Carnifex (18 page)

Mustafa, lips pursed, rocked his head from side to side for a minute, thinking about that. "Are you so sure my people could never become a threat?"

"Yes, I am that sure. To be a threat you must travel space. To travel space you must progress technologically. And that kind of progress is everything your movement abhors. That much, at least, you share with the Kosmos. At least your side is honest about it."

Robinson hesitated briefly before adding, "And . . . frankly, the Kosmos have little long-term chance of global success, not here. They only succeeded on Earth because immigration patterns to Terra Nova pulled away more and more of the traditional, religious and nationalist sorts, leaving the Earth behind for my ancestors. There is no new world such people can leave for from here."

Mustafa nodded. That wasn't important. "And you wish to help, more than you helped with the attacks that began this war?"

"I will help more, much more. Still no nukes, though."

Mustafa shrugged an indifference he did not truly feel.
Nuclear weapons . . . what a dream to have them and use them on the Nazrani and the atheists.

"Details?"

"First, I need your support in taking over the direction of the pirates operating off the coast of Xamar and the Straits of Nicobar. They can—"

"Xamar I already control," Mustafa interjected. "The Nicobars listen to no one. I've tried."

"Then the question is whether they should be attacked and brought to heel or if they can be induced by incentives."

"What sort of incentives? And how do you provide incentives to ten thousand men, every one of whom considers himself a chief answerable to no one?"

"By helping one chieftain to become paramount, to rise above all others."

Montoya loved flying. He'd hardly imagined, as not much more than a boy standing in a Legion enlistment line, the power and the freedom and the sheer joy of
flight.
Though he'd known then that the Legion had, or at least intended to have, aircraft, he'd
never
imagined himself actually conning one. What was he? Just a poor farm boy from the interior. Who was he to think he'd someday be a pilot?

But the
Legion del Cid
was an equal opportunity employer, he'd found. It was also a miserly employer of human talent. While he'd not shown any remarkable leadership ability at Cazador School, he had shown toughness, determination, and at least a modicum of brains. He could be taught. Moreover, when he'd been talked into volunteering for some hit missions by Cruz, he'd shown considerable personal courage and determination. There were places in the Legion for people like that. In Montoya's case, that place had eventually come to be in a cockpit. And he just loved it.

What he hated, though, were the carrier takeoffs and the landings. Those scared him silly. Every time.

No, not landings on the ground, even on pretty rough ground; he'd had lots of experience in those, flying a Cricket. His plane could take it, no problem. On the other hand, landing or taking off from a pitching, weaving, postage-stamp-on-the-ocean? Trying to catch the arrestor cables? Reversing thrust at the last minute so he didn't overshoot and end up crushed or drowned –most likely, both—under the prow? Trying to time his take off so that he hit the leading edge of the flight deck on an upswing? (The deck crew was becoming a big help there, though, he had to admit; especially as they gained experience.) That sinking feeling as the plane dropped almost like a rock as he left the flight deck behind? Gag . . . shiver . . . barf.

He shivered again, half at the memory of the last take off when his landing gear had plowed furrows in the ocean before pulling up and half at foreboding over the next landing.

It got progressively worse, too. It seemed like the skipper was actually
looking
for rough seas and bad weather to launch in. They'd lost one pilot already, and cracked up both that plane and a Yakamov-72 helicopter. At least the Yakamov crew had gotten out.

From this and other evils, deliver me, O Lord.

In some ways, Montoya wished he'd been picked to fly a Cricket, as he used to, rather than a Turbo-Finch Avenger, usually called a Finch. With the
Dos Lindas
facing into the wind, and even a mild headwind, the Crickets took off practically straight up. And for landing, their stall speed wasn't much above the carrier's cruise speed. Piece o' cake.

On the other hand, Crickets don't generally fight. I'd prefer to fight, even if getting to and from the fight soils my flight suit. And speaking of which . . . 

The island—the Isla Santa Josefina—loomed out of the gloomy dusk ahead. Montoya adjusted his throttle to pick up speed, veered a little left, then right, and mentally reviewed his firing run. Trees began near the water's edge. A slight pull back on his stick, then an equally slight push forward, lifted the Finch and set it on a heading and altitude that would allow its fixed landing gear to
just
skim over the trees.

The central hill dominating the Isla Santa Josefina lay ahead. Again Montoya eased back on the stick, causing the plane to just miss the jungle below. He felt a pressure in the seat of his trousers. As soon as the plane cleared the summit, Montoya pushed forward to drop the nose, causing his stomach to lurch.

There's the target.

Ahead, in Montoya's view, three old, rusty armored vehicles sat in the open. As he aimed the plane by feel, his thumb flipped off the safety cover on the firing button over his stick and began to press. With each press of the thumb two rockets, one from under each wing, lanced out. As soon as he had bracketed the target Montoya pulled the stick to the right. The nimble Finch acted like the crop-duster it was and turned away athletically.

Damned good thing, too,
thought Montoya. Looking to the left he saw the next bird in the training attack was firing almost before he had cleared away.

The Isla Santa Josefina had been purchased by the Legion as a range. No one actually lived there for the excellent reason that the Federated States had used it as a chemical warfare testing ground during the Great Global War and never spent a drachma or expended an ounce of sweat cleaning it up afterward. It had come to the Legion pretty cheaply.

The Legion hadn't spent much on it either. It had decontaminated a small landing area for boats and a couple of observation posts. Nearer the center of the island a few target spots in the impact area had been cleared. Cleared paths connected the landing, the OPs and the target spots. The rest was not only presumed to be at least somewhat chemically toxic, and much of that contamination being with very persistent nerve and blister agents, but had had an absolutely amazing amount of ordnance dumped on it over the last several years from the main island, the Isla Real, as well as three much smaller islands purchased to serve as firing positions for mortars and artillery. The new ordnance, too, had the effect of breaking open some of the three thousand dud chemical warheads believed to be still on Santa Josefina, either at the surface or just below it.

Even the few people, forward observers for the artillery the most part, that went there, went with full chemical protection—suits, rubber booties, gloves and masks.

It was not well know outside of Balboa, but the FSC had tried to use the islands, almost two decades before, as a dumping ground for economic migrants from the impoverished island of Ayiti. Both the government of Balboa and the then owners of the Isla Santa Josefina had objected, leaving the FS to drop the scheme. It would have been interesting, what the highly progressive First Landing Times would have said, if the Ayitians had been dumped there in guarded camps. The headline, "Federated States Exiles Poor Migrants To Nerve Gas-Poisoned Island," would have been the least of it. On the other hand, that headline, widely broadcast, might have served as a damper on the Ayitians' mass enthusiasm for emigrating to the Federated States. This may not have suited the FLT agenda.

The
Dos Lindas
couldn't see either island, not even from its own island on the starboard center of the flight deck. It could, however, see the mass confusion on the flight deck as the crew attempted to crowd twenty Cricket Bs and five of the Yakamovs in position to load troops and take off. It really shouldn't be as hard as they were making it look.

No matter,
thought Fosa.
Practice makes perfect and they'll practice until they puke and drop.

Though said to be "slightly modified" the B models were actually fairly substantial modifications to the basic Cricket. The cabin had been lengthened and widened to allow four (or if they were feeling
really
friendly, five) passengers. The wingspan had also been increased by about thirty centimeters a side. The single engine in the nose was taken out and replaced by two slightly smaller and individually less powerful ones on the wings. Also, and this was important given the mission, the two smaller engines were slightly
quieter,
together, than the original single was, alone. In the nose had been placed a fairly sophisticated thermal imager cum ground sensor for recon and for limited visibility landings. In addition, to either side of the engines were hardpoints, four in total, for rocket and machine gun pods. Underneath was a single hardpoint to which could be attached a light homing torpedo, just in case one of the Yakamov ASW helicopters happened to find a submarine where no submarine ought be.

Fosa and the commander of the Cazadors, Tribune Cherensa, had arranged for an opposing force at one of the training areas on the Isla Real. That was where the Crickets and Yakamovs were heading, once this batch of Cazadors was boarded. Twenty B models and five Yakamovs weren't quite enough to move the entire demi-battalion in one lift. A further three platoons and the unit's four Ferret light armored vehicles still waited below, assembled on the hangar deck.

The skipper looked out from the open bridge at the lead Cricket. He recognized Cherensa standing beside the plane. Cherensa saluted, which salute Fosa returned. Then the Cazador boarded his Cricket.

Picking up a radio microphone that looked more like an old-fashioned telephone receiver, Fosa gave Chirensa and the deck crew the time-honored command, "Land the landing force."

It was really all very sickening to Mustafa, though he tried to hide it.

But the more Robinson explained, the more the Salafi realized how badly he had screwed up the war, to date, and how much had to be done to redeem it.

Robinson tried to be gentle with the Salafi, downplaying mistakes as much as possible while still making the point.

"You saw only Pashtia, the Federated States and the Tauran Union, Mustafa," the High Admiral had said. "You assumed that, because the attacks originated in Pashtia that the FSC would only attack Pashtia. You assumed that all the
mujahadin
would come to Pashtia to fight. You thought that, because it was a place where there were no railroads, hardly any roads, no ports, no navigable rivers, and few good airfields, the FSC would not be able to support any very large army there. You were correct in this, of course. You thought that you could meet what they could support there on fairly equal terms. This, too, would have been correct had they elected to meet you there only. You forgot that they were able to attack somewhere else, somewhere closer to your holiest city, somewhere that would attract the
mujahadin
away from Pashtia, where they might have fought on more even terms, to Sumer, where the Feds held all the cards."

Mustafa could only accept it for it was nothing but the truth. He knew now that there had been other mistakes in plenty.

"I never even considered it as a possibility that Kashmir would turn against us, or even play a neutral part," he admitted. "I thought the Federated States would grow sick of the killing after they'd lost a couple of hundred soldiers. I counted on Allah doing too much, forgetting that he cuts the coat to fit the man, or that he might demand more of us than that we fight and be willing to die. The Nazrani have taught me though, and taught me well."

"You know I do not believe in your god, Mustafa. But, accepting for the moment his existence, let me tell you something a wise man of Old Earth one said. 'God is not willing to do everything and thus take away from us our free will and that share of the glory that belongs to us.' Within that man's mental framework, he was right, and you would be well advised to follow his teachings.

"It is a truth of war," Robinson had continued, "that groups in conflict tend to come to resemble each other. This is true tactically, technologically, and morally. You have learned from the FSC not to trust everything to God. What do you suppose they've learned from you? How have they become like you?"

Mustafa thought upon this for a long time before answering. When he did answer, he said, "They have learned to use terror, as well. In fact, they have learned to do it better than we do. We've knocked one country out of their unholy coalition, Castille. They've knocked out at least four from what should have been ours, Sumer, Pashtia, Kashmir by threatening genocide and Fezzan by threatening to extinguish its leader and his family."

"Those, yes," the High Admiral agreed. "Other places, too. More than that, faced with a non-state adversary like yourselves, they have also learned to use and develop non-state allies."

"Those stinking Latin mercenaries."

"Well . . . following the same man who wrote about God and free will, they're not technically mercenaries. But, yes . . . "

"I think," said Mustafa, finally, on this, the last day of his conference with Robinson, "I think that we are agreed on all the important things."

"Yes," said Robinson, then recapitulated, "You will, with my help, gain complete control of your movement. This will leave you potentially more vulnerable to attack but will also make your own attacks make sense in the larger plan for the first time. Serious attacks on the FSC will end, though planning will continue. Within the FSC, you will build a group of supporters for when the time comes to renew attacks there."