Enemies

as she doesn’t know where she is, she can’t tell anyone, can she?”

“It won’t work,” Xerxes snapped back. “During the Cuban crisis, she was taken hostage by the guerrillas there. They held her as a human shield at their missile site. Everyone will think we’re doing the same thing.”

Xerxes sighed. How was he to have known of the range of problems he would have to deal with? It had all been so simple when they started out, a question of national pride and their honor as Macedonians. But the details, ah, the details. The devil was in the details.

They’d made plans for logistic support, chosen their allies carefully. Somehow, they’d managed to assemble a credible fighting force out of the disparate aircraft, weapons, and equipment that they’d been able to beg from other countries.

But when had he had time to decide what to do about a pregnant freedom fighter? Or about conflict between his troops, the need for some form of military discipline in this People’s Army of equals? Or about a SAR mission that brought an international reporter to his secret headquarters inside enemy territory? All these things and more had never even crossed his mind.

It had been so simple, back when it was just a matter of national honor.

“How is she?” Xerxes asked finally. “Do not tell me she’s going to die in my camp.”

“She’s badly hurt,” the medic kneeling beside her said. “I need X rays, access to diagnostic procedures we don’t have in the field here. She needs a hospital.” He looked up at Xerxes, concern evidence in his face.

Xerxes shook his head. “We can’t take the chance. It’s dangerous enough flying the surveillance missions. I can’t risk the men or the equipment to get her into town.”

The medic sighed and looked down. “She might be all right,” he said. “If there are no internal injuries, no bleeding. I can’t tell that now. At the very least, she’s got a concussion, and it could be a lot worse.” He pointed at her right leg. “Broken. I set it.” He pointed at her right shoulder. “Dislocated. And the cuts and bruises are simply too numerous to catalog. But at least she’s hydrated now. It’s a miracle that a pack of wild dogs didn’t find her while she was unconscious.”

“How did she survive?” Xerxes asked. “And more importantly… why?”

Tavista Air Base, northern Greece

1040 local (GMT –2)

“What do you mean, they’re not there?” General Arkady snapped. “Where could they have gone?”

The helicopter crew stood ranged before him in a rough semicircle. Clearly, word of Spiros’s fate had traveled quickly among the ranks of the aviators. These looked to be the juniormost officers and enlisted flight technicians to be found in their squadrons.

Arkady turned to Colonel Zentos. “Do my orders still mean so little?” he asked. He pointed at the men. “Finding this reporter was our top priority. I made it clear, did I not? And yet we send these… men who can’t even locate the downed helicopter in two days. An explanation. Now, if you please.” His tone of voice made clear that this was not a request.

His chief of staff swallowed hard, uneasy. Nor was it the first time since he had joined Arkady’s staff.

Colonel Zentos was a career army man, with all that that implied. He believed in order, discipline, a regulated way of life that made it possible for a nation to deploy its military power on a moment’s notice. The question of Macedonia and Greece was not one that he thought much about. He had his orders — detect, track and destroy Macedonian forces inside Greece, interdict supplies flowing into Macedonia, and maintain air superiority using primarily army assets. This assignment to General Arkady’s staff had been a vote of confidence, and he’d looked forward to serving under the command of the brilliant tactician whose rise through the ranks was virtually legendary. Colonel Zentos was well aware that he was regarded as a strong, methodical officer, the perfect chief of staff. By serving with General Arkady, he’d hoped to expand his reputation as a tactician and planner.

Zentos had thought in the beginning that the rumors about General Arkady’s brutality were simply discontented murmurings from staff officers not accustomed to working for a demanding flag officer. He had dismissed the worst of the accounts as too clearly implausible to possibly be true.

But in the past weeks and months, Zentos had started to experience doubts. With the execution — and there was really nothing else that it could be called, could it? — he’d had his worst fears confirmed. General Arkady might possess an awesome intellect, and might be just the person to control the Macedonian problem, but he was a brutal, atrocious human being.

“I will look into this, General,” Zentos said carefully, all too aware that his own life hung in the balance. Yet he was unwilling to take the coward’s way out and try to shift the blame to the squadron commanding officer, or even to these pilots. The essence of command was the trust and confidence one’s subordinates felt in their commanders, their conviction, however unwarranted by the facts, that the commander knew what was best. “I apologize for wasting your time with this. Give me a chance to get to the bottom of this before I have you briefed.”

Arkady turned his basilisk glare on Zentos. For a moment, the chief of staff expected the worst. He repressed the shudder that ran through his body. The incident with Spiros yesterday… no, it was unthinkable.

But he’s capable of it. You know. You were there.

Zentos had directed the removal of the body and the cleanup of General Arkady’s office afterward. A team of enlisted men had scoured the room for bits of bloody tissue and spots of bodily fluids then almost silently cleaned the wooden floors and walls. Zentos had stood over them the entire time, trying to keep his body between the men and the general, wincing every time one of them made the slightest bit of unavoidable noise. General Arkady had remained at his desk, ostensibly engrossed in wading through paperwork but attentive as a hawk. It was the most profoundly humiliating episode in Zentos’s career thus far.

A court-martial would have been the right thing to do and would have brought the full force of military justice to bear on the foolish pilot. Greece had a long history of democracy, had developed a military culture that rivaled any in the world and extended back to the earliest recorded times. There was much to be proud of, ancient history and traditions to uphold.

Unfortunately, a court-martial would have also revealed the one fact that Arkady did not want made public: that the general himself had ordered the fatal maneuvers, fully conscious of the danger to the helicopter. That was why Spiros had died. Not as punishment for making a critical mistake in the air, but because the pilot had obeyed his orders.

Private executions on the whim of a madman. Am I next? With that thought, as he’d shielded the cleaning crew with his own body, Zentos had turned a corner that not even he fully recognized yet.

Zentos stared at a spot just under Arkady’s chin, carefully avoiding direct eye contact and holding his breath, wondering whether he’d bought them all some time. With any luck, events might distract the general from insisting someone pay for the failure to locate the downed helo.

Finally, Arkady appeared to lose interest in him. He turned away, fixing his glare back on the aviators again. “Find out why these men were assigned to fly this mission. After you do, I wish to see their commanding officer.”

Zentos nodded, relieved for the men arrayed before him, but now facing a growing fear for the captain of the squadron. He was an old friend, one with whom Zentos had served for many years. Would he meet Spiros’s fate in a few hours?

“You heard the general — return to your duty stations at once,” Zentos said harshly, aware that every second they spent in Arkady’s presence increased the danger that he’d change his mind and make another example out of them. He shepherded the men out of Arkady’s office, then closed the door behind them. He turned to face the general alone.

Was there any point in discussing the execution with Arkady? Surely he understood what monstrous misconduct it had been? Could he achieve any real purpose — besides increasing the odds of losing his own life — in offering criticism to the flag officer?

And yet, wasn’t that the role of the chief of staff? To serve as a sounding board for ideas, build the staff into a cohesive unit that the general could take into war? Of all the generals that Zentos had ever served under, he had never met one that did not value a chief of staff willing to speak his mind.

Until now. Is it worth my own life? And perhaps even the life of the RIO that the general has forgotten about. If I even bring the incident up, there is every possibility that he will remember that there were two