A Desert Called Peace

II.

"What? You afraid he won't be able to perform in bed, bitch? How about I have a half dozen of my men give you the last decent fuck of your life?" The wife's mouth just formed a silent "O" of pure terror. She began to plead for herself then, as well as her battered husband.

The corporal released her hair and turned back to the husband. He asked, "You want that, boy? Shall we gang-bang your wife? No? Then tell me what the fuck you were doing here. Just out for a stroll, you say. No doubt."

A private put his hand under the husband's chin and pushed up hard. The naval officer's head slammed into the wall behind. It struck the exposed brick wall hard enough to split the thin skin over his skull.

Even now Jimenez smiled at the memory, the same smile he had been using since boyhood whenever something really annoyed him.

He went on, "So the private's still holding this poor guy's chin and was cocking his arm to hit him in the face when I reached them and grabbed his arm."

"He said, and I remember this clearly, 'What the fuck…?' Then the private looked at me over his shoulder. Oh, Patricio, it was good to see. His eyes got big-like saucers-when he realized who I was."

"I smiled at him. Patricio, I confess… I was not always as even tempered as I am now. The private knew what that smile meant. He looked… well… a lot more frightened than that poor woman did."

The corporal's eyes bugged out. He stuttered out, "Ca-Ca-Captain Jimenez. Sir. They're spies. We were…"

Jimenez cut off the explanations and excuses. "I know what the hell you idiots were doing. I can see what you were doing. But I don't think you know what you were doing. Let the gringos go… with apologies. And pray it's enough."

The corporal insisted they were spies. That's when Jimenez lost his temper. He grabbed the corporal's uniform shirt and slammed him against the wall, following up with two quick punches to the solar plexus.

"That navy officer was spying, you know? Probably without authorization but still spying," commented Hennessey. "Then again, maybe he had authorization, too. I had awfully detailed and up-todate information when my company rolled out."

Jimenez sighed. "Yes, I know. I knew that even then. But I still didn't want a war we could not even hope to drag out very long, let alone win."

Hennessey was a bit odd about impending combat. He'd fret nervously, go to see everything, to check on everything, to look into the face of every one of his soldiers. And then, as it got closer, he'd simply begin to calm down. It was almost as if he was detaching a part of himself. Perhaps it was the part that was human. Certainly it was the part that seemed most human. In any case, when the time came, with something like an internal mental click, he would drop off fear, drop off trivial personal concerns, and become something very like a machine.

"Up there! The windows!"

A few vehicles ahead of Hennessey, a young soldier twisted his body to realign the heavy machine gun mounted atop the armored personnel carrier. "Target!" The flash from the muzzle lit the buildings to either side as fifty-caliber bullets, long bursts in steady streams, streaked out to punch through the thin walls of a third story room. The pounding of the heavy machine gun was a palpable blow over the entire upper half of the gunner's body.

The gunner, ears covered by his track commander's helmet and hearing under assault by the fifty's steady booms, could not tell that the shrieks coming from inside did not somehow sound military. Even Pina hadn't thought to conscript five-year-old girls.

From the other side of the street a single, mostly hidden, muzzle flash sparked. A bullet forced its way between the aramid fibers of the gunner's armored vest. He gasped and slumped down to the footstand. Blood began to drip, then gush. It flowed across the raised dots of the metal floor plates, gathering in the lower flat parts.

Confusion on his face, the dying soldier called out once, "Mama?" Then his body went limp, dead.

The soldier's platoon sergeant roughly pulled the body off of the stand. With one hand he dumped it to the floor even as the other hand scrambled for purchase on the inside of the hatch well. The platoon sergeant pulled himself up into the hatch, drew his remaining arm through, then grasped both spade handles of the fifty cal.

Again, there was the faintest flash from the side of the street opposite where the gun pointed. The platoon sergeant felt something strike his armored vest, then ripple through his left shoulder. He felt more than heard the crunch of splintering bone.

Not too bad. Doesn't even hurt much. He reported to his company commander.

"Sergeant Piroute, you don't sound right," Hennessey said coldly and calmly into the radio. He ignored normal radio procedure; Balboa had no real electronic warfare capability.

"I'm fine, sir. Just fine. A little hit. Not bad."

"Can you carry on?" Hennessey asked, still ice cold.

"Yes, sir. No sweat, sir," the platoon sergeant answered as his well drilled right arm jerked the fifty's charging handle, twice; ka-chink, ka- chink. Steadily, the gun turned towards the dimly perceived flash. The sergeant's thumbs pressed down on the gun's smooth butterfly trigger. Again, long, steady bursts lit the night. Fountains of powdered cement, wood and stucco emerged from a wall where the fifty's bullets struck. On the other side of the wall a sniper-young and brave but not too well trained-suddenly found himself minus the legs that had held him up. His dying thoughts were of his mother.

Heated by a lodged fragment of a tracer, a piece of wood began to smolder. Soon enough it would blaze.

The platoon sergeant, still ignoring his own wound, spoke orders into a microphone. The tracks rolled forward, toward Balboa's Estado Mayor.

"You managed to drag it out a lot longer than anyone could have expected," Hennessey said, by way of condolence.

"You pushed faster than anyone should have expected," Jimenez retorted.

Behind him was nothing but fire and smoke and dead bodies, some of them carbonized. The nauseating stench of burnt flesh overlaid that of burnt wood and diesel exhaust. Ahead of him was more smoke, more fire… and much of the fire was of the directed variety, the bronze- jacketed lead variety.

Hennessey ducked his head barely in time to avoid a random burst in his direction. The bullets made sharp cracks overhead. They were too close together to make out individual rounds. He spoke into a radio and, on command, a helicopter gunship came in low to rake a threatening section of the compound with cannon fire and rockets. Another command and a team of his infantrymen rushed the wall to emplace a demolition charge.

"Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" the men shouted, racing back to the cover of their armored personnel carrier. Again Hennessey ducked as a dark, angry cloud blossomed from the wall.

His men resumed their fire as the last of the demolition-spawned fragments pattered on the ground. Hennessey lifted a hand, then swung it forward. One platoon, still covered by the armor of their carriers, raced for the breach. Hennessey's own track followed.

He didn't think it funny, at the time, that he was not afraid. It was just one of those things that was. Some people were calm before the storm and mere wrecks in it. Hennessey was always at his calmest and coldest under stress.

If the defenders were afraid, none of the attacking force could see it. Outnumbered, outgunned, to a degree also outfought, but not surpassed in courage, they continued to hurl their defiance at their assailants.

With a clang of metal on metal Hennessey emerged from the rear door of his carrier. He spared a quick glance at one of his platoon leaders. Phil will be fine, he thought, seeing one of the medics apply a bandage to a wounded leg. Another wider glance encompassed the men. They seemed ready.

Hennessey smiled confidently, nodded once and shouted, "All right, motherfuckers… Let's gooo!"

With a roar the men followed.

They followed as if into a vacuum. Bodies lay sprawled everywhere, in every manner of undignified death. Here lay a headless torso, there a torso-less head.

Hennessey shook his head with regret. He thought again of his old classmate, Xavier Jimenez, probably even now lying dead somewhere in compound. Jimenez would never run; this Hennessey knew.

Around him, to either side, his platoons and squads fanned out across the compound. Occasionally, shots rang out wherever an FSA trooper simply felt he could not take the chance. This was the price of a fierce resistance; a price the Balboans had understood when they had decided that honor demanded that resistance.

Hennessey heard a scream rising above the sounds of battle, the scream coming from a burning building. Poor bastard, he thought. Horrible way to die. Why the hell didn't they surrender when they saw it was hopeless?

Of course, he knew the answer. I wouldn't have. Jimenez wouldn't have either. And the men will follow their leaders… if they're good men… and have good leaders. And Xavier is a good one.

A fire team leader, a corporal, led his three men to the sound of the scream without being told to. Dodging from cover to cover, they reached the building just as it collapsed. The screaming grew for a few seconds, then petered out into sobs amidst the smoke and falling sparks. Then the sobbing stopped, small mercy.

From off to one side, at another building, one of Hennessey's troopers called out, "I've got five of 'em, here."

A sergeant ordered, "Bring 'em out."

The answering voice was composed half of shock and half of wonder. "I don't think so, Sarge. They're all fucked up."

Hennessey jogged over to investigate. He passed the trooper standing flush against the wall by the door, entering a room taken straight from hell. Bodies, parts of bodies… above all, gallons of blood that lent the air an iron stench, even above the smoke. He looked for signs of life. He looked for his friend.

Hennessey knelt beside one body that still showed signs of life. With grief shaking his voice he asked, "Oh, Xavier, you big, dumb, brave fuck. Why the hell didn't you surrender when you had the chance?"

To his surprise the body answered, "Because I had my duty, Patricio."

"We sure as hell tried to get you to surrender, you know."

"I know that too, Patricio. But we had taken our oaths. We had our duty as we saw it." This time it was Parilla's turn to nod in silent agreement.

"It was too late, though?" Hennessey enquired.

"Patricio, it was always too late. It was too late when Herrera was killed in the plane crash that-I am morally certain-Pina arranged. It was too late when General Parilla here let himself be tricked out of office by Pina." Here, Jimenez referred to one of the cleverest coups in human history, where one would-be dictator, Antonio Pina, convinced a rather reluctant dictator, Raul Parilla, to resign his military post in order to run for the civil office of president… then ensured there would be no civil elections.

Parilla muttered, "Son of a bitch cocksucker," under his breath, then added, with a rueful smile, "I've got to admit it was clever, though."

"It was too late," Jimenez continued, "when the thieving son of a bitch lined his pockets with the money we might have used to build and train a force big enough and powerful enough to make your president think twice about invading until we could solve our own problems. It was too late when some of us launched the coup in October, 447, and failed. It was always too late."

"Speaking of which," Hennessey interjected, seeing that his guests had begun to look weary, "it's late, in general. I've had Lucinda make up guest rooms for both of you. If you'll tell her what you would like for breakfast, I am sure it can be arranged. In any case, we need to turn in."

The three stood then, leaving the study and walking across the courtyard to the bedroom side of the house. The rain had stopped; the skies cleared. Hennessey looked skyward at the familiar constellations-the Smilodon, the Leaping Maiden, the Pentagram-and wondered which of the bright points of light overhead were the ships of the UE Peace Fleet.

Interlude

4 August, 2040, Mission Control,

Houston, Texas, USA, Earth

The budget had been busted with not a damned thing to show for it. Then had come the scandals, the resignations, the heavily publicized trials… the obligatory appearances for public flagellation in front of a posturing Congress. Then had come very damned little money, let me tell you, brother. NASA was reduced to minor projects, as flashy as possible, to try to overcome the bad press and re-fire the public's imagination for the potential of space travel.

One such flashy mission-it amounted to little more than another photo op of the rings of Saturn-was underway now.

About the only thing positive to come out of the loss of the Cristobal Colon was that any number of astronomers and physicists had turned their attention to the area in which the probe had disappeared. There was a theory on the subject.

Based on the presence near the area of microwave variance that the physicists described as "lumpy," it seemed that the area concerned was very similar to conditions believed to have existed when the universe was virtually brand new. The theory was that the speed of light was not the same in that area as it was more generally.

This theory, by the way, was not exactly correct.