by Tom Kratman
Moncey gestured with contempt at his former C-3, “And get that miserable piece of shit out of here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
And you know, sonny, there’s no bad shots at five yards’ range.
—Sinn Fein aphorism,
Traditional
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora, Via Hispanica, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
Among the many missions given to the ad hoc brigade of mountain battalions, which is to say, sometimes down to platoons and squads of mountain troopers, directly, an important one was to block major transportation arteries running through Ciudad Balboa. One, or rather two, of these crossed each other in front of the beautiful white church that fronted Via Hispanica. A mountain infantry company had air assaulted—come in by helicopter—early in the operation, the helicopters touching down near the fountain of a nearby hotel.
Two platoons of the company moved out from the intersection to block other roads, one moving up past the University of Balboa, one toward the sea. The company headquarters and mortar section stayed in the vicinity of the church, along with the remaining infantry platoon. Within minutes of the landing all of the vantage points overlooking the intersection had been occupied by at least a couple of soldiers each.
The troops at and around the intersection passed the first four hours with no more excitement than that provided by the original helicopter insertion. Their commander was not surprised by this. The local reservists and militia were from a battalion of the legion’s transportation tercio; they were not combat troops. Certainly, he thought, the same kind of unit in the Tauran Union armed forces would not be expected to put up much of a fight. Less was expected from part time support troops.
However, unlike some other armies, the legion did not believe in a line separation between support and combat echelons. Moreover, every officer and centurion was a graduate of Cazador School, hence guaranteed to be tough and to have a belligerent mindset. Lastly, even though the transportation tercio had a primary mission of moving troops and supplies it retained an official secondary mission of fighting as infantry. True, it was only trained to about one-third the standard of an infantry tercio, but that was not a contemptibly low standard. The drivers were trained to attack successfully with a ten to one advantage in numbers, to defend against even odds.
Moreover, unlike the combat tercios, where the leadership had to be offered up as bait to the Tauran Union, the truck drivers’ leaders were mostly at their homes in the city. So, while it had taken some considerable time for the platoons and companies to assemble, well before sunrise a battalion of truck drivers was in a position to attack the nearest Tauran soldiers.
The first news the Taurans had of this was when a leading squad of truck drivers stumbled upon a small team of mountain infantry on the roof above a ladies’ clothing store. Within half an hour, the southern side of the intersection was cleared of Tauran soldiers. Caught in the open, the company mortar section was driven—with heavy losses—away from their tubes.
Finding no opposition to the east and west, the transportation battalion had crossed the broad street, turned inward, and rolled up both Tauran flanks. Three dozen or so Taurans took refuge in the church. Repeated, desperate legionary assaults failed to dislodge them. Ultimately, the transportation battalion commander called off the attacks, though not before several dozen of his men had been hit. Their bodies were scattered all along the open spaces surrounding the church. Then, with the radios finally cleared, the Taurans used their artillery to good effect in keeping the truck drivers from massing nearby for an assault.
Sniping at the defenders continued.
Command Post, Gallic Twentieth Parachute Brigade, Herrera Airport, Balboa, Terra Nova
The colonel ducked instinctively as the air was once again torn by the blasts of Balboan artillery. “Can’t we get any goddamned air on those bastards?” he demanded. “They can’t be all that hard to find.”
The Brigade S-3 (Air) shook his head in negation. “There isn’t any to be had, boss. We’re on our own for now.”
The Operations Officer, the S-3, gave a triumphant shout. “Sir, Second Battalion reports they’ve finally gotten through the people who’ve been holding us up. We’ve got a route to the Third Corps Headquarters. It’s a damned narrow way, though.”
“That’s more like it,” said the colonel. “Put everything we’ve got into supporting Second Battalion.”
For the next several moments the TOC seemed more like normal. The brigade had broken through and everything was going to work out. Then came the message, “Sir, Third Battalion reports they’ve got tanks and infantry carriers moving up on them from the south. They are taking casualties.”
Four hundred meters east of the One Hundred and First Air Defense Artillery Caserne, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa Terra Nova
Though the caserne had been given up with no more than a token sacrificial fight, the officers, centurions, and men of the ADA had themselves by no means given up. From their humble houses to their neighborhood rally points they had gathered. Now, by platoons and companies, with no more than their government-issued but personally kept small arms, they moved forward to take back what was theirs—their guns and missile launchers—and then to fight for the skies over their country.
They moved raggedly. Though each man had gone through infantry training, close combat was not their primary duty. But there were nearly three thousand of them on hand.
Eighty-first Artillery Tercio Caserne, Alcalde Flores, Balboa, Terra Nova
The artillery was, if anything, even more ragged than the air defense when it came time to assemble an attack to regain the use of their guns. For one thing, more of their leadership had been trapped defending their buildings and artillery parks. For another, they had put in a hasty attack too early, while the Taurans were still in full strength and good form. This had been beaten back with considerable loss.
So they had waited for hours, gathering up their reservists and militia. The commander of the Tenth Artillery Legion now had nearly eight thousand men under his control. They were poised to retake four of the eight casernes that dotted the east side of the township. Still, the commander hesitated.
Then, a half hour or so ago, he had heard the flutter of dozens of helicopters. Mierde, he had thought. The bastard Taurans have been reinforced.
This had made him put his counterattack on hold. Little by little, though, he had come to suspect that the Taurans were not reinforcing but rather withdrawing. Finally, the commander had made his decision. He would attack.
Fire Base Eagle, Imperial Range Base Camp, Balboa, Terra Nova
Janier’s forces initially had but a single battery of cannon larger than 105mm, the standard light gun used to support light infantry. This battery consisted of six 155mm lightweight pieces attached to the airmobile brigade. Dug into a pentagonal-shaped fire base, surrounded by fighting positions and barbed wire, this battery had provided general support to invasion forces.
Some hundreds of miles away yet, the ad hoc division of Marines under Anglian command had three batteries aboard their transports. Likewise, two more full battalions were to be flown into Balboa later in the plan, about thirty hours hence. For now, however, one single battery was it for medium artillery.
Unlike the 105s, the 155s were able to fire scatterable mines. Unfortunately, the mines were strictly antiarmor, as the Tauran Union had sworn off using politically incorrect antipersonnel mines. Even had it not, however, there had been no reason, prior to the turn of fortunes in the invasion, to anticipate their need. Worse, while there had been artillery ammunition containing antiarmor mines available, it had not been convenient to locate and move to the battery.
Finally, however, the mine ammunition had been found, moved, broken down from its containers and made ready to fire. Unfortunately, since each round of ammunition contained but nine mines, the placement of a mine field west of the Bridge of the Columbias in support of the Haarlem Marines would take considerable time.
Around the single battery of 155s, another six batteries—the 105mm artillery of Gallic airmobile brigade, plus three much shorter-ranged guns from the mountain battalions, fired more or less continually in support of their own and other units. They were slower to respond to a situation that could have been described as chaotic than Tauran artillery was wont to be. Their GLS still insisted that the artillery was located somewhere other than where the artillerymen knew they actually were.
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
Captain Chu bit at his upper lip. Nerves, doubt—maybe too—regret, assailed him. “Sonar, have you nothing else?”
“No, Captain. Not since that one explosion,” answered Auletti, the sonar man. “The one that went off near where the Santisima Trinidad was supposed to be on patrol. The other sounds might—or might not—have been helicopters.”
“What of the carrier ship that passed by?”
“She’s still out there, noisy as hell, about eighty kiloyards away. She’s moving in a sort of box . . . back and forth, side to side.”
His orders had been to stay submerged and undetected until and unless fighting broke out between the Tauran Union and the Republic of Balboa and then to use his initiative to defend the territorial waters as he thought fit. Although the explosion could have been the signal to that outbreak, he did not think that it, alone, was enough. And there had been some kind of jamming that made civil radio reception impossible. Chu thought that, too, to be a signal for war, but was loath to start the war all on his own if he were wrong.
Suddenly signals looked up brightly. “Skipper, I’ve got reception. Estereo Bahia came through for me!”
“Skipper?” said Signals. “It’s the mobilization call . . . And there’s someone reporting live on heavy fighting in the City . . . people are fleeing their homes. A good chunk of the place is in flames. . . . But we’re holding our own, it seems.”
Chu’s face grew angry, then determined. “Auletti, any change of the location of that fucking Tauran ship. No? Helm plot a course. Take us as near as possible but first go down under the thermal. Speed six and a half knots. We’re going in quiet. Weapons, make a last check on your babies. That ship’s going under if I have to use all of them.”
One Hundred and First Air Defense Artillery Caserne, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
A few dozen commandos really hadn’t been sufficient to hold the caserne against the legion’s counterattack. Superb though the commandos might have been as light infantry, and relatively poorly trained though Balboa’s ADA people had been, as noninfantry, odds of nearly a hundred to one gave the Balboans a quality all their own. Sprawled and bleeding Gallic and Balboan bodies littered the grounds and rooms of the caserne. A few wounded prisoners, le Blanc among them, were being given first aid under guard.
The commandos had had just sufficient time to damage a few of the launchers and gun systems. Most were still quite serviceable. The commander of the tercio, with his maintenance chief, was just now in the motor pool sorting out the good from the bad and sending the good to their firing positions as quickly as their crews could be assembled.
Their munitions were not kept on board the heavy launchers. Balboa’s climate was far too wet for that. So the vehicles had to be taken to the bunkers and loaded. This was time consuming. Still, the ADA tercio, like most heavily equipped BDF units, had only forty or so percent of its equipment, enough to equip it to level II mobilization. The rest of the bodies, the militia, could and did speed the work of getting what they did have into action.
For the moment, Balboa had nothing but tactical air defense, the batteries and battalions assigned to the tercios and legions. Within a half an hour, possibly less, that would change. It was changing with every passing minute.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova
Her recent experiences in acting stood Esmeralda well for the moment. As the display being continuously updated by Khan’s crew showed the disaster unfolding on the Taurans, she was able to keep from cheering her distant cousins, the Balboans.
Inside, though, she still thought, Die, you swine, die. I know where your society leads and death is still too good for you.
The high admiral was past tears. She had to laugh at the scope of the disaster torrentially expanding below. She laughed again as one of Khan’s analysts exclaimed, “Shit, there goes another one.”
That was a Anglian Navy aircraft, the fifth so far, fireballing in the skies over Herrera. The analyst couldn’t tell if the pilot had been able to bail out or not; the skimmer they’d sent down had only so much discrimination. And it was hard to sort an ejecting pilot quickly from the other debris that filled the skies.
“Can you get locations on the launchers?” asked Wallenstein, pretty sure she already knew the answer.
“Sure, High Admiral,” Khan replied, “for all the fucking good it’s going to do. They’re moving after each firing . . . moving them faster than we can report if not see. And we can’t always see, either. The skimmer is low in the sky. The Balboans are using the buildings and trees of the city and jungle to get out of sight when they move. This shit was never meant to see through buildings, you know.”
“Are we feeding Janier what intel we can?” she asked.
“Yes,” Khan said, “but he’s not been able to make any real use of it.”
“Would it help if we broke in to the local telephone or radio net and began giving it directly to the Taurans at Cerro Mina?”
“Oh, don’t do that, High Admiral,” said Khan, wife. “We don’t want our fingerprints on any part of this disaster.”
“I think my wife’s right, High Admiral,” said the other Khan. “Besides, things are so far gone that nothing we can do short of dropping nukes—”
“Don’t even joke about that,” said Wallenstein.
“Yes, High Admiral. Sorry, High Admiral. But there’s still precisely nothing we can do.”
Southern Perimeter, Herrera International Airport, Balboa, Terra Nova
The commander of the airborne brigade entered the shack that served as his command post. The bodies had been moved but the bloodstains on the floors remained. He ignored them.
He had been out trying to get a better feel for the battle than the radio would provide. Artillery fire was coming in steadily now, far heavier than it had been even a half hour ago. If the colonel had to make a guess he would have said that he thought it was coming from around Alcalde Flores. The colonel shuddered as another aircraft overhead made the dot to the exclamation point of a Balboan missile.
“Well . . . at least the bastards are trying,” said the colonel to no one in particular. He turned to his operations officer. “What’s the word north and south?”
“Not good, sir. The Second Battalion is meeting increasing resistance . . . if they’re still advancing it’s at a crawl. And Third Battalion in the south is only barely holding on against increasing pressure.”
“All right . . . all right. Tell Second to hold on to what they’ve got. See what you can scrape up to help out Third Batt. If you can get a hold of the Navy or TUSF-B, put their air on helping Third.” The colonel swore, not for the first time that morning. “Goddammit, I wish we had some kind of armor, even a couple of shitty light tanks. Anything. Damn.”
“There’s one piece of good news, sir. The Balboans that were holed up in the terminal have been taken out. No survivors, sir.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Yes, sir . . . but sir, the First Battalion commander reports that they were mostly kids, not more than seventeen years old, with two adults. Most looked younger still.”
Along the northern perimeter of the airhead established by the paratroopers the pressure was increasing rapidly. The Eleventh Infantry Tercio was finally making its appearance, fully self-mobile troops and whatever could be stuffed onto a truck or jeep coming first. The tercio’s light armor, Ocelots, and medium and heavy mortars w
ere already driving the Gallic Paras into whatever cover they could find. There was little return fire from the paratroopers to interfere with the Balboans. Under cover of their supporting weapons they moved, mostly by squads and platoons, to assault positions close to the paratroopers.
When the Eleventh’s commander decided he had enough combat power forward, he would order the assault . . . with bayonets fixed.
Adjudant-Chef Jung knew this almost as if he were privy to the Balboans’ orders group. He had been trained as a soldier in his younger days, not a peacekeeper. This was not so true for most of the men of his company. They had initially been trained as soldiers, true. But years of worrying more about international peacekeeping than real fighting had dulled them. Still the Paras had been given less of this to distract them than other types of organizations had. They were not so dulled that Jung’s boot couldn’t send them back up to engage the Balboans. But he could only influence the men immediately around him. It would have taken many months of training for battle to have made them all risk their lives on their own.
Meanwhile, the Eleventh Tercio grew stronger with each passing minute.
East of Dahlgren Naval Station, Balboa, Terra Nova
The remaining Haarlem Marines, wounded and unwounded alike, heard the ominous sound of diesel engines through the fog and smoke. For better than an hour they had been listening to the faint puffs of overhead mine shells dispensing their cargoes. Few had bothered to count the number of incoming shells. They were too exhausted with the morning’s fight.
When the mines had first begun landing a fairly senior officer, a major, had walked the ragged line, informing the men what was happening. He told them to dig in as best they could. This they had done, shallow scrapings on the surface of the earth.
