by John Ringo
As if to punctuate that, a furry-faced, green-toned Indowy, face something like a terrestrial bat, emerged from below, straining under an enormous weight of a capacity-stuffed canvas tarp. The Indowy walked to port and dumped a mass of organic trash, rats and rat filth to splash over the side before returning wordlessly below.
Davis paid no more than a moment’s attention to the Indowy before turning back to McNair and continuing, “So anyways, my own cat Maggie had a litter of kittens about a month before I went into the tank; you know, rejuv? Under their mom’s guidance, they are taking pretty good care of the rat problem. There’s eight of ’em. Maggie drops big litters.”
Gorgas Hospital, Ancon Hill, Panama City, Panama
Laid out on the helicopter’s litter, Digna expired not twenty minutes flight from their destination, her chest rising suddenly and then slowly falling to remain still. The paramedic in attendance had at first tried to revive her, using cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then, when that failed, electric shock. Finally, after half a dozen useless jolts, he had shaken his head and covered her face with the sheet. He shrugged his regrets at Digna’s son, Hector, then politely turned away as Hector covered his face with his hands.
The inspector’s face remained impassive throughout.
Hector had managed to gain control of himself by the time the helicopter touched down on Ancon Hill overlooking Panama City at what had once been officially know as “Gorgas Army Hospital,” and was still commonly referred to as “Gorgas.”
At the helipad, Hector was surprised to see an ambulance still waiting for his mother. What did they think they could do for her now? She’s gone. He was even more surprised that the ambulance sped off, sirens blazing and tires lifting from sharp turns at a breakneck speed, once his mother’s body had been loaded.
Another car, a black Toyota, was left behind as the ambulance raced away. Into the back seat of this vehicle the inspector peremptorily ordered Hector, before seating himself beside the driver. Hector’s pride bridled but, realistically, he knew that the reach of the Miranda clan’s power stopped well short of Panama City. He went along without demure.
Hector Miranda hated the antiseptic stink of hospitals. Worse, this was an ex-gringo hospital where the smell of disinfectant had seeped into the very tile of the floors and walls. It didn’t help matters that his mother had just died. Almost as bad was uncertainty over his own future. A conscription notice at his age seemed too absurd for words.
And then there was that heartless bastard, the inspector. Did he have a word of sympathy over Digna’s death? A kind gesture? Even minimal civilized politeness? No, he just sat unspeaking as he pored through one file folder after another.
Hector was a proud man; as proud of himself as he was of his lineage. He could not weep for his mother here in public. Had he done so, and had she been there to see, she would have been first with a none-too-gentle slap and an admonition that “men do not cry.” It had been that way since he was a little, a very little, boy.
Once, his mother had caught him crying over some little-boy tragedy; he couldn’t for the life of him recall just what it was. She had slapped him then, saying, “Boys don’t cry. Girls are for crying.”
Shocked at the slap, he had asked, sniffling, “Then what are boys for, Mama?”
His mother had answered, in all seriousness, “Boys are for fighting.”
He had learned then to weep only on the inside.
So, dry-eyed, he paced, hands clasped behind his back and head slightly bowed. People in hospital greens and whites passed by. He thought some of them were gringos. Hector paid little attention to the passersby, but continued his pacing. Ordinarily, even at his age, he would have at least looked at the pretty, young nurses. He knew he looked young enough, perhaps thirty years less than his true age of eighty-seven, with a full head of hair and bright hazel eyes, that the girls often enough looked back.
One girl did catch his eye though. A lovely little thing she was, not over four feet ten inches, her shape perfection in miniature, and with bright blue eyes and flaming red hair. It was the hair that captured Hector’s attention; that and the bold, forthright way she looked at him. He had no clue what it was about him that caused the pretty redhead to walk over and stand directly in front of him.
She stood there, quietly staring up into his eyes, with the tiniest of enigmatic smiles crossing her lips. This lasted for a long minute.
Something… something… what is it about this one? Hector thought. Then his eyes flew wide in shock.
“Mama?”
Fort William D. Davis, Panama
Sergeant Major McIntosh sneered, showing white teeth against black lips. The place was a shambles, disgusting to a soldier’s eye. Never mind that the golf course was overgrown, riotous with secondary growth jungle. The sergeant major thought golf was for pussies anyway. But the barracks? They were a soldier’s shrine and that shrine had been desecrated! Windows were broken in places, missing where they were not broken. Wiring had been ripped out, unskillfully and wholesale. The paradeground had gone the way of the golf course, and that did matter in a way that a silly pursuit like golf did not. Trash was everywhere. The only buildings still in half-assed decent shape were the post housing areas that had been sold to government functionaries, their families and cronies. And even those needed a paint job.
The sergeant major stopped and stared at what had once been a wall mural of an American soldier in an old fashioned Vietnam-era steel pot, weighed down under a shoulder-borne machine gun, symbolically crossing the Isthmus of Panama. The mural was a ruin, only the artist’s name, Cordoba, remaining clear enough to distinguish for anyone who had never seen the mural when it was fresh and new.
“Muddafuckas,” the sergeant major announced in a cold voice with a melodious Virgin Islands accent. “Dis post used to be a fucking paradise, and look what’s left.”
James Preiss, former commander of 4th Battalion, 10th Infantry and future commander of the entire, rebuilt, regiment, ignored the sergeant major’s ranting as the two of them turned left to head east along the old PX complex, just south of the overgrown parade field. Preiss looked to right and left — assessing damage, prioritizing work to be done. This was as it should be; he to set the task, the sergeant major to tongue-lash the workers until the task was completed to standard. Preiss knew that the sergeant major was just getting himself in the proper frame of mind for when the troops began to show up.
I almost feel bad for the poor shits after the sergeant major has had a couple of weeks to brood. This was his favorite place even after thirty-five years in the Regular Army. Preiss smiled a little smile — half mean, half sympathetic — in anticipation.
Ahead was the post gym; built by the troops of the 10th Infantry Regiment early in the twentieth century, a bronze plaque to the left of the main entrance so proclaimed. “I wonder why nobody stole dat?” wondered the sergeant major aloud.
“Be thankful for small favors, Sergeant Major McIntosh. Though I admit I’d have been disappointed if even that had been gone.”
Fort Kobbe, Panama
Kobbe was composed of little more than thirteen red-tiled and white-stuccoed barracks and one smallish headquarters building, plus a half dozen old coastal artillery and ammunition bunkers and a couple of sold-off housing areas. Whereas Davis was a complete post, intended to be sufficient unto itself, Kobbe was a mere annex to what had once been Howard Air Force Base. It had no PX, no real chapel, no pool, no NCO club, no officers’ club. In short, it was just a place for troops to live; happiness they would have to find elsewhere.
Worse, if Fort Davis was a mess, Fort Kobbe was more nearly a ruin. Everything was missing. If Davis was missing toilets, Kobbe had seen its plumbing cannibalized. If Davis had had its wiring removed, on Kobbe the street lights had gone on an extended journey. If Davis was covered with graffiti, Kobbe’s buildings had seen the stucco rot in patches from its walls.
This was natural, since there were so many more people, hen
ce so many more thieves on an equal per capita basis, in Panama Province than in Colon. About all that could be said for the place was that the thirteen barracks and one headquarters were still standing, though building #806 was plainly sagging in the middle.
“That fucking idiot, Reeder,” commented Colonel Carter, in memory of a born-again moron who, in 1983, had just had to knock out a central load-bearing wall to build an unneeded chapel for an ineffective chaplain. “Why, oh why, didn’t somebody poison that stupid son of a bitch for the good of the breed like Curl said we should?”
Short, squat and with an air of solid determination, Carter glared at the collapsing building with a disgust and loathing for its destroyer undimmed after nearly two decades.
The Panamanian contractor standing next to Carter and surveying the same damage had no clue what Carter was speaking of. He assumed it was simple anger at the damage. He could not know that Carter was reliving, in the form of the falling Building 806, all his experiences with one of the more stupidly destructive and useless officers he had ever met in a life where such were by no means uncommon.
Carter shook his head to clear soiled memories. “Never mind, señor, I was just remembering… old times.”
“You were here, with the battalion?”
“Yes, I was with B Company as a lieutenant. I was a ‘Bandido.’ ”
“Was?” the Panamanian asked, with respect, then corrected, “Un Bandido siempre es un Bandido.”
“So we were,” agreed Carter. “So we are. Señor, have you seen enough to make an estimate of the repairs?”
“I have, Coronel, and the bill will not be small.”
“The bill never is, señor.”
Harmony Church, Fort Benning, Georgia
They came in old and fat and gray, or — some of them — old and skinny and cancerous and bald. Still others — the more recently retired — were fit but worn. One poor old duffer grabbed his chest and keeled over while standing in line. The slovenly looking medics merely dragged out a stretcher, put the heart attack victim on it, and carried him to the head of the line.
After passing through the white-painted, World War II era barracks building, they left young and fit and full of energy. Even the heart attack victim left as young and alive as any, albeit a bit more surprised than most.
They came from such diverse places as Tulsa, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, in the United States. Many came from outside the United States altogether.
Yet they had one thing in common: each one of them had at least one tour in the old 193rd Infantry Brigade (Canal Zone), soon to be reformed as the 193rd Infantry Division (Panama). Many other commonalities flowed from this.
Juan Rivera, Colonel (retired), looked up at his old comrades awaiting rejuvenation. He had to look up; Rivera was a scant five feet five inches in stature. He couldn’t help but notice their proud bearing. His own shoulders squared off, automatically. How different from the gutter scrapings of draftees I saw from the bus on the way in. Ah, well. I had thought to live out my life in peace and quiet. If I must go back to youth and turmoil I would rather do so with proven soldiers. Besides, it would be nice to have a hyper-functional pecker again. And better to die with a bang than a whimper.
As if he could read minds, a soon-to-be rejuvenee said aloud, “Man, I can hardly wait to get back to Panama with a working dick.”
Rivera wasn’t the only one to join in; the laughter was general. He also suspected he wasn’t the only one who had had the very same thought at the very same time. There was an awful lot to be said for a second man-, if not child-, hood. There was even more to be said for having that second manhood in Panama.
There were a surprising number of rejuvs for what was, Rivera suspected, an important but still secondary mission. He had no knowledge of the algorithm that had set aside such a large number of potential rejuvs — nearly three thousand — for a division that would be no more than fourteen or fifteen thousand at full strength. He suspected that Panama had so charmed that troops assigned there in bygone days that an unusually large number had reenlisted and gone career in the hope of someday returning. Thus, there had been a great many more than usual jungle-trained and experienced troops to rejuvenate.
Maybe that was it, he thought. Or maybe we are just plain screwed.
Department of State Building, Washington, DC
The Darhel would have fumed if fuming had not been inherently dangerous to its health and continued existence. He might still have fumed, despite the dangers, over the potential lost profit implicit in the barbarous American-humans going their own way. But the thing which threatened to push him over into lintatai was the sickening, unaccountable smile on the face of the human sitting opposite him.
The Undersecretary for Extraterrestrial Affairs did smile, but with an altogether grim and even regretful satisfaction. He had — he believed — thoroughly screwed the defense of Panama, and done so with a subtlety worthy of the United States Department of State. Thus, there was a certain satisfaction at a job well done. But he had screwed the United States and humanity as well, and that was no cause for even the mildest mirth. The fact was that the undersecretary loathed the Darhel but had no choice but to cooperate with them and support them if his own family was to survive the coming annihilation. The fact was also that, however they might couch it, the Darhel’s purpose was inimical to humanity.
The alien twisted uncomfortably in his ill-fitting chair. The undersecretary had been around the elflike Darhel enough to recognize the signs of discomfiture. In truth, he enjoyed them.
“I am at a losss to underssstand your current sssatisssfaction,” complained the Darhel. “You have failed completely. The losss to our interessstsss and, need I add, your own isss incalculable. We asssked you to stop thisss wassste of resssourcccesss on a sssecondary theater. Inssstead you have arranged to commit your polity to a much larger defensssive allianccce. Inssstead you have exssspanded the wassste beyond all boundsss of logic.”
“Didn’t I just?” observed the undersecretary cryptically.
Gorgas Hospital, Ancon Hill, Panama City, Panama
The inspector had gathered a half a dozen of the rejuvs in a conference room, once an operating room, on the western side of the hospital, facing the Canal. Like all the rest of the building, the room stank of disinfectant. The walls were painted the same light green as half the hospitals in the world. The mostly empty conference table was good wood, and Hector wondered where it had come from, or if it had been here continuously since the gringos left… or perhaps since they’d first arrived.
Hector sat now — like his mother — looking for all the world like a seventeen-year-old. Opposite Hector was an Indian in a loin cloth fashioned from a white towel. The Indian also looked like a near child despite the many faint scars on his body. To Hector’s left was Digna and beside her another man unknown to either, though Digna seemed to be almost flirting with him. Handsome, Rabiblanco, Hector thought. Two more men, seated to either side of the Indian, completed the complement. The conference room was not crowded.
Hector was initially terribly upset that his mother should be flirting, period, and more so because it was with such a youngster. And then he saw the youngster’s eyes and realized that he, too, was one of the old ones who had seen the elephant.
“William Boyd,” announced the “youngster,” reaching out an open hand to Hector. “Call me Bill. And I can’t imagine why I am here and why I am seventeen again. God knows, I didn’t like it much the last time.”
The inspector then spoke, “You are here, Mr. Boyd, because you, like these others, were once a soldier.”
Boyd looked at Digna and incredulously asked, “You were a soldier, miss?”
“The Thousand Day War,” Digna answered, “but I was more of a baby than a real soldier. I helped Mama do the cooking and the dishes. Certainly I didn’t fight or carry a gun. I was too little to so much as pick up a gun.”
“You are, nonetheless,” corrected the inspector, “listed on
the public records as a veteran of that war, Mrs. Miranda. You are a veteran. Your son, Hector, served when a boy as a volunteer rifleman in the Coto River War. Mr. Boyd here volunteered for service as an infantry private in the United States Army during the Second World War, fighting in some of the closing battles in Belgium, France and Germany.”
“I didn’t exactly volunteer,” Boyd corrected. “I went to school in the United States and was drafted upon graduation. I made sergeant before I was discharged,” he added proudly.
“A minor distinction,” the inspector countered. “You could have left the United States. Your family certainly had the money and the connections.”
Boyd shrugged. He could have, he supposed, but it wouldn’t have felt right. Maybe he had been drafted by his own sense of obligation rather than by law.
The inspector turned to the other side of the conference table, pointing at the small, brown, scarred — and now that one looked closely, rather ferocious seeming — Indian. “Chief Ruiz, there, was taken from Coiba,” Panama’s prison island, “where he was serving time for murder. The fact is, though, that the murder was more in the nature of an action of war… despite his having taken and shrunk the heads of the men he killed. He has been pardoned on condition of volunteering to return to his tribe of the Chocoes Indians to lead them in this war.”
Again the inspector’s finger moved, indicating a short and stocky brown man, and an elegant seeming white. “The other two, First Sergeant Mendez and Captain Suarez, are retired veterans of our own forces, both of whom fought the gringos in the 1989 invasion.