by Tom Kratman
She remembered something Garcia had once said just before a much shorter navigation exercise, “By the way, did I mention that, while you’re safe enough in the jungle at night—if you stay in one place—there are any number of things out there that will kill you if you blunder into them?”
Trujillo was scared to death at each step she took. Every time she reached a hand out to grab a vine it was an act of will to make herself touch it; snakes hang from trees, too.
I don’t like snipers or snakes.
The sun arose the next day to find one terrified, exhausted, scratched and generally bruised Inez. Nor did she dare to take a break. A few hours later she came to point seven. There was a centurion manning that point.
“Private Trujillo, this is not bullshit. Your next point is seven and one half kilometers away. It is probably not your last one. You are moving too slow to meet the standard. I suggest you hurry.”
“Just what the hell do you think I’ve been doing, Centurion, dawdling?” She just took the map without another word. God, it really is nearer to eight klicks away.
Inez alternated walking and semi-jogging with only the briefest of halts to check her bearings. The heat and humidity were nearly unbearable. How does the weather god know when it is most miserable to rain, most miserable to shine? He must read our training schedules.
With the pace, the load, her previous exertions—and some blood loss, too—she began to feel faint. She kept pushing on but she only barely kept on course.
Finally, she saw it, off in the distance and in the open; a jeep with a couple of troops lounging around. She fixed that image in her mind and concentrated on putting one foot in front of another. She staggered; she fell. But she just kept getting up to push onward. The jeep seemed impossibly far away.
As Trujillo drew closer she saw that were more people there, lying on the ground, unmoving. Closer still and they showed as girls, more than half a dozen of them. She couldn’t help thinking that whatever it was they said or did to the women at that point it was enough to make a large number of them quit. She began to cry again. But she kept walking.
Inez fell to her hand and knees. The damned bitch came loose from the air mattress to gouge her back and make a long ugly scrape down one arm. She stopped briefly to pick it up, then staggered back to her feet. She held the bitch by one hand, the air mattress by the other. Still weaving from side to side, she barely discerned that the girls that had been flat on their backs were sitting up. Some dim part of her mind might have registered the fact that they didn’t look defeated.
She fell again and crawled.
At the edge of a little clearing she got up on both knees, then swayed to her feet, and said, “Private Trujillo, Inez. May I have the next map, please?”
Cristina Zamora came up and put an arm around her, holding her up and squeezing her tight in shared triumph. “No more maps, Nezi. You made it.”
* * *
Not everybody did. Almost two thirds had given up before reaching the end, or let someone convince them that they were doing just fine and slacked off thereafter. They would graduate. They had missed an honor, though, and the chance to become leaders.
Not everyone who didn’t make it quit or failed. Three were dead. One fell into a ravine and broke her neck. One died of heat stroke. Another…well, they never found her body, though they found her pack and nausea inducer. She probably drowned, or was eaten. Or both. Most likely, both.
Some time later, when Inez was in charge of a group of fighting women, when she was all alone, scared, tired and miserable, when she had to win a fight first with herself to make herself go on before she could make anyone else do so, she had cause to remember that “sickener.”
* * *
The test wasn’t quite over. They spent two days searching for the bodies though they only found two of them. Then, after a few hours rest they moved to a broad river and waited for transport. The same hovercraft came back to take them back to the island for their graduation exercise. This was nothing much, a series of platoon attacks on an “enemy” strongpoint, using live ammunition. The only reason they did it was so the president and some of the Senate, plus Duque Carrera—and, via TV, the rest of the population—could watch them go through their paces.
After that they went back to barracks, cleaned up, and turned in such of their gear as belonged to the training base. The uniforms, rifles, and individual equipment were theirs to keep forever. They even had a full two days to recover and rest; that, and prepare for graduation parade.
* * *
In the old days, before the legions had begun transforming themselves from a regular force of mercenaries or, depending on one’s definitions, auxiliaries, into a national army, the Isla Real had been home to approximately fifty thousand soldiers and their families. Now, the bulk of those regulars had moved to the mainland to provide the cadres for reserves and militia formations, and even the numbers of troops present had shrunk to under twenty thousand, mostly people in training plus maybe five thousand regulars with their families present.
Even so, a large percentage of those that were there had turned out to watch the official formation of the Tercio Amazona and the graduation parade of its first members. Carrera was there, along with a select committee from the Senate and his wife, Lourdes. The president was not there.
“And so,” Carrera asked of Senator Cardenas, chief of the select committee, seated next to him on the reviewing stand, “will the Senate pay for the two tercios? Now that you’ve seen them?”
“We’ll…pay for them,” Senator Cardenas agreed, with bad grace. “But the special uniforms and the statue are on you.” He pointed with a chin at a bronze, life-sized statue of a woman. The work suggested a beautiful bone structure but with skin roughened by the chisel. She sat atop a rock, clad in partial abdominal armor of an extremely archaic design. The woman was grasping weapons—bow, spear—in her hands. Her upper body was exposed, leaving her breasts bare. Except that she didn’t have breasts. One of them, the right one, was excised, as if by a rude scalpel and fire. Only the bronze simulacrum of scar tissue remained.
“Very good,” Carrera said genially. “I wanted the kilts and the statue to be my personal gifts, anyway. My thanks to the Senate. And now—”
He stopped speaking as the pipes and the drums of the training base band marched out from the right as the reviewing stand faced and onto the close-cropped, emerald green parade field. The band was followed by eight tiny platoons of about twenty to twenty-four women each.
The women were dressed in kilts, with white ruffled shirts and light waistcoats above. Their feet were encased in heavy shoes, with hose held up by garters over their calves. Atop their heads each woman wore a Glengarry, cocked to the right, ribbons hanging down free behind. It had never been made a part of their dress uniform, but each of the women had, apparently by mutual agreement, posted a large red flower over her left ear.
Lourdes bent her head to whisper something in her husband’s ear.
Carrera nodded, looked at the flowers and smiled, mostly to himself. Good, very good. Then he stood to receive the report.
The band counter-columned off to the left as the platoons of women left-wheeled to face the reviewing stand. The adjutant for the training base took the report from Tribune de Silva, then turned and reported to Carrera, “Duque, all present for the induction onto the legion’s rolls of the Thirty-sixth Tercio.
“Post the orders,” Carrera said, then stepped away from the podium.
“Pursuant to Legionary Headquarters directives of…”
While the adjutant was speaking, Carrera stepped off the reviewing stand and looked around at the front of its base. There, carefully tended, were some extensive flower beds. He ignored what was going on around him, while he selected out a particularly large and beautiful red blossom, then plucked it, leaving six or more inches of stem.
He walked to the statue, and waited, listening for the adjutant to say, “…the Thirty-Six Tercio of Mounta
in Foot, Amazonas, is formed and called to the colors.”
On the word, “colors,” Carrera stuck the red blossom behind the statue’s left ear.
Then, still smiling, he walked back to the podium, took it over from the adjutant. He gave Lourdes a wink and began, “My beautiful bitches…”
Interlude
“Are you happy now, Patricio?” Presidente Parilla asked. “You’ve proven your point. At ridiculous expense you’ve gotten—what is it?—maybe a maniple of women who might, just might, be able to do something besides scrub pans, type, or change bandages. Now what? Shall we turn them into a ceremonial unit?”
“These girls deserve better than that, Mr. President,” Carrera replied. “You saw them, too. I know you were watching. They’re remarkable. And you know they are.”
Parilla shook his head. “What I know is that they’re a colossal waste. But they might look good for propaganda’s sake; guarding some monument, say. Or swirling those silly kilts you gave them in a parade.”
Carrera hesitated, trying to find the words. I could threaten to resign. That would get his attention. He knows there’s a war coming and that he can’t win it without me. But, no. He may need a commander…but I need a president…even more than I need the Amazonas. If I threaten to resign, and he knuckles under, he won’t feel like a president anymore. Shit!
At length, Carrera said, “Make a wager with me, Raul. The girls have done everything we ask of a foot soldier. Let’s see what else they can do. If they can’t crew the heavy weapons found in an infantry tercio, I’ll back off. We turn them into parade troops…but not pay the girls off and disband their unit.”
Carrera’s voice grew impassioned. “I’m not telling you they’ll be better than men. They may not be as good. But they deserve the chance to try. Just let them try, won’t you?”
Parilla looked at Carrera intently for a moment, then said, “Sweeten the pot, Patricio. If these women fail to be able to use every weapon found in an infantry tercio, I want them turned into a ceremonial unit. And then I want your goddamned queers disbanded. If your bitches can’t do it, to include shitting their own leaders, I want Tercio Gorgidas to go away. Then maybe I can forget about the shame of having ‘married’ the bastards. And don’t tell me it isn’t fair. Gorgidas trained them. They’ve had their chance.”
Carrera slowly nodded. “Agreed. Every weapon in an infantry tercio.” Fifth Mountain Infantry Tercio, he silently added.
Before Carrera left, Parilla asked a question. “Patricio, why do you even care? What do you expect to get from these women?”
“More men!”
“Bah!” Parilla answered. “And what is this about wanting to create a new nongovernmental organization for the care and feeding of refugees of war?”
“All part of the plan, Raul, all part of the plan.”
Chapter Eight
Every experiment is like a weapon which must be used in its particular way.
—Paracelsus
Maria:
Basic may have been over, but they were far from finished with us. There was still a tercio to build. Carrera came to speak with us shortly after graduation and laid it all on the line. Yes, we’d done well. Yes, he was very proud of us. Yes, we had to learn to use every weapon in a mountain infantry tercio, and demonstrate that we could use them under combat conditions, or we were a footnote in history.
At least he was honest.
* * *
Life, however, became much, much better. For one thing, they moved us out of Camp Botchkareva—which was needed for the next group of girls to be trained—and into a really nice little caserne, one the Legionary Housing Directorate had renamed “Camp Penthesileia,” a couple of miles down the road and right on a small beach. This was, I gathered, an old senior tribunes’ housing area from when the entire legion had been on the island. It was a lot bigger than we needed but there was a housing glut out on the island anyway.
Each squad had its own house, not plush but certainly nice, and infinitely nicer than the tents and huts of the old camp. There was a common mess, or maybe it had been an officers’ club at one time, as well as kitchenettes in each squad hut. The officially provided food didn’t improve, but then, it had always been pretty decent. And not having to choke it down with barely enough time to chew was a definite plus. Nice, too, was not to be surrounded by barbed wire. And we guarded ourselves, for a change.
Well, why not? We were real soldiers by then. And I’m sure I would have pitied anybody who came in uninvited.
Best of all, our FG’s brought our kids out to those of us who had kids. They stayed right with us in our squad huts; sleeping in our beds or rooms. The sweet, sweet smell of my baby in my nostrils as I drifted to sleep was…well, no words.
Over the next few days Marta grew a little sullen. I wasn’t sure why that was so but, acting on a hunch, I sent Alma to sleep with her one night when I had guard. Poor Marta really needed a baby so badly. Within two weeks, Alma was calling her “Tia Marta.”
The FG’s cared for them while we were working. I sometimes remember those days as the best times of my life. I had my kid, all my best friends still, useful—even important—work to do.
Not that it was all work. We used to have beach parties about every third night. Did I mention how cheap shrimp and lobster were on the island? We pooled our mess rations and supplemented those from our pay to eat and feed our kids like royalty.
We rotated with the cooking in the huts, though we usually had breakfast in the common mess and packed a lunch. There were a half dozen civilian cooks for that. Eventually, the Tercio Amazona would have its own regular cooks but, for now, we were too rare and—just possibly—too valuable to detail any of us to those duties permanently.
On the other hand, Cat was one fine cook; maybe better said, First Cook. She took charge in the kitchen of whoever was detailed to evening mess duty and showed them how to do it.
Except me. I can almost burn water, frankly, so I did my share by helping prepare the meals and cleaning up afterwards.
Occasionally we’d have men over, though not to stay. Group living and individual sex just don’t go together—too much noise for the others to sleep (at least if the parties know what they’re doing. I really didn’t, frankly, but then I didn’t try to have anyone stay over with me either). Besides, for those girls who just had to, there was a very romantic beach a stone’s throw away.
Before going any further, I probably should tell you a little about a legion infantry tercio, since that is what we were to become, or to try to become. Its name comes, in part, from an old Spanish word that means, essentially, regiment. We didn’t take it merely for that reason, however. A tercio also implies a third, tercer. Ours are divided up into three, oh, echelons: Regular, Reserve, and Militia. The regulars of a tercio are one third the number of the reservists. Regulars and reserves together are about one third the size of the militia. That is to say, about six percent, plus a little, are regulars, full-time soldiers. About nineteen percent are reserves on call at any time, but owing only seventy-seven days service a year in time of peace. The rest are militia who are also on call, but only owe twenty-five days a year unless called up for war or other national emergency.
It was a variant on Zion’s militia system, I learned later.
It would be many years before we would be large enough to form a real tercio, so what I will describe is the size and shape of a fully mobilized tercio of men. As I do, remember that the cohorts and maniples of our tercio were to be thirty percent bigger in field strength, to give us more bodies to do the physical work, and that one hundred and thirty percent strength would be augmented by an additional, compounded, thirty percent to allow a portion of us to take maternity leave. So we would, eventually, be one hundred and sixty-nine percent the size of a male tercio, assuming there were enough really tough and willing women in the country. Or in Colombia del Norte, since we recruited from all over.
In a tercio there are three infantry cohorts,
each consisting of three infantry maniples, a (heavy!) weapons maniple, and a headquarters and support maniple. The infantry companies have three infantry platoons, each with three rifle squads and a weapons squad, and a weapons platoon with three mortars, six medium antitank weapons, another two .34 caliber medium-heavy machine guns, plus a small headquarters.
The weapons maniple had heavier mortars, 120 millimeter as opposed to 81 millimeter, either eight recoilless rifles or eight light armored vehicles for antiarmor work, an antiaircraft section with light surface to air missiles or antiaircraft guns or a mix of both, a reconnaissance platoon, sappers, forward observers to call for and adjust artillery and mortar fire, or air support, on the unlikely chance we should have any. There was a small headquarters there, too.
The headquarters and support maniple had the cohort headquarters section and the two staff sections. These were I: Operations, which includes a section each for operations, logistics, and intelligence (entitled Ia, Ib, and Ic respectively) and II: Personnel administration. There were also a communications platoon—messengers, radios and field telephones—a medical platoon, and a platoon each of cooks, mechanics, and truck drivers, a couple of whom drove fuel trucks. The HSM commander had a tiny little section to help him command.
Beyond the three infantry cohorts, there was a combat support cohort that had an HSM, either a Cazador maniple or an armored cavalry troop for reconnaissance, an engineer maniple, a light tank maniple, and an antiaircraft battery. (A maniple and a battery are basically the same thing, but artillery is always in batteries. The armored cavalry, but not the armor, call their maniples, “troops.” Yeah, I think it’s silly, too.) If it was a mechanized infantry tercio, there was no light tank maniple, but there was a full cohort of medium—forty-five or so ton—tanks.
