Carnifex (64 page)

Indeed, it had not bought anything but a reduction in fire from the freighter. It still closed on the helpless
Dos Lindas
; the distance now was just over one thousand meters.

Especially did it not buy us any time. Oh, God, for some time. With time even our forties could chew through. With time . . . 

The patrol boats launched by the
Hoogaboom
went by the simple names of "Wahid" and "Ithnayn;" "One" and "Two." Why, after all, invest any emotion or any name into what amounted to throwaway weapons?

They'd held back, One and Two, after being launched. This was not out of any fear; the men aboard the boats had no expectation, nor perhaps even any desire, to live. But there were only the two. Ahead, they'd be vulnerable to the defensive armaments of the target. Astern, they could react to any threats that arose to their primary, and do so especially well against any threats to their primary's greatest point of vulnerability, it's long, broad flanks.

Thus, when the captains of One and Two saw the tracers from
Trinidad
, they'd begin to move cautiously and carefully through the smoke to where they thought they would find the rear quarter of whatever was engaging the
Hoogaboom
. Side by side they moved until the bow gunner on One saw the infidel boat. He immediately engaged, followed by Two's bow gunner as soon as that boat had closed enough to make out a target.

Pedraz felt more than heard the incoming fire from his starboard aft quarter. Indeed, the first he actually heard was when the machine gunner on that point screamed at being chopped apart by the concentrated fire of first one, then two, then a half dozen enemy machine guns that came from astern.

Poor Marco,
Pedraz thought as he applied throttle to get the hell away from the position in which he found himself. Unseen, Legionary Turco's body slid across the deck, leaving a broad swath of blood behind, before plunging over the stern. He'd never had a chance to strap himself in.

There wasn't a lot of advantage either way. All three patrol boats,
Trinidad
, One and Two, were sleek and fast and armed.
Trinidad
with her forty, was much more heavily armed. Sadly, though, the forty could not fire astern and
Trinidad
could not turn without presenting a vulnerable side to the pursuing craft.

"And that fucking freighter is closing on the
Dos Lindas
," Pedraz fumed. "Shit, shit, SHIT!"

A near burst of machine gun fire passed just to Pedraz's right, splintering the glass to his front. "Shit!" Pedraz repeated.

Nothing for it but to go for the glory,
he thought.

"Cris," the skipper shouted to his XO, "get astern and be prepared to man Turco's gun. You'll know when."

"What are ya gonna
do
, Skipper?"

"
Diekplous
," Pedraz shouted, as Francés scurried astern. Then he said into his microphone, "Clavell, bring your gun to bear ninety degrees to port. Guys, we're gonna turn and go right in between them. Fire as you bear."

Both One's and Two's crews, and especially the gunners, laughed maniacally as they pursued the fleeing infidel boat. It had been all too rare, in this war, to see the enemy actually turn and run on the battlefield. Such moments were to be savored. Especially were they to be savored when the time available for such savoring was destined to be very short.

Sweating profusely, heart pounding fit to burst from his chest, Clavell huddled behind his gun shield, eye pressed firmly to his sight. Beside him, Guptillo held on for dear life against the turn he was pretty sure the skipper was about to make.

"If you ever made a good shot, Jose, make one now," Guptillo said.

Eye still to his sight, Clavell couldn't answer by nod. Instead, he stuck one thumb in the air.

Suddenly, the boat slowed and began to turn to port. Clavell cranked the gun down to compensate, never moving his eye from his sight. Sea passed in his view, then more sea, then more . . . then . . . 

Kawhamkawhamkawhamkawhamkawham
. Clavell depressed the trigger on the forty as the veer of the boat brought it into view and almost aligned. Downrange, his first shell missed, bursting in the water. His second missed as well. But he held true to his aim and trusted the movement of the ship to align the target perfectly. Shells three through five, rewarding his faith, found their target, smashing the front of Two like so much kindling. Enemy sailors, and pieces of sailors, went flying in all directions. Others aboard Two, those further astern, continued to fire after only a brief, shocked pause.

"And now we charge. Banzai, motherfuckers!" Pedraz shouted over the rising roar of the engines, the crash of the cannon, and the cloth-ripping hum of his machine guns.

The
Trinidad
spurted ahead, her machine gunners, plus Guptillo and Clavell, trading what amounted to mutual automatic broadsides with the
Ikhwan
fighters of One and those remaining aboard Two. Sailors on both sides went down, some suddenly and silently, others with curses and screams. The armor worn by Pedraz's crew helped, but at this range, perhaps one hundred meters, it didn't help
much.
And the greaves didn't cover the back of the sailors' legs at all.

Astern, Francés leapt to his feet, almost losing his footing to Turco's wet blood, and grabbed the spade grips of the .41-caliber tribarrel. From across the water, he and an
Ikhwan
gunner from Two stared at each other for what might have been the longest nanosecond in human history.

"Motherfucker!" Francés exclaimed as he deftly swung the tribarrel to bear on the machine gunner. Before the gun was on target, his finger was already depressing the trigger, causing the electrically driven barrels to spin and the gun to spit out its eighteen hundred rounds per minute. While the
mujahad
's bullets went wide, Francés' swath of fire cut right across his target, from left hip to right ribs, slicing—though by no means neatly—the
Ikhwan
gunner in two, spilling his intestines to the deck.

Pedraz looked around his half ruined boat and his mostly ruined crew. Men shrieked in agony on the deck, with the boat's sole medic frantically going from one to the other, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood here, relieve pain there.

Behind the
Trinidad
, One and Two lay smoking and dead in the water. Two was plainly sinking, though it was taking its time about it.

If I had more time
 . . . 

Time was about up, however, and Pedraz knew what he had to do. "Clavell, cease fire," he said, gunning the engine and twisting the boat away. It made a tight turn, then headed off away from the
Hoogaboom
and slightly towards the carrier.

Picking up his microphone, Pedraz broadcast, "
Agustin,
this is
Trinidad
. Get the hell away from the freighter. Don't argue. Just do it."

Kurita had stationed himself beside the one serviceable forty-millimeter gun on the carrier's stern port quarter. To either side of him, twenty-millimeter cannon and forty-one caliber machine guns churned futily at the oncoming scow.
And the forty does no good either. For that matter, the pounding isn't doing my head much good. No help for that, though.

He watched a small and gallant patrol boat, the
Trinidad
, he thought, trading fire with, then turn and run right in between two patrol boats.
Glorious
, thought Kurita,
In the best naval tradition. Brave boys. Bravo. Banzai.

Kurita watched as the PTF, smoking and clearly hurt, pulled away and began to retreat.
No shame in that, my friends,
he thought.
You must save whatever you can of this fleet. We here are, after all, just dead men now.

No matter for me, of course. I've been dead since I failed my emperor. But it's a shame about the others.

Kurita watched a Finch swoop down to lay a barrage of rockets on the top of the freighter. They seemed to have no effect at all, except to cause a missile to be launched upward at the Finch. Then Kurita remembered something old and sacred.
I wonder if . . . but, no, there's no way to suggest it to you.

Kurita looked out and saw a most remarkable thing. The small patrol boat he thought was the
Trinidad
turned and almost stopped, as about half a dozen men began to assemble on the rear deck.

"I . . . can't . . . go . . . into the water, skipper. With this blood . . . the sharks will come . . . for me. I can't."

"All right, Santiona," Pedraz agreed.

"You'll need a back up, Chief," Francés said. And that's, rightfully, my place."

Pedraz had intended to make his last ride alone. It was frustrating and infuriating that more than half his never-sufficiently- to-be-damned, mutinous crew wouldn't go along.

"See, it's like this, Chief," Francés explained, with a casual shrug. "That ship is probably loaded with explosives. This wasn't a minor effort, here, after all, so I figure two, maybe three thousand tons. Nobody who gets off has much of a prayer of surviving that, if it goes off. So . . . all the same, I'd rather not jump ship. It wouldn't do any good anyway. Besides, like Santiona said, we put wounded into the water we'll have sharks all over everyone."

But still, Pedraz wanted to save
something
. He looked at the youngest crewman, and nearly the only one unhurt who could be spared. That youngest was a nice kid named Miguel Quijana. Quijana, like the others, wore helmet, body armor, and over that a life vest.

Pedraz grabbed the seaman by the shoulders and said, "Stay as much on the surface as possible. Watch carefully; when we hit you'll have a few moments between when the first wave of concussion passes under water and the debris starts falling. Remember, the concussion under water will be
worse.
Don't get under water until you can feel that wave of concussion pass. Then get under fast. Good luck, son."

With that, Pedraz turned the boy around to face the stern and, placing a boot on his rear end, shoved him off into the sea.

"For the rest of you, Battle Stations! Banzai, motherfuckers!"

Nobody left the boat, Kurita could see, except for one man deliberately booted off, probably by the captain. And then the boat began to move forward, picking up speed at an amazing rate.

Another man might not have understood. Yet Kurita understood perfectly and immediately.
Divine wind. Kamikaze.

He tapped the leader of the forty-millimeter crew and said, "Go and warn the other gunners on this side, you and your crew. Get the hell behind cover. Now!"

Then, as soon as that crew had sped off, Kurita drew himself to attention, saluted the
Trinidad
with his sword, and began, softly and in an old man's reedy voice, to sing
Kimigayo
—

" . . . Until pebbles

Turn into boulders

Covered with moss."

Fosa, too, saw
Trinidad
's death ride, through the cracked windows of the bridge. He, like Kurita, stood to attention and saluted. Though he had his sword, the one that Kurita had given him, saluting with the hand just seemed more . . . 
personal.

Some members of the bridge crew, following their commander's gaze and understanding what the salute meant, likewise came to attention and rendered the hand salute. They and Fosa held those salutes all the way to when the
Trinidad
disappeared into the hull of the enemy freighter, and halfway through the incredible, barely sub-nuclear, explosion that followed.

"They survived," Robinson said, later, in his quarters. "They couldn't have survived, but they did. The
Ikhwan
ship was
that
fucking close," he held out his hand with thumb and forefinger a bare inch apart, "
that
fucking close, and
still
that fucking ship survived. It isn't possible."

The High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet nearly wept with the sheer frustration of it all. So upset was he that Wallenstein, without being ordered to, dropped to her knees and began to undo his belt. He pushed her away, roughly.

"No . . . not you tonight, Marguerite. Send me Khan, the wife. I want to
hurt
something."

A messenger was waiting when Bernard Chanet arrived at his office for the morning's work. Standing at attention, the messenger passed over a sealed letter from one of the outlying offices. Chanet was surprised at the origin of the missive; he had observers at several locations in Southern Columbia but was denied any control over the area.

Opening the letter, Chanet paced his office as he read:

Your Excellency:

I've had the most intriguing request and proposition that I thought I must present to you before going any further with it.

A small group of the local regressives from North America, back home, approached me the other day and requested arms. I thought this especially odd in that they are already self sufficient for the primitive arms they tend to use. But, no, it wasn't flintlocks or even percussion weapons they were looking for. They wanted modern, military arms.

On the face of it, I'd have laughed them out of my office. Yet the leader of the group, who is also a political figure of some local importance, had a most compelling argument. He took out a pouch of gold, weighing perhaps two and a half kilograms, and proceeded to pour it out onto my desk. He said to me, "One dozen modern rifles and twelve-thousand rounds of ammunition and it's yours. A thousand times that and a thousand of these are yours."

I, of course, have no weaponry here beyond the few carried by my security staff. Yet it occurred to me that in your position . . . 

Belisario was about given up hope. His band was down to seventy-five men, perhaps less by sunrise, and he'd found no solution to the problem. Even now his men were scattered across two hundred square kilometers, in little groups of five or ten, partly to ease foraging and partly so as not to attract the attention of the always-threatening UN air power. Of the modern weapons he and his group had captured, few remained. For those few there was no ammunition. Even Pedro had wrapped and buried his prized heavy sniper rifle for lack of anything to feed it with.