Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4)

by Andrew Seiple

  He closed his eyes. “I do not know that we can do that.”

  “Then someone’s going to die, and your promise will be broken. Won’t be the first time one of you broke your word to the Chamis.”

  “We’re not... it’s not like that.”

  “Then make it not like that.” Next to me the rebel who’d taken a pot shot at Escala hurried up, and offered me a full bucket of water. I took it without turning my head, glared at him as I marched back to my shack, and slammed the door.

  I was just pouring the water into a washbasin, when someone knocked.

  “Come.”

  Escala entered, towing Mally by one hand. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “If I die here I want you to be Mally’s mother.”

  I dropped the bucket, sprayed water everywhere, and whipped around to stare at her.

  “What?”

  “If I die here I want you—”

  “No, no, heard that part. That part was pretty well understood. Just... why?”

  “You can protect her.”

  I blinked. “Isn’t it the tribe’s duty to raise her if you die? Perhaps your sister, or Birin maybe?”

  She met the question with typical unflinching Chamis pragmatism. “If I die here, it is very possible that everyone else will be dead. And you can give Mally chances that they can not.”

  “If everyone else is dead...” I tapped my chest. “Dead too, you know? Not immortal, here.”

  She frowned at the odd word, didn’t seem to understand it, but forged on nonetheless. “They will not kill you. You’re American.”

  “Bullets don’t always stop and check to see who they’re hitting. And if explosives get involved, well, we’re all pretty frangible.”

  “Frangible?”

  “Made to break.”

  “That is a silly word. Nothing is unbreakable.”

  I scratched the back of my head. “Well, there’s this guy called Crusader...”

  She looked away. “You will not help Mally then. If she needs it.”

  “Whoa now, didn’t say that.”

  “I have no right to ask it of you. I know. You are not kin. You are not tribe.”

  I put my hands on her bare shoulders. “But you are a friend. We are friends, yes?” She’d been one of the first to talk to me, back when I was new and didn’t know what I was doing. Even showed me how to hunt, how to properly use a bow and arrow. I wasn’t that good at it, but she was patient, and she was proud when I bagged my first rabbit. Whenever it was her turn to head up to the city for a bit, she’d leave Mally with me. Me, not any of the other Americans.

  To tell the truth the kid didn’t need much looking after. She was sharp, and little trouble at all.

  “I very much hope we are friends,” Escala finally replied.

  “We are.” I gave her shoulders a squeeze, and let her go. “Mally will be looked after, if the worst happens. Now let’s go make sure the worst doesn’t happen.” I took a step, winced as my sandaled foot came down in a big puddle of water. Right, the spilled bucket. “After we get some more water. Going to be a long, hot day.”

  And it was.

  Dear gods the rebels were useless. Well, most of them. Teens mostly, with a few older sorts running around trying to keep them in line. A third of them were from the worst slums of Mariposa City, gutter rats who had little to lose. You could tell who they were by the way they jumped whenever a parrot screamed, and watched the trees like they were going to pick up and move at some point. Another third of the rebels were students, university types or well-educated rich kids. You could tell who they were by their clothing, and the way they sat around and talked while everyone else either rested or helped with the village’s tasks.

  The third lot were quiet, wearing shoddy clothes like the slum kids, but with muscles and weathered skin that indicated outdoor living. They were also the only group that seemed to be any sort of familiar with the tasks the Chamis did, and pitched in here and there as they could. These were sharecroppers, I learned, farmers from the outskirts of the city, who’d spent their lives in what was essentially slavery on Mariposa’s coffee plantations.

  Not everyone fell into those neat categories, of course. People are people, and you do them a disservice when you try to sum them up in neat little sentences. But for the most part, they all shared one thing in common.

  They were pretty fucking incompetent.

  There was no kind way to say it. Some quiet conversation and a few shared cans of Roja Cola among them got me answers, and the more I heard the more I wanted to roll my eyes out of my head. They’d gone into Mariposa City trying to rally the people to overthrow Corazon, and been surprised as hell when the people didn’t instantly rally to their side. Or the ones that smiled and nodded and told them ‘sure, go on ahead we’ll catch up directly’ failed to suddenly materialize when the army finally took notice of the insurrection, and started shooting at the rebels.

  That hadn’t gone well. It took a few hours of conversation with one of the other ‘officers’, a stuttering university senior with glasses and eyes that kept wandering down to my cleavage, but I finally got some rough maps and an idea how they’d tried to conquer the city. In a word; craptacular.

  “So let’s get this straight...” I said to the officer, Paolo, as he jerked his eyes back up to my face, blushing. “You sent out the call on radio, but not everyone had a radio. You couldn’t send it out through the gridnet because whoops, it was down. And since only the officers knew the plan, and not all the officers were there to start, instead of three simultaneous assaults from the west, northwest, and south, you had more of a loose line as you told people to just follow you and sweep forward.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which lasted, oh, about an hour, and you barely got to... here.” I pointed with a stick, adjusting it a few inches. They’d slowed down in Barrio del Agua, where the streets were tight and the sightlines were bad. All told they’d made it perhaps twelve blocks, in the space of perhaps sixty minutes. “Then everyone to the south of Lupe street mucked about in the Barrio, while the rest of you north of there kept advancing on the Cabildo.”

  “We had to take it!”

  “Without the support from the south that you planned to have.”

  “We sent ru-r-runners,” He shrugged. “Waited as long as we could.”

  “And without doing anything about the arsenal in the middle.”

  “We had loyalists in pl-place.”

  “Who were waiting for the signal from the gridnet, so they didn’t know it was time to start sabotaging.” I put down the stick, and sighed.

  “You would have done better?” A voice from behind me. Captain Damiano, the one who’d made promises that the village would not suffer from his people’s actions.

  “Frankly, yes.” I stood, looked him over. He had his jacket off, bags around his eyes, and sweatstains covered a very nice shirt. He looked like hell. Amazing the change a few hours of trying to keep his people in line and productive had made.

  Behind him, Paan stood, arms folded. She was glaring at me, as usual.

  There was a ring on her finger, that she hadn’t had before. On her wedding ring finger. With a flash of intuition I checked the Captain’s left hand.

  Yep. Matching ring.

  My eyes flicked up, met Paan’s cold gaze. “Congratulations,” I smiled. “Hell of a honeymoon, though.”

  “Dorothy. We need to talk.”

  “Going to guess the two of you met at university.” To my side, Paolo saluted, glasses slipping down his nose as he did so. I handed him the stick I’d been using to point out flaws in their plan.

  “Yes. Please come with us.” Damiano’s eyes hadn’t left my face, and that was troubling.

  “We’re talking just fine right here.” I raised my voice a bit, and noted villagers pausing in their tasks, collecting in a loose cordon as they stopped to look on. The rebels in the area looked around, settling uneasily as the Chamis loom
ed around them, staring at us.

  Damiano closed his eyes. “You won’t be harmed. I want to talk with you and the other Peace Corps members separately.”

  “What do you have to say to us that you don’t want the Chamis to hear?” I asked, raising my hands and spreading my fingers.

  “It’s for your own benefit,” Paan said, glaring harder. “Unless you want the village to know your secret.”

  She was fishing. She had to be fishing. I’d fallen for bluffs like this in the past, from better and more dangerous people. Well maybe not, if she was a hero of some sort like I suspected, then she could be plenty dangerous.

  “What secret?” I asked, doing my best to look puzzled.

  She looked away, stared at the ocean in the distance. I’d noticed that the older Chamis did that when annoyed. Damiano, for his part, slumped and tucked his hands in his pockets. “Look, if we’re wrong it’s nothing, but if we’re right, I don’t want to cause you problems. Please. Just come.”

  I glanced over. “Take care of that stick Paolo, gonna want it back.”

  “Sí, sí.”

  We left him behind, and Damiano lead the way to Benny and Mary’s shack. Paan kept her face away from me the whole time, watching the ocean.

  “So what’s all this—” I stepped through the door, and instantly four muzzles trained on me. The young men and women behind the guns were sweating, but their hands were steady.

  “—shit.” I put my hands up. “Damiano, you lying son of a bitch.”

  Mitch, tied to the table and sweating, face pale and angry. Benny and Mary were visible through the door of the bedroom, holding each other and frightened.

  Behind me, the door shut. Damiano glanced over his shoulder, sat down next to Mitch, and rubbed his face with both hands. “Search her.”

  Paan felt up and down my frame, patting me until she found my pistol. “A gun.”

  “Well, yes,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “There’s a war on. Might have to shoot some of you assholes if you start killing Chamis.”

  Damiano glared at me. “We are not Corazon’s butchers!”

  “No, you’re not.” I put my hands down, and folded my arms. “You’re the incompetent little snots who think a good slogan and ideals will beat a whole lot of pragmatic bad guys with superior numbers, more guns, a defensive advantage, and a lot of experience putting down people like you.”

  He recoiled like I’d struck him, then his face hardened. “Our cause is just! The tyrant will fall!”

  “So you crouch here with what, half of your army because the others are either dead or trapped in the barrios, trying to beat Corazon by involving an innocent group of natives? With the help of one turncoat brat who should really know better!” I was shouting. The kids holding guns on me didn’t know what to do. One of them tried jabbing the barrel of his gun at me, and I slapped it aside. That confused them, and before they could react I was up in front of Damiano, shaking my finger in his face. “You idiot. You’ve made everyone here collateral, for the sake of your fucking cause. What’s this rebellion about, anyway? Why so many rich brats? Did Corazon put a tax on pumpkin spice lattes or something?”

  “Corazon killed my father,” said the girl holding the rifle on me.

  I stopped mid-rant. “What?”

  “My father was an editor for the Mariposan Star, the paper, you know? He let a story through he should not have. They came for him in the night, and they beat him too hard. They told us he died of natural causes. With bloody truncheons in their hands, they told me and mama that he died of natural causes, and that’s what we would say if anyone asked.”

  I took a deep breath.

  The largest boy there cleared his throat. “El Presi- the tyrant raised our work quotas again last month. For no reason. My sister is sick, but we can’t afford medicine with his taxes rising all the time. This way if we win, we are free. If I die here my parents don’t have to pay to feed me, so my sister will get her medicine.”

  I felt myself deflating. I pulled a chair from the table, sat down in it. “Well. Okay. So you’ve got just cause.”

  The other girl there smiled at me, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “I was a beggar. I couldn’t pay a fine, so they threw me in El Presidente’s brothel for a year. I was ten.”

  What the fuck? Okay, I knew it was bad in the city, but this was a new level. The testimonies had shaken me, but this was the crap capstone on the shit sandwich. “Sorry,” I muttered, shamed to my core. “Shouldn’t have condescended.”

  Damiano folded his hands, scooted his chair around so he was across from me. “Every one of us has ample reason to fight. Corazon is bad for Mariposa. He’s bad for us. Every third recruit we have has lost someone to the blackshirts. Every second one has suffered because his bureaucrats and enforcers milk them dry with fines and bribes and fees they have no right to levy. And the rest of us are smart enough to see where this is going.”

  “We are the least affected, and that is only because he does not turn his attention to us,” Paan said, popping the magazine from my pistol and putting the gun on the table. “You have lived among us. You have seen this, you cannot deny it.”

  I exhaled through my nose, half-sighing. “All right. So why the guns and all this and why is Mitch tied up, anyway?”

  Damiano spread his fingers. “He reacted poorly when we confronted him. Tried to escape, and one of my men is being treated by the Chamis healers for a broken arm. We did not wish you to react the same way.”

  “About what?” I said, picking up my gun and popping the chambered bullet out. Paan flinched as she realized she’d given me access to a loaded pistol. But Damiano’s eyes never left mine.

  “Dorothy, they know,” Mitch said, speaking for the first time since I’d gotten in here. “They know we’re CIA.”

  The shock hit me like a bucket of water. My mouth gaped open, as I stared at Mitch...

  ...and my brain kicked into overdrive.

  My superpower is— essentially— being a super-genius, with a brain far superior to most on this planet. There were a few who could probably give me a run for my money in certain specializations, but I had them beat for all-around intelligence. And one of the things that it affords me is a sort of mental bullet-time. I can think on a situation, muse on it from different angles, come to conclusions with the evidence given, and make leaps of logic in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the time it takes the average human to do so.

  Neurons fired, pieces fell into place, and realizations hammered me one after another like a superspeedster boxing a training bag.

  Mitch was CIA.

  They knew he was CIA.

  They thought I was CIA too.

  But I'm not CIA.

  Mitch knew that.

  There was only one person from the Peace Corps missing right now.

  Colleen.

  The most likely scenario was that they knew Mitch and one other member of the Peace Corps was secretly a CIA agent. They’d ruled out Benny and Mary, which was why they weren’t bound right now. Which left me or Colleen. Colleen was nowhere to be found.

  Mitch was throwing me under the bus, to cover for Colleen.

  The confusion sorted, I mused on my options, in the split second that my mouth hung open and the shock started to show on my face. And one option seemed best out of all those remaining:

  Playing along.

  I shut my mouth. “Well. Secret’s out. Now what?”

  Damiano and Paan relaxed, just a bit. I flicked my gaze over to Mitch, saw his eyes close in what could be resignation, but was more likely relief.

  “Mister Mitchell told us about the... voxcaster? The military radio thing you have in the woods. That you were in charge of the reports and the codes.”

  I was wearing a vox, but it sure as hell wasn’t military grade. It was about four or five cuts above, and a damn sight smaller than the stuff that the black ops guys used. At least the black ops sorts I’d hacked whenever I got bored in the lair.
>
  “Yes, that,” I said. “Why do you want it?”

  Damiano looked to Paan, who nodded. He looked back to me and smiled, for the first time. “We want to cut a deal.”

  “What?” Mitch and I said simultaneously, blaring in unintentional chorus.

  “We know Corazon has only survived this long because of his American backing. We all know that the United States will only tolerate him so long as Castro is in power to the north, because Corazon helps keep Castro in check. But Castro is an old man, he will not survive many more years.” Damiano stood, pleading. “The need for Corazon fades, and he is greedy, so greedy! We can displace him. Even with the plan gone wrong, we had the Cabildo. We had the first Corps on the run before the Arsenal Garrison pushed in from the flank. We will be better for America than Corazon was!”

  “And better for Maripsoa, too,” Paan added. “Corazon has become a monster, a corrupt monster. Even with the government’s control of the internet, even with the secret police, word keeps leaking out of his human rights violations. America loses face for being his friend, because he is a monster. We will get rid of all that. We will justly rule Mariposa.”

  Mitch looked to me, and I looked back. I was reaching the end of my ability to cover for him and had no idea which way he wanted to go, so I kept my face blank until he sighed and turned back to the two eager rebels.

  “I’m sorry. This is above our pay grade. We can’t commit the American government to any policy decisions, especially given the circumstances.”

  “You do not need to,” Damiano pointed out. “Go to the voxcaster and call your superiors. Tell them to take it up to your leaders.”

  Mitch was shaking his head. “Pointless. They’re only monitoring at certain hours. Voxcasting now wouldn’t reach anyone. They’d think we were compromised.”

  “Which we kind of are,” I said, indicating the four rebels who were still holding their guns. At least they weren’t pointing at us anymore, I noticed. Hooray, I might get out of here without being accidentally shot.

  “Then tell us where it is,” Paan said, looking at me. “We followed your trail into the hills, but we lose it from there. We’ll bring it into the village, and call when the time is right.”