because they were busy putting in a few mines in some obvious places and a much large number of warning signs that insisted a given area was mined.

  It was actually harder than it sounded, because these fake minefields had to be by the numbers enough to convince people they were real. That meant stringing barbed wire on three sides of the field, leaving the front open toward the enemy, lifting and replacing clods of earth in a pattern that looked like a deliberate minefield, putting thin rods in places to look like tilt rod mines, and running what would appear to be trip wires from central points.

  A lot of this, of course, had been done over the last three days. But there were certain things, laying actual mines and booby traps being the biggie, that had to be done at the last minute. And that meant a very, very dark last minute.

  “Hurry up, dammit, Borroni,” ordered Chiarello. “I do not want to be left behind and captured or have to run to Cordoba and be interned. Neither do you.”

  “Sergeant Major,” answered the soldier addressed, “maybe it’s been a while for you since you worked with mines, but these things are fucking dangerous. You really want me to rush them? You want me to rush them when I’m having to do everything by feel?”

  “Just go as quickly as you can . . . while being safe.”

  ***

  The spot chosen for the evacuation was a cove, sheltered by sand dunes and cliffs, about halfway up the coast from the forward trace to the Cordoban border. There were two spots, close together, where a boat with some draft could get in to wading distance and depth from the shore. For most of the rest it was a gently sloped, sandy beach without much in the way of either cover or impediments.

  There were colored lights on the beach, facing out toward the ship and well shielded from view from anywhere but to sea. Four of the colored lights, blue, green, yellow, and red, were for six, each, of the rubber boats moving to and from the Alberto Helada. A fifth, in orange, marked the pickup point for the four decent-sized fishing boats and dozen small craft the Taurans had managed to scrounge.

  Gold was favorably impressed by the behavior of the men—oh, and some women, too; mustn’t forget the ladies—of Task Force Jesuit on the beach.

  Sure, he thought, there’s a little confusion. Bound to be when you’ve got fourteen or fifteen languages in the same small area and the lingua franca, English, is native to almost none of them.

  Yeah, a little confusion, but no panic. And this kind of thing is like a neon sign, inviting panic in.

  He heard a burst of machine gun fire, a long burst, somewhere to the north. Ours, I think, one of the semi-robotic ones the Taurans rigged up.

  A group of about twenty, led by an MP, trotted by, kicking up sand. They said nothing, so Gold couldn’t make a guess at the nationality. Big boys, though; I’m guessing Hordalander tankers.

  He thought back to earlier in the day, when he’d seen a crew of Hordalanders, big bastards, all, crying like babies as they applied thermite grenades to their tank’s breach block, engine, final drive, and transmission. The radios and thermal imager had been taken off their mounts and put over the engine, so that the thermite would burn through them before melting its way through the engine block.

  The driver had been particularly pathetic, bent over at the waist in front of his station, face buried in folded arms resting on the tank’s glacis, shoulders shaking with the sobbing of pure grief.

  I suppose it had been their home, or maybe a family member, Gold had thought. Well, and don’t I feel pretty much the same way about Alberto? Sure I do.

  The wounded had posed a particular problem, since many of them had to be lifted and carried. This included even some of the walking wounded, since many bore wounds that precluded climbing up the net the Alberto Helada’s crew had let down the side. The ship hadn’t had a suitable lift, either, but the men rigged up something with the davits for the ship’s boats, which had also been tossed into the fray, running between the ship and pickup point orange.

  Even with the davits, his exec had reported to Gold that it was a goat fuck at the ship. This had led to a change in loading plans. Now, all the wounded lay or sat in lines by the colored pickup points. Every boat leaving shore now departed with two, usually one each walking and litter-borne, though those numbers could vary. And, instead of stopping first by the nets, the boats went to the davits, rigged their wounded to the falls there, saw them off, and only then went for the nets.

  That was, the exec reported, a cluster fuck, too, but less of one than the other way they’d been trying, with boats nearly full of nothing but wounded, with a few medics, and the davits overtasked.

  He wasn’t keeping close track of the frequency the boats came to shore, but Gold had the impression the turn-around times had shortened. He also had the impression that they hadn’t shortened enough.

  “Captain Gold? Captain Gold? Can you come here, please?” />
  That was Marciano’s voice. Gold followed it to find both the general and his chief of staff, Ralls, in furious discussion.

  “Here, General,” Gold announced himself.

  “We should have given you a radio operator to follow you around,” Claudio said. “Silly of us, I suppose, but we’ve never . . .”

  “Never done anything like this before?” Gold offered.

  “Never. And that means,” Claudio said, “that we’re not going to make it, the most we’re going to be able to get off is perhaps six-tenths, and that would demand our running the boats till shortly after sunrise. And that, as my chief of staff points out, means the Santa Josefinans will attack before seven thirty in the morning.’

  “You can’t wait that long,” Gold replied. “I’ll need to get my ship at least moving over the horizon, and preferably have it over the horizon, before the first hint of light.”

  “We know,” Ralls said. “The point of discussion is whether or not we should send half the men back to man our forward trace again, or just keep bugging out all day, and do a fighting withdrawal to the beach.”

  “You want my advice?” Gold asked. At Marciano’s nod, he said, “Fine, I think we need to wait another day.”

  “Wish we hadn’t torched the tanks,” Rall said.

  Marciano laughed, ruefully, and said, “Wish in one hand . . .”

  It was in the aftermath of this discussion that Gold saw—no, not saw exactly, but felt the first signs of . . . No, not panic, but the ones being sent back to the line are  .  .  .  sullen? Resentful? At least those. Can’t say I blame them.

  Meanwhile, I’m not precisely orgasmic with glee at having to order my ship over the horizon while stuck here, myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Fixed Fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of Man.

  —George S. Patton, Jr.

  Not quite so much as fixed ideas are.

  —Patricio Carrera

  Mortal Danger is an effective antidote to fixed ideas.

  —Erwin Rommel

  World League, First Landing, Federated States of Columbia

  Lourdes didn’t know about the attack on the Spirit of Peace. She had never been cleared to know about it. This wasn’t because Carrera didn’t trust her, but that, with something this important he didn’t trust anybody completely. Neither had the word yet broken in First Landing, though it wouldn’t be long delayed.

  She was a lovely woman, Lourdes, even now as she entered middle age. Tall and slender, willowy, really, with enormous brown eyes and full, sensuous lips; if she was not the beauty Carrera’s first wife, Linda, had been, still she turned heads and even stopped conversations when she entered a room. She wished she had been able to stop the conversation she was currently engaged in.

  Or change it, anyway.

  The ambassador to the World League from Valparaiso, Filipe Bazaar, looked slightly ashamed. Middling of height, with salt and pepper hair—all gray at the temples—dressed in formal diplomatic attire with a diagonal sash running over his shoulder and across his chest, the ambassador cut a rather dashing figure. A retired admiral, he was, too, a not uncommon background for highly placed public servants in Valparaiso.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Carrera, truly sorry and from the bottom of my heart. But, no, my government has decided not to provide a squadron of fighters to, as it turns out, cover the attack on the Earther base.”

  Before she could comment, the Valparaisan held up a hand, palm toward her, and explained, “We could send a brigade of mountain troops to help defend your country because that was only against the Taurans and Zhong, neither of whom would have nuked us from space. But the UEPF just might, over this, and that is a risk my government will not—cannot—take.”

  Since it was her son’s life at stake in this, Lourdes found it hard to keep her voice calm and her claws out of the ambassador’s face. So it was not entirely calmly that she replied, “If you—your government—had told us this before, we might have been able to make alternate arrangements.”

  Bazaar winced slightly at her tone, but rebounded quickly. “You never told us what the fighters were for before,” he explained, reasonably. “We thought it would be backup air cover, over your own country, and for that we’d have been there if and when called. We’re not afraid to fight, you see, only to be exterminated like roaches. I’m sorry, as I said, but you have only yourselves to blame for this.”

  The problem is that it’s all true, Lourdes thought. We never did let them in on why we needed the fighters so we can’t complain that they’re not willing to do something we never asked them to be prepared to do. But we’re still talking the life of my son; I see no need to be reasonable  .  .  .  except that, still, it’s not their fault and especially not his.

  Grasping at straws, Lourdes asked, “Would you be willing to let us stage some fighters through you?”

  “We would not,” Bazaar replied. “And even if we would, my military attaché tells me that you have nothing suitable, nothing bellicose, anyway, in your entire aerial legion, that would range from Balboa to the nearest airfield in Valparaiso and nothing that would get from any airfield in Valparaiso to Atlantis Island. And none of your fighters have in-flight refueling capability, so, no, we can’t do that, either, even if we wanted to. Which my president does not.”

  I hadn’t known any of that, Lourdes thought. I really don’t know as much about our own military as I ought to. So ours won’t range and  .  .  .  hmmm.

  “Airships could carry disassembled fighters and land them, but they’d never get there in time. Our aircraft carrier?” she asked.

  “Too far away, I understand, to do you any good in anything like good time. Moreover, it carries not a single modern fighter,” Bazaar replied. “You can chase down helicopters and slow-moving cargo planes, but you would be left behind trying to chase down even the slowest jet transport.”

  Lourdes’ hands began to tremble slightly. She managed to keep her voice calm as she said, “Excuse me, Ambassador Bazaar; I need to call my country.”

  Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa

  Carrera had returned to Balboa tired, but not half as exhausted as the flight warrant, Montoya, who had been doing all the heavy lifting. He’d dismissed his pilot with the advice to, “Get some sleep. Or get laid and then get some sleep.”

  Then he, himself, had retired to his own quarters to follow the same advice. He’d just managed to close his eyes when Jamey Soult opened the door and announced, “It’s your wife on the encrypted phone, sir. ‘Urgent,’ she says. ‘The worst emergency of your life or hers,’ she says.

  Word traveled quickly in the concrete confines of the general staff bunkers. Both Kuralski and Fernandez were standing by, by the time a bleary-eyed Carrera reached the secure phone.

  “Oh, shit,” Carrera said, after Lourdes had given him the dread news. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” His face had gone suddenly very pale. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don’t make this kind of mistake.

  “What’s that, Duque?” Omar Fernandez asked.

  “I think I made a very bad mistake, Omar, one that we cannot fix. Oh, crap . . . they’re going to have to find a new phrase for ‘fuck up,’ now, because I have fucked up badly enough that the phrase is now worn out.”

  “And that mistake was . . . ?”

  “Call it wishful thinking on steroids. Believing the Valparaisans would get caught up enough in enthusiasm for the war that they’d deploy the fighters they’d earmarked for our defense, if called upon, to cover the ALTA and the attack on Atlantis, when we asked for that instead.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Duque,” Fernandez said. We simply couldn’t let the Valpos, or anyone else, in on the secret. And we have nothing . . .” Fernandez let the thought trail off; it had been a statement, anyway, not a question. “That’s worse than you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our ambassador in Wellington reported that ten Zhong heavy aircraft, two
of them likely to be for in-flight refueling, landed a while ago and have been sitting there. Se-67s; they can carry about a maniple, plus, typically, a couple of pieces of light armor, what we call ‘Ocelots,’ or their version of them. The other two were probably Se-87s—refuelers—just based on how long they spent refueling. It’s entirely possible that more are coming.”

  “Oh, joy.” Carrera certainly didn’t sound joyful. “So they’re going where? And how heavy? What will they carry?”

  “We don’t know. If we’d never attacked Atlantis then I’d have been sure they were heading for the lodgment the Zhong have, against expectations, managed to carve out to our east. Since we have attacked the base . . .”

  “How long to get there from Wellington?”

  “Probably nine or ten hours after they take off. It’s impossible to calculate their fuel burn without knowing what they’re carrying. Impossible to say when they’re going to take off, too.”

  Carrera stormed to the door to his quarters and practically tore it off its hinges. “Get me in communication with my son!”

  Atlantis Base

  Ham felt the flush of victory, with the base’s town firmly in his hands, the first threats passed to Wallenstein, and the terror being spread throughout the fleet. The actual base, which was more of a not so small town, was built around a fair-sized trapezoidal bay, the same bay in which the damaged ALTA now rocked at anchor. From the corniche along the shores of the bay, the town climbed up steep slopes that led to crests now occupied by seven maniples of Balboan cadets under fairly adult leadership.

  Except for me, thought Hamilcar. I’m in charge and I am not an adult.

  From his command post in the town, Ham mused on the situation.