Tactics of Mistake (15 page)

“Because, General,” said Cletus, “his purpose in coming here was to give the Neulanders a morale boost—a shot in the arm. Instead, his visits have coincided with a couple of bad, if small, defeats for them. If he leaves now, his trip is going to be wasted. A man like deCastries is bound to put off leaving until he can leave on a note of success. That gives us a situation we can turn to our own advantage.”

“Oh? Turn to our advantage, is it?” said Bat. “More of your fun and games, Colonel?”

“Sir,” answered Cletus, “I might remind the General that I was right about the infiltration attempt through Etter's Pass, and I was right in my guess last night that the guerrillas would try to move men and supplies down the river and into the city—”

“All right! Never mind that!” snapped Bat. “If I wasn't taking those things into consideration I wouldn't be listening to you now. Go ahead. Tell me what you were going to tell me.”

“I'd prefer to show you,” answered Cletus. “If you wouldn't mind flying up to Etter's Pass—”

“Etter's Pass? Again?” said Bat. “Why? Tell me what map you want, and show me here.”

“It's a short trip by air, sir,” said Cletus, calmly. “The explanation's going to make a lot more sense if we have the actual terrain below us.”

Bat grunted. He turned about, stalked to his desk and punched open his phone circuit.

“Send over Recon One to the roof here,” he said. “We'll be right up.”

Five minutes later, Cletus and Bat were en route by air toward the Etter's Pass area. The general's recon craft was a small but fast passenger vehicle, with antigrav vanes below its midsection and a plasma-thrust engine in the rear. Arvid, who had been waiting for Cletus in the general's outer office, was seated up front in the copilot's seat, with the pilot and the vessel's one crewman. Twenty feet behind them, in the open cabin space, Bat and Cletus conversed in the privacy provided by their distance and lowered voices. The recon craft approached the Etter's Pass area and, at Cletus's request, dropped down from its cruising altitude of eighty thousand feet to a mere six hundred. It began slowly to circle the area encompassing Etter's Pass, the village of Two Rivers and the two river valleys that came together just below the town.

Bat stared sourly at the pass and the town below it, nestled in the bottom of the V that was the conjunction of the two river valleys.

“All right, Colonel,” he said. “I've taken an hour out of my day to make this trip. What you've got to tell me had better be worth it.”

“I think it is,” answered Cletus. He pointed at Etter's Pass and swung his fingertip from it down to the town below. “If you'll look closely there, sir, you'll see Two Rivers is an ideal jump-off spot for launching an attack through the pass by our forces, as the first step in an invasion of Neuland.”

Bat's head jerked around. He stared at Cletus. “
Invade Neuland…
” He lowered his voice hastily, for the heads of all three men up front had turned abruptly at the sound of his first words. “Have you gone completely out of your skull, Grahame? Or do you think I have, that I'd even consider such a thing? Invading Neuland's a decision that's not even for the General Staff back on Earth to make. It'd be the political boys in Geneva who'd have to decide that!”

“Of course,” said Cletus, unruffled. “But the fact is, an invasion launched from Two Rivers could very easily be successful. If the General will just let me explain—”

“No!” snarled Bat, keeping his voice low. “I told you I don't even want to hear about it. If you got me all the way up here just to suggest that—”

“Not to suggest it as an actuality, sir,” said Cletus. “Only to point out the benefits of the appearance of it. It's not necessary actually to invade Neuland. It's only necessary to cause the Neulanders, and deCastries, to realize such an invasion could be successful, if launched. Once they realize the possibility, they'll be under extreme pressure to take some counteraction to prevent it. Then, if after they've taken such action, we move to show that invasion was never our intention, Dow deCastries will have been involved in a local blunder from which it'll be impossible for him to detach his responsibility. The Coalition's only way of saving face for him and itself will be to cast all blame on the Neulanders and penalize them as evidence that the blame-casting isn't just rhetoric. The only form that penalizing can take is a lessening of Coalition help to Neuland… Naturally, any reduction in Coalition aid to the Neulanders puts the Alliance contribution to the Exotics in that much stronger position.”

Cletus stopped talking. Bat sat for a long second, gazing at him with an unusual expression—something almost like awe—below the heavy, expressive eyebrows.

“By God!” Bat said, at last, “you don't think in simple terms, do you, Grahame?”

“The complexity's more apparent than real,” answered Cletus. “Everyone's more or less the prisoner of his current situation. Manipulate the situation and the individual often hasn't much choice but to let himself be manipulated as well.”

Bat shook his head, slowly. “All right,” he said, drawing a deep breath, “just how do you plan to signal this fake invasion attempt?”

“In the orthodox manner,” answered Cletus. “By maneuvering of a couple of battalions of troops in this area below the pass—”

“Hold on. Whoa—” broke in Bat. “I told you once before I didn't have spare battalions of troops lying around waiting to be played with. Besides, if I order troops up here on anything like maneuvers, how am I going to claim later that there never was any intention to provoke Neuland in this area?”

“I realize you haven't any regular troops to spare, General,” said Cletus. “The answer, of course, is not to use regular troops. Nor should you order them up here. However, the Dorsai regiment under Colonel Khan is engaged in jump-belt training right now. You could agree to a suggestion which Colonel Khan might make to the Exotics—and which the Exotics will certainly check out with you—that he bring his Dorsais up here for a week of live training jumps in this ideal terrain, which combines river valleys, jungle and hill country.”

Bat opened his mouth as if to retort—then closed it sharply. His brows drew together in a thoughtful frown.

“Hmm,” he said. “The Dorsais…“

“The Dorsais,” Cletus reminded him, “don't operate out of your budget. They're financed separately by the Exotics.”

Bat nodded, slowly.

“A full two battalions of men in this area,” went on Cletus, “are too many for deCastries and the Neulanders to ignore. The fact that they're Dorsais rather than your own troops makes it seem all the more likely you're trying to pretend innocence, when in fact you've got some thrust into Neulander territory in mind. Add one more small factor, and you'll make suspicion of such a thrust a certainty, to deCastries at least. He knows I've been concerned with the two recent incidents when the Neulanders were frustrated. Appoint me your deputy general commander of this Dorsai unit, with authority to move them wherever I want, and nobody on the other side of the mountains will have any doubt left that the jump training's only a cover for an attack on Neuland territory.”

Bat jerked his head up and stared at Cletus suspiciously. Cletus returned his gaze with the calm innocence of a man whose conscience has nothing to hide.

“But you
won't
be moving those Dorsais anywhere, except between Bakhalla and this area, will you, Colonel?” he demanded softly.

“I give you my word, sir,” said Cletus. “They'll go nowhere else.”

For a long moment Bat continued to stare, hard, at Cletus. But then, once again, slowly he nodded.

They returned to Bat's office in Bakhalla. As Cletus was leaving, headed for his staff car in the parking lot, a flyer settled into one of the marked spaces and Mondar got out, followed by the small, waspish shape of Pater Ten.

“There he is,” said Pater Ten in a brittle voice, as he spotted Cletus. “Why don't you go ahead into the Headquarters building, Outbond? I'll stop a minute with Colonel Grahame. Dow wanted me to extend his congratulations on Grahame's success last week—and last night.”

Mondar hesitated briefly, then smiled. “As you like,” he said, turned and went on toward the Headquarters building.

Pater Ten walked over to face Cletus.

“Congratulate me?” asked Cletus.

“The Military Secretary,” said Pater Ten, almost viciously, “is a very fair-minded man—”

In mid-sentence he broke off. For a second some inner change seemed to wipe his face clean of expression, and then it shaped itself again into a different kind of expression—an expression like that of an excellent stage mimic who has decided to impersonate the character and mannerisms of Dow deCastries. Except that Pater Ten's eyes were fixed and remote, like a man under hypnosis. When he spoke, it was in an eerie echo of Dow's ordinary speech:

“Evidently,” said those silkily urbane tones, “you're still trying to raise the ante, Grahame. Take my advice. Be warned. It's an occupation that's fraught with danger.”

As abruptly as it had come, the unnatural resemblance to Dow smoothed itself from the little man's features and his gaze became normal again. He looked sharply up at Cletus.

“Very fair-minded,” Pater said. “You underestimate him. I promise you, you've underestimated him—” The little man broke off, abruptly. “What're you looking at me like that for?” he snapped, acidly. “You don't believe me, is that it?”

Cletus shook his head, sadly. “I believe you,” he said. “It's just that I see I did underestimate him. It seems he's not just a dealer in other people's minds. He buys souls as well.”

He turned and walked off to his car, leaving Pater Ten staring after him uncomprehendingly but with the automatic rage on his face with which the violent little man viewed nearly all things in the universe.

They met in Eachan Khan's office a week later—Cletus, Eachan and the four other top officers among the Dorsais. There was Eachan's second-in-command, Lieutenant-Colonel Marcus Dodds, a tall, quiet, narrow-boned man. There were also a major with a shaved head and expressionless features in a hard, round, blue-black face, with the single name of Swahili, a Major David Ap Morgan, who was thin and slightly buck-toothed and as fair-skinned as Swahili was dark; and, last, there was Captain Este Chotai, short, heavy-fleshed and handsome, with narrow eyes in a slightly mongoloid face. They sat around the long conference table in Eachan's wide office, with Eachan at the head of the table and Cletus seated at his right.

“And so, gentlemen,” said Eachan Khan, winding up his explanation of Cletus's presence in their midst, “we have a new commanding officer from the Alliance Forces. I'll let Colonel Grahame speak for himself from this point on.”

Eachan got up from his chair at the head of the table and stepped aside. Cletus rose, and Eachan took Cletus's former place at the table. Cletus moved over behind the chair Eachan had occupied, but he did not sit down immediately.

Instead, he turned about to look at the large map of Etter's Pass-Two Rivers area projected on the wall behind him. He looked at it and something deep, powerful and unyielding moved without warning through him. He drew in a slow deep breath and the silence of the room behind him seemed to ring suddenly in his ears. The features of the map before him seemed to leap out at him as if he saw, not the projected representation, but the actual features of jungle, hill and river that they represented.

He turned about and faced the Dorsai officers. Under his gaze they stiffened and their eyes narrowed as though something massive and unknown had stepped suddenly among them. Even Eachan stared at Cletus as though he had never seen him before.

“You're all professional soldiers,” said Cletus. His voice was completely flat, without inflection or emphasis, but it rang in the room with a finality that left no room for doubt or argument in its listeners. “Your future depends on what you'll be doing in the next two weeks. Therefore I'm going to tell you what no one else on this planet yet knows, and I'm going to trust you to keep that information locked inside you.”

He paused. They sat staring at him like men in a trance.

“You're going to fight a battle. My aim isn't going to be to kill the enemy in this battle, but to force him to surrender in large numbers, so if all goes according to plan you ought to win with little or no casualties… I don't guarantee that. I only say that it ought to be that way. But, in any case, you'll have fought a battle.”

He paused for a second, looking into their faces one by one. Then he went on.

“Behind me here,” he said, “you see the upland area into which you're going to move at the end of this week for further jump-training and jungle practice. This practice isn't just to fill time. The better shape your men are in at the end of the training period, and the better they know the area, the better chance they'll have to survive in the fight, later. Colonel Khan will give you your specific orders. That's all I'll tell you now. As I say, I don't want you to tell anyone, not even the men you command, that any sort of real action's in prospect. If you're the kind of officers I think you are, and they're the kind of men I think they are, they'll absorb the feeling that something is going to happen without your having to tell them… That's all.”

He sat down abruptly and turned to Eachan.

“Take over, Colonel,” he said to Eachan.

Eachan, unmoving, continued to gaze at him for just a fraction of a second longer before he rose, cleared his throat and began to describe the patterns of movement of the various units from Bakhalla into the Two Rivers area.

Four days later support ships of the type that had flown Cletus with Lieutenant Athyer and his troops up to Etter's Pass began ferrying the mercenary soldiers to Two Rivers. Cletus went up on one of the early flights and toured the area with Eachan Khan. Cletus's first concern was for the town or village—it was really more village than town—of Two Rivers itself.