Carnifex

by Tom Kratman

  "Who is this?" Jimenez asked, pointing at Bashir.

  "Fernandez's spy. And he's got a story."

  "Story?"

  "There's a cave over there," Masood answered. "He says we need to look in it." To Bashir he said, "Get this man to safety."

  "Let's hurry then." The party of three, including the driver, trotted over to the cave. Bashir picked Sevilla up, slung him across his shoulders and headed up the mountain in the wake of the Scouts. He thought he would be less likely to be shot that way.

  A bullet rang out from inside the cave as soon as the camouflage curtain moved slightly. It sounded strange, nothing like the twenty-two- to thirty-caliber favored on most of Terra Nova. Jimenez and Masood immediately fell to the ground and fired several long bursts into the cavern until they were rewarded with a scream.

  When they did go past the curtain it was to see one man, uniformed, bleeding on the rocky floor and . . .

  "Holy shit!" Jimenez was stunned. "The fucking UE is here? I knew we had enemies in high places but this . . . "

  The hatch to the UE shuttle was open, its integral flight of steps lowered. They looked inside and saw nothing. Then they pulled open the cargo bay doors and . . .

  Jimenez ran outside, pulling a small but extremely powerful radio from his belt as he did so. "Patricio? Goddammit, Patricio, fuck radio silence. Get on the horn, goddammit!"

  "Carrera," crackled back.

  "Come quick, compadre. Come really quick. Don't spare the horses. Accept any level of casualties. There are eleven, I say again, fucking eleven, nuclear weapons here. Oh, and a United Earth transport but we machine gunned the shit out of it."

  "What the . . . "

  "Just trust me. Come a runnin'."

  Cricket 4-15

  Eleven nukes? Good God. I didn't need my little play after all.

  While he was thinking this, Jimenez came back on the radio. He sounded slightly out of breath as he said, "We found our lost Cazador squad . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. They were crucified. We saved one . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. To do that we had to shoot up a substantial crowd . . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff."

  Jimenez continued explaining. "We really had no choice . . . But there's two effects of that . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. One is that we're trying to unfuck things on top of the central hill. We got pretty disorganized in the scramble . . . huff . . . huff. The other is that the north side of the base has got to be weaker now. The scouts killed hundreds of men of fighting age on that side when they opened up."

  "You're assuming they assembled from where they were camped, and camped on the side they were to defend, right? Makes perfect sense. Let me think on it. Yeah, despite the confusion, it may make sense to switch the side for the main effort."

  "Don't think too long, Patricio. There are maybe five hundred and fifty or so of us on this hill, plus a couple of hundred cavalry blocking the entrances, and we're surrounded by thousands of the bastards."

  Loud and clear over the radio came the rattling sound of incoming mortar fire, somewhere close to wherever Jimenez was.

  "Roger. Artillery priority, minus the rocket launchers, is yours. Twenty-four 155mm are in range and ready. Twenty-four 160mm will be ready to fire . . . in . . . " Carrera looked up at a chart and then to a clock . . . "about seventeen minutes. Air support priority is yours. Expect nine sorties of Turbo-Finches to arrive in a few minutes followed by two more every ten minutes for the immediate future. Also three ANA-23 gunships on station continuously as per the plan. I'll be overhead in a few. Over."

  "Roger," Jimenez answered. "Air and arty . . . huff . . . priority to me."

  "Yes . . . and the Cazadors should be jumping right about . . . now. Carrera, out."

  I intended to bring in one nuke as a cover and an excuse. Instead we find another eleven. Do I send that one back? No . . . I might have to blow that entire mountain to shit and I can't be sure of being able to set off the captured ones. It stays in the plan . . . for now.

  The Base

  While Subadar Masood and the other leaders tried to bring order out of chaos, Jimenez scanned the skies. Thin anti-aircraft fire was rising from the surrounding hills, thin mostly because the bulk of the 14.5 and 23mm weapons had already been overrun with the central massif. Even now, small arms fire was breaking out all over the massif as Salafi air defense gunners struggled to fight their way to their guns.

  The air over the other side of one of the surrounding ridges suddenly lit up in a ball of orange flame. That was a Finch-dropped thermobaric bomb, intended to make as sure as possible that the jumping Cazadors weren't shot to bits on the way down. Nothing was likely to survive such a blast, even should the targets be bunkered in. More such blasts followed the first.

  A twin series of pops, one from the east, one from the west, grabbed Jimenez's attention. He'd heard the sound before. It was the small charge that caused the heavy rockets, fired from almost fifty miles back, to dispense their cargo; in this case, mixed anti-personnel and anti-vehicular mines to help Cano's cavalry seal off both of the entrances to the valley.

  And then the small pops of the mines being laid were lost amidst the tremendous roar of thermobaric bombs dropped from the ANA-23 gunships. These smashed up every known and suspected air defense position on the hills ringing the valley fortress.

  The angle of the view over the ridges to the south was such that Jimenez had only the briefest glimpse of dark dots descending from the low-flying Nabakovs before they were lost to sight. He knew the men were jumping without reserve 'chutes and from a height of a mere four hundred and fifty to five hundred feet over the ground. They'd have jumped lower still except that the irregular terrain meant that while some would jump at four-fifty, others would touch down hard from as little as two hundred and fifty feet.

  * * *

  Deep below, in a conference room not far from where Mustafa had interviewed Bashir, the men and serving women felt and heard nothing of the turmoil above until a breathless Abdul Aziz burst in to make the announcement.

  "Sirs . . . we're . . . we are attacked! The infidels already hold the ground above us. Their paratroopers are descending all around to seal off the base."

  "What?" Mustafa asked. "How . . . "

  "I don't know . . . panicked rumors only. Some say that a column came in pretending to be reinforcements force and just opened up on our people."

  Robinson turned instantly white. "The special weapons . . . "

  "Damn your 'special weapons,' you infidel bastard," Mustafa snarled. "That's probably what the pigs came for."

  "I've got to get to my shuttle," the High Admiral insisted. "If they find those nukes we're all screwed."

  Peshtwa, Kashmir

  The office was . . . Tasteful, Siegel thought, looking about with approval. It was Anglian tasteful. There was no gilt, no tacky decorations, just simple and elegant wood with a mix of Kashmiri and Tauran art on the walls and a beautiful series of rugs covering the floor.

  Siegel stood beside the ambassador from Pashtia to Kashmir. The ambassador, underpaid and, being out of the country, without any serious opportunity for graft, had jumped at the one hundred thousand drachma offered to set up this meeting. Siegel was reasonably certain that he'd have gone for less but it wasn't like he was spending his own money.

  "Mr. President," Siegel apologized, "there really was no choice. You know you don't control the Tribal Trust Lands and you know that the Salafis have a major base there. We know, and we would have thought your Central Intelligence Directorate would have told you, that a nuclear weapon is coming in, possibly more than one. My principle has begun an attack by ground and air to seize that weapon or those weapons with—I hasten to add—the full backing and support of the Federated States. You can try to resist, and get in a war with the FSC or you can do the smart thing and announce that this operation is entirely with your approval. One way makes you look weak and foolish, especially when your air force goes down in flames. The other makes you look strong and d
ecisive."

  The prime minister, Baraka, short and dark, listened attentively. His face showed only a trace of hostility. After all, all this emissary-without-portfolio said was true enough. He didn't have control of CID. He didn't have control of the Tribal Trust areas. And it was entirely conceivable, even probable, that the Salafi base could be about to play host to one or a number of nuclear weapons. It was even possible that the weapon was coming from his own country's stockpiles.

  He still didn't have to like it.

  Siegel understood perfectly well. To the ambassador who had accompanied him to the meeting he said, "Would you leave us for a moment, sir?"

  "I am further authorized, Mr. President," he said, once the door had closed behind the ambassador, "to offer you and your family sanctuary for life, in the Republic of Balboa and to . . . " he dug into an inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a small red booklet . . . "to offer you a substantial guaranteed honorarium if you cooperate in this."

  He handed the booklet over to Baraka who opened it and read without comment. Finished reading, the President placed the booklet into a desk drawer and sat, silently, for a few minutes.

  "What's Balboa like, Mr. Siegel?" he asked.

  "Wonderful place, Mr. President," Sig answered. 'Warm though a bit wet, rather like here. Clean. Beautiful women. Low cost of living. Best of all, sir, it's very secure."

  Baraka slowly nodded before reaching out one finger to an intercom. "Achmed, call the General Staff duty officer. I want every plane in the Air Force grounded. Further, I want the Army's regiments in the posts bordering the tribal lands to the south confined to barracks. Lastly, set me up a press conference for noon, to be held here."

  Already he felt the vultures circling. The important thing, the President knew, isn't whether or not our borders have been violated. The important thing is that I act like I am confidently in charge.

  The Base

  Mustafa felt his confidence wilting like a desert flower—quickly and completely. His closest followers sat stunned. This was not supposed to happen, not here, not in the sanctuary that God, in the form of the Kashmiri government's inability to control their southern border, had ordained.

  Stunned transformed to horrified when another messenger burst in saying, "The stinking President of Kashmir has come on the television. He says that the attack is with his permission. He says his air force is staying out of it only due to incompatibility between the FSC's Air Force and Kashmir's. We'll get no aid from that quarter."

  Was it the nukes that brought them here? Mustafa wondered, dully. But then, how could they know? I told no one but Abdul Aziz and Nur al-Deen. They wouldn't tell any one. They are the most faithful of the faithful. Robinson couldn't have told. If he had, he'd have been out of here last night. Sometimes it makes me wonder whose side God is on.

  "What are we to do, Mustafa?" al-Deen asked.

  "Fight," Mustafa answered, fatalistically. "What else can we do? But," his eyes fixed on Nur al-Deen, "begin collecting the cadres, the most important ones, and the families. We may lose here, but that will only be Allah's test of our faith. If we can get the key people out," his finger pointed, "along with that one weapon, we can continue the struggle."

  "I'll send an advanced party out now," Nur al-Deen said, "to gather some of our followers further north, their vehicles and animals, to provide us a cover when we emerge."

  "Excellent, my friend, except . . . " Mustafa looked at the bomb. "Not to the north. We'll take the southern route. And we will prevail yet."

  Camp San Lorenzo

  "What is it, Alena?" Fernandez asked. "Worried for your brother and your husband?"

  "I am," the girl admitted. "But that's not it. I am missing something and I don't have a clue of what."

  "Maybe it's only nerves."

  "No," Alena insisted. "I know nerves and I know when there's a truth staring at me from nose length away. This is the latter. Why can't I see it?"

  To that Fernandez had no answer. He operated off of hard evidence, not the half mystical insights of this Pashtian witch-girl, however damnably effective those insights might sometimes be.

  * * *

  His father had told him to pack his rucksack—and little Hamilcar was very proud that he'd been issued the very same model the legionaries carried—and to report to Fernandez. He'd packed himself, though his father's driver had taken him to Fernandez's office in the main headquarters building. Gaining entrance was no problem; the troops were used to Ham having the run of the place.

  Besides, he knew better than to ever mentiona word of what went on there, not even in the thrice weekly electronic letters his father insisted he send to his mother.

  Half carrying and half dragging the rucksack behind him—"Dig your own hole; carry your own roll," his father insisted—Ham stumbled in the direction of Fernandez's voice, saying, "Maybe it's only nerves."

  * * *

  Alena heard a small sound, something like an oversized mouse scurrying, and looked towards it. A small boy, bowed under the weight of a rucksack bigger than he was, staggered and stumbled towards Fernandez. She started to smile and then looked again at the boy's face. She'd seen that face before . . . somewhere . . .

  "Iskander, our Lord," she whispered, before dropping to her knees and then placing her face and palms to the floor.

  The Base

  Jimenez lay beside a Pashtun Scout bearing a laser designator. He pointed at a stream of tracers rising to the sky. The tracers chased behind a Turbo-Finch, just pulling up and away from a strafing run. Almost they closed the gap before the 'Finch pulled away.

  "Bring fire down on that," Jimenez ordered the scout. "Right at the base. Pulverize it."

  "Yes, sir," the scout answered, aiming his designator at the target while another man on a radio called the artillery for supporting fires.

  Jimenez crouched above the military crest. He was in plain view of hundreds of Salafis on the surrounding hills, but out of their range. For the enemy that were in range, he had the mass of the crest for cover. Even so, bullets from below struck the trees and branches above him steadily, sprinkling him with bits of wood and bark they had chewed off.

  Crouching lower still Jimenez moved closer to the crest where the Scouts had set out a perimeter and were battling fiercely to keep the huge numbers of charging and firing Salafis at bay. As he got closer still he went to his belly to crawl forward. A commander has to see the action; not just rely on reports of others to guide him.

  He crawled, he lay, he saw, he thought, Holy shit.

  The hill sides and valley floor below were crawling with the enemy.

  "Good fighting," Masood announced, approvingly, as he flopped down next to Jimenez.

  "Maybe too much of a good thing," Jimenez answered with a smile.

  * * *

  Despite a pretty severe case of nerves, and the incessant shaking of the helicopter, Cruz forced a smile to his face. There was a lot of acting involved in combat leadership and he'd been to some of the best training for actors available. What, after all, was Cazador School except some hundreds of men in utter misery pretending that they liked it?

  The helicopter would have been a little bit overstuffed if it had borne, as it was designed to, Taurans or Volgans. For the smaller and slighter Balboans who made up the bulk of the Legion it was possible to cram several more, sometimes many more, troopers than the design had called for.

  In this case, with forty-seven men of his own platoon, a two man and one pooch scout dog team, another two forward observers, the one platoon medic, a piper and Majeed, twelve men sat each side of the two helicopters carrying Cruz's platoon, and three more on each of the cargo bays' floors. The dog, tongue lolling, sat in the middle of Cruz's.

  Cruz's smile almost disappeared at the helicopter crested the high ridge to the south of the target and began a rapid descent to the valley floor outside the fortress.

  I fucking hate elevators.

  He had a bad, heart-pounding moment when a stream of t
racers passed by, visible from the passenger compartment through the pilots' windscreen. The tracers stopped abruptly mere moments before the IM-71 would have been forced to pass through them. Flying in tight formation going around the fire might have been worse than flying right through it.

  Better to lose a couple of men to anti-aircraft fire than all of two birds to a crash.

  Again, like an elevator, the chopper stopped descending and pulled up suddenly to gain a little more altitude. Cruz's stomach sank sickeningly. It did so again as the pilot made some turns to bring the bird around to the north side of the target. Then, once again, the chopper rose rapidly.

  "Two miinnuutteess," the crew chief announced, holding up two fingers and showing them to the men lining both sides of the compartment. The infantrymen in the back immediately began making last minute adjustments to their load bearing equipment and loricae.

  That "two minutes" was all the warning the crew chief would be able to give, Cruz knew, as the aviator turned his complete attention to the machine gun mounted on one side. This he began to fire in long bursts to the left front as the bird climbed up the side of a ridge. A bag caught the crew chief's hot, expended shell casings as they flew out the side of the gun in a steady stream.

  Bad sign, Cruz thought. Very damned bad.

  * * *

  Noorzad had, he thought, no good choices. He'd lost over a third of his men just to the sudden surprise fire when the column of light trucks and buses had opened up. He'd lost some more from the aerial attack and the artillery and mortar bombardment. He thought he might have as many as fifty men left, possibly a few less.

  Forget the surrounding ridges and join the attack to free Mustafa's hill? He wondered. No . . . a few more guns there won't help much. Better to stay here and hold the ridges as long as possible, take as many with us as possible.

  There was an air defense gun, a twin 23mm job, not far from Noorzad. The crew were dead around it but, in one of those peculiar effects of large explosions, and especially thermobaric ones, the gun itself was still standing and looked fine.