by John Ringo
Once more, Diaz flicked on his red-filtered flashlight. A last time he checked his map and his route. He turned his attention to his compass. Then he eased the stick over and headed, as nearly as he could tell, for the town of Montijo and, he hoped, aid to rescue his father and the others.
Montijo, Panama
Suarez was standing by the wall-mounted main map in his forward command post when the medical orderlies brought in the stretcher-borne, broken and bleeding young man and placed his stretcher across two chairs.
“He’d have been dead, sure as shit,” the fat, balding medical sergeant in charge announced, “except that he landed only a few hundred meters from the field hospital. We were able to stabilize him and stop the bleeding. The tough part was cutting him out of the airplane and unimpaling him from the tree branch that punctured the plane and his gut.”
“Has he said anything?” Suarez asked, though something the sergeant said nagged at him.
“Other than that he’d shoot us if we didn’t bring him to you, no, sir,” the sergeant answered. “We believed him.”
“When did he pass out?”
“Oh, about the time we pulled him off the branch and got his guts back inside him. We probably should have taken him to the hospital but he seemed to think it was really important that we bring him here.” The sergeant shrugged.
Airplane, Suarez mused. Airplane? No airplane can fly anywhere near the Posleen. How the hell…
“Was there an engine on this ‘airplane’? A propeller? Anything like that?”
The sergeant tilted his head to the right and looked up, while he tried to remember. “Yes, sir, but now that you ask, it wasn’t even warm, as if the plane had been flying without it. I wonder how it flew.”
Suarez nodded deeply. “It didn’t fly; it glided. This is one of the young men who saved our asses when we were cut off by the enemy.”
“Ooohhh,” the sergeant said. “Then, if you are going to ask him any questions, you had better hurry, sir. This young man needs a hospital and we owe him better than to let him die.”
Suarez knelt down next to Diaz and tapped the pilot twice on his blood-streaked cheek. This didn’t seem to have any effect so he slapped the boy, as gently as seemed prudent. Diaz’s eyes sprang open, though they seemed to lack focus. The eyes swept around the room, gradually coming to rest — with at least some focus this time — on Suarez’s face.
The boy moved his bandaged head to face Suarez. Rather, he tried to and stopped suddenly, a groan of pain escaping his lips. His eyes closed again and he bit at his cheek to stifle the escape of any more “unmanly” sounds. No human male thinks it is quite so important to appear manly as those so young that they are more boy than man.
Be that as it may, Diaz didn’t try to open his eyes again. Instead, with eyes still tightly shut, he insisted, “I must speak to Colonel Suarez. It’s a matter of life and death.”
The voice sounded familiar. Suarez put that together with the boy’s reported means of arrival and came up with the perfect solution: Julio Diaz, son of the Army’s G-2 and the pilot whose calls for naval gunfire had, more than any other, saved the core of the 1st Division.
“What is a matter of life and death, Lieutenant Diaz?” Suarez asked gently.
Hand trembling and uncoordinated, Diaz reached for the left breast pocket of his flight suit and began fumbling with the zipper. After a few moments of frustration he gave up and asked Suarez to look in that pocket.
Carefully, Suarez reached over, unzipped the pocket and withdrew a small packet of papers, with a map, wrapped in plastic. He opened it and began to read, referring back to the map from time to time as he did so. Every now and again a “Bastards!” or “Pendejos!” or, once, “Motherfuckers!” — in English, no less — escaped his lips. After a short time, he folded the maps and paper up.
“Get this man to the hospital,” he told the medical sergeant.
Diaz risked opening his eyes, winced once again with the pain and disorientation, and then took a death grip on Suarez’s arm.
“You must save my father,” he insisted.
“Your father is important, son,” Suarez answered, “and I’ll save him if I can. But it’s more important — your old man would be the first to agree — to save the country.”
Freeing himself from Diaz’s grip and standing up, Suarez began bellowing orders. “Get this man to the hospital,” he repeated to the medical sergeant. Then, turning to the officer on staff duty in the command post, he said, “And get me every commander in the division down to battalion level. Also alert… mmm,” he consulted the map. “Alert Second Battalion, Twenty-First Regiment. I want them here and in position around the command post within the hour.”
The sun arose on Cortez’s left, shielded by but filtering though the trees that lined portions of the road. There was more pasture than there were trees, though, this being cattle country. Much of the trip was made with bright morning sunlight pouring into the Hummer, burning the back of the coward-general’s neck.
Cortez’s major thought while on the road to Montijo was that Boyd had indeed been funneling extra equipment to the 1st Division. He knew, at some level, that the gringos had begun to pour in more material, and to buy material from other sources, for the defense of the Canal. Seeing just how much of it had gone to 1st Division, though, was something of a shock. On the half-crushed road from Santiago to Montijo he passed what would easily make two battalions worth of modern American armor, possibly twice that in Russian-built infantry fighting vehicles, and two or three battalions of self propelled guns of indeterminate origin. These were lined up to either side in company- and battalion-sized motor parks.
Knowing the approximate strength of what had survived of his division’s soldiers suggested to Cortez that this equipment was, for the time, extra and that the exchange of old materiel for new was already well advanced.
Suarez has been hiding this, the bastard, and the soldiers must have been in on it; there’s just too much here to have kept quiet unless nearly every man were cooperating. And if he has this equipment issued and integrated, even with only forty percent of a division left, it is more than enough to plow through any other formation in the force that might be in position to stop them. Fuck.
Cortez led a convoy of twenty-seven trucks carrying over five hundred of the stockade scrapings such as he had used to effect the arrests. He didn’t delude himself that they would be worth anything in a fight; that wasn’t their purpose. He had very good reason to believe that they would be effective enough at intimidating people into quiet acquiescence, even such people as made up the battle-hardened, hard-core remainder of the 1st Division, provided — at least — that he could catch them unawares and at a disadvantage.
A guard posted by the road stopped Cortez’s American-provided Hummer. After the most cursory check, mere verbal questioning, the guard waved Cortez’s column on, helpfully offering directions to the 1st Division Command Post.
Cortez guessed, correctly, that the guard was under orders to let groups of scruffy looking troops, replacements to make good 1st Division’s previous crippling losses, through with minimal hassle. This matched well with the presence of all the extra and new equipment he had already seen.
Cortez’s next guess was not quite so good. A couple of miles past the roadside guard post his Hummer passed between two medium armored vehicles — he thought they looked Russian — which tracked him for a few moments and then seemed to lose interest. More vehicles appeared, and then were lost in the rolling terrain as the Hummer moved onward. At a distance, and much harder to see, Cortez thought there were infantry accompanying the armor.
Left to himself, in a static situation, Cortez would have surrounded his command post — more importantly, his own mortal flesh — with at least as big a guard. Quite possibly his personal guard would have been even bigger. Thus, he found it not at all strange, completely normal, for there to be a strong battalion situated about the CP. He never for a moment suspected the
guard might be because of him. He never even noticed that, as his Hummer and the following trucks passed, the armored vehicles pivot steered to face inward, towards the command post.
The command post was set up in an open area surrounded by trees. Camouflage nets were held above it by poles. In places, the nets were tied to any nearby trees that might help break up the outline of the tents that served to shelter the nerve center of the division. Going in through the main entrance, the center tent, one would have seen more than thirty folding metal chairs laid out in rows with a central pathway left open running up the middle. The grass of the pathway was worn almost out of existence, red dirt — though it was more mud than dirt at this point — showing clearly. At the far side of the pathway, against the tent wall and held up by twisted and bent coat hangers, were maps and status boards, detailing the deployment and condition of all the regiments and battalions in the division. Smoke from two dozen smoldering cigarettes hung in the air above the men seated in the folding chairs, giving the whole place a tobacco reek to mix with the sweat and diesel smoke. To the right of the assembly area, banks of radios set up on folding tables were manned by half a dozen enlisted men of the division. To the left was a planning cell, all maps and tables, manuals and grease pencils.
“And that is the crux of the situation,” Suarez told his assembled officers in the three conjoined tents that served as the division CP. “Our best leaders have been incarcerated on trumped up war crimes charges, and our defense has been sabotaged from Day One. Moreover…”
A field phone rang, though it was more of a continuous, annoying clicking than a ring, actually. One of the NCOs working the communications picked up the phone, asked a couple of questions, and then held it up where Suarez could see.
“Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,” Suarez apologized and walked down and aisle through the middle of the seated crowd to get to the phone. Taking it, he announced himself — “Suarez” — and listened for a few moments.
“Si… I understand… Your sergeant did well… that’s right… come running when I call… Yes, come running then, too.”
Suarez returned the phone to the sergeant, then turned to address his officers. “Our old division commander,” he had to stop for a moment while the men stood and vented their spleen, “Bastard…” “Coward…” “Fucking deserter…” At least two, that Suarez could see, drew bayonets.
Making shushing motions, Suarez waited until they were quiet and seated again. “As I was saying, Cortez is coming with about five hundred armed men. I imagine he is here to arrest us, or at least to arrest me, and possibly to resume command of the division.”
“Over my dead body,” the division sergeant major announced, with utter seriousness.
“Do you all feel that way?” Suarez asked. “Do you feel that way even if it means fighting our countryman? Overthrowing our civil government, if that’s what it takes?”
Some voiced, “Yes.” Still others nodded. Some merely glared out their hatred of Cortez and their contempt for the president. Suarez searched through the small sea of faces, looking for one, even one, that looked reluctant or afraid. There was not one.
Cortez directed his Hummer to the small, wired-off parking lot area outside the tents. The area was more than half full with senior officers’ vehicles; Cortez could see that by the number of them that had a “6” painted on their bumpers. A small sign announced the open area’s purpose, as another announced the function of the tents: “1st Division Command Post.” It was the right time of day for a meeting; Cortez had often held such morning get-togethers when he had helmed the division. Indeed, he had planned the timing of his raid in the hope of catching as many as possible of the division’s leaders in one place, some to arrest, others to intimidate by the fact of the arrests.
The driver of the Hummer slowed to a stop. Cortez dismounted, pointed the driver in the direction of the other vehicles, and then turned and made hand gestures for his followers to dismount, spread out and surround the division command post. This they did, but without the silent speed and precision of professionals. Instead of dispatch, they trundled off the trucks slowly. Instead of silently taking position to give their quarry as little warning as possible, their jumped-up, gutter-scraping officers and NCOs had to make their orders heard with much shouting.
To a degree, this offended Cortez’s sense of propriety. He was, after all, a son of the United States Military Academy. He knew, in theory at least, how an armed force was supposed to look, sound and act. He knew, equally well, that the security detachment he had drummed up didn’t look, sound or act that way. Oh, well. You do the best you can with what you have.
Cortez did have a few real soldiers, men who had perhaps made a mistake and gotten on charges for it, or had committed some crime — rape was common — that put them in cells. These formed a special squad that followed him into the command post tents.
Inside, Suarez was leaning on a podium, unaccountably smiling at Cortez. The other officers and noncoms present turned their heads to stare or, in some cases, openly glare but all remained seated.
Forcing down the anger at being slighted, Cortez announced, “I am here to resume command of the division, Colonel Suarez. You are relieved, sir.”
Suarez’s smile morphed into something rather different, a cross between a shit-eating grin and a frown. He shook his head slowly, saying, “No, I don’t think so.”
The general waved his arm forward, then pointed as Suarez, saying, “Guards, arrest that man.”
The guards started forward, then stopped in mid stride as forty-three pistols, four rifles, and a machine gun were suddenly leveled at them. The senior of the guards, a defrocked, overaged lieutenant with an unfortunate taste for very young girls, looked at Cortez with a mix of fear, anger and desperation. Fear and desperation won out.
He asked, not softly, “What the fuck do I do, General?”
Suarez answered, “Put down your weapons… or die.”
“You’ll all hang,” Cortez shouted frantically. “I have five hundred men surrounding you. Surrender now, I promise fair treatment if you surrender now.”
At that time, a long burst of machine gun fire sounded from outside the tent. This was followed by shouting, screaming, some scattered shooting, and then more machine gun fire. Over these sounds of fighting came the roar of armored vehicles approaching seemingly from every direction. The fighting ended almost immediately, the rifle and machine gun fire being replaced by the much softer sound of weapons being dropped and the repetitive pleas of, “Don’t shoot.”
Suarez looked meaningfully at Cortez. “Five… four… three…”
The picked men with Cortez dropped their rifles and raised their hands at the count of “Four.” Cortez, himself, looked from side to side. Seeing he was alone and without support, Cortez lifted his left hand, palm out in supplication, while his right pulled his pistol slowly and gently from its holster. Using only his thumb and forefinger he withdrew it and stooped to place the firearm gently on the ground. The right hand then joined the left in the hands-up posture of surrender.
Suarez jerked his head in the direction of the dropped firearms. Two sergeants, a lieutenant and a captain sprang to retrieve them from the ground.
“You know, Manuel,” Suarez said, not ungently, as he walked toward the overthrown general, “I can almost forgive you for bugging out when the Posleen had us surrounded. And I can even, almost, understand the desire to obey the orders of your uncle, the president. But the thing that really gripes, the thing I’ll never be able to forgive you for, is abandoning your company and mine when the gringos attacked in 1991.”
Suarez’s arm drew back in a blur and then lashed forward, his fist catching Cortez squarely on the nose. Blood burst forth even as the victim flew back. The body made an audible thump despite the fairly soft dirt flooring the tent. Cortez was quite senseless, though, and never heard Suarez give the order to arrest him. He also never heard, not that it would have done anyone on his side any good,
the order Suarez gave to certain officers to assemble their commands and prepare for a long vehicular road march to Panama City and beyond.
Interlude
It was not the alcohol, curiously enough, that intoxicated the Posleen, but an impurity within it that was usually only found in any quantity in the cheapest, rawest rotgut human beings were capable of manufacturing. Since the bottle Ziramoth split with Guanamarioch was searing, cheap, rotgut…
The two Posleen, arms over each other half for comradeship and the other half for steadiness, staggered through the night up the dirt road that roughly paralleled the fishing stream. They sang as they staggered, their bodies swaying from side to side with the tune and the drunkenness.
Perhaps there was in all the universe a more vile form of singing than that practiced by the Posleen. Perhaps. Then again, snakes slithered fast to escape from the snarling bellows of the pair. Insects shivered and scuttled away as fast as legs and wings would carry. Fish dove down into the deepest pools they could find and a few tried to bury themselves in the mud. Somewhere, off in the distance, a pair of wolves howled in their cave before giving the canto up as a bad job.
What was the song about? That was a story. It seems that, sometime in the lost millennia past, there had been a God King whose very name had disappeared and whose song was now known only as “The tale of he who farted in the enemy’s general direction.”
Properly translated, the Irish would have loved it, being, as it was (and they were), full of defiance and rage and untimely but glorious and violent death. The Russians may have loved it even more. The Germans? Nah.