A Desert Called Peace

by Tom Kratman

"And, Captain Hennessey," the colonel had emphasized, "since Captain Jimenez of the overstuffed and underarmed brigade we call the Balboa Defense Corps is your friend, since you command the most powerful ground striking force in the country and since the fall of Jimenez's charge, the Estado Mayor, can reasonably be expected to cause the rest of the BDC to fold, there is a) some chance that you might be able to induce him to surrender and b) no chance that anyone else could."

  "No, sir, not a chance, sir," had been Hennessey's answer. "Zip, zilch, zero, none, nada. You don't know him like I do. Jimenez is first rate all the way. His mother could ask and he'd tell her to fuck off, the same as he will me."

  "Do it anyway," the colonel insisted.

  Hennessey's reminiscences were suddenly interrupted as the rain promised by the afternoon's darkened skies came down in a deluge. Its heavy pounding on the tiles of the roof and the stones of the courtyard returned him to the present.

  Even as it did so, Jimenez remembered, It rained that night, too. . . .

  The rain had come quickly, taking in its wake the trash and the smell, and even covering briefly the sounds of the city under its soft hammering. People scrambled for shelter or ignored the downpour as the mood took them; for this was Balboa City, on the closing end of its long wet season, and the only possible weather forecasts were "it is going to rain" or "it may stop raining soon."

  The deluge passed as quickly as it had come. From his sheltered vantage on an upper floor of one of the many buildings of Balboa's Estado Mayor, or general staff, complex, Xavier Jimenez, Captain, Balboa Defense Corps, sighed as he watched the streets nearby fill again with people.

  Jimenez missed the rain as soon as it passed, missed the feeling of solitude, of peace, of being subsumed in nature. Balboa was the rain; the rain was Balboa. Jimenez loved both very dearly.

  Casting a wary glance skyward, Jimenez was pleased to see the clouds still blocking the stars above. He said softly, and only to himself, "Not tonight. They won't hit us tonight. Not with the clouds so low and thick."

  He did not say it aloud, but whispered the words, "But they will hit us. I wonder if it will be Patricio who comes for us here. We're important; he's the best. I think it must be. I'm so screwed." Another sigh escaped him, this time for things that could not be helped, things as inevitable as the rain.

  Dozens of automobiles passed by the Estado Mayor every minute. Had any looked up, they would have seen Jimenez smiling, white teeth sparkling in an angular, coffee-dark face. They would not have seen his hands as they clenched and unclenched to no perceivable rhythm.

  Pushing the sight and sound of the automobiles from his mind, twisting his head to look directly at the corridor leading to the office of his country's "Supreme Leader," General Antonio Piña, Jimenez's smile grew even broader. "Son of a bitch," he muttered under his breath. He could have spoken aloud, since that same dictator was either passed out drunk, or, if he retained some semblance of consciousness, certainly engaged in fornication with one or another of his bevy of mistresses.

  The smile closed, a sneer taking its place. Some things were just too disgusting to maintain a smile over, even for him. Jimenez turned his gaze back to the street below, watching the passing cars as one might watch fish in an aquarium, relaxing, vicarious, mindless existence . . . like watching the rain.

  Below, a corporal of the guard stopped a car. This was an unusual enough break from the pattern to catch Jimenez's attention. He watched closely, intently. He watched as the car leapt forward, missing the corporal by mere inches. He watched as the corporal grabbed a nearby rifle, charged it, and raised it to his shoulder. He saw the rifle give off three spurts of flame that lit up the area as if by a strobe, each shot driving the corporal's shoulder and body backwards a few inches.

  Under the glow of an overhead streetlamp, the rear window of the automobile shattered under the fire. Jimenez saw countless tiny flakes of glass burst into the air then fall, sparkling, to the dull pavement below.

  "They shot up the car, killed your man," Jimenez explained. "That was understandable, if unwise. But then they grabbed that naval officer and his wife . . . threatened them, beat him and assaulted her. I tried to stop it but . . ."

  Hands clenching convulsively, Jimenez turned from his station and began walking briskly to the nearest staircase. His booted feet tap-tap- tapped on the hard stone floor.

  Reaching the staircase, one hand grasped the banister as a pivot for a forceful turn. His feet beat rhythmically on the stairs as he descended. Soldiers and flunkies, each and every one perplexed at the unexpected shots, took one look at the fixed, fierce and even painful smile on Jimenez's face and looked quickly for something else to do, someplace else to be.

  Jimenez burst through the door, then trotted for the complex gate. Armed guards were all around. Some stood idly. Others, those nearer the gate, were plainly at a heightened sense of alert. Jimenez trotted through them all without a sideward glance.

  Reaching the gate, Jimenez slowed his trot back to a brisk walk. As if in compensation, his hands' clenching became almost frenzied and his smile grew broader still. He headed straight for the guard shack from which the shots had been fired.

  Reaching the shack, Jimenez found it to be empty. He looked around until, under the city lights, his eyes caught on the former occupants. They were surrounding two civilian-clad people—one man, one woman; both, Jimenez was certain, from the FSC. Gringos—the name had been carried across the stars. They were too well dressed, too light skinned, too blond—especially the woman—to be anything else.

  Jimenez stopped for a moment, watching intently. In his gaze the crew surrounding the gringos began to beat the man mercilessly. A knee intersected his groin.

  The woman's head bent down as if she were crying. One of the Balboans grabbed her hair and pulled her head erect again. Jimenez thought she must have been threatened then, as she began shaking her head back and forth in obvious terror.

  More words were spoken, none loud enough for Jimenez to make out clearly. He saw one of the troops smash the gringo's head back against the wall. Another made a half-ways grab at the woman's breasts, then reached down instead and patted her thigh meaningfully.

  Jimenez's smile grew brilliant. Hands forming fists, he strode forward.

  From clouds overhead and to the south the first hints of another warm sprinkling began to descend.

  Hennessey stopped typing. He looked up at Jimenez and asked, "What happened next, Xavier?"

  "I heard the corporal say, 'Kick the fucking spy again.' Then some private did, kneeing this navy type's groin. That navy officer—he was a tough man . . . very . . . well, he hardly made a sound. But his wife was crying, streams of tears running down her face, begging for her husband. She looked terrified. Who could blame her? Not I."

  "Raul," Hennessey turned his head to address Parilla. "You were the commander of the old Guardia. They weren't like that before. What changed? What do you think caused them to act like that? With a woman, I mean?"

  "Piña," answered the short, brown and somewhat rotund Parilla in a single word. "Our drunken idiot 'Supreme Leader.'"

  "Him? How?" asked Hennessey, raising a single eyebrow. In principle, he agreed, of course, but wanted Parilla's thoughts.

  "Oh . . . I doubt I have to explain this to you, Patricio." When the eyebrow remained raised anyway, he continued, "Look, we had a little tiny force in Balboa before I was ousted. Maybe two thousand men. Maybe a few more. But they were select. Good men. Piña brought in . . . oh, Christ, Patricio, some of the people he brought into the force weren't much more than criminals themselves."

  To Parilla's side, Jimenez just nodded in silent agreement.

  "And then he had to get rid of, get out of the way anyway, a lot of good people. It was only my nagging that kept our friend here in service. Somebody, after all, had to set an example." Parilla leaned over and ruffled Jimenez's hair just as if the younger were still the old man's aide de camp.

  Hennessey laughed, more
at the gesture than at the words. He turned back to Jimenez. "What happened then, Xavier?"

  Jimenez sighed and shook his head with a mixture of regret and disgust. "I saw the corporal lift the woman's head by her hair. I heard him say . . ."

  II.

  "What? You afraid he won't be able to perform in bed, bitch? How about I have a half dozen of my men give you the last decent fuck of your life?" The wife's mouth just formed a silent "O" of pure terror. She began to plead for herself then, as well as her battered husband.

  The corporal released her hair and turned back to the husband. He asked, "You want that, boy? Shall we gang-bang your wife? No? Then tell me what the fuck you were doing here. Just out for a stroll, you say. No doubt."

  A private put his hand under the husband's chin and pushed up hard. The naval officer's head slammed into the wall behind. It struck the exposed brick wall hard enough to split the thin skin over his skull.

  Even now Jimenez smiled at the memory, the same smile he had been using since boyhood whenever something really annoyed him.

  He went on, "So the private's still holding this poor guy's chin and was cocking his arm to hit him in the face when I reached them and grabbed his arm."

  "He said, and I remember this clearly, 'What the fuck . . . ?' Then the private looked at me over his shoulder. Oh, Patricio, it was good to see. His eyes got big—like saucers—when he realized who I was."

  "I smiled at him. Patricio, I confess . . . I was not always as even tempered as I am now. The private knew what that smile meant. He looked . . . well . . . a lot more frightened than that poor woman did."

  The corporal's eyes bugged out. He stuttered out, "Ca-Ca-Captain Jimenez. Sir. They're spies. We were . . ."

  Jimenez cut off the explanations and excuses. "I know what the hell you idiots were doing. I can see what you were doing. But I don't think you know what you were doing. Let the gringos go . . . with apologies. And pray it's enough."

  The corporal insisted they were spies. That's when Jimenez lost his temper. He grabbed the corporal's uniform shirt and slammed him against the wall, following up with two quick punches to the solar plexus.

  "That navy officer was spying, you know? Probably without authorization but still spying," commented Hennessey. "Then again, maybe he had authorization, too. I had awfully detailed and up-to- date information when my company rolled out."

  Jimenez sighed. "Yes, I know. I knew that even then. But I still didn't want a war we could not even hope to drag out very long, let alone win."

  Hennessey was a bit odd about impending combat. He'd fret nervously, go to see everything, to check on everything, to look into the face of every one of his soldiers. And then, as it got closer, he'd simply begin to calm down. It was almost as if he was detaching a part of himself. Perhaps it was the part that was human. Certainly it was the part that seemed most human. In any case, when the time came, with something like an internal mental click, he would drop off fear, drop off trivial personal concerns, and become something very like a machine.

  "Up there! The windows!"

  A few vehicles ahead of Hennessey, a young soldier twisted his body to realign the heavy machine gun mounted atop the armored personnel carrier. "Target!" The flash from the muzzle lit the buildings to either side as fifty-caliber bullets, long bursts in steady streams, streaked out to punch through the thin walls of a third story room. The pounding of the heavy machine gun was a palpable blow over the entire upper half of the gunner's body.

  The gunner, ears covered by his track commander's helmet and hearing under assault by the fifty's steady booms, could not tell that the shrieks coming from inside did not somehow sound military. Even Piña hadn't thought to conscript five-year-old girls.

  From the other side of the street a single, mostly hidden, muzzle flash sparked. A bullet forced its way between the aramid fibers of the gunner's armored vest. He gasped and slumped down to the footstand. Blood began to drip, then gush. It flowed across the raised dots of the metal floor plates, gathering in the lower flat parts.

  Confusion on his face, the dying soldier called out once, "Mama?" Then his body went limp, dead.

  The soldier's platoon sergeant roughly pulled the body off of the stand. With one hand he dumped it to the floor even as the other hand scrambled for purchase on the inside of the hatch well. The platoon sergeant pulled himself up into the hatch, drew his remaining arm through, then grasped both spade handles of the fifty cal.

  Again, there was the faintest flash from the side of the street opposite where the gun pointed. The platoon sergeant felt something strike his armored vest, then ripple through his left shoulder. He felt more than heard the crunch of splintering bone.

  Not too bad. Doesn't even hurt much. He reported to his company commander.

  "Sergeant Piroute, you don't sound right," Hennessey said coldly and calmly into the radio. He ignored normal radio procedure; Balboa had no real electronic warfare capability.

  "I'm fine, sir. Just fine. A little hit. Not bad."

  "Can you carry on?" Hennessey asked, still ice cold.

  "Yes, sir. No sweat, sir," the platoon sergeant answered as his well drilled right arm jerked the fifty's charging handle, twice; ka-chink, ka- chink. Steadily, the gun turned towards the dimly perceived flash. The sergeant's thumbs pressed down on the gun's smooth butterfly trigger. Again, long, steady bursts lit the night. Fountains of powdered cement, wood and stucco emerged from a wall where the fifty's bullets struck. On the other side of the wall a sniper—young and brave but not too well trained—suddenly found himself minus the legs that had held him up. His dying thoughts were of his mother.

  Heated by a lodged fragment of a tracer, a piece of wood began to smolder. Soon enough it would blaze.

  The platoon sergeant, still ignoring his own wound, spoke orders into a microphone. The tracks rolled forward, toward Balboa's Estado Mayor.

  "You managed to drag it out a lot longer than anyone could have expected," Hennessey said, by way of condolence.

  "You pushed faster than anyone should have expected," Jimenez retorted.

  Behind him was nothing but fire and smoke and dead bodies, some of them carbonized. The nauseating stench of burnt flesh overlaid that of burnt wood and diesel exhaust. Ahead of him was more smoke, more fire . . . and much of the fire was of the directed variety, the bronze- jacketed lead variety.

  Hennessey ducked his head barely in time to avoid a random burst in his direction. The bullets made sharp cracks overhead. They were too close together to make out individual rounds. He spoke into a radio and, on command, a helicopter gunship came in low to rake a threatening section of the compound with cannon fire and rockets. Another command and a team of his infantrymen rushed the wall to emplace a demolition charge.

  "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" the men shouted, racing back to the cover of their armored personnel carrier. Again Hennessey ducked as a dark, angry cloud blossomed from the wall.

  His men resumed their fire as the last of the demolition-spawned fragments pattered on the ground. Hennessey lifted a hand, then swung it forward. One platoon, still covered by the armor of their carriers, raced for the breach. Hennessey's own track followed.

  He didn't think it funny, at the time, that he was not afraid. It was just one of those things that was. Some people were calm before the storm and mere wrecks in it. Hennessey was always at his calmest and coldest under stress.

  If the defenders were afraid, none of the attacking force could see it. Outnumbered, outgunned, to a degree also outfought, but not surpassed in courage, they continued to hurl their defiance at their assailants.

  With a clang of metal on metal Hennessey emerged from the rear door of his carrier. He spared a quick glance at one of his platoon leaders. Phil will be fine, he thought, seeing one of the medics apply a bandage to a wounded leg. Another wider glance encompassed the men. They seemed ready.

  Hennessey smiled confidently, nodded once and shouted, "All right, motherfuckers . . . Let's goo
o!"

  With a roar the men followed.

  They followed as if into a vacuum. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere, in every manner of undignified death. Here lay a headless torso, there a torso-less head.

  Hennessey shook his head with regret. He thought again of his old classmate, Xavier Jimenez, probably even now lying dead somewhere in compound. Jimenez would never run; this Hennessey knew.

  Around him, to either side, his platoons and squads fanned out across the compound. Occasionally, shots rang out wherever an FSA trooper simply felt he could not take the chance. This was the price of a fierce resistance; a price the Balboans had understood when they had decided that honor demanded that resistance.

  Hennessey heard a scream rising above the sounds of battle, the scream coming from a burning building. Poor bastard, he thought. Horrible way to die. Why the hell didn't they surrender when they saw it was hopeless?

  Of course, he knew the answer. I wouldn't have. Jimenez wouldn't have either. And the men will follow their leaders . . . if they're good men . . . and have good leaders. And Xavier is a good one.

  A fire team leader, a corporal, led his three men to the sound of the scream without being told to. Dodging from cover to cover, they reached the building just as it collapsed. The screaming grew for a few seconds, then petered out into sobs amidst the smoke and falling sparks. Then the sobbing stopped, small mercy.

  From off to one side, at another building, one of Hennessey's troopers called out, "I've got five of 'em, here."

  A sergeant ordered, "Bring 'em out."

  The answering voice was composed half of shock and half of wonder. "I don't think so, Sarge. They're all fucked up."

  Hennessey jogged over to investigate. He passed the trooper standing flush against the wall by the door, entering a room taken straight from hell. Bodies, parts of bodies . . . above all, gallons of blood that lent the air an iron stench, even above the smoke. He looked for signs of life. He looked for his friend.