A Desert Called Peace

XVI.

"This is just fucking murder," the centurion said to Jimenez over the continuous rattle of machine guns assaulting both men's ear and from both sides. He repeated, "Just fucking murder."

Jimenez ignored it, concentrating on the bodies being harvested in long lines at the edge of the minefield and where the machine guns were laid along their final protective lines.

The centurion's right. This is just murder. These poor bastards are clueless. It isn't even worth calling in some artillery or mortars on them. Why waste the shells when they just offer themselves up for butchery?

Dawud never saw the bullets that cut his legs out from under him. One minute he was running forward, the next he felt both legs struck out from underneath and found himself spinning, literally head over heels, to fall to the dirt.

It didn't hurt at first, nor even for several minutes. Then the burning began, followed by pain such as the boy had never even imagined. He began to cry and then, as the pain grew greater, infinitely great, to scream.

His screams were no more than a few notes in the hellish symphony.

The centurion's eyes glowed even in the darkness. He shrugged, "So court-martial me, sir, but I'll be damned if I'll let that shit go on. Just listen to them, won't you? Those were just fucking kids. Just kids! So I'm going out-we've got clear lanes through the wire and mines-and I'm bringing them back with me, as many as I can and as many as any of my men who'll volunteer to go with me can."

Jimenez sighed. He'd not have the centurion court-martialed, not when he wanted to go out himself. Poor little bastards. They are just kids, too. Maybe one man might sound like that. But not every one of hundreds.

"Wait a few minutes until I can get a smoke screen laid then, centurion. Then you can go."

Field Hospital Number Two, Legio Del Cid, 2/8/462 AC

When Dawud came out of surgery he was unconscious and legless. The surgeons had tried but… well, the damage had been too great. Keeping the legs would only have condemned the boy to a harder death from gangrene.

He remembered nothing of how he had come to be captured and treated, though after the centurion who had ventured out into noman's-land had come by the field hospital to check on him, Dawud had been told the story by a Sumeri auxiliary nurse.

He'd miss the legs, he knew. Then again, what use were legs to a beggar boy? Perhaps it had been a fair trade. After all, at least he was eating well.

The boy bore no grudges. He didn't even know who to blame, the men who had shot him or the men who had driven him forth to be shot. In his world, bad things happened-usually to him-and it wasn't really anyone's fault. Il hamdu l'illah.

In any case, he had no hard feelings. The Sumeris working the field hospital had even suggested that it might be possible to go to school again on the legion's ticket. "Stranger things have happened," they'd all agreed. So, when the intelligence warrant officer had come to question Dawud, he had held nothing back. Not that he had much to tell. Yet from little bits of color are mighty works of art created. Dawud had a few such little bits to offer.

Given the ready cooperation, it was unsurprising that the boy was identified to the PSYOP maniple as a possible source for a telling interview.

Pumbadeta, Sumer, 3/8/462 AC

It was Dawud's voice carried on the dusty air from the loudspeakers of the legion to the ears of the men, and they were virtually all men, remaining inside the city.

Listening to it, Ehmed al Hanawi sat in a circle of other Pumbadetites. Like them his face was darkened with fury. Like them, too, his empty stomach rumbled. Like them his teeth ground against each other.

"So much for my boy's having volunteered for martyrdom," he cursed. "Taken without warning and forced into a meat grinder by our 'liberators.' The bastards."

The others nodded. Ehmed was the only one of the group who had lost a son in this way. But they were all fathers, and many of them still had boys trapped inside the town.

One of them men lifted up his Samsonov rifle and shook it. "I say we clean these bastards out. Who the fuck do they think they are, bringing this trouble upon us? Clean 'em out, I say."

Though almost all of the men assembled were at least functionally literate, only one among them could have been called really well educated. Mullah Thaqib had even attended school in far off Yithrab. He, too, had borne arms to the meeting. Those who insisted on calling Islam the "religion of peace" had obviously missed something important.

"It is easy to say 'Clean them out,' my friend,'" Thaqib answered. "But before we revolt," Thaqib said, "we must know if it is to any purpose. Will those who surround us let us live if we kill their enemies here for them?"

"Most of those surrounding us do not speak Arabic," Ehmed pointed out, "nor even English. Are there any here who can speak with them?"

Not even the mullah could speak Spanish.

"Most," he agreed. "Not all. There are some sections of the wall around us manned by Sumeri soldiers."

Ehmed answered dejectedly, "What difference, really? They let no one approach, preferring we all starve here."

"Where are the Sumeris stationed?" the mullah asked.

"One battalion-I think it's a battalion-is on the other side of the river."

"'Whosoever saveth the life of one…'" quoted Thaqib. "I will go to them."

Battle Position Sargon, 2nd Battalion, Sada's Brigade, 4/8/462 AC

If a Catholic priest had appeared alone in front of one of the portions of the front held by Balboan troops the effect would have been much the same. With a mullah, a bit wet and dripping perhaps but still recognizably a man of the cloth, the Sumeri troops likewise didn't fire.

The mullah climbed up the bank of the river and posted himself near the far end of the ruined, green-painted-steel girder bridge and leaned against it to catch his breath. He had a torch with him, and a lighter, but these were both soaked. He had to wait a time for them to dry. Fortunately, even this close to the river the air was dry enough to suck away life, let alone a bit of muddy water from the stream.

Although around four-fifths of the city the distance between buildings and circumvallating walls was nearly half a mile, here at the river the lines were close. Moreover, given a shortage of mines, the far bank was bare of them. Nor was there any wire, Sada having deemed, with Carrera's agreement, that the river itself was obstacle enough.

Thaqib didn't know that, of course. It was an act of desperate faith and belief in his God that caused him to light the torch, stand erect and walk forward.

He did have one thing going for him that he knew about. The insurgent fighters under Fadeel were an undisciplined lot. They rarely stayed awake to guard at night.

At least I don't have to worry about being shot in the back, he thought. That's some small comfort anyway.

" Naquib! Naquib! Wake up. There is a holy man who has crossed to our lines and wishes to speak with General Sada."

"Send him back," the captain commanding the company answered, firmly. "You know the rules on line crossers."

The sergeant normally wouldn't have bucked his commander. He liked the boy for one thing. For another, they were cousins. It was precisely that fact that made the sergeant stand up. "Sada will want to talk to this one, cousin. Trust me on this."

When Sada arrived and had spoken to the mullah he congratulated the captain on his wisdom and made a mental mark to look the man over closely for possible promotion. Breaking rules and violating orders-let alone disturbing their commanders at frightful hours!- was not something that came easily to Sumeri officers.

Hearing the mullah out took hours. By the time it was done the sun was beginning to rise, its glorious light casting the shadows of buildings across the ground.

"Carrera will want to hear this, Thaqib," Sada advised. "But he may have you shot."

"That will be as it will be."

By noontime two things had happened. For one, the desert had returned to its normal state of open oven. For another, Carrera had decided that there might be a way to end this without destroying the town and killing all the men inside.

"Are you willing to go back? To organize a rebellion?" Carrera asked in Arabic. "I would spare the men, but they must earn it." Unsurprisingly, his Arabic had started to become quite good rather than just adequate, though it still lagged well behind Lourdes' under Ruqaya's instruction, or Sada's English for that matter. This was annoying to him, in a distant way, as he had already spoken some Arabic long before Lourdes had ever come to Sumer.

"I am willing," Thaqib answered. "As to whether I am able? The men inside will likely not let me return."

"Do you have some people who are jump qualified?" he asked Sada.

"You're shitting me, right, Patricio?" Seeing that Carrera was serious, Sada thought about it and said, "Myself. Qabaash. Oh, he'll be hot for this. Possibly half a dozen troops. But the mullah is not trained. How do we get him out the airplane and down on the ground?"

Carrera just smiled and turned to Thaqib. Conversationally, he asked, "How's your faith in God?"

Fifteen-hundred feet over Pumbadeta, Sumer, 6/8/462 AC

A half a day of ground school and twelve jumps were hardly enough to make Thaqib an expert parachutist. On the other hand, he took it philosophically.

I am sure to hit the ground, no matter what happens, he thought. The ways of Allah are inscrutable but are as certain as His Grace. And best of all, after this one it will be the last time I'll ever have to do anything like this again. For this, Beneficent One, I thank You.

They waited until the moon, Eris, which was nearly full, had set. Sada jump-mastered the operation for one bird. Qabaash had the other. They both thought the idea was insane-a definite point of appeal to Qabaash-but were willing to take the chance to prevent the otherwise inevitable bloodbath in what was, after all, one of their cities and filled with their people.

Sada looked Thaqib straight in the face, searching for signs of hesitation. Seeing none, he laughed aloud. "Mullah, when this is done, if we live, how would you like a job as a chaplain in my brigade?"

Given the warm, thin air right at the surface, the Crickets had had to strain to lift even two men with parachutes. Any idea of using the next smallest airplane available, however, the NA-23, was simply out of the question. Crickets were designed to be quiet, their single engines muffled. NA-23s could be heard from far away.

Lanza-hell, he flew everything and every chance he had, too!looked back over his right shoulder and told Sada, in English, "Crossing the river now." Sada knew that meant less than two minutes to jump at this speed.

The engine suddenly went dead. This was by design rather than a flaw. The Cricket was perfectly capable of gliding quite some distance without engine power, once it was up among the cooler, thicker air.

Sada helped Thaqib to ease himself to the Cricket's door. As with every prior jump, the cleric stiffened once he was in position, but then forced himself to a more relaxed calm. Reciting some of his favorite hadiths helped. At the proper time, Sada pushed the mullah out the door, then quickly threw himself behind him.

Above, the Cricket sailed on until near the edge of the city, at which point Lanza reengaged the engines.

Sada, Qabaash and the young soldier accompanying them, Sergeant Ali, landed easily enough in the broad park near the center of town. Mullah Thaqib nearly screamed at his landing as he came down with one leg on a concrete pad and the other just off it. This caused the ankle that hit first to twist, dislocating it with an audible sound that was almost as bad as the pain shooting up Thaqib's leg.

"Oh… God!" Thaqib gasped when Sada reached him. One look at the odd angle of the foot was enough to tell the general that there was no chance of the man walking on his own power any time soon.

"Qabaash, you and Ali hide the chutes." He hesitated. They had not been sure, even after planning and aerial recon, just where they could hide the parachutes. "Mmm… over there. I'll meet you." Sada's finger pointed to an apparently abandoned apartment building.

While that was being done, Sada half-stripped and put on a long flowing robe and keffiyah. His weapon was indistinguishable from those carried by the insurgents so that would be no problem. Slinging the rifle across the left side of his neck, Sada helped the mullah to his good leg and assisted him to hobble, one-legged, to where Qabaash and Ali waited. They'd also donned local, civilian costume and already had their boots off and replaced with sandals.

Qabaash and Ali both looked at the mullah's ankle and the bone pressing out and said, together, "Shit."

"We'll have to splint it before we try to move him any farther. Sergeant Ali, can you find a couple of stout sticks?"

The sergeant nodded and walked farther into the building, muttering something about, "Darker than three feet up a well digger's ass at midnight… a moonless midnight."

Sada and his two men had no real difficulty moving Mullah Thaqib to his home. The streets were dark, the insurgents mostly less than alert, and their appearance nothing remarkable. Once there, they set Thaqib down on a pallet while his wife fussed over him. Sada used the break to call the legion's command post with a single code word, repeated three times: "Badr… Badr… Badr."

Legionary Command Post, 7/8/462 AC

"They're in and safe," Jimenez announced, when the message was received. A subdued cheer rang throughout the command post.

Fahad, standing by for just this word, breathed a sigh of relief.

"You really care about Sada, don't you?" Carrera asked. "Moslem or not you still care about him?"

The Chaldean thought about that for a minute before answering. "He was… still is, my commander, sir. We've been through the… through the shit together. Bonds like that go past things like religion. Besides…"

"Yes?"

"If this country is ever going to amount to anything ever again, it will be because of Sada and the few men like him, men who stand above tribe and religion and sect. Honorable men."

"Isn't that an interesting thought," Carrera said slowly. "Sada and a few like him. I confess; I see Sumer as doing better in his hands than in those of the pack of jackals down in Babel. He is, as you said, an honorable man… and a brave one. Yes, that's a very interesting thought, Fahad."

"Sir?" Fahad asked, clearly not understanding.

"Never mind, friend. We will see what we will see."

Pumbadeta, Sumer, 7/8/462 AC

A man has to play the hand he's dealt. Sada didn't even try to form a working chain of command based on military experience. Instead, he selected out the couple of dozen experienced senior officers and NCOs from the old Sumeri Army (for while virtually every man in town had some military experience, trained leaders were few and far between) and assigned one or two to each group of tribal and clan leaders. The traditional chiefs would command; the former soldiers only advise.

In analyzing his assets all Sada could think was, There are damned few of them. I've got numbers but I lack everything else. No radios, no heavy weapons, limited ammunition, no special purpose ammunition.

More than anything, it was those last two that decided him to begin the rebellion on the side of the town by the river. If he could clear that, then his troops could throw a temporary bridge over the stream and not only add their own weight to the fight but also bring in whatever the rebellion would need.

He had another consideration though. Even after we seize the near bank, Fadeel's men will just fall back and make us root them out of every little building and shack. Bad for the town, and bad for the townsmen's lives.

Sada knew, from prior planning, that the legion would be making a great show of preparing to assault from every side. The intent was to draw the insurgents out from the center of town, leaving it for the townsfolk to occupy. This would make life very difficult for the insurgents, once they began to fall back.

That's not enough, though. They will still fall back. How do I use that?

He closed his eyes and began to think. Okay… let's imagine I first grab the near bank. The insurgents will run to that to try to retake it and stop us. Let them in or keep them out? Hmmm. Let them in, I think, as many as want to go. Then we rise up to seize the center of town. Both of my battalions here cross the river at about the same time and begin the resupply operation for the locals. Then we push the insurgents into the center of town, which we hold… and ambush the hell out of them as they flee to new positions to the west. Now… where to draw the line?

"Qabaash, do you have the centers of gravity for the clans and tribes, yet?"

In response, Qabaash left the group of elders with whom he'd been talking and from whom he'd taken the information to annotate his acetate-covered map, came over, and laid the map in front of Sada.

Sada rubbed his hand across his sprouting beard wearily. No really good lines to seal off the area. But… there is this government complex in the center of town. It's tall and fairly visible from everywhere.

The trick, he knew, would be assigning the tribes missions that directly related to the security of their own homes, that blocked the fighting from those homes. Sada read off a tribal name that Qabaash had scrawled inside a circle drawn on the acetate along with a number indicating likely fighters. "Dulaim tribe?"

"Here, sayidi," answered a bearded old man in a dusty robe.

Sada's finger pointed to the map near the northern edge of town. "I'll want your people to assemble here and keep anyone from fleeing westward. Let as many as want to come east, but nobody goes west. Got it?"

"Yes, sayidi," the old man answered after looking carefully enough at the map to make sure he could find the right spot. "When do we start? I don't own a watch."

"Noon," Sada answered. "We will begin seizing the river bank at first light. Give these stinking, murdering foreigners plenty of time to move to contain us, and have this position blocked by high noon."

"Yes, sayidi. We can do this."

Sada slapped the old man on the shoulder, then turned his attention back to the group. "Muntafic tribe…?"

Fadeel no longer used his minaret lookout. It was no fine sense of obligation or newfound respect for convention that kept him out. Rather, the filthy, ass-fucking crusaders made a habit of sniping at anyone found near the city's edge who looked remotely like an observer.

They were damnably good shots, too. Worse, some of the rifles they used were subsonic and silenced. One never knew where the shot might have come from that blew out a man's chest or disintegrated his head amidst a spray of brains, blood and bone.

So, instead of his usual minaret perch Fadeel found himself looking through an irregular loophole knocked in the wall of a used car dealership.

Something's definitely up, he thought, looking out over the crusaders' surrounding berm. The air past the berm was heavy with the dust thrown up by what had to be heavy vehicles, lots of heavy vehicles, moving into position.

A large explosion rocked Fadeel. And they're blowing lanes in their own obstacles. We're in for it, right enough.

Fadeel left the shelter of the used car lot headquarters and began moving toward the center of town. While he did, he stopped at a couple of spots to count the aircraft circling like vultures overhead. He stopped counting when he reached forty and then saw over thirty more helicopters winging in from the south. Shit.

Carrera and Jimenez choked on the dust in the air. A nearby light truck deliberately raised those clouds, dragging behind it several rolls of concertina wire stretching out in the dirt. It was one of dozens being used for the purpose. They dragged the concertina up, raising the clouds, then collapsed the wire and drove back away from the city and repeated. From the inside of the town it had to look like a massive assembly of troops and armor.

Soult handed over a radio microphone with the announcement, "Sada, Boss."

"Yeah, Adnan?"

"We're ready to start, Patricio. What's the word from overhead?"

"Not much reaction, yet," Carrera answered. The air folks reported some massing toward the bridges but as near as we can figure that's your people."

The radio keyed and Carrera heard a heavy rattle of rifle and machine gun fire before Sada said, "Well… it's time. Wish me luck, friend."

"Rack 'em up, Adnan."

Qabaash laughed heartily. Normally quiet, he was one of those odd folks who only came alive when the bullets were flying and he could shoot back. He hadn't had nearly enough chance to do that, of late. Under his direction a group of townsmen assaulted a building overlooking the river. They had no grenades, except for a few dozen they'd captured when they'd taken the insurgents unawares. These had been passed out already and, for the most part, used. Now it was rifle and bayonet in every room.

"Allah forgive me but I love this shit," Qabaash murmured. He raised his own rifle to take a potshot at an insurgent running across an alleyway. Much to his irritation, he missed.

No problem, friend. We'll get you later.

The radio crackled. "Qabaash, Sada. Progress?"

"We've almost cleared the river bank, Liwa. There's one big building held by the enemy that's blocking our way. The engineers on the other side can't get a bridge up until we take that building. Any word on grenades?"

"Waiting on the other side, Qabaash. Will the building burn?"

Qabaash looked at it. It was an older one and likely to have something flammable to it. "Maybe."

"Good. Burn 'em out."

Qabaash looked around the street. Hmmm… I wonder how many of those cars have gas in the tank. He ran over to one and flopped to the ground. Crawling underneath, he tapped the gas tank. Maybe half full. Hmmm.

Running back to where a group of townsmen waited, Qabaash ordered, "Bottles and hoses. Drain the tanks of the cars. We'll give them a taste of the hellfire that awaits."

Little bits of concrete dust burst into the air as bullets struck the walls and windows of the building. Below, at street level, a steady stream of men and boys ran across the open area to toss a bottle or two into the ground floor. The whole area stank of gasoline.

The other bottles had not been lit. Qabaash, however, had a more conventional Molotov cocktail in his hand. After seeing what had to be fifty or sixty liters of gas dumped in the building, he trotted across the street and took cover against the building wall. Reaching into a pocket he pulled out a cigarette lighter and flicked it to light the Molotov. Build a man a fire and keep him warm for the night. Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life. With a smile he hurled the flaming contraption into the building and began to run back…

And was knocked flat on his face as the gasoline inside suddenly caught in something that was only just less than a full up fuel-air explosion. Only the many open portals of the building kept it from going up in a huge, contained, thermobaric kaboom. By the time he had rolled on his back and sat up, the entire ground floor poured forth flames. Before he had gotten to his feet the second and even some of the third floor windows had tongues of flame licking out.

The screaming inside the buildings went on for a very long, very satisfying, time.