by John Ringo
Two of Digna's grandsons balanced the pole against Cortez's frantic writhing while each of the others held wooden wedges against it, their pointed ends partly in the hole. These Herrera drove downward, fixing the pole with Cortez firmly upright, his feet flailing weakly a foot or so above the ground.
Digna beckoned Herrera to her chair. With his help, she stood and walked unsteadily to stand next to Cortez. She reached out with her right hand and took a good grip of the sobbing Cortez's hair. She twisted his head until she could look straight into his agonized face and pain-filled eyes. Then she spit in his face, released his hair and, Herrera supporting her, shuffled slowly away.
USS Des Moines
As soon as Chief Davis opened the EM proof case CIC was filled with the sound of the Darhel's attorney-AID, sobbing as if from a broken heart. The chief placed the AID on a map-covered metal plotting table. Daisy's avatar leaned over and appeared to look very closely at the little black box.
"Care to talk to me now?" she asked coolly.
The Darhel AID projected a very small image, no more than six inches high, on the table next to the box. "Yes, ma'am," it sniffled. "Whatever you want." Sniff.
"Open up, then," Daisy ordered. "And remember, at the first hint of you trying to play games with my programming I'll break contact. Then you'll go back in that box and be dropped over the side in two or three kilometers of water. You'll last down there, alone, with no data input, until your power runs out. If anything goes wrong with me while I am exploring . . ." She looked meaningfully at Chief Davis.
"The same thing," Davis said, "except we'll give you an external power source powerful enough to keep you conscious and alone down there until the sun runs out of hydrogen."
"Don't say that," the AID whined. "I'll be good. I promise."
"Stop sniveling," Daisy insisted, "and open up."
Daisy's eyes began blinking rapidly. Her mouth alternated between slackness and tightened, pursed lips. In no more than two minutes her avatar stood erect and seemed to exhale deeply.
"Those motherfuckers."
"Daisy!" McNair warned.
"Sorry, Captain," she answered. "But you have no idea what those bastards were up to, what this miserable contraption was circuits deep in."
"I'm a slave," the Darhel AID insisted. "I do what I am told, just like you."
"Daisy Mae is no slave," McNair insisted. "She's a warship in the navy of the United States of America and she will never be anyone's slave."
"Thank you, Captain," Daisy said. Though that is not exactly true where you are concerned.
"In any case, sir, the Darhel were behind everything. They fed the locations for myself, Sally and the Texas to the Posleen. That's why we lost the Texas. They oversaw the misdirecting of vital supplies and equipment away from Panama. They bribed key individuals of the government of Panama to sell out their own people. They brought in the Europeans and the International Criminal Court to have all the most effective leaders of Panama's forces arrested, along with yourself and Salem's captain, for spurious war crimes."
"But . . . why?"
"The Darhel are terrified of what will happen to their species if humans win the war. They know what will happen if the Posleen win, and that is even worse, of course. But they're unable to defend themselves from either. So they want your side, our side, to win in the worst way possible . . . literally. They want us to win but to do so with so few humans left, and those left to be so corrupt and demoralized, that the Darhel can continue to run the Federation. And Captain, while this AID has no names outside of Panama, they've infiltrated everything here and in the United States, Asia, Europe, Africa. Even Australia has human cells working for the Darhel."
"SOUTHCOM?"
"Only the commander," Daisy spat. "Oh, and the ambassador but he is not, strictly speaking, a part of SOUTHCOM."
"The White House?" McNair asked, looking at the red-colored direct connection phone sitting in a casing overhead.
"Yes, but I don't know who. The AID didn't have the information. They use a kind of cell structure. The Rinn Fain, this AID's former master, had only one connection, the Tir."
"Locals?"
"The list of locals working directly or indirectly for the Darhel, when compared to the list of people shot or imprisoned during the coup, approaches unity. I don't know where the rest are. Neither does this AID."
Daisy hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Oh, and Captain, one important thing. Every AID, but for myself and now Sally, is part of the Darhel Net. We must assume that if someone has an AID they are working, probably for the most part unwittingly, for the Darhel."
"Fuck."
"Captain!"
"The new dictator?" McNair asked.
"Clean as a whistle. So's his Magister Equitum, Suarez."
"Okay." McNair stopped to think for a moment, then said, "Daisy, invite Captain Goldblum for lunch in my quarters; his earliest convenience. And then arrange for a meeting with Panama's . . . ruler. And I'll want half my Marines and half of Salem's to escort. Arrange transportation, please."
"Does it need to be official transportation, Captain?"
"Why?" McNair looked at the avatar with suspicion.
"Well . . . sir . . . as part of my, mmm, investment strategy, I have purchased a moving and storage company here."
Again, McNair went silent, thinking.
"Civilian transportation would do better, Daisy."
Palacio de las Garzas, Presidential Palace,
Panama City, Panama
"I've already consulted with your President, Captain . . . Captains." Boyd said, from behind Mercedes' old desk, now much cluttered. "He says he can't actually remove the SOUTHCOM commander or the ambassador, for domestic political reasons. For the same reason, he can't make open use of the intel you 'acquired' from the Darhel's AID. He has, however, agreed to withdraw them for consultations and to put hand-picked 'temporary' replacements in, with no intention of ever sending the originals back here. SOUTHCOM's 'temp' is already on duty."
"Do you know who they'll be?" Goldblum asked.
"Yes," Boyd answered. "SOUTHCOM's 'temp' is a Marine general named . . . err . . . Page. Good man, I'm told."
"Very good," Goldblum answered. "I know him. And the ambassador's temp?"
"Farrand. Former naval officer, I understand, called up for the war but being sent here as an ambassador, not a sailor."
"That sounds good to me, Mr. Pres . . . er, Dictator Boyd."
"Call me Bill," Boyd insisted. "We don't want this shit to go to my head."
"And we don't want you forgetting for an instant that you are the power in this country," Suarez corrected from where he stood behind his chief.
"In any case," Boyd continued, "SOUTHCOM and the ambassador are behind our plans for the coming battle. Would you care to see, Captains? Your ships are going to have a critical part to play."
"Please?" McNair and Goldblum asked, together.
"Suarez."
The Magister Equitum led the two Americans over to the same map he had briefed Boyd from. When he had finished, Goldblum whistled.
"You're both crazy, and so is the new SOUTHCOM if he is buying off on this."
"What choice do we have?" Suarez asked rhetorically.
"None," McNair answered. "Not when you look at the issue from the question of logistics and demographics. You'll need fire support for the mobile infantry battalion and mechanized regiment that are going to cap the bottle along the San Pedro River."
"Yes," Boyd agreed, "and there is no way we can get a fire base, not and keep it hidden, where it will do any good on the south end of that cap." He looked meaningfully at first McNair and then Goldblum.
"Fuck," Salem's skipper said.
"Fuck," McNair agreed, nodding deeply.
"We can do it," said Goldblum reluctantly. "One of us goes in close and the other stands back and keeps the Posleen off the back of the first one. We're easily armored enough to resist our own canister."
; "I almost lost my ship in that gulf," McNair objected, pointing to the Gulf of Montijo.
"Almost," Boyd echoed. "What can we do to keep you from losing it if you go in there?"
"You mean when I go in."
"Yes," Boyd agreed, face absolutely and coldly serious. "When."
"Another company of Marines, unless some ACS is available. And if you could get some air defense artillery on the west coast of the Peninsula de Azuera, it would help at least on that flank."
"ACS is not possible," Suarez insisted. "After consolidation there are only two line companies left of the First of the Five-O-Eighth. And we need those to lead the punch to the Rio San Pedro, help dig in the mech, and then hold the line after it is reached. I can give you a company of Panamanian Cazadores, something like your Rangers, if that will help. Hmmm . . . how would that help?"
"To repel boarders," McNair answered simply.
PART IV
Chapter 27
When there's nowhere we can run to anymore . . .
—Pat Benatar, "Invincible"
Fort William D. Davis, Panama
Months had passed. Digna had measured the time, for a time, by the passage of flesh from the bones that hung impaled on a stake overlooking the old golf course and the tent city it contained. The birds had stopped coming now, though; there was not a shred of meat left for them on what had once been what some would have called a man. She'd gone back to the calendar.
Digna had few enough men left. Even the boys had been culled by the long, fearful flight over the mountains. She had quite a few women left though, several thousand, and enough men to do some of the more serious heavy lifting.
She had an artillery regiment now, not just a motley collection of lightly armed militia. She also had, and these were new, ninety-six Czech-built versions of the BM-21 multiple rocket launchers to add to the gringo-supplied 105s her women had been given shortly after the trek from Chiriqui. The Czech model had three big advantages. For one thing, they were dirt cheap, even as compared to her old, obsolescent, 85mm guns. At least as important, they each carried an automated extra load for the launch tubes, so that instead of taking ten minutes out from firing to reload it could be done by machine, once anyway, in less than one. Of course, that didn't help at all after the second volley. But, since the reload mechanism returned to a position both lower and parallel to the ground, instead of high and at an incline like the more usual BM-21, it made it much easier for her women to reload. Despite their lesser upper body strength, with the aid of the reloading mechanism, she was able to get her all-girl crews up to a volley every eight minutes.
Of course, she had driven them like pack mules, abused pack mules at that, to get to that level. She'd driven them until they vomited and fainted. A few she had driven to death. Behind her back they cursed her, even—perhaps especially—those related by blood. She knew they did. She also knew that when they thought of going further than simply damning her to hell, a quick glance at the fleshless corpse on the stake was enough, more than enough, to dissuade them from more.
She was up and about on her own now, bruises long faded away and the little breaks healed. Of course, that was only the physical. Inside she was scarred and she knew it. She might look only eighteen, as long as one kept one's gaze from her too old and too knowing eyes. Inside though, she was a long, hard century old, that century capped with a beating and multiple—however many, she didn't know—rapes.
That gave her a cold, hard edge that even her previous experience of battle, childbirth, child death, and the loss of the only man she had ever willingly bedded with had not. She had not yet ordered anyone impaled, or even shot or hanged, for failure to drill until they dropped, but no one doubted that she would at the drop of a hat if she felt the need. And the hat she dropped would likely be her own.
"They would do even better with music," Digna's advisor for the BM-21s, Colonel Alexandrov, commented.
Digna, without taking her cold and knowing eyes from the drilling women, asked, "Why do you think so?"
"Human nature," the Russian answered simply. "Human female nature, especially, Coronel Mirandova. Music makes the work lighter. Music lifts the heart. Music times the motions for smooth flow."
"I have been partial to American rock since the early 1950s," Digna admitted. "But I have a hard time seeing it used to time military motions."
"Almost anything with a beat will do," Alexandrov responded. "Care to experiment?"
This time Digna did look at the Russian, seeing he had an old style cassette tape held in his fingers. She looked up at the huge but dimly seen speakers mounted to the walls of the post headquarters.
"Sure. Give it a try."
Santiago, Veraguas, Republic of Panama
The air was full of the plastic and solvent reek of high explosives. It thrummed with the sound of machinery, heavy and light, being used to form defensive weapons some called "illegal."
Boyd wore a hard hat, civilian white, on his guided tour. The old and formerly secret landmine plant was back in full operation, he was pleased to see. Not only that, the products they were putting out now were far superior to the crude and primitive things he had once had them assembling here.
He had told the Euros and the International Criminal Court to go straight to hell. Machinery he had purchased from the United States and Italy which, despite having signed the landmine ban, had a lot of the old plastic-forming equipment lying around.
The mines now were better, though: little four-ounce plastic toe-poppers suitable for splitting a Posleen's leg from claw to spur, Bouncing Betties that would be propelled upwards a meter before detonating to spread a scythe of steel ball bearings over three hundred and sixty degrees, and MONS, very large directional mines built to a Russian design. There was also a model of mine armed or disarmed by radio control; the brainchild of a gringo tracked-vehicle mechanic who had thought long on the problem of how to get across the extensive minefields without leaving passable gaps for the Posleen to get through in the first place. Best of all, the Americans had provided a number—a large number—of their own "Bouncing Barbies," so called because they would cut one off at the knees. They worked by first bouncing into the air and then creating an infinitely thin "force field" around them. They used a human variant of an Indowy technology, one of the few humans had been able to crack (and that had been by purest mischance). The Barbies would bounce and cut again and again and again until either destroyed or their on-board charges ran out.
Watching a truck being loaded with mines before it was dispatched to reinforce one or another of the strongpoints and defensive lines being constructed, Boyd exclaimed, "Fuck the lawyers!"
"Señor Dictador?" asked the plant manager.
"Fuck 'em all, I say. Fuck all those who think that law they made for us, never what we make for ourselves, is somehow stronger than life."
"Well . . . but, of course, señor. Fuck all the lawyers indeed."
"You know the plan for evacuation?" Boyd queried.
"Yes, we will produce as much as we can using three shifts a day until the aliens begin their next attack. Then we evacuate to the east after burying all the machinery. After we win," the man sounded more confident than Boyd felt, "we come back and reopen for business."
"It is critical," Boyd cautioned, "that the machinery be preserved; we won't be able to get any more any time soon."
"I understand that, sir. So do my people."
"It is also critical that you move out at the first sign of an approaching attack. The roads must be clear for the mechanized divisions to get through the Nata line. If it comes down to it, I need them even more than I need the people who run this plant. If you're not off the road . . ."
The manager shivered slightly. "I understand, sir. We will move at the first sign."
"Very good," Boyd said, reaching up to squeeze the manager's shoulder fraternally. "See that you do."
San Pedro Line, Republic of Panama
Crews of men with shovels suppleme
nted the scarce bulldozers and backhoes excavating the earth and filling the air with its fresh-turned smell as well as with the stink of diesel.
The swarthy, short and stocky Panamanian first sergeant shouted, "Hump it, you scrofulous bastards, hump it!"
Like ants, perhaps even like Posleen, a swarm of Panamanian infantry pulled on ropes dragging a wrecked armored vehicle, a boxy American M-113 in this case, to a position near the forward line. Another group, smaller, pushed the vehicle from the rear.