by John Ringo
Boyd and the G-2, Diaz, held the same rank. That, their nationality, and the uniform was about all they had in common, though. Diaz was the son and grandson of poor peasants. Short and squat compared to Boyd, and dark where Boyd was essentially white, Diaz had struggled all his life to make of himself what had been given as a free gift to Boyd by reason of his birth.
Their prior dealings had been sparse: Intelligence and logistics tended to work apart in the somewhat Byzantine structure of Panama's Armada. Indeed, since one of the major traditional functions of the intelligence service in Panama was to prevent a coup, and since logistics—specifically transportation—was generally key to the launching of a successful coup, one might have said that the two were, or should have been, natural enemies.
Natural enemies or not, Diaz met Boyd warmly with an outstretched hand and a friendly smile.
"Señor Boyd, how good of you to come on such short notice," Diaz offered.
"It's nothing, señor, especially since you said you had something to show me. Your aide said it might be critical to the defense of the country."
"Just so," Diaz answered. "And if you will follow me into the hangar."
Once inside, after giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the reduced light, Boyd saw what was perhaps the last thing he expected to see.
"What the hell is that?" he asked.
Diaz shrugged. "Some would call it a gamble; others a forlorn hope. Me; I call it a glider, an auxiliary propelled glider, to be exact."
Boyd looked closer. Yes, it had the long narrow wings of a glider, and sported a propeller from its nose.
"Let me rephrase," he said. "What is there about a glider that justified pulling me away from my job where, I have no doubt, someone is stealing the country blind and where, if I were there, I might manage to save half a gallon of gasoline?"
Diaz scowled, though not, to all appearances, at Boyd. "We can talk about the thefts—yes, I know about them. Of course I would know about them—when we have finished with this matter.
"This, as I was opining, is a glider. It is not an ordinary glider, though. It has been fitted with a good, light radio. It has a top of the line thermal imager. It has an on board avionics package to allow it to fly in some pretty adverse weather."
"It sounds like you're thinking of using it for reconnaissance," Boyd said.
"Maybe," Diaz admitted. "It's a gamble, though not, I think, a bad one."
Boyd looked dubious. "I've been to the same briefings you have. Nothing can fly anywhere near those aliens. The life expectancy of an aircraft, even the best aircraft the United States can produce, can be measured in minutes."
"It could be measured in seconds, señor, and it would still be worth it for the intelligence we might gain."
"But a glider?"
"It might be that only a glider has a chance to fly over the enemy, report, and make it back. Let me explain."
Diaz pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, offered one to Boyd and, at his refusal, pulled out one and lit it with a lighter he withdrew from the same pocket. His head wreathed in smoke, he began to explain.
"The gringos make wonderful machines, I'm sure you'll agree. But you know, sometimes they get too wrapped up in those machines, forget the circumstances that make those machines valuable or vulnerable. How else can one explain them making single bombers that cost more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of the very countries they would wish to bomb? How else can you explain their intent to produce a new, and incredibly expensive, jet fighter when no one in the world could even touch the fighters they had?"
Exhaling a plume of smoke, and grunting in satisfaction, Diaz continued. "We think they overlooked something. We know, because they told us, that these aliens who are coming can sense powered changes in anything moving. It is possible, even, that the Posleen can sense any changes.
"And yet they do not. There are reports that birds in the areas they infest are generally unmolested. We know they do not engage any of the billions of small particles roaming through space. Maybe it is because the particles are not moving under their own power. But then, how do you explain the birds going unmolested?"
"Hell, I don't know," Boyd answered with a shrug.
Taking another drag, Diaz answered, "Neither do I. But a young man, a student, at the university has a theory and I think it is a good one. Certainly it explains much.
"He thinks that the reason the enemy do not engage the micrometeorites in space is because their sensors have been deliberately 'dialed down,' that they are set not to notice things of insufficient mass or velocity or a combination of the two. He has done the calculations and determined that if the enemy's sensors are dialed down to where meteorites are unseen, then birds simply do not appear on their sensors. He thinks that slow, really slow, moving gliders might also go unnoticed, at least some of the time.
"He's firmly enough convinced of this that he has talked me into raising a small force of these gliders for operational reconnaissance. He's even joined this force."
" 'Some of the time.' You're gambling a lot of men's lives on the calculations of a student," Boyd observed.
"I should hope so," Diaz answered. "The young man of whom I spoke? He is my son, Julio."
"Shit!" Boyd exclaimed. "You are serious. All right then. What do you need from me?"
"Not much. A certain small priority for fuel for training. Some shipping space. Maybe we can both have a word with the G-1 to assign some high quality young people to this unit."
"We'll need the fuel that is, if his Excellency, el presidente, doesn't have a market for low grade aviation fuel. He might, you know. He has found a way to steal everything else."
"Can you prove that?" Boyd asked.
"Oh, I can prove it," Diaz answered, then shrugged. "To my own satisfaction, at least. Can I prove it to a court? Can I prove it to a legislature that is as deep into graft and corruption as the president is himself? I doubt it."
"But you know, Señor Boyd, I've been thinking. The president and his cronies are able to pilfer an absolute amazing proportion of what we bring in to defend ourselves. After all, they know exactly where everything is and where everything is supposed to go.
"I do wonder though, what they would do if we started 'stealing' it first."
Boyd looked at Diaz as if he had grown a second head. That look lasted but a few moments before being replaced by something akin to admiring wonder.
"Stealing it first? What a fascinating idea, señor. Deliver it to the U.S. Army to hold for us, do you think?"
"That would help, of course," Diaz agreed. "But I am thinking we are going to have to take control of the more pilferable items before they ever get here. Can you transship things like ammunition and fuel someplace overseas, bring them here in different ships, unload those ships here and deliver the supplies to the gringos or to some of our own more reliable people without the president knowing? Can you cover the traces of the original ships so it looks to the government as if those things are being stolen overseas?"
Boyd smiled confidently, and perhaps a little arrogantly. "Señor, I would not claim to be much of a general, but I am as good a shipper as you'll find in the world."
"Bill," said Diaz, using Boyd's name for the first time, "I have no doubt you're a fine shipper. What you are not, however, is a thief."
Boyd felt months of frustration welling up from inside him. Engraved on his mind he saw sickening images of troops sitting around bored and useless because the fuel and ammunition they needed for training was "no tenemos." He saw roads and bunkers half finished and workmen standing idle. He saw mechanics kicking broken down vehicles because they simply didn't have the parts needed to repair them.
He felt these things, and the anger they fed, growing inside him until he just couldn't stand it anymore.
"If that no good, thieving, treasonous, treacherous, no account, stupid bastard who claims to be our president can figure how to rob a country, I can figure out how to steal it back!
"And if I have to, if you think it will work, I'll steal whatever it takes to get your son's project off the ground."
Hotel Central, Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama
The ceiling fan churned slowly above the bed. Like the hotel itself, the fan was ancient. Unlike the rest of the hotel, however, the fan had not been especially well maintained.
Stolen moments are often the sweetest, thought Julio Diaz, lying on his back with his girlfriend's head resting on chest.
The girl, Paloma Mercedes, was quietly crying. The bastard had waited until after they'd made love before telling her the grim news.
Except he isn't a bastard . . . or if he is, I love the bastard anyway.
"I just do not understand how you can leave me, how you can volunteer to leave me," she sniffled. "You could have had a deferment. If your father wouldn't have arranged it, mine would have."
Julio stared up at the ceiling fan. How do I explain to her that I volunteered for her? How do I explain that I couldn't have looked at myself in the mirror to shave if I'd let other men do that job for me?
Instead of explaining, Julio offered, "My father would never do such a thing. And your father would beat you black and blue if he knew we were seeing each other." Julio sighed before continuing, "And I couldn't. I just couldn't. It would be so wrong."
Seventeen-year-old Paloma lifted off of his shoulder, taking Julio's hand and placing it on her breast. "It would be wrong for you to stay here for me? Wrong for you to keep holding me like this? That's . . . the most selfish thing I've ever heard!"
She pushed his hand away and stood up, her eyes fierce and angry. Paloma walked around the bed, furiously picking her clothes off the floor and pulling them on with no particular regard for placement. She completely skipped replacing the bra, preferring to stuff it into her pocketbook and leave her breasts to bounce free and remind Julio of what he was giving up by his pigheaded refusal to see the truth: that the war was only for the ants of the country and that the better people should stay out of it.
Even angry as she was, maybe especially angry as she was, Julio still thought she was the most beautiful person, place or thing he'd ever seen. Hourglass figure, aristocratic nose, bright green eyes . . . sigh. He tried to get up to stop her but she held up a forbidding palm.
"When you've come to your senses and decided that I am the most important thing in your life, call me. Until then I do not wish to see you or hear from you."
Without another word she turned and left, slamming the hotel room door behind her.
Quarry Heights, Panama City, Panama
Digna Miranda saluted, as she had been taught, when she reported to Boyd's sparsely furnished office in one of the wooden surface buildings sitting above the honeycombed hill. He could have furnished the room lavishly, but had an ingrained frugality that simply wouldn't permit it.
Boyd returned the salute, awkwardly, before asking the tiny lieutenant, politely, to have a seat. Though she'd agreed to meet him—indeed, legally she could probably not have refused—Digna was suspicious. She had few illusions. She knew her looks were, minimally, striking and in some views more than that. Why this new-old general wanted to see her privately she did not know and, inherently, distrusted. All men were to be distrusted except close blood relatives until they proved trustworthy.
She sat, as directed. Boyd noticed her eyes were narrow with suspicion.
"Lieutenant Miranda, this isn't about what you might think," Boyd said defensively.
"Very well," she answered, though her eyes remained piercing, "what is it?"
"You said something at the reception at Fort Espinar that struck my interest. You complained about the 'soft city boys' we are commissioning. I wanted you to explain."
"Oh," Digna said, suddenly embarrassed by her suspicions. "Well, they are soft, despite the gringos' attempts at toughening them. They don't know what it means to live rough, not really. Pain is foreign to them. Maybe worst of all, they don't have the intrinsic loyalty and selflessness they need to have."
"Are they all like that?" Boyd asked.
She thought for a moment, trying very hard to be fair. "No . . . not all. Just too many."
"You mean we're in trouble then?"
"Serious trouble," she agreed, nodding.
Boyd asked the serious question, with all the seriousness it deserved. "What can we do about it?"
"We don't need as many officers as we've created. No company of one hundred and fifty or two hundred soldiers needs six officers to run it. Three would be more than enough. If it were me, I'd watch those we have very carefully and very secretly. Then I'd send about half to penal battalions and let the decent remainder run the show."
Harsh woman, Boyd thought. Harsh.
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
From the United States Department of Defense a credit in the amount of several score million dollars was issued to the government of Panama for purposes of buying diesel fuel. Presidente Mercedes was aware of the sum but was also aware that it as far too soon for any of it to disappear.
Instead, the money was duly paid, part to a company which owned four Very Large Crude Carriers, and more to the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, which would provide the fuel. Though the VLCCs normally carried crude oil, in this case they were slated to haul diesel.
Some of ARAMCO's payment went to transportation, pipeline usage fees for the most part. Roughly half of that went to a Royal Prince of the al Saud clan, some to the plant that produced the diesel, the rest actually went to the company—another Saud clan sinecure—which owned and operated the pipeline. These excess fees were simply built in to the cost of the fuel.
There were some additional fees that also had to be also paid. Perhaps it was the strain of war that was driving up the cost of everything.
In time, the four tankers pulled up to the docking facilities of a large oil terminal on Saudi Arabia's eastern coast. Diesel fuel was pumped, a lot of diesel, though perhaps rather less than had been paid for.
At the appointed times, the tankers withdrew from the oil terminal and proceeded generally south, paralleling the east coast of Africa. Rounding the Horn of Africa, the tankers headed generally northwest, nearly touching the northeast coast of Brazil before entering the Caribbean sea.
It was at about this time, when certain agents on Trinidad confirmed that two particular tankers were heading north, that a large payment, many million dollars, was made on behalf of a certain rejuvenated dictator, one with a very full beard, on a certain populous Caribbean island, to a private account held by the president of Panama. The northbound tankers continued on their way.
Meanwhile, the other tankers, lying low in the water under their burden of just over two million barrels of diesel fuel, each, continued westward towards the Panama Canal.
By the time the last two tankers docked at the port of Cristobal, in Panama, two hundred and fifty-five thousand gallon fuel tankers were lined up and ready.
Boyd grinned happily as the trucks began to pull up next to the tanker to have their cargo tanks filled to capacity before dispersing to small fuel dumps at their corps', divisions' and regiments' fuel points. They would return in shuttles to claim the rest. While some of the fuel would disappear, Boyd was certain, before reaching the line, better some than all. Moreover, if someone was going to benefit by a little theft he would rather it be the little people of Panama than that grasping spider in the presidential palace or his greasy hangers-on.
Even so, Boyd was pleased to see that officers vetted by Diaz were along to keep the thefts to a tolerable minimum.
Meanwhile, from the capital city of an island several hundred miles to the north, from a different presidential palace, a blistering telephone call raced from dictator to president.
"Mercedes, you chingadera motherfucking pendejo!" demanded Fidel Castro. "What the fuck have you done with my chingada fuel?"
Interlude
Aided by his Artificial Sentience hanging by a chain around his neck
, Guanamarioch interspersed his religious and tactical studies with studies of the target area. This was a place at the northern tip of the one of the lesser continents of the threshworld, very near where a narrow isthmus joined it to the second continent of that world. The maps showed it as being called, in all of the significant thresh tongues, "Colombia."
The young God King referred back to the Scroll of Flight and Resettlement as he perused the holographic map of the new home.
"Hmmm . . . let's see. The scroll instructs the new settler to match the mass of thresh available in the area against the time available to get in crops before the available thresh runs out."
