'Santa Juanita River below, sir,' said a helicopter pilot to Samsonov, standing just behind. Samsonov strained to make out the river through the little bit of clear view available to him. Satisfied that he had seen enough to be sure, he turned and walked back, using the troop seat frames as handholds against the bucking of the helicopter as it followed the contours of the jungle covered hills and valleys. Samsonov sat and leaned over to the next man in line. 'Pass it down. Thirty minutes.'
* * *
Miles to the south-southeast, Warrant Officer Montoya glanced out the left side of the plane at the sleepy fishing village of Baudo Arriba.
* * *
A light rain spattered the ocean surface. Engine shut off for the last few meters to reduce noise, a small rubber boat slowed as it neared the shore. Shershavin leapt out of the boat and into the shallow water. Two other men jumped from the same boat, grabbed the line and towed it to shore at as much of a run as they could manage in two feet of foaming surf. To either side other boats touched in and their occupants disembarked. Shershavin looked ahead at a small but steep hill on which stood a well-lighted mansion. He knew that the men of 15th Company were dismounting perhaps a mile away, on the other side of town. Their target was similar, but on a lower hill. The mortar platoon began to set up their guns on the shoreline, aiming stakes forward and left at twenty five meter intervals. Troops carrying silenced sub-machineguns in the lead, Number 14 Company went into the jungle and up the slope. Shershavin called on the radio for a check up from his two supporting Finches, now crossing a few miles west of Cabo Caminando. The difference in speeds between the amphibious force and its air support, as compared with the other three forces, had caused Samsonov to give Shershavin alone the right to use his radio with some freedom.
* * *
If Carrera wasn't airsick, it was only by the grace of God that he wasn't. After two trips up and down over two different mountain ranges, some of the boys aboard the Nabakov were not so lucky.
The somethings missing were sufficient air sickness bags. Having no choice but to puke on the floor, the sick soldiers had covered it with vile smelling vomit. Carrera forced himself to choke back a spurt of his own. Almost retching, he went forward to the flight deck for some minor relief. He saw the navigator cum copilot give a thumbs up signal to the pilot. The town of El Dorado, Santander, continued to sleep as a stream of aircraft flew by, low, overhead.
Chapter Sixteen
No society can truly be called civilized which is unable to deal with barbarians, of both the external and the home-grown varieties. This is so unless one cares implicitly to define 'civilized' as 'that which is comfortable but weak, unwilling to defend itself, and in the last stages of life before descending into barbarism.'
Of course, since good and evil must be measured by duration as well as scope and intensity, and since such a 'civilization' has no prospect of having much more duration, that 'civilization' is hardly worth defending anyway. That said, should the people of such a civilization
But what then is civilization? Arts and letters? Education? Public Order? Rule in accordance with law? Trade? Specialization of function? Urbanization? Public works and roads? Ports?
Civilization shows all of those things, yet it is more than any of them, singly or in combination. At core, civilization is a system of society which permits something near the maximum number of people, for any given geographic area, to enjoy the maximum feasible quality of life, for the longest possible societal duration.
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Anno Condita 471 Belalcazar Air Force Base, Santander, Terra Nova
In his headphones Pavlov heard, 'Unidentified aircraft! Unidentified aircraft! Move away from the flight line and parking areas or you will be engaged!'
Pavlov ignored the calls except to mutter, 'With what?' Reducing power to the main rotor, he allowed the chopper to descend to only one hundred and twenty feet above the ground. That was high enough to provide enough fall to arm the mines his bird carried, and also high enough not to worry about sucking any trash that might be blown skyward into the engine.
Pavlov looked left and saw that his wingman had likewise descended and was even now slowly moving along and above the taxiway. From the rear of the wing helicopter, through the open clamshell doors, a deluge of little mines, some of them glowing, descended to the concrete.
It was seeing the glowing mines hit and then bounce up off of the concrete that made Pavlov think,
Pavlov, himself, went for the one of the aircraft parking areas showing plain in his goggles. A lone guard below fired his rifle at the bird, the muzzle flash plain in the gloom.
'Ignore that,' the pilot cautioned his door gunner. He pretended he hadn't heard the gunner's return comment. At the fighter jet parking area, Pavlov swung stick and played with his pedals to produce a sort of aerial ballet overhead, the chopper twirling and swinging and shifting from side to side. The Santandern jet below was deluged with toe popping mines. The helicopter moved on to the next. Unheard by the crew, sirens wailed out a warning, rousing the base from its slumbers. More rifles were fired at the IM-71s. These, too, were ignored as the choppers continued their work of making the only nearby Santandern air base temporarily unusable. As each HIP finished its mining, it turned its attention to the radar dishes, several civil and one military. Machine guns sparked, colanderizing the radar dishes with fire.
