A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  “Their positions are going to be collapsed upon them, Bertrand. Their calls for medical help will go unheeded, since unlike you I haven’t the first clue where your medical units and facilities are, so they’ll get blasted. Their ammunition supply points—and I seriously doubt you’ve had a chance to dig those in—are going up in smoke and fire. Same for your fuel. Same for every other class of supply you’ve managed to stockpile.

  “My wire communications are dug in and secure. I doubt yours are. And I doubt a single radio antenna will survive what’s going to be thrown at you.

  “Your army is going to be destroyed, Bertrand, and with sickening casualties. The prospect sickens me, at least, and should be even worse for you. And it’s totally unnecessary, too. All your men can go home, healthy and sane; all you need to do is give up. What is your personal shame, old friend, compared to the lives of your soldiers?

  “Worst of all, the people you are fighting for do not deserve to be defended, and their septic tank of a political system is best buried forever.”

  The answer was a long moment in coming. Finally, that French-accented voice returned. “All that you say could be true, Patricio. But it still would be only a half truth. The other half is that my men still gave their oaths to support their countries’ decisions by force and with their lives, that I have given my oath to command them, and that I have a duty not to give them up while they still have the means to resist.

  “So you go ahead and do your worst, and we shall do our very best, and then we shall see who should have surrendered to whom.”

  Carrera couldn’t quite keep that little touch of pride out of his voice. “Good luck to you then, you frog bastard; you’re going to need it. By the way, someone is going to suggest nukes . . .”

  “We won’t use nuclear weapons, Patricio.”

  “Good. Oh, and one last thing, we’re moving your POWs out to the north and assembling them near and on Herrera Airport. I’m not going to use the airport for anything, nothing at all, except for prisoners and medical, so there’s no need for you to bomb or shell it. Carrera, out.”

  Academia Sergento Juan Malvegui,

  Puerto Lindo, Cristobal Province, Balboa

  Carrera hadn’t been the only one with an interest in recording the conversation. As soon as Carrera broke the connection, Janier ordered, “Get me a call through to Major Campbell.”

  That took no time at all. As soon as Jan answered, Janier said, “Listen to this and tell me what you think.”

  She recognized the voice immediately. When she heard, “Carrera, out.” She answered as immediately. “He, at least, believes he can do what he says, General. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “That, but more importantly, what do you think, my dear and lovely ecossaise?”

  She dropped to English and to her native accent. In sorrow, she answered, “Ah dinna ken.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Renown awaits the commander who first restores artillery to its prime importance on the battlefield.”

  —Winston Churchill

  Isla Colombo, El Toro Province, Balboa

  A couple of days before, Hauptmann Nadja Felton, Sachsen Luftstreitkräfte, had railed and fumed, screamed and did everything but cry, to try to get rocket pods affixed to the two underwing hardpoints of her Hacienda-121 to help to defend the port of Capitano, across the broad bay. Nothing had worked. Her commander had refused, and none too politely, explaining that there were people and places to do that kind of thing that were better suited to it, that her cargo-carrying capacity was more important that her limited strike capability, and that the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Balboans weren’t presenting any engageable targets anyway.

  Her cargo-carrying capacity hadn’t meant much of anything in the next day and a half or so. She’d come in from Cienfuegos with about five minutes’ worth of fuel left in her tanks. They’d loaded her here with about two tons of medical supplies. She was supposed to fully refuel here, plus pick up some packaged POL—motor oil—in theory for medical vehicles, and bring the two to the newly constructed airstrip southwest of Puerto Lindo. In practice, the fuel just hadn’t been allocated because no one had yet worked out what to do about the loss of the port.

  Instead of moving on, however, she’d sat while the powers that be tried to decide if it would be better to drain her tanks to refuel a Gallic C-31, and transfer her cargo. While the committee that ran the base and, as far as she could tell from her lowly perch, the war, argued, she either slept in a tent or sat with her co-pilot and load master on the rear ramp, drinking whatever was available and legal. In this case, that meant coffee for her while her co-pilot indulged in a single local beer, which was basically piss.

  “Like making love in a canoe,” the loadmaster observed, after a sip. At her inquisitively raised eyebrow, he amended, “Fucking close to water, Hauptmann.”

  The thought was enough, still, to give her a mild case of the giggles, “fucking close to water” . . . speaking of which, I miss my husband. I miss the spark of . . . What the . . . ?

  Nadja noticed a bright flash across the bay, in enemy occupied—or liberated, depending on point of view—territory. The spark reflected strongly off the low hanging clouds. Relax, girl, it could be anything. It could be . . .

  Then roughly a pound and a half’s worth of explosion went off, with a slightly brighter flash than that seen a minute earlier. This was followed by the rattle of incoming. The two left her in no doubt what that first spark had been.

  “They have guns,” she said, dully, “and they can range.”

  Both her co-pilot and her load master turned their eyes to her. “What . . . ?”

  She said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We don’t have fuel to get back to Cienfuegos.”

  “No, matter, we can get to Puerto Lindo.”

  “But . . .”

  The previous explosion had been four or five hundred meters away. The next one was not only closer, but it impacted on a plane only about two hundred meters away. That plane was parked among a dozen others whose crews waited for some kind of direction or mission. The shell passed completely through the plane before exploding on the tarmac below. The spine held, the explosion wasn’t really all that big, but pieces of the aircraft flew off, anyway. One or more fragments must have hit a tire, or perhaps the landing strut had been hit and broken or bent. In any case, the plane suddenly fell on one side, though not enough for the wing to break on the tarmac.

  Within maybe fifteen seconds of that single hit, Nadja saw what looked to be five or six or seven more sparks from the area of the first. She caught a slight whiff of fuel in the air.

  “Get in the goddamned plane! Get in the goddamned plane! We’re getting out of here!”

  Then it was scramble and push and use anything that would touch a fixed surface for her and her co-pilot to get to their seats.

  By the time they were a quarter of the way through their preflight checklist, and with shells coming in on that aircraft parking area at what sounded like a couple of hundred per minute, Felton said, “To Hell with this; we leave now or we die.”

  She flicked the engines to life, first port and then starboard, released the brake, and gave them just enough juice to begin rolling to the runway from the apron. A roar came from behind her, punctuated by a huge blossom of fire that lit up the entire airfield and the town beyond. The shock of that caused her to let the plane go a little further than she planned, all the way over to the left side of the runway. Turning it was a sheer bitch.

  Then, in the light from the burning aircraft behind her, Felton saw a sudden angry cloud of black smoke ahead. It was not a matter of chance; the next shell had landed to the left, and closer. Oh, crap; they’re adjusting on me, the dirty bastards. Time to gamble a bit, I think.

  Their last adjustment that I saw was maybe three hundred meters. I don’t know it’s so but maybe they can only adjust their fire, or are, at least, most comfortable adjusting their fire, for
that distance . . . okay . . . so that last one was five hundred meters to my front . . . in a minute it will be only two hundred if I stop here . . . screw that.

  She reduced the gas to her starboard side engine and fed it to her port, applying partial brakes on starboard as she did so. She still had some forward momentum, enough that when the next shell came it was only one hundred meters in front and to the left. She thought she felt some light fragments hitting her hull.

  Releasing the brake, she fed gas back to the starboard engine, driving it a little faster to straighten up on the runway. In her mind she began to count down from fifteen.

  The plane shuddered as if in a stiff breeze. Her loadmaster, looking out the gap over the rear ramp shouted through the intercom, “Crap, that was close, Hauptmann. Six or eight shells no more than fifty meters behind us. Get us the hell out of here!”

  She didn’t need the encouragement. Pushing the twin throttles forward and feeding the engines all they’d take, she began to race down the runway. At about four hundred and fifty meters from where the loadmaster reported that battery’s worth of impacts, she felt the wheels lift from the strip.

  “You’ll never catch me now, coppers,” she whispered to herself as she put a more than adjustable difference between her aircraft and the runway.

  Run or stick around until the shooting stops? she asked herself, as soon as she was airborne. Yes, her first thought had been that there would be safety at Puerto Lindo. But what if they need me here?

  She’d circled then, for a few minutes, watching the enemy artillery firing from the mainland turn the airfield into an inferno. Must make the decision now, there’s just enough fuel. Do I stay here in case it clears enough to land or go to Puerto Lindo where I know it’s safe? It may not ever be safe enough to land here, and if not, I lose my plane.

  Even so, she called the field and asked, getting a major who was obviously ducking some incoming. “Go,” he ordered. “No telling when or even if you can come back here. I think they’ve got someone on the island adjusting fire for them; they’re turning this place into a graveyard.”

  With an acknowledgement, she turned west for Puerto Lindo.

  Watching her fuel gauges nervously, Nadja went for the most economical speed she could find. She gave some serious thought to jettisoning the cargo. If it were ammunition or a supply of condoms, I would, but two tons of medical supplies are not to be tossed away lightly.

  Glancing out to her port at the sea, below, Nadja saw the two glowing sides of a triangle that indicated a vessel passing through bioluminescent waters. The triangle abruptly disappeared, but whether this was because a fishing boat had stopped or a submarine dived she had no idea. She called in the sighting, anyway, as a possible submarine.

  SdL-1, Megalodon, Shimmering Sea.

  Chu cursed not himself but fate. He’d had to come up, and would have to come up again, to get the message on the locations of the enemy carriers. He’d just been receiving when that plane, presumptively Tauran, had passed by and driven him below, message uncompleted.

  There will be another chance in twelve hours, he consoled himself, if nothing else comes up. I’d really like to get a carrier I should sink to make up for the one I probably shouldn’t have.

  I wonder if the others we hid—Orca II, Baiji, or Monk Seal, managed to get the full message. They all should be coming out for the party now.

  HMAS Indomitable, Shimmering Sea

  The ship’s exec brought the dire news to her lord and master, Captain Allingham, who was said to have a taste for whiskey and wild women. The captain’s day cabin fairly reeked of cigarette smoke.

  “There’s very little doubt, sir,” said the exec, after announcing himself and gaining admittance. “We had two intercepted partial messages believed to have been from two of their Megalodon Class SSKs. A Special Boat Service team, returning from a mission to put a little fear of God into the headhunters the enemy has been using, spotted one leaving an estuary to the west of Cristobal. And now we have reports of a wake where there was no ship or boat to be seen. They’re coming out and they’re coming out looking for us and the Frogs.”

  “What do the Frogs say?” asked the captain.

  “Charlemagne and Charles Martel and their battle groups are all pulling back, sir. Makes sense, really; we’ve both been on station pretty close to the action. Good chance the enemy knows where we are but will lose us if we pull back to just inside maximum combat radius.”

  Allingham looked grim. “Problem is that the bloody Frogs’ Tourmantes outrange our Sea Hurricanes. Their combat radius is nearly twice ours. If we follow them—disgusting idea, no, us following the bloody Gauls?—we’ll be useless for the battle.”

  “Then what, sir? We have no good answer to their SSKs yet.”

  “Tell me about it.” Allingham thought for a moment, then said, “We can hide by running away. We can hide by going someplace useless. I wonder if we cannot also hide by being considerably gutsier than the enemy has any reason to expect.”

  “Sir?” The exec didn’t like the sound of that. With something akin to genuine terror in his voice he asked, “Captain?”

  “Bring us to within fifty miles of Puerto Lindo. Let’s see if they think to look for us there.”

  “Sir . . .”

  “Just do it. It will not be said that Indomitable shirked her part in the greatest battle in three generations.”

  Estado Mayor, Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

  Soult passed around the glasses—well, small paper cups—while Carrera poured the legionary rum himself. The clock showed half an hour before the liberation began. It was just enough time for a short speech and a toast. The speech was over.

  Parilla walked in, looking shaky and strained. “Patricio,” he asked, “Have you no rum for an old friend?”

  Carrera put down his can of rum and raced to the old man’s side. He put his own forearm under one of Parilla’s and, beginning to lead him to one of the few genuine chairs in the command post, asked, “Should you be walking? I’ve spoken to the doctors . . .”

  “Fuck them, you insubordinate son of a bitch,” Parilla whispered. “And don’t pretend it’s anything but the merest truth.”

  “Yeah, but my dog likes me,” Carrera rebutted.

  “You don’t have a dog.”

  “Well . . . I can always get one.”

  “No self-respecting dog would have you. Why Lourdes puts up with you is beyond me. Why I’ve put up with you all these years . . .”

  “Because, while I am an insubordinate son of a bitch, I am your insubordinate son of the bitch.”

  “Fair enough. Now get me that rum.”

  “Jamey, a glass—yes, a real glass—for the president, if you please.”

  Easing the president down to the chair, Carrera asked, rhetorically, and loud enough for everyone to hear, “There’s something I can’t figure out: When a counterbattery radar sees something like sixteen thousand shells per minute, does the radar’s computer have a nervous breakdown first, or will it be the operator?”

  After the laugh one of the radio-telephone operators, acting sua sponte, struck up the song, “O, Campo, Campo Mio.” Everyone, including Carrera and the President, joined in.

  Ramirez’s Battery, “Log Base Alpha”

  The gun chief opened a can of legionary rum and poured some into the canteen cup of every man in his crew. “May we and our own balls still be attached, each to the other, this time tomorrow,” he said. The crew raised their cups and answered “hear, hear,” before downing theirs, each in a gulp. The shit was strong, one hundred and sixty proof, for weight and cube savings, and burned its way down every throat. It was normally meant to be cut with something, water or coffee or fruit juice, but, for certain occasions, raw and straight was called for.

  Outside, in trenches, tunnels, bunkers, and containers, the rest of the battery did likewise. The two great-great-granddaughters of Digna Miranda hesitated when a sergeant brought them theirs. Digna raised her no
se slightly, looking down into the paper cups to make sure the sergeant hadn’t shortchanged her girls. The girls hesitated, not sure what granny might say if they drank.

  What she said was, “Maybe last chance, niñas; drink up.” They did, and both choked and gagged. Somehow, though, the old woman managed to down hers without so much as a wince. “Don’t be weak,” she said. “Think of it as a kind of communion.” And besides, fair chance that you’re going to miss another kind of communion, that you’re not necessarily too young for now, so take what you can get.

  Not far away, toast done with, sweating crews worked or waited in all eight gun-filled shipping containers, the containers having been buried on their sides and at a slight angle along their long axis. Besides the containers with guns, others had been sunk into the earth and covered to serve for fire direction, communications, ammunition, medical, and mess. The latter were utterly empty now, as even the replacement cooks, old Mrs. Miranda and her girls, reinforced by all the ash and trash from cohort and tercio, stood by to carry more rounds to the guns as needed.