The Lotus Eaters

Frente Nacional Liberacion Santerdereño (FNLS) Camp Twenty-seven, La Palma Province, Balboa, Terra Nova

If the town of Puerto Jaquelina de Coco wasn't much, FNLS Camp Twenty-seven, twenty odd miles to the south of it, was even less than that. At least Jaquelina had one paved road and some rooftops of solid material. The camp had mud and more mud, with open latrines dug none too deep and far too close to the well, some half falling apart bohios roofed with rotting leaves, hammocks strung between trees and altogether too many flies and mosquitoes. That latter, especially, droned in swarms outside the nets slung by the denizens of Camp Twenty-seven as protection against them.

On the plus side, thought one of those denizens, "guerilla fighter" Esteban Escobar, as he glanced about at the surrounding squalor, the work load ain't much. And there's pussy.

The sun barely penetrated through the thick canopy overhead. Still, the mottled shadow hid little of the camp from those, just awakening, who inhabited it.

Esteban had once been a rather bright student at the national university in Santander's capital, a "dull, middle class, grind," as some of his classmates had called him. Then he'd fallen in with a very pretty and very radical girl from the upper classes. She'd made certain introductions, first to her body, then to some illicit substances, and then finally to some friends. He'd left school—Well, why not? My grades were going to shit in favor of sex anyway—and joined the Movement.

His life as a guerilla had started out poorly and gone downhill from there. First there'd been the Army of Santander, hunting him and his comrades like vermin through the mountainous jungles. And they'd gotten progressively better at it, too. Even that wasn't the worst of it, though. The worst had been the things the police had done to break the guerilla's support networks in the towns and cities.

Little food, no money. And pussy—even, maybe especially, upper class pussy—will only carry you so far, Esteban mused, swinging slowly from side to side in his hammock. Absently, the guerilla's hand reached up lightly to caress a small crucifix hung about his neck. With so many Catholic priests in support of the Movement, it was perhaps the only Tsarist-Marxist inspired guerilla group on Terra Nova where the rank and file were required to keep their religion.

There was a buzz in his ear. Esteban let go the crucifix and swatted at a mosquito that had found a hole in the netting he'd spread over his "bed." Dammit. Missed the little bastard.

In a quest for survival, Esteban and his "company"—never more than about sixty-five fighters anyway—had moved on. They'd had to move forward because the "liberated zone" the government had temporarily granted the FNLS as part of a ceasefire arrangement was already at carrying capacity. There'd been no going back.

And wasn't that fucking brilliant, the guerilla thought. Vigilantes everywhere, within days of our showing up. Fucking Autodefensas!

In time, after many fights, few of them victorious, the guerilla band, now reduced to thirty-seven, found itself on the Balboa-Santander frontera, with no place to go but into Balboa.

And here we prosper, for certain very constrained values of prosperity. The jefes back in Santander send us processed drugs; we send them on; we get a cut of the take. All in the interests of the people's struggle against oppression, of course.

And all of which buys us some worn out, tumble down huts, a shitty well, some muddy trails . . . and some food and an occasional piece of ass from the locals. Viva la Revolucion!

"La Revolucion, Esteban mentally sneered. What is the revolution? Some upper class pussy? A jefe smelling faintly of cologne that comes by every half year to lecture us on the dialectic? Running drugs to keep that jefe in style in Belalcázar? A priest who pretends to be a Catholic? Chinga la Revolucion. The Revolution is nothing but taking the drugs to Puerto Jaquelina and transshipping them to some assholes in Ciudad Balboa.

I want to go back home and start school again. I'm tired of this shit.

I want . . . what the fuck was that?

* * *

The aircraft—a Turbo-Finch Avenger—was basically a modified crop-duster; armored, upengined, with thirteen hardpoints for ordnance, and a fair electronics suite. They were cheap; they were tough; they were highly maneuverable. They also, with their comparatively fuel-sipping turbo-prop engine, had a very impressive range and loiter time. The one hanging over Esteban Escobar and his unwashed comrades had taken off from the military strip on the Isla Real some hours ago.

"Well, that's that," said Montoya into his radio, just after dropping the last of his original load of four electro-magnetic pulse bombs and gunning the engine of his Turbo-Finch to get the hell out of range of the bomb before it fried all his electronics and left him at a very unpleasant "one with nature."

A voice answered; Montoya thought it might be the commander of the Air Ala, Lanza, himself, but couldn't be sure for all the static.

"Well done, Rafael. Head to the strip at Puerto Jaquelina de Coco. They're not ready to refuel and rearm you yet but they can receive you well enough. And the carrier's choppering in some fuel pods and ammunition pallets as they can."

"Beats a carrier landing," Montoya answered. "I'll be along."

Several kilometers behind and below Montoya's aircraft, a bright flash and somewhat muffled boom told of an EMP bomb doing its bit to fry every radio and satellite phone within a fairly large circle on the ground.

* * *

Lightning? Thunder? Esteban listened carefully for a while over the sounds of the jungle and its creatures. No. Thunder and lightning aren't generally accompanied by the sound of an aircraft engine . . . or . . . —he listened more carefully still—maybe two or three of them. That I can hear. And . . . helicopters? Time to wake the jefe, I think. And I think maybe we're in neck deep shit.

* * *

God, I love this shit, Senior Centurion Ricardo Cruz thought to himself as he led his platoon through a neck-deep swamp twenty miles southeast of Puerto Jaquelina de Coco. Cruz, average height for a Balboan, which is to say, medium short, helmeted, dressed in pixilated jungle tiger stripes, sloshed along as quietly as possible, his F-26 rifle held above his head.

The platoon had been choppered in to a spot over the jungle onto which had been dropped a tree landing platform. This platform, basically a hexagon of pipes with six longer pipes leading from it to a larger hexagon, the whole connected by wires the better to catch on the foliage, and topped by chain link fencing, allowed helicopter-borne infantry to land atop the jungle, rather than try to find a large enough landing zone. The men descended from the TLP by ladders hooked to the sides and let down through the thick canopies.

Cruz had had to rush and bully the men to get them off the helicopters and onto the uncertainly swaying platform, then do it all over again to get them moving down the ladders.

Well . . . reservists, most of them. One has to make allowances.

Now they moved as quickly as practical in a race to ambush a trail junction that intelligence insisted was regularly used by the denizens of several guerilla camps.