Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  Ah, well. I’d better tell him and let him decide what to do.

  A few hours later, when the composite artists had produced a picture of the man who had rented the warehouse, Fernandez swore at length and with eloquence. “Arias!” He knew exactly where to find a photo of the culprit. And he knew that the folder with the picture would have an address.

  “Boyd, give me one squad,” demanded Fernandez.

  Paitilla, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Quickly and quietly the squad from Boyd’s platoon fanned out to surround the house. No sirens alerted the occupants; it wasn’t that kind of a squad. When the squad was in position Fernandez gave a signal. Doors were smashed down, to the alarm of the neighbors. In a few moments the soldiers emerged, dragging a woman and four children aged six to thirteen. Fernandez said not a word as two soldiers unloaded scrap wood onto a pile and set it alight. Once the flames were roaring he turned to the woman.

  “Where is your husband?” demanded Fernandez. The woman said nothing.

  Turning to the squad leader Fernandez commanded “Throw one of her brats on the fire . . .” He pointed to the youngest and said “That one!”

  The woman shrieked, sank to her knees and began to beg for the life of her child.

  “Madam,” said Fernandez, and his voice was colder than any ice, “you have a choice. Tell me what I want to know or see your children burn alive. For their sakes, I hope you know where your husband is.”

  The woman gibbered until the soldiers reluctantly picked up her baby and made ready to throw it into the flames. Sobbing, then, she murmured an address.

  Lumière, Gaul, Terra Nova

  An aide ducked a head into Janier’s office, announcing that Carrera wished to speak with him.

  “Janier.”

  “We have a photo, now, of one of them. We expect to have more within a few days.”

  “Do you have them in custody?” Janier demanded.

  “I don’t recall that a picture leads to instantaneous capture in the Tauran Union,” Carrera retorted. “Can you give me an example?”

  Janier ignored the jibe, answering, “The Tauran Union isn’t facing what you are if those men are not captured.”

  “Good point,” Carrera admitted. “On the other hand, we’re maybe a little tougher to take on than some others, as well. It might be that the Cosmopolitan Progressive Neo-Aristocracy that runs your Union has forgotten that.” Carrera’s tone was not conciliatory.

  Yes, it might be, Janier silently agreed. Even so, he said, “But whatever they have remembered or forgotten is irrelevant. Before it’s too late, you had best remember you can’t win, not against the full might of the Tauran Union. Find those bastards, quickly. And, by the way, whatever happened to the men we sent to Lago Sombrero to ensure that you were abiding by your word?”

  “They’re being held.” Those still alive.

  “Good. Nothing had better happen to them. Janier, out!”

  Imperial Base Camp, Imperial Range Complex, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Since the beginning of the crisis, the Balboans had, for a change, pulled all their people out of the base camp, leaving it free for the TU. Into that slightly superior facility the helicopter-borne troops of the Gallic First Airmobile Brigade had moved, not a bit sorry to leave behind their inadequate tents.

  There were only a few powers in the world willing to pay the expense of maintaining a completely airmobile division. The Federated States did. The late Volgan Empire had. And the Gauls had. Now that division was reduced down to about the size of a brigade. Of that brigade, two full combat battalions, plus all the helicopters needed to lift one of them simultaneously, waited expectantly for the word to move. The full brigade headquarters was there, along with artillery and engineer detachments. There would not be enough lift for those last two until the infantry had been shuttled out.

  In the wooden-walled and tin-roofed square shack that served as the command post, the commander of the brigade, a lantern-jawed colonel, listened while his company, troop, and battery commanders, one after the other, back briefed their parts in the next day’s operations.

  The brigade was initially assigned to eliminate the Balboan Tenth Artillery Legion at and around Alcalde Flores. The Tenth was scattered in eight different casernes around the area. Accordingly, the brigade had assigned its three artillery batteries and two scout platoons to insure that two of the casernes were under sufficient observed fire that mobilization would be impossible. The artillery batteries were, of course, available to fire in support of other units.

  An infantry battalion’s three rifle companies had the same mission for another six casernes. The remaining battalion’s job was to tackle and quickly destroy one of the casernes and the leaders expected to be found on it. They would then be helicoptered to another, until it was neutralized. This would free up another company, so that the four maneuverable companies could fly to and link up with two reduced companies that were still static, and overrun yet two more casernes until those were taken. The two reduced companies that were freed up by that would close on their still engaged sister companies. It would take several iterations, but there was nothing in principle wrong with the concept. That said, even though it was not a bad plan, it did, perhaps, depend too much on things going well from the start.

  Casa Linda, Highway InterColombiana, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Carrera stopped by the house on his way to Lago Sombrero, the place he judged, more than any other, to be the center of gravity for the battle to come.

  “It’s time to go, miel,” he told Lourdes.

  “But, Patricio, this is only our home. Why should they bomb us here? Surely they wouldn’t. After all, you’ll be gone. It will only be myself and the children and our ‘helpers’ here.”

  “They don’t know that. I’ve actually gone to some trouble to make sure they don’t know where I am. And I don’t know that they will bomb or they won’t. I do know that they might . . . to get me.”

  Bowing to the inevitable, Lourdes nodded sadly. Tears in her eyes, she began to direct the servants, the guards, Alena, the children, and Ham’s wives, to save what they could of the most important of her and her husband’s treasures, things more sentimental than valuable. Carrera, once he had seen that there would be no further argument, gave her what might be a last hug, kissing her lips and neck, and left for Lago Sombrero in his unescorted and nondescript sedan.

  Aserri Airport, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Calderón probably never really understood the full implications of bringing Tauran troops into his country. Raised to accept the artificial fantasy of neutrality based on impotence, he hadn’t even considered that, once he brought foreign troops in, he had already given up his country’s neutrality. Indeed, he’d given it up so thoroughly that the Taurans didn’t even bother to consult with Santa Josefina as they took over airfield and port in the course of building up for the coming invasion.

  Part of that build-up included the Anglian Parachute Brigade. One of its battalion commanders, a Lieutenant Colonel Marshall McIntire, climbed the short ramp leading into the aircraft with more seeming calm than he felt. Behind, ahead, and around him about two thousand parachute infantry likewise clambered up narrow steps and through cramped doors toward the uncomfortable troop seats. They were their nation’s best, fittest, and bravest. Few of them felt McIntire’s qualms. They had the best training, the best arms and equipment, the best men in the world. And they were going to attack Balboa, for Christ’s sake! What reason had they to worry?

  Hotel Santo Hijo, Santiago, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Outside the fairly modern motel were parked four light trucks of the Sixth Mechanized Tercio. Inside, and under cover safe from prying satellites, some forty-two reservists watched television, ate the motel’s excellent sandwiches, or simply slept on the floor of the open-air restaurant under the tin roof. The platoon leader waited by a telephone.

  Herrera Airport, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Balboa
had relatively few combat aircraft, none of them truly modern. Two of those they did have sat unmoving but well attended on the tarmac strip. Another two were being readied for flight in one of the airport’s many hangars. Another two were already aloft.

  Two Volgan-born pilots, both of them independently wondering what had ever possessed them to emigrate to Balboa, sat in the confining space of their Mosaic Ds. Having flown much more modern aircraft, the ex-Volgans knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were absolutely outclassed by even second-rate Tauran equipment. Why they chose to stick it out with Balboa neither could have said.

  Shimmering Sea, sixty miles west of Cienfuegos, Terra Nova

  Flying low to avoid radar, twenty-three Tauran aircraft—an attack package complete with all the specialized equipment needed for a modern aerial assault—closed on Herrera Airport. The pilots knew there would be jets on the other side. They were also certain that those enemy jets had less than an ice cube’s chance in hell of surviving to see the next sunset.

  More than a hundred more planes were aimed at each of the wretched little airstrips to which Balboa had dispersed its air force. The Balboan aircraft themselves were not cost effective targets. But the airfields could be temporarily shut down. The Tauran Union Air Force had armed these planes for that mission, for runway cutting.

  Cristobal, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In a warehouse abutting the bay that faced Fort Tecumseh, over two dozen legionaries worked frantically in the dark to fill small rubber boats with air. As each boat was finished, four men moved it away from the air compressor and stacked it atop its brethren. There were enough boats stockpiled to move slightly over a battalion in one lift.

  A Balboan cursed as it became apparent that one boat would not fill. “The son of a bitch has a hole, sure as shit,” he exclaimed.

  “Can we patch it?” asked his centurion.

  “In this light? I don’t think so. It just means that some squad will cross over on a later lift.” The legionary quoted something Carrera had once written. “‘No kingdom has ever really fallen for lack of a horseshoe nail.’”

  East Slope, Cerro Gaital, east of Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Global Locating Systems satellites send a time signal to ground receivers. By comparing the time signal from different satellites, the receiver can know its location to a considerable degree of certainty. The receiver merely notes the time differences between the signals received from however many satellites are available to receive from, then calculates its position based on the differences in the time sent by each satellite.

  Anyone can receive these signals. They will give a location to within ten to fifty meters. There was, however, a special encrypted signal sent by the satellites and useable only by military GLS. This signal gave a far more precise location. Modern high-tech weapons depended on this more accurate military signal to a great degree for their effectiveness.

  Others can receive the military signal, in theory, but cannot make use of it because of the encryption.

  The legion had no real capability to decode the encrypted military signal. But, they could receive the signals that were sent. They could record them. They could delay them. They could amplify and direct them. And they could retransmit those signals. By doing so they could spoof any GLS that was capable of receiving the military signal.

  Electronic warfare sergeant Valdez stood over two of his subordinates as they carefully aligned a satellite dish with a known GLS satellite. It took a few minutes for them to adjust the dish to gain the strongest possible signal. As soon as they had that signal acquired, the team began to adjust the next of its eight dishes to another satellite.

  Satisfied, Valdez walked away from the reception team of his section over to where another team was setting up a directional antenna, a half rhomboid. Valdez checked the set up; especially did he check that the direction was perfectly in line with the Tauran firebase at Imperial Base Camp, just east of the Transitway. With a grunt of approval, Valdez walked on to the amplification team.

  The amplification team had the simplest job. All they had to do was insure that the system was wired to take the signals from the dishes, amplify them, then send them on the antennas that would direct them in a fairly narrow arc toward the Taurans.

  The rest of Valdez’s platoon were deployed in other places, including the Isla Real, the Continental Divide, and a substantial hill north of the academy at Puerto Lindo. There were also some part of his cohort and tercio doing related and similar missions both on land and at sea, off of Balboa’s coasts.

  Lumière, Gaul, Terra Nova

  With just over two hours remaining until the invasion kicked off, the analysts of the Tauran Union Intelligence and Security Agency were even more frantic than the legionaries in that Cristobal warehouse. Every thirty seconds, it seemed, some minor functionary reporting to some member of the Tauran Union Security Council or one of the national authorities called with some new request for information.

  What could the TUISA report? Balboa was to all appearances sleeping. The were no unusual heat signatures, no remarkable new traffic. From high above, the Union’s most sophisticated spy satellites found absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

  The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  While the Council was the primary user of the intelligence gathered and analyzed by the TUISA, the Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa headquarters had been a close second for the past few days. But the TUISA had had little to offer in the way of hard intelligence. They could, and did, report that “X” amount of equipment of “Y” type was present—or sometimes not—at “Z” location. The TUISA could, and did, mark the locations of Carrera’s miserable little fleet and air force, such as was known to exist.

  Yet, even without useful input from the Agency, Janier’s staff assembled a remarkably complete—and remarkably wrong—picture of Balboa’s defensive posture. Literally hundreds of staff members marked maps, made inputs into computers, gave briefings, and filed reports. Several dozens, just in the headquarters alone, manned radios and field telephones.

  The Taurans were not merely interested in the status of the legion however. The Tauran Union was engaged in a major military operation. Well over half of the staff’s efforts went to keeping track of every little squad and platoon engaged in the mission. From over in Gaul, Janier, himself, pestered the local staff mercilessly for information, as they in turn pestered him to grant dispensations and make the “hard” decisions.

  Fully fifteen enlisted men in the headquarters had no other function than to ensure that tea and coffee were always ready in case a senior officer should show up demanding to be briefed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Il nous faut de l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace. [We need audacity, and yet more audacity, and always audacity.]

  —Georges Jacques Danton

  Ammunition Supply Point, Legionary Base Lago Sombrero, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In comparison to the staff of the Tunnel and Building 59, to say nothing of Janier’s headquarters in Gaul, and less still of the TUISA, Carrera’s command post was simplicity itself. It consisted of Carrera, Soult, Siegel, and a mixed crew of nine, mostly operating radios and telephones. There were no huge map displays, no grandiose charts and graphs. Even Carrera’s coffee came from a thermos filled by Lourdes before she had had to abandon the Casa Linda.

  Inside the bunker, Siegel received a message from a runner and checked a block on his clipboard. “The dragoons and Panzers at Fort Muddville are rolling out of Fort Muddville,” he announced softly. “With their past performance, that means they hit us at zero one hundred hours.”

  He walked outside, gave the same word to Carrera, then returned to the bunker.

  Carrera stole a quick glance at his watch. Fifty-five minutes until midnight. Impatiently he paced the small area defined by the door, the berm of concrete-revetted earth that was designed to protect the contents of the bunker from either an a
ccidental explosion or a near miss from a deliberate attack, and the two angled projections from the door to the access road. In this little trapezoid, hands clenched behind his back, Carrera paced out his frustrations and anxieties.

  All three moons were up, Bellona, Hecate, and Eris. They bathed the world beneath them in a bright and, because of their spacing, virtually shadowless light.

  Under those moons, just outside the door of bunker number twenty-three, a huge meter-thick assemblage of old and very, very strong concrete, Duque Patricio Carrera gazed up into the night sky. Though trees blocked his view of the ground to the south, he knew he could see the airstrip if he wanted by just climbing to the earthen, treed roof of the bunker. He didn’t bother; he already knew exactly what it looked like.

  A set of night vision goggles hung by their straps from Carrera’s neck. The goggles rested high on his chest, itself covered with the peculiar custom-made, slant-pocketed, pixilated tiger-striped camouflage that the duque had selected for his legion’s jungle wear. Between the two was the legion’s silk and liquid metal lorica.

  Above goggles, lorica, uniform, and chest was a salt-and-pepper haired, deeply tanned face, with striking eyes, a narrow, aquiline nose, and more wrinkles than Carrera’s years should have accounted for.

  The sky was clear, unusually for Balboa’s wet season. Mosquitoes droned in Carrera’s ears. From farther off the nighttime cries of the antaniae, Terra Nova’s winged, septic-mouthed reptiles, came softly, muffled by the surrounding jungle. Mnnbt . . . mnnbt . . . mnnbt. As with the mosquitoes, Carrera likewise ignored the moonbats. Besides, they were fairly harmless except to children, the physically disabled, and the feebleminded. Cowardly creatures, they were.

  Carrera stole another quick glance at his watch. Forty past midnight. He remained inside the trapezoid defined by the bunker’s door.

  “Duque?”

  Carrera turned to his driver, just emerging from the shelter of the bunker. Without another word Warrant Officer Jamey Soult handed his commander a cup of coffee, black and bitter. It was an old routine. “Sir, how do you know they’re coming?” Soult asked.