Carnifex. Part 25

16/8/467 AC, Kirov Tank Factory, St. Nicholasberg, Volgan Republic, Khudenko and Kuralski clashed gla.s.ses full of vodka. "Vashe Zdorovie,"

The Volgan said. Your health. Your health.

The gla.s.ses were considerably larger than the usual fifty-milliliter jobs. Indeed, it took Kuralski several gulp to empty his though Khudenko managed with two. Practice tells.

"So your boss got the contract he wanted, did he?" Khudenko asked.

Kuralski grinned. "He did. He always knew he would. It goes well with you, Victor? With the plant?"

The Volgan put down his gla.s.s and extended his hand, palm down and fingers slightly spread. These he wriggled. So, so. So, so.

In explanation, he said, "We've never managed to acquire a second customer as good as the Legion, though we've made some sales to the oil wogs and a few in Uhuru, Colombia del Norte, and western Taurania. Right now we're operating at less than full capacity though, and it hurts."

Dan Kuralski reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a list he'd prepared in Cyrillic. "I think this can keep you fully employed for a while longer."

Khudenko scanned down the list quickly. "We can provide about half the armor from on hand stocks," he said. "The rest will take...say...five weeks. Is that soon enough?"

"It is if you can get it to the railhead at Thermopolis within three weeks after that."

"This, I think, we can do. But I'll need to hire a lot of guards for the trains. I think I can get a regiment from the army for not too much."

"We've already got a Volgan regiment for that. Don't sweat it."

Khudenko nodded. He knew about Samsonov's group and its relations.h.i.+p with the Legion. "We don't make the rest of what's on this list. You know that, right?"

"We don't want you to produce the other material, of course, but to acquire and s.h.i.+p forward," Kuralski answered. "I'm here for the next two months to a.s.sist in that."

"There will be many bribes needed. Large Large bribes. A third of the rolling stock in this country is in private, and generally criminal, hands." bribes. A third of the rolling stock in this country is in private, and generally criminal, hands."

Kuralski shrugged. "Whatever the market will bear. Money's not really an issue. There's something else we need, too. We'd like you to set up at Thermopolis a forward maintenance depot from your workers here to match the one you've set up in Balboa. We'll provide a rather generous bonus to them, if that helps. And Samsonov's boys will be staying on to guard."

Khudenko rubbed one hand across his face. He removed that hand and began to tap on the table, thinking hard.

"There's no way to both produce the tanks and and provide the depot. Unless...is it acceptable for us not to be ready until a week or so after the last equipment or supply train reaches the railhead?" provide the depot. Unless...is it acceptable for us not to be ready until a week or so after the last equipment or supply train reaches the railhead?"

"Mmm...sure; that will work," Kuralski answered. "We shouldn't have lost much or need much higher level maintenance until then, anyway."

18/7/467 AC, Isla Real, Quarters #1 The phone rang. Lourdes answered it, then called out, "Patricio, it's Adnan on the phone for you. The secure line."

Carrera patted her posterior lightly and took the phone. "Carrera."

"Pat, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, what do you think you're doing?" Sada shouted.

"Huh?"

"You're going to war in Pashtia and you forgot about me," the Sumeri chided. "And I thought we were friends."

"What are you talking about, Adnan?"

"You're going to war again," Sada explained, "and you haven't asked me for help? What kind of friend is that? What kind of friend leaves a friend owing a debt and doesn't let him try to pay it back. Harrumph!"

"Ohhh. Well...I thought you had enough problems at home."

"My biggest problem, friend, is that you've got Qabaash hiding his head in shame and throwing things at walls because you're leaving him out of this. Look, this is the deal and I won't take no for an answer. Over the next week Qabaash and one light infantry brigade-the Salah al Din Salah al Din-from the Sumeri Presidential Guard are going to fly to Thermopolis, along with the cohort from the Legion I have here. Don't worry about the expense; I'll cover it. The oil market's been very good to me."

"That's a good brigade," Carrera conceded, "and I'd appreciate having my cohort back, but, again, can you afford to lose it?"

He heard Sada sigh into the phone on his end before he explained, "Barely, but yes. Right now, Pashtia has problems because the lunatic Salafis lost here. If they win in Pashtia, they'll come back here stronger than ever."

"Adnan, if-no when-they lose in Pashtia, they'll come back to Sumer anyway."

"Yes, that's true, my friend. But if they lose in Pashtia, they'll come back here much weaker than they will if they win. So not another word. Qabaash and company are coming."

Carrera, unseen by Sada, nodded his head. There is faithfulness. There is faithfulness. There There is honor. Thank G.o.d for you, Adnan. is honor. Thank G.o.d for you, Adnan.

"I'll be expecting them, friend," Carrera said. He saw Lourdes mouthing "Ruqaya?" and asked, "Is your wife there? Lourdes wants to chat."

EXCURSUS.

From: Legion del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains, FSC) Legion del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains, FSC) The insurgency in Sumer, of course, continues today, albeit at a very low level. It is unlikely to completely disappear anytime soon.

With the gradual drawdown of the insurgency in Sumer, and the building up of the Sumeri security forces to the point where they were able to defend law and order and maintain control of the country without resort to wide scale terror and ma.s.sacre, it proved possible to reduce the commitment of coalition forces to the security mission. By 466, for example, the Federated States Army and Marine Corps were able to drop their troop commitment to two divisions, then one, plus equipment parks for three more. Since casualties had dropped to near nothing, this was a military commitment the Progressive administration in Hamilton could continue. Moreover, Sumeri contributions to the maintenance of these divisions, once the oil began steadily flowing again, made them little more expensive than they would have been had they been stationed in the Federated States. They were much cheaper to maintain in Sumer than in Taurus.

The war however, was far from over. Sumer had been only one campaign among many: Pashtia, Eastern Magsaysay, Kush and Amazigh also being active at some level. For that matter, the insurgency existed across the entire globe and was fought, in one form or another, wherever it could be identified and targeted.

The major advantage of fighting the largest of the campaigns in Sumer had been that, being so centrally located, it had served as a magnet for insurgent volunteers and monetary donations from all over the Salafic and Islamic world. Much of the success the Federated States and its coalition had met with elsewhere could be directly attributed to the pull of the Sumeri insurgency on the Salafi mind.

With their infrastructure within Sumer largely destroyed, these volunteers, and the charitable and religious front organizations that directed them on behalf of the overall movement, began to reorient themselves in the only place where they still had a chance of striking back to any effect: Pashtia.

Pashtia had seemed to the uneducated to be quite safe and secure in the anti-radical fold. What these missed was that it was in large part thanks to the insurgency in Sumer itself that Pashtia had achieved as much stability and progress as it had. Certainly it was not the number of troops committed there that brought about relative peace. Pashtia could not even support, due to lack of road, rail, and navigable river, any substantial number of first quality coalition troops. The infrastructure of Pashtia had not much improved over that found by the Volgan Empire during their abortive ten-year campaign there. If the Volgans had found themselves logistically limited to a corps of about one hundred thousand soldiers, the Coalition was unable to field more than half that number, which half required even more in the way of logistic support than the previous Volgan total.

The insurgents, on the other hand, needed little but willingness to fight and the most basic of supply. Uniforms were a detriment. Food and fuel were purchased or taken from the economy. Weapons were light and largely individual. A single column of five donkeys and a driver, moving at night and feeding off the local vegetation, was able to provide ammunition for an insurgent company sufficient for a month's operations.

Thousands of guerilla volunteers, the younger brothers of those who had once gone to Sumer, began to flood Pashtia by the middle of 467. These came in in one of four ways. From the east they came through Farsia, itself something of a model for theocratic dictators.h.i.+p and always eager to confront the Federated States and its allies or to help those eager to fight them. From the north, Kashmir-populous and somewhat radicalized, and never really exercising control of its common border with Pashtia-saw thousands of young men flock to the cause. In the south, the ongoing war between the Volgan Republic and its own Islamic radicals turned the entire area for hundreds of miles to either side of the border into, from the radicals' point of view, one big war zone. From the Volgan and FSC points of view, there were two which should have been one but which could not, for political reasons, be joined.

Of course no small numbers simply bought tickets, boarded aircraft, landed in Pashtia's capital, Chobolo, and disappeared into the countryside.

It is estimated that some ten thousand guerillas entered Pashtia between mid-467 and mid-468, adding to the thousands already there. To have confronted and neutralized these required, by normal doctrine, some one hundred thousand coalition troops. These were available. The logistic infrastructure, however, simply wasn't there. Arguably, after the long, drawn out and b.l.o.o.d.y campaign in Sumer, neither was the will.

Money, however, was not a problem.

The Legion began investigating Pashtia in either late 466 or early 467, the record is unclear. It is clear that no later than mid-467, a recruiting campaign had begun in Pashtia to attract and raise one cohort of mixed foot and mounted scouts plus some other auxiliaries from among the Pashtun, notably those Pashtun whose tribes had formerly sided with the Volgan Empire and then switched allegiance to the FSC-propped national government. These were brought to Sumer, trained, and equipped and to some extent integrated with the existing Balboan-Sumeri forces in the provinces of Ninewa and Pumbadeta, Sumer, before being redeployed to Thermopolis.

PART II.

Chapter Ten.

"We eat and then we s.h.i.+t. 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

13/9/467 AC, Thermopolis 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 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 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 Ikhwan from either reinforcing the operational area or escaping from it. 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 pa.s.ses. Qabaash couldn't hope to cover every little goat and camel trail. But with every easy pa.s.s 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, a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sengers to add to the confusion. At some of the pa.s.ses, 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, 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 G.o.d, still fly a transport converted to a bomber with the best of them. 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 G.o.d, still fly a transport converted to a bomber with the best of them.

If Lanza had a.s.sembled 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 c.o.c.kpit. 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 alt.i.tude 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 a.s.s 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 electro-magnetic 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 non-magnetic 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 cla.s.sified at a fairly high level.

Along with those other things, and this was not cla.s.sified, was a Global Locating System guidance package that would guide the bomb in on a set of coordinates punched in from the c.o.c.kpit. 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 know they're on the move..." 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 sh.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.ton to turn it on.

"Nothing, Noorzad. It's dead. I checked it just this morning but-"

"s.h.i.+t."

Noorzad noticed another explosion, also seemingly small, a kilometer to the east where lay one of his companies. Further 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 a.s.s 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 that was the thing. 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 their comrades forward with the heads of their erstwhile enemies. comrades forward with the heads of their erstwhile enemies.

From the ma.s.s of hors.e.m.e.n 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 Tercio, on detached duty to the Scouts for the campaign.