Carnifex

13/9/467 AC, Thermopolis

In the setting sun, as far as the eye could see, military encampments stretched out. To the north, northeast, and northwest were three large camps holding one legion each. These were minus most of their armor, four fifths of their Cazadors, all their aviation but for a half dozen each Crickets and medium lift helicopters for command, control and medevac, and some of their engineers and artillery. Near the airfield to the south of the town were three camps, one for the Cazador tercio, one for the Salah al Din brigade of Sada's Sumeri Presidential Guard, and—to either side of the strip—one large one for the three cohorts of aviation formed into a single, large ala.

On that strip, and nearby it on helicopter pads, troops boarded aircraft. Qabaash's brigade filed quietly aboard sixty-seven IM-71 medium lift and a dozen IM-62 heavy lift helicopters. Theirs was, in many ways, the toughest mission, involving, as it did, the deepest insertion to block the Ikhwan from either reinforcing the operational area or escaping from it.

The seven provinces that comprised the Legion's initial objective for pacification were infested with insurgents. They could be expected to run as soon as the battle turned against them. This was no cowardice but merest good sense. When they ran, as Carrera was certain they eventually would, Qabaash's battalions would have to stop them and, moreover, they would have to stop them largely on their own, without artillery support, and with only limited support from the air.

Of course, there were other passes. Qabaash couldn't hope to cover every little goat and camel trail. But with every easy pass over the mountains blocked, the Sumeris could at least ensure that little in the way of vehicles, heavy weapons, or ammunition, got away.

The Salah al-Din was taking with it enough supplies for thirty days of existence, assuming they cut wood for fuel to cook their meals, and about three of full up combat. Emergency resupply was possible, but not something Qabaash counted on or Carrera felt he could promise. There was too much for the helicopters to do.

For the other places, the footpaths and goat trails, there were the Cazadors. These were going in via a mix of helicopters and Crickets, depending on the landing site chosen. While the choppers carrying the Sumeris would race almost directly for their objectives, the Cazador carriers would touch down anything from three to nine times each to confuse the enemy as to where they had actually dropped troops, or even if they had dropped troops at all. Most would continue to touch down even after leaving behind their passengers to add to the confusion. At some of the passes, and with the prevailing winds, Crickets could practically hover over a spot.

While the Sumeris, with three dozen heavy and twenty-seven light mortars among them, and being deployed in larger units, would be able to hold on on their own for some time, the Cazadors were not intended to fight much, if at all. Instead, they would call in aircraft or, as the rest of the force advanced, artillery on any enemy groups they saw trying to cross the mountains to the north.

Each Cazador team had, in addition, two sniper rifles—one in .34 caliber for long range shots and one in .51 caliber subsonic for closer in work—to engage individuals and small groups. Still, the Cazador teams' primary weapon was the radio.

The enemy had some radios. They had a great many satellite and cell phones. For those, Carrera had a special trick.

* * *

Miguel Lanza was getting a bit long in the tooth to be flying attack missions. Still, commanding the entire deployed portion of the ala, over four hundred aircraft, he felt the urge, the need, to lead from in front. He'd never gotten the hang of helicopters, though he'd tried. The g's inherent in flying the CAS, or close air support, mission were getting to be a bit much for him. By he could, by God, still fly a transport converted to a bomber with the best of them.

If Lanza had assembled all of his medium transports, he could have lifted a grand total of perhaps three hundred, two-thousand pound bombs. This would have been enough to scour mostly free of human life perhaps ten or fifteen square kilometers. That was a drop in the bucket for an objective area of this size, perhaps a tenth of a percent. Oh, yes, they could have extinguished a guerilla company or two, maybe even three. That would not have much mattered.

Instead, Lanza's transports were going to drop some very special bombs, one or two over each of the several hundred spots that the Federated States' Office of Strategic Intelligence had indicated held a body of guerillas of platoon size of better.

A red warning light flashed on the instrument panel of Lanza's cockpit. He spoke into his throat mike, "Stand by to roll in three minutes."

The crew chief answered back, "Roger, three minutes."

Lanza's aircraft was flying at very near its maximum altitude of ninety-two hundred meters. Given the power of the weapon they carried, this seemed hardly enough to Lanza. As soon as he felt the plane lurch as the bomb fell away, he accelerated to his maximum flight speed of four hundred and seventy kilometers per hour and hauled ass to get as far away from the bomb as mechanically and aerodynamically possible. Lanza had absolutely no desire to lose every bit of avionics in his bird to an overpowering flash of electro-magnetic pulse.

* * *

The bomb was contained within what appeared to a standard two hundred and fifty-kilogram casing. That appearance was deceiving; the casing was made of a non-magnetic material, epoxy resin in this case. Inside, moreover, instead of the usual explosive component, the bomb contained a much smaller amount of explosive, a capacitor, three reels to release long wire antennae, a stator coil and a number of other things the precise nature of which was classified at a fairly high level.

Along with those other things, and this was not classified, was a Global Locating System guidance package that would guide the bomb in on a set of coordinates punched in from the cockpit. This particular set of coordinates happened to correspond to the headquarters of Noorzad's group of guerillas, now grown to the size of a small battalion.

The bomb knew none of this, of course. It "knew" that its capacitor was suddenly powered up and cut free of the power source from which it had been drawing. At the same time, it "knew" where it was. Shortly thereafter it "knew" it was falling even as it "knew" where it was going and how to navigate to that point. Almost the last thing the bomb "knew" was that it had reached a preset distance over the target. At that point the three thin wire antennae deployed. Shortly after that, the bomb reached the point of optimum detonation. After that, it didn't "know" anything.

* * *

"Look, I am telling you, I know they're on the move . . . "

Noorzad was speaking into his cell phone, talking with Mustafa's functionary, Abdul Aziz, back in Kashmir, when there was a significant explosion several hundred meters overhead.

It was far enough overhead, however, that it struck Noorzad as more on the order of a large mortar shell than the dreaded aerial bombs the FSC dropped with such terrible accuracy. And yet he was, so Noorzad knew, most unlikely to be within range of any of the infidels' mortars.

He decided it was harmless and returned to his conversation.

"As I was saying Abdul . . . Abdul?"

Noorzad pulled the cell away from his ear and looked at it. It didn't seem any different, except that it had gone dark. He shook it a few times, then tapped it with his finger. Nothing.

"Give me your phone, Malakzay," he ordered.

Malakzay took his own phone out of a pouch on his ammunition belt and pushed the button to turn it on.

"Nothing, Noorzad. It's dead. I checked it just this morning but—"

"Shit."

Noorzad noticed another explosion, also seemingly small, a kilometer to the east where lay one of his companies. Further away, other flashes briefly lit the night sky before disappearing. The guerilla chieftain had a sudden sense that those lights indicated that other lights, the lights of seeing and knowing, were going out.

A sudden thought occurred. "Malakzay, your phone was turned off?"

"Yes, Noorzad. You know what a pain in the ass it is to recharge the batteries."

"That means that whatever weapon the infidel is using can attack our electronics even if they're shut off." He paused, thinking hard, before exclaiming, "Quick, get me half a dozen messengers, fast and smart men on fast horses."

* * *

It was commonly believed that Samsonov's boys had recruited one group of Pashtun for Carrera. At one level, this was true: there was a central department for the Pashtun Scouts (numbers of whom were not actually Pashtun). At another level, though, it was false. There were several more or less independent groups. One of these groups was composed of four hundred and eighty-seven honest-to-Allah horse cavalry, supplemented by a small group of twenty legionaries detached from various cohorts and tercios to direct and maintain communications with Legionary headquarters.

These now splashed on horseback across the Jayhun River which separated the city of Thermopolis from Pashtia proper. The river was low, this late in the season, but still as icy cold as if it were full of the annual snowmelt.

The cavalry carried rifles and machine guns, of course, and even had a section of light mortars. Still, there's nothing like cold steel between real men and every Pashtun on horseback also carried a lance and a sword. Tradition; that was the thing.

A very small detachment had crossed early, three days prior, at a ford nowhere near as good as this one. They'd crossed, ridden deep and then circled around. The mujahadin guards watching the ford had seen nothing amiss in twenty-one riders, looking for all the world like their comrades, coming up from behind. And then, from the distance of twenty yards, the lances waved in greeting had lowered. Spurring their horses, the scouts had charged, spearing the guerillas like so many boar.

Those same forward scouts now stood in their stirrups, wearing genial smiles and waving their comrades forward with the heads of their erstwhile enemies.

From the mass of horsemen winding their way through the flood, two emerged and, forcing their way up the riverbank, rode to join the Scouts as they waved their lances and severed heads. Of these, one—Rachman Salwan—was another Pashtun, though he had some odd, non-Pashtun words in his vocabulary. The other was one of the legionary officers, Tribune II David Cano of the Fourth Tercio, on detached duty to the Scouts for the campaign.

Cano had been hand-selected for the job—along with nineteen others, officers, centurions, and noncoms—by Carrera, Samsonov, and a Pashtun, Subadar Masood, recommended by Samsonov and flown specially to the island. Following selection, the twenty had been given a crash course in Pashtun by some of the Volgans who still had pretty fair fluency in the language and a few Pashtun flown in for the exercise. Still, at best, so Cano thought, he spoke a pidgin.

Despite the lack of real fluency, Cano had taken so well to the Scouts, joining them at their meals, discussing their lives and their problems, playing some of their tribal games, that Rachman Salwan had taken a liking to him and taken him under wing. Being senior in the tribe among the young horsemen who'd signed on with Samsonov's recruiter, Rachman served—unofficially, the cavalry scouts didn't have a very formal chain of command outside of the legionaries placed over them—as the senior noncom for the squadron.

"Praise them, Sahib," Rachman advised in a whisper, "but not too much. Tell them, 'Aafaran!'"—bravo—"Tell them they were 'dzhangyaalay'"—courageous—"But do not promise them any reward yet. The heads and the honor are enough for good Pashtun serving in the field."

Cano appreciated the advice; Rachman was more a friend or even a brother than a subordinate. He stood by his stirrups, waving a rifle and shouting to his men—yes, my men—of their valor and their skill.