Read The Devil's Footprint Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Real soon now, the head of that government was going to be Valiente
Zarra.
The professor was increasing his
lead day by day.
Even the PRI, experts
in every form of election fixing and with a talent for innovation, were going
to find it impossible to wish Zarra away.
And the Task Force was going to have the ear of the new
Presidente
and be able to collect on a
few favors, not the least of which was dealing with Governor Diego Quintana's
power base.
The proposed raid into Tecuno would not put Quintana out of business,
Warner considered, but it would weaken him.
A weakened power broker would be easy prey for others to finish
off.
It would probably be done by
his own
party.
The
PRI had quite a tradition of turning on its own.
The PRI was less a united party than a
coalition of interests of those who wanted to hang onto power by whatever means
were necessary.
Some wanted to reform
the PRI.
Others did not.
Blood had already been spilled.
The cantina was in a backwater town about eighty miles south of
The place had once had a silver mine, which
had closed down some sixty years earlier, and right now Warner could see no
economic reason for the town's existence at all.
Except for a magnificent crumbling church,
the cantina, and — he had been told — a whorehouse.
The reason for a location this remote was not campaigning — even Zarra
drew the line somewhere, and this town was way below somewhere — but a discreet
meeting with reformers in the Mexican military.
The 170,000-man Mexican Army was conservative, and its officer corps
schooled at the Escuela Superior de Guerra and the Colegio de Defensa Nacional
even more so, but even those diehards wanted to be on the winning side.
Tentative approaches had been made by the military to the Zarristas.
Zarra had replied with promises to reform the
Mexican Army along modern lines — not a hard promise to fulfill, since the
existing deployment was based on a 1924 plan.
The end result was an agreement that in exchange for Zarra's new
military program, the Mexican Army would move ‘when the time was right.’
It was a little vague for Warner's liking, but the complexities of
Mexican politics took a lifetime to understand, even if its fundamentals were
clear enough.
The end result was that if
Fitzduane's force opened up Tecuno, the Mexican Army would probably go in and
finish the job.
If
Zarra was still high in the polls and virtually certain to become the next
president.
And there were a few
more ‘ifs.’
The deal between Zarra and the Mexican military had not been worded with
any degree of precision.
It focused more
on broad aspirations.
To be fair, Zarra
had wanted to mention Tecuno specifically as the target to enable the Mexicans
to get their troops into place.
It made
sense in military terms, he had argued.
Warner had fought against this and had stressed the importance of keeping
the assault on the Devil's Footprint a secret.
A secret!
No one — but no one — was to know except Zarra himself.
Reluctantly, Zarra had agreed.
The
Mexican Army merely knew that they were likely to be called upon to take action
at a time and place unspecified.
They expressed irritation but were secretly pleased.
Valiente Zarra was proving to be a man who
understood the realities.
They had no
desire to be allied with a political naïf.
Certainly the army would back him if it looked as if he was winning, but
equally certainly someone — more likely several people — in the army high
command would be keeping the current
el
Presidente
and his party, the PRI, posted.
Precise information would have got back to Quintana rather faster than
shit through a goose.
Such was the world
of politics.
So this secret meeting between Zarra and the Mexican high command might,
in fact, have taken place in
City
the Ministry of War and National Defense, for all the secrecy it really
invoked.
But such was
going through the motions was very important.
A secret meeting — even if not really secret — showed that the generals
were really serious about supporting Zarra and had taken something of a risk.
Accordingly, Zarra, when he became president,
would now owe them.
On the other hand,
since the PRI
and
the
incumbent
el Presidente
had been kept
informed, they would owe the generals also.
It made Dan Warner feel right at home.
It was just like
But it was even HOTTER!
And that
was saying something.
16
"You want us to WHAT?" said Fitzduane incredulously.
"Take out Governor Quintana's supergun," said Jaeger
helpfully.
"I think that is the military
term.
Hell, man, you'll be down in the
Devil's Footprint anyway.
A bit of this
and a bit of
that,
and you'll be outta there with
almost no time lost."
Fitzduane looked around the conference table.
Lamar was there and so were Cochrane and
Maury and Kilmara, but there were also some new faces.
General Frampton, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, was there unofficially, and so was William Martin of the CIA, doubtless
equally unofficially.
It was a regular unofficial teddy bear's picnic, and it was beginning to
look as if he was the main course.
If
these yo-yos had their way, he was going to end up unofficially dead.
"I thought you were watching my back," Fitzduane said to
Kilmara, "keeping me free of the political shit so I could concentrate on
the mission.
Terrific job you're
doing."
Kilmara looked uncomfortable.
"The mission is getting
every cooperation
,"
he said.
"But in turn,
they
would like — would appreciate — a
certain quid pro quo.
They help us and
we help them."
Fitzduane stared at General Frampton, William Martin, and Grant
Lamar.
"Who are
‘they.’
He said.
"I think you know, Hugo," said Lamar quietly.
"We're not going to insist on it.
It will be your decision.
But we'd like to make the case.
The fact is that we are faced with a threat
to national security which, for various reasons, we cannot officially act
against right now.
You know the
background.
You know all about
influence.
Hands off
That was serious enough when we were
talking
conventional
terrorism.
Add in an offensive
capability, and we have just got to act.
Your mission is jumping off in a couple of weeks.
So you, Colonel, are the obvious
candidate."
Fitzduane leaned forward to emphasize his point.
"According to the latest intelligence,
General Luis Barragan has at least two thousand troops equipped with Eastern
bloc armor at Madoa Airfield eight kilometers away from the base.
At the Devil's Footprint itself, there are
fifty hard-core terrorists and a further six hundred mercenary troops, also
equipped with all kinds of nasty things and an unfriendly attitude towards good
guys like us.
"Now, since you people won't send in air strikes and the kind of
sizable force this mission really requires, I'm going in with a total force of
fifteen personnel — not to go head-to-head with these vermin, but because I
think speed and stealth are our best weapons.
Anything that delays us or makes us more likely to be discovered erodes
our advantages.
They are slim
enough.
We need to hang on to what we've
got."
He looked around the group one by one.
"Have I made myself clear?"
Grant Lamar nodded.
General
Frampton cut in before he had time to speak.
"We understand the situation, Colonel Fitzduane.
We would not be raising this if we had an
alternative."
William Martin spoke.
"Colonel Fitzduane, her out Dr. Jaeger and then decide."
"Have you gentlemen ever heard the term ‘mission creep’?" said
Fitzduane.
"It is something of a
A nice clean mission with a
simple objective and a clear chain of command gets truly fucked up with so many
additional requirements and idiotic restrictions that no one knows quite what
they are supposed to be doing.
Add
micromanagement and a dose of friendly fire and you've got a recipe for a lot
of people dying and your objective lost in a cacophony of sound bites."
General Frampton met Fitzduane's gaze.
"Ouch!" he said grimly.
He paused for a beat.
"But
we have learned a few things from our mistakes."
"Maybe," said Fitzduane without conviction.
He glanced over at Jaeger.
"Go ahead, John.
I'm a reasonable man."
Jaeger laughed.
"With
a hard edge, Colonel.
With a very hard edge."
Fitzduane smiled somewhat grimly.
"It seems probable, gentlemen, that I'm going to need it."
*
*
*
*
*
Jaeger was well into his stride.
"George Bull was a Canadian genius who believed that a gun could do
much of what a rocket can do, only more efficiently.
He argued that a focused explosion contained
within a barrel is inherently more efficient than something like a rocket,
which dissipates much of its energy into the general neighborhood.
"So don't think of the supergun as a giant artillery piece.
Think instead of it as being the equivalent
of a first-stage rocket, with the projectile — the missile — being the second
stage.
The supergun gives the missile an
initial momentum and then, once it is partially released from the gravitational
field, the
missile's
own small motor takes over.
The significant point here is that, weight
for weight, the supergun can do the same job with a fraction of the energy and
at a fraction of the cost."
"Theoretically?" said Fitzduane.
"Actually," said Jaeger.
"I told you I'd built a hydrogen-powered gun.
Well, we didn’t just screw it together.
We carried out a full firing program."
There was silence in the room.
"So you've built a weapon," said Fitzduane slowly, similar to
whatever they have built in
Jaeger shook his head.
"Ours
is not a weapon," he said.
"Our gizmo is designed to ferry materials into space at about one-twentieth
the cost of a rocket.
The cost of
putting materials into space is currently greater than their weight in gold,
which concentrates the mind, does not overly please Congress, and ticks off the
electorate.
We've tested it.
We've fired it, and it works.
If fact, it works exceptionally well."
Fitzduane looked dubious.
The
interchange was giving him time to think.
"Look," continued Jaeger, "rockets were right at the time
and continue to have advantages.
Human
beings are not too well adapted to being fired out of a gun barrel into
space.
But equipment, supplies, and so
one are another matter.
They don't care
how they get up there.
It is just a
matter of physics, and the bottom line is that a supergun can do it much
cheaper than a rocket.
But not with gunpowder.
That's where Bull was wrong.
Gunpowder works okay, but it is expensive, slow to load, and hell to
clean up.
No, the way to go is hydrogen."
"And that is what you used at
said Fitzduane.
"Or is it
‘use’?"
"More or less," said Jaeger.
He grinned.
"To
both."