by Tom Kratman
"In . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . . FIRE!" Jimenez ordered.
The Subadar lifted his machine gun off the roll bar, grasped it with both hands, swung it to the right to face the crowd, slammed the butt into his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
The gun was a typical Volgan model, not the newer M-26 used by the Legion. This was no problem; the slower rate of fire was more than enough for such a tightly packed crowd. Cheers turned to screams of pain and dismay as Masood and a couple of dozen others swept their weapons across the crowd on both sides. The fire laid them out in windrows, cutting them down like wheat being harvested.
There were probably children in there and certainly there were women. Whatever they were, they were simply targets as the guns bowled them over.
The Scouts were no slouches. Already somewhat hyped up on adrenaline, it took a mere fraction of a second for them to join their fire to the Subadar's. Their fire lashed out into the crowd cutting down the Salafis by the hundreds. The rest ran screaming to either side, bullets in the back dropping many of them dead or screaming in pain. Mothers ran frantically to and fro trying to find children to carry to safety. The Pashtun didn't deliberately target these. Avoiding them, however, was not always possible or practical.
The Salafis returned fire, some of them. But with the confusion, the shock, and the jostling by the panic-stricken, their fire was to little effect.
Jimenez was shocked as well, half at the destruction and half at the surprise. Leaning forward he tapped the driver, hard, on the back of the head. "Ram that central cross," he shouted. Even as he did, the cavalry—That kid Cano is quick on the uptake, isn't he?— began racing for the entrances to the fortress valley, Cano's going straight ahead while Rachman peeled off and wheeled to the rear.
* * *
Life for the crucified rarely contains any humor. Nonetheless, when he saw the fire lance out from the vehicles Sevilla began to laugh and curse hysterically. "Die you bastards, you motherfuckers . . . hahaha . . . scream and fucking bleed, you pigfuckers . . . "
* * *
Like some of the others, Bashir had dropped to the ground as soon as the firing from the newly arrived vehicles began. He had only a pickax in his hands anyway. This, the absence of a firearm, might have been what spared him.
Laying under the fire, Bashir twisted his head. He was surprised to see one lone sedan speed off to ram one of the crosses, eliciting a scream from the crucified man that rose even over the roar of gunfire.
They couldn't be here just to save those men . . . that man. But they intend to, even so.
Whispering, "Allah give me strength," Bashir raised the pickax, head first, to show he was unarmed. Then, when no bullets struck it, he stood erect and reversed his grip.
Still unstruck, though bullets flew all around him scything down the fleeing crowd, he began slowly to walk toward the crosses. His speed picked up as he neared them. Bashir arrived and the cross tumbled over onto its back at almost exactly the same moment. He immediately shouted the only name he knew among the men of the Legion—"Fernandez! Fernandez! Fernandez!"—then began trying to pry the spikes that went through the Sevilla's heels.
The heel spikes came out fairly easily. Both ankles were free of the cross by the time Masood joined Bashir.
"How the fuck do you know Fernandez?"
"He sent me here! Now help me get the arms free!"
The arms were tougher; the spikes had been driven further into the wood. Still, with two men straining on the pickax handle, they came free quickly enough.
* * *
While Masood and this new convert tried to save his man from the cross, Jimenez turned the other way and walked the line of vehicles
"Up the hill! Up the hill," he screamed over the sound of the rifles. No one paid him any mind until he began walking the passageway in the bus, forcing the men to cease fire and begin to dismount. Some kept up the fire while others crawled out the left side windows or risked exposure in leaving by the door.
The trucks had less problem. From those the scouts merely grabbed a pack, their own or someone else's, jumped over the side and began to run to surmount the looming massif above. For the four wheel drive vehicles there was even less problem. Some of these turned left and drove at least as far as the stream at the base of the massif before dismounting. Within a couple of minutes of opening fire there was a flood of Pashtun Scouts splashing through the waist deep stream or surging upward.
Jimenez walked the line under cover of the vehicles, making sure the men forgot the easy targets and remembered the mission. He went first to the tail of the column, shouting and pointing, then turned around and reversed his steps.
He met Masood where he had left him, by the crucifixion site. A medic from the Scouts was already working on the saved man, who announced, repeatedly and heartbreakingly, "Sevilla, Juan B, Sergeant, Legion del Cid, Cazador Tercio, Serial Number Two-Seven-Zero . . . Sevilla, Juan B . . . " The blood encrusted, oozing holes from the spikes showed on both the sergeant's wrists and heels.
"Who is this?" Jimenez asked, pointing at Bashir.
"Fernandez's spy. And he's got a story."
"Story?"
"There's a cave over there," Masood answered. "He says we need to look in it." To Bashir he said, "Get this man to safety."
"Let's hurry then." The party of three, including the driver, trotted over to the cave. Bashir picked Sevilla up, slung him across his shoulders and headed up the mountain in the wake of the Scouts. He thought he would be less likely to be shot that way.
A bullet rang out from inside the cave as soon as the camouflage curtain moved slightly. It sounded strange, nothing like the twenty-two- to thirty-caliber favored on most of Terra Nova. Jimenez and Masood immediately fell to the ground and fired several long bursts into the cavern until they were rewarded with a scream.
When they did go past the curtain it was to see one man, uniformed, bleeding on the rocky floor and . . .
"Holy shit!" Jimenez was stunned. "The fucking UE is here? I knew we had enemies in high places but this . . . "
The hatch to the UE shuttle was open, its integral flight of steps lowered. They looked inside and saw nothing. Then they pulled open the cargo bay doors and . . .
Jimenez ran outside, pulling a small but extremely powerful radio from his belt as he did so. "Patricio? Goddammit, Patricio, fuck radio silence. Get on the horn, goddammit!"
"Carrera," crackled back.
"Come quick, compadre. Come really quick. Don't spare the horses. Accept any level of casualties. There are eleven, I say again, fucking eleven, nuclear weapons here. Oh, and a United Earth transport but we machine gunned the shit out of it."
"What the . . . "
"Just trust me. Come a runnin'."
Cricket 4-15
Eleven nukes? Good God. I didn't need my little play after all.
While he was thinking this, Jimenez came back on the radio. He sounded slightly out of breath as he said, "We found our lost Cazador squad . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. They were crucified. We saved one . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. To do that we had to shoot up a substantial crowd . . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff."
Jimenez continued explaining. "We really had no choice . . . But there's two effects of that . . . huff . . . huff . . . huff. One is that we're trying to unfuck things on top of the central hill. We got pretty disorganized in the scramble . . . huff . . . huff. The other is that the north side of the base has got to be weaker now. The scouts killed hundreds of men of fighting age on that side when they opened up."
"You're assuming they assembled from where they were camped, and camped on the side they were to defend, right? Makes perfect sense. Let me think on it. Yeah, despite the confusion, it may make sense to switch the side for the main effort."
"Don't think too long, Patricio. There are maybe five hundred and fifty or so of us on this hill, plus a couple of hundred cavalry blocking the entrances, and we're surrounded by thousands of the bastards."
/>
Loud and clear over the radio came the rattling sound of incoming mortar fire, somewhere close to wherever Jimenez was.
"Roger. Artillery priority, minus the rocket launchers, is yours. Twenty-four 155mm are in range and ready. Twenty-four 160mm will be ready to fire . . . in . . . " Carrera looked up at a chart and then to a clock . . . "about seventeen minutes. Air support priority is yours. Expect nine sorties of Turbo-Finches to arrive in a few minutes followed by two more every ten minutes for the immediate future. Also three ANA-23 gunships on station continuously as per the plan. I'll be overhead in a few. Over."
"Roger," Jimenez answered. "Air and arty . . . huff . . . priority to me."
"Yes . . . and the Cazadors should be jumping right about . . . now. Carrera, out."
I intended to bring in one nuke as a cover and an excuse. Instead we find another eleven. Do I send that one back? No . . . I might have to blow that entire mountain to shit and I can't be sure of being able to set off the captured ones. It stays in the plan . . . for now.
The Base
While Subadar Masood and the other leaders tried to bring order out of chaos, Jimenez scanned the skies. Thin anti-aircraft fire was rising from the surrounding hills, thin mostly because the bulk of the 14.5 and 23mm weapons had already been overrun with the central massif. Even now, small arms fire was breaking out all over the massif as Salafi air defense gunners struggled to fight their way to their guns.
The air over the other side of one of the surrounding ridges suddenly lit up in a ball of orange flame. That was a Finch-dropped thermobaric bomb, intended to make as sure as possible that the jumping Cazadors weren't shot to bits on the way down. Nothing was likely to survive such a blast, even should the targets be bunkered in. More such blasts followed the first.
A twin series of pops, one from the east, one from the west, grabbed Jimenez's attention. He'd heard the sound before. It was the small charge that caused the heavy rockets, fired from almost fifty miles back, to dispense their cargo; in this case, mixed anti-personnel and anti-vehicular mines to help Cano's cavalry seal off both of the entrances to the valley.
And then the small pops of the mines being laid were lost amidst the tremendous roar of thermobaric bombs dropped from the ANA-23 gunships. These smashed up every known and suspected air defense position on the hills ringing the valley fortress.
The angle of the view over the ridges to the south was such that Jimenez had only the briefest glimpse of dark dots descending from the low-flying Nabakovs before they were lost to sight. He knew the men were jumping without reserve 'chutes and from a height of a mere four hundred and fifty to five hundred feet over the ground. They'd have jumped lower still except that the irregular terrain meant that while some would jump at four-fifty, others would touch down hard from as little as two hundred and fifty feet.
* * *
Deep below, in a conference room not far from where Mustafa had interviewed Bashir, the men and serving women felt and heard nothing of the turmoil above until a breathless Abdul Aziz burst in to make the announcement.
"Sirs . . . we're . . . we are attacked! The infidels already hold the ground above us. Their paratroopers are descending all around to seal off the base."
"What?" Mustafa asked. "How . . . "
"I don't know . . . panicked rumors only. Some say that a column came in pretending to be reinforcements force and just opened up on our people."
Robinson turned instantly white. "The special weapons . . . "
"Damn your 'special weapons,' you infidel bastard," Mustafa snarled. "That's probably what the pigs came for."
"I've got to get to my shuttle," the High Admiral insisted. "If they find those nukes we're all screwed."
Peshtwa, Kashmir
The office was . . . Tasteful, Siegel thought, looking about with approval. It was Anglian tasteful. There was no gilt, no tacky decorations, just simple and elegant wood with a mix of Kashmiri and Tauran art on the walls and a beautiful series of rugs covering the floor.
Siegel stood beside the ambassador from Pashtia to Kashmir. The ambassador, underpaid and, being out of the country, without any serious opportunity for graft, had jumped at the one hundred thousand drachma offered to set up this meeting. Siegel was reasonably certain that he'd have gone for less but it wasn't like he was spending his own money.
"Mr. President," Siegel apologized, "there really was no choice. You know you don't control the Tribal Trust Lands and you know that the Salafis have a major base there. We know, and we would have thought your Central Intelligence Directorate would have told you, that a nuclear weapon is coming in, possibly more than one. My principle has begun an attack by ground and air to seize that weapon or those weapons with—I hasten to add—the full backing and support of the Federated States. You can try to resist, and get in a war with the FSC or you can do the smart thing and announce that this operation is entirely with your approval. One way makes you look weak and foolish, especially when your air force goes down in flames. The other makes you look strong and decisive."
The prime minister, Baraka, short and dark, listened attentively. His face showed only a trace of hostility. After all, all this emissary-without-portfolio said was true enough. He didn't have control of CID. He didn't have control of the Tribal Trust areas. And it was entirely conceivable, even probable, that the Salafi base could be about to play host to one or a number of nuclear weapons. It was even possible that the weapon was coming from his own country's stockpiles.
He still didn't have to like it.
Siegel understood perfectly well. To the ambassador who had accompanied him to the meeting he said, "Would you leave us for a moment, sir?"
"I am further authorized, Mr. President," he said, once the door had closed behind the ambassador, "to offer you and your family sanctuary for life, in the Republic of Balboa and to . . . " he dug into an inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a small red booklet . . . "to offer you a substantial guaranteed honorarium if you cooperate in this."
He handed the booklet over to Baraka who opened it and read without comment. Finished reading, the President placed the booklet into a desk drawer and sat, silently, for a few minutes.
"What's Balboa like, Mr. Siegel?" he asked.
"Wonderful place, Mr. President," Sig answered. 'Warm though a bit wet, rather like here. Clean. Beautiful women. Low cost of living. Best of all, sir, it's very secure."
Baraka slowly nodded before reaching out one finger to an intercom. "Achmed, call the General Staff duty officer. I want every plane in the Air Force grounded. Further, I want the Army's regiments in the posts bordering the tribal lands to the south confined to barracks. Lastly, set me up a press conference for noon, to be held here."
Already he felt the vultures circling. The important thing, the President knew, isn't whether or not our borders have been violated. The important thing is that I act like I am confidently in charge.
The Base
Mustafa felt his confidence wilting like a desert flower—quickly and completely. His closest followers sat stunned. This was not supposed to happen, not here, not in the sanctuary that God, in the form of the Kashmiri government's inability to control their southern border, had ordained.
Stunned transformed to horrified when another messenger burst in saying, "The stinking President of Kashmir has come on the television. He says that the attack is with his permission. He says his air force is staying out of it only due to incompatibility between the FSC's Air Force and Kashmir's. We'll get no aid from that quarter."
Was it the nukes that brought them here? Mustafa wondered, dully. But then, how could they know? I told no one but Abdul Aziz and Nur al-Deen. They wouldn't tell any one. They are the most faithful of the faithful. Robinson couldn't have told. If he had, he'd have been out of here last night. Sometimes it makes me wonder whose side God is on.
"What are we to do, Mustafa?" al-Deen asked.
"Fight," Mustafa answered, fatalistically. "What else can we do? But," his eyes f
ixed on Nur al-Deen, "begin collecting the cadres, the most important ones, and the families. We may lose here, but that will only be Allah's test of our faith. If we can get the key people out," his finger pointed, "along with that one weapon, we can continue the struggle."
"I'll send an advanced party out now," Nur al-Deen said, "to gather some of our followers further north, their vehicles and animals, to provide us a cover when we emerge."
"Excellent, my friend, except . . . " Mustafa looked at the bomb. "Not to the north. We'll take the southern route. And we will prevail yet."
Camp San Lorenzo
