Parilla, despite this, did not seem to relax.
Carrera watched as a centurion stopped one three-ton truck before it nearly went over the side of an elevating loader. The centurion walked briskly to the driver's door of the truck, opened it, hauled the driver out with both fists and then held him in the air seven stories above the ground while shaking him and cursing. The centurion didn't drop the driver, however, but put his feet back on the ramp, pushed him back into the cab, forced him to slide over. Then the centurion climbed in himself to show how the damned thing was supposed to be done.
Parilla winced at seeing this. To Carrera it was… well, in small details, at least, he thought the centurions ought to have a certain latitude.
'Are we going to make it, Patricio?' Parilla asked. Carrera had never shut him out-even consulted with him frequently-but neither man had any doubt as to who was really in charge. Nonetheless, Carrera always treated Parilla as his unquestioned superior in public and a good friend in private. Politeness cost nothing, after all.
'I think so, Raul. We were lucky to have the freighters stopped before the Volgans actually began putting our armor aboard. They're going to fly the stuff into Yezidistan directly from the airport near the factory, all sixteen tanks and forty-four Ocelots, plus eight extras for floats, two tanks and six Ocelots. The other twenty-two still come here by ship, for training, of course. I'm still worried as hell about the cold weather gear, though. Those mountain passes are fucking freezing this time of year.'
Parilla gave an involuntary shiver. 'How badly off are we?'
Without inflection, Carrera answered, 'So far we've been able to find mid-weight sleeping bags for every man, Anglian surplus, and about ten thousand heavy wool blankets for when we find out that a mid-weight sleeping bag just won't do sometimes. The Misrani tents we have will be good for summer or winter since they've got a good heavy liner to them, though with that desert pink color they'll stand out like sore thumbs whether it snows or not. The south of the country isn't desert, after all. Stoves are allegedly en route. We'll see.'
'God I hate the cold.' Parilla shivered in anticipation, despite Balboa's oppressive heat.
'So do I,' Carrera agreed. 'In any case, balaclavas have been ordered, good wool ones from Helvetia, but the order won't be filled for about ten days-ten cold fucking days, I expect-after the tail end of the legion arrives. Same deal and same source on the polypropylene-lined leather gloves. We have found some really neat polypro mittens that allow the troops to peel back the part covering the fingers for fine detailed work, but in a cold wind they'll be pretty worthless, too. Harrington's looking for leather shells to cover the mittens. Nobody had winter boots available for immediate delivery in the quantity we need and the boots we were offered were almost no better than the jungle boots the men already have. That scares me. I foresee a lot of trench foot in our future unless Harrington can come through on the boots. I told him I didn't care if the styles match, just so long as they are good, serviceable, winter boots. Maybe that will help. Then again, part of our problem is that most of the troops have shorter, wider feet than those found in all the places that make winter boots.
'On the plus side, we have gotten twenty-thousand sets of polypro underwear. It's already in Yezidistan and being issued, first thing, as the troops debark from the aircraft. Most of it will be too big but better too big than too small. I've had a local company take five thousand white bed sheets and convert them to camouflaged pullover smocks. Better than nothing.'
'We're going be cold for a while then,' Parilla commented.
'Very.'
'Wish we'd had time to acclimatize the men to cold weather,' Parilla said.
Was there a touch of rebuke in his voice? Carrera thought so but whether it was directed at him or not was an open question.
Parilla's aide de camp came up to the pair. 'Sir,' he said to the nominal senior, 'the aircraft chief stewardess tells me they are ready to board you now.'
'You're sure we should fly separately?' Parilla asked of Carrera.
'Absolutely,' Carrera answered. 'In the first place, God never intended for man to fly. Worse, He has an odd sense of humor. If one of those things comes down with both of us on it, the legion will be fucked. Go on, Duce. I'll be on the flight right behind you.'
A bombero band stood at attention on the tarmac playing a martial tune, one heavy on the brass and drums. The legion's main band, the pipes and drums, were already long departed and guarding the headquarters in Yezidistan.
From the movable stairway nestled against the Air Balboa jet, Parilla made a good show of turning, smiling for the cameras, and waving at the crowd of families and well-wishers bidding farewell to yet more of their soldiers. Behind him the line of mostly hung-over men waiting to board bunched briefly at the halt.
Unseen in the crowd, Lourdes waved back with her right hand. She hadn't seen Patricio since he had left the terminal lobby a few minutes after Parilla.
While Lourdes waved with her right, her left was busy catching tears in a handkerchief. Raul Parilla's elderly wife put an arm around Lourdes' narrow waist.
'I have never done this either,' the older woman confided. 'I am frightened for them.'
Lourdes began to cry more loudly. 'I am frightened for me. '
'I know, dear. I know.'
Standing not far away, a younger woman, affianced to legion Private First Class Ricardo Cruz started to bawl as soon as she saw Lourdes' tears. Seeing Cara, Parilla's wife made a motion for her to join them. Then, standing there in the lobby, the three women hugged each other and had a good, long cry.
Hewler International Airport,
Yezidistan, 16/1/461 AC
Under the glare of the portable lights, the last of a dozen rented semi-tractors carrying Misrani Army tents pulled away from the unloading area on their way to the legion's bivouac site near Mangesh, Yezidistan. This was about thirty miles to the north and perhaps five miles from the dividing line between Sumeri controlled Yezidistan and the Yezidi safe area that had been guaranteed by the Federated States eleven years before, following the Oil War.
Despite the bitter cold the unloading crews sweated with the strain. Their breath made little horizontal evergreens of frost in the air. Nearby, Kuralski and his Yezidi counterpart, Captain Mesud, stood to one side while waiting for the Volgan LI-68s that would be flying in, among other things, a load of rather poorly made but at least warm cold-weather boots that had been stolen from Volgan army stores years before and offered to Harrington once the need was made known. Along with the boots were coming some tons of ammunition, a portion of a huge store that had been offered by the newly reunited Sachsen Reich from what had once been held by then nominally independent North Sachsen. This, too, would go to join the growing stockpile of supplies and equipment building in the middle of Yezidistan. Packaged field rations from Anglia, Gaul, the Federated States, and other places arrived at intervals as well. No rations would be coming from Zion as Kuralski had been warned about Army of Zion rations, canned goat with the hair still on it, and kosher to ensure near tastelessness. Besides, the one tasty, for certain values of 'tasty,' item of food in Zioni rations, Shoug, was a mix of ground peppers ranging from 'Holy Shit Peppers' to 'Joan of Arc Peppers,' with a very small admixture of 'Satan Triumphant Peppers.' That way layeth logisticide.
Thirty miles away, at Mangesh, Sergeant Major McNamara had his hands full setting up the five hundred and forty odd tents the brigade would be moving into. Morse and Bowman were a great help, here, but-thank God!-his real salvation was that enough of these nonYezidi, Christian Chaldeans spoke English to get his will across. Ah, well, at least he didn't have Harrington's worries. That poor bastard was torn in a hundred directions; trying to set up an Ammunition Supply Point, arrange feeding, receive the equipment that arrived in a steady stream from Hewler International, and, in general, prepare for the arrival of the remaining troops.
Still, between himself, Kennison, Kuralski, Johnson, and Captain Mesud- fine officer, thought McNamara, rare among these wogs- he had to admit that things were getting done. They had a tent city laid out and about half the tents raised. The ASP was also laid out and, at least to the extent ammunition had arrived, dug in. Johnson was going insane trying desperately to set up local training facilities.
In a way, that was McNamara's biggest distraction, not that he minded. Carrera-McNamara still had to force himself not to think of his boss as Hennessey-was very goddamned particular, and a little unpredictable unless you thought at his level, about how his training was set up. Johnson did better than most and Mac enjoyed filling in the
