"We eat and then we shit. Do we eat in vain?"—The Great Helmsman, on guerilla warfare
"We kill you. Then we slaughter your sons to half-extinguish your line and sell your wives and daughters to dishonor the other half, sparing and taking only the youngest, converting them, and using them against your cause. Have we killed you in vain?"—Patricio Carrera, on counter-guerilla warfare
In the setting sun, as far as the eye could see, military encampments stretched out. To the north, northeast, and northwest were three large camps holding one legion each. These were minus most of their armor, four-fifths of their Cazadors, all their aviation but for a half dozen each Crickets and medium lift helicopters for command, control and medevac, and some of their engineers and artillery. Near the airfield to the south of the town were three camps, one for the Cazador tercio, one for the Salah al Din brigade of Sada's Sumeri Presidential Guard, and—to either side of the strip—one large one for the three cohorts of aviation formed into a single, large ala.
On that strip, and nearby it on helicopter pads, troops boarded aircraft. Qabaash's brigade filed quietly aboard sixty-seven IM-71 medium lift and a dozen IM-62 heavy lift helicopters. Theirs was, in many ways, the toughest mission, involving, as it did, the deepest insertion to block the Ikhwan from either reinforcing the operational area or escaping from it.
The seven provinces that comprised the legion's initial objective for pacification were infested with insurgents. They could be expected to run as soon as the battle turned against them. This was no cowardice but merest good sense. When they ran, as Carrera was certain they eventually would, Qabaash's battalions would have to stop them and, moreover, they would have to stop them largely on their own, without artillery support, and with only limited support from the air.
Of course, there were other passes. Qabaash couldn't hope to cover every little goat and camel trail. But with every easy pass over the mountains blocked, the Sumeris could at least ensure that little in the way of vehicles, heavy weapons, or ammunition, got away.
The Salah al Din was taking with it enough supplies for thirty days of existence, assuming they cut wood for fuel to cook their meals, and about three of full up combat. Emergency resupply was possible, but not something Qabaash counted on or Carrera felt he could promise. There was too much for the helicopters to do.
For the other places, the footpaths and goat trails, there were the Cazadors. These were going in via a mix of helicopters and Crickets, depending on the landing site chosen. While the choppers carrying the Sumeris would race almost directly for their objectives, the Cazador carriers would touch down anything from three to nine times each to confuse the enemy as to where they had actually dropped troops, or even if they had dropped troops at all. Most would continue to touch down even after leaving behind their passengers to add to the confusion. At some of the passes, and with the prevailing winds, Crickets could practically hover over a spot.
While the Sumeris, with three dozen heavy and twenty-seven light mortars among them, and being deployed in larger units, would be able to hold on on their own for some time, the Cazadors were not intended to fight much, if at all. Instead, they would call in aircraft or, as the rest of the force advanced, artillery on any enemy groups they saw trying to cross the mountains to the north.
Each Cazador team had, in addition, two sniper rifles—one in .34 caliber for long-range shots and one in .51 caliber subsonic for closer-in work—to engage individuals and small groups. Still, the Cazador teams' primary weapon was the radio.
The enemy had some radios. They had a great many satellite and cell phones. For those, Carrera had a special trick.
Miguel Lanza was getting a bit long in the tooth to be flying attack missions. Still, commanding the entire deployed portion of the ala, over four hundred aircraft, he felt the urge, the need, to lead from in front. He'd never gotten the hang of helicopters, though he'd tried. The g's inherent in flying the CAS, or close air support, mission were getting to be a bit much for him. By he could, by God, still fly a transport converted to a bomber with the best of them.
If Lanza had assembled all of his medium transports, he could have lifted a grand total of perhaps three hundred, two-thousand pound bombs. This would have been enough to scour mostly free of human life perhaps ten or fifteen square kilometers. That was a drop in the bucket for an objective area of this size, perhaps a tenth of a percent. Oh, yes, they could have extinguished a guerilla company or two, maybe even three. That would not have much mattered.
Instead, Lanza's transports were going to drop some very special bombs, one or two over each of the several hundred spots that the Federated States' Office of Strategic Intelligence had indicated held a body of guerillas of platoon size of better.
A red warning light flashed on the instrument panel of Lanza's cockpit. He spoke into his throat mike, "Stand by to roll in three minutes."
The crew chief answered back, "Roger, three minutes."
Lanza's aircraft was flying at very near its maximum altitude of ninety-two hundred meters. Given the power of the weapon they carried, this seemed hardly enough to Lanza. As soon as he felt the plane lurch as the bomb fell away, he accelerated to his maximum flight speed of four hundred and seventy kilometers per hour and hauled ass to get as far away from the bomb as mechanically and aerodynamically possible. Lanza had absolutely no desire to lose every bit of avionics in his bird to an overpowering flash of electromagnetic pulse.
The bomb was contained within what appeared to a standard two hundred and fifty-kilogram casing. That appearance was deceiving; the casing was made of a nonmagnetic material, epoxy resin in this case. Inside, moreover, instead of the usual explosive component, the bomb contained a much smaller amount of explosive, a capacitor, three reels to release long wire antennae, a stator coil and a number of other things the precise nature of which was classified at a fairly high level.
Along with those other things, and this was not classified, was a global locating system guidance package that would guide the bomb in on a set of coordinates punched in from the cockpit. This particular set of coordinates happened to correspond to the headquarters of Noorzad's group of guerillas, now grown to the size of a small battalion.
The bomb knew none of this, of course. It "knew" that its capacitor was suddenly powered up and cut free of the power source from which it had been drawing. At the same time, it "knew" where it was. Shortly thereafter it "knew" it was falling even as it "knew" where it was going and how to navigate to that point. Almost the last thing the bomb "knew" was that it had reached a preset distance over the target. At that point the three thin wire antennae deployed. Shortly after that, the bomb reached the point of optimum detonation. After that, it didn't "know" anything.
"Look, I am telling you, I know they're on the move—"
Noorzad was speaking into his cell phone, talking with Mustafa's functionary, Abdul Aziz, back in Kashmir, when there was a significant explosion several hundred meters overhead.
It was far enough overhead, however, that it struck Noorzad as more on the order of a large mortar shell than the dreaded aerial bombs the FSC dropped with such terrible accuracy. And yet he was, so Noorzad knew, most unlikely to be within range of any of the infidels' mortars.
He decided it was harmless and returned to his conversation.
"As I was saying Abdul . . . Abdul?"
Noorzad pulled the cell away from his ear and looked at it. It didn't seem any different, except that it had gone dark. He shook it a few times, then tapped it with his finger. Nothing.
"Give me your phone, Malakzay," he ordered.
Malakzay took his own phone out of a pouch on his ammunition belt and pushed the button to turn it on.
"Nothing, Noorzad. It's dead. I checked it just this morning but—"
"Shit."
Noorzad noticed another explosion, also seemingly small, a kilometer to the east where lay one of his companies. Farther away, other flashes briefly lit the night sky before disappearing. The guerilla chieftain had a sudden sense that those lights indicated that other lights, the lights of seeing and knowing, were going out.
A sudden thought occurred. "Malakzay, your phone was turned off?"
"Yes, Noorzad. You know what a pain in the ass it is to recharge the batteries."
"That means that whatever weapon the infidel is using can attack our electronics even if they're shut off." He paused, thinking hard, before exclaiming, "Quick, get me half a dozen messengers, fast and smart men on fast horses."
It was commonly believed that Samsonov's boys had recruited one group of Pashtun for Carrera. At one level, this was true: there was a central department for the Pashtun Scouts (numbers of whom were not actually Pashtun). At another level, though, it was false. There were several more or less independent groups. One of these groups was composed of four hundred and eighty-seven honest-to-Allah horse cavalry, supplemented by a small group of twenty legionaries detached from various cohorts and tercios to direct and maintain communications with legionary headquarters.
These now splashed on horseback across the Jayhun River, which separated the city of Thermopolis from Pashtia proper. The river was low, this late in the season, but still as icy cold as if it were full of the annual snowmelt.
The cavalry carried rifles and machine guns, of course, and even had a section of light mortars. Still, there's nothing like cold steel between real men and every Pashtun on horseback also carried a lance and a sword. Tradition; that was the thing.
A very small detachment had crossed early, three days prior, at a ford nowhere near as good as this one. They'd crossed, ridden deep and then circled around. The mujahadin guards watching the ford had seen nothing amiss in twenty-one riders, looking for all the world like their comrades, coming up from behind. And then, from the distance of twenty yards, the lances waved in greeting had lowered. Spurring their horses, the scouts had charged, spearing the guerillas like so many boar.
Those same forward scouts now stood in their stirrups, wearing genial smiles and waving their comrades forward with the heads of their erstwhile enemies.
From the mass of horsemen winding their way through the flood, two emerged and, forcing their way up the riverbank, rode to join the Scouts as they waved their lances and severed heads. Of these, one— Rachman Salwan—was another Pashtun, though he had some odd, non-Pashtun words in his vocabulary. The other was one of the legionary officers, Tribune II David Cano of the Fourth Tercio, on detached duty to the Scouts for the campaign.
Cano had been hand-selected for the job—along with nineteen others, officers, centurions, and noncoms—by Carrera, Samsonov, and a Pashtun, Subadar Masood, recommended by Samsonov and flown specially to the island. Following selection, the twenty had been given a crash course in Pashtun by some of the Volgans who still had pretty fair fluency in the language and a few Pashtun flown in for the exercise. Still, at best, so Cano thought, he spoke a pidgin.
Despite the lack of real fluency, Cano had taken so well to the Scouts, joining them at their meals, discussing their lives and their problems, playing some of their tribal games, that Rachman Salwan had taken a liking to him and taken him under wing. Being senior in the tribe among the young horsemen who'd signed on with Samsonov's recruiter, Rachman served—unofficially, since the cavalry scouts didn't have a very formal chain of command outside of the legionaries placed over them—as the senior noncom for the squadron.
"Praise them, Sahib," Rachman advised in a whisper, "but not too much. Tell them, 'Aafaran!'"—bravo—"Tell them they were 'dzhangyaalay'"—courageous—"But do not promise them any reward yet. The heads and the honor are enough for good Pashtun serving in the field."
Cano appreciated the advice; Rachman was more a friend or even a brother than a subordinate. He stood by his stirrups, waving a rifle and shouting to his men—yes, my men—of their valor and their skill.
Nur al Deen scratched his head with puzzlement while Mustafa tapped his fingers with irritation. Both men watched underlings mark the large map of Pashtia that hung on one rocky wall deep in their underground complex near the Pashtian border. Each mark represented a group of mujahadin with which he had lost contact or with which his headquarters still had communications. There were many more of the former than of the latter. The rest? Were they dead? Hiding? Engaged? He didn't, couldn't, know.
"You know," he muttered, "I am really beginning to hate this group of infidels."
After tugging absentmindedly at his beard for a few minutes, and playing with his worry beads for a few more, Mustafa stood and returned to his quarters. Once there, he closed the door behind him, went to a small casket and removed from it the device given him by High Admiral Robinson for direct communication.
"Robinson here, Mustafa. I see the problem."
"Seeing does me little good," Mustafa snarled. "What is it? What can you do about it?"
"They're using EMP—electromagnetic pulse—bombs, frying the internal workings of your phones and radios," the high admiral answered. "I can't do anything about it. We have none aboard the fleet and the only things I do have that can generate electromagnetic pulse are nuclear weapons. As we've discussed, I can't use those. Given time and warning, which I didn't have"—time to have a little chat with Intelligence, I think—"we could have hardened your radios and phones against them. Even now I can send you some simple methods to protect what you have in the north of the country. But the southern part? No, too late. We could manufacture some EMP bombs ourselves and slip them to you, but not in time to do you any good. I can advise you of enemy movements from up here but—"
"But I have no way to get the information to my fighters on the ground," Mustafa finished. "They'll have to escape on their own."
"I fear that few of them will, Mustafa. The enemy has blocked all the major passes and most, I think, of the minor ones."
"Then we are helpless."
Cruz Apartment, Ciudad Balboa, 14/9/467 AC,
Cara sighed helplessly. Ricardo had his eyes on the television screen, a bottle of rum in one hand, a glass of some local cola in the other. Nothing she'd been able to do had pulled his attention from either rum or television since the legion had commenced operations in Pashtia. Sometimes, she thought she saw him rub at his eyes. Tears? She didn't know and really didn't want to find out.
God, what have I done to him? she wondered. He doesn't eat. He isn't studying. He won't pay any attention to me or the children. I thought he would learn to be happy . . . happier, here with us. Why aren't we enough for him?
Was I just selfish, demanding he get out of the legion? I don't know. I do know that if he'd stayed in he'd probably be over there now and it would be me watching the television for any sign of him and worrying myself sick. So what did I do? I substituted his misery for mine. Maybe that wasn't fair.
But he's my man, not the legion's. I own him. My rights are superior to theirs.
Again she sighed. But are they superior to his?
The town ahead wasn't much, perhaps two hundred houses, a mosque and a few stores. Even so, it promised resupply and some refuge from the eyes in the sky.
The plane, blotted out by the sun, wasn't even a dot to Noorzad when it began its dive. His first warning was when a horse screamed—always more horrible than the scream of a man—as large- caliber bullets pierced its torso, flinging it in blood to the ground.
The column, which had been trudging wearily to the mountains to the north, and safety, suddenly erupted in bedlam. Men shouted; animals squealed. Then came the sound of the enemy's machine guns— a brrrrp of explosions so close together they sounded like cloth ripping—and the whine of its engines as it pulled up and around for another pass.
Soon, much sooner than could be accounted for by a single plane, a salvo of rockets erupted overhead in the glare of the sun. Flechettes, they had to have been, as pockets of men, horses, mules and donkeys were scythed down along the line of march. Some of the horses were felled with as many as a dozen of the finned nails entering their bodies and then tumbling to slice out inch-wide routes through their flesh. Men, small targets as they were, might take half as many. To the targets it made little difference.
Many of the riflemen and machine gunners returned fire as Noorzad had trained them to. Unfortunately, he had trained them to engage helicopters and relatively high performance jets. These new infidel planes made a hash of their training as they fired and turned without ever entering the curtain of fire thrown up by those on the ground.
Should I have stayed and fought where I was? Noorzad wondered amidst the confusion. He shook his head. No, that would have just gotten my entire group isolated, surrounded, and destroyed. It is more important to preserve a seed, a kernel, from which more mujahadin can grow.
Noorzad lifted his eyes heavenward and saw both of the enemy aircraft twisting in the sky. He thought, but could not be sure, that they had their canopies pointing downward. The aircraft separated, one moving to the north of Noorzad's band, the other to the east. He thought the one that flew to the north was farther out than the eastern one.
This, too, was different from what he was used to. Normally he'd have expected the aircraft to make a pass or two, drop some bombs, fire some rockets, and then move on. To have the infernal machines . . . linger . . . well, that was disturbing.
As he'd thought, the eastern plane was closer. It came in, low and menacing. It fired its machine guns in bursts, veering slightly southward with each ripped-cloth roar.
"Cut the lead! Cut the lead!" Noorzad tried to shout over the din. No matter; his men, such as were firing, were too intent on their hoped-for target, or seeking cover from its guns, to listen.
In the confusion, Noorzad lost track for a moment of the plane that had gone to the north. Suddenly remembering, he turned his eyes in that direction and saw that that enemy bird, too, was diving in. He saw a glint of dull light; from the undercarriage, so he thought.
The thought brought absolute terror. Noorzad had seen silvery canisters under aircraft before.
"Naaapaaalm!"
Some of his followers heard his shout, saw the aircraft bearing in, and followed Noorzad in running out of its line of flight. Even the heavy bullets of the other plane held small terror in comparison to being burned alive. Still, many did not hear or, if hearing, did not understand. These kept their positions and either hid or fired as the mood and their degree of manhood took them.
Noorzad looked behind himself as he ran. He'd guessed right, he saw, and took no satisfaction in it. From underneath the second aircraft, the one from the north, two cylinders tumbled end over end until reaching the ground. There they broke apart, spilling their incendiary contents along two parallel straight lines with almost no dispersion. The burning stuff moved like a mini-tsunami, passing around the boulders and covering such of his men who'd remained behind in fire. Their common howl of utter agony sounded even over the roar of flame, engine and machine gun.
We've got to split up, Noorzad thought, breathlessly. Together we're simply too inviting a target.
Noorzad took a hiding position between two boulders and pulled out his map. Yes, there were enough small towns like Sanda that he could hope to hide the bulk of his force while he escaped with the small, hard core that had been with him for years.
Press conferences with the legion were rare, very rare.
Still not rare enough to suit me, thought Carrera. Even so, I suppose I owe it to the legionaries left behind, and the families of those who are here, to let them know what's happening.
The limited number of pressies, deliberately limited, actually, was clustered around Carrera in a town square in front of a mosque that was little more than rubble.
The whole town was considerably the worse for wear, Carrera saw. With the awful task of blocking escapes, driving the enemy from a roughly triangular area two hundred miles wide and one hundred and fifty deep, and searching out the thousands of little towns and villages, and likely cave complexes, his forty-eight maniples of infantry, fifteen of Cazadors, and dozen of mechanized troops were, to say the least, stretched.
Still, the town had blocked the only possible supply route from Thermopolis and so the problem of the town had had to be solved. He'd solved it by flattening the town in substantial part. Not for him the risking of his own troops to limit collateral damage and loss of civilian life. He didn't have enough troops for that and the collateral damage meant almost nothing to him.
"They know we're coming," he'd said. "It's up to them to get out of our way, not up to us to tiptoe around them."
Not that he'd blasted the town indiscriminately, far from it. Rather, with his one hundred and eight long-range, Volgan-designed and built 152mm howitzers, his thirty-six Tsunami multiple rocket- launchers, hundreds of sorties by Turbo-Finches and Nabakovs in the bomber role, and, over the last twenty-four hours, his thirty-six heavy mortars, he'd pounded every known and likely enemy hiding position with considerable precision, aided by real time reconnaissance from both his own air assets and the FSC's.
Since the enemy insisted on trying to hide among civilians, however, his precision had meant more civilian casualties rather than fewer.
"Tough shit," he said to a reporter who asked about civilian casualties. "If they want to save civilians, let them not hide behind the women's skirts. I'm certainly not going to pander to their deliberate violations of the laws of war."
One might have thought that the global press would have intervened and interfered. They said not a word. They'd learned, over the years, the legion had no compunction about killing members of the media they considered to be in the enemy camp. There was not, in fact, a member of the FSC's or Tauran Union's press within thirty miles of Mazari Omar. And of the members of, say, the Islamic world's press, particularly al Iskandaria . . .
"That's them over there, gentlemen," Carrera told the remaining assembled members of the Fourth Estate, all carefully vetted members of the Balboan and other Northern Colombian media. "Yes, those dozen swinging from the lampposts. We caught them with enemy propaganda in their video recorders. They were then duly turned over to our Pashtian allies who tried them and hanged them as enemy combatants found not wearing uniforms. The chief mullah for my Pashtun, Mullah Hassim, approved the sentences completely"
Not all the buildings of Mazari Omar had been damaged. Most were, in fact, still standing and even in reasonable repair. Of these, many were requisitioned by the legion. In the case of public buildings there would be no recompense, though the few owners of private real estate that the legion needed were compensated with cash on the spot.
In one such, an apartment building of three floors that had the distinct advantage of having a very open ground floor, the MI, or military intelligence, maniple had set up shop.
Larry Triste was not in command of the MI maniple; that was far too low a posting for the Intelligence Officer for the entire deployed corps. Still, the MI maniple worked for him; its commander, a Tribune III, took his orders from him. Sometimes, that same tribune muttered, "I'm not in command. I'm just the XO for Legate Triste."
That wasn't quite fair but it was at least understandable. And Triste really did try to keep his hands off the day to day running of the maniple. Still, when he asked . . .
"Goddammit, where did that fucking guerilla battalion go that the air engaged by Sanda yesterday?"
. . . people hopped to find the answer.
"Sir," answered a junior warrant, "If you'll look over here"—the warrant pointed at a map hanging on one wall—"we've tracked that battalion for the last several days. Based on their normal daily progress, and accounting for slowing down as the hills begin their ascent to the mountains, they're somewhere between Sanda and this pass." The warrant's pointer touched lightly on a spot where the track ran through a ridge.
"They're not there, however, or at least not in the strength we've been tracking."
"Yeah, so? Where are they? What strength are they in?"
The pointer touched lightly on seventeen towns spaced about three miles apart within an oval on the map.
"We think they've split up. We think that one group, maybe the core of the battalion, took all or at least most of the horses and ran for it. That would explain why we can't find them where they ought to be. The others are likely in these towns."
Triste sat silently for a minute, gazing at the map and thinking on it. Finally, he nodded his head, once, decisively.
"I think you're right. Get me the ops shop."
They'd worked out the technique over the long campaign in Sumer. It was helicopter intensive, infantry intensive, and military intelligence, military police, civil affairs, and PSYOP intensive. Thus, the legion could not do it everywhere simultaneously.
The first the townspeople of the targeted area knew of it, it was announced by the drone of well over one hundred helicopters bringing in two heavily reinforced cohorts of infantry supported by dozens of highly visible attack aircraft flying escort. The townsfolk's initial instincts were to fight. Initial instinctive urges to fight often wither when faced by overwhelming force.
The helicopters landed in a swarm, like locusts, everywhere. The troops they carried disgorged with practiced, professional speed and ease, and then raced to surround every town in the target area, plus another eight outside of where they expected the enemy to be. Loudspeaker teams from a psychological operations maniple accompanied the infantry. These advised the townsfolk not to resist, but to stay inside until they were ordered out. A single battery of 160mm mortars, set up just outside the target area, began to register fire at points outside the towns to reinforce what the PSYOP people said.
When fire came from one town, the heavy mortars, the attack aircraft overhead, and a single maniple of infantry reinforced with fourteen Ocelot light armored vehicles attacked brutally, destroying the town along with most of its men. The PSYOP teams broadcast the result of that resistance and the attack, as a warning to others. Indeed, only women and children were spared, and that only where practical.
Sanda was picked as the first town to be cleared as being the most likely to contain terrorists. The townsfolk were ordered to line up and come forward in single file to a point west of the town. They were met by troops from the MI using dogs specially trained to smell women. When people wearing women's clothing that did not smell quite right passed the dogs, the canines alerted.
Three of Noorzad's band were caught that way and carted off for rigorous questioning.
Other dogs sniffed for explosive residue and weapons oil. Several more terrorists were captured. Another was shot down on the spot for being a potential suicide bomb. The legion preferred to use shotguns for this purpose as they had much better immediate knockdown and endangered bystanders less. People behind the victim suffered little beyond being splattered with blood and bits of flesh.
From the initial dog-sniffing station the townsfolk were sent through a medical station that not only administered inoculations but also drew blood for DNA samples. There, too, everyone was subjected to facial recognition imaging which went directly to military intelligence. The DNA results from the medical screening would arrive at the MI headquarters sometime in the next twenty-four hours.
Men were then separated from women. The men were kept under intensive guard and required, on pain of death, to be utterly silent. One shooting was sufficient to make the legion's determination in this regard very plain. The women and children, on the other hand, were left in groups and much more lightly guarded.
It was with the women that questioning began, the interrogators being among the relatively few—and absolutely critical—women in the Legion del Cid. "Who is your husband? Who is your father? How many brothers do you have? What are their names and ages? Where are they? Your sister is where? Married to whom? Look at this picture. Who is this man? Look at this one. Is that your father? Your brother? Look at this one. Is that your house? No? Who lives there?"
By day's end, the legion had a complete family tree for the town of Sanda, imperfect only insofar as someone had lied. It also had some leads and partial family trees for some of the neighboring towns.
And that was where the DNA came in. Noorzad had dispatched thirty-two of his men to Sanda after his column was attacked. Those men could threaten the townsfolk into lying for them. They could not fool the DNA analysis that identified them as genetic outsiders. Of that thirty-two, eight had already been captured or shot. The remaining twenty-four were ostentatiously separated out from the rest of the men and, again, sent for rigorous questioning.
At that point blankets, water, and food were passed out to the men.
Only then, when the rest of the men in the town saw that the most serious immediate threat to their families was identified and removed, were the men questioned, privately and individually. In particular, the MI folks were interested in who within the town could reasonably be said to be part of the infrastructure of the guerillas. Those that were so identified, in secret, were further questioned. Some were sent away for more serious inquisition. After questioning, the rest were taken, one at a time, to search out portions of the town and especially the houses the women had identified as their own.
At about that point certain discrepancies crept up. Those responsible, male or female, were taken away to be questioned, once again, rigorously. Most of the discrepancies were cleared up in fairly short order. A few more people were sent to trial as potential guerillas. All of those were sentenced to be shot. Most then decided that discretion was, after all, the better part of valor.
The quality of voluntary information delivered to the MI suddenly grew to amazing heights. Sentence was then suspended, and prisoners released, on the understanding that if there were ever again any reason to suspect those half-pardoned people of further guerilla activity that not only would they be killed, but the legion would send their own auxiliaries, Arabs or Pashtun, back with pictures and orders to kill every relation on whom they could get their hands.
A few of the captured guerillas were kept on hand for further questioning. The rest were given a very quick trial, made to dig their own graves, and then shot.
Then the group, less one platoon to watch the town, moved on to the next.
In anyone else's army Sergeant Quiroz probably would have been a commissioned officer. He had a university education, from the University of La Plata. His IQ was in the range of the low 120s. He had no criminal record and was, all around, a good soldier, respected by superiors, peers and subordinates alike. Hell, Quiroz had been an officer in the army of La Plata.
In the Legion del Cid? "No, not good enough. Especially are we suspicious of you having been an officer in an army we consider, at best, fourth-rate. Centurion track is the best we can offer, and you'll have to prove yourself as a noncom first."
Thus it was that Quiroz found himself leading a nine-man squad of Cazadors, in a hide position overlooking a donkey track that led through a pass on its way over the mountains to the north. His nearest friendly neighbor was six miles to the east. And he didn't even have all his squad with him as five of the nine were sleeping in a hide some hundreds of meters away.
"Company, Sergeant," one of Quiroz's men announced. "Thirty men . . . no, thirty-one, on horseback with a donkey train. They look awfully tired. Might just be nomads."
Quiroz crawled up to the scout's position and gestured for his binoculars.
"No . . . not nomads. Nomads would have rifles but not machine guns. Those fuckers are heavily armed. Hmmm . . . more than we can take in a heads up fight."
The sergeant scuttled backwards, snakelike, and pulled a map from the cargo pocket on the leg of his trousers. He knew, generally, how far the advance of the Legion had gone and also knew that they were not yet in artillery range. Even the rocket launchers wouldn't reach so far from the very front. And those, being soft-skinned, were rarely right at the front.
"What's available for air?" he asked his radio-telephone operator, or RTO.
"Nothing, Sarge. I asked. Well, there are two Turbo-Finches heading this way but they're each carrying loads of scatterable mines for further up the pass. Not even any gun pods."
"Mines, huh? Tell them I want those aircraft." Quiroz glanced at his long-range sniper. "Salazar, what's the range?"
"About fifteen hundred meters," the sniper answered. "It's a pretty long shot. They'll start to run right after the first shot too, and then I'll never hit them."
"Can you make that shot?"
Salazar wet one finger and held it up in the breeze. "Possibly," he answered, reaching for the waterproof case to his rifle. "Just possibly. If I had a 'forty-one' I'd be a lot more confident."
"Get ready to try."
"Roger."
Quiroz looked at the last man in the group, a new private, and said, "Go back and wake the others. Bring them here, loaded for bear."
Hard, hard, Noorzad mourned, in thinking of the men he'd left behind. Hard it is to break up this band I worked and fought so hard to build. Hard to lose the company of comrades until we meet in Paradise. Hard to hear the screams of the wounded and the dying. Hardest of all to think that the horrible things I've done might be for nothing.
"No," he said aloud. "It can't be for nothing. Allah would never permit such a fate."
"Chief, we've got company," said, Malakzay, gesturing as he rode to Noorzad's left.
"Eh? Oh, shit, not again."
Noorzad looked over his shoulder and saw two of those damnable planes these infidels used. Even this small core of his band had been struck three times from the air in the last two days.
"They're just circling," he observed. "We probably don't look like much from above."
Malakzay looked around at the loose column and answered, "Maybe not, but from the ground we look a lot like what we are."
"They're coming low to look us over," Noorzad announced at the top of his voice. "Look innocent, boys."
The planes indeed came in low, not more than one hundred meters above the ground. At just about that distance from the tail of Noorzad's column they began emitting smoke as if from the mouth of a volcano. Noorzad's eyes caught numerous small objects— indeed, hundreds of them—erupting from squarish containers on the planes' undersides. The first of these hit ground yet, to Noorzad's surprise, did not explode. He was just digesting this bit of information when one of the cylinders in his view sent out what looked like six or seven almost invisibly thin wires with small weights on the end. One of his fighters reached for one of the wires.
"Sto—"
Boom.
Quiroz had watched with keen interest as the planes swept over the guerillas, dispensing their cargo. He didn't know too much of the technical details of the scatterable mines. From where he lay, though, it looked like the two Turbo-Finches had laid down a fairly thick pattern.
He saw in his binoculars as one of the guerillas reached over to touch either one of the mines or one of the tripwires they emitted. He then saw a good sized puff of angry, black smoke appear as that guerilla was tossed backward. Best of all, he saw that the guerilla didn't arise and that no one went to his aid.
"Salazar, you can take your shot anytime now."
"Roger, Sarge," answered the sniper, easing himself into firing position behind his .34 caliber, scoped rifle.
"Shit, shit, shit! These bastards are as evil as the Blue Jinn!" Malakzay exclaimed, glancing down at the torn and faceless body lying on the ground.
"Blue Jinn, indeed," answered Noorzad. "but cursing them does no good. How do we—?"
The bullet's crack came as a surprise. Not far away from the two a single man was struck down with a small hole in his chest and a much larger one in his back. As he fell he hit a mine's tripwire very near to where the wire emerged from the mine. The mine promptly jumped up and blew up, scattering guts to the wind. Another guerilla, too near to the explosion, went down shrieking and clutching at his groin where a largish fragment had torn off his scrotum and testes.
Quiroz grunted with satisfaction as he saw the guerillas drop. "Good shot, Salazar."
The sniper didn't answer. Already he and his spotter were scanning for another target. Unfortunately, the guerilla band had gone to ground—albeit not without setting off another mine. Of good targets they saw none.
After visually sweeping the entire area, the sniper announced. "No good targets, Sarge."
Quiroz muttered, "True, but only for some interpretations of 'good targets.' Buuut . . . kill the horses, Salazar. Radio; get on the horn and tell headquarters we've got a band pinned. Tell them we can't take them all and if they want prisoners they need to reinforce."
Quiroz stopped speaking for a moment, tapping his face with his fingers. His eyes settled on his assistant, Cabo Vega, then on the other sniper, Legionary Guzman.
"Vega," he said, "take charge here. I'm going to take Guzman forward and act as his spotter. We'll be"—Quiroz finger pointed— "somewhere over by that boulder that looks like a tit. Keep on the horn nagging headquarters to get some infantry here."
As usual, Noorzad found the screaming of the horses somehow more disconcerting than the screaming of his own men. After all, was not the horse especially praised by Allah? And yet the Holy Koran held out no hope of Paradise for them, even should they be killed in God's cause.
The one good thing Noorzad could see was that the enemy fired infrequently, however well. It must be only the one sniper, he presumed. Thank Allah for small favors.
Then came the moment when two beings, a man and a donkey, screamed out almost simultaneously. That told him there was a second sniper team out there. Worse, perhaps, while he could make out both the shot and the sonic boom of the initial sniper butchering his men, this new source of fire made neither. That, that possibility of being killed silently, was terrifying.
"Malakzay?" Noorzad called out. "Are you still with me?"
"Yes, Sahib. Here I am."
A bullet snapped overhead. A miss, thankfully. Yet another struck a rock nearby but that one made no snap beyond the striking of the lead on the rock. The snipers had given up on surprise and, to an extent, even very careful shots. It was as if they were trying to hold the mujahadin in position for some greater menace. That was worrying, as well.
Noorzad hesitated. He hated giving the order. But . . . crack!
"Pass the word to stampede the horses straight up the eastern side of the trail, herding them north."
"But Noorzad . . ."
"Just do it!" he snapped.
It was only a couple of horses, at first, Quiroz saw. Quickly that brace became a herd and, moreover, a herd with some riders in it as a few of the enemy used the horses to try their own breakout attempt. The horses set off mine after mine. But what would fell a man immediately didn't necessarily do the same with animals five times bigger. It was a strange and horrible scene, the more horrible as more horses were swallowed up in the billows of evil, black smoke only to emerge moments later trailing dangling intestines and broken limbs.
"What the fuck have you stopped firing for, Guzman?"
The .51 sniper shook his sturdy brown head and answered, "It's just too . . . nasty . . . sorry, Sergeant." He settled back into the stock to resume firing.
"I think the way is clear, Noorzad," Malakzay announced. "The last couple of animals standing made it through."
The sun was setting to the west now. Soon it would be dark. Did the infidels have their cursed night vision equipment? Noorzad had to presume that they did. But . . . he knew from his experience with the Taurans that the things were limited. He thought he could escape under cover of night.
Crack!
The sun was high overhead, casting a shadowless light down onto the gruesome scene. The Cazadors had come out, dressed in the pixilated tiger stripes they shared with most of the legion. Beside them, lined up on the road, were about one hundred tall, lean and fierce looking men mounted on hungry-looking horses. All stood well to the north of the minefield. It was long duration and was not supposed to self-detonate for another two weeks. Still, quality control at the factory being, at best, imperfect, it generally didn't pay to take chances.
"Quien esta el jefe aqui?" one of the ruffians asked.
Quiroz did a double take on seeing a mounted, bearded, dirty horseman who spoke such clear Spanish. He'd been advised over the radio of the Pashtun Scouts arrival, and so had held his fire. Still, the incongruous appearance of border bandit and good Spanish came as a shock.
He saluted the speaker and announced, "Sir, Sergeant Quiroz reports."
Cano returned the salute from horseback, then dismounted. "Tribune Cano, Sergeant, Fourth Infantry Tercio seconded to the Pashtun Mounted Scouts."
Cano took a moment to look around at the scattered bodies of men and horse. He put out his hand and said, "Damned fine job."
"Thank you, sir. We got maybe half of them. Maybe even two- thirds. The rest got away."
Cano heard the subtle rebuke. "We rode as fast as we could, Sergeant. But we got the word late and intercepted two small groups of guerillas on the way." Cano shrugged. Fortunes of war.
"What now, sir?" Quiroz asked.
"We're going to try to pursue up the mountains," Cano answered.
"Well . . . sir . . . make sure they don't do to you what we did to them."
"How could they, Sergeant? They are not men so good as yours, nor are my men so bad as them." Cano laughed, "And they don't have aircraft to drop mines on our heads."
In over a century and a half, no one had been able to strip the UN bureaucracy of its perks. No matter how constrained the budget, and in olden days it had been sometimes very constrained indeed, free parking was their charter-given right. Remuneration at the highest level found anywhere on the planet their just due. Generous educational benefits for their children only fair. Fresh water poured by human servants an utter necessity to the forwarding of their sacred work on behalf of mankind.
One of those servants poured now for the three-person hiring committee tasked with sorting out the right kind of people from the mass of aspirants.
"Goldstein won't do," said one of the committee, Guillaume Sand, placing the file aside.
"Of course not," agreed another, Ibrahim Lakhdar. "Like we accept Jews anymore. They've served their purpose."
"To be fair, Goldstein claims not to be a practicing Jew," objected the third, Alan Menage.
"It's in the blood," Lakhdar sneered.
Menage shrugged. No sense it getting Ibrahim all worked up over it. Besides, it isn't like I really care about the Jews.
"Here's an interesting one," said Sand, opening a different application file and diverting the subject away from Lakhdar's distressingly open anti-Semitism. "Louis Arbeit. Harvard. Sorbonne. Early volunteer work with International Solidarity Movement. Parents are both Colleagues of Proven Worth. Mother: Christine Arbeit, D1 with the Human Rights Commission. An up and comer, I hear. Father: Bernard Chanet, Deputy Director for International Disarmament. His grandmother recently retired from the European Parliament."
Ibrahim took the file, impatiently, and began flipping pages. When he reached the background information page on the applicant's father, he signaled one of the water servants to bring a telephone. He spoke a number and, after a brief pause, a face appeared.
"Bernard? This is Ibrahim Lakhdar, with the hiring committee. Yes, yes . . . I am normally with Human Rights. I know your wife. I was looking over your son's application and I was wondering if you might not give a little boost to my nephew. He's a fine boy and he's interested in working disarmament . . ."