The Lotus Eaters

off the blood supply to the brain in this case.

'I'm with DITF,' Keith answered, 'the Drug Interdiction Task Force. We've got people inside the Belalcazar organization. We think you're going to get hit, soon and hard.'

Carrera raised an eyebrow. 'Do you mean me, personally, or do you mean my family and friends? Or Balboa, generally?'

'All of the above,' Keith answered. 'We've got no details, not yet, anyway. We're working on it. There is one thing, though . . .'

'Yes?'

'They've got shoulder fired surface to air missiles available. If I were you I wouldn't take any aircraft anywhere anytime soon.'

Fernandez frowned, nodded, and then admitted, 'I've got nothing, no sources whatsoever, among the narcotraffickers, Patricio. Only when we grab one . . . and this report of light SAMs sounds . . . plausible, certainly.

'Is it just the Santander people or is Atzlan involved, too?' Fernandez asked.

'Atzlan is . . . interested,' Keith said, 'but, so far as we can tell, not involved. They're on the other side of the supply chain. What you're doing here doesn't affect them that much, if at all.'

And it doesn't hurt, thought Fernandez, that I had my wet work people, especially Khalid, exterminate one group of the bastards some time ago. Hmmm. Maybe it's time to put Khalid back to work again; he's my best. But in Santander this time.

Hmmm. Wet work? Have to work on Patricio myself to get him to agree, these days.

Police Headquarters, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

The afternoon sun cast long shadows from the trees lining the main thoroughfare on both sides. Striped by those shadows, a dirty white van, old and badly used, pulled into a parking space next to the former headquarters for the Transitway Area Police. The building itself, less than forty feet from where the van parked, was a one story, light brown painted, stucco structure. A group of policemen and women, numbering perhaps twenty-five, stood on the grass fronting the building. Another police officer, this one wearing sergeant's stripes, read aloud from his clipboard the duty instructions for the night shift.

A young police officer, Emilio Alvarez, half ran from a side door of the police station to his car parked a few hundred meters away, opposite the Balboa Knights of Pius V hall. As he passed, Alvarez took little notice of the t- shirted passenger exiting the van. Like all new members of the police force inducted of late, Alvarez was a member of the Reserves, in his case of the 10th Infantry Tercio. He hastily tucked a fatigue shirt in as he rushed to be on time for his weekend drill.

Amidst a cacophony of fruitlessly honking horns and mostly good-natured cursing, Alvarez crossed the street, weaving his way through crawling 'rush hour' traffic. On reaching his automobile, he bent slightly to unlock the door. Opening the door, he looked up to see two men, one of whom he thought he had just seen getting out of a white van, cross the street at a very fast walk. The men broke into a fast run.

Afterwards, Alvarez was to remember everything which followed in remarkable detail: the approach of two running men toward his car, the way the desk sergeant turned to look at the van, the small puff of smoke that escaped from underneath it, the blinding flash, and then the bodies—and parts of bodies—of the night shift being smashed into the crumbling wall of the police station.

Alvarez was thrown to the ground by the blast. He rolled over to his belly and then arose to all fours. Paying no attention to the cuts on his face and—where his own car's windows had shattered—his chest, Alvarez drew his sidearm and rushed into the street. Now he really did notice the two men, one in a dirty white t-shirt, the other in a cheap looking guayabera, that arose from the asphalt, swearing about something. Whatever it was they were cursing, Alvarez was too deafened by the blast to hear. It didn't matter.

One of the two bombers, the one in the guayabera, began to reach under his shirt for a gun. Alvarez quickly took a firing stance. The gunman put both his hands into the air, followed by his companion a moment later.

A female Tauran Union corporal, Gallic by birth, and shapely enough even through her battledress, had also survived the blast. She rushed over to where Alvarez had the two bombers covered. Seeing another uniform, Alvarez beckoned the corporal over with one hand, the other keeping the pistol steady-aimed on the bombers. He handed over his pistol and said, 'Watch these two. Kill them if they make a move.'

The languages were just close enough. The Gallic corporal nodded, angrily, then took the pistol and held it on the bombers. Alvarez raced for the ruins of the police station. On the way he passed dozens of dead; men, women, and children. Still others cried or screamed. He left those for what aid the other survivors could give them. He had to get to the police station.

When he reached the smoking yard in front of the station, Alvarez began to throw up. He had seen dead people before, but never so many in one place, never so many so completely ruined. Fighting his nausea, Alvarez returned to the wounded on the streets. There he could still do some good.

Estado Major, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

As reports rushed in—a bombing in Cristobal, another two in Ciudad Balboa, a fifth in Ciudad Cervantes to the east—Fernandez gently held a framed portrait of his daughter, his only child, killed years before by a terrorist's bomb.

What a terrible world we live in, child. I would have thought—though I should not have thought it—that those days were past. Silly me.

The reports of casualties were fragmentary, at best. Even so, there were well over a hundred known dead, and possibly as many as twice that. Of wounded there may have been a thousand. Among the dead were half a dozen elderly tourists from the Federated States, killed while dining at a small and quaint restaurant overlooking the sea. This, of course, had the Federated States enraged.

Fernandez placed the portrait back down on his desk, then stood. His normally ferret-like face twisted into a