The Lotus Eaters

'Think best,' Samsonov had answered. 'One plane to secure strip, then others follow.'

'Hmmm,' Carrera had wondered aloud, 'how do we keep the local guards from shooting up the plane as it lands?'

'That is only question of deciding which Kosmo humanitarian activist organization works most closely with Santandern guerillas,' Samsonov had answered. 'Maybe Red Cross.'

Thus, instead of jumping, one plane would go in first, marked with the insignia of the Red Cross, to secure the landing strip and fuel facilities.

* * *

That first, falsely-marked plane landed with only the airfield guards to witness. The guards hadn't been expecting a flight but in any guerilla movement coordination and information sharing tends to be problematic. Still, the guards began to walk over to enquire as soon as the plane rolled to a stop.

A side door flow open. From it emerged four Balboans from the 14th Tercio, all dressed in mufti. Two of the Balboans called out greetings in Spanish and walked toward the three guards running to meet them. The two others, doing a fair imitation of the universal 'pee pee dance,' trotted to the far side of the airfield as if to relieve themselves. Half disappearing below the lip of the airstrip, the latter two made motions as if loosening their clothes. Instead of penises, however, silenced Pound sub-machineguns were pulled out. The eyes of those two followed their comrades closely as those comrades neared the FNLS guards.

'What the fuck are you guys doing here now?' the chief of the Santandern guards asked. 'I've got no word of any flight coming in and I know for a fact we don't have enough leaf or paste on hand to justify using one of these to take out what we do have.

The Balboan shook his head. 'Ain't that just like the fucking Committee?' he asked. 'Nobody tells nobody nothin'. We're carrying shit in, not bringing it out.'

'Shit?' the Santandern asked.

'Serious shit,' the Balboan said. 'Ammunition, some guns—some heavy guns—mortar shells, explosives, and a couple of crates worth of uniforms and field gear.' All of which was, technically, true. So what if the uniforms weren't actually in crates? They would have filled a couple of crates easily enough.

'No shit?'

'No shit. Estevez, over in Belalcazar, made a deal with the Committee. He provides the shit; you guys smash the Balboan Embassy.'

'Ohhh. That makes some sense then.' The FNLS guard leader agreed. 'Need help unloading it?'

The entire time the two parties, Cazadors and airfield guards, had been walking closer to each other. At a range of under six feet the two Balboans drew silenced, large caliber, pistols, with cartridges loaded down to be subsonic. The Santanderns barely had time to register shock and surprise before the muzzles flashed and their heads and chests were ruined by bullets that broke up upon hitting flesh or bone to create great swaths of destruction inside human bodies.

The senior of the pistoleros spoke a code word into a small radio masquerading as an earpiece. At the word, the second pair of Balboans ran to the little shack that housed the rest of the guards. Civilized men, they tried the door to the shack first and found it open. Gripping their silenced Pound submachine guns, the Balboans walked in and began methodically spraying the reclining men inside. They killed them all, quickly and silently, then went from body to body, shooting each one in the head, once, to make sure.

Meanwhile, back at the Nabakov, the rear ramp dropped and Chapayev's men bustled out and then ran to take positions around the airfield. The Balboans, leaving responsibility for the field to the Volgans, had returned to the Nabakov to await Carrera's arrival. Even without orders from their commander, they intended to wait for Carrera and guard him when he landed.

Crouching by the ramp, under the light of the moons Eris and Bellona, Chapayev saw the Cazadors approach. He kept his rifle on them until they were close enough to recognize. Then he rested his rifle and picked up the radio transmitter to order the rest of the company in.

* * *

Overhead and at a distance, the gunnery officer of the one supporting Nabakovs modified to the gunship role scanned the ground through his thermal cameras. The gunner's face was lit green by the glow of his screen. To Chapayev, through an interpreter, he reported, 'No armed men outside the villa walls. There are three laying down on the strip—'

'Those are dead,' Chapayev interrupted.

'I figured that, Tribune. I see your men forming perimeter around the strip—'

'Forget the strip. We control that.'

'Fair enough,' the gunner agreed. 'Besides, those infrared chemical lights your men are placing are making the thing a little confusing.

'The villa's got a dozen men I can see manning the walls. The whole thing's surrounded by bunkers I can't see into, though I can tell you that at least some of them—mostly the corner ones—are manned.'

'Give me the numbers of the ones you're sure are manned,' Chapayev said. The gunner began calling them off while the Volgan made notes on his sketch of the place. By the time the gunner had finished his report, the first of the main body of troop carrying Nabakovs was reversing thrust on the airstrip, raising a cloud of dirt large and thick enough to blot out the hurtling moons overhead.

* * *

Carrera was in the first main body Nabakov to land. Before beginning his descent, the pilot had peremptorily ordered him back to his seat and to buckle in.

'This is going to suck like you wouldn't believe, Duque,' the pilot had shouted back, as Carrera buckled himself in, in the forward-most, starboard-side, seat next to Menshikov. 'Would be hard to control it with your body plastered across the windscreen.'