The Lotus Eaters (48 page)

"When can you people put up something to join me?" Hartmann asked.

The control tower answered, "Hours after daylight. The bastards skimmed by us just before one in the morning. Two helicopters; model unknown. They dropped thousands of these little damned mines on all the taxiways, the parking area, and the runway. Mixed in with those were some anti-vehicular mines. A bunch of them were painted with some red glow-in-the-dark paint. More weren't. We found out all the mines weren't painted when one of our people went out to try to sweep the way clear with a push broom. He stepped on one that wasn't painted. It smashed his foot. Anyway, at first light we'll begin to clear the base. Sorry. And, no, we can't refuel you either. Bastards."

Hours after first light
, thought Hartmann,
too late. I guess it's still up to me.

"Sir, Mare Superum and Pizarro are out of Buenaventura waters and splitting up."

"What about Santiago Two Bravo?"

"They've made water, but they say their bird won't go much farther."

"Marathon Two Romeo, rescue?"

"They've gone past Checkpoint Papa and are flying a back azimuth toward Santiago Two Bravo."

"Tell Marathon Two Romeo to set their altitude above Santiago 2 Bravo's. No sense in finding each other the hard way."

"Sir! Also, sir, the Mosaics have radar contact on one bogie, heading from Santiago to Buenaventura. They are moving to intercept."

"Tell them to warn the other guy off. They are not to kill anybody they can avoid killing."

Hartmann didn't even bother to check his position as he passed over the town. He had a radar contact, moving maybe a hundred knots, dead ahead of him. He aimed his
Illusion
straight at the contact and closed. Hartmann never even noticed the two small ships, one sailing north, one sailing south, that he overflew on his way.

Missile range
, thought Hartmann, when he'd closed some.
Guns or missiles? The orders were to force them down to arrest them, not produce a railroad car full of bodies. Guns it is.

Hartmann heard his threat warning radar chiming out danger. He chose to ignore it. The target—it had to be a helicopter—was only miles away. And there was another one—no two!—closing on the first, moving faster and at higher altitude.

By the moonlight Hartmann saw his target. Yes, it
was
a helicopter. Lining his sights up ahead of the bird, he fired a short burst across its bow.

* * *

When the line of tracer fire shot past the front of the crippled HIP, the pilot had instinctively shied from it, veering sharply right. Men in the back of the helicopter shouted their alarm. Overhead and behind the flight position the transmission ground out a sound of gradually disintegrating metal gears.

The pilot told his copilot, "I'm going to hold her in this position as long as I can. Get back, dump the life rafts, and get the men out. Have them leave their equipment aboard. I'll exit before the bitch sinks." When the copilot hesitated the pilot shrieked "Go on, damn you! I'm a better swimmer than you are."

The copilot thought about continuing to protest. The look on the pilot's face made him think better of it. He unbuckled and crawled back to the troop compartment.

* * *

Out at sea, in the blue-green light of the Phidippides' operations center, the ops crew heard the radio blast out, "Marathon, this is Four! The bogie just fired at the helicopter!"

"Can you take him out, Four?"

"Roger!"

"Do it!"

* * *

Amid hellish confusion—though at least there was no screaming—the troops in the back of the helicopter stripped off their gear, dropped their weapons and radios and dived out the left side door to where, hopefully, two small rubber rafts floated. The copilot had been first out—someone had to insure the boats inflated. The crew chief pushed the others out one after another, then joined them in the darkness. When the pilot, head turned rearward, saw the crew chief go he pushed his stick over to get the HIP as far as possible from the struggling men. Sparks and smoke came from the engine compartment.

* * *

Hartmann forced his head back forward as he made a high "G" turn. He knew that there was another jet out there somewhere close. His radar warning buzzer told him so. Nonetheless, he lined up on the stricken HIP to fire again. If he couldn't force it back to shore, he'd give the sea plenty of bodies to eventually wash ashore for evidence.

Hartmann's thumb reached for the firing button. He flicked off the safety cover and began to press. Before the guns fired he felt something strike his aircraft and then the unmistakable feel of an airframe coming apart around him. What had hit him was a mere conjecture until he saw a second missile streak by.

"Chingada," Hartmann said as he released his stick and reached down for the ejection lever.

* * *

"Mosaic Four has fired, sir! Two missiles. She reports one hit. The bogie has lost its engine. . . . Four reports an ejection . . . he thinks.

The work deck exploded in cheers when the radar officer reported the Santandern as downed.
Never
, thought the colonel,
never have I been so proud of my country as I am today.

Clinging to the side of the raft, the copilot watched the helicopter turn over on one side and fall to the water. The spinning blades cut the water even as the increased resistance of the water tore the blades apart. He thought he saw, but couldn't be sure, his pilot trying to exit the side door as the helicopter took water and sank from sight.

Above him the copilot saw twin streaks and either a single or a double explosion; he couldn't be sure. The sonic boom he had heard as he had entered the water ended suddenly. From miles away came the sound of something hitting the waves, hard and fast.

The copilot scanned the skies around him. A different sounding sonic boom passed overhead, heading southeast. In the moonlight, the copilot thought he saw a parachute. This was confirmed when he did see the flashing of a strobe light, perhaps a mile away, or a bit less, the jet pilot's rescue beacon.

A few minutes after the last sonic boom had died away, the copilot heard the welcome sound of helicopter rotors, two he thought, rapidly nearing. He activated his own strobe.

* * *

"Marathon this is Two Romeo. We're on station and the other chopper is picking up the troops now. But Marathon, we've got a problem."

From many miles distant, Ops asked, "What?"

"The Santandern pilot," answered the rescue chopper's pilot. "He's in the water. I doubt they'll find him anytime soon, if at all."

Ops considered.
Twin problems. We want to leave the Santanderns in doubt as to who is responsible and we want to keep their military and non-combatant—or at least non-Cartel—losses to a minimum.

"I admit to being a little stumped. Any suggestions, Two Romeo?"

"Nobody's going to mistake me for a Balboan. Not once they hear me speak Spanish. And my English isn't bad either. I can swim. While my copilot maintains a hover, I'll pull him out, cover his eyes, and give him a choice he can't refuse. Then we drop him off somewhere not too convenient. I'll be the only one he sees."

"Move out and draw fire, Romeo."

* * *

His automatically inflating life vest kept him afloat. The pilot's seat was sinking somewhere deep below him. Idly floating on his back, Hartmann wondered,
Will the sharks get me first? There are megalodon in these waters. That would be quick if not exactly painless. Or will the vest leak so that I drown. Or maybe a storm comes up? Whatever it might be, there's essentially
no
chance that my own air-sea rescue will find me.

Oh, oh, what's this? Ah, the invaders. They'll just machine gun me from a distance, I think.
Adios, Patria
.

To the Santandern's surprise, the helicopter didn't go into a hover at a reasonable distance away, where reasonable was defined as "good to shoot fish in a barrel from." Instead, it kept coming closer until it was almost exactly overhead, at a distance of about twenty feet. He saw a shape emerge from the side of the chopped, then felt his body begin to rock as a great spout of water shot up beside him.

* * *

The Volgan pilot surfaced, moments later, near Hartmann. The Santandern waved. "Nice of you to drop in."

"You speak English?" the Volgan shouted to be heard over the chopper. It was few enough words that a foreigner was unlikely to pick up the Volgan accent.

"Flight school in the Federated States," answered Hartmann, succinctly.

"Good. But we can speak Spanish. Now, we can do this one of three ways. I can take you back with me and no one you know will see you any time in the next half century or so. Or, we can leave you here and maybe you'll be found and maybe you won't."

"You said three ways," Hartmann reminded. There was also a fourth way, as both men knew. The Volgan—or gringo, as Hartmann thought—had the good taste not to mention it.

"It's up to you. But we can take you back and drop you off."

"And the catch?"

"You've got to swear to me that you won't say who we are."

"Be serious. I've got to say something."

"Fine. Tell them we were men from outer space, Cajamarcans. Make something up."

Hartmann felt his arm. He was pretty sure it was broken. He knew he wouldn't last out here very long. Shock and exposure would get him if nothing else. And Santander's Air Rescue Service was next to non-existent. "I agree."

The Volgan waved to the helicopter to throw a rope. This he tied under Hartmann's arms. The rescue crew pulled him up by main strength, the helicopter having no winch attached. The rope was returned. Then the helicopter turned east towards Santander before heading for home.

* * *

San Martin had focused on Hartmann's radio beacon as it activated. He had had no luck chasing down any of his sightings. They had all either lost themselves in the trees and hills, or had crossed over into Balboa before he could intercept. He picked up a radar contact, a helicopter that seemed to be hovering over the approximate location of Hartmann's beacon. San Martin was about to use his IFF, Identification Friend of Foe, when the helicopter turned east toward Santander.
Oh, its one of ours
. San Martin told himself that he would never again have a bad word to say about Santander's helicopter units. San Martin turned back toward Santa Fe.

Elites of today favor coddling the criminal class. The elites, then, will deny the common people arms necessary for self defense. This is easy for the new aristocracy; they live in gated communities, with armed guards, and as far from criminal elements as possible. They will also deny the commoners the social good resulting from the putting to death of the wicked. The elites don't suffer from this; their gated communities and their guards make them fairly immune to crime.
Are your public schools a ruin? Never mind; you and your children don't count. Jobs gone? Electrical service spotty? Public transportation unreliable? News full of lies? Not to worry; the elites are well taken care of, behind their walls. And fear not for your elite, neo-aristocratic rulers' children. Those children will attend good private schools even as the elites subject yours to a system that, imposed by foreigners, would be a crime against humanity, an act of war.
But then, the elites
are
foreigners; even if they—purely notionally—share your citizenship, they have renounced all of its meaning. And the people owe them nothing, not even their lives. They are at war with you. You should fight back.
Without mercy.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral
,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

"Turn that shit off," said the President, Karl Schumann. A flunky picked up the remote to turn off a television that seemed to have nothing on it but anti-gringo protests from Atzlan to la Plata.

The President, watched by his press secretary, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General and a few others, paced vigorously from wall to wall.

"General," Schumann asked, "are you absolutely certain we didn't do it? The President of Santander is positive that we did."

JCS suppressed a highly amused smile, answering, "Mr. President, we know exactly who did do it. The ACCS we have on patrol over the Santander coast recorded the whole thing as it happened, even though they didn't quite understand what was happening. The Balboans did it. I don't know all the details, but they did it. And they set it up to pin it on us."

"But . . .
why
?"

"My guess," answered the JCS, "is that they didn't want to piss off the Santanderns because they've got all the enemies they need already. And, too, it isn't like we haven't been pressuring them to do something about the drug trade, or as if they don't have good reasons to keep drugs out of Balboa."

"What's the ambassador down there say?" Schumann asked of State.

"Ambassador Wallis says the Balboans won't admit a thing to him. They refuse to discuss it. Which is screwy, because if it was them, then they know it couldn't have been us."

"It wasn't us," JCS reiterated.

The Secretary of State gave JCS a look which as much as said,
So you say.

Schumann returned to his desk and sat down. "In any event," he said, "Santander, the whole of Latin America, thinks we did do it. There were protests today in every capital. The Santanderns are showing helmets, our kind of helmets, all over the news. They claim we shot down one of their planes and shot up an airfield. Their President is threatening to shut down diplomatic relations and kick us completely out of the country."