Carnifex

26/7/469 AC, Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia

"Dammit!"

"Be calm, Patricio," Fernandez advised. "Rome wasn't burnt in a day. Besides, we still haven't even figured out how to do the damned mission. Delays while we do figure it out don't hurt us."

Carrera slowly nodded his graying head. "I know. And I am still not convinced we can do it, even with the boy's suggestion."

"It was a hell of a good idea though, wasn't it?"

Again Carrera nodded, though this time with a slight smile at his son's precocious insight. Carrera found few reasons to smile anymore. "Clever boy, isn't he? I'm going to leave him with you when . . . if . . . we actually go through with the attack."

"That would be fine," Fernandez agreed. "And, yes, Patricio, he's a frightfully clever boy. Pity he didn't have a way to get forty IM-71s and eight IM-62s, of which no more than forty, total, will be functional on the day we move, to carry what we need."

That was a daunting problem. To take the fortress, even if the enemy could be enticed away from its rocky, bunkered and entrenched outside ring, required more than forty helicopters could lift. In the first place, to enable most of one cohort, minus its armor and softer vehicles, to survive attack until relieved required fifty sorties of IM-71s. Under the circumstances, it would be improvident to use any of the heavier lift IM-62s. Given that the cohort selected would go in with limited mortar ammunition meant that they would need continuous artillery support from outside. Even lifting one maniple of twelve 155mm guns with their required ammunition would take up all the IM-62s. But that wouldn't seal off the area from escape. It could be sealed off, at least to vehicle traffic, by using the 300mm multiple rocket launchers to drop mines at the fortress valley's two entrances. But those would have to move into position to range the fortress. This might well tip the enemy off.

It would also tip them off if the first two loads in—the Air Ala was still configured to lift one infantry and the Cazador cohort in by helicopter in two lifts—were used to seal off the objective. Of course, the Cazadors, at least and in theory, could jump in. Carrera thought about the prospect of his men landing by parachute on either the rugged mountains around the fortress or the valley within it and shivered. In the former case, he would expect anything up to twenty percent broken legs and ankles before so much as a shot was fired. In the latter, his men would hang for long moments in the air while the defenders below shot them up like sitting ducks. Gliders? Squad sized gliders? Maybe if I'd thought of it two years ago.

And then there was the problem of intervention by the Kashmir Air Force, by no means a despicable one. Yes, they couldn't control the tribal lands along their border with Pashtia. That didn't mean they were willing to let anyone else do so. He could bring in the SPLAD, the Self-Propelled Laser Air Defense system, the Legion had had built. But that, too, meant weight and cube and less lift for the infantry. All that, taken together, meant the likelihood of intervention by a Kashmiri armored division before he could finish off the fortress and extract his men.

As far as sealing off the fortress from relief by Kashmir's also somewhat respectable ground forces . . . he could do it, for a while, by committing the Legion's mechanized cohort. But a ground war between himself and Kashmir was something of a losing proposition. They already sided altogether too much with the Salafis. A direct strike would certainly push them over the edge from secret to open support.

Briefly, he thought about using one of his seven nuclear weapons. But no, the downsides of that are just too great. Besides, I'd have to know it would get Mustafa and all his top lieutenants. They're just not that effective on a hardened, underground target.

"Any change on the ground reported, independent of our infiltrator?"

"Not really, Patricio. They're still improving their positions, digging out caves and the like. That, and a lot of housework."

"Any good estimate on the number of women and children in their camps."

"Thousands," Fernandez answered, shaking his head. Do they think the women and kids will be a shield? They're living in yesterday's war, if so.