Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  Cold forgotten amidst the excitement of impending action, Cruz reached up and pulled the passive vision monocular down over his right eye. Then he tapped awake Majeed, his attached Pashtun scout. "Pretty soon. Make ready," he whispered.

  Majeed sat up with a smile. With luck, there would be a bonus for this one. Majeed had his eye on a third wife. Legion scouts made a lot of money in comparison with the Pashtian norm. The multiple wives this allowed the scouts to support added much to their status and kept the recruiting lines for the few open positions somewhere between long and longer.

  * * *

  Carefully, the two Pashtun sniffed at the air. Nothing. They moved bare feet along the cold rock as they advanced into the pass, eyes scanning for any sign that the infidel awaited.

  Brothers, Bashir and Salam had once thought to join the Scouts. Having been shamed by rejection, they'd vowed revenge for the insult and made their way north to the refugee camps that lay just far enough across the ill-defined border that there could be no doubt they were in the territory of Kashmir rather than that of Pashtia. There, the brothers had sought work and been hired to lead formed units and caravans of donkeys into Pashtia. The pay was not as good, not nearly as good, but at least they could strike back at those who had insulted them.

  This was their third trip. They'd begun to consider the possibility of retiring after this one. While the pay was not so good as that given to the infidel Legion's scouts, it was enough at least to pay for a wife each and a small plot of decent land. With that, they could grow enough of the poppy to eke out a decent living.

  It was beginning to look like eking out a living would be better than continuing to lead convoys forward and dying in the process. Neither brother knew anyone who had managed to lead four convoys safely through.

  Besides, they had already begun to loathe the Yithrabis, who looked down on them, criticizing everything from their illiteracy to their manner of dress.

  * * *

  Covering himself almost completely behind his rock, Cruz watched the two point men walk through. Even at a distance of one hundred and twenty-five meters, and in the fuzzy and grainy picture given by his monocular, they seemed fairly professional. He had to hope that one of the other point ambushes in the area ambush would get them. No sense in letting pros survive.

  He shifted as quietly as he could to look to his left, the direction from which the sounds of donkeys came. Yes . . . there they are. Cruz saw thirteen or fourteen men, in a staggered double column, enter the kill zone. Behind those were the donkeys, tied together in strings of five or six with a man leading each string. Another group of thirteen or fourteen took up the tail of the caravan.

  Shame about the donkeys.

  He waited, his heart racing so fast he could not have marked the time by it even if he'd thought of it. Unconsciously, his hands reached for the two directional mine detonators he'd placed carefully against the rock to his front.

  It took almost six minutes from the time the point of the main body entered the kill zone to when its tail did. All that time, Cruz's heart beat so heavily that he thought the enemy must hear it. Of course, they did not hear it. In fact, the only thing they did hear was . . .

  Kakakakakakakaboomoomoomoomoomoomoomoomoom.

  . . . as the directional mines went off. These, more Volgan-made munitions, were flat cylinders with one point seven kilograms of explosive on one side and four hundred cylindrical bits of steel buried in a plastic matrix on the other. Most of the bits went high or low, of course, though even then some of the low ones would ricochet at man height across the Kill Zone. In all, tests had confirmed that at least a third, in this case about two thousand, bits of flying steel would cross at an acceptable graze to the ground. The mines were more directionally focused than the FSC-made versions and so had been laid at angles to sweep along rather than across the kill zone.

  More than half the infiltrators were blown off their feet, screaming and spurting blood and bone. Immediately the men along the ambush line opened fire, while a machine gun to the right raked directly long the line of march. A few tried to return fire. They were shooting in the dark at barely seen muzzle flashes. Cruz's men, on the other hand, had F- and M-26s with integral thermal sights. They did not shoot blindly at muzzle flashes but instead were able to take careful aim at standing or kneeling men.

  The fire went on for what seemed a very long time but was really no more than forty-five seconds. By the end of that time all of the obvious targets were down. Cruz thought he saw a few running pellmell across the rocks to his front.

  Good. Right into Corporal Lopez's position.

  A single white star parachute flare, hand held and fired, flew up with a bang and a whoosh to burst overhead. The squad leader of the squad Cruz had accompanied blew his whistle three times. Firing ceased. Another whistle blast sent the men into the kill zone. Most of them, as they crossed, carefully shot each of the bodies laying there once again, in the head, to make sure. A central team, two men, looked around quickly and identified someone still breathing who might be a leader. One of the team rapped the supposed leader on the head with his rifle stock and dragged him off. Another two man team went rifling packs and pockets for items of intelligence. Some was kept, maps and notebooks, typically, along with cell phones and the one radio they found. The rest, along with weapons, were dropped beside the intel team.

  What was just business sense for the enemy infiltrators was a mercy to their donkeys. These were shot quickly and even with regret. After all, the Legion could always use more strong and healthy beasts of burden and, as anyone who dealt with them knew, the Pashtian animals were the best.

  Cruz had watched the squad go through its motions. No sense in taking over from a perfectly competent sergeant, after all. Nonetheless, while half the squad provided far security to the kill zone and half assisted the intel team in the search, he went out to look over the intel gathered.

  A map caught Cruz's eye. Picking it up and looking at it under the moonlight, Cruz spontaneously whistled.

  * * *

  Bashir and Salam cowered behind a rock as the infidel ambush went out into the kill zone. Bashir began to raise his rifle to engage them, when Salam slapped it down.

  "Foolish Brother, do you think you can do any good?"

  "What do we do then, O wise Brother?" Bashir asked quietly but sarcastically. "Do you think they don't have this place surrounded? We are not going to escape. Better to take one with us."

  "God curse the day we ever left to join the Ikhwan," Salam said. "But, if we kill one of the infidels, they will certainly kill us. Then, if the tales are to be believed, they will take bits of our bodies and blood to identify our clan in the evil ways the infidels have. Then our clan will suffer. Do you want that?"

  "No . . . no, not that," Bashir admitted, relaxing his grip on his rifle. "But what are we to do?"

  "We escape," Salam counseled. "To Hell with the Ikhwan. Drop everything. We'll crawl out under cover of the night."

  * * *

  The Cricket's machine gunner saw the brothers through the thermal imager mounted over his gun. "I've got two in sight," he told the pilot, "but I don't think they're interested in fighting."

  "Whereabouts?"

  "Five-fifty to six-hundred meters southeast of the kill zone. They're crawling away. There's also a group of cavalry coming as fast as they can drive their horses. I recognize them. They're friendly."

  "I see the cav," the pilot said. "I'm going to fly over low and direct them to the crawlers."

  * * *

  "Surrender now," Rachman called out in Pashtun once the airplane informed him by signal that the Scouts were close enough. "You are surrounded and there is an armed aircraft overhead that has you in its sights. Come out unarmed and with your hands up."

  Unheard by any but themselves, Bashir and Salam breathed a deep sigh of relief that the infidels were interested in prisoners. They had reason to believe this was not always the case.

  * * *

>   Cruz saluted Cano and reported, then added, "You missed all the fun."

  Cano shrugged and pointed with his chin at Bashir and Salam, preceding the cavalry column with heads down and hands bound. "Not all," he disagreed.

  Cano then turned and gave the woman riding beside him a mock dirty look. "Wicked wife! Incompetent. Call yourself a seeress. Hah! Thirty to forty heads you promised us, and on that promise I awakened my men for this? I should divorce you."

  The woman just laughed, as did the Pashtun close enough to Cano to hear.

  Even Cruz laughed at that. It was patently obvious, just from a glance, that this tribune would not leave the woman for anything.

  "We've got a helicopter coming in for the prisoners, your two unwounded ones plus two we have that might or might not make it."

  "Then Centurion Cruz," Cano said, "I present to you and your men two hale prisoners of war, compliments of this wicked woman whom I shall certainly beat mercilessly at some more convenient time."

  The woman, Cruz noted, pulled a vicious looking dagger from her belt and began nonchalantly flashing the blade in the sun. Still, the whole time she smiled at her husband.

  Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia, 14/7/469

  There was a bit more rock and concrete in this camp than there had been in Camp Balboa back in Sumer. Moreover, while the "brutal Pashtian winter" wasn't all that bad it was somewhat uncomfortably cool in these hills at night and in the winter, even this far north. Thus, the spread of legionary barracks and offices, mess halls and warehouses were, in the main, wood-lined and heated. The wood had once been growing on the spot where the camp sat.

  Standing in one such, with a small fire going in a sort of Franklin stove in one corner, a number of men—and one small boy—sat in comfortable chairs. All but the boy sipped something alcoholic, often enough scotch. A recently captured map was tacked to one wall. The map showed a valley dominated by a single, tall elevation in the center, with two streams that cut around the mountain, and long ridges to either side. Both mountain and ridges were heavily trenched and bunkered.

  The legion hadn't needed the map to know this was a main enemy base; it was simply too obvious. What the map provided was considerable detail on the fortifications of that base as well as the suggestion that it was a regular meeting point for the elite of the enemy movement. Also, that is was the enemy base.

  "The problem, Patricio," Fernandez said, pointing at the map which had been delivered by Cruz's maniple commander the day prior, "is that their base is in Kashmir and Kashmir has both a credible air force and nukes."

  Carrera didn't bother saying, So do we . . . have nukes. Fernandez was one of a very few who knew that the Legion did have nukes. Moreover, the original three had been supplemented by the other four which had needed reworking and recertification. And hadn't that been a bitch to arrange through some off line Volgan contacts?

  The problem was that Kashmir didn't know the Legion had nukes and, so, might be inclined to discount the possibility and use their own. Nor would it have been altogether wise to have let them know.

  "And even if they don't use the nukes, they have a real air force, a good one. You can't count on the Federated States to provide air cover for an attack into the territory of even a very nominal ally any more than you can count on them putting us under their own nuclear umbrella if we attack across the border."

  "We can stymie their air force if we can helo in the air defense maniple," Jimenez suggested.

  This was more likely than it had once seemed. A number of Volgan warships, laid up and rusting, had been stripped for their heavy, range-finding lasers. The lasers—power hogs, all—had then been mounted on three hundred and sixty degree rotating carriages, with less powerful and power-consuming lasers mounted coaxially. The lesser lasers could send out low energy streams of light more or less continuously. When they got a bounce back from an aerial target they automatically fired the main laser, blinding or at least stunning the pilot. Since blind pilots cannot fly . . .

  There was a treaty against this, against the use of lasers to blind. Carrera ignored that and, when questioned by the press during one of the very few press conferences he deigned to endure, had answered, "If we wanted to blind them so they would be blind, that would be illegal. In fact, we want to blind them so they crash their planes and die. This does not leave them blinded for later on in life and, so, is perfectly legal."

  Even the Federated States hated that position, their pilots more so.

  It was Harrington's turn again to serve as the forward Ib, or logistics officer, of the deployed legion. He had more objections. "If that map and what's drawn on it is right—"

  Triste, also back from Balboa and serving as Ic, or Intelligence, interjected, "We snuck an RPV there last night. The map is correct. There are several thousand of them, well armed, with decent air defense, dug in like rats and surrounded by mines and wire."

  "—well then," Harrington continued, "that's even worse. It will take hundreds of tons of artillery and heavy mortar ammunition to breach that place, maybe thousands—"

  "Thousands," confirmed the artillery cohort commander. "Even though the base will be in range of our rockets without them crossing over or getting very far from a good road," he added.

  "See? I can't move that much. I just can't. And you'll need infantry to clear the place, and to make sure there are no escapes. We don't have the lift, Pat."

  Carrera turned furiously on his logistician. "You stupid fuck! I pay you to fucking solve problems, not to whine about what you can't do—" He stopped abruptly, shame-faced, and said, "I'm sorry . . . you didn't deserve that. I don't know what—" His voice trailed off.

  Everyone went silent. Even Harrington wasn't angry, or more than a little hurt. Carrera, unlike the rest of them, had been at war for over eight years without more than an occasional break. The strain was telling . . . but none of them had the heart to tell him it was time for him to take a long rest.

  The small boy in the company of men was Hamilcar, Carrera's first child with Lourdes. He was a good looking kid, and tall for his age. The stature, like the huge eyes, probably came from his mother. On Carrera's last visit home the boy had begged to come along and, since his mother had stayed in a combat zone with him as a baby, she had been in a very difficult position to refuse. Then, too, she was terribly worried about her Patricio and his health, both physical and mental. That last visit home had been . . . difficult.

  Hamilcar was loathe to speak, surrounded, as he was, by half a dozen men that he had grown up admiring. But it seemed so obvious to him. He would have thought it would be obvious to his father, too.

  Well, no one else was going to say anything. He'd have to. Clearing his throat he piped up in a little-boy voice, "Father, if you landed a cohort inside the enemy base, on that large hill in the center, it would draw them away from the outside. Wouldn't that help you?"

  The room went quiet as every man turned to look at little Hamilcar in something between surprise and wonder.

  "Acorn never falls far from the tree, does it?" Jimenez commented.

  "Helps anyway," Harrington admitted grudgingly. "If we can crush their air defense so we even can land men on the hill. Plus . . . it's a damned steep hill . . . hard to actually land a chopper on. But it doesn't solve the other problems."

  "Even those might not be insurmountable," Carrera said, calm again if infinitely weary. "The major problem is that if we hit it and don't get most of the leadership, then it's all a bloody damned waste."

  Fernandez brightened. "I might have a solution to that, Patricio. Give me a couple of days."

  * * *

  Bashir had not seen his brother, Salam, since they'd surrendered. He'd been interrogated, of course, and warned that very severe consequences would follow if he didn't tell the absolute truth. It was also explained to him that Salam was being asked the same questions and that, if the stories didn't match perfectly, the severe consequences would be administered to both.

>   "Absolute truth from each of you is your only salvation," the interrogator had explained.

  Bashir had only told one lie, that concerning the whereabouts and names of his family. Unfortunately, he and Salam had never been given the chance to work out anything between them. Bashir would remember the beating that followed for years. Even after he'd told the truth the beatings had continued until, apparently, Salam had likewise come clean. Or perhaps they'd continued just on general principle or to see if they'd come up with different answers. Bashir didn't know.

  Their parents, plus their brothers and sisters were brought to the camp two days later, though they were apparently well treated. Neither attempted the slightest lie after that.

  * * *

  Fernandez spoke, through an interpreter, to Bashir first. The man looked pretty badly off, face bruised and eyes half-swollen shut. He walked like a much older, indeed a very old, man. That would pass, Fernandez knew. The guards were expert and had been under firm instructions to do no permanent damage.

  He had the guard remove Bashir's manacles and offered the young man water and some food, legionary rations, in fact, which Bashir choked down, greedily. He especially liked the one-hundred-gram bar of honey-sweetened halawa, seven hundred calories of crushed sesame seed goodness in just over four ounces.

  While he ate Fernandez made a show of looking over his file. "Ah . . . I see you tried to join us once."

  "How did you—?"

  "Your picture was taken when you were interviewed. We matched that to your picture taken when you were first brought here. The computers do that almost instantly. Hmmm . . . rejected, I see . . . well . . . no, not rejected. We placed you and your brother on the wait list. We'd likely have taken you in a couple of months."

  "The recruiter didn't tell us that," Bashir answered. "He said if we could come up with a bribe he might get us a position in a couple of months."

  Fernandez smiled evilly. Corruption was always a problem, though it was a problem the Legion dealt with very severely. In reality there was only one punishment, death.