by Tom Kratman
He gave her a few seconds to think. She went down the list of organs and senses but rejected most of them outright. Finally Maria had it narrowed down to her trigger finger and her eyes, then decided that eyes were more important. She said so.
“Just so Private…?”
“Fuentes, Centurion. Maria Fuentes.”
“Private Fuentes. You are just right. Because that is the big weakness on the tank. We can’t see shit from inside those things. Strip off our infantry; cut out most of our eyes; cut out the ability to get precise fire in small doses to protect ourselves.”
She didn’t really pay perfect attention to what he said next; she was marveling that a man in uniform and authority had just called her something besides bitch or twat, or lady in a tone that implied the same thing.
“…are particularly vulnerable. That’s something that hasn’t improved a bit since the Great Global War. The same charge—satchel or land mine—that would break the treads on a tank of sixty years ago will do the same to a tank today.
“And the engines? We aren’t submarines. Tanks require oxygen in vast quantities to keep the engines going; oxygen that has to come from the air around us. Cut that off; we stop dead. Then you can kill us; because a tank that isn’t moving is dead meat to good infantry.
“Okay, move into the classroom behind you.”
Maria hesitated…which the centurion saw. “Something bothering you, chica?”
She stood to attention, hesitated, then asked, “Centurion…how come you are so…ah…polite to us? No one else has been.”
He smiled briefly, then answered, “You aren’t going to my unit, girl. So I have nothing against any of you. So what does a little politeness cost? It might be different if there was some chance that you women might be mixed in with regular, male organizations. I understand that in the armies that have tried that there is often a vast resentment of women soldiers on the part of the men, partly because the men end up doing nearly twice as much heavy work, and partly because some women will…ah…sell themselves, frankly. But you girls? You’re not going to harm me or mine any.”
“Oh…I see.”
“Yes. Now trot your cute little buns into the classroom.”
“Si, Centurion.” She smiled fetchingly; the habits of a lifetime die hard. The centurion smiled back until a warning glance from Garcia, standing nearby, turned his face to a scowl.
“Now GO, girl.” Maria went.
In the classroom the women were shown a film, Hombres Contra Tanques. Men Against Tanks. This work showed a number of interesting ways to earn a medal for valor, most likely posthumously. Then the women had to go through a number of those ways themselves, using small charges, gasoline bombs—they were told those were called “Molotov cocktails”—mines and more formal antitank weapons.
Inez had taken considerable interest in the film. Cat had said, “Uh, uh.” Perhaps she thought she had a choice.
* * *
The girls waited in holes for tanks to run over them, then leapt up to toss satchel charges on their decks. Yes, they were very, very small satchel charges, with several pounds of dirt added to make them as heavy as the real thing. As the charges were heavy, it took a fair amount of practice to learn to swing them just right by their straps.
In pairs they used ropes to pull practice mines back and forth across the ground to line them up on a tank that was moving forward. They manufactured and then tossed live Molotov cocktails on towed tank hulks’ back decks. This usually didn’t work.
This was, by no means, the toughest drill taught them.
* * *
Franco, serving as coach, squatted in a ditch by the side of a dirt road.
Next to him, Inez Trujillo lay panting. A pair of tanks waited around a bend in the road, a few hundred meters away, revving their engines menacingly. She was scared nearly witless.
In her hands, clutched in front of her, she had a twelve-pound sticky satchel charge. It, too, was mostly dirt, not explosive. Tanks are too expensive to blow up as training aids.
She reminded herself, The trick is that the tank can’t see mierda. So the hunter waits until it’s within twenty meters. Then, in the three seconds you have between the driver losing sight of where you will be and the tank crushing where you have been, you leap into the middle of the road and lie down right in front of the monster. Timing things carefully, you pull the igniter, stick the bomb to the underside or suspension of the tank, let it finish rolling over you, then, covered by the dust cloud, roll back to the ditch before the following tank can see you.
Then: BOOM!
Franco made a call on a small radio he carried. The menacing mechanical roar around the bend picked up and was joined by the squeaking of treads, worse than an infinity of nails on an infinity of blackboards. Inez spotted the long barrel of a tank pushing past the trees. Her tremors grew worse, exacerbated by the shaking of the ground from the metal monster’s roll. She saw the barrel swing over towards her, roughly parallel to the road. There was still more squeaking as the tank pivot-steered at the bend. And then the barrel—all she could really see—was moving in her direction.
As the tanks neared, the little pebbles by her dirt-pressed face began to jump up and down. That vibration grew steadily worse. Then the muzzle of the tank’s cannon was about twenty meters from her position. Inez braced herself for her leap.
Franco slapped her ass and shouted, “Go!”
Inez made a nimble, quick jump onto the road, then flopped to her belly and rolled. The roll was uneven, deliberately so, to get her in line with it and with the tank’s movement. She ended up on her back, precisely as she should have. Frantically, she tore away the tape that covered the sticky part of the satchel charge. By the time she had that off, the tank’s treads had enveloped her, grinding the dirt to both sides. She pulled the ring of the igniter and was rewarded with a crack more felt than heard, followed by a small puff of smoke. Shaking, she slammed the charge, sticky side first, against the hull. Then the tank was past her and, gasping for breath, she made another leap for the ditch, hitting and rolling into its warm embrace. A few seconds later she heard the muffled boom that said her charge had gone off.
Franco patted her shoulder. Leaning down next to her ear he shouted, “Good job, girl!”
Exhaling, Inez thought, Damn; that was fun.
Standing atop the tank, Garcia had seen everything but what had gone on underneath it. He thought, Fine, character-building exercise this is. Though as a combat technique it strikes me as barely better than nothing.
* * *
Gloria couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t get out into the road. Once, even, Garcia had to rip the sticky bomb—it did have half a pound of trinitrotoluene in it—from her hands and toss it away, hunching one shoulder against the blast as he fell back to earth.
Few noticed that Garcia threw his own body over Gloria’s before the explosive went off. Then he hauled her to her feet and slapped her to the ground with a curse.
Long after the rest of the women had passed the test, Garcia was still working with Gloria. Exasperated, he finally ended up having her lie right down in the road, with him standing on her back, while the tank rolled up on them. At the last second he would jump aside.
She still wouldn’t, or couldn’t, ignite the bomb and stick it to the tank.
Time ran out before Garcia gave up.
* * *
The best part was when the instructors let the women ride the tanks on the inside. That centurion-instructor had told the truth, they saw: Tankers were blind compared to infantry. Sure, the latest ones might have been able to see right through fifteen feet of sand to spot a hot tank engine. They couldn’t see a cool foot soldier behind a tree or a wall, or in a trench. The women learned; the women saw. And when they had to use those little vision blocks? Once a foot soldier got within fifty or sixty feet of a tank, or it got that close to them, the tank couldn’t see them. It was as if the tank were like a man, a quadriplegic, whose head and eyes are locked
straight to the front and on the level.
And they learned that even if a tank could see them it couldn’t depress the main gun or the coaxial machine gun.
An instructor said, however, “Don’t get too cute, girls, because it can still run you over in the open, and the muzzle blast from the main gun can kill or maim, knock the hell out of you, anyway. But even a small hole in firm soil—the smaller the better, actually—can protect you from that somewhat.”
* * *
The roar of the tank engines grew noticeably louder. “Marta,” Maria shouted, “Marta, come on. Get ready! The tanks are coming.”
Marta looked blankly for a moment, then asked, “Tanks?”
“Tanks,” Maria shouted again, then slapped Marta’s face.
That got through to her. Her face came alive. She reached for her rocket launcher and started to stick her head up to fire.
“No! Wait! Let them pass. You can take ’em from the rear.”
Marta nodded her understanding, whispering, “That would be nice for a change.”
Both women crouched down in their hole with the roar of the tanks’ engines and the squeal of the treads drawing ominously nearer. The tanks began firing their machine guns—at the ground between the positions, but also right over their heads. Some girls later swore they had heard bullets strike the berm in front of their hole! They were right.
The 125-millimeter shells from the tanks’ main guns buried themselves in the dirt between positions before exploding with gut crunching force. The sound grew so loud the girls could barely stand it. It wasn’t as loud as the artillery had been, but it was somehow much more personal.
Then the hole became very dark. “God, the damned thing’s right on top of us!” Maria gripped Marta to give her a little comfort, and perhaps to take some, too. “You would never have gotten a kill with a frontal shot! Let it pass,” Maria shouted again. Why not? The tank couldn’t hear her.
But it didn’t pass, not right away.
* * *
“We’re right on top of them, Sergeant,” announced the tank’s driver over the intercom.
“Good. Pivot steer! Let’s give ’em the time of their lives.”
With a chuckle, the driver began twisting the tank back and forth, side to side, grinding Maria’s and Marta’s position in on them.
“Teach them to be a little more careful about camouflage in front of their position, won’t it, Sergeant?”
“Yeah…teach ’em a few other things too.”
“Sergeant?” the gunner asked.
“Yes, Gunner?”
“If they had been better camouflaged from in front I couldn’t have fired the main gun without maybe killing them.”
“I knew where their positions were, Pablo,” the tank commander said. “We watched as they were building. I wouldn’t have let you hit a hole, or even get too near one. The grinding is punishment for bad camo.”
“Oh…I see.”
* * *
Beneath the thrashing treads, dirt and bits of wood filtered down onto Marta and Maria. They coughed in air made suddenly rank with diesel fumes and dust. When a log fractured, it made a crack they could feel in their bones more than hear with their ears.
After another eternity of terror the tank moved on, more dirt flying from behind the treads and splattering down on them.
“Now, Marta! Now,” Maria screamed. Marta hesitated not a moment, she wanted revenge for what they’d just been through.
Marta risked a quick look to their front. (Yes, risked; bullets had been flying overhead.) Maria guessed there hadn’t been any more tanks or supporting infantry, because Marta turned around and fired almost immediately. The boom and flash of the backblast was followed by a shriek of frustration. A miss.
Maria handed over another rocket from their little store of them. Marta twisted it onto the front of her launcher and took aim again. The backblast sent more crud and smoke into their position.
“Give me another one,” Marta demanded. Maria passed over the last rocket. This time Marta was very careful; Maria could see that from the deliberate way she loaded and the deliberate firing stance she took. This gave Maria time to join her, just her head sticking up from the hole. They saw the tank that had just savaged them moving away. It was firing its machine gun off into the distance.
“Easy and careful, sister,” Maria shouted in her ear. Marta nodded, took a deep breath, let some of it out, and fired.
The rocket sped straight and true. It hit the tank right on the back grill. A big column of orange smoke filled the air behind it.
From the command bunker Franco noticed the tank had been hit. He radioed the crew to tell them so…and to tell them how.
The tank slewed to a stop, the hatch flying open. One by one the turret crew emerged. Then they were joined on the back deck by the driver. Marta and Maria, and the tank crew, just stared at each other for a minute, a degree of disbelief on all five faces. One of the tankers—Maria guessed he might have been the TC, the tank’s commander—began to applaud. The rest of the men joined him. Marta blushed scarlet when they shouted out, “Well done, girls! Well done.” The tank commander threw them a ragged and friendly salute. Then, with a wave, the men reboarded their tank, cranked the engine, and drove off.
Just about then the centurion’s whistle blew. Marta and Maria ran to where the platoon was assembling. Before they fell in on Garcia they heard a sound—again, barely—that made them look behind. Inez Trujillo was sitting on Gloria, slapping her repeatedly, back and forth, across the face, while Cat looked on with disapproval on her face. It was sort of funny; this little thing beating on someone more than a head taller. None of the cadre interfered in the slightest.
Heart doesn’t come easy.
* * *
That night Marta approached the girl who had saved her life. “Maria, I’m sorry for what I said to you. And…I’m sorry for collapsing like that.”
“It’s okay, Marta. Everyone has their…little moments. And your vocabulary was certainly…ah…enlightening.”
Marta said nothing for a while, just kept staring down at the ground.
“I learned the vocabulary in the biggest and best whorehouse in the capital of La Plata,” she said, eventually. Then it all came out in a rush. How she’d gotten pregnant at fourteen, been thrown out of the house, met a pimp. Done everything.
“I lost the baby, the ability to have a baby, when a customer beat me up, but by then it was too late to do anything else. I was…contaminated. Maria, I learned to hate myself even more than I hated my customers.
“I learned to loathe every part of me. Drugs? Oh, yes. Huánuco, mostly. Some marijuana and hashish. Opium. A lot of alcohol. When I was twenty I tried to figure out how many people had had a piece of me. It was over seven thousand. I wondered what could be left of me, with so many having taken a little away each.
“Then a recruiter came from the classis. He wasn’t looking for sailors, not where I worked, but for sea whores to service the fleet off the coast of Uhuru, during the antipirate campaign the Yamatans paid for. I went with another girl, my special lover, Jaquelina.
Seeing the confused look on Maria’s face, Marta added, “Yeah, I can go both ways. But I wasn’t in love with Jaquelina because she was a girl but because of the person she was. We both signed up because we figured we could get away from the pimps; make a bundle; and maybe we could start over fresh somewhere.
“Anyway, they needed some girls who were really obviously girls to be bait on a small boat. Jaquelina and I signed up, mostly for the bonus they offered.
“We ended up fighting, because our boat took a bad hit. We got a couple of medals…”
“You’ve got a medal?” Maria asked. Marta just nodded.
“Anyway, eventually my lover was killed.” The woman’s voice broke for a moment. She swallowed to get control of it. “I tried to stick it out with the classis, but the memories were just too bad. So, when this came up, I volunteered for it to get away from those mem
ories.
“If I’m killed here it won’t be so bad. Nobody will miss me. But I can’t fail. Thank you, for helping me not fail.”
Marta started to cry again. Maria began to gather her into her arms, saying, “Marta, I would miss you. I’m going to hug you now. If you yell at me or push me away, I will punch you in the face and then hug you. Understand?”
Marta stiffened at first at being pulled into Maria’s shoulder. Then she relaxed, softening into the other, while continuing to cry.
* * *
What the women needed wasn’t just individual heart; they needed something called esprit de corps. Men get it; develop it easily, in fact. After all, the boy gang is one of only two spontaneously occurring human organizations.
And that was one area where the Gorgidas cadre couldn’t help much. They knew how to build it in a male unit, straight or otherwise. It’s pretty easy for them. Take any average group of males (well, Franco had once told them not any group; in much of the world men usually couldn’t develop real esprit de corps; most of them were not capable of even conceiving of loyalty to someone or something who isn’t a blood relation or a body of blood relations); put them in positions of fair equality, give them competent leadership; add stress, misery, danger and excitement to taste: voila—esprit de corps. Having them compete against other groups of men helped quite a bit, too.
* * *
“The big advantage,” Franco had said, in one of his frequent, informal lectures, “that men have is that they’re much more emotional, far less coldly rational, than women are.
“Women don’t really like to compete at, so to speak, manly things. What does conquest mean to them? What does being better at something than someone else mean, if it isn’t innately womanly? How does it make any of you more of a woman that you can march, shoot, destroy? Not your job, so to speak.
“And it isn’t,” he continued, “that women are incapable of loyalty to something besides themselves. They are loyal: To children, almost always, husbands, usually, parents, generally, societies and nations…that’s slightly less common but by no means unheard of.