Carnifex (79 page)

Safe landing accomplished, the plane was met at one end of the airfield by vehicle-mounted military police who had absolutely no clue as to its contents. These formed a wide perimeter around the plane as it turned in place at one end of the runway. Turn completed, the MPs closed up and escorted it to a hangar which they likewise surrounded. What went on after the hangar doors were closed they knew not.

Carrera watched the plane as it moved down the runway, turned, taxied and stopped. He'd been sweating this moment. A messenger reported to him and saluted. He returned the salute casually and took a piece of paper from the messenger's hand. The note read: "Targets at objective tonight and tomorrow."

Click.

The marquis of Amnesty, a lit candle with barbed wire wrapped around it, was emblazoned across the front of the mansion. The light of the candle was false but the barbed wire looked very real.
Only fitting,
thought Louis Arbeit, the
Marquis
of Amnesty, as his chauffeur opened the door to his limousine.

Once out of the limo, the Marquis looked around with considerable satisfaction. It wasn't merely satisfaction at the quality of residence he'd acquired. No, the really thrilling part had been that his organization paid the entire bill, from mortgage to taxes to servants to gardeners to utilities to food. Add in the other perks that commonly went with being a senior part of Earth's new royalty and, well, it was worth much more than even the three quarters of a ton of gold he'd paid for it.

Life is good
, the Marquis thought, reaching for the handle of the ornate double door out front.
And with the newest anti-agathics, it will be long, as well.

"Daddy!" Arbeit's young daughter, Lucretia, screamed as he came through the double front door. The girl launched herself at her father, wrapping him in a tight hug. She then took his hand and led him out to a patio overlooking the garden.

"I supervised the cooks making dinner myself, Daddy," Lucretia announced, proudly. "Though I had to beat one for being naughty."

"Good girl, Lucretia," he father congratulated. "I hope you didn't damage her."

Lucretia hung her head slightly. "Not much, I didn't, Father. I will need a new riding crop, though," she added, brightly.

"That's my girl."

And although it appears that the World has become effeminate and Heaven disarmed, yet this arises without doubt more from the baseness of men who have interpreted our Religion in accordance with Indolence and not in accordance with Virtu. For if they were to consider that it (our Religion) permits the exaltation and defense of the country, they would see that it desires that we love and honor her (our country), and that we prepare ourselves so that we can be able to defend her.

—Machiavelli,
The Discourses
, Book Two, Chapter II

As he usually did, Bashir lay down for the night with his yellow radio's earpiece in his ear. Also, as usual, he punched in the code, hoping against hope that tonight there'd be an answer. There had been none since those five poor devils had been taken and crucified.

The coded message he sent out was simple: "tonight . . . tomorrow . . . tonight . . . tomorrow." He punched it in and pressed the key to transmit in a burst.
This message
must
get through or my family is dead
, he thought. Closing his eyes after the message went out Bashir was almost shocked to hear in the earpiece, "Message received. Thank you."

The chill early morning breeze raised dust across the regularly laid out encampment. By the airfield, in the tall, sandbagged control tower, Carrera scanned past the high earthen walls.

There were eyes on the camp. There were
always
eyes on the camp. You couldn't stop them from seeing. You couldn't stop their owners from reporting. The trick, then, was to make them think they saw something different, to make the unusual look normal and even the normal unusual.

The Legion had since its arrival kept at least one cohort operating along the Kashmir-Pashtia border. That could remain there. Indeed, moving them without replacing them would have been inherently suspicious. Also, there were always at least four Pashtun Scout maniples and two to three Cazador maniples operating somewhere in the Balboan Zone of Responsibility, or BZOR. Few units operated without being in range of some kind of artillery or heavy mortar support.

Both Pashtun Scouts and Cazadors operated further from camp than line infantry, and were much more likely to rely on air support than artillery or mortar fire if they found themselves in a jam.

Leaving one infantry cohort and the bulk of the service and support troops to guard the camp, Carrera had sent out one infantry cohort to replace the Cazadors and part of the Scouts. This was done slowly, over a period of days, so as to incite no comment. The infantry flew out with the morning supplies; the Scouts and Cazadors flew back, hidden in the IM-71s closed, almost windowless, cargo bays.

At the camp's own airfield the Scouts had spent a mere day being partially briefed and fitted with civilian clothing suitable for travel. They were issued passports with visas. They'd then transshipped onward , some via the Legion's AN-21s and 23s for the major airport at Chobolo, the capital of Pashtia, still others on civilian buses to cross the border. Still others left openly on horseback. Clothing for the foot scouts had been easy, since the one-size-fits-almost-all robe was common dress where the Scouts were headed.

For the most part, for those who flew out, this was Sumer, where Sada's closest followers arranged further onward movement through Yithrab for some, directly to Peshtwa, Kashmir for others.

The long range patrol that had served as retrans for the Legion's spy in the enemy base was not replaced. Instead, a very quiet remotely piloted vehicle took up station within range and circled expectantly.

Subadar Masood spoke Urdu, the primary language of Kashmir, flawlessly and with a proper Peshtwa accent. He waited impatiently for a group of twenty-one of his scouts, all in civilian dress, to debark from the plane. With these, four legionary officers including Jimenez, and those men who had arrived previously, he would have a force of fifty-one men in the capital. This was just large enough to minimally man the vehicles he had purchased for cash over the preceding weeks, and also just few enough to excite no real comment in bustling Peshtwa.

Weapons, too, had been purchased. Masood smiled to think that he was buying from the very same men who made their livelihood selling to his enemies. Since
he
knew what he was about and the Salafis rarely did, he was confident, at least, of having obtained superior products.

Such purchases, on such a scale, would have excited comment almost anywhere else on Terra Nova; one man buying nearly six hundred rifles and machine guns, plus several tons of explosives and ammunition. In the decentralized ways of the Salafi movement, with no one really in charge (though Mustafa was still working on bringing some of the disparate submovements to heel) and its leaders more inspirational than operational, it was merely routine.

The only interest shown in the transactions by the government or any of its agents were requests for bribes, or
baksheesh
. Masood paid, of course; this was the price of doing business. He took some small satisfaction in haggling the bribes demanded down from the obscene—which
would
have excited interest, if paid— to the reasonable.

With weapons, ammunition and explosives excess to immediate needs all safely stowed in the cargo compartments of the buses, Masood directed the drivers and co-drivers to mount up. Without fanfare the column moved south to its rendezvous with the rest of the maniples committed to the attack.

The Admiral's launch from the
Spirit of Peace
didn't need a landing strip, except as a convenience. The price to be paid for not having one was expenditure of fuel. Mustafa had promised fuel and Robinson had believed him.

I was told this area was safe,
Robinson thought, doubtfully, as he looked out the window to see a long line of what looked like bomb craters.
Guess not.

Robinson had been a bit skeptical when the Salafi sheik had promised a cavern big enough to shelter his launch. Looking out his portside window, however, he had to admit that the excavation revealed as dozens of men pulled aside its camouflaging curtain was indeed impressive, easily as large as the VIP docking bay of the
Spirit of Peace.

The pilot hovered briefly until he was certain that the concealing curtain was pulled far enough away to permit his shuttle easy entrance. Then with a few gentle adjustments of the horizontal thrusters the launch began to slide left, into the cavern. The Salafis replaced the curtain as efficiently as they had removed it.

There was no Marine band for this landing, no purple carpet and no salon-like terminal. The security was just as tight, though, as on Atlantis base, if not so formal.

Mustafa was curt when Robinson stepped off the shuttle door with a burkha-clad Arbeit. Robinson turned to help the marchioness to step down to the cave floor. "You have brought the weapons?" Mustafa asked.

"I have brought the weapons. The keys to activate them I retain," Robinson answered, tapping his forehead.

Mustafa smiled suddenly and brilliantly. "This is to be expected. We will emplace them where they will do the most good. You will detonate them. We will take the credit. The infidel will be destroyed."

Robinson refrained from pointing out that it would take more than a dozen wrecked cities to destroy the Federated States. Likewise he refrained from mentioning that the Federated States were very likely to launch a genocidal nuclear war against any place which so much as
might
harbor a Salafi if a dozen of its cities were nuked. Instead, Robinson intended to detonate only one of the bombs. This would leave the rest in place and hidden, in other words left as a threat, to force the Feds to pull back within their boundaries.
That
would leave the rest of Terra Nova to the either the
Ikhwan
or Tauran Union, the World League and their puppet master, himself.

The town was one of the central points for the support of the insurgency in Pashtia, much as it had been during the earlier Volgan-Pashtian war. There were still refugees from that earlier war, hundreds of thousands of them, rotting in tent cities in the barren hills to the southwest. Hundreds of humanitarian workers made a fat enough living through dispensing the charity that kept those refugees rooted to the area.

To the northeast of the town was a fertile plain the produce of which, along with the retail arms trade and the fat pickings from foreign aid, made Hoti the pleasant and prosperous burg it was.

The town was also large enough, the dress similar enough, and the language common enough that something over four hundred and fifty newly arrived Pashtians made little impression on it or its people. There were always guerilla bands traipsing through Hoti or, at least, there had always been for the last thirty-three years.

The buses, four-wheel-drive sedans, and light trucks under Jimenez's and Masood's command waited by the town's outskirts. By twenties and thirties the rest of the party, those who had openly entered Kashmir across the common border as "refugees," met the vehicles. There weapons and—for vehicle leaders, radios— were issued and, in some cases, mounted.

"I almost can't believe we're getting away with this shit," Jimenez told Masood.

"The ways of Allah are inscrutable," the
subadar
answered, with a sardonic smile. "His mercy is infinite. What's more, sir, we're nothing unusual, not even for size. We're not even forming up in any particularly remarkable way. The mujahadin have been doing this for over three decades, and almost without pause. I, myself, joined a guerilla column to fight the Volgans not two miles from here thirty years ago. Purely routine."

Jimenez commented, "But it still seems too easy."

"Wait until we reach the Salafi base, sir. We'll pay there for any ease we've had here. Then, too, this is the
last
and only time we'll ever get away with this."

"How are the vehicles holding up?" Jimenez asked.

"Not bad. We should lose no more than, say . . . a third of them. Yes, about a third, over the next portion of our journey. Less if Allah is especially merciful."

Jimenez consulted his watch. "Fortes Fortuna adiuvat."

"Yes, sir," Masood agreed. "She does. Great writer, Terence."

"You understand Latin?" The legate was flabbergasted. "
Latin?"

"School in Anglia, sir. Every
proper
gentleman there studies Latin."

Jimenez couldn't help laughing with surprise. "Load 'em up,
Subadar
. 'Fortune favors the bold'
and
the timely. We have a group of cavalry to link up with."

A military headquarters in a theater of war is rarely precisely quiet. The Coalition headquarters here, in the capital of Pashtia, rocked with fury.

Virgil Rivers was as angry as the three stars on his collar allowed and encouraged him to be. "How dare that bastard? How
dare
he present me this . . . this . . . . this fucking
ultimatum.
"

"It's not an ultimatum, Virg," Ridenhour supplied calmly. Following his retirement from the FSA, he'd taken Carrera's shilling. "And please keep your voice down. It's an advisement. He has information that there will be a nuke or nukes at the Salafis' main base in Kashmir . . . today. He is acting on that. He is asking you to keep the Kashmir Air Force off his back while he does so. If you don't, and he and his force are destroyed, or the nuke gets away . . . on your head be it."