A Desert Called Peace

by Tom Kratman

  "Small change," Carrera scoffed. "Eighty million for nearly eleven thousand fanatical potential infantry? A bargain. Besides, we have the money."

  But I have to take that fucking hellhole, Pumbadeta, to keep the money flowing. Bastard, Campos. Shit.

  Enroute to Ninewa Airport, 27/5/462 AC

  The legion AN-21 was something less than comfortable. Lourdes didn't complain, though, and Carrera hardly noticed. She slept with her head on his shoulder and he with his cheek resting against the top of her head.

  Halfway through the flight, he suddenly sat erect, waking her and causing concern among the crew. He cursed himself for an idiot.

  "Sorry, Lourdes," he apologized. Carrera then walked to the cockpit and asked if it was possible to make a telephone call to Hamilton, FD. Assured that it was, he gave the radioman/navigator a number to dial.

  "Mr. Secretary? Carrera. I can do it. But it's still going to cost you the extra figure I quoted. And I am going to need those battalions you promised."

  Pumbadeta, Sumer, 35/5/462 AC

  The FS Marines never patrolled the streets of the city anymore, Fadeel was pleased to see. Moreover, whoever among the local police had not come over was surely cooperating anyway. Perhaps the entire family hanging by their necks from one of the bridges over the river had something to do with that.

  This had not been the first family put to death in the city, of course, merely the first for whose execution Fadeel had been present. It had been a grisly, awful thing, even by Fadeel's atrophied moral standards. The father and mother had been forced to watch first as each of their five children, aged four to eleven, were hoisted up. The ropes were thick and the children light. After watching for a quarter of an hour of slow strangulation, the children's faces slowly purpling and their legs kicking frantically for purchase, Fadeel had told his men to hang onto the legs to put the kids out of their misery. Both mother and father had been too grief-stricken, horrified and shocked, thereafter, to even struggle as the ropes were placed around their own necks. They'd died more quickly and far more easily than had the children.

  A small price to pay, however distasteful, to ensure the rest cooperate, was Fadeel's judgment.

  And cooperation had indeed been forthcoming. Crews of conscripted civilians dug ditches and tunnels wherever they were directed to. Streets were being blocked off; mines, booby traps and improvised explosive devices were being set all across the city. More than twenty-five hundred holy warriors, too, had gathered for a climactic showdown. Best of all, the cost of stockpiling food for the coming siege—and there would be something like a siege, Fadeel was certain of it—had been borne by various worldwide humanitarian organizations. Since more than a few of these were Islamic, supply of ammunition had also been seen to.

  We'll make the infidels pay a price in blood that will open their eyes to the truth, Fadeel thought, that they can never pacify and control Islamic lands.

  Interlude

  6 Jumadah I, 1529 (20 May, 2105 AD), Makkah al Jedidah (New Mecca), Al Donya al Jedidah (the New World)

  Abdul ibn Fahad wasn't entirely comfortable with the new calendar system. He still went by the old, though he also—as a very holy man—kept both sets of religious holidays and festivals. That took up quite a bit of time. Worse, celebrating two Ramadans a year was exhausting. Fortunately, at least occasionally they coincided.

  In twenty-one years they had coincided twice. In twenty-one years the population of the colony had blossomed. Not only did the women bear children in vast numbers, but every month it seemed new ships arrived bearing colonists from among the most faithful, the most traditional, back on Earth. The colonists, of course, brought many slaves with them to tend to the farming. It was well that they did so; the life expectancy of a slave was naturally lower than that for a freeborn man.

  Sitting, as it did, at the confluence of two streams, Makkah al Jedidah was green and lush and lovely. This was as it should be, as this was a holy place, especially marked by Allah to be a reminder of the blessing of Paradise that awaited the Faithful.

  Farther out, the greenery lessened. It was hardly noticeable to the new colonists, coming as they did from the barren deserts of Old Earth. As more people arrived, more trees had to be cut for their homes. As more people arrived so, too, they brought more domestic animals with them. These ate the grass. The goats, in particular, ate the grass down to the roots. Without trees, without grass, the sand blew. Already, one of the two streams that fed the settlement was noticeably shallower than it had been.

  Abdul didn't worry about that. It is good, he thought, if by the Grace of Allah we return here to the desert from whence we sprang. Life has been too easy. Too much green and the faithful might forget that greenery is the gift of the Almighty. A green and holy Makkah al Jedidah should be enough to remind them of the bounty that awaits in the hereafter.

  The hereafter was more and more on Abdul's mind of late. He hadn't been precisely a young man when he'd made the hejira to the new world. Now he was well advanced in years. Soon, very soon, his time would come.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I will leave your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcasses. I will water the land with what flows from you, and the river beds shall be filled with your blood. When I snuff you out I will cover the heavens, and all the stars will darken.

  —Ezekiel 32: 5-7

  Northern Boundary, Ninewa Province, Sumer

  It began with a gradual repositioning of troops along the boundary. From all appearances, this was merely an attempt to seal off infiltration into the BZOR from the insurgent held city of Pumbadeta. There were a fair number of firefights, mostly in the nature of ambushes, over the following week. Some of those were staged purely for show but some really did stop infiltrating vehicles and small units of insurgents.

  The other effect the move had was that it placed the troops an average of fifty miles closer to the town. It also put them within one day's very hard march. Moreover, a fair amount of artillery was moved into range, ostensibly to support the interdiction line. Lastly, because the interdiction line was somewhat remote from any substantial place of habitation, it lessened the chances that anyone would report the sudden move away from that line, either by foot or by helicopter, in anything like a timely fashion.

  Pumbadeta, Sumer, 1/7/462 AC

  The stars were unseen through the cloud cover over the city as the remotely piloted vehicle made its pass. The RPV was nearly silent. Certainly, it was quiet enough that no one noticed it over the normal noise of the place.

  Normally it might have been seen, of course, by any of the city's population of nearly three hundred thousand or by any of the now three thousand, approximately, of the mujahadin who had also taken up residence. The cloud over the city prevented that. The cover did not, could not, prevent the thermal imagers the RPV carried from seeing down and recording the town below. Among other things, the operator of the RPV, sitting comfortably in a cool adobe building in Balboa Base, was counting dogs and cats running free in the town.

  Cloud cover overhead could not prevent the people, or the mujahadin, from seeing outward, though, as hundreds of helicopter sorties landed and took off, removing the FSMC troops who had been partially investing the city for some months. After giving the populace of the town a good look at the Marines leaving, the Marine artillery and mortars expended their white phosphorus and HC, hexacloroethane-zinc, shells to screen the pickup zones.

  Thus, the mujahadin, no great shakes at patrolling in the desert anyway and very loathe to risk fighting the Marines in the open, really didn't see the men of the deployed cohorts of the 1st through 4th Infantry Tercios of the Legio del Cid as the men landed in the helicopters ostensibly coming in to pull Marines out. Nor, given the dark, did they notice that not all the helicopters inbound were of the types favored by the FMC's armed forces.

  Camp Balboa, Ninewa, Sumer

  In the cool adobe building, more of a bunker really, the RPV's controller watched hi
s screen. He pulled back on his stick slightly and nudged it to the left, causing his bird to begin a slow left-banking spiral up to height. As it gained altitude, more of the city spread out below on the green-toned control monitor.

  The city abutted the river at a spot where it turned south, then north, then south again to form an N. By that N, coming from the city to the west of the river and continuing on, was a highway that cut through the center of town. East were two bridges, close together. It was too far up for the RPV pilot to make out how many bodies were hanging by the neck from the spans. Previous flights had seen a variable number from four to, on one day, thirty-one. Some of those bodies had seemed very small, even to the distant pilot.

  The town jutted out west of the river. It was almost rectangular and about three kilometers, north to south, by perhaps five, east to west. A multilane highway ran northwest to southeast, west of the town. The narrower highway, Highway 1, ran through the town from a cloverleaf on the major highway to the two bridges over the river.

  As the RPV inched higher, more and more of first the city and then the surrounding lands became visible. Lights marked landing/pickup zones where groups of men, their body heat gleaming on the monitor, boarded hot-engined helicopters.

  The command post for the legion was lit red inside. The usual ceiling fans turned slowly and, for the most part, silently overhead. Messengers and staff officers hurried to and fro on various missions. Not all of those messengers were legion troops, either. There were plenty of Sada's Sumeris and more than a few FS Marines. Briefings were being conducted in three languages in different corners of the CP.

  "I wish to hell my men and I were going in with you," the crusty FS Marine Corps colonel told Carrera.

  "No, you don't," Carrera corrected. "Trust me on this; it's going to be nasty and the nastiest part isn't even going to be the fighting."

  "Even so," the Marine countered, "It's going to be the best brawl since Gia Long, in the Cochin War. My boys will hate to miss it."

  "Well . . . maybe we'll save you some. You just make sure that things here don't go to shit while we're gone."

  "No chance of that," the Marine assured the legate. "I've got all three of my battalions, plus another two coming from the army, to hold down your ZOR. Plus, you're leaving me enough Sumeri and Balboan liaison that we won't exactly be strangers. And I'll have that one battalion of Sada's troops; they look pretty competent. We'll do fine."

  I hope to fuck you do. Carrera was actually desperately worried about the situation in the BZOR. He, Sada and most of their troops were going to be gone for over a month, possibly two. A lot of unpleasantness could come to pass in even a month.

  Still, they are FS Marines, good troops. Campos could have given me Tauros to cover my sector in my absence. Thank God for small blessings.

  Landing/Pickup Zone Bluejay, 1400 meters north of Pumbadeta, Sumer

  Carrera had had Jimenez flown in two weeks prior just for this operation. He'd been the first Balboan on the ground, arriving to coordinate with the Marines ten days prior to the shuffle.

  A young tribune commanding a maniple ran from a group that had just debarked from a Marine helicopter and reported to Jimenez. "Sir, Tribune Rodriguez, Maniple B, 2nd Cohort, 3rd Tercio, Commanding. Where do you want us?"

  "You brought the mines?"

  "Yes, sir," Rodriguez answered. "Every man is carrying a couple and the helicopters left us six bundles with . . . well, shit, sir . . . craploads. Plus a fuck of a lot of wire and stakes. We can mine and wire maybe three kilometers. I counted the wire before we left. It was six hundred rolls and maybe fifteen hundred stakes."

  Jimenez nodded. "Good." His finger pointed in the dark. "See that red chemlight to the right, Tribune?"

  Rodriguez looked, saw it and answered, "Yes, sir."

  "Your sector starts there and then works over to the left along the berm the FS Marines left us. You'll know when to stop when your line reaches the green chemlight to the left. Occupy and then move forward to just outside effective small arms range. Then mine and wire in. Don't forget to tie in with the units to your left and right."

  "Yes, sir. I won't, sir. I mean, no problem, sir."

  "Good lad. Off with you now."

  There had been four Marine battalions surrounding the town. This was not considered enough to take it. It would have been enough to seal it off if they had really been permitted to seal it off. They hadn't.

  Each of the Marine battalions was flying out by one or two pickup zones. The legion and most of Sada's brigade were flying in via the same spots. The continuous landing and lifting of masses of helicopters raised a cloud of dust that spread for miles downwind.

  XV.

  Sneezing at the dust assailing his nose, Fadeel climbed to one of the highest spots in the city—a thin, graceful minaret that soared over the walled compound of a mosque. Try as he might, Fadeel had never been able to obtain one of the thermal imagers the FS forces seemed to use everywhere. He did have a number of Volgan-built passive vision devices—relatively cheap and simple light amplification scopes—but these were much inferior. In any case, it had proven impossible to train his men to use them or, as important, maintain them. He did have a few superior Haarlem- and FSC-made passive vision scopes, but these used odd batteries and were, for the most part, useless now.

  Harder to get a hold of the batteries than it is to get explosives, Fadeel thought bitterly. He had no idea that many an FS Army and FS Marine Corps supply sergeant had had the same thought over the years.

  The scope Fadeel had with him he had batteries for, enough, at least, for a few nights' work. It had once been mounted on a rifle. That mounting was broken now, had been broken, as a matter of fact, in the action in which the scope had been captured. Still, it did perfectly good service, if only for reconnaissance.

  Fadeel flicked a switch. The scope came on without the noticeable and annoying hum of the Volgan versions. He raised it to his eye. A folding rubber sphincter kept the green glow of the thing from lighting up that eye as a target for a sniper until it was safely pressed to his face.

  From this vantage point Fadeel could see west, southwest, and south. The lights of the helicopters that landed and took off in seemingly endless numbers drew lines in the scope. They were not bright enough to permanently harm it, however. Looking down, Fadeel saw groups of men stringing wire. Some of them seemed to be laying mines.

  "What? Do the crusader Marines think I am stupid enough to attack them in the open where they have all the advantages? Not likely, that. I could order some sniping, I suppose, but to what purpose? They're too far away to hit—and despite having a fair number of sniper rifles Fadeel knew his men were not great shots at any range—and the return fire might be devastating. Besides, what do I care if they wire in the whole city? The humanitarians will still make sure we are fed. "It's for the children, after all." Fadeel laughed softly and bitterly, thinking of very small bodies hanging from the bridge behind him. "For the children."

  While Fadeel sneered, high, high above those gently swaying bodies the NA-23 nicknamed Lolita circled. Lolita carried, this sortie, five two-thousand pound bombs. Another five were carried in her sister, Anabelle. It was believed that the bridge that could take four of five direct strikes with two-thousand pounders hadn't been built yet and, even if it had, it had certainly not been built in Sumer.

  The bombs were only a moderately heavy load, but most of the extra two and a half tons more lift still available to the planes was taken up with fuel. The aircraft could loiter for quite some time.

  Ninewa-Pumbadeta Highway

  Sumer's old dictator, Saleh, had expended considerable capital on modernizing the country, though "modernization" was, itself, a word open to some interpretation. One of these programs had been to give Sumer a truly modern highway system. It would have been more accurate to say that Saleh had given Sumer a post-modern highway system, in the same sense that post-modernity meant familial corruption, vice, graft, kickbacks, bribes . . .
and a shoddy product.

  Carrera had actually spent quite a bit of the legion's money, and hanged more than a few Sumeris who sought graft, turning that highway system into a model within the BZOR.

  Despite the improvements, the armored columns stayed off the asphalt highway except at the bridges over streams and irrigation canals. There was no better way for a heavy force to strangle itself, logistically, than to drive on and thereby destroy the very roads down which ran its lifeblood of fuel, food, parts and ammunition. The columns raised great clouds of dust. With the wind blowing from the west this was little problem to the drivers of the westernmost column. For the soft-skinned, untracked vehicles, which included the military police, engineers, and artillery prime movers moving along the hard surfaced road, and for the other armored column moving in the dirt east of those, it was a misery of choking, stinging dust.

  A PSYOP vehicle, a four-wheel-drive light truck, preceded the column. Loudspeakers mounted on it proclaimed that any interference with the column would mean the destruction of whatever town the interference was met in. The tone of the speaker and the words suggested very strongly that the people of such a town would not survive the experience. There was, unsurprisingly, no resistance whatsoever. The people stayed inside and closed the shutters to their hovels, each of them hoping that no hothead would take a shot at the foreign soldiers. In several cases village elders confiscated arms and held them in order to prevent any such incident.