Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  Soult, tall, slender, and rather large-nosed, had been with Carrera in two armies, over as many decades. He was more a son or a younger brother than a subordinate. Even so, the term that best described the relationship was probably “friend.”

  The corners of Carrera’s mouth twitched in something that vaguely resembled a smile. “Jamey, I know they’re coming,” he said, “even if I don’t know which units or in what precise strength, because they think they’ve no choice. I made them think they have no choice.”

  In point of fact, Carrera actually did have a pretty good idea of who was coming, the units and the strength. After all, his enemies in the Tauran Union only had so many airborne units of the requisite quality.

  Anglian Paras or Gallic, he thought. Sachsen, just possibly. But I don’t think so. Probably Gauls.

  Around the airfield proper, four Volgan-built self-propelled air defense guns stood; one at each end of the strip and two to the sides where the InterColombian Highway bisected the strip. Sandbagged in on three sides, the guns were unmanned. Still their radar was turned on. Other, simpler, air defense guns stood manned by solitary Balboan soldiers. These were in the open; they had to be manned to be credible. More bait.

  Within a radius of fifty or sixty miles of the base more than twelve thousand reservists and militia of the First Legion (Mechanized) waited in their homes or clubs with pounding hearts and with their issue rifles at hand for the call to report to their units at Lago Sombrero. Some of the legion’s wheeled vehicles had already been dispersed to pick-up points to bring the reservists in a hurry when called. Still others had their private vehicles and pickup rosters. Some would go to pre-planned pickup zones to await helicopters, assuming any survived the initial Tauran onslaught. Buses from what Carrera liked to think of, and hoped was the case, as the “hidden reserve” would take still more.

  All this was known to both the Taurans and the UEPF. Indeed, it was knowable, in broad terms, to anyone who cared to study. Without the threat of those reservists, and hundreds of thousands more like them, waiting for the trumpet’s call, the Taurans would probably never have jumped.

  Not everything was known though. Carrera would have bet—in fact was betting—that six secrets had been kept. Inside the ammunition bunkers was one of those six real secrets. Hidden away, as they had been for the last three days, roughly eleven hundred young Balboan troops waited, unknown to anyone outside of a very small circle. They were little more than boys, most of them; the average age was just under sixteen.

  The boys had been painstakingly smuggled in from their military academy just after the most recent outbreak of tension between the Tauran Union and Balboa. They had found in the bunkers a complete set of all the equipment needed for them to form a mechanized cohort, a very big cohort.

  “But it’s as perfect as I can make it.” Carrera turned and left his post outside the bunker, going inside to speak with the commander of the hidden force.

  Once out of possible observation, Carrera lit a cigarette. The smoke drifted up and hovered about the ceiling of the bunker. “Rogachev, are you ready?”

  Unseen by the light-blinded Carrera, former Volgan Army major, and current legionary tribune III, Constantine Rogachev nodded in the affirmative. Rogachev was a typical, even a stereotypical Volgan: a short, stocky, hairy bear. Above his round head and light blue eyes was a thatch of blond hair bright enough to gleam in the flash from Carrera’s lighter.

  “We’re as ready as we’re going to be, sir,” the Volgan answered. “All of the vehicles that are going to start are topped off with full fuel tanks. The ammo is loaded. My cadre knows its mission . . . well, the mission is simple enough. Let the Taurans land. Pop out of these shitty bunkers. Get in formation. Drive off their close air support, and crush them with armor.

  “The only thing that has me worried is the traffic jam we’ll have trying to get out of this place and into formation.” Rogachev shrugged ruefully. “Couldn’t really rehearse that. If the Taurans notice us, or the UEPF does, and a couple of thousand tons of steel moving is very noticeable, sir, they could destroy us before we’re properly deployed.”

  “I know the risk, Tribune. There is nothing to be done about it, except get your air defense systems out first, before anyone really notices.”

  Rogachev nodded briskly. “Yes, sir. We know that’s the plan.” He chuckled, apparently at himself. “Maybe I’m nervous about it because that’s all that could go wrong. A soldier has to worry about something after all.”

  Carrera laughed a little. “Indeed we do. Fine. I’m going back out. I suggest you get your boys into their tracks now. It can’t be too much longer.” Carrera threw his cigarette to the ground and stepped on the glowing ash.

  Outside again in Balboa’s thick, even stifling, air, Carrera did climb to the top of the earth-covered bunker. He lifted his night vision goggles to his face before turning them on, lest their green glow betray him to a possible sniper. He then scanned the sky through the grainy, green image.

  Was that a flash? he wondered, looking toward the west. Maybe.

  From this position he could even see part of the airstrip itself, one spot where an air defense gun’s radar dish spun on its axis. Even if its radar picked up something, there was no one on board to see and report it.

  Carrera’s question of a moment before was answered. He saw the first impact of a homing missile—Radar homing? Contrast imaging? Terminally guided? Who knows?—as the SP air defense gun disappeared in a great flash. The echoes of other explosions told of similar bombs hitting elsewhere around the field. Each concussive blast was felt in the form of rippling internal organs at least as far away as the bunker.

  Carrera hated that feeling. Even so, he looked up and smiled. If you were planning a long war, he mused, these bunkers would be the better target. But you’re not; you’re planning for a very short one. Amazing how often such plans fail to quite work out.

  Overhead the screech and sonic crack of the jets was nearly loud enough to drown out rational thought. In Carrera’s view, one of the barracks expanded and crumpled from a direct hit by an aerially delivered bomb. Vainly, a lone and very brave Balboan gunner fired his air defense gun into the sky. Carrera could see his tracers rising in the black night and then more as another gun joined him. He made a mental note to check the boys’ names for later—Carrera assumed they would be posthumous—awards.

  The Balboans’ tracers didn’t rise for long. What Carrera had almost seen a few moments before was the shadow of a Federated States of Columbia-built aerial side-firing gunship. This now poured down a stream of fire.

  Like something from a science fiction movie, thought Carrera. The defenders’ guns went silent, both of them. And gunships. Hmmm. So it’ll be the Anglian Paras, not the Gauls’. They’re the only ones outside of the FSC that have gunships. That’s a pity, he thought, and meant it. I’d hoped they’d stay out of this.

  The air shook as more fighter-bombers raked over the legionary base. Down came regular unguided—dumb—bombs, 20mm cannon shells, rockets, cluster bombs. Had there been any serious opposition on the ground around the airstrip these might well have broken it, even though well dug-in troops were not terribly vulnerable to air attack.

  Joining the air armada now came a flight of half a dozen helicopter gunships, presumably flying out of the Tauran-held Transitway Area, or perhaps even from something at sea.

  Hmmm . . . more proof of Anglians.

  The helicopter gunships didn’t carry anything like the airplanes’ firepower. They made up for that lack, however, in the attention to detail they could apply to a mission. By the glow of the burning buildings, Carrera could make out the gunships’ track as they shot down legionaries attempting to flee from them.

  Holding a fist in front of his chest, Carrera spoke out loud to himself. “Now,” he commanded to no one who could hear. “Now! Report that the area is clear enough to jump.”

  Carrera’s order, or prayer, or wish, was quickly rewarded. Under
the bright moonlight, he saw the outlines of the first of twenty-four medium and fourteen large cargo transports and troop carriers, approaching the Lago Sombrero airfield. Coming in low, Carrera thought maybe just over one hundred and twenty meters, these planes began disgorging their loads—over fifteen hundred Paras of the Royal Anglian Airborne Regiment. At that altitude the Paras didn’t even bother with reserve chutes. If their main parachutes failed there wouldn’t be time to open the reserves anyway.

  I wonder what friends I have up there, jumping to their deaths.

  The first of the medium transports made its pass over the airfield and surrounding cleared area in about forty seconds. Then, duty discharged, it turned to head for home. Others, in a long double trail behind it, were still dropping troops. Hundreds of these were already on the ground struggling to free themselves from their parachutes and harnesses. When Carrera was sure that enough had landed to guarantee the others would also land despite any danger, he shouted down to Soult, “Jamey, radio silence off. Get on the horn to fire the caltrops. Tell Rogachev to roll.”

  Outside, on both sides of the airfield, plastic drums began blowing up. The explosions were mostly low, though linear shaped demolition charges to cut the tops off the drums were high explosive. The tops being cut off, the lower explosive charges lifted the drums’ cargo, tens and hundreds of thousands of stiff plastic antipersonnel caltrops, up and out, scattering them across the open area. It was confidently expected that the average landing paratrooper would be stabbed at least twice, about two inches deep, in the course of landing.

  The boys must have felt the shuddering bombs and rumble from the caltrop projectors, even deep down in their concrete hides. If it frightened them, there was little evidence of it. Carrera heard song, boyish voices supplemented by older ones, coming from the now opening vault doors:

  “A young tribe stands up, ready to fight.

  Raise the eagles higher, mis compadres.

  We feel inside the time is right,

  La época de los soldados jóvenes.

  High, from His Heaven, the God of battles calls us.

  Ahead, in ranks, march the ghosts of our slain.

  And in our hearts no fear of falling.

  Legion, Patria, through the steel rain!”

  Carrera looked skyward, past the incoming transports, and whispered, “Enjoy the show, Marguerite.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Strike ’til the last armed foe expires.

  Strike for your altars and your spires.

  Strike for the green graves of your sires,

  God, and your native land.

  —Fitz-Green Halleck, “Marco Bozzaris”

  Alfaro’s Tomb Gates (back gates), Brookings Air Force Station/Fort Muddville, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  NDI had only taken over security for the site where the Tauran women had been tortured and killed scant hours before. Even then, it had been a couple more hours before authorization was granted to release the troops that had been guarding it.

  Exhausted from searching and guarding, as well as from the perennial worrying that was a signifer’s lot, young Boyd let the thrum of the bus’s engine and the steady droning of the wheel lull him to sleep on the drive back from the warehouse. The driver’s instructions were to take the men to a point in Ciudad Balboa from which the troops could easily walk to their homes.

  For all that he was bone weary, the signifer slept uneasily in the front seat of the bus. His mind, asleep though he was, noted his body being pushed to the right, and automatically adjusted for it, as the bus made a sharp left-hand turn to avoid going through either of the checkpoints the Taurans had at the rear of the two installations. Boyd came half-awake when he heard a shout, in French-accented Spanish, for the bus to halt.

  Looking out the front window, Boyd saw a machine-gun-armed vehicle—a Sochaux S4—blocking the road. The driver pulled a lever to open the door as the signifer arose to his feet. Then Boyd went for the door, intending to go outside and explain. Surely the Tauran would appreciate that this was the unit that had found so much evidence concerning the murder of the Tauran women. As he descended to the ground, Boyd heard, though did not so much understand, a shout of alarm from the half-dozen Tauran soldiers he could see. Surprised, he gripped his submachine gun more tightly and turned toward the shout. It was with greater surprise that Boyd saw bright yellow blossoms blooming from the muzzle of the Tauran machine gun. His surprise was short lived, however, since the gun was pointing directly at him.

  From the west side of the bus a platoon’s worth of rifles and machine guns, hidden in the jungle that bordered the road, began to riddle it from one end to the other. Balboans caught dozing died with spasmodic jerks without ever understanding what was happening to them. A few—brave souls or determined—tried to shoot back. They were quickly silenced.

  Finally, a burst of fire with at least one tracer punctured the gasoline tank. Flames began rising through the floor. Even unwounded Balboans began to scream as the flames found them.

  Still the Tauran fire continued. In action already and with a deadlier action fast approaching, the Taurans were far too keyed up to cease fire, except to change magazines. Finally, with flames from the bus beginning to rise dangerously, the Taurans withdrew a short distance to a safe position. The footsteps were followed for several minutes by a lone Balboan’s screaming. The cries didn’t stop until the bus blew up.

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

  De Villepin swore as the report of the “fight” at Brooking’s back gate came in over the radio. Then, thinking how little good a mere fifteen minutes’ warning was likely to do the legion, he relaxed, shrugging the incident off as a mere matter of timing.

  In the Operations Room, in an even deeper part of the Tunnel under the hill, the chief of staff paced nervously from wall to wall. While he paced, staff officers and noncoms posted the latest reports of the troop movements that were expected to catch the legion largely unmobilized and unprepared for the invasion. Radios crackled with reports of helicopter lifts taking off, flights of medium and heavy cargo aircraft reaching checkpoints in the air or landing at Tauran Union controlled air fields, armored vehicle convoys reaching their release points and lines of departure. At this point in the Tauran Union’s invasion of Balboa the chief had little to do but fret. The intricate planning had been done months and years before. Every known legionary mobilization point and headquarters had been assigned a force adequate to either overrun it or, at least, keep it from mobilizing before an adequate force could descend to take it out. The chief of staff, Moncey, stopped pacing from time to time to look over the chart that tracked the movement of troops to their assault positions. Of the ninety-seven legionary targets listed for action by Tauran forces at H Hour, each a distinct operation in the plan, virtually all were moving on schedule. None were off schedule by more than a few minutes.

  The chief strode to the main operations map and asked to be briefed.

  “Sir,” said the watch officer, a rather bored seeming Sachsen Oberst, “the friendly situation is as follows: the fighters are about two minutes out from their main targets at Lago Sombrero and Herrera Airport. Those are eight sorties each of fighter-attack aircraft plus the usual support. Other, smaller, packages are aimed at the following legionary dispersal sites.” The Oberst’s pointer tapped a number of locations about the large, horizontally laid, map.

  “The Anglian Paras are in the air less than eighty kilometers miles from Lago Sombrero, south of it. The Gallic Parachute brigade is closing on Herrera, also from the south. The Sachsen Panzer Battalion is moving up the InterColumbian highway toward Nuevo Arraijan. They should reach the town in about twelve or fourteen minutes. They’ll cross the border in two. The highway into Cristobal has already been cut. The Four Hundred Tenth Infantry and Four Hundred Seventeenth are in their positions to take out the Castilian Battalion plus the legionary tercios at Fort Melia and Lone Palm. The jungle school
is guarding the locks and dam on the Shimmering Sea side already. The Four Twentieth Dragoon, plus one company of Sachsen Panzers, are in their assembly areas ready to roll down on the legion’s Second Corps headquarters. The Thirty-fifth Commandos are already seventy percent on the ground around Fort Guerrero and their other jump-off points . . .”

  The Sachsen continued for some time in that vein. Eventually, the chief was satisfied. From the operations room, he strode to the C-1/C-4 sections—Combined Admin and Combined Logistics. From the latter’s charts, all supply categories looked adequate.

  The J-1’s wall charts held the chief’s eyes for some time, especially the anticipated casualty chart. To the chief, four hundred and seventy-five to five hundred and fifty dead—most of whom were going to be Gauls—seemed a very high price to pay.

  Balboa Railroad, Isla Repressa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Railroads, Pililak discovered, have their crossbeams set the distance apart they are not for any reasons of strength, or economy, or anything remotely like that. Oh, no; they’re set the distance apart they are because that distance is shrewdly calculated to make it as painful as possible for a human being to walk on them. Bastards. No good rotten motherfuckers. Stinking shits. Why, why, WHY did you old-time railroad builders have to make the things just that far apart? They make everything hurt. You didn’t even know me; why did you hate me already?

  The rain that had been beating down on the girl let up momentarily. She didn’t expect the respite to last, of course. In the last few days since crossing the water and nearly being killed she’d seen more rain that she had in her entire life back home in Pashtia.

  How do the people here stand it? she wondered. That and the heat . . . always the heat . . . always the rain . . . they must be very fierce. But of course they are or my lord would not have chosen one of them to be his mother.