Carnifex

with the new shavetail when we could have had a nice, wise, older centurion in charge? No heroics then; just do the mission and come home safe. The sergeant suppressed a sigh.

He didn't really have to suppress it. The squad, all eight including the signifer, was well below ground with a good camouflage job covering them above from prying eyes. Only one little opening had been left in the camouflage, natural vegetation supplemented with a burlap strip net, that covered the hide, and that was closeable.

Corporal Somoza lay at that opening, watching with a pair of non-reflecting binoculars toward the fortress to the south. Somoza's Hush Fifty-one sniper rifle, a .51 caliber subsonic with a silencer, rested against the earthen wall of the hide beside him. A Pashtun scout attached to the squad lay resting near the rifle.

Most of the problem was that from the hide you couldn't see much of the fortress, only some—not nearly all—of the bunkers and a few stretches of trench here and there. Somoza's perch was actually oriented on the most likely avenue of approach for a Salafi patrol, rather than the fortress.

The signifer wasn't happy with that. He wanted to be able to see and report more. Never mind that that wasn't the squad's mission, that they were only there to serve as a relay and retransmission station for someone below among the enemy. Sevilla didn't have a single clue as to how to identify the spy, except by a code word over the radio. He supposed that if someone were to show himself at the hide and managed to get the code word out before being killed then he'd likely be accepted as the spy for whose word the team waited. Then again, Sevilla was reasonably certain the spy would not know where to look for them; Fernandez was careful that way.

In the interim, all the Cazador squad could do was wait for the signal and hope they weren't spotted. That is, that's all they could do unless the signifer had a bright idea.

* * *

Bashir was bone weary, every muscle in his torso aching, by the time he and his company were released to rest for the evening. Though he didn't have his rifle, they'd left him his pack. He unrolled the bedding, adjusting it to the firm ground, then took out the yellow radio before placing the now half-empty pack at one end of the bed roll for a pillow.

Lying down after placing the radio's earpiece in one ear, Bashir fiddled with the dial until he found an Islamic station broadcasting from the capital of Lahore, many hundreds of miles to the north.

The radio Fernandez had given him was much more sophisticated than it looked. Most of the short time he'd had available before he'd had to leave on the Cricket, Bashir had spent learning to use its features. One of these was an integral, and passive due to the nature of the system, Global Locating System positioner. By putting the dial at a given point, one where no station in range broadcast, Bashir was able to upload his current location to a small computer chip. By placing the dial at another, he was able to tap out his simple codes and phrases which were also stored on the chip. A third notional frequency set the thing to 'transmit.' Flicking the on-off button halfway transmitted the contents of the chip in a burst and continued to do so every thirteen minutes for five bursts.

That duty done, and no one apparently the wiser, Bashir closed his eyes and went to sleep.

* * *

Sevilla shook the signifer awake. 'Sir, we just got word from our infiltrator. I've got his location and he sends that the main target isn't there. He doesn't know when the target will return. There is a meeting scheduled for sometime in the near future. Corporal Somoza is already retransmitting the message.'

26/7/469 AC, Camp San Lorenzo, Jalala Province, Pashtia

'Dammit!'

'Be calm, Patricio,' Fernandez advised. 'Rome wasn't burnt in a day. Besides, we still haven't even figured out how to do the damned mission. Delays while we do figure it out don't hurt us.'

Carrera slowly nodded his graying head. 'I know. And I am still not convinced we can do it, even with the boy's suggestion.'

'It was a hell of a good idea though, wasn't it?'

Again Carrera nodded, though this time with a slight smile at his son's precocious insight. Carrera found few reasons to smile anymore. 'Clever boy, isn't he? I'm going to leave him with you when . . . if . . . we actually go through with the attack.'

'That would be fine,' Fernandez agreed. 'And, yes, Patricio, he's a frightfully clever boy. Pity he didn't have a way to get forty IM-71s and eight IM-62s, of which no more than forty, total, will be functional on the day we move, to carry what we need.'

That was a daunting problem. To take the fortress, even if the enemy could be enticed away from its rocky, bunkered and entrenched outside ring, required more than forty helicopters could lift. In the first place, to enable most of one cohort, minus its armor and softer vehicles, to survive attack until relieved required fifty sorties of IM-71s. Under the circumstances, it would be improvident to use any of the heavier lift IM-62s. Given that the cohort selected would go in with limited mortar ammunition meant that they would need continuous artillery support from outside. Even lifting one maniple of twelve 155mm guns with their required ammunition would take up all the IM-62s. But that wouldn't seal off the area from escape. It could be sealed off, at least to vehicle traffic, by using the 300mm multiple rocket launchers to drop mines at the fortress valley's two entrances. But those would have to move into position to range the fortress. This might well tip the enemy off.

It would also tip them off if the first two loads in—the Air Ala was still configured to lift one infantry and the Cazador cohort in by helicopter in two lifts—were used to seal off the objective. Of course, the Cazadors, at least and in theory, could jump in. Carrera thought about the prospect of his men landing by parachute on either the rugged mountains around the fortress or the valley within it and shivered. In the former case, he would expect anything up to twenty percent broken legs and ankles before so much as a shot was fired. In the latter, his men would hang for long moments in the air while the defenders below shot them up like sitting ducks. Gliders? Squad sized gliders? Maybe if I'd thought of it two years ago.

And then there was the problem of intervention by the Kashmir Air Force, by no means a despicable one. Yes, they couldn't control the tribal lands along their border with Pashtia. That didn't mean they were willing to let anyone else do so. He could bring in the SPLAD, the Self-Propelled Laser Air Defense system, the Legion had had built. But that, too, meant weight and cube and less lift for the infantry. All that, taken together, meant the likelihood of intervention by a Kashmiri armored division before he could finish off the fortress and extract his men.

As far as sealing off the fortress from relief by Kashmir's also somewhat respectable ground forces . . . he could do it, for a while, by committing the Legion's mechanized cohort. But a ground war between himself and Kashmir was something of a losing proposition. They already sided altogether too much with the Salafis. A direct strike would certainly push them over the edge from secret to open support.

Briefly, he thought about using one of his seven nuclear weapons. But no, the downsides of that are just too great. Besides, I'd have to know it would get Mustafa and all his top lieutenants. They're just not that effective on a hardened, underground target.

'Any change on the ground reported, independent of our infiltrator?'

'Not really, Patricio. They're still improving their positions, digging out caves and the like. That, and a lot of housework.'

'Any good estimate on the number of women and children in their camps.'

'Thousands,' Fernandez answered, shaking his head. Do they think the women and kids will be a shield? They're living in yesterday's war, if so.

27/7/469 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Lands

Khalifa, wife of Abdul Aziz, was as much a part of the movement as her husband, so she felt. She not only cooked and cleaned—for her husband, yes, but also as part of the communal kitchens for all the holy warriors of the base—but she raised the children who would go on to carry forth the movement, the boys, and to breed warriors, the girls. She had only had two, so far, but this was quite good considering her age, nineteen, and that she had only entered into marriage a bit over five years before.

She'd not met her husband before the marriage, of course; good girls rarely did. She had been pleased, though, at the choice her parents had made for her. Not only was Abdul Aziz good looking, to the extent her limited experience allowed her to tell good looking from bad, but he had a bright future. Everyone said so.

It was really only that bright future that had caused her family to