by Tom Kratman
“I don’t think there will be many survivors on top of this hill. I also think there’s going to be a court-martial or board of inquiry over this,” Cruz announced to her. “At the very least over the swine I had to shoot. What did you see?”
Truthfully, the woman answered that she hadn’t seen much; just some hand-to-hand fighting and the large oaf to whom she had offered herself.
“All right, that may be useful. What’s your name?”
“Lydia. Lydia Frank.”
Cruz looked around him until he spotted a soldier who looked fairly calm. “Corporal Leon! Post!”
A legionary junior noncom ran up and stood at attention in front of Cruz. “Si, Sargento-Major.”
“Take this woman—her name is Miss Frank—down to the tercio POW area. Make sure she sees all the dead Amazonas on the way. Special tag her as a possible witness to what happened up here. If anything happens to her, Corporal Leon, your balls will be my kids’ dog’s breakfast. Do you understand?”
“Si, Sargento-Major!” Leon had no doubts whatsoever that Cruz meant it.
As the woman was led away, she thanked Cruz for the first time for saving her life.
The officers were all forward. Cruz waited for the slaughter to burn itself out before taking control of currently uncontrollable men. Never give an order you can’t enforce.
Only at the great steel doors that barred the way to the Tunnel did the slaughter atop the hill stop. Except for Cruz’s female POW, none of those caught above ground were taken prisoner. None escaped that hadn’t made their escape long before Second Tercio showed up.
Even as he watched, engineers began affixing four shaped charges to the great steel doors, intending to make holes in them for the gasoline some others were unloading from a light truck sent up from below. They ran det cord from one shaped charge to the next until all were linked.
Another squad was about to take axes to the huge air conditioning unit before their centurion stopped them, shouting, “No, you stupid shits. We want to feed them all the air they can take. Can’t make a fire without oxygen, after all.”
It’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight, thought Cruz.
Private Brickley and Gefreiter Czauderna had taken one look at the building massacre, then ducked into the Tunnel and slammed the doors shut. There was some beating on the door, very faintly heard, for a while, but that had given way to a series of sharper raps which had then given way to silence.
Their commander, Hauptmann David Lang, stood by, wondering, How do I let the Balboans know we’d like to surrender? Do I even have authority to surrender? Do I need any authority? After all, my men really can’t resist anymore.
“Wait here,” he told the two enlisted men. “I’m going to go . . .”
KaaawhoomFFF!
None of the three really knew what hit them. All that the privates knew was that they felt as if every square inch of their bodies had suddenly and simultaneously been struck by baseball bats. Lang didn’t know that much. He’d had the misfortune of standing precisely were a hot jet from the shaped charge burned through. It burned off his face and eyes at the same time, setting his screams to reverberating down the long, concrete-lined tunnel.
And then they smelled the gasoline. It poured along the down-sloping floors. The privates set off running for below. They didn’t see it when a burning flare was pushed through one of the shaped charge-created holes, soon to be followed by a completely unneeded other.
At that point it became a race between fast-flowing, burning gasoline and stunned, staggering, bouncing-off-the-walls-while-trying-to-outrace-it privates.
The gasoline won the race. It was never really a contest since blast doors farther on had activated automatically once the shaped charges went off.
Herrera International Airport, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
The Gallic Para Brigade was no more, barring only prisoners of war and a few die-hards being flushed out like rats. Split from north to south, artillery overrun, under pressure from all sides, the men of the brigade had—mostly on their own—surrendered.
When the men of the Eleventh Tercio retook the airport terminal, they spread the word that all of the cadet defenders appeared to have been killed. It was only the timely intervention of the tercio commander—and his fully sincere threats of summary execution—that kept his soldiers from lining up their hundreds, rather thousands, of prisoners and shooting them.
So reluctantly, the paratroopers were spared. In a short time they had been separated into eight groups. The seven groups of the hale were marched west to temporary captivity. At the Balboan legate’s command, the wounded Taurans—and there were many of these—were treated equally with his own by his scanty medical resources.
Unfortunately, it was at the time when the POWs were at their greatest density, formed in a long, thick and winding column, that a Gallic Air Force relief mission flew overhead.
Unknown Hurricane Fighter-bomber, over Herrera International Airport, Balboa, Terra Nova
The new pilot—a senior lieutenant fresh out of flight school—was frankly terrified. Pulled from his warm bed and warmer Cienfuegan bedmate, filled to the brim with coffee, scarcely briefed on his mission and superficially briefed on the threat, he had been nervous since well before takeoff. Even the in-flight refueling he had done over the Shimmering Sea had been sloppy.
Scared or not, the kid intended to go in. His mission commander’s chatter kept him informed as the threat materialized below. Christ! Training was never like this! the kid thought as flak began to blossom around his plane. He forced down bile and pushed his stick slightly forward.
There they were, the bastards. The kid saw a column of soldiers. At least he assumed they were soldiers, though he couldn’t possibly have seen any weapons. He bore in.
Shit! Shit! His warning buzzer had sounded. Some SOB had a radar lock on him. Where are the fuckin’ EW folks when you want them? he asked of no one. He continued on.
“Missiles!” came over his radio. A sixth sense told that one, maybe more, were meant for him. But he was brave. In the last fraction of a second of life remaining to him he made a final minor correction to his aircraft and released his bombs . . . all of them.
His instructors would have found no fault with his aim.
The Eleventh Tercio commander promptly threw up when he was driven to the scene. More than two hundred and fifty Tauran POWs, and nearly thirty of his own men, were shredded beyond recognition. They were shredded beyond recognition as human beings let alone as individuals. In a tree hung an impaled corpse. Balboan? Tauran? Who could say? The uniform had been ripped off by the blast along with all four limbs and the head. The remnants were darkened by bruising and smoke.
Still, nearly half of those in the impact area had survived, even though this had been a perfect saturation attack on perfectly exposed troops. But the survivors were in no fit state to help the wounded.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
But blood for blood without remorse
I’ve taken at Oulart Hollow
And laid my true love’s clay-cold corpse
Where I full soon may follow
As ’round her grave I wander drear
Noon, night and morning early
With breaking heart when e’er I hear
—Robert Dwyer Joyce,
“The Wind That Shakes the Barley”
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
The submarine moved ahead slowly but steadily. Twice in the last half hour, the Tauran ship had changed course slightly. Now, again, they were heading back toward the Meg. In ten minutes, ten at the most, she would pass directly overhead.
At his XO’s expectant look, Chu nodded gravely. Maybe, he thought, I should come up to periscope depth but . . . no, the Earthpigs are possibly aiding the Taurans and who knows how far down into the water they can see?
“The carrier’s a big whore,” said the skipper. “It�
�s going to take two solid hits to be sure of sinking her. A cynic, or someone used to Volgan quality control, might say three. The replenishment ship, though, is dead meat with just one. I’ve only got two control units. So . . .
“Weapons, set up attacks on the carrier and the replenishment ship. Fish One to WCU One for the carrier. Fish Two to WCU Two for the replenishment ship. Set torpedo speed for slow. Passive search mode. Set up Fish Three and Four for high-speed and active-passive search. Assign them to the WCUs as soon as the latter are free.”
“Targets for Three and Four, Skipper?” asked the exec.
“I want the follow-ons for a quick attack on the carrier,” replied Chu. “Report when ready.”
“Ready one . . . ready two, Skipper.”
Chu and the XO stepped up behind the weapons console operators, then shared each a sideways glance. The glances as much as said, Oh, my God this shit is real. We’re firing. We’re going to kill people . . . a lot of people. Oh, shit.
Came the commands, crisp and clear, “Fire One! Fire Two!” Chu watched the weapons operators, each steering his torpedo into the sonar signature of his target. Chu put his hand on the shoulder of the operator on the second console. “Son,” he said, “be ready to set up on the carrier as soon as you have acquisition with your fish.” The operator nodded. “Yessir.”
CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
Onboard the escort ship Hengshui a sonar operator puzzled and concentrated on his screen. “Damn pistol shrimp!” he cursed. Weary from constant false-alarms by the torpedo alert function of the sonar system, the copy of a stolen Gaul design, he touched a button and used his track-ball to mark an area on the screen.
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
“Aquisition on two!” reported the operator. “Hand off two, cut wire on two, set up number four on the carrier!”
Chu looked expectantly at the operator on console one. “Aquisition on one! . . . Hand off, cut wire, set up three! . . . Ready four! . . . Ready three!”
CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
The sonar operator on the Hengshui put his hands on his earphones. His face rapidly lost all color. “Chief! I’ve got a torpedo on bearing 172!”
“Nĭ de lăo mŭ,” muttered the senior chief. It was a Mandarin expression ripe with meaning. In this case, though, while “Your old mother” was a literal translation, “What the fuck?” would have been a fairly good idiomatic translation. The antisubmarine warfare chief looked at the principal warfare officer. Both were also wearied by how the torpedo alert algorithm reacted to the noise signature of the Bay of Balboa’s pistol shrimp colonies. He inserted the plug of his earphones into the supervisor slot on the sonar console. When the PWO saw him abruptly straighten in obvious shock he frantically pushed the talk buttons on both the ship and the task force circuits. “Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo on bearing Tango Three Uniform 165!
“Sir, I hear two torpedoes! I have got to get the urgent attack out!”
An “urgent attack” was a counterattack designed and intended to disrupt an incoming attack. At the very least, it’s hoped to force an attacking sub to cut its guidance wires.
The PWO with one hand hurriedly turned a dial on the lightweight torpedo weapon console while placing an icon on his screen display using the other and his trackball. He pushed a button, announcing, “Viper away. Dogbox established. Dogbox expires minute four.”
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
“Fire three! Fire four! Hand off and cut wire as soon as the fishes have left the safety zone! . . . Three cut! Four Cut!”
“Nav, dive. Let the ammonia chill and flood tanks. Do not release noisemaker. Increase speed to nine knots with glide. Cut jet pump speed when we have enough forward movement to glide. We’ll glide to the side; drop under the layer, turn, rise, and engage again, if necessary.”
Anshan, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
“Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo in bearing Tango Tango 165!”
Also saying, “What the fuck?” the CIC watch officer nevertheless reflexively pushed the ship’s circuit’s talk button. “Step aside port! Launch torpedo countermeasures!”
Admiral Yee had been on deck, greeting new arrivals, when the announcement came and the deck began to tilt as the carrier sped up with the rudder hard over. “What the fuck?” he asked of the universe, as he began to trot across the flight deck, heading for the CIC. “What the fuck?” Yee repeated, as he entered CIC after hurrying through his ship as it heeled over sharply into a tight turn. The CIC watch officer however was listening to the Hengshui’s PWO’s latest announcement on the task force circuit and picked up the microphone for the 1MC. “All hands! All hands! Brace for torpedo impact. I repeat . . .”
The Anshan lurched as nearly seven hundred pounds of high explosive went off under her keel.
“What the fuck?” Yee repeated, rising unsteadily to his feet from the deck where the blast had thrown him. He repeated, as he entered CIC. “What the fuck? We weren’t attacking anybody? Why this?”
CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
“The second torpedo is homing on Sierra Five Romeo! . . . Shit, that bucket of an oiler won’t survive a hit! We have no helicopter in readiness for ASW. I have to form a ship search attack unit.”
“Loud torpedo noise in bearing 169!”
“Damn! They are going for the kill on the Anshan! So much for the urgent attack.”
Hengshui’s captain announced, “I am forming Golf Romeo Two and Uniform Echo One into a SAU with us for a line of bearing search. Handing the rest over to Delta Six Echo; he needs to take over On Scene Command for the rescue operations.”
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
“Sir, I’ve got a lightweight torpedo sonar on intercept. It’s weak. Probably above the layer and off bearing.”
“Keep below the layer and on course,” ordered Chu. “We need to further separate from our attack bearing!”
CIC, Anshan, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
The Anshan had taken damage, leaking damage, to one side. To compensate for what the pumps couldn’t handle, a minimal amount of counterflooding had been ordered. This kept the ship aright. There was even minimal propulsion power available on number three shaft.
The pattern of jammers ejected by the Anshan shortly before the first hit transmitted broadband noise and random active sonar pulses in the presumed torpedo frequency. Meg’s torpedo four, however, passed right between two of the jammers—just damned bad luck, really—then acquired solid lock on the Anshan. It exploded in almost the same spot under the ship’s keel as had its predecessor.
“Damage report!” The ship’s XO called in. “Captain, I can’t tell you what’s holding her together. But I’m looking at her keel and she’s never going to make port on her own. One more hit, sir—two at most—and we’re going down. And, sir, power will be out in a few minutes. There’s a damaged cable and water . . .”
Torpedo three had been confused by the jammers and passed the Anshan on her starboard side. Its electronic brain noticed that its original impact time had passed and switched to reattack mode, turning sharply.
CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
The Hengshui and her two co-escorts had shaken down into a line-abreast formation and continued searching down the initially reported torpedo bearing while the rest of the ships tried to rapidly close with the stricken Anshan and the oil slick under a towering column of smoke that was all that remained visible of the replenishment ship.
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bah
ia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
With the time for the fourth explosion having passed and still eager to sink the carrier Chu ordered a tight turn—forty degrees—and neutralization of buoyancy. The sub slowed as it lost the ability to glide on its outsized fore and aft diving planes. In effect, it stalled.
Chu let the sub continue under its engine power for a mile and a half, ordering the ballast tanks to be slowly and silently warmed. With the ammonia in its condoms beginning to boil, the Meg rose slowly.
“Come to periscope depth.”
The XO looked doubtfully at Chu. “What about the Earthpigs?” he asked.
“Fuck ’em,” answered Chu. “I want that carrier. And the sonar picture is too confused. Set up five and six for snapshot on wake-homer!”
“But . . .”
“Look, Exec, the Earthpigs were dangerous when the task force had the carrier to hunt us, if they’d told the carrier about us. They can tell all they want now, that whore’s not launching anything anytime soon. So they can see us if they want.
“Now do it!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova
Chu’s periscope had been picked up by radar.
“Riser! Riser on bearing zero-eight-six, eight kiloyards!” The PWO cried out in frustration. “Damn, we’ve passed him by and he is out of our lightweight torpedo range. Golf Romeo Two! Attack Riser with ASROC!”
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
Chu took a quick look with the periscope. If the target had been less enveloped in smoke, he might have seen some indicator that it was a neutral ship. All he saw in his quick glance was the top of the superstructure and a fragment of flight deck.
“There is the carrier! Bearing Three-One-Three! Mark! Snapshot five down Three-One-Three!” He swiveled on to the left. “Damn! There are three escorts searching for us! Bearing Two-Six-Six! Mark! Snapshot six down Two-Six-Six!”
Chu saw the smoke column of a vertically launched antisubmarine rocket rising above one of the escorts. “Nav! Emergency dive, hard starboard rudder come to course Zero-Two-Five! Launch type two noisemaker now!” Chu bit his lips and quietly damned his own eagerness.
