by Tom Kratman
“Can you bluff, make them believe that they would be taking a great risk if they attacked. I assume you have no plans to attack the Tauran Union.”
The way Carrera started when the priest said that told that he did, indeed, have some such plans. The priest, with some regret, didn’t ask for information he knew would not be given.
“Even a bluff has great risks, Father. People can bluff each other into war, no matter that what they intend is peace.”
“Yes. I see,” the priest agreed. He considered a while. “You seek penance and forgiveness for a sin—and it was a sin—the results of which have not yet come to fruition. Ordinarily, the token penance of prayer is sufficient to obtain God’s forgiving grace. But the ordinary sin is complete in its essentials before the penitent seeks that grace. Your case is special and no amount of praying seems to me sufficient. I mean, in a sense, that God helps those who help themselves. Prayer there must be, prayer for guidance, divine assistance, wisdom. And I shall assign you much. Yet works have their place along with faith. You said that there are great risks in bluffing. But you’ve also said, and I believe you, that war is otherwise a certainty. You must take the small chance for peace, rather than the certainty of war. You must actively try to prevent the outbreak of war. How you will do this, I do not know. God, however, will. He will know also if you have sincerely tried to prevent the impending harm you have caused.”
“I will do so, Father, but only to this point: I will reveal nothing to the Taurans that will make it more difficult for Balboa to survive and prevail if it comes to a fight . . . as it almost certainly will anyway.”
The priest started to interrupt, but Carrera cut him off. “No, Father. Don’t bother. If the price is my soul, then I deserve to lose it. I have used these people and abused their trust shamefully. A single soul is not too great a price to pay to redeem that trust.
“Even so—up to the point of further betrayal, not an inch beyond—I will try.”
La Comandancia, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
The compound was walled, but more for show than defense. That said, there were machine gun towers on the walls, as well as hidden firing ports at street level, and several antiaircraft positions sandbagged on the roofs of its buildings and a few more in the open spaces. Still, the obvious defenses couldn’t do much beyond preventing either clandestine infiltration or a coup de main. The real defenses of Second Corps’ headquarters was outside the compound, in rehearsed positions, some of which had already been fortified, out in the town.
This time, Carrera came with full escort, a marked armored sedan, two armored cars mounting cannon, and a platoon of infantry in two trucks. The infantry were from Ham’s Pashtuns, though the armored cars were manned by legionaries.
Second Legion’s bagpipe band was standing in the open area as the guards on the gate waved the first armored car through. As Carrera’s sedan’s grill made its first appearance at the gate, the band struck up what was widely believed to be Carrera’s favorite march, which had been adopted also by several tercios and legions: “Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera.”
An escorting officer and centurion were waiting about in the middle of the yard. Soult aimed for a spot next to them, then gently applied the brakes to come to a halt. The centurion had Carrera’s door open within a small fraction of a second of the car’s coming to a halt.
How the hell did he do that? Carrera wondered as he returned the escorts’ salutes. They then led him off at a brisk step toward the conference.
This really wasn’t necessary, he thought. I know the way. Then again, the pipes are always nice. Carrera sniffed a bit. Ah, good. Last time I was here the place reeked of spilled gasoline and burnt flesh and plastic. Now . . . somewhat better. Hmmm, I wonder if that young mother with the little girl will ever work up the gumption to call my aide?
Suarez and his senior officers and sergeants major stood to attention as Carrera entered their conference room. The room only held twenty at the table and about one and a half times that on a stepped platform in the back. An air conditioner mounted in a window strained without much success against the heart of bodies and the heat radiating down from the roof and through the windows.
Fifty men—or forty-nine, minus Carrera—just about worked out to legionary and tercio commanders and sergeants major, Suarez, his corps staff and sergeant major, and either the executive or operations officers for those. The one centurion present had a misery in his bowels; he was pretty sure he’d been delegated to piss boy.
“Seats, gentlemen,” Carrera began. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to our problems with the Tauran Union. Every day, it seems, there is some new incident. We’ve done a few things to make them back off—on those occasion when we’ve had enough warning to be in position to make them back off. And you people shooting down their helicopter may pay dividends.
“Still, I wonder if it isn’t time to increase the stakes a bit. We . . . none of us, I think, want to fight if we don’t have to. The Tauran Union is powerful, not an enemy to treat with contempt. But, given their overarching political and philosophical outlook, they’re a power much given to delusion. They may not realize, yet, that they could face a serious fight here. We should show them, I think.”
Suarez grew grim-visaged. “Take them on the next time they come near our borders?” he asked.
Carrera shook his head. “No, we don’t fight . . . yet. Let’s play some more games back, though, shall we? How hard is it,” he asked Suarez, “to come up with forty or fifty really beautiful girls in Second Corps’ area? I mean here stunners, the kind of women who don’t just suck all the oxygen out of a room when they enter it, but can leave entire city blocks gasping for air as they pass by. Being photogenic counts.”
“Not so hard,” Suarez answered. “Even without going to the foreign help in the bordellos. Though a small budget for clothing, makeup, and makeup artists might be a good idea. Most of our grid area”—the seven layered complex of grids that drove Balboan recruiting—“is fairly poor, after all.”
Carrera thought of the poor girl, Alma’s mother, and said, “I’ll cover it myself. How much?”
Suarez, after a moment’s thought, answered, “Fifty girls? A hundred thousand drachma. Maybe not even that much.”
“Fine. Make it two hundred thousand and have polleras made for them, too. Nice ones. With lavish silver for their hair.” The Balboan national dress, the pollera, or “bird cage,” included, indeed derived its name from, the ornate arrangements of silver ornaments in a Balboan girl’s hair.
“Might even let ’em keep the silver if they do a good job.”
“Pay them?” asked Suarez.
“Yeah, sure. Standard, not drilling reservist or militiamen’s, daily pay, to include when they’re on alert.”
“On alert?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Carrera, and his voice was full of malicious mischief. “After the girls are ready I want parties of them on continuous alert, whenever the Taurans roll out, to meet them at their assault positions . . . with coffee, and doughnuts and other pastries, maybe empanadas if it’s mid-day or early evening. Cold drinks, too, at noon. Whatever’s appropriate.
“And I want cameras there to record the whole fucking thing. And prominent banners that say, ‘Balboa es Soberana en la Area del Transitway,’ and, ‘Taurans out of Our Country,’ just in case anyone thinks those girls are out there in support of, rather than to undermine, the Tauran Union.”
“Ooooh . . . that’s evil,” said Suarez. “I like it.”
“Me too, but I don’t trust the Taurans, so trailing along after the girls, just in case, I want fully armed maniples . . . or cohorts, if you think it’s necessary. And police, of course, to chaperone the girls.”
“How old?” asked Suarez. “Is there a bottom age?”
Carrera thought about the Balboan notion of the quinceñera, a girl’s fifteenth birthday party, the time when she was officially available for (escorted) courting. “Fifteen on u
p, provided they look exquisite.
“Oh, and Suarez?”
“Sir?”
“Tell the girls, from me, that everyone who is a patriot fights for their country in the best way available to them.”
“Sir.”
“Note, also, gentlemen, that I’m going to be giving a similar mission to Third Corps. I trust the girls of Second will not be content with second place.
“One last thing, Suarez. I’m having the propaganda department print up copies of Historia y Filosofia Moral in every language present among the Taurans here. I’d like it if the girls could get the Tauran troops to take copies.”
Alfaro’s Tomb, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
News stations’ video cameras whirred, taking in the aspect of lovely olive skinned Balboan women, in ornately frilled, colorful, dresses, pouring coffee, passing out doughnuts, and chatting amiably with befuddled Tauran soldiers, most of whom had already picked up the minimum of Spanish since that was, after all, what the local women spoke. The women’s smooth and rounded sleekness stood in stark contrast to the angular, squat, ugly lines of the armored cars they surrounded. A hastily erected banner proclaimed, “Balboa is sovereign in the Transitway Area.”
Politely refusing a gracefully proffered cup of coffee from an angelic faced girl, the frustrated Tauran company commander spoke into his radio handset. “No, sir. I tried to pull out. Four of these women, with six TV cameras to watch, blocked the way. . . . Sir, I think the little bitches would have let us run them over before they moved. I had to stop my tracks. And now there are police passing out tickets to my squad leaders. . . . Oh shit; they’re hooking up a wrecker to one of my tracks!”
The captain stormed over to where a crew of wrecker operators were attaching the last cables needed to drag the armored vehicle away. The captain unholstered his pistol. Immediately, two Balboan policemen drew their own, pointing the firearms to the captain’s chest. Women stiffened—a few suppressed cries—as vehicle turrets swiveled to cover the policemen. Two trios of the girls moved—they shook with fright but they still moved—to stand beside and behind their police. Their chins lifted, defiant and proud. At the moral reinforcement, the policemen cocked their pistols. The cameras caught that, as well.
Shit, thought the captain. I can’t start anything. If I do, the police will shoot. I might survive that, but my boys will fire at the police. Then we’ll hurt these innocent girls. With the cameras watching . . . the whole world watching. And two cops with pistols against what everyone will say are tanks. Shit!
Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
Carrera held his sides and rocked, he was laughing so hard at the afternoon news. It was especially delicious since, many years before, during preparations for the FSC’s invasion of Balboa, he had, for all practical purposes, been that Tauran Panzergrenadier captain.
“That dipshit, Piña,” he said. “If he’d had two brain cells to rub together, he could have done that to us, and wouldn’t that have frosted the old Northern Command’s collective balls?”
Lourdes, sitting beside him, didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until Carrera had been able to bring his own laughter under control that he’d been able to feel through the structure of the sofa that she was shuddering.
He turned his head and looked at his wife, who was almost as tall as he was. She was crying, tears running down her face and chin lifted in defiant pride—an unconscious imitation of the girls, perhaps. She stood and began to walk out of the room, in the general direction of the front door.
“Where are you going?” he shouted after her.
She sniffled, then sniffled again. Turning, she answered, “To find Suarez and volunteer myself. I’ll be damned if my countrywomen will stand against armored vehicles without me there to stand with them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.
—Vladimir Lenin
The press is the enemy.
—Richard M. Nixon
With the press there is no “off the record.”
—Donald Rumsfeld
The Tunnel, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
Janier, plus his C-2 and C-3, watched the very same news film as had Carrera and Lourdes. The difference was that theirs was beamed in via satellite from a channel in the Tauran Union. It was also, unlike the ones broadcast in Balboa, accompanied by shots of a series of, so far, small protests across the capitals of the Tauran Union.
“And I wonder whose idea that was,” said Janier.
His intel chief, de Villepin, shrugged. “The protests back home? Might have been spontaneous, for all I know. For that matter, the use of the—let us admit it—lovely girls here might have been spontaneous or, at least, low level.”
“No . . . no,” Janier disagreed. “There’s organization there. Otherwise, no police, no military backup just behind the girls. And I would not be the least surprised to discover there’s some organization back home behind those protests.”
“It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Carrera would do,” de Villepin said. “For all his myriad faults, he’s always struck me as a pretty unsubtle man and up front soldier. If I’ve been wrong about that . . .”
“You mean if he’s as much an unprincipled hypocrite as we are?” Janier asked.
“Exactly.”
“It requires thought,” Janier said. “But what I want to know is how have the bastards been keeping such good track of us. How do they know every time we make a move?”
“They don’t,” de Villepin said. “Yes, I had the same impression as you, sir. But I’ve counted the numbers and tallied the incidents; they’ve intercepted less than a third of the probes we’ve made. I think if they knew more they’d have intercepted more.
“And yes, they have their spies in our ranks, as we have some in theirs. It’s tougher for us, by the way. If we catch one of ours spying for them, we have to send them home where their home countries never have the moral fortitude to do much about it. When the Balboan, Fernandez, catches one of his people spying for us, the fate of that man or woman is grim, indeed.”
The C-3 interjected, “Sir . . . no one knew in advance . . . except for you, me, and the C-2. And sure as shit we didn’t tell the locals. No, sir. The early Mosquitoes warned them. And they set up an ambush—a public relations ambush—for this last one. And they are watching us. As de Villepin said, they have a few spies here, but this has all been too close hold and short notice for that to work. They’re just using recon, all kinds of recon, to get warning, then reacting only to those they have sufficient time to react to.”
“D’accord,” said de Villepin.
A messenger knocked on the door to Janier’s office, then hurried over to hand a message to the C-2. De Villepin’s face went ashen as he read.
“Sir . . . it seems the Balboans are mobilizing and moving towards our facilities.”
Janier blanched. “Who? Where?”
De Villepin looked down at the paper in his hand. His first glance had been at the headline paragraph. Now he began to read in more depth. “The information is incomplete, General. However, indications are that two tercios are forming up just north of here . . . it looks like they intend to assault this hill. That’s probably Second Legion’s Second and Tenth Tercios. Third Corps’ Third Legion is not making offensive moves, but to be taking positions to defend Herrera Airport. Fourth Mechanized Tercio is moving—in dribs and drabs—toward the City. On the Shimmering Sea side there is a tercio—Eighth Marines would be my guess—inflating rubber rafts in Cristobal opposite Fort Tecumseh. Another is moving on the locks on that side. And, sir . . . there is artillery setting up all over the place.”
Janier ran to the door to his office. “Get me the goddamned Air Force!” he shrieked, near panic.
“Sir,” an airman piped in, “Radar at Arnold reports numerous prev
iously unidentified radar sources blanketing the Transitway. They say these are air defense radars, sir.”
“Get me the Air Force!” Janier demanded again.
Before anyone could respond to his double demand, a French-speaking Anglian Army private walked up with a portable phone. The private hesitated, then held the phone out. “Sir . . . the enemy commander, Duque Carrera, wants to speak with you.”
Janier took the phone. “Janier here.” He struggled to keep his voice calm.
From the other end Carrera spoke calmly. “General Janier? This is Carrera. How good to speak with you again. . . . Yes, General, we are engaged in harmless maneuvers as well. It would be a pity though, don’t you think, if someday I neglected to give my boys a limit of advance? Why . . . they could overrun the Transitway area before I could order them to stop. . . . Well, of fucking course they have ammunition, General. . . . Oh, yes; we’ll return your armored vehicle to you as soon as the Tauran Union pays off the fines for that infantry company that trespassed onto our territory. The fines will be heavy. Good day to you, General.”
After sober reflection, much reflection, Janier went to his office and took out the communications device Marguerite had given him. He suggested very strongly to her, and said he would be going to the Security Council for the Tauran Union as well, that it might be better to let things cool down in Balboa for a while.
“But what if,” asked de Villepin, “they do this to us someday and don’t give us an early indication that they won’t go past a certain point? Things could easily spin out of control.”
Casa Linda, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
Between the shot down helicopter, the pretty girl ambush, and the dramatic increase in tensions brought about by Carrera’s policy of active confrontation, Balboa suddenly found itself once again newsworthy in the Tauran Union, and for something other than being denounced for war crimes. Accordingly, a popular Tauran television news “magazine” asked permission to interview Patricio Carrera and Raul Parilla. Parilla declined the invitation as his English was wretched enough to make a bad impression on the viewers of Tauran television. Carrera, however, was tempted.
