Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4)

by Andrew Seiple

  “You talked down Crusader!”

  “But for now she’s going to call it an early day. Get some rest. Maybe go sit and play some video games. You know, de-stress a bit.”

  “What? We’ve got so much on our plates, and you want to play video games?”

  “Well, yeah. She earned it, after all. Dire talked down Crusader. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  Alpha made a noise that I’d never heard him make before, and I spent quite a long time enjoying a good bout of maniacal laughter.

  But in my gut, I knew that my troubles were just beginning. If calling in Crusader was the CIA’s opening move, then I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what their next step involved.

  CHAPTER 11: AN UNFORTUNATE VICTORY

  “I have been hired as a bodyguard before, and public appearances are always the worst. Your client’s foes always know where he will be, for a given amount of time. You have to prepare for the worst trouble you can imagine, then double or triple it. At least.”

  --The mercenary villain identified as Vorpal

  Noise pierced through my dreams, and I woke to darkness. Darkness broken by a gentle blue glow as Alpha sat on the foot of my bed, looking miserable.

  “What’s wrong?” I croaked, while I blinked away sleep. If it was something minor I could roll over and go back to dreamland.

  “Ricio’s forces just took Malo Verde.”

  “Oh shit.”

  No more sleep that night, then. Maybe not for a long time to come.

  Half an hour later, I was up, dressed, and hating life. “How?” I whispered, as we pored over the maps.

  Malo Verde had started life as a mining town. It was up in the middle of the main pass that divided Isla Mariposa. There were other ways around the pass, but the rebels had the perfect guerilla fighters, the Chamis, to guard those.

  This had been the perfect crucible, the place where the rebels were supposed to hold, to rally the various factions to their side. This was their training ground, to face the army with some actual advantages, and figure out how to fight the government forces.

  I’d weighed the odds, talked it over with Alpha, and we figured they’d last a week unless they found their battle rhythm. The worst case diagnostic had them falling in three days, after inflicting a good amount of harm on Ricio’s forces.

  But one night?

  “How?” I asked again, not expecting an answer.

  But Alpha surprised me.

  “Ricio’s good. We expected him to focus on using the pain lasers.”

  “Which actually have shorter range than the standard Mariposan surplus AR-18. And are stopped by simple cover,” I noted, tapping my chin as I thought. “But he didn’t?”

  “We’d ordered him to focus on giving the lasers a thorough tryout. From the reports he gave me, and the radioed orders I intercepted, he did that at first.”

  “Right. Okay. So how did the rebels react?”

  “Panic, about what we predicted.”

  “They didn’t rally?” I leaned forward, and stared at Alpha in disbelief.

  “He didn’t give them a chance. Once the laser squads had started the rout, he sent in mixed squads. Used the lasers as support, heavy weapons backup. For the rest of the soldiers it was combined arms fireteams, with grenade support and knee mortars.”

  “Wait, they had portable mortars? She didn’t see that in the last logistical report.” Mortars were a good weapon for hilly terrain. Better for defenders, but when used offensively they’d let attackers negate some of the defenders’ cover. I hadn’t factored those into Ricio’s assault. I hadn’t known they existed. “Why weren’t they accounted for?”

  “I asked him that. He said they’d found them during a warehouse sweep just before they left, hadn’t time to report them as assets.”

  “Bullshit. He was hiding those from the official reports. Which means...” Neurons fired. “...which means that the most likely explanation is that he was planning a coup against Corazon.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “What other reason would he have to keep weapons off the official reports? Dire would wager he had the armory guys rejigger the inventory, to hide their presence. He probably has several other caches and assets, ready to go.” I gnawed my lip.

  “We need to shut him down immediately,” Alpha stood, started pacing back and forth. “The people are going to be loving him for this victory. Give it a few days of good press and he’ll be a hero—”

  “Do we?” I wondered.

  “Do we what?”

  “Do we need to shut him down for this? Do we really care if he planned a coup? Or if he’s planning a coup against Dire, even?”

  “Well, yes! I mean...”

  “We are but transient guests, here. The whole goal is to hand the country off to someone who’ll take care of it, and stop shitting up the lives of the people who live here. Originally that was going to be the rebels, but...” I stood, and poked at the map. “If they couldn’t hold this place for even a full day, they don’t have their shit together, plain and simple. No matter how good Ricio is or how scary the pain lasers are, there’s still no excuse. Damiano had ideals, but he also had the strategic sense of a goddamned gopher.”

  “Actually, from early reports, it looks like Damiano’s group weren’t there.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. According to the villages that the troops stopped in, he’d been working his way north with a burning woman, trying to rally supplies and support. But the rebels in Malo Verde blew him off. Blew the Chamis off, too.”

  “Idiots.”

  “Yep. Which is why Ricio was able to flank them in the West, and push them out once they started falling back.”

  “Hm. Is he taking prisoners, at least?”

  “Well yeah, I made it clear to him that was a direct order. The first trucks should ship them in a few hours. Direct to the factories, where the guard-bots will take charge of them.”

  “Go check Ricio’s files, see if El Presidente had any blackmail on him, see if he’s got any atrocities to his name.”

  “On it.” Within seconds he was back. “Nothing. Worst he did was turn a blind eye to the secret police. Which could have been self-preservation, because speaking up against them was usually grounds for early retirement at the least.”

  I nodded, and the plan shifted. The picture changed, became more open-ended. I truly had a win-win scenario shaping up here, either Ricio would beat the rebels and prove himself worthy of ruling Mariposa, or Damiano would manage to rally the rebel remnants to victory, and thus pass through his own gate of fire. Only one thing remained in their path after that.

  Me.

  “Dire thinks it’s time to start the final arrangements for the endgame. Here’s how we’ll go about it...”

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled up the radio, and managed to get in touch with the General. “GOOD WORK. RETURN TO MARIPOSA CITY BY FIFTEEN HUNDRED HOURS TODAY. SHE’S GOING TO GIVE YOU A MEDAL AND RALLY THE POPULACE WITH OUR VICTORY.”

  “I’m not certain that I can make it by that time,” Ricio said. “Still plenty of pockets of resistance to mop up. I would hate to be careless and lose my life to an assassin on the way.”

  Oh. Heh, he thought I planned to kill him. That was cute.

  “NO PROBLEM. SHE CAN FLY OUT, AND CARRY YOU BACK HERSELF. LACKS DIGNITY, BUT SO LONG AS YOU HOLD ON TIGHT, YOU’LL GET HERE INTACT.”

  The radio transmission suddenly got a lot more garbled. I recognized the trick, he was having his operator scramble it on the other end, to fake interference. I chuckled to myself and sat back. Obviously he was thinking things over now. With Malo Verde fallen, the only rebel stronghold left to take was Putnam’s Providence, and with the mountains at his back he could hardly lose. He didn’t need my tech or support to handle the rebels himself, now. Nor did I need a general in the field, if it came down to it. So he was probably weighing whether he could either get out of this direct order... or whether
he could scrape up the hardware to kill me with a sudden betrayal on my flight over.

  Sensible, really. But he came to the same conclusion I had before I’d made the offer. The static ‘miraculously’ cleared up, and he sighed. “No, that should not be necessary. I will have my staff car prepared immediately. I trust you have no problems with a small escort, for security’s sake.”

  “OF COURSE NOT. BRING WHOEVER YOU WISH.”

  That put him a little more at ease, and he promised to be back well before fifteen-hundred.

  With a sigh of my own, I turned off the radio and decanted from the armor. “Going to get a little more sleep. Can you set things up from here?”

  “Sure,” Alpha said, stepping his virtual form into the back of the suit. “YOU CAN LEAVE IT TO ME, BOSS.”

  Still weird to hear my own voice without the mask on. Eh, this was a temporary measure.

  Two regrettably short hours later, I was up and prepared for my cover job. A quick jaunt down the escape tunnel, a change into Dorothy’s clothes, and I caught the bus back to the palace. Thoroughly inefficient, but necessary to my cover.

  Spetta was happy to see me. “I was worried when you didn’t return from the Doctor’s office!”

  “Hm?” Oh, right. The last she’d known I’d been called over there. “She kept us up late talking. Kind of snuck out the second she was done.”

  “You do look tired,” she said, sitting down next to me with the day’s work.

  “You’re one to talk.” Her makeup was patchy, and didn’t hide the bags under her eyes well enough. “What have you been doing?”

  “Ah, there’s this man. Adrian.” she smiled.

  “Oh, okay.” I smiled back. Well, whatever she got up to on her own time was her business.

  Wait. Adrian? I knew an Adrian; that was the first name of the thorny problem that was El Hombre Último. But the way she was smiling seemed to suggest a deeper relationship between the two of them. I concealed my own grin, but something of it slipped through, judging by her shocked look.

  “Oh no, it’s not like that!” she protested. “He... has problems. Problems sleeping. I keep him up talking, until he drifts off.” She sighed. “He was asking a lot of questions about the Doctor. I told him she is a good woman. He didn’t believe me at first. But he is starting to come around.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  “Crusader.” She smiled at my shocked expression. “He used to wear underwear with Crusader on it, when he was a boy. Wanted to grow up to be like him. A proper hero. But then Crusader came for the Doctor, and the Doctor shamed him. Showed him the truth of what he was.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “How dare he come in now, after all Corazon did!”

  “Adrian heard that, did he?”

  “The whole palace heard that. Adrian and I watched from one of the far towers.”

  “You’ve been letting him have the run of the palace?” I hadn’t ordered that. Except whoops, I wasn’t Doctor Dire at the minute. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice the oddness of the question.

  “He’s a guest, not a prisoner. At any rate, he says he must watch the Doctor closely. He says he’ll kill her the second she becomes as bad as Corazon.” She snorted. “I tell him he is watching for nothing. She is a saint, compared to the old Presidente.”

  “Dire fills the skies with choking smoke and manufactures pain lasers with enslaved prisoners of war.”

  She shrugged. “Still the best presidente I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

  “She’s also a tyrant, not a president.”

  “And yet here you are working for her.” She glared, and leaned in. “You’re American, so I’ll let this go. Just don’t forget that things are different here. And don’t talk ill of her where I can hear you.”

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Sorry, sorry. She really doesn’t mind being called a tyrant. Calls herself that all the time.”

  “It’s fine. Now then, let’s get through this next set of forms. You’ll like them, they only take about ten minutes of double-checking apiece...”

  A few hours later, Spetta got called away to talk with “Doctor Dire.” I used the time to slip away and go track down my new Minister of the Interior.

  I finally found Julian Moreto ensconced in a cramped tower office, pouring through rows and rows of folders by the weak light of a window set high up in the wall. Dust wavered in the sun, and handkerchiefs wadded up all over the table showed that the work wasn’t doing his asthma any good.

  It was a lot of handkerchiefs. I was kind of impressed at his dedication. Also a little grossed out by the sheer volume of mucus he’d managed to produce over the last few days.

  “Hello?” He blinked at me with watery eyes, and stretched out a hand. “I don’t think we’ve met, señora...”

  Ah, crap. I’d have to be an asshole here, to cover my verbal tics. “Sorry, but the tyrant wants to know how the search is coming.” We were shifting to the endgame, so the work I’d set him to do didn’t matter so much, but I’d gotten curious. If there was something here I could do to improve Mariposa’s tourism, or improve the quality of life for its people, then it would be worth the digging. A few last-minute notes for my successor, perhaps. Or even setting Spetta in motion to manage it, if it was something that didn’t require force.

  “Oh.” He pulled his hand back, and looked down, disappointed. “I wish I had more to report. But everything’s in order.”

  “Really?” I pulled over a chair, and sat down. “Then why are the beaches so empty?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t see how they get enough customers to stay open, but it seems like they do. They’re all owned by the same parent corporation, so it looks like if one has a bad season the others can absorb it.”

  “Really?” There were only about four resorts, but still, that was strange.

  “Sí. Looks like they got bought up about eight years ago by a British company, Maximum Potential Unlimited.”

  “Really? How much did they pay to play in Corazon’s backyard?” Going by the gifts he’d extorted from the American companies, I figured some fairly hefty bribes had been in order. And he needed American goodwill. The British, bah, he’d milk them for all he was worth.

  “Nothing. Not a single bribe.”

  My mental needle skipped a track in the vinyl of my mind.

  “You’re certain?”

  “As sin. Mind you, they’ve been paying their taxes like clockwork and in full every year. Not too many other corporations in town who can boast this sort of record.”

  “No bribes, and regular taxes...” I chewed my lip. “Seems funny.” I wondered. The CIA had used front companies before. But four resorts worth seemed like overkill. I doubted they had that kind of budget. But if not them, who?

  “Beyond the taxes, have they done anything interesting?”

  He shrugged. “Now that the internet’s back I’m talking with their financial managers through email. A few of them have been asking for some permits that they applied for, a few months ago. Construction for a new facility on the Eastern coast. A wilderness retreat, up in the hills.”

  “All right. Keep looking into it. If their permits are in order, go ahead and file them.”

  He glanced over at the cabinets. “Well, I’ll have to ask my boss about that. Who are you again?”

  “Ah, right, sorry, sorry.” I laughed. “Just... gonna go let the Doctor know you’re doing a good job.” I chuckled and backed out, as he stared after me, suspicious.

  Spetta was nowhere to be seen when I got back to Dorothy’s desk, but an email on my workstation computer told me that all civil servants were to attend a four-o-clock address by the new Presidente, to honor General Ricio and the armed forces for their noble victory in Malo Verde. I smiled, deleted it, and voxed Suru to temporarily crank down the smoke production in the factories. Best to have clear weather for a proper monologue, after all.

  As the day wound on, I heard loudspeakers crackling outside. We’d put out
notice on the gridnet, but the old ways were best for a city this small. Guards riding around on trucks, shouting the call for assembly through megaphones.

  And it worked, too. I filed out with the other employees, when the appointed time came, and the size of the crowd amazed me. Even from a distance, the grounds of the old Cabildo were packed, the mob spilling out into and around the streets. Not much chance of getting a car through there. Fortunately almost everything in Barrio Centrale was close together, and a brisk walk through a cheerful, excited crowd got me smiling, too. The mood was that contagious.

  We’d gotten most of Barrio Centrale, by the look of the crowds. Business suits and casual dress, the people who worked in the shops and high-rise buildings and government offices of the district. Quite a bit of Barrio Del Agua as well, fishermen in from the water, thanks to our plans to hold this late in the day. Didn’t expect to see many people from Barrio Del Sol, that would be mainly tourists and resort staff who didn’t care much about dictators.

  The bulk of the crowd came from Barrio Del Flores, I wagered. The working poor who filled the slums there, and handled so much of the day-to-day business of Mariposa. They sweated in sweatshops, farmed in the sharecropping plantations just outside of the city limits, and paid taxes for the privilege to a government that milked them more out of apathy than greed.

  Hardly any wonder the revolutionaries had expected support there. But naive to count on it... these people were survivors, toughened by their labors. They would not trust so easily, and they hadn’t, and Damiano’s assault had foundered and broken. Whereas I, now, I had cleared the soldiers from their streets with a single challenge. Without any loss of life, or collateral damage. Actions spoke louder than words— though their roar of approval spoke loudest of all, as Alpha flew my armor up to the top of the Cabildo, squatting on top of the tower like a great, red-cloaked gargoyle.

  A very petty part of me hoped Crusader was still around to hear that cheer.

  “Feeling pretty exposed out here, boss,” Alpha’s voice whispered through the vox.

  “Just stick to the plan. Now we’ll see who the sniper’s really after.” This was me calling him out, that was one of the main reasons for this little soiree. Alpha could see him, and Alpha had full control of my Brute Suit for the moment. If the sniper went for the empty suit, no big deal. If the sniper went for Ricio, we could take him out. There weren’t really any other targets of worth on the board.