PROLOGUE
Office of the Supreme Commander,
Coalition Forces, Ravenette
A heavy explosion shook the walls, causing a fine cloud of dust to fall gently onto General Jason Billie’s desk. That was immediately followed by several wump-wump-wumps as friendly coastal batteries answered the enemy cruiser firing several kilometers out on Pohick Bay.
“Missed again!” Lieutenant General Alistair Cazombi grinned. The artillery dueling was getting to be a daily occurrence for the army cooped up on Bataan. General Billie never batted an eyelash as he brushed the dust off his desk. He’s getting used to the bombardments, Cazombi reflected.
“Would you have a cigar, General?” Billie shoved the humidor across the desk.
Now that’s unusual, Cazombi thought, the supreme commander offering anyone except his chief of staff a cigar. What’s he want this time?
“No, thank you, sir.” Billie raised his eyebrows at the refusal. “You issued an order against anyone smoking in here, don’t you recall? The air-filtering system can’t handle all these men smoking, much less exhaling, down here,” Cazombi elaborated.
“Ah, yes. Well, General, I never intended that order to apply to senior officers.” Billie sighed, helping himself to a Clinton. Soon a foul blue cloud of tobacco smoke rose up between the two generals. “These are exquisite smokes, Alistair. Sure you won’t have one?”
“Positive, sir. I prefer Davidoffs, when they’re available. Besides, if my men can’t smoke, I don’t think I should.” It had become a standing joke among Cazombi’s small staff that when he came back into his office smelling of cigar smoke, it was a sure sign he’d been in to see the supreme commander, as General Billie preferred to be called.
Billie inclined his head and regarded Cazombi through the smoke. “RHIP, General,” he intoned.
“I’d rather not, thank you just the same.”
Goddamned prig, Billie thought, shifting his cigar from left to right in his mouth. Then: “We’ve got to find out what the hell he’s up to.” Billie nodded toward the sound of the naval bombardment. “What kind of an intelligence network did you have before I got here?”
“I didn’t. I was a depot commander, remember? I had neither the personnel nor the mission to set up an intelligence network. General Sorca’s division G2 had someone planted in Ashburtonville as I recall. A female sergeant. She was able to develop some pretty reliable intelligence before she disappeared.”
“Umpf. An enlisted person, and a female at that? I’ve never put much stock in human intelligence, Alistair. Too damned impressionable. What we need is electronic surveillance.”
“Lyons’s damned antisatellite lasers have been playing hell with Admiral Hoi’s string-of-pearls, sir, and our aerial reconnaissance flights have been very costly in men and machines. We need someone to go in there and knock those guns out. I’d call for immediate deployment of Force Recon elements—”
“General, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for that Marine poop-and-snoop propaganda!” Billie snorted. “What we need is eyes-in-the-skies. You’d think Task Force 79 would have fixes on those guns’ emissions and could take them out when they fire! Damn, what good is that fleet up there to us?” Billie puffed exasperatedly on his Clinton.
“The enemy are using laser cannon with passive sensors, they’re undetectable until they fire. Somehow, they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of the guns. Take one out, and another crops up somewhere else. You have to admit, they’ve been effective. You’ve seen the reports from Admiral Hoi and your own G2’s evaluations, sir.”
“Yes, yes, yes—” Billie snorted impatiently. “I know all that, I’ve read the reports. But damn! Where’s the innovation up there, Alistair? Where’s the original thinking, eh?”
“If the Combined Chiefs hadn’t disbanded the army’s long-range reconnaissance units, we could send our own men out to—”
“Humpf.” Billie gestured with his cigar. “That was a very wise move, General, as you should know. We had to reduce our budget, and with all the money we’d been spending on technology, it was only logical to eliminate the costs of maintaining human intelligence programs. Pure and simple.”
General Cazombi suppressed a sigh. “As I recall, sir, that was done because the Chiefs envisioned combined operations that would rely on Marine Force Reconnaissance so the army’s Rangers and so on were considered a redundancy.”
“Um. Yes. Well. Hmmm.” Billie puffed on his cigar in silence for a while, sidestepping the direction the conversation had taken. Like all conservative army officers, General Billie harbored a deep distrust and resentment of any elite unit, regardless of service affiliation.
Cautiously, as if scratching it, Cazombi put a hand to his nose to suppress a violent sneeze he felt coming on.
“General, I want you to get on this problem,” Billie said at last. “Get in touch with Admiral Hoi in his ‘ivory starship’ up there. Goose him to find a way to take out those guns, before they kill his satellites.” As if the enemy were listening, a series of powerful explosions shook the command post.
“Jesus!” someone exclaimed.
“First thing I want Hoi to do is eliminate that goddamned naval presence out in the bay,” Billie said, banging a fist on his desk.
“General, consider it done.” Cazombi got to his feet and saluted. Yes, and he knew exactly how to do it.
Office of the Deputy Commander, Coalition Forces, Ravenette
“Sir, you’ve been in with the supreme commander again,” Brigadier Ted Sturgeon, Confederation Marine Corps, observed wryly.
“Yes, Ted, I have. As soon as this campaign’s over, I’m burning every piece of uniform and clothing I’ve been wearing down here,” Cazombi chuckled. “But our supreme commander has given me a task, and I want you to help me with it.”
“You name it, Alistair.”
“It’s an easy one, Ted, and I hope I’m not insulting your Marines by asking them to do this for me. Just go out there, behind the enemy lines, find those damned antisatellite laser batteries, and knock them out. While you’re at it, look around a bit. See what Lyons is up to, count noses. Maybe even pull off a few raids and ambushes, get the enemy off-balance. Then come back here and tell us everything we need to know about his capabilities and intentions and the deployment of his forces. Think you can handle that?”
Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon, commander of the Thirty-fourth Fleet Initial Strike Team, stared at his friend silently for a long moment. “Aye, aye, sir,” he responded, and made as if to leave.
“Ted? Have a cigar?” Cazombi reached into a cargo pocket and withdrew a portable humidor. He opened it and shook out one Davidoff Anniversario. “It’s the last of Cazombi’s Zombies, Ted, and I’d like you to share it with me on this momentous occasion.”
“Thanks, Alistair, but General Billie issued an order—”
“Oh, we won’t smoke it, Ted! Heaven forbid!” Cazombi produced a small cutter and sliced the cigar in half. “Seems a sin to treat such an exquisite cigar this way, but we can sure chew on it. While you’re doing that, chew on what I just said. How do you think we can do all that?”
“Force Recon.”
“Precisely! Ted, I’m surprised at how goddamned smart you’ve become since you first met me.”
“But we don’t have them. And before they can be deployed, we’ve got to get the supreme commander’s approval to conduct the missions. I think under the present circumstances, that is not going to be forthcoming.”
“Wrong. I just got that authority directly from General Billie. He told me to get with Admiral Hoi and figure out how to take out the laser guns that’ve been shooting down his satellites. He didn’t say how. I have sent a message to the fleet commander, using my authority as General Billie’s deputy, requesting help from Fourth Recon Company. Once they have completed their first mission, I’ll let General Billie know what I’ve done. Nothing succeeds like success, Ted, but if he doesn’t like it, let him fire me. What do you think of them apples, Brigadier?”
“I think I am truly astonished at how devious you have become since you first met me,” Sturgeon answered. They laughed long and hard and chewed happily on their cigars.