Come and Take Them-eARC (26 page)

Part IV

Chapter Twenty-five

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.

—Sir David Frost

Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

With the increase in tensions, Janier had been spending a lot more time down in the Tunnel than in the more open, airy, and civilized situation at Building 59. His mistress, a local girl, wasn’t a bit happy about it, either. But between military demands emanating from both headquarters, his wife, and the mistress…

Well, there are only so many goddamned hours in a day.

Of course, the good thing about all that, he thought, was that,
At least my frigid, useless bitch of a wife never knows where I am at any given time, which allows me more time with Isabel.
He looked over at the sleeping woman and thought,
May as well admit it; I’m fond of her. Another shot at it, though, or back to work?
Janier looked at the woman again, then down at his apparently disinterested penis, then over at her, with particular attention to her resplendent breasts. Then finally, and hopelessly, he looked back down again.
You miserable bastard,
he thought, generally southward,
years, decades, getting into a position where I could get nearly any woman I want into any position I want and
now
you fail me? At last I know why they call you a “prick.”

With a sigh the general stood and began to dress.

He wasn’t at Building 59 merely for the woman, in any case. In less than three days he had a meeting with Carrera. He wanted ammunition for that meeting.

Thus dressed in normal Gallic khakis, he looked wistfully at the reproduction Napoleonic marshal’s uniform he kept in the woman’s apartment.
If I make real peace, there goes any chance of earning that, I suppose. On the other hands, it beats being cashiered if I fight and lose.

There was something else, too, something Janier could barely admit to himself and could never have admitted to anyone else. He’d begun to sense it during the naval battle between one of the legion’s submarines and his own country’s navy, a battle that had ended with a Gallic physical victory and a Balboan moral one.
I just don’t have the nerve for this, not to gamble like this. Oh, that knowledge comes hard.

Ah, but what about the extra twenty or twenty-five years of youth Wallenstein promised me?
That caused him to look more wistfully at the woman on the bed than he had at his marshal’s uniform.

“Well, what about it?” he asked aloud, causing the woman on the bed to stir and to adjust the sheet downward, exposing to view those magnificent breasts. “It’s only a couple of decades, not immortality…and I was always willing to die young for glory. Although…if ever there was an argument, or a pair of them, for twenty-five more years of youth, she has those arguments all sewed up.

“Oh, well, speaking of magnificent breasts, that Anglian female in intel has some information for me that perhaps de Villepin has been keeping under wraps.”

* * *

Through the windows could be seen a very large freighter, rising as water entered the Florida Locks. Inside, Campbell could smell the scent of Janier’s mistress hanging about him. It was a female thing, both the smell and the ability to detect it. Few if any men could have.

Wonderful,
thought Janier and he was only half thinking of Jan Campbell’s chest.
So de Villepin has been holding out on me, has he?

Janier sat at Jan’s own desk while she stood to one side, hands clasped behind her back. She was in uniform, and dressed and made up even more severely than that required. It wasn’t enough to hide or distract from all the things that made her such an attractive woman, not least her brainpower.

On the desk, in front of him, Janier had the
original
of the report she and Hendryksen had prepared, the report that had been extensively altered by de Villepin’s directorate.

“Can this be true?” he asked her. “Are they really this good?”

“They’ve got all kinds of flaws and weaknesses,” she said. “The rank and file, for example, are not especially well trained. But they are willing. They are far more morally fit for war than we are; they won’t blanch at the thought of casualties and in their entire country there is no person like TU Safety Minister Marine R.E.S. Mors du Char the Fourth—”

“That pussy!” Janier exclaimed.

“Quite,” she agreed, “and everyone knows it, and yet the silly twat
still
exercises her baleful influence. But never mind that, sir; the point was that marginally trained or not, the rank and file are willing to bleed and the country is willing to let them. And their leadership is every bit as good as I’ve said, on a par with our own or, in many cases, superior.”

“What else?” Janier asked. In response, Jan walked around the desk and pulled something, a bound file, from a side drawer. She opened the file and handed it to him. He read:

Balboan Legion VXI, the Air Forces…

Skipping ahead, Janier read:

The Artem-Mikhail 82, also called Mosaic D, is an ancient jet fighter of Volgan design, highly modified to operate in a special environment with some effectiveness. It is geared to fly at extremely low altitude, going high only for brief engagements at targets of opportunity. From above, its radar signature is so low that, combined with clutter from the ground, it is nearly undetectable. From below it can be picked up by its IR emissions. However, its very brief moments of vulnerability when operating over its adopted jungle home make a successful engagement with IR seeking SAMs most unlikely. The Mosaic D can carry just over 1/2 ton in ordnance (bombs, rockets, air to air missiles, 37mm cannon ammunition) which it can deliver with an acceptable degree of accuracy.

Known modifications for at least some models include: Upper wings and fuselage replaced by low radar signature metal/carbon fiber/plastic composite; avionics package with modern GPS and fire control; underside redesigned for minimal IR signature; tail replaced by V form low radar signature metal/carbon fiber/plastic composite. The Mosaic D has an improved, low maintenance engine (Zioni), nap of the earth radar (Volgan), a low light long range TV camera (Zioni), and a low radar signature canopy (local). It retains one 37mm cannon and can carry up to four air to air missiles, which are normally partially encased in a radar defeating sheathing.

One great advantage of the Mosaic D is its ability to take off from and land at very austere airfields. This, coupled with the Balboans’ penchant for bunkerizing nearly everything makes it extremely unlikely that any large numbers can be destroyed on the ground without undue effort.

The Mosaic D is flown by exceptionally well selected and well trained pilots. It is not believed that the plane can take on even second line modern fighters with anything like equality. It is believed that its mission is engagement of transports, attack aircraft, and EW aircraft, along with ground attack and naval attack.

Suspected vulnerabilities include: degraded flight characteristics due to modification of wings and tail assembly; low availability due to inexperienced ground crews; lack of modern IFF; limited all weather capability (though it can fly reasonably well in the rain); poor pilot visibility except to the front; EXTREME vulnerability to damage due to almost complete lack of redundancy in systems. The use of small arms for air defense may be the best defense.

It is not known how many of the legion’s Mosaics have been upgraded to this model. Based on Zioni reports, the number may be anywhere from twenty-one to sixty. However, we believe the Zionis are lying and the true numbers are on the order of ninety.

“What do you think that means?” Janier asked.

“Sir,” said Campbell, “we think it means they can engage current TU air forces within the Transitway Area at parity.”

“Fuck,” he said, then added, “that was not an invitation, tempting though the prospect may be.

“What else?”

“They haven’t brought them home yet,” Campbell said, “but after piecing together a great deal of information of ours, plus some that the Federated States makes available to Anglia and Secordia, and nobody else, I’ve come to the conclusion that twenty-four one-seat and seven two-seat Artem-Mikhail-23-465 Gaur jet fighters are somewhere, crated and in shipment or being modified, perhaps in Zion.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you, sir,” she replied. “Really. Please don’t ask.”

“All right,” the Gallic general agreed.
Would I have had she not such a marvelous chest? Maybe not.

“Read the chapters on their artillery park and air defense artillery park,” Campbell suggested. “Note their batteries are fully manned but only have three guns, typically. Ever wonder if the other guns weren’t around somewhere?”

“Some of this did get to me,” the Gaul said.

She replied, “Some of it was so obvious it couldn’t be hidden. But let me tell you what bugs me about it, sir: I think that’s only a large fraction of what they have. Too much Volgan, Cochinese, etc. material has disappeared into the cracks. What we show there is just what’s in country, not what might be hidden elsewhere. Then, too…”

“Yes?” he prodded.

“Hendryksen and I go ’round and ’round about this daily. Personally, I suspect they show us just enough to attract our fears and our attentions away from other things.”

“Like their ‘hidden reserve,’ you mean? We know about them.”

“Just what I was getting at, sir. They let us see enough of the hidden reserve that I wonder if it isn’t deliberate, if there isn’t even a more hidden, a more deeply hidden, reserve somewhere.”

“But no evidence?”

“No, sir, none we’ve been able to find.”

Janier nodded somberly. “Dangerous…dangerous,” he muttered. Then he asked her, “Are you available for a boat trip tomorrow?”

Before she could fly into a rage at the suggestion of impropriety, he amended, “Just to accompany me as an advisor for a negotiating session? You would be one of four guards I am allowed.”

“Who with?” she asked. “Where?”

“Carrera. On his yacht.”

“I’ll wear my skimpiest bikini.”

Janier laughed, which may have been the first time in his life he’d found humor in anything having to do with Anglia. “May I ask you for some advice, Captain?”

“Surely, General,” Campbell replied.

“What, in your opinion only, of course, should I do about Balboa?”

Without hesitation, she answered, “Leave them be. Just leave them be.”

Explaining further, she added, “My comrade, Sergeant Major Hendryksen, is of the opinion that they need to be taken down because they are so unconstrained by civilized morals and values. And he, be it noted, sir, likes them.

“I agree with him that that makes them very dangerous, especially while Carrera lives.

“But, he will not live forever. So the problem is one that will mitigate itself in time. On the other hand, if we fight them and lose, as we may, they will not only be unconstrained, they will—after defeating someone a hundred times bigger and a thousand times wealthier, and much, much better armed—be convinced that there is nothing in the universe than even
can
constrain them.

“They will be impossible to live with, then. Contemplate how regularly the Cochinese flout and frustrate the Zhong after defeating the Federated States and Gaul. Then multiply that by fifty. Or a hundred and fifty while that psychotic bastard Carrera lives.”

Four Miles North of the
Isla Real, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso

Janier came in a not too ostentatious boat he’d had Campbell rent. She, being of fisherfolk, herself, steered. Since that made her, in Janier’s opinion, crew rather than guard, he also had four armored and armed guards with him. Ahead, bow on, rolled the considerably larger yacht he recognized from a target folder as Carrera’s. Even if he hadn’t recognized it, the mean looking, gun bristling patrol boat a few hundred meters off would have told him.

And, no doubt, he would claim that the boat doesn’t count against the four guards limit, and, equally doubtless, the fully combat trained and equipped crew for the yacht won’t count either. Only the ones in battle dress and armor count. Naturally. Because he has the nerve to push.

It was said Carrera virtually never used the thing, but allowed his personal staff to borrow it. There was a very faint discoloration at the bow, which Janier thought he recognized as repaired damage from when Carrera’s wife had run the thing into a dock during her flight for help against the late Legate Pigna’s coup.

Odd,
thought the Gaul,
if we had taken out that boat in the course of the coup, Carrera’s wife could never have gone for help. The coup might have worked and I would not be out here now, but back in Gaul with accolades galore. Why I didn’t order that—it could have been discreetly done by us—I will never know.

Oh, be honest, Janier, at least with yourself in the confines of your own mind: Yes, you do know why. You lacked the nerve.

The general found it strangely refreshing to admit this, if only to himself, refreshing…and a relief, as well, not to have to pretend even to himself.

Campbell guided her small craft with an ease and expertise learned as a child. With barely a thump, and not much of a scrape, she eased it right up to the ladder hanging off the side of Carrera’s boat. The boat transmitted both the waves and the little bit of bump almost directly to her barely contained breasts.

Watching from the yacht’s gunwales, Carrera thought,
She doesn’t have to flaunt them a bit; they flaunt themselves.

Then he was reaching a hand over to help Janier aboard, while one of the Gaul’s guards tossed a line to one of his. Campbell came aboard last, and Carrera waited, helping each Tauran up in turn, just for the chance at an eyeful. As Carrera took her hand to help her up and over, Janier introduced her as, “My aide de camp, Captain Campbell.”

* * *

Jan sat behind Janier, on the rear deck of the yacht, occasionally stretching or shifting position every time she thought Carrera’s mind was in gear. Not for the first time in her life she recalled what her mother had told her were the purpose of breasts:
Ta feed bairns and ta turn grown men into bairns.