Carnifex (45 page)

The Cazadors were going in under strength. One half of one of the eight line platoons was detached to
The Big ?
, though they'd be nearby at sea and could land by rubber boat if needed. Another two platoons were split up among various Yamatan and Haarlemer freighters. Still, with the headquarters and support troops that were going to land, there were just over two hundred Cazadors in the landing force. These waited below, in the hangar deck, playing cards, sleeping, or sneaking off for a quick cigarette as the mood took them.

"Computer?"

"Yes, High Admiral?"

"Put me through to Abdulahi in Xamar."

The call went through almost instantaneously; Abdulahi had learned since he'd lost three ships to the infidels' ambushes not to let the High Admiral's warnings pass.

"Yes, Admiral Robinson?"

"Your enemies are moving inshore, between the villages of Sanaag and Gedo. I can't tell which of them is the target. Possibly both are."

"The villages? What reason could they have for going after villagers?"

Unseen below, Robinson rolled his eyes.
Were these people incapable of understanding the nature of the war they were in or the nature of their enemies, the nature they themselves brought forth?

Forcing disdain from his voice, Robinson answered, simply, "Terror."

That
Abdulahi understood. "I'll have a column on the road within the hour, High Admiral. Thank you."

"I don't know that it will do you any good."

"Perhaps not, High Admiral, but I have to try."

Again, Robinson rolled his eyes. "You can reasonably expect them to cover the roads by air, Abdulahi."

"We have some anti-aircraft weapons mounted on some of our vehicles."

"I doubt that light ones will be enough."

The Cricket Bs, being the slowest, were the first aircraft to take off. With the carrier's nose into the wind, even fully laden with five Cazadors and a pilot, it was a strain to keep the things from taking off on their own. With Fosa's command, "Land the landing force," the deck crew removed chock blocks, the pilots gunned engines, and—
fwoosh—
the things were gone into the night in a couple of eyeblinks.

The Finches were next to depart. These had superb short take off capabilities, but nothing like the miraculous abilities of the Crickets. They needed every inch of the flight deck they had to get airborne.

Rafael Montoya was lead bird for the Finches, this mission. As usual, he nearly wet himself as his plane reached the end of the flight deck and began to fall to the sea. As usual—now, at least—he maintained control of his bladder as he fought his plane back into the air.

"I have
got
to find another line of work," he muttered, once he was sure he was not going into the drink to be ground to pulp underneath his own ship.

Once clear of the ship, Montoya veered left and began a long spiraling climb to five thousand feet. There he loitered until the last of the Finches was airborne. Then, together, the group turned east. If everything worked out, they'd be past the coast and able to turn to make their initial attacks with the sun behind them.

The Yakamovs, with eighteen Cazadors loaded—actually, slightly
over
loaded— each, took off almost vertically even as the elevators began bringing up the last of the Crickets and Finches for the
other
part of the mission. Once airborne, the Yakamovs dropped down to skim-the-waves level. One never really knew what the wogs might have bought, in terms of warning radar and air defenses, from somebody or other.

'They're bringing more aircraft up on deck," Wallenstein said, as she and the High Admiral watched the carrier's ops in high resolution real time. "That's . . . . odd. We know they can launch everything more or less at once if they really want to. We've
seen
them do it."

Robinson worried a tooth with his tongue. There was absolutely no chance of a cavity in any of his teeth, of course; it was a nervous affectation.

"Maybe tougher to get everything on deck and launch it at night?" he mused. "I don't know. It is, as you say, 'odd,' Marguerite."

The couple went silent then and stayed silent, watching the launch of the last of the mercenaries' aircraft on the High Admiral's big Kurosawa. Bored after a bit, Robinson directed Wallenstein to come over. He snapped his fingers lightly and pointed at the deck, indicating she should kneel down between his legs. She did, of course; sexual service from their inferiors was a given right of the higher castes. Wallenstein hardly objected; she still desperately wanted Robinson's support for a jump in caste. Refusing him, or even performing at less than her very best, would jeopardize that. She sucked expertly but only automatically. Her mind was still working on other things.

Suddenly, Wallenstein pulled her head off. Her face took on a horrified look. "High Admiral," she said, "I just had the most
appalling
thought. We've been assuming all along that the mercenaries are unaware, and the Federated States only dimly aware, that we might be helping the other side. What if they know? What if they're counting on it? What if they were counting on us warning Abdulahi?"

Fosa and Kurita watched the large plasma screen—this one, too, was a Kurosawa—intently. The screen showed numerous markers. Central was the carrier itself, shown as a green triangle. Nearby were two smaller markers, green squares, for the
Santisima Trinidad
and the
San Agustin.
Ordinarily, there would have been corvettes in place. Indeed, not long before they'd been there on station around the carrier. Now, however, they were needed elsewhere. The plasma screen showed them—another two green squares—racing at thirty-seven knots to a point that would place them within range of a long arc of the main coastal road. They were due to arrive within fourteen minutes; so said the display. Wide circles around the corvettes' markers indicated maximum range for their guns.

A last important green square,
The Big ?
, likewise chugged toward the coast. It moved much more slowly, however, at some twenty-four knots. That didn't matter; it wasn't expected to be needed until later in the day.

Above the town of Gedo a blue circle was superimposed, Montoya's Finches circling like vultures. Another blue marker, this one in a V, showed the remainder of the carrier's Finches heading in. Further lines from both markers went generally north, intersecting the coastal road. Numbers above the lines indicated the time required for each group to reach a point on the coastal road from their present position. The lines shifted as they were moved by the crew of CIC. The times shifted as well.

Another blue V indicated the flight of Crickets and Yakamovs. This group, too, had a line that ran to the coastal highway. Like the Finches, the line and the times shifted and changed.

From the town and running up the highway were a series of eyes, outlined in black. These were the RPVs, watching the highway. Beneath the eyes, shown in red, was a long dotted column. This was the enemy, the enemy they'd expected to come from the capital of Xamar once the pirates were apprised of the fleet's movements. It was to the center of mass of this that the lines pointed. It was time of flight to this that the numbers indicated. It was this that the corvettes' markers sought to capture within the wide circles that showed maximum range for their guns.

Although the other chart showed times of flight, ease of management required that a different screen show in one convenient place the times for interception from each force to the enemy column. For the aircraft, those times were based on what was possible within their minimum and maximum speed, along with the speed required to intercept simultaneously, with the speed of the truck convoy from the capital factored in. When all subunits on the chart showed a time between nine and eleven minutes, Fosa took the radio microphone and announced, "Black this is Black Six. Roland. I repeat, Roland." Fosa then turned the mike over to his operations officer who quickly and efficiently relayed the speeds and course the various elements were to assume. The entire thing could conceivably have been digitalized, but this just wasn't that kind of force. Besides, voice worked well enough.

Every marker on the plasma almost immediately changed course to intercept the column at precisely the point it was expected to be in ten minutes.

Montoya keyed his mike and announced, "In ten . . . heading: 262 . . . speed: 137 . . . on one from five . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one." He then adjusted his throttle and eased his stick over to head toward the convoy. A glance to either side with his night vision goggles told him the others were following in a V behind.

A toss of the head backwards and the goggles flipped up, clearing his vision so that he could see his instruments. Everything appeared nominal, so he threw his head forward to bring the goggles back over his eyes. Then, followed by his wingmen, he dove for the dirt. He intended to come in low out of the rising sun.

"Fucking wogs are never going to know what hit 'em."

Abdulahi might have been willing to send lesser sons to sea, even to sacrifice a few here and there for the greater good of his line. For the core of his power base, the mobile column of over a thousand well armed and—by local standards—well trained cousins and nephews and family retainers, nothing and no one would do to lead except his number one son, and presumptive heir, also called Abdulahi.

Abdulahi the junior stood in the back of the second truck in the column, scanning ahead.
Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight,
Junior cursed. Even the one moon that had been showing had gone down. The sun was not yet up. The stars gave little light, even where they reflected off the sea beside the road. Only the headlights of the trucks provided illumination, and that only ahead and only when they actually worked. Many drove on one light, or even none.

Worse, perhaps, than the darkness was the noise. The trucks would have made a cacophony even had they been well maintained. They were not, however, well maintained. Added to the roar and backfiring of out of tune engines were the squeals of badly maintained brakes, the squeaks of abused shock absorbers, the whistles of leaking air tanks. In all, beyond the noise of the column Junior couldn't hear a blessed thing.

That didn't matter, as it turned out, as Montoya's flight was already lining up and the shells were already leaving the corvettes' guns by the time Robinson had alerted Abdulahi the senior to the threat.

The 76.2mm shell was no great shakes. Even coming it at a relatively high angle, its burst radius—more of an oval, actually—was no more than about fifteen by twenty-five meters. Moreover, because it was high velocity, the shells had to be of fairly high quality steel to withstand the stresses of firing. High quality steel produced many times fewer fragments than did simple, cheap iron.

On the other hand, the guns firing from the corvettes were capable of tossing out eighty shells each in forty seconds and, moreover, doing so with considerable accuracy. By the time the computer controlled guns had emptied their magazines, a sixteen hundred meter section of Xamar's coastal highway had been
deluged
with fire and flying chunks of glowing hot steel casing.

"YeeHAW!" Kurita exulted, when the image from the nearest RPV showed the road begin to erupt. Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing and simply stared at the normally ultradignified and reserved Yamatan.

"I've always liked Columbian films," the commodore said, stiffly, by way of explanation. It didn't really explain much.

Fosa suppressed a smile, then picked up the microphone. "Good shooting, corvettes," he said. "Reload and stand by to support the Cazadors."

"Already reloading, Legate," the first corvette answered. "Half full now," responded the second.

"Roger . . . break. Bluejay One: Finches, you may make your run."

Montoya's voice came from the speaker. "Wilco, Skipper." The other flight leader answered, "On station in three, Skipper."

Unbidden, the leader of the Cazadors—still aboard the Crickets and Yakamovs - broke in. "Leave some for us, ya greedy bastards."

Montoya had slowed slightly, to allow the other three birds in his flight to line up on him. Now, with the first rays of sun creeping over the horizon, the four Finches divided up their prey then separated laterally themselves.

For himself Montoya picked a half dozen trucks, one of them already burning. As his thumb flicked off the red safety on his yoke, he sang out, "
Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha
! Hey, where the hell's a PSYOP chopper to play Ride of the Valkyries when you really need one?"

Veering left, Montoya's thumb pushed the firing button. Fifty-seven millimeter rockets lanced out at a rate of six per second, preset. The rockets were almost evenly divided into high explosive, incendiary—the classic shake and bake—and flechette. Still veering, Montoya switched to his second pod by twisting a dial with his free hand. Once again he thumbed the firing button. Downrange, Hell was materializing.

Junior couldn't believe his eyes. One minute he'd been riding forward in pre-triumph mode to punish the wicked infidel and earn the gratitude of his father and glory among his people. The next, his column was half turned into twisted wreckage, and the roar of engines was replaced with the screams of the dying. With the next, the darkness was illuminated by the combination of just-rising sun and just-spouting flame.

There was an explosion off to Junior's left. Seconds later virtually the entire complement of the rear of the truck in front of him fell down with a god-awful collective moan. The moan was soon replaced by the sound of a dozen men, weeping like brokenhearted girls, as their organs failed from flechette wounds and their life's blood gushed out to fill the bed of the truck and run out the back in a small wave.