The Lotus Eaters (29 page)

The guerilla thought about that.
We just
might
, too. Rumor control said so and
—

"Blllauauaughghgh!"

Oh, God, maybe that would be better.

As soon as the helicopter had set down on a square concrete pad surrounded by close-cropped grass, the crew chief had pulled a black bag over Esteban's head.

"Sorry," the crew chief had said. "Orders."

Immediately thereafter the door had been whipped open and two sets of hands had roughly and expeditiously pulled the POW out of the chopper, forced him to bend over slightly, and hustled him to a waiting vehicle. That vehicle sped away. Miraculously, or so Esteban thought, his stomach had settled down the instant the helicopter had landed.

When the sedan stopped, mere minutes later, two more sets of hands—or perhaps they were the same; Esteban couldn't be sure—dragged him out and then backwards to somewhere he knew not. He was dumped, unceremoniously, into a hard chair. In all, the entire process from landing to seating had taken perhaps five minutes.

A voice said, "Remove his mask."

Esteban was still shaking like a leaf in a strong wind when the black bag was removed from his head. He hadn't a clue what awaited. Torture? Death?

Probably both and in that order.

Once his eyes readjusted to the light, the prisoner saw a small, slight, and weasel-faced little man standing before him with a very uncommitted expression on his face.

"I'm Legate Fernandez," the man said, "and I understand you surrendered to our men. I have a few questions for you."

* * *

"I don't know,
señor
," Esteban said, shaking his head. He was nervous, understandably so. "Someone in the
aduana
, that's all my
jefe
ever said. I never went with him to deliver the goods."

The one called "Fernandez" sighed. "That doesn't help much, Esteban. Work with me here. Did your
jefe
ever say anything about him or how he operates? A physical description maybe?"

The prisoner shrugged. "He called him 'a gold-toothed motherfucker.' "

Fernandez shook his own head. "Gold teeth, son, are not particularly rare around here."

Esteban licked his lips nervously.
Torture and death. Torture and death
.

"The
jefe
called his contact a
chumbo
once."

"A prick? The world is full of pricks."

"No, no,
señor
. In Santander a
chumbo
is a prick. But I think my
jefe
was using local slang for a
chumbo,
a black man."

The POW could see from Fernandez's scowl that this, too, was not very helpful.
The Balboans have black folk just like we do. Shit. Torture and death. Torture and death.
He stretched for something, anything that might be useful.

Esteban offered, doubtfully and nervously, "He . . . the
jefe
, I mean . . . he always said that payment was a mix of money and usually a single bag of the stuff, sometimes two, for his contact."

Fernandez tilted his head sideways even as his mouth formed a little quizzical expression. After a few moments' thought, he straightened his head and said, "Please, work with me here, Esteban; if a shipment's just gone through—you said these were big shipments?

"
Si, señor
," the Santandern agreed. "Often more than a ton. Twenty tons, once. I know because I helped load it."

"Okay. So a shipment that size gets cut by ninety percent or more before being sold on the streets of the Federated States or the Tauran Union, right?"

"
Si, señor
, that's my understanding."

Fernandez stopped speaking long enough to go to his desk and make a telephone call. He asked a few questions, got a few answers, said, "Thanks. Goodbye," and hung up.

"That was an acquaintance of mine," Fernandez said, "at the Federated States Drug Interdiction Team at their embassy. He says that a big shipment usually depresses prices in the FSC and TU. See, the dealers have a hard time hanging on to a large inventory and so they sell as quickly as they can. It's a supply-demand issue, much complicated by a the-police-are-looking-for-this-shit issue."

Esteban nodded, eager to please and avoid,
Torture and death. Torture and death.

"Now," Fernandez mused, "if I had a small quantity of something, would I want to transship it on to someplace where the price was depressed?"

Esteban shook his head vigorously,
no
.

"So think I," the legate agreed. He seemed almost genial, too. "Especially if there's a substantial number of just plain rich folks locally I could sell it to. But to whom would I sell it, and how would I get my product to market?"

Before Esteban could formulate an answer, Fernandez touched an intercom and said, "Come get the prisoner."

Oh, God. Torture and death. Torture and death.

Two fierce looking guards came in. Fernandez told them, "Take this man to a holding cell. Feed him if he'll eat. Treat him well. He's been most cooperative."

As Esteban was led away he heard Fernandez speaking into a telephone again. "Patricio," he heard the legate ask, "just how far do your war powers extend? No, I don't mean outside of the country, actually."

The neighborhood was old and picturesque, built upon the charred remains of the original settlement in the then United Nations-supervised colony of Balboa.

Up the narrow, cobblestoned street, between the close-packed rows of five story mansions, most of them converted to upscale apartments or condominiums, walked a young man of perhaps twenty to twenty-five years. That young man was slight of build; light complexioned and prosperously dressed. He walked from the area of the Old City toward a neighborhood that was everything the Old City was not . . . everything bad, that is.

Rats scampered quickly and furtively across garbage strewn streets, leery of the antaniae that clustered on leaky roofs. From glassless, unscreened windows came the sounds of tuberculoid coughing and wailing babies. Even so, far worse than the moonbats and the rats were the human filth that preyed on the
barrio
's inhabitants.

This was the city's open social sewer. And despite Legate Cheatham's comments to Carrera, full employment—
honest
work for everyone—had not quite yet come to Balboa.

The young man continued to walk, pretending not to notice the nondescript, aged automobile that passed him on the street every few minutes. The vehicle's four occupants, as well, tried not to observe the young man too obviously.

As the young man turned a corner, a hand from an unseen assailant reached out to grab him by the back of his collar. He felt the point of a knife pressed against his back.

"What have we here? A
rabiblanco
coming home from visiting his sweetheart. Empty your pockets,
white ass
."

The young man did as he was told, but in doing so he dropped a handful of loose change, apparently from nervousness. A fist lanced out at the pit of his stomach. The young man bent over, reflexively. Another blow knocked him to the ground. A shutter in an upper story apartment closed at the sound.

Kicks followed. Unnoticed by the assailants, the same nondescript car that had shadowed the young man pulled serenely past his prostrate form. The car stopped. Three men, armed and masked, emerged from the car and closed on the scene of the crime. The beating of the young man stopped when the leader of the street toughs felt the cold metal of a pistol silencer press against his neck. All four of the thugs were forced to lie down by two of the men from the car. "On your bellies, assholes." The third helped the young man back to his feet.

"Are you okay, corporal?" asked the third man from the car.

"Sure," answered Corporal Enrique Velasquez, of the 10th Infantry
Tercio
. "The cocksuckers didn't have time to hurt me badly." He dabbed a handkerchief at some blood dripping from his face even so.

One of the two men from the car who still guarded the thugs said "You were bait this time. So you get to finish the job, except for the two that higher needs. Those are the rules." He handed a silenced pistol to Velasquez, who thanked him, politely.

Then Velasquez walked up to where the muggers lay parallel on the ground. He shot the first two, once each, in the back of the head. The pistol made a soft
pffft
, quieter even than the working of the pistol's steel slide as it leapt back and forth to strip, catch and feed a new cartridge. The expended cartridge flew up and to the right before hitting the ground with a soft ring. Blood and brains splattered the sidewalk, even as the smell of shit, not all of it from the dead, wafted up.

The same automobile that had brought the three rescuers to the scene returned, the driver stopping his vehicle and opening the trunk. Velasquez and another lifted the two corpses one at a time and dumped them in the trunk, even as the remaining two legionaries taped the still living thugs securely. These, too, were then dumped in the trunk atop the bodies.

"Ok," said the sergeant. "Let's drop off the garbage at the city dump. After that, we'll turn the survivors over to our contact."

An old woman peeped out from her window. "Chico," she asked Velasquez, "is it safe to come outside?"

"Only for a little while,
Abuela
. But soon it will be safe all the time."

One had to give Fernandez his due. Given a new mission, he moved faster than anyone had a real right to expect, starting with giving the operation a name,
Nube Oscura
or Dark Cloud, to arranging funding, to recruiting a few score reliable troops for the effort.

He didn't entirely trust the Civil Police for work like this; they were still too close to the old ways and the old government. Moreover, there was more than sufficient reason to believe they were, in too many parts, corrupt.

Starting from scratch
, Fernandez mused in his windowless basement office,
and given orders to move quickly . . . well, we've had a good beginning. Fifty-seven criminals killed, half of them saved for interrogation before being executed. Illegal? So what? They volunteered to be outside the law when they broke the law. And, moreover, when they caused my country to be threatened with another gringo invasion they become my personal enemies as well as the enemies of all right-thinking Balboans. In short, fuck 'em.

A good beginning
, he repeated the thought.
That's given us the next tier up, the gang leaders. From there . . .

They waited until the crowd from the last airship to land had dispersed before walking forward.

Corporal Velasquez, like his senior,
Sargento
Lopez, wore civilian clothes, slacks and
guayaberas
, embroidered shirts that took the place of suits for much of Balboa's population most of the time.

"
Señor
Donati?" asked Lopez.

"Yes," the
aduana
chief answered, impatiently, "I'm Donati."

"Then you must come with us."

The entire facility had the smell of disinfectant, much like a hospital. Like a hospital, too, the whole place was rather quiet, all subdued voices and muffled mechanical sounds. Under the artificial lighting, and with that pungent stink in his nostrils, a bound and gagged Donati, shuffled down the corridor under the direction of his guards. He thought he had caught a glimpse of his wife being led off down a corridor crossing the one he followed. That was worrying enough to cause his heart to sink. Who knew what she might divulge?

One guard put a hand on Donati's shoulder, stopping him in front of a metal door unmarked save for a room number. The other guard opened the door and said, "Enter."

The room inside was lit, with one desk and a hardback chair in front of it. At the desk sat a swarthy, somewhat overweight sort, in the uniform of the Legion, making an entry into a page in a file folder. Without looking up, the swarthy one made a motion that the guards should seat Donati, which they did, roughly.

Donati thought there was something about the man at the desk to mark him as foreign, but couldn't quite put his finger on it. That man continued to write for several minutes before closing the folder and looking up.

"My name is Mahamda," the man said, in accented Spanish, "Warrant Officer Achmed al Mahamda. I am a recent immigrant to Balboa. From Sumer. You are going to tell me everything I want to know about the drug trade, how it works, who are the players, where are the facilities, what are the routes, how much money is involved, where it is, and how to confiscate it.

"You're going to want to lie to me. Don't."

Each
tercio
, or regiment, of the Legion del Cid, the armed force of the Republic of Balboa, sends to the Senate one senator who serves for an eight year term, with one quarter of all senators being reelected—or not, as the case may be—every two years. Senators are elected by their regimental centuriate assembly, composed of the discharged veterans of the regiment.

Upon graduation from initial entry training, all newly minted soldiers are assigned to a political century, an arbitrary grouping of exactly one hundred. (That is to say,
officially
it is arbitrary. In practice, wealthier and better educated people appear to be deliberately scattered among the centuries not only to reduce their political influence but to force those wealthier and more influential types to watch out for their century-brothers.) Soldiers killed in initial entry training are also counted, and their names enrolled in the other centuries being filled at the time of graduation.

That is one type, one might call it the "post-revolutionary" type, of century. The other type consists of those who were soldiers prior to the "revolution," which is to say prior to the election of Raul Parilla as President of the Republic and prior to the establishment of the Senate. These, plus their dead comrades, of which there were very many, were formed into political centuries shortly after the Parilla assumed power.