A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  Janier gave a smile both cynical and wicked. “Now, of course, we all know that your governments are firmly committed to upholding the rule of law, which is to say the rules that human rights, environmentalist, and cosmopolitan progressive lawyers think we ought to follow. Let me suggest to you, however, my very dear friends, that if your countrymen under my command in Balboa are obliterated, your governments will not stand for long, and you—yes, each of you, personally—will be held accountable for both the loss of life and the defeat.

  “Understand, then, that when I call for an attack, in whatever density I demand, and against any target I say, most especially to include the just ever-so-fucking-blessed rain forest, and all the cute little animals therein, that I expect you to do just what I demand.”

  Janier took a proffered styrofoam cup of coffee from some Anglian enlisted man with “Bateman” on his chest. He absently nodded his thanks.

  “Do I have any dissenters at this point in time?”

  Only the Gallic air commander, le Gloan, had the balls to raise an objecting hand.

  “Yes, old comrade?”

  “One problem,” he said. “I am sure you are aware of it, Bertrand, but I’ll mention it just for the record. The Balboans are holding many thousands of our men prisoners of war, inside the fortress of sorts they’ve drawn around their capital. Those men are in small camps, above ground, and only just outside the blast radius of our smallest bombs, were those bombs to hit a legitimate enemy target. We’re not even sure which are POW camps, which are enemy medical facilities, and which are just places they don’t want us to bomb. I can accept, though, that probably most of the places they announced as off limits really are supposed to be off limits.

  “None of this would necessarily be all that great a problem, were two things true. One is were we to have a very large, to the point of unlimited, supply of precision guidance packages. We do not. The other is if the Balboans had not found a way to utterly befuddle the Global Location System, which they have. In other words, when we bomb in that area, we will hit our own men, and will probably kill them in great numbers.”

  Janier nodded, soberly. “It is, as you say, a problem. Indeed, it is a moral and a practical and a political problem, all three. But the enemy holds fewer that twenty thousand men. More than ten times that are at risk in our lodgment area. What would you do? What would you have me do?”

  “Nothing beyond what you plan and what you will demand,” le Gloan replied. “Yet it had to be said.”

  Prisoner of War Camp 42 (noncommissioned),

  South of Ciudad Balboa

  Marqueli Mendoza showed up at the gate with two dozen mostly elderly guards. One of the Anglian noncoms in the camp shouted out, “Hey, boys, it’s Mrs. Mendoza, our teacher!” There followed an immediate rush to the gate, partly based on Marqueli’s absolutely magnetic personality and looks, but as much on a degree of genuine affection and respect the men had acquired for the enemy who had done her very best to educate them, and with such a degree of tact, understanding, and sympathy. Indeed, she’d done well enough that the education in Historia y Filosofia Moral had continued in the camp, with a strong additional element of “death to the TU and to the lampposts with the Kosmos.”

  The guards opened the gate to allow Marqueli in, the foreign troops automatically backing away to clear a path for her.

  “Gentlemen,” she shouted, “gentlemen, my little lungs aren’t big enough . . .”

  Immediately about two hundred of them called out, “Not so little as all that, Ma’am!”

  She laughed; it was an old joke between and among them. “Okay, but be quiet for a bit anyway, will you?”

  A sergeant majorly voice called out, “All members of the mess, and you fucking subhuman corporals, will shut the fuck up for the lady.”

  Marqueli nodded her thanks. “I don’t have much time,” she said. “I have a dozen more camps to visit in the next half day. The short version, which is all I can give you, is that you have to leave here and very soon. The only safe place for you is the airport, Herrera International. This area”—she swept her arm to indicate that she meant the very expansive version of area—“is going to become a battleground within a day or two. Those guards”—she inclined her head toward the gate—“aren’t here to prevent you from escaping or to protect you from anyone with a bad case of the stupids so much as they are to give you an excuse not to try to escape. You don’t want to try; there’s no good you’ll be able to do commensurate with the value of your lives. Sergeant Major?”

  “Here, Ma’am,” he said, striding out from the crowd.

  She handed him a map, though it was devoid of much in the way of useful information. It showed, however, a route to be taken and stops along the way for water and meals.

  “Just follow this,” she told him. “The guards can help if you run into a language problem or some officious fucking asshole . . .”

  “Ma’am!” said the sergeant major, utterly shocked.

  “Well, what did you expect after understudying you people for months now?”

  “Good point, Mrs. Mendoza. Okay, we’ll follow the map. I can’t say none of the boys will try to escape, guards or no.”

  “Sergeant Major, this whole area is likely to be blasted in ways that haven’t been seen since the great battles of the Great Global War. I understand even nuclear weapons are not off the table. Please do your best to convince them that their best route to safety is the one I gave you and their best chance of survival is at the airport where they can be seen and not attacked.”

  He nodded. “I’ll try, Ma’am. And from all of us, thank you for everything you’ve tried to do for us.”

  “It was my job,” she answered. “Do you have any sick or wounded?”

  “None we can’t carry, Ma’am.”

  “Then in the name of God, and with God, go.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said softly. Then, after turning about, in his best parade ground bellow the sergeant major shouted out, “Attention! Camp Forty-two will be fallen in and prepared to leave this place, quite possibly forever, in one hour. More instructions then. Now fall out! Oh; except for Sergeant Major Hendryksen; Kris, we need to have a chat about rear guard and straggler control.”

  East of Arnold Air Base, Balboa

  Tribune Juan Ordoñez hadn’t slept well the night before. His sleeping mind had kept dreaming back to the last national fighter race day. He’d been a participant, as had about forty-five other pilots.

  But winding in and out of the valleys of the Cordillera Central, between wires hung from balloons, and between the capital’s high rises at only a couple of hundred feet above street level? I’m not sorry I did it, except for the nightmares, but I’ll never volunteer to do it again.

  Now, instead of winding through sheer mountain passes, the tribune wound his way through the trees that shielded his flight of Mosaic-Ds, obsolete fighters that had proven still capable of taking on and killing the best the enemy had, albeit at usually a less-than-ideal exchange rate. They sat on rails that could be elevated to as much as eighty degrees. The rails, in turn, were attached to turntables that were mounted on trucks. As a general rule, launching close to vertically wasn’t a good thing for the trucks, as the planes also had slung underneath them rockets for a very quick, and usually somewhat painful, launch.

  We still need airfields to get the planes back, of course, thought Ordoñez, but they needn’t be much and, if they’re not available, what the hell, the planes are cheap.

  “Cheap” hardly covered it. At about twenty- to twenty-five thousand drachmae for a depot rebuild, in very good shape, and another seventy- to eighty-thousand in modifications, the planes cost less—much less—than most of the missiles that were used to shoot them down. Moreover, as dogfighters, if they could get to knife fighting range, they were at least as good as the best their enemy had and, given the pilots’ training, with its typically rather philosophical approach to training casualties, quite possibly better.


  Ordoñez stopped at the next position. It was a log-and-earth-built structure, with radar-scattering nets over it and trees draped with long strips of foil over that. The position could be sensed from the air or from space, either magnetically or by heat, the tribune was certain. What couldn’t be sensed was any difference between it and fifty others of the same design and with roughly the metallic mass of a Mosaic D and scrapped truck or just scrap metal. It was another case of the bombs needed to destroy the shelters costing more than the planes, and, worse, having only about a twelve percent chance of achieving a hit. And even that was assuming they could somehow lay it on exactly the right place in the absence of reliable guidance. That, in turn, depending on the Taurans being able to take out the many and redundant directional and omnidirectional antennae that served to spoof all three global locating systems.

  Ordoñez had six planes and six pilots. He’d lost two of each, previously, but another flight had lost four, including its commander, so the survivors had been assigned to Ordoñez’s crew. Moreover, he had an increased increment of ground crew now, because a portion of those from the butchered flight had been sent to him, while others went to make up losses another flight had suffered to aerial attack on their base.

  Camouflage and deception will sometimes only carry you so far.

  This shelter’s plane was his own, though he’d never had it personalized. He tapped the truck that cradled it affectionately with an open palm, as if patting a child’s back. Day after tomorrow, my old friend, he thought, the day after tomorrow.

  Broadly smiling, he turned to the six pilots and several dozen ground crew gathered around in the shelter. “Day after tomorrow,” he said. “We drive the enemy from our land the day after tomorrow.”

  Not far from Ordoñez, indeed close enough that he thought about stopping by for a visit, Carrera watched a tethered balloon being filled. Many hundreds more balloons, all across the area around the capital, were likewise being filled, but this one, and a few score of its sisters, were special. The others, the hundreds of others, would lift anti-aircraft cables and the anti-aircraft mines that were based around the Volgans’ man-portable air-defense missiles.

  This one, though, and that few score mentioned, lifted unmanned Condors carrying—except for three—either fuel-air-explosive bombs or a hefty load of scatterable mines, but mostly the former. The three exceptional ones were presents for Cienfuegos’ Presidente for life. These were mixed explosive and incendiary, matches for the one that had taken the life of the Tauran Defense Agency’s incompetent chief, Lady Ashworth. Unlike hers, though, these were devoid of the five-minute warning. No warning would be given because Carrera wanted both the president, whom he and Balboa considered to be a traitor to their culture, and as many of his followers as possible to die, and didn’t really care about losses to their families. They were merely stationery.

  Lanza, who had been nearby, at another launch point, pulled up in his vehicle. “I’m letting them go as they’re able to lift,” he said, “except that I want the second wave, with the mines, to reach target half an hour after the last FAE goes off there. I saw off the three for the presidential palace first, though.”

  “Works for me. Are you ready to shield the attack?”

  “Oh, I’m just shivering with anticipation,” Lanza said. He sounded perfectly sincere.

  Carrera consulted his watch. “Right at thirty-six hours. I need to go make a call.”

  “You’re really going to call them?”

  “Short of nukes, there’s nothing they can do in the next thirty-six hours that will make any difference. And they won’t use nukes for obvious reasons . . . well . . . obvious to some.”

  “It’s true, then? You never admitted it but . . .”

  “Yes, we have a small number,” Carrera answered, “both tactical and city busters. And they know now that we can hit their cities with more than enough precision at more than enough range. That’s half the reason I need to talk to him, to sense if he and the Tauran Union understand the rather dire consequences of escalation beyond conventional arms. But also . . .”

  “You’re hoping he’ll surrender? Pretty forlorn hope, I think. He’s made his mistakes but he’s no wimp for all that.”

  “I know.”

  Hide Position X-Ray, Rio Calebora, Balboa’s Shimmering Sea coast

  One of the tricks, so to speak, to hiding the country’s coastal defense submarines, their Megalodon Class SSKs, was that they were hidden, some of them, up estuaries that were non-navigable except at high tide. This meant that for most of any given day, the subs sank into the mud, with only their upper half exposed, and floated free when the tide came in and their sheltering streams backed up. It also suggested to the Taurans that no such river could hold a submarine.

  Up one such estuary, the Meg, the original, the killer of Gallic warships and tracker of Zhong submarines, arose gently with the incoming tide.

  Meg had been stationed at different times on both the northern and southern coasts. Her skipper, Captain Chu, had brought it through the transit way sometime between the defeat of the Zhong landing on the Isla Real and the beginnings of the Tauran attack on the town, port, and fortress of Cristobal. It had come through, then headed many miles out to sea before turning back to Balboa. Once in sight of shore a shore party had guided it into its current berth by flashlight and flag.

  That shore party remained ashore, unseen in the jungle’s dark. They and the crew lived in tents and cots, though they all took at least one meal a day inside, where the cooking would not present a heat signature. One hot meal was all they got. The rest came canned or pouched and cold.

  It was high tide now. Captain Conrad Chu looked upward at the thickly intertwined branches and vines, themselves over a huge assembly of radar-scattering camouflage nets, hung from the trunks of the trees. There wasn’t much to see, really, since the moons had not at the moment risen very high.

  Darker than three feet up a well-digger’s ass at midnight, thought Chu, with some satisfaction. We’ll only be vulnerable from when we come out from under the trees until when we have enough depth under our keel to sink. He corrected that thought. Well, we’ll only be vulnerable on the surface until then. It’s always possible they’ll find some way to track us underwater. They’ve got to know by now that the clicker is just a trick.

  The “clicker” had served the Megs well for some time and in several actions. It was a simulator that gave off a distinct set of clicks, different for each submarine, as if the submarine’s main gears were mechanically cut, hence slightly off. It could be used to convince a hunting enemy that the submarine was in the last place it had been heard before the clicker was turned off, even though the boat was long gone or even in a position to donate the hunter a torpedo.

  “Huerta?” said Chu into the intercom.

  “Yes, Skipper?”

  “For my peace of mind, tell me the clicker is off.”

  “It’s off, Skipper; I checked it five minutes ago and locked it in ‘off.’”

  “Are we ready?” It was a moral more than a mechanical question.

  “We’re ready, Skipper.”

  “Very good, ahead slow.”

  Estado Mayor, Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

  A parlementaire, under flag of truce, had gone forward at daybreak to deliver an invitation to the Tauran commander to meet, via radio. There was a hint inside the meeting that only Janier would understand, that, in his discretion, the message could be three way, and include the High Admiral, via the communicators Carrera was “quite certain we all share.” For reasons of his own, Janier declined that, but did agree to converse at two that afternoon, via radio.

  Sundry signalmen and a number of women, on both sides, worked to set that up. It was only a little late when one of Carrera’s people could stand away from a desk and say, “We’re on with the Tauran commander, Duque.”

  Carrera sat and took the handset. Unseen, a small machine was recording this for posterity. “General Ja
nier? Bertrand?”

  “Yes, Patricio, c’est moi. What can I help you with?”

  “Not to seem pushy or demanding, old friend, but I need you to surrender your command.”

  Apparently, the Tauran was not using a normal microphone but something sound activated. His laughter came through loud and clear. Carrera just smiled, perhaps a touch sadly.

  “What are you going to tell me, Patricio; that your more than three thousand guns, mortars, and multiple rocket launchers stand ready to pound my army to pulp? No need; I know you have them and believe you intend to do just that. You will fail. The attack that will follow on will fail. I stand, on the other hand, fully ready to accept your surrender and to allow you and your close subordinates to escape to a country of your choosing with whatever you care to take with you. Volga is a bit cold, this time of year, I understand, but there are other places without extradition treaties to the Tauran Union or the Global Court of Justice.”

  The way Janier said that last, with a verbal sneer amounting to palpable contempt, was a bit of information Carrera didn’t have before. He’s convinced his air forces to ignore the court order. Good for him and good for them. And he thinks it will make a difference or that I was counting on them restraining his air power. Unfortunately, I can’t tell him any different. Hmmm . . . what can I say that might convince him? Ah, I know.

  “I’m no more concerned with the Court than I am with yesterday’s long disposed of breakfast, Bertrand. But I don’t think you understand what you’re facing. Every one of your soldiers is going to be at least shocked, battered, and frightened every fifteen seconds for several hundred minutes. What’s that going to do to their morale and ability to resist? They’re going to be within the lethal burst radius of something explosive at least once every minute for that same length of time. Even if they’re better dug in than I have reason to believe you’ve had the chance to get them, they’re going to be nervous, trembling wrecks before they have a chance to fight. Something between fifty and a hundred times, over the course of that time, every one of them is going to have a shell come in close enough to do damage, to ear drums, if nothing else.