CHAPTER FIVE
No, I have no right to rank with the great captains, for I have never commanded a retreat. —Moltke the Elder
Over and on the Mar Furioso, North of Santa Josefina
At about fifty miles out, the package split into three, two of six Finches, each, and one, much more spread out, consisting of the six Gabriels. One package of Finches circled out to sea, enveloping the Zhong destroyers. The other did the same thing, but veered toward the land. The Gabriels just spread out and, like the others, kept their height over the water to about twenty to twenty-five feet. The solitary command bird, Number 72, began circling higher and then a bit higher, until he had not only a clear view of the Zhong, but could see perhaps twelve miles past them. He was well out of range of anything expected to be on the old Federated States giveaways.
The legate in charge, Cortez, gave the command, “Finches, start bobbing.”
Those aircraft duly began raising themselves off the clutter of the ocean surface, enough to give the Zhong both radar and visual acquisition. They’d raise and then dive, raise and dive. In his very large spotting scope, Cortez could actually see the Zhong rapidly traversing their twin five-inch mounts, as well as the lighter forty and twenty millimeter air defense guns. The ships, themselves, also began to maneuver, or at least to zig-zag. Cortez understood that this was mostly to avoid being an easy target.
This is beginning to feel like killing puppies, Cortez thought. Oh well, mine not to reason why . . .
Beepbeepbeep . . . “Gabriel Six, Strike Six,” Cortez sent over the radio.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Gabriel.”
Beepbeepbeep, “You are cleared to have one of your planes launch one sea skimming missile, azimuth zero-one-seven.”
Beepbeepbeep, “Roger, one Shiva, zero-one-seven.”
Beepbeepbeep, “You are cleared to have a second of your planes launch one sea skimming missile, approximate azimuth zero-one-four.”
Beepbeepbeep, “Roger, one Shiva, zero-one-four.”
“Finches, begin to close in from the sides. Don’t be an easy target but keep their eyes on you.”
There was a brief chorus of “rogers.”
As the Finches began to veer in, Cortez saw first one, then another, Gabriel rise to launch and release a streak of flame from under its belly.
Yeah, drowning puppies.
Zhong Destroyer Changsha
The guns had long since been cleared to fire. The ship rattled and roared, spitting out defiance. It was a waste of ammunition, especially since the enemy aircraft were still out of range of the forties and twenties, but, What the hell, it’s not like we’re going to have any use for ammunition in a short time.
Only the five-inch guns in the three twin-mounts could even range, and they were too slow to react to the attackers’ flickering in and out of view.
CIC, Liu thought, was completely confused, watching brief targets appear and then disappear only to reappear somewhere else all too quickly.
“Let’s make this easy,” Liu said. “Baby steps now; how many are there?”
“We don’t know, sir,” answered CIC. “More than a dozen. And . . . oh, shit!”
“What?” Liu demanded.
“We’ve got two somethings coming in low. Too fast, oh, way too fast to be one of those converted crop dusters . . . speed says . . . Shiva-class antishipping missile. The southern one is a good deal closer than the northern.”
Liu felt his heart begin to pound and his blood pressure to rise.
“Shiva . . . Shiva?” he asked aloud of no one in particular. “I wonder what guidance package they have, radar or image contrast or infrared or what? Sea skimmer, though, which is some ways simplifies our problem.”
We might be able to take them down if we mass the air defense.
“Bring her to heading three-five-five. Signal to Chengdu, cease fire, line astern, follow us, all guns that can bear to face west, oriented to engage the southern one. Fire at my command.”
They didn’t have long to wait. Looking through his binoculars, Liu caught sight of the first missile, heading unerringly for Chengdu, trailing behind. He gave orders, and both ships spat out the combined fire of twelve five-inch guns, twenty forty-millimeter guns, and a good sixteen twenty-millimeters light cannon.
Whatever the failings of the old destroyers, the crews were about as well trained as could be expected. In front of that missile all that firepower was concentrated. Most was, of course, wasted. Indeed, almost all of it was wasted.
Yet, still, the magic BB worked. At a height of perhaps ten feet, the missile flew into either a shell or a large fragment from the explosion of a shell. Whatever it was, it ripped the guts out of the guidance package even as it set off the fuse which, in turn, detonated the missile amidst a great flash, a tremendous roar, and a large and growing cloud of black smoke.
The crews of both vessels cheered lustily, barring only one twenty millimeter crew that, sprayed by the fragments of the missile, screamed and bled.
And then the second missile came into view, too close and too fast for the air defense to reorient. Liu started to give an order to do just that, but then realized that, in the first place, they were no dummies and were already trying, while, in the second, they were not going to succeed. The few shells gotten off by the defenders didn’t change this.
His own ship shuddered as the missile hit and penetrated the nearly unarmored hull, about two thirds of the way back from bow to stern, right under the Number Three mount. There was a time interval between that penetration and detonation, an interval measurable only by those to whom time is about to have little or no meaning. And then the ship was gutted from the inside.
The ready ammunition for Number Three went up with the missile. Between the two, they were enough to launch the torn mount, along with a goodly chunk of the deck and a badly deformed portion of the crew, upward over one hundred feet. Still others of the crew had legs and ankles broken by the sudden thrust upward of whichever deck they stood upon. Some had feet too badly smashed to walk upon, which left them crawling, and that far too slowly to escape the almost inevitable fire. At the same time, the blast of just slightly under five hundred pounds of high explosive, shattered the bulkheads and made tears in the hull of that section, next to the welding of the seams of the hull. In some places the old welding, itself, was brittle and gave way. It was close enough to the fuel tanks to tear those, releasing flammables. Most of this was not readily set off by the explosion, being a lot closer to tar than oil. However, the explosion was enough to set off all the ammunition that hadn’t gone skyward with the five-inch mount, plus the not especially modest amount of gasoline carried for things like the ship’s boats. And then there was the so far unexpended fuel of the Shiva.
Water poured in through rips in the welding of the hull. Of itself, at this point, it wasn’t enough to sink the ship any time soon. It did, however, have the effect of lifting the bunker fuel into the ship’s insulation, which had further effect of turning the insulation into a very large wick.
When bunker oil, again, not so easy to torch off on its own, gets wicked up by insulation, and then a gasoline or other fuel fire touches it . . . phoomph!
Fortunately the screaming didn’t last long.
His ship was already listing badly and down by the stern when Liu’s smudge-faced, filthy, and apparently singed damage control chief reported in. He was wet nearly to the waist, which was another very bad sign.
“All the fucking hatches in the area are warped, Captain. We can’t seal off enough of the ship. We’re wading through burnt fetus-looking corpses and the fires are out of fucking control, too; so we can’t stop the leakage at or near the source.”
“And so?” Liu asked.
“Skipper it’s time to abandon ship.”
Liu looked heavenward. Will this be enough, he wondered, to save our families? Being sunk in action? How can it not be enough?
He caught out of one eye a brilliant flash, presumably from a missile he hadn’t seen, hitting the Chengdu. He looked in time to see the ship simply disintegrating.
The magazine, they must have hit the magazine. I wonder how, since the magazines are so low. Angled down a bit I suppose, or maybe some idiot failed to close an ammunition lift door or . . . what difference does it make at this point in time?
“Give the order,” Liu said, resignation and pain in his voice. “Abandon ship.”
BdL Dos Lindas, Mar Furioso
Beepbeepbeep. “They’re both down, Admiral,” Cortez informed Fosa. “A lot of survivors from one, but I don’t think anyone got off the second destroyer. It’s just an oil smudge on the ocean surface.”
“Roger,” Fosa replied, then said, “Dispatch the Jaquelina Gonzalez to search for survivors. Tell the Trujillo to cover both sectors. Then signal the fleet, heading Zero-nine-zero. We’re going Tauran hunting.”
Some two hours later, Dos Lindas steamed through an oil slick and passed by the inverted hull of the Changsha. The Gonzalez was still busy picking up survivors, no easy thing amidst the thick but spreading, tar-like oil slick from the ruptured tanks.
He thought about it for all of fifteen seconds before ordering over the ship’s public address system, “All hands on the flight deck not engaged in immediate launch or recovery operations, assemble to port.”
Once they had, he stepped out onto Vultures Row, a kind of balcony platform overlooking the flight deck, carrying a microphone with him. As the capsized hull came parallel to the carrier’s island, he ordered, “Present . . . arms,” before rendering his own hand salute to the ships that, however badly outnumbered and outclassed, still had bravely stood against them.
Road to Santa Cruz, Santa Josefina,
Task Force Jesuit command post.
General Claudio Marciano stood by the side of the dirt road, filthy, like his men. He was just as dog-tired, too, but, nonetheless, kept up a confident smile, encouraging the weary and dispirited Tauran soldiery as they trudged past, their backs bent under heavy packs. Worse than dirt and fatigue, short rations had slimmed out his once stout frame, leaving his now threadbare uniforms to hang about him, “like an old lady’s loose garb.” Not only had the rations grown scant but his duties had often prevented him from eating regularly.
He’d lost a great many trucks, already, or the job would have been easier and rations more plentiful. It wasn’t just breakdowns, either; unexpectedly—though I should have expected it, I can see that now—a swarm of light attack aircraft, wave after wave of them, had scoured the road pretty much free of wheeled transport.
Some of his Hordalander-manned tanks though, made of tougher stuff than mere cargo trucks, were still keeping up. Of course, being better suited to rough terrain, they could take the back roads and keep under trees, for the most part.
Task Force Jesuit had made good quite a bit of their loss in wheels by commandeering as many trucks and other wheeled transport as could be found, sending them well—well!—forward under Stefano del Collea. The sales hadn’t been entirely voluntary, no, but Marciano’s people had paid a twenty percent premium over the real value of the transport, so the tears from the dispossessed had been as much feigned as real.
The more genuine storms of tears, though, had come from those who had not had their vehicles seized. In most cases, for these, the Taurans had taken only the carburetors, poured sugar into the gas tanks, and set the wheels on fire, then paid the one hundred and twenty percent of that amount of damage.
The worst, though, had been the draft animals and the wagons they pulled. Some of those they’d been able to pay for and take, however, the number of Tauran soldiers who knew how to deal with animal transport had been very limited. Many of the animals, horses and oxen, both, had simply been shot and left to rot and bloat by the sides of the roads.
One such, a horse, legs up, belly burst, intestines bulging and crawling with flies, stank up the area near where Marciano stood.
I should have expected it and sunk that fucking carrier at its moorings. Did Fosa know the plan? Of course he did, that smug, smiling bastard. But he, at least was doing his job, honorably, if sneakily, for his country. No hard feelings. Well, not much, anyway.
“What was that, sir?” asked Oberst Friedrich Rall, Marciano’s Sachsen chief of operations. Rall was just as mud covered and sweat-stinking as his boss. “No hard feelings toward whom?”
“Was I thinking out loud?” Marciano asked. “I guess I must have been. No hard feelings for the enemy, Rall, the enemy.”
“You, sir, maybe not. But I hate losing, so I have plenty of hard feelings. Though . . . well . . . have to admire the dirty bastards even so.”
“Yes . . . well . . .”
Whatever Marciano was about to say was lost under the swell of hand powered air raid sirens. Rall instantly dived into one of the muddy ditches lining the road. Marciano scorned taking cover but just stood there and watched the attack come in.
He saw that first as a pair of aircraft, popping up over a hill in left echelon. Those modified crop-dusters the carrier was stuffed full of.
At the first note of the sirens, a few dozen men started tossing fire at what they hoped would be where the incoming aircraft would meet it. Most of the rest of the troops lining both sides of the road dove for cover just like Rall had. Those were just barely in time to avert the twin volleys of rockets—probably seventy-six in total—launched by each of the enemy aircraft.
Some of the rockets, maybe five or six, seemed to explode in mid-air. He knew what those meant; Marciano saw a half dozen men go down, not so much bowled over as melting from the inside amidst what looked like a storm of flechettes striking the ground all around them. The rest came hard on the heels of the flechettes, blanketing the area with high explosive and whistling shards of metal. Screams and calls for medics followed instantly on the explosions.
As far as Marciano could tell, not a single bullet hit.
They turn too sharply. They don’t have to pass over us except to drop bombs, and they’re not dropping any bombs. All our techniques are useless. And the bastards are too daring because they know they don’t have to fly over us.
I need to inflict some highly desirable caution on them, and for that I need a trap . . .
“Rall! Get your Teutonic posterior up and help me. We have an odd kind of ambush to plan.”
San Juan del Norte, Cordoba
When Tsarist-Marxism and the notion of the planned economy had finally gone under, in Volga, and the Cordoban government had lost its deathgrip on the breast and nipple of international socialist aid, the government had turned to the Tauran Union as the next best alternative. The loss had been a bitter blow, for that government had only thirty or so years before been installed as a result of victory in its own revolution.
That Taurans’ aid had been fairly generous, even before the troubles with Balboa. In return, when the time came, Cordoba, almost uniquely among Spanish-speaking states, had sent no soldiers nor any other kind of aid to help Balboa in its struggle with the TU.
On the other hand, Cordoba had a long memory, deeply engrained in which was the fact that they’d been under the bootheel of the Federated States for several decades over the past century, and hadn’t liked it a bit. “Poor Cordoba,” ran the local saying, “so far from God and so close to the Federated States.”
They wished the Taurans well, both in Balboa and in neighboring Santa Josefina, but not enough to violate their neutrality in any way that risked, even potentially and even that slightly, the appalling prospect of more Federated States intervention. A good deal of that fear came from the fact that the Federated States was almost completely unpredictable; a bug or a feature, the observer could take his pick, of their peculiar political system.
But this, thought customs inspector Debayle, waving Stefano del Collea’s convoy through, is no reason for me to take note of the fact that of the fifty-five trucks, all but twelve bearing civilian license plates from Santa Josefina, and the remainder likewise civilian, every one is driven by a man wearing military boots, and assisted by one or two others, also wearing military boots.
“Thank you, Inspector,” said Collea, sincerely. “Would you perhaps accept a small gift, purely a token of our esteem, naturally, for expediting our passage.”
“I wouldn’t say no,” answered the inspector. He was a neat man, uniformed, short, and mildly olive-skinned. Del Collea noted, while passing over an envelope containing about two months’ worth of salary for a Cordoban customs inspector that, while immaculate, Debayle’s khaki uniform was also growing a bit threadbare. It was things like that, the sheer inability of a government to collect enough in taxes to properly pay, clothe, and equip its servants, that led so many of those servants to have to rely on “gifts.”
“We’ll probably need to do something like this a few more times,” Collea said. “Will there be . . . ?”
Debayle was no fool; he knew exactly what was going. “You want a suggestion? One that will keep my government from having to officially notice what’s happening?”
“Absolutely.”
“Keep the trucks,” said Debayle, “and the ‘civilian’ drivers here. Don’t cross the border with them. You can board them at hotels. Or you can leave a few or your people to supervise and hire some of our people to drive. I can show you half a dozen spots you can use to unload near the border, safe enough from most prying eyes.” He cast his own eyes spaceward, though whether that meant the UEPF or the Federated States was anyone’s guess.
Collea had a shopping list to go with the safe full of money turned over to his care by Marciano. He asked Debayle, showing him the list.
“Food in those quantities . . . not local. You need to go to the provincial capital of Rafaela Herrera. There are warehouses there for what you need. Lumber . . . mmm . . . let me think. Would raw, untrimmed wood do?”
“It would be fine.”
“Tapatipi, west of the capital.”
“Barbed wire? I need about fifty thousand fifty-meter rolls.”
“Of course, we use barbed wire, raising cattle and all. But the stuff lasts a long time and needn’t be replaced often. I doubt there are fifty-thousand rolls for sale in the entire country. But for what there is, look in the capital.”
“I’ll do that, one way or the other. How did you . . . ?”
Debayle smiled, white teeth gleaming in the olive and tanned face. “What do you suppose I did, young man, during the revolution, that got me a job at customs?”
“You know, sir,” said del Collea, “that sparks a thought. Your economy is for beans, right?”
“Sadly, revolutionary promises aside, yes,” Debayle admitted, suddenly conscious of his threadbare uniform.
“And you have a great many people experienced in war and even fortifications?”
The chest swelled in that threadbare uniform. “Yes, quite a few. Older now, but some things you never forget.”
“I wonder if we couldn’t hire about five thousand of them to help put in fortifications.”
“Organization of Revolutionary Veterans, in the capital,” Debayle said. “You might even get some volunteers to fill your ranks. And they won’t be like the Santa Josefinans who were notionally on your side.”
“More like the ones who were against us?” del Collea asked.
“Almost exactly like them.”
Road to Santa Cruz, Santa Josefina,
Task Force Jesuit command post
The first trick had been to figure out that there was a pattern, or at least a timing, to the aerial attacks. It wasn’t necessary for Marciano and Rall to know exactly what went into assembling a strike package of converted crop dusters operating from an aircraft carrier. They only had to note that the attacks seemed to come in at intervals of either about forty-five minutes, give or take five, or about twice that. The ones that came in less frequently were invariably quite a bit larger.
The other trick was to note that, though they could have provided close air support to the pursuing tercios of former guerillas, now the official Santa Josefinan Army, this never happened. It never happened because, between seizing and destroying transportation, blowing up or burning bridges, and cratering roads, Task Force Jesuit had largely succeeded in breaking contact with their equally weary pursuers.
“And that, Rall, is why they’re concentrating on trying to slow us down, to give the enemy a chance to catch up to our retirement.”
Rall just nodded. That retirement had effectively stopped for a few hours, while three dozen machine gun teams formed a ring around what was hoped to be a very tempting target for the next Balboan strike, half a dozen trucks held up in column by an apparent accident between two more on the road. They were centered in an oval bowl, of sorts, of about three kilometers by four.
There were no soldiers on the trucks; at the typical range the aircraft had been using for this terrain, there was little chance of a soldier being noticed, though groups of them could be.
Marciano, about a kilometer from the trucks, consulted his watch. As he did, air raid sirens began to sound all around. “If you can’t count on a Balboan air strike,” he asked, rhetorically, “what can you count on?”
“You suppose it’s something about the clockwork precision required to even operate an aircraft carrier?” asked Rall.
In reply, Marciano just pointed to his Ligurini—mountain soldier—insignia. How the hell would I know, Rall?
“There,” Rall announced, pointing at the latest attack inbound, just appearing over a ridgeline to the north. There were two aircraft coming in, as before, and, as before, they were in echelon left. This time they were closer,
The range of the rockets was actually fairly impressive, at about fourteen kilometers. The effective range, however, was much less so, under a fifth of that. So far, the Balboans had used terrain—and pretty well, Marciano admitted to himself; I suppose being infantry-oriented even in their air crew has something to do with that—to get close enough. They’d never before, though, had to come so close in to a target.
And that’s why I picked this spot.
Marciano held out one hand, palm up. Automatically, an RTO placed a handset in the palm. Just as automatically, the general raised it to his face. He saw the first puff of smoke from the lead aircraft, a single puff, indication a ranging shot.
Marciano pressed the key and ordered, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Instantly and simultaneously, those three dozen machine guns opened up, firing from all around the clock and at a combined rate of over twenty-five thousand rounds per minute. Following the tracers, Marciano saw an oval of glowing bits materialize all around and especially just in front of the two attack craft. The second one flashed—probably hit some on board ordnance—and then began to tumble over to its left. A long burning, smoking descent followed, ending in a series of rumbling explosions, a considerable ball of flame, and then a rising cloud of oily smoke.
The lead bird, meanwhile, maybe in the hands of a more experienced pilot, jerked radically to port, apparently on that pilot’s having seen the first few tracers rising in front of him. The machine guns followed, continuing to place a wall of flying lead in front of the attacker. The pilot jerked in the other direct, then apparently pulled back on his stick enough to invert completely. He jerked left again, again, and then to the right yet again. Still the remorselessly vindictive fire followed him.
And then the plane wasn’t really there anymore. In its pace, instead, was an aerial fireball enclosing a mass of disassociated parts.
Unconsciously, Marciano crossed himself, offering a brief and silent prayer for the souls of his enemies.
“Okay,” the general said. “Now, Rall, I want the next few hours spent on getting the hell away from the roads and camouflaging everything to the Nth degree. Also get a couple more ambushes prepared, but hide the bait. If I know Fosa, and I do, he’s coming back with blood in his eyes and with everything he can get in the air. They’ve a long loiter time, those planes, so they’re going to hang around overhead for hours. Once they’re gone, they’re also slow, so we’ve got some hours to move like hell.”
“Where did you learn that, sir?” the Sachsen colonel asked.
Claudio laughed slightly. “From Carrera actually. Or how do you think he managed to get himself whole blocks of time to deploy and support his forces?”
BdL Dos Lindas, off the coast of Santa Josefina
Fosa gripped the railing around Vultures’ Row so hard his knuckles turned white. Over the speakers, one of his pilots reported the ambush they’d flown into in heartbreaking detail for as long as he could. “Firing from all around the clock! Trixie Two-two is down, I repeat, ‘down.’ Crap, where did all this come from? Dozens, anyway. Jesus, I can’t dodge them forever. Bullets, not cannon she—”
The transmission cut out. For the next several minutes the bridge’s radioman attempted to reestablish communications. Finally, the commander of the air wing told him, “Forget it; he’s gone.”
“Air boss?” Fosa called, his voice calm and even. One would have to have known him very well to detect the murderous anger within it.
The entire bridge crew, which did know him well, thought, Oh, shit, somebody’s going to pay.
“Sir?”
“Break out a couple of the partially broken down and stored reserve planes. Hold all flights. I want to assemble a very large strike package, everything we have. We’re going to go get our two lost men a fine funeral escort.”
“Sir! Umm . . . sir, it will take until nightfall.”
Fosa looked at the angle of the sun. Nightfall, yes. “So—barring the Gabriels, since they have integral night vision — make sure they have their NVGs.”
“Sir!”
Road to Santa Cruz, Santa Josefina,
Task Force Jesuit command post
Marciano didn’t know how many recon drones came in the first wave. If he were to believe the reports, there were as many as fifty. Were he, instead, to believe his own eyes, he thought there might be four or five.
But the wise guess would be that there are maybe twelve. And they’re up there expressly looking to draw fire.
“This is exactly like what the guerillas felt like, isn’t it, sir?” asked Rall.
“I suppose. So?”
“So this; if they felt anything like I feel, with those sons of bitches hunting us from the sky, we had better not surrender under any circumstances. They’ll just stand us all against walls, unless, of course, they have enough rope and trees.”
“And you know this because?” Marciano asked.
“Because that’s what I’d like to do to them.”
At this point, thought General Marciano, I suppose he’s right. We can’t surrender to the Santa Josefinans, when the time comes that we can’t hang on anymore. I suppose I’d best put del Collea to finding the materials to build us our own internment camp. Maybe some land, too . . . something with a beach, I think.
“They’re spotted something,” Rall announced, pointing to a spot where one drone circled and to which at least two more appeared to be hurrying.
“Who’s over there?” Claudio asked.
“A mess unit,” Rall answered. “One set up to feed the troops passing up the road. Maybe they didn’t get the—”
Suddenly, the treed area under the circling drone flashed with what seemed a mix of thermobaric, high explosive, and incendiary. Claudio looked to where the fire seemed to have come from just in time to see one of those wide-winged crop dusters ducking down behind the treeline.
“. . . word,” Rall finished.
Looking through his light amplified field glasses, the general saw a fair number of his men running away from the targeted mess. That was the cue for two more of the attack aircraft to swoop in. From underneath each plane two silvery canisters dropped, tumbling end over end until they reached the ground. From where they touched down four long tongues of flame leapt out, continuing in the same direction as the plane that had dropped them, engulfing the soldiers caught inside.
He didn’t need light amplification for this; with his bare eyes Marciano saw a dozen men disappear inside the curtain of fire. That was bad, but not so bad as the three human torches he saw running out of the flames, burning from head to foot, dripping fire from whatever remained of fingers on waving, burning arms. One by one the three fell, to lie writhing on the ground until death, mercifully, took them.
Shaking his head slowly in the waning light, Claudio thought, No, we can’t surrender to the guerillas at all, can we? Every one of them is going to have a memory close enough to that that they’ll want to skin us alive.
There were half a dozen more attacks between sunset and roughly midnight. Two of those were on point, and some of the men of Task Force Jesuit died under them. The rest appeared to be an attempt to spook the defenders into exposing themselves. The attackers were, in any case, few enough in numbers that Marciano took them to be stragglers or late launchers.
Marciano listened carefully for the time came that there was no more buzzing, whether of drones or manned recon birds or strike aircraft. It came not long before midnight. At that point, he told Rall, “Turn the men out. Get them moving fast. Balls to the wall for the planned battle positions. Traffic accidents, to include fatal ones, are, at least to some extent, acceptable. We’ve got to move before those bastards can refuel, rearm, and come back for more.”