A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  How do I find it? Nobody knows who owns any given ship. There are civilian ship watchers who do a better job of tracking ships than any intelligence service, but they’re usually anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months behind. And we of the intelligence community? Nobody pays enough attention. Some of us try. Most of us usually fail.

  Maybe more importantly, if the target is who I am beginning to suspect it is, do I tell anyone or just keep my pretty little mouth shut?

  In any case, I have time to think about it; the next few days are filled with appointments and bribes for heavy duty scrap metal dealers, and then one who deals in slave labor.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I am driven on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the Devil drives.”

  —Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

  Headquarters, Task Force Jesuit, Rio Clara, Santa Josefina

  In the command post, Marciano looked at Esma carefully. It wasn’t because she was something of a vision, though she was. No, it was something else about the girl that disturbed him and he could not quite put his finger on it. She’d been with his headquarters several weeks now and never been anything but admirably sweet, pleasant, and attentive to her duties. There was nothing actually wrong with her, and yet . . .

  Then he realized, “Young lady, why are you here without so much as a pistol to defend yourself with?”

  “I didn’t think . . . ummm . . . nobody issued me one.”

  “I see.” Marciano stood up. “Come with me, please. Do you know how to shoot?”

  Esma shook her head in the negative. “I’ve never so much as held a firearm in my hand.”

  “I see,” said the general. “Stefano!?” he shouted out.

  “Sir?”

  “My quarters, one good sergeant, married, religious, faithful, who is also a good arms instructor.”

  “Sure, sir. Be a few minutes to find this paragon of whom you speak.”

  “No dawdling. And have him draw five hundred rounds of nine-millimeter from the ammunition people.” Turning his attention back to Esmeralda he repeated, “Now come with me, please, miss.”

  In another time, on another planet, Esma would have assumed that any man in a position of authority who gave her an order to follow him intended rape. Marciano, though, had been thoroughly decent since she’d shown up at his command post. He treats me . . . he treats me very much the way the High Admiral does, as a kind of daughter. How can the wrong side have so many decent people in it? How could they be the right side when they have so many demons in human form?

  At the general’s spartan quarters he pulled a chair out from his desk—not a typical folding field desk but something much more substantial that a group of his soldiers had skillfully built for him—and invited her to sit. Then he went to a simple green-painted footlocker that was atop the expected folding field desk and opened it. From it he took a pistol mostly concealed by a leather holster made to clip to a belt. He held it contemplatively for a short while, hefting the weight in his right hand before withdrawing the pistol from the holster. He stared at the thing for a few moments, then cleared it, dropping the magazine and jacking the slide. Then he turned to Esmeralda and showed it to her. She saw bronze-colored metal, with beautiful silverwood grips, the same material as on the walls of the High Admiral’s conference room on the Spirit of Peace. The grips were grooved to accommodate fingers. There was some engraving, too, but it was in a language she really couldn’t read.

  “This is special to me,” Marciano said. “But it is also probably the only woman’s gun you could find in this encampment. Oh, you’ll find women carrying pistols, but they’re big-gripped jobs, holding double stacked magazines, and really not comfortable for a female hand.

  “It’s a loan,” he advised. Then he smiled broadly, adding, “Unless of course, I am killed, in which case, keep it with my blessings.”

  “General, I can’t . . .”

  “Hush, young lady,” Claudio said, forcing the pistol into her tiny hand. “I’m a general, even if only a ground-bound one, whereas you are a mere ensign. You must do as you are told, no arguments.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The general looked up then, perhaps out of embarrassment, and saw a middle-aged, maybe slightly paunchy, and balding sergeant standing by with a filled haversack containing what appeared to be, from the sharp corners poking the material, a fair amount of ammunition.

  “Maresciallo Bertholdo, sir.” Maresciallo, or Marshal, was the Tuscan equivalent of a master sergeant. “The Operations Officer gave me certain instructions . . .”

  “Ah, very good, Sergeant. Please take Ensign . . .”

  “Miranda, sir,” Esma supplied.

  “Yes, of course. Please take Ensign Miranda and teach her how to shoot and care for that pistol.”

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant looked at the narrowish weapon. “General, is that a Helva P21S? I love those guns. Miss Miranda, this is going to be a fun afternoon for both of us.”

  Esma turned to go, then turned back. “If I may ask . . .”

  “It was my grandmother’s.”

  There was a protective berm not far from his headquarters, Marciano assumed, from the somewhat erratic poppoppop coming from that direction, that Sergeant Bertholdo had selected that for the training session. He, meanwhile, was in discussion with his exec and operations officer, Rall and del Collea, respectively, on the Santa Josefinan guerillas’ maddening refusal to take bait.

  “Why should they,” insisted Rall, “since they’re winning without it?”

  “How do you mean ‘winning,’ Rall?” asked Marciano.

  Del Collea was nearest the map, so answered for both the Sachsen colonel and himself.

  “The action, sir, is all behind us.” Del Collea began tapping the map. “Ten days ago, ambush here, right inside the town of Irazu. Yes, sir, the very same Irazu—”

  Rall interrupted, first with a cough and then with, “Told you we should have rounded up and done away with a thousand of them.”

  Del Collea continued without more than the slightest pause, “where we were ambushed before. This time, instead of a tank, it was a fuel truck, two rations trucks, and a trailer load of ammunition, mostly small arms.” His finger moved several inches east on the map, or about five miles in real distance. “That afternoon, a Santa Josefinan police checkpoint was assaulted. We have no idea where the officers are.” Again, the finger moved, this time to the capital. “Sniper killed two and wounded one of our men in the red-light district in Aserri . . . avoiding the main roads, two of our vehicles ran into mines in dirt roads . . .” Move, taptaptap. “Mortar attack against the port. Didn’t do any damage but cost an afternoon’s work unloading.” Move, taptaptap. “North of Pelirojo; firefight between an estimated platoon of guerillas and one of ours. We had one dead, four wounded. We have no idea what we got of theirs, or even if we did.”

  Del Collea’s tapping finger continued to punctuate the litany: “Ambush . . . bombing . . . mine . . . improvised explosive device . . . sniper . . . kidnapping . . . murder of civilian . . . murder of civilian . . . sniper . . . mine . . .

  “Note, sir, that every one of those was in what are supposed to be safe rear areas for us.

  “I’d like to be able to say that they could all be the same platoon, or a platoon from each of the guerilla regiments, except that they’ve hit us in more than one place near each ‘front’ simultaneously and they’ve hit us in areas too far apart for it to have been the same crews. I think a lot of it is classical guerillas, probably raised and led by people from the two enemy regiments we know about.”

  Rall stepped up then, using his finger to draw supply routes. “Sir, if this keeps up or, God forbid, gets worse, we’re not going to be able to supply the forward battalions for much longer. We’re already getting overly reliant on helicopters to keep them in beans and bullets. And those tend to break down under heavy use. Worse—”

  It was now Rall’s turn to be
interrupted as one of the women manning the bank of radios at the far side of the headquarters announced, very loudly, “Enemy attacks! Multiple enemy attacks in the capital! It looks like they’re going after embassies.”

  Near the United Earth Embassy, Aserri, Santa Josefina

  Almost the entire platoon was huddled in a garbage-reeking indentation off an alley that led directly to the perimeter of the embassy. Near the edge of that indentation and nearest the objective, Corporal Esteban Sanchez, Second Cohort, Tercio la Virgen, figured that the Earthpig Embassy staff never quite figured out that the sniping and the mortaring were about keeping their heads down so that recon parties could do their jobs unimpeded. That’s how we found this little spot to assemble. Same for the bulk of the Tauran embassies, too, I guess.

  He glanced down at the rifle in his hands. It was a Tauran job, confiscated from the hold of one of the interned ships of Balboa’s classis, as was only right, proper, and within the laws for internment of combatants, then distributed to the men of the Second Cohort who had lined up at the border to go home some months prior. Sanchez had been assigned his, along with a decent load of ammunition, web gear, and new uniforms of the liberation army, in the same bar, La Cascada, where he normally picked up his pay. They’d been assigned there, but almost everything had been brought to the alley’s opposite entrance in a couple of automobiles. Indeed, only the uniforms had come with the men, and those had been hidden under civilian clothes now piled in bundles at the back of their little assault position.

  It was all weird, but the uniforms were especially funny. They’d been made locally, and to a somewhat different design from the legionary battle dress uniform Sanchez was used to. But the same company had done up quite a number of them for some of the contingents of Task Force Jesuit, not least the Task Force’s contingent of Cimbrian commandos. That civilian company had also long been a subcontractor for the legions and had been using for both sets of battle dress excess and leftover material that had proven impossible to forward to Balboa. Thus, if the Tercio la Virgen were violating the law of war, by using Cimbrian uniforms, what of the Cimbrians’ own violations, stemming from their using the same material and general cut as Carrera’s legions?

  What the fuck, it still beats carrying a shotgun and wearing denim trousers, a dark blue shirt, and a fucking stupid-looking blue baseball cap. And fucking clever of the Duque to have put the Taurans in this position.

  Sanchez and anybody else who believed that would have been surprised to know that the thought had never occurred to Patricio Carrera. Possibly it should have but, in fact, it was just part of the serendipity of war on a grand scale. Sanchez wasn’t up to worrying about war on the grand scale, anyway. He was, on the other hand, pretty damned good at war at the micro scale. Not everyone could say that.

  Those stupid motherfuckers in the Earthpig Embassy, for example, don’t know shit about the subject. True fact.

  Among the various implements and supplies of war that had come to Second Cohort from the interned fleet were also a hefty quantity of demolitions material. Sixty pounds of that, exclusive of carrying case, fuse, blasting cap, and pull igniter, Sanchez had turned into satchel charges to breach the high concrete wall around the embassy. Sanchez wasn’t an engineer; he’d never even attended the assault demolitions course the legion ran for non-engineers. So, he pulled out the manual and decided that Factor P, for plenty, should be his guide. Thus, three satchels, rigged to connect on the objective with hanging lengths of demolition cord, themselves hung from pairs of light poles ranging from three to six feet long, connected at their bottoms by short lengths of heavy-duty string. Three of Sanchez’s four men each carried one of those, while he and another free man, Vargas, the light machine gunner, would provide left and right security, once the order came.

  Sanchez’s platoon leader, Centurion Mora, whispered a word into the radio that linked him and one of the maniple’s light mortars. Seconds later, Sanchez heard a distant thump, soon followed by half a dozen more. But for timing they could have been a car backfiring. No car backfire, however, sounded remotely like the bangs that came from inside the embassy walls, about fifteen seconds after the first thump. Other, more distant thumps and crashes told of still other attacks kicking off. Sanchez knew of six that were planned, but there may have been more.

  The corporal was close enough to Mora to hear the words come through the radio, “The Earthpigs are all running for cover. Nobody’s watching the wall. There were some civvies but they’re all running like hell. I think you can go for it.”

  “Sanchez,” ordered Mora, “move out.”

  “Roger, Centurion. C’mon, motherfuckers.” Sanchez took off at a brisk jog, the footsteps of booted feet behind telling him his men were following. In a single line they emerged from the mouth of the alley, dodged between parked cars, and sprinted across the street for the embassy wall.

  They’d rehearsed this a dozen times. Unfortunately, little details missed in rehearsal can prove problematic in action. They’d forgotten to have a curb edging the sidewalk outside the wall for the rehearsal. Thus Vargas, racing between two parked cars, tripped on the curb and fell face-first to the concrete sidewalk. To his credit, the gunner had the discipline not to cry out, despite the smashed, blood-running nose he’d acquired and the two chipped teeth he had to endure. The rest, hearts pounding, just stepped on him in their course.

  Other than that, though, things went smoothly enough. The first man to reach the wall had the shortest poles, about three feet. He used them to prop the charge against the wall as a height a bit over two feet, spreading them at their bases for stability. He pulled a brick from a pocket and propped up the bottom of the sticks, then turned left to guard from that direction. The next man propped his up not quite a foot above the first, then connected the short line of demolitions cord to a blasting cap in the bottom charge. There wasn’t time to crimp the cap, which was crap procedure but—so the corporal had decided—better than trying to run with them connected. He then faced to the right and moved out five meters to clear the way. The third man did much the same, placing his charge above the second and connecting it to it. Sanchez and the third man, together, each grabbed one of the two pull igniters. Looking at each other, Sanchez consulted his watch and said, “Together on three . . . one . . . two . . . three.” While shouting “Fire in the hole!” was all well and good for training exercises, or demolitions not conducted under fire, under the circumstances, it would have been like initiating an ambush with the order “open fire”: silly in other words. Instead, on “three,” they simply said, “let’s go.”

  They pulled the igniters and were rewarded with a bit of smoke and some bubbling fuse.

  “Help me with stumbledick,” the corporal ordered. He and demo man number three each bent and took one side of the still stunned light machine gunner. One of the other men grabbed his gun. Then all five took off as fast as feet would carry them for the alleyway.

  “Hurryhurryhurryhurryhurry!” Sanchez encouraged. In rehearsals they’d had plenty of time. Half carrying Vargas was tougher, especially between the parked cars. “Shitshitshit! Hurry!” Demo man number three then bent and grabbed Vargas’ feet.

  “We can carry him faster this way!”

  “Hurryhurryhurryhurryhurry!”

  They made it with one and a half seconds to spare. And there was a great, Earth-shattering—in more senses than one—Kaboom!

  After giving flying shards a dozen seconds to settle to the ground, Mora risked a look out at the embassy wall. “Nice,” he said, upon seeing a roughly man-sized, rough-edged oval in the wall, as well as half a dozen cars, flipped and, in most cases, furiously burning. “First squad, go!”

  Sanchez didn’t particularly like the next part of the job. Two of his men, including a now somewhat recovered Vargas, took up security on the outside, near the breach. Two more posted themselves inside, scanning the compound. While second squad cleared the grounds, and first squad—reinforced, for prisoner control
purposes, by half of third—went for the embassy building, the corporal took a can of spray paint and wrote “COLABORADORES” in red on the inside wall, not far from where they’d made the breach. The paint ran, but not so much that the word couldn’t be made out easily.

  From inside the embassy building came the sounds of shooting, of small explosions from grenades, and a great many screams. After what seemed half an hour, but may have been less, the other half of third squad appeared, with the squad leader, herding about three dozen civilians out of the building. Some were female. Of those, a couple were young and pretty. Others were male, ranging from late teens to early seventies. Age or sex notwithstanding, all seemed to be in shock and not a few, male and female, both, in tears. All, too, were herded to the wall and made to stand under the freshly painted word.

  Centurion Mora, carrying an Anglian submachine gun not notably different from the Pound used by the Legions, began at the left. “What is your name?” he asked one young woman.

  The girl—she’d have been pretty were it not for the tears and snot running down her cheeks and chin—was shuddering and choking with fright so badly that it took her quite a long time to get even her own name out. “Es . . . Es . . . Estef . . . tef . . . tefani . . . Estef . . . Es . . . Es . . . Estefani . . . Me-Me-Mel-Me-Melendez . . . Melendez-Ri-Ri-Ri-Ri-Rios.”

  “Ah, now that name rings a bell. You were on my special list. You were the Earthpig ambassador’s private secretary,” Mora accused. “And yet, did you help the revolution? No. Why should you not be shot for crimes against the people and collaboration with the enemy?”

  Mora didn’t even wait for the answer, but turned to the next person, an old stooped and graying man. “What is your name and what was your job?”