“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking out loud.” Evacuating a planet with eight million people in transports that were only capable of carrying one hundred refugees at a time seemed incredibly inefficient. It took ten thousand transports to move one million people, and it would take eighty thousand to empty this planet. Eighty thousand liftoffs …Eighty thousand dockings …
The officers drove me to an Air Force base, where a small knot of Marines came out to greet me. We traded salutes and pleasantries. Admiral Liotta had placed my Marines in charge of looking for food and dealing with looters. Armed troops carrying M27s patrolled the streets. Looters would not be offered evacuation. The Marines had orders to shoot them on sight.
“How is the evacuation going?” I asked one of the Marines.
“It’s a mess, sir,” said the colonel in charge. “I don’t know who came up with these evacuation plans, but we’re finding looters on every street. It’s a mess.”
A Marine captain said, “General, these people are scared. We’re herding them like cattle, and they’re scared of us. They’re even more scared we’re going to leave them behind.”
“I can take you to see what we’re dealing with if you want, General,” the colonel offered.
I shook my head and turned to one of Liotta’s officers. “Will we get them all out?” I asked.
“It’s going to be close, sir,” he said.
“How about supplies?” I asked. “Do we have enough time to gather supplies?”
“We already gathered ’em. We’ve had teams out all day. We have the food and the medicine. All we need now is transports to lift the supplies out.”
“Where are the supplies?” I asked.
“Stacked up and ready at the spaceport.”
“Outstanding,” I said. “So the supplies we need will be in neat stacks when they burn to dust.”
“But, sir …” Liotta’s officer started to explain himself, then thought better of it and fell silent.
“Where is Admiral Liotta?” I asked the officer.
“I’m not sure, sir. He might be at Gandhi.”
“Back at the spaceport?” I asked. “Well that’s excellent. Let’s go find him. You can show me the supplies when we get there.”
I’d lost track of Ray Freeman since the last time we’d contacted Sweetwater. I ran into him as we left the Air Force base. He stood outside the gate looking more tired and old than I had ever seen him, his dark skin blending into the shadows as he waited for my car to clear the gate.
I told the driver to wait for me and climbed out of the car. I walked on the loose gravel along the side of the road and approached Freeman. I asked, “What are you doing here?”
“You listed me as a civilian advisor,” he said. “I came here to advise.”
“Looks like these guys need all the advice they can get,” I said.
“We don’t have enough time to get everyone off the planet,” Freeman agreed.
“Yeah, I know. I think it’s time I relieved the officer in charge,” I said. “I hear he’s at the spaceport.”
“You mean Liotta?” asked Freeman.
“That’s the man,” I said.
“He’s left the planet,” said Freeman.
“Know where he went?”
Freeman said, “I can find him for you.”
I smiled, and said, “Ray Freeman, welcome to the Praetorian Guard.”
When we returned to the spaceport, I noticed things that had eluded my attention when I first arrived. I asked the commanding officer to take me on a tour. He pointed out the crates and pallets along the runways. I saw trucks loaded with supplies waiting by the hangars.
Five hangars, each the size of a college auditorium, stood in a row behind the airfield. The doors of the first four hangars hung open, revealing stacks of supplies that seemed to overflow from within their walls. I asked one of my guides about the fifth hangar.
He answered, “That’s the crematorium, sir.”
“The crematorium?” I asked.
“A civilian came through …a big man. He was a black man, bald and built like a mountain. He had orders identifying him as a civilian advisor.”
One thing about Freeman, he always left a lasting impression.
“He took a jeep into town. When he came back, he had a busful of prisoners,” said the officer. “He identified most of them as gangsters, but a few of them were fleet officers as well.
“He said he caught the gangsters bribing their way onto a transport.”
“And the officers?” I asked.
“They accepted the bribes.”
Freeman had probably spotted some civilian driving a truck up to a transport and gone in to investigate. He’d come to Bangalore hoping to save lives, but Ray Freeman did not mind killing people who got in the way of salvation.
“He left the prisoners in the bus and parked the bus in the hangar. That’s why we call it the crematorium. He left them there to burn.”
I looked at the hangar and smiled. A private crematorium for gangsters and crooked officers …it had a certain ring to it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I got the feeling Admiral Liotta suspected me of having something to do with Admiral Jolly’s untimely demise. Liotta conducted his business via the confabulator, holding daily summits and refusing to grant me a face-to-face interview. I did not understand the Navy way. In the Marines, we treated our subordinates like missiles, we told them what to do and launched them in the right direction, knowing that destruction would follow. In the Navy, the officers seemed so damn political.
Once again finding myself in a war room, speaking through a confabulator, I missed the halcyon days of summits with Gary Warshaw. Back when he ruled the Enlisted Man’s Empire, he held summits in which all the top brass met behind closed doors.
At least I was not alone in the conference room. Captain Morris Dempsey, the officer Liotta placed in charge of evacuating Bangalore sat to my left. Captain Jim Holman, the redheaded clone, sat to my right. Dempsey looked stressed. Holman looked like a man who didn’t have a care in the world.
“What is the status of the evacuation?” asked Liotta.
Dempsey said, “It’s in progress, sir.” Then he quietly muttered, “Whatever happened to briefing and debriefing, and leaving me to do my job in between?”
“Is it running according to schedule?”
Dempsey fielded the question. He said, “We fell behind schedule at the start, sir, but things are looking up now.”
Holman, who was pretending to take notes, lazily wrote “Bullshit” on his notepad.
“Glad to hear it,” said Admiral Liotta. He sounded enthusiastic about the news. By that time, I had come to realize that Liotta was both a coward and entirely inept.
Admiral Wallace seemed surprised by the report. Using Liotta’s undermining tactics, he asked, “Will you be able to rescue the entire population?”
“Yes, sir, Admiral,” said Dempsey.
“Really,” said Wallace. “Every man, woman, and child?”
“Yes, sir. We almost certainly will.”
His expression serious and intent, Holman made obscene gestures with his hand under the table. Since he
