by John Ringo
Of course, the Guard had no mines. Instead, they stopped the first fifty civilian vehicles that showed up at the bridge and took them, sometimes at gun point, to form a roadblock across the friendly side of the highway. The roadblock they covered with machine guns placed in some of the buildings. Closer to the road, some in the buildings, some among the roadblock cars, others dug in into the ground, they placed Russian-supplied rocket propelled grenade launchers. These were few, both in the Guard and in the regular forces, as they were not really very effective against the Posleen.
The commander of the Presidential Guard, Raul Mercedes, was another nephew but one who had seemed to Mercedes as having more promise than Cortez. Indeed, it had hurt Mercedes to order Raul to buy him time to evacuate key family members. The president had salved his conscience, and purchased Raul’s continued loyalty, by placing this nephew’s wife and children on the list.
It had been hard enough for Raul, short and somewhat plump but still diligent, to train himself while training his men to be police officers and riot control troops. He was unversed in the military arts. His commission had come directly from his uncle, the president, without any real intermediary training involved. Even so, marksmanship was of a fairly high standard; he’d done well there. Riot control techniques, procedures and formations he’s taught himself and then his men from a book. More detailed military training, however, was lacking, except for some theoretical exercises in classrooms and a few practical exercises in city fighting. Even this much had been difficult, what with a quarter of his few hundred men being on guard duty at any given time and the not infrequent calls from the Palacio de las Garzas to assemble a larger show for some foreign dignitary.
It was hopeless, Raul knew. He might hold on for an hour, or perhaps two if Jesus smiled on him. His uncle assured him that would be enough; that he could surrender himself and his men honorably after he had bought enough time for the core of the clan to escape. Two hours, at most, Raul. So his uncle had insisted.
Raul knew what his uncle was, and despised him for it. He knew that, in some sense, he was on the wrong side. But he was also certain that his uncle had so badly damaged Panama’s prospects for a successful defense that the only chance for his wife and children to survive would be for him to follow his uncle’s orders without question. For that, the survival of those he loved, he would compromise his honor, give his life and sacrifice his men. The thought made him sick, but he would do it all the same.
He consulted his watch for perhaps the hundredth time. Who knows, maybe if we can hold them here for a while we can work something out before any serious blood is spilt.
Suarez halted the Hummer at the western abutment of the bridge. He could not see the far side. This alone was reason enough for him to stop; he had gone forward once, under orders, without adequate reconnaissance and lost thousands because of it. Never again. Enough of my men’s blood has been spilt over political silliness and iniquity.
So, instead of blindly charging over the steep, asphalted hump of the bridge and down the far side, he ordered a company of his mechanized infantry to cut north to gain a view of the opposite bank. What they reported back he used to begin to build a picture, a remarkably accurate picture, of what awaited on the other side.
The bridge is blocked. That would not be so, most likely, unless the men who blocked it were still there. What would they have? Who would they be? MPs? Civil Police? Maybe those. Tanks? No, they’re all to the west, watching the Posleen. Anti-armor weapons? It’s possible, even likely, there in those buildings on the other side. Maybe not many of them but… No, going directly over the bridge is a losing proposition.
One thing he had not found time yet to train his men on was waterborne operations with their Russki BMPs. For that matter, given the exigencies of the Posleen war and the limitations of the Posleen themselves, he had never worried about training his men to disperse as a defense against indirect — artillery and mortar — fire.
He turned to Hector Miranda and ordered, “Get back there and spread the men out. Disperse the trucks to either side of the road. The driver can watch Cortez for a while.”
Miranda saluted and exited the Hummer even while the driver took his rifle and stuck it under Cortez’s chin with a smile. In a few minutes the roar of diesels behind Suarez grew as the trucks strained their engines to get into and through the ditches to either side of the road.
Suarez picked up his radio’s microphone and called the company commander, Captain Perez, A Company, who had cut right to recon the bridge. “Perez, do you think your BMPs can cross the water to the other side?” he asked.
“They’re water jet-propelled, Boss,” the captain answered. “There’s no real preparation required. And you drive them, basically, the same way. But… fine control? Selecting a good spot to try to emerge? Honestly, we’d be clueless. And if we took any close artillery on the way over…”
Suarez stopped to think, despite the racing clock, before issuing his orders. Tough call; tough call. I don’t even know if the poor bastards can get out of the water once I send them in. I don’t know…”
C Company’s commander, First Lieutenant Arias, came from the radio. “There’s a yacht club at old Fort Amador, sir. Where there’s a yacht club there’s likely to be a boat ramp. If there’s a boat ramp…”
Yeah there is. Shit, why didn’t I remember that. Hell, I’ve seen it.
“Do it, Arias. Cross,” Suarez ordered. “Perez, you get in the water, too. Go about half or two thirds of the way across, then cut right, and follow Arias out. Then clear the far side of the bridge.”
“Roger, sir… Roger.”
Raul Mercedes felt a momentary surge of hope when his observers reported that the enemy force — difficult to think of his countrymen as an enemy — had stopped on the far side of the bridge. That hope soared when the same observers reported that they seemed to be scattering their men and trucks into the trees on either side of the Pan-American Highway. Since Raul had no artillery or mortars, though he didn’t know that his enemy didn’t know that, he assumed that this indicated an intent not to try to force his roadblock. This would be fine with Raul.
Surging hope fell like a spent wave on the shore when Raul received the word that the enemy’s armor was splashing into the bay on both sides of the bridge. He rushed forward to the roadblock and peered first right, then left over the sides of the bridge. There, in the greasy looking waters trapped on three sides by the Canal, the City, and the peninsula to the west, two swarms — that was all he could think to call them as they had adopted nothing recognizable as a formation — of a dozen or more armored vehicles each were churning towards him and his men. If they could make a landing, and — since he had not reconned the area Raul had no way of knowing whether they could or not — they would roll up his flanks like a newspaper and then clear the side of the bridge he was charged with defending.
A trained officer might have remembered the old aphorism: who would defend everything defends nothing. Raul, however, was not a trained officer. Instead of concentrating his efforts, he split his reserve into two and reinforced both sections with men from his roadblock, thinning the line there. These two groups hurried south, to Fort Amador, where one group of armor seemed to be headed, and northeast toward what appeared to Raul to be the objective of the other company of armor. Some went in what amounted to police cars, sirens blazing, others in the trucks that had brought his force to the bridge. He was able to estimate their arrival at the likely landing points by when the sirens cut off.
Soon little geysers, the result of the impact of bullets on the water’s surface, began spouting up all around the approaching armor. The commanders of the vehicles ducked down, closing their hatches until only their eyes were able to see out.
To Suarez, looking through binoculars as he crouched in some bushes under and to one side of the west bank of the bridge, it looked like heavy rain on a calm lake surface. He might have thought it looked more like hail except that hail was
something of a rarity in Panama. He watched the track commanders half-buttoning up under the fusillade and wondered, worried, how that would affect their chances of finding an egress from the water. He assumed that the reduction in visibility would not help, in any case.
From his vantage point Suarez could make out the spot at Amador where he thought the boat ramp must be. He couldn’t see anything that looked promising in front of Perez’s boys, though this didn’t matter as he intended for Perez to form a second wave at the Amador boat ramp.
From across the water, and magnified by it, came the sounds of mass firing of the BMPs’ machine guns. Suarez couldn’t see the muzzle flashes as the guns were pointing away from him. He could, however, see that the hurricane of geysers spouting around the vehicles dropped to a light squall.
Good… good. But don’t keep going, Perez, however good it looks. Cut right and go for the known ramp out of the water.
Suarez picked up the microphone for his radio and keyed it. He was about to give the order when he saw A Company’s BMPs suddenly begin to veer to the right. As they did, they turned their turrets left, still facing the hostile shore, and laced it with machine gun fire.
Suarez had brought with him a single battery of self-propelled 122mm guns and, of course, the battalion’s heavy mortars. These had set up for firing, as a matter of standard procedure, at the first sign that the halt might be prolonged. He had held them in reserve until now, on the theory that they might be critical if it turned out his enemy-of-the-day actually had some artillery or mortars of their own. It made sense not to have called them, so far, but…
To hell with that. If they’d had any mortars or artillery they’d have used them on the troops behind me or the tracks as they wallowed through the water. Still, one never knows. I’ll keep the artillery hidden and support the landing with the mortars alone. Best be careful not to damage the ramp though. Airburst and smoke, only, I think.
Boat Ramp, Fort Amador
Peering from beneath the hatch of his BMP, Lieutenant Arias caught sight of the boat ramp, concrete and cobblestones, leading up from the water.
“Juan,” he asked his driver over the vehicular intercom, “you see the ramp?”
“Si, señor.”
“Aim straight for it.”
The driver didn’t answer verbally, but the BMP swung slightly until its boatlike nose pointed directly at the ramp. Incoming fire increased and the peculiar screeching of machine gun fire off the front glacis sent Arias even lower into his turret.
Arias was pleased to see shells, mortars he suspected, begin to explode in the air a few meters above ground behind the ramp. The fire he and his men were receiving dropped noticeably.
The ramp was close now. Arias manipulated the commander’s turret control handle to traverse his turret around to observe and control the vehicles following. These had slowed, it seemed, based on the lesser amount of water being pushed over their prows. This was all to the good. Arias was going in first, but he wanted a steady stream of reinforcements behind him.
Again traversing the turret, this time to face the ramp, Arias ordered his BMP’s driver to gun it. The BMP picked up speed, then shuddered as the lower front section of the treads on each side hit the ramp. Without cutting off the water jets — the track would need them to pull itself over the slippery concrete and stones — the driver engaged his clutch and transferred power to the treads. These, despite the aid of the jets, initially spun, throwing water, muck, and greenish slime up and to the rear.
Guard Cabo, or corporal, Robles had been in a position covering the roadblock on the bridge when the orders came to move down to this position overlooking the old gringo yacht club’s boat ramp on Fort Amador. Grumbling, he had squeezed himself and his machine gun, along with about a thousand rounds of ammunition, a tripod and his assistant gunner into the back of the patrol car. Another man, the ammo bearer, sat in the front passenger seat with more ammunition on his lap. The patrol car had then, sirens shrieking, rushed them to a hotel overlooking both the water and the ramp.
By the time Robles had been ordered to a suitable position his targets had already crawled across the water to within something like effective range of the gun. The crew had hurriedly set up a couple of end tables, the same size and just below window height. Within a few more seconds the tripod was set up, the front claws digging into the edge of the table nearest the wall, and the gun locked into position.
Robles had then begun sustained fire, about two hundred rounds per minute, at the steel amphibians clawing their way across the water. This hadn’t done any more good than Robles had expected. It had caused the commanders of the vehicles to half button up. This would add to the confusion of the attackers. More than that, the corporal knew, was too much to expect, though one could always hope.
Then the return fire came in. It was somewhat more effective, if only because — despite being on the open water — the BMPs’ armor was better cover than the light wood and brick the defenders had in front of them.
Neither Robles nor anyone standing with him had much of a clue what was going on. The commander had said they had to fight a golpe de estado. Rumor had it that the president had arrested some of the Army’s leaders for crimes unspecified and that the Army was rebelling against that. There were also rumors that the ruling classes, exemplified by the president, had sold out the country to the alien invaders. Robles didn’t know. It was entirely possible that both things were true, he thought. In fact, the only things he was sure of were that he had a job to do and that he intended to do it to the best of his ability.
The incoming machine gun fire didn’t do much to discomfort the defenders. On the other hand, the heavy shells that began exploding when the attacking armor closed on the ramp did. One shell went off about fifty meters from the window. Robles’ ammunition bearer screamed and clutched at his eyes as splintered glass shredded them and his face. Hunched down behind his gun, Robles, himself, took minor bits of glass in his right arm and shoulder. He cursed but did not let up on his fire.
The same could not be said for some RPG gunners who had taken a covered position behind some parked automobiles overlooking the ramp. These had good protection from the BMPs’ machine guns but none whatsoever from the shells exploding overhead. Three minutes of shards screaming through the air and tearing through their bodies was enough for those poor men. They ran, those still able to.
The smoke from the high explosive shells hadn’t done much to interfere with Robles’ vision. This changed when dozens of smoke shells began impacting around the ramp and in front of the buildings.
“Shit,” Robles cursed, as his view of the water completely cut off. The loss of the focus of his concentration allowed the corporal, for the first time, to actually take notice of the sobbing, clawing ammo bearer. He thought, briefly, of putting the man out of his misery but decided against it. Who knows, maybe they can rebuild the poor bastard’s eyes, these days.
After shouting for a medic, Robles contemplated his next action. No sense in staying here; can’t see shit. Maybe another position…
Seeing a medic and two litter bearers had arrived to care for his wounded man, Robles ordered his assistant gunner, “Forget the tripod. Grab all the ammunition you can carry and follow me.”
Burdened with the gun as he was, Robles slipped and nearly fell on the spent casings littering the floor. For a few moments his feet spun like a log roller’s before he caught balance on the table that had previously served as his firing platform. Bad sign, he thought, very bad. Well, nothing to be done for it.
Taking a deep breath, a part of his mental recovery from almost falling and, just possibly, a part of steeling himself to go outside to find a new and better firing position, Robles physically grabbed the assistant gunner and half dragged him out of the room and down a short flight of steps. They went through an open door, turned right, and raced to the corner of the building.
Covering behind the solid corner, just as Robles extended his bipod a
nd placed his machine gun to his shoulder, he uttered, “Fuck,” as the first BMP up the ramp emerged through the thick smoke.
* * *
Arias was unwilling to dismount either himself or the men in the back of his track until he had more vehicles and infantry ashore. The pitter-patter of bullets striking the armor not only reinforced his original inclination but actually succeeded in driving him completely under cover and even to close his hatch. It would never do to let the inside of the hatch cause one to ricochet into the interior from which it could not escape without bouncing around until it buried itself in one of the crew. Frantically, he traversed the turret while searching for targets through his sight. Nothing. He elevated the sight and gun and swept again. Nothing. He depressed the gun and swept back but the gun would not go low enough to let him see ground level at any of a number of positions that could be sheltering his assailants.
He thought about having the driver back out but, with more vehicles coming up to the ramp in a steady stream, he was afraid of an accident that might block the ramp. Like any infantryman, even a mechanized one, he hated being stuck inside his track. What others saw as protection he saw only as a trap, an armored coffin vulnerable to any man with an anti-armor weapon.
I can’t back up. I won’t stay here. All that is left is to go forward.
Robles’ machine gun chattered until seconds before the left tread of Arias’ track squashed him like a grape.
“Mount up, you bastards, mount up,” Colonel Suarez shouted into his radio. He gave the order as soon as he saw the first BMP break across the street, 100mm gun flaring, and the Presidential Guard breaking in terror. Every now and again, looking through his binoculars, he caught a glimpse of a BMP, with its distinctive silhouette, at one of the city’s crossroads along Avenida de los Mártires.