A Desert Called Peace (31 page)

"I'm the only one who speaks Russian. Until I can go over there, that amount remains an educated guess. We do have fairly hard numbers and figures for some much less capable equipment, T-27s and the like. But that stuff is truly shit, well designed but what's available is so badly made it would be almost as criminal to use it as to not have anything."

Carrera looked like he had a very sour taste in his mouth. He mulled the prospect of losing his chief of staff for anywhere from weeks to months and clearly didn't like it. After perhaps a minute of looking sour, he went along. "All right. You go to Saint Nicholasberg as soon as possible to hunt arms. Moving right along, who do we have among the Civil Force competent to command the mechanized troops?"

Kuralski shook his head. "Xavier says there's no one."

Carrera thought about that for a minute.
Harrington or Brown and I need Harrington as a loggie.
He then said, "Brown?"

"Sir."

"I dub thee, 'Sancho Panzer.' You'll command the mech and tanks. You're going to go spend about a month and a half somewhere where
nobody
speaks a word of English to immerse you in Spanish."

"Sir!" The single word meant:
I won't let you down, Boss. Promise.

The brief moved along, covering artillery and ground transportation

"Twenty-four 105mm guns and six multiple rocket launchers will cost WHAT?"

"We have an alternate plan to substitute twelve 122mm guns and twelve 160mm mortars, plus six Volgan . . . "

By the time they got to individual equipment beyond small arms . . . 

"Twenty-two hundred FSD per man for body armor, Pat. Unless you want to go with something Terry Johnson has come up with."

Johnson stood up. "I knew that figure would floor you. It floored me. So, off duty, I started nosing around the Globalnet. There are two developments I think you ought to consider. By the way, Harrington let me dip into discretionary funds to get this stuff."

Johnson bent over and pulled what looked like a thick vest from under his chair. This he passed to Carrera.

"What the fuck is this?" Carrera asked. "It's
light
."

"It's silk, Pat, regular old silk. Well, not
regular
. It's specially woven and encased in polytetrafluoroethane cloth. That model is what this company in Rajamangala had available to send us. It's thirty-four layers of heavy duty silk and, yes, at about four and a half pounds, it's pretty light. It will stop anything up to .45 caliber but
not
.44. It will stop damned near all shrapnel. Though both .45 and heavy shrapnel will
hurt.
It will
definitely
not stop high powered rifle ammunition. Neither will the twenty-two hundred drachma vest the FSC makes which is also, by the way, a shitpot heavier."

"Cost?"

"One fifty to five hundred, depending. I say depending because there are some modifications we can make that would make it lighter
and
make it more effective. Some mods would lower the price but one modification also raises it substantially.

"That modification is this." Johnson again reached down and handed over a four inch by twelve inch metal plate, about a tenth of an inch thick. The plate was deformed in five spots.

"This is what is called 'glassy metal' or 'liquid metal.' It's an alloy of five metals—titanium, copper, nickel, zirconium and beryllium— that really don't like each other. It's cooled very quickly so that the metals can't form crystals. What they do form is an alloy about seven- eighths as dense as steel and two and a half times stronger. It's also precision castable. What that means to us is that we can make a plate a tenth of an inch thick out of this shit and have it be as strong as a quarter of an inch of good steel. We might also consider using it for some other things; bayonets come to mind, and maybe helmets.

"I figure that we can make it something like the old Roman lorica, a series of thin plates maybe four inches by twelve or so and running partway across the chest and back, and over the shoulders, to cover all the really vital organs and the hard-to-rebuild shit, like shoulders, for maybe eleven pounds. Add that to the silk which, because we'll be able to make the chest and back portions thinner will reduce in weight, and you're looking at a fourteen pound set of torso armor."

Carrera looked skeptical. "You tested the metal?"

"I shot at it, yes. Those deformations are what I got firing different calibers. Got to warn you, armor piercing .30 cal and higher will go through if it hits straight on."

"Fair enough. What's the total cost for a vest with the metal plates, again?"

Johnson put out his hand, spreading his fingers and wiggling them slightly. "A little under five hundred drachma . . . give or take."

"And that saves us," Carrera summed up, "about eight or nine million drachma. Which, even if this shit turns out not to be as good, is still eight or nine million I could spend on training, training which is at least as likely to save life, by killing the enemy, as a vest is. Okay. I'll think on this one though."

Casa
Linda, 6/10/459 AC

Carrera and Abogado spoke privately on the balcony that led from his office to overlook the
Mar Furioso
. A steady drumbeat of electric crackles told of myriad mosquitoes being fried before they could come to feast.

Abogado handed Carrera a thick notebook with rings. "These are people I've talked to about coming here for the FMTG that have indicated a willingness to come. No, I have
not
made an offer to any of them. It's set up by rank—former generals in front, then former colonels and lieutenant colonels, then other officers, other warrants, and noncoms—and the position I think they could fill. It isn't alphabetical."

Carrera shrugged, took the book, and began flipping pages.

Flip, flip, flip. "No, you can't have 'Moon' Mullins," he said, tearing a page out and laying it on the coffee table between them. "He's a toad, an incredibly stupid toad, and a sycophant. He brings out the worst in you; I've seen it." Flip, flip. "Hmmm . . . maybe." Flip, flip, flip. "Good choice on Frazar." Flip. "Lambert? No. He's the 'Salute in the Field' type. Had his Special Services Group operatives shaving when their mission required them to blend in with locals, none of whom shaved. Altogether too stupid for me to let near my boys." Flip, flip, flip, flip. "Bolger? Are you out of your fucking mind? Disloyal and treacherous. Mulholland? Nice guy but almost as stupid as he looks. Well . . . that's not
quite
fair; nobody could be that stupid. Maybe Mulholland." Flip, flip. "Mace? You have got to me shitting me! He could be a good stage manager in some major theater, great at putting on a show, but there's never a drop of substance behind the show. Add in . . . oh, off the top of my head, smuggling exotic birds and falsifying physical fitness tests. If he sets foot in this country again I'll have him shot. I wouldn't let him near my troops except in a sealed glass case marked, 'Be nothing like this man.'" Flip. "Taylor's very good."

Looking up, Carrera saw that Abogado face had become a mix of frustration and worry. "Look . . . you saw these guys from one end. I saw them as peers or superiors and I saw something very different. The Army of the Federated States does a very bad job, generally, of choosing general officers. For the most part, they're charming men without an ounce of good character. How the hell could it be any different? In an environment where every decision is a moral one, where you get rated by fifty or sixty people before you're looked at for stars, the ones who make general are, almost entirely, those who
never
pissed anyone off. How does one never piss off the boss? Almost the only way is to have no real character, or at least no good character. The exceptions to that rule are just that, exceptional."

"I had character," Abogado objected.

"You were fucking the secretarial pool at Building Four on Fort Henry," Carrera pointed out. "I'll overlook that because you have other virtues. But let's not pretend that you aren't a rotter, too."

True to his pledge, Carrera had not assumed command of the expeditionary force. When Kuralski asked him about that, he answered, "Dan, I don't need to be in the top position to be in control. I don't even want to be. Besides, I'll own every piece of equipment the legion is going to use,
and
be making the payroll. How much more control do I need?

"Then, too, Parilla's an old soldier, but he doesn't know much of anything about war, less still about modern war. He understands discipline, leadership and politics. I need him for that. But I'm quite sure he'd let me do what I want to train and lead the force, even if I weren't paying for it."

Parilla, escorted by Kennison, Morse, and Bowman, pulled up to the entrance of
Casa
Linda in Carrera's Phaeton. Once, when he had been the effective ruler of the country, Parilla would have been driven in his own. Since then he had fallen on somewhat harder times, although he was hardly living in poverty. Carrera would have been more than prepared to give Parilla the Phaeton, or to buy him one of his own, to get his cooperation. He knew that wouldn't be necessary.

When the vehicle stopped, Morse got out to open the door. Carrera and Kuralski came to attention and saluted although no one was in uniform. After Parilla returned the salute, Carrera walked down the steps to greet him.

"General Parilla, it is good to see you again." The two smiled conspiratorially.

After shaking hands, Carrera escorted the party down to the briefing room. The rest of his staff was already there. Lourdes served drinks while Carrera introduced Parilla to the staff. Then Carrera began the briefing.

"General Parilla, I have asked you here today to get your approval for a plan for raising, equipping and training an expeditionary force, roughly brigade sized, to participate in the war against the terrorists. I thank you personally for coming out of your way to meet with me here at my home. The
Estado Mayor
would once have been a more appropriate spot for this but, since this house is air conditioned and the
Estado Mayor
has been demolished, I thought you might prefer to be brought up to date here."

"And besides that," Parilla added, "this place is secure. There probably isn't another quite so safe in the country."

"This first item of business is the shape of the organization we have planned." Carrera gestured for a slide to be shown on the screen in the front of the briefing room.

"As you can see, General, we've named it a legion. It should be obvious enough why."

Parilla looked confused but let it go. "I confess I don't know, but do you think, do your people think, that this is a good design, Patricio? It seems odd to me."

Carrera frowned, not at Parilla but at circumstance and fate. He shrugged. "Honestly, in some ways it's a crappy design. But it has some serious good points. It actually is not designed for use so much as for expansion. In the expanded form, with every cohort grown to the size of a small regiment of about one thousand to fourteen hundred men, and the legion grown to the size of a division, it
would
be fairly optimal for the kind of war we expect to fight. As is, it is as much as we can afford, as much as we have the personnel to lead, and as much as we have time to train those leaders for. Matthias, explain to the general, would you?"

Esterhazy nodded and went over the finances. He didn't need to remind Parilla who was paying for everything.

Carrera interjected, "Basically, Raul, the hit my family's fortunes took in the TNTO attack has not been made good. The value of our assets is down to about forty-seven percent of what it had been."

"
Ja
," Esterhazy agreed. "If he vere to cash out assets now ze loss vould be enormous. His family vould object and he might lose control in a shareholders' fight. As is, if Patrick can vait, zere is no reason for ze assets not to return to zere prior value . . . in a couple of years."

"Matt's used his contacts to arrange loans secured by my holdings, Raul," Carrera added. "We have a line of credit for seven hundred and fifty million FSD, a personal loan, really, secured by me, er, rather secured by what will be my personal share once the estate is finally probated. That's all we have to count on."

Carrera sighed, a bit wistfully. "I'd have gone for a full division, anyway, and just used shit for equipment until we could afford better but the personnel and training issues make that more than a little problematic. As is, not only are we going out smaller than I'd like, and not organized the way I'd like; we're not going to be able to afford the best equipment either.

"There is no telling exactly how the war will roll out. It could be that Sumer folds immediately and we go right into a counterinsurgency war."

Seeing Parilla's somewhat quizzical look, Carrera stated, "Oh, yes; no matter what, there
will
be an insurgency, though I have reason to suspect the FSC is not even considering the possibility.

"It could be that there will be a major conventional fight, something like the last Petro War, though on a lesser scale, because Sumer has not managed to make good its losses. What we really expect though, is a campaign—more or less conventional—of about three to seven weeks' duration, followed by an insurgency."

Triste, sitting in the left rear corner, added, "You got that right. Those idiots in the War Department, to say nothing of that king of idiots, Ron Campos—that's the FSC's secretary of war, General—are really being obtuse about this. I don't think I've ever even heard of anyone engaging in such wishful thinking since the FSC got itself into that dumb-assed war in Cochin, forty years back."

Carrera scowled a bit. This was Campos' second stint as SecWar. Carrera had not thought the first sufficiently impressive to justify a second.

He continued. "Anyway, the legion is based in large part around the needs of counterinsurgency. Thus there are four infantry cohorts, each with four infantry centuries, plus combat support and headquarters and support, because a square organization is more suitable for controlling an area and the people on it than a triangular one is. Note though, that triangular is clearly better for maneuver warfare. There are Cazador and mechanized cohorts because the one is critical, and the other useful, for counterinsurgency. The rest is fairly self explanatory
except
for the size and shape of the aviation
ala
."