A Desert Called Peace (62 page)

With deep piety, the party moved down the ramp, Abdul leading the four selected to carry the
Stone
and the other eight flanking the porters as an honor guard. Abdul led the group to a spot far enough away that the litter-carried stone would not be sullied by the blast when the shuttle took off to bring in the next load. He told the four porters to guard it and then made a motion for the other eight to follow him. These he led to the shuttle's cargo ramp. Already the first of the camels, horses, sheep and goats were being offloaded by others among his followers. The armed men were not needed for that.

In all things Abdul and his followers intended to follow the ways of those who had known, or followed closely in the footsteps of, the Prophet. What was permitted by Allah must never be forbidden. What was forbidden must never be permitted. All things must be as they were.

What the guards were needed for was the other large portion of the cargo. These walked on two feet. They had been purchased from several sources. Some came from among those who had made the Hajj to Makkah. These sometimes found then that they lacked the money to return to their homelands and sold either themselves or their children. Some came from various places on Earth where certain otherwise illegal transactions were permitted, notably northern Africa, Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, and the Balkans. It was this cargo that would actually do the work of cutting the stone and building the new Kaaba. It was this cargo that would warm the bedrolls of the Salafis at night.

There were those "possessed by the right hand" of Abdul and his followers. These were the slaves.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

—Winston Churchill

The sandstorm had lifted two days prior. With that lifting winter ended and a terrible, oppressive heat descended onto the playing field. With the lifting, also, planes and helicopters were able to fly in parts and men from the main depot at the airport and the smaller one at Mangesh. Convoys wandering lost in the desert or hunkered down were scouted for from the air, found and directed. Tanks were recovered and sent forward. It had even proven possible for Christian, the legion's "II," or personnel officer, to ferry in two just-graduated classes of replacements, about four hundred privates, to make up for losses suffered to date, plus a bit.

Jorge Mendoza, Stefano del Rio and the tank commander, Sergeant Perez, pulled up in their Jaguar II to a dun-colored building fronting a small square. They were pleased to have made it this far. To this point in time, there had been little action for the tankers of the legion. In fact, only two tanks of sixteen could claim kills on enemy armor, and less than half could even claim to have fired a shot in anger at other targets.

The crew was also a little surprised. Good workmanship the Jaguar might have, and good design as well. But it had been designed for the continent of Taurus, not the desert. Half a dozen times since the sandstorm had begun the air filter had clogged with a mass of grit, choking the engine to a whining, sputtering death. The Ocelots had fared little better. Eventually Brown, the commander of the mechanized cohort, had simply said, "To hell with it," and radioed in to legion headquarters that he and his command were simply frozen. "Better we stop now," Brown had explained to Carrera, "before we ruin every engine in the command, than keep going another few miles and never move again until you fly us in a few dozen new power packs."

Since they had stopped before the dust had done their engines to death, once the sandstorm had cleared the mechanized cohort had made good progress, reaching Ninewa in less than a day and taking up positions overlooking the bridge that spanned the broad, slow- moving, and brown-silty river behind it. The bridge stood in plain view about three thousand meters away.

Perez climbed out of the tank and stood atop the turret. From there he could see the bridge easily enough, plus the tall white building his map labeled as a hospital that looked over the entire town, dominating it.

"It's got to come down," he said to himself.

Perez heard a series of
foomps
, so close together as to seem to be one, single, long explosion. He waited for a few seconds, half in analysis and a quarter in surprise. Then he shouted, "Incoming!"

Del Rio and Mendoza said, together, "What the fu . . . ?" before dropping down into the tank and buttoning the hatches behind them. Perez dived through his own hatch face first, twisting around inside the tank to get one arm onto the turret handle. This he pulled shut with a clang as the first mortar rounds began impacting nearby.

The tank shuddered under the barrage. Inside all three of its crew prayed fervently that no Sumeri shell would find the lightly armored top of the vehicle. Even a smaller shell would be dangerous if it exploded there. A 120mm, as they assumed the enemy shells were, would burst the top like an overripe grape.

The barrage ended as suddenly as it began. Giving the order, "Wait inside until I tell you it's safe," Perez popped the hatch and risked a careful look around.

"Damn," he said aloud, though without keying the tank's intercom.

His tank had survived, but not unscathed. Where once the thing had carried two whiplike radio antennae, all that remained of these were roughly sheared off nubs. It was worse farther away.

The infantry that had dismounted from their Ocelots once these had halted and had been caught in the open and flat footed. Their bodies—the bloody, torn remnants of their bodies, rather—lay stretched out, torn or eviscerated, across the square. Perez didn't try to count them but there had to be at least ten or a dozen men killed.

The wounded, and there were more of these, were worse. They screamed for pain, for "Mama," for lost legs, arms and eyes. Already medicos were busied trying to staunch the flow of blood, to keep intestines from falling out, to field-set broken bones.

A single Ocelot apparently
had
taken a direct hit on top. It burned on the opposite side of the square from Perez and his tank. Someone inside of it screamed.
No one
tried to perform first aid on its unfortunate occupants, though Perez did see a lone soldier cross himself before firing a single round into the track. The screaming stopped.

One of the nice things about modern technology—for some definitions of "nice"—was that it didn't take an ultramodern bomber or jet fighter to drop even a very large bomb accurately. Any old thing that would get off the ground with a sufficient payload would do, provided it could fly above the ceiling for light air defense or that there was no real air defense deployed.

The Dodo, as rebuilt, met these minimal requirements. It could carry, handily, six bombs of two thousand pounds each. Moreover, after a blistering tongue lashing by Carrera, the commander of the
ala
had seen to it that four of his Dodos had wooden frameworks installed internally to allow them each to carry five such bombs, with a sixth on a dispenser rack. The cursing ground crews had worked through the night, cutting, lashing and bolting together the wood scrounged up by Harrington for the purpose. Then they'd worked half the morning using the three-thousand-pound crane integral to each aircraft to load the bombs.

The bombs, themselves, came courtesy of the FS Air Force, an easy and profitable trade in which Harrington had passed over a dozen cases of eighteen-year-old scotch and received in return two dozen bombs. (It was actually more complex than this, since Harrington also had to bring in an ordnance officer from the FSAF, that officer's commander, and a couple of others to see the deal go through and the planes effectively fitted to carry and use the weapons. For simplicity's sake, though, it is accurate enough to say that one case equaled two bombs with guidance packages.)

In prior times, no plane like the Dodo could hope to place a bomb on target with anything approaching accuracy unless the planes were substantially modified. In this case, though, the bombs had been modified. Each of the two-thousand-pounders had had its normal fusing taken out and replaced with a sophisticated guidance package. The guidance package operated off of the Global Locating System the United Earth Peace Fleet had, reluctantly, permitted the FSC to loft into space. Once released, the bombs became self-actuating, if not self-aware. They would guide themselves onto target with a CEP, or Circular Error Probable, of mere meters.

(Of course, the bombs needed to be programmed and the
ala
's ordnance folks had not the first clue as to how to do that. Moreover, they had to be kept charged until released and this required some rewiring of the Dodos. Thus, as part of the deal two ordnance men from the FSAF had had to accompany the load to teach the Balboans how to do it. As mentioned, the deal was complicated. It became more complicated when Harrington went back, some days later, for several score five-hundred-pound bombs with similar fusing and guidance packages.)

"Evacuate the hospital," the
amid
ordered abruptly.

"Sir?" asked Qabaash, the operations officer, in confusion.

"Just a feeling," Sada admitted. "But get the men out. Leave the guns. Now
go
!"

There is very little one can do with a computer that one cannot also do, albeit more slowly and with more difficulty, with a pen and paper, map and compass. The rate of fall of the bombs had been calculated and from that the release point was decided. This had been compared with the bomb's ability to guide itself and an oval shaped area was drawn on the pilot's map, now strapped to his thigh.

Back in the cargo bay, the crew, supplemented by a couple of cooks and a medic, strained to get the bomb moving down the rollered ramp that ran along the plane's center line. It was tricky and required timing.

"Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . release." The pilot, Miguel Lanza, pulled back on his yoke to point the nose of the plane upward slightly. This made the roll easier.

The five men of the crew, all clustered behind, heaved and pushed. The bomb began to roll to the door, picking up speed as it went down the heavy wooden ramp. The bomb disappeared from view as the plane, lightened by a ton, lurched upward. Lanza, stomach sinking as the plane arose, immediately applied throttle to get this Dodo out of the way of the next one—number two of four on the mission—coming in to the release point.

"Okay, boys," shouted the sweating, panting crew chief, leaning with one arm on the wooden frame. "Let's go back and slide the next one into position.

Amid
Sada sat on a folding chair on the flat roof over his bunker, sipping a tepid fruit juice. His eyes were fixed on the hospital, standing tall and white except for black bull's-eyes painted on each side. He heard, distantly, the drone of aircraft.

Suddenly the interior of the darkened hospital lit up, showing a montage of broken glass and torn-out cinder blocks cascading from every window.

"I will never again doubt one of your hunches, sir," Qabaash admitted.

"Wait for it, my friend," Sada chided, wagging a finger. "The building still stands. It won't for long."

Seconds passed. Once again the former hospital building flashed with internal fire. This time, one corner began to sag. In half a minute another bomb, this one not so accurate as the first two, struck it on the side, almost exactly on one of the painted bull's-eyes. An entire section of masonry peeled away to fall crashing to the street below.

Qabaash looked awed. "It was likely a fluke, my friend," Sada announced.

It was nearly two full minutes before yet another bomb hit the building, again internally. That one managed to start a fire, though the next put it out while crumbling one wing completely.

"How many, do you think,
Amid
?"

"Why, as many as it takes, Qabaash," Sada answered calmly. "And if what they have tonight isn't enough, they'll be back tomorrow. The enemy has plenty of time, and apparently no shortage of munitions."

"Truth is, Carl," Carrera admitted to Kennison, "that I'd have spared the building if I could. I couldn't. The other side probably had no choice but to use it, and made the right choice of at least not hiding behind it. But because they used it, it had to go."

"Seems like a bloody awful waste to me, Pat." For some reason Kennison seemed more troubled by the destruction of the former hospital than by anything that had gone before. Or perhaps it was a cumulative thing, with the hospital being the final straw. In either case, he had tendered his resignation to Carrera that morning, just before sunrise.

Carrera's face was a stiff mask as he folded the written resignation carefully and placed it in one pocket of his battledress, rebuttoning the pocket when he was done. "In any case, Carl, no, I won't let you go. You signed on for two years and for two years you will stay, in irons if necessary. You were under no illusions about what I intended and you've known me long enough and well enough to know how I think and how I operate. None of this should be a surprise to you."

Kennison looked utterly miserable, haggard and drawn. "That's not the surprise, Pat. Everything you say is true. The surprise is how
I
feel about it.
That
, I never had a clue to. I don't even disagree, in principle, about the things you've done. It just bothers me in ways I can't deal with. Pat . . . I haven't slept in a week and it isn't just because of the cluster fuck the sandstorm caused."

Carrera turned away for a moment, thinking hard.
I don't have a decent replacement here for him. Kuralski could do it, but he's out of country. Jimenez could, too, but I can't afford to pull him out of Fourth Cohort. I need Harrington where he is. Triste? No. Great intel guy but not an operator. Parilla could run a staff well enough provided someone else gave him the overall plan. But he's still bedridden.