The other just shrugged. "Speak of the devil," he announced, pointing his chin towards a nondescript, off-road vehicle leaving the fortress in a cloud of dust, "there goes Mustafa now."
"Tall bastard, isn't he?" Bashir commented. "Where's he going?"
"Who knows," said the other, wiping sweat from his brow with a filthy shirtsleeve. "He almost never spends two nights in the same place. The locals here are all supportive, all armed to the teeth, and each little family has its own fortress. The collaborators of the Kashmir government don't even try to come into this area anymore. Last few times they did, they got run off with a bloody nose."
Shit, Bashir thought. I am supposed to pin a man down to being here on a precise day, at a particular time, and that same man makes it impossible to do so.
And my family's life depends on my doing so. Shit.
* * *
Bouncing along over what passed for a road in this part of the world, Mustafa thought, Shit. Nothing seems to work out the way it should. When I launched the attack on the Federated States I knew they would come here and I expected to be able to bleed them white and drive them out in shame and disgrace, the same way we did the Volgans.
Didn't happen.
Then I saw the hand of Allah in their invasion of Sumer. Surely, I had thought, that with the best army and the most militarized people in all the Ummah the crusaders would meet their doom.
Didn't happen.
Oh, it attracted the mujahadin in vast numbers, to be sure. And the crusader coalition killed them in vast numbers, too. It seemed so close. But with their allies and mercenaries they always had enough troops to meet any success we had while they built up a new government—whores that owe their souls to the infidels, the lot of them—capable of standing on its own. Meanwhile, we were barely able to hang on here.
I thought then that Allah had truly turned his face from us. Two campaigns; two victories for the enemy. That only shows how foolish I was, for God is the greatest plotter of them all. With the cost of their victory in Sumer, the FSC has lost almost all stomach for the fight. Even now, the bulk of their forces in Pashtia are the Tauros—more albatross than ally—and these mercenaries. These we can defeat. And so Allah shows his omnipotence and his wisdom while mocking our lack of faith. We lost here, to lose there, so we could win here and recreate a base for establishing His law in the world in a more perfect and secure fashion.
Curse me to Hell if I ever doubt the wisdom of God again.
* * *
Damn all shavetails.
Sergeant Sevilla, 3rd Cohort, 6th Cazador Tercio, hated having his signifer along on a mission. The kid—he was only nineteen—was just so damned ignorant. Oh, sure; he'd come up through the ranks just like all the others, proved himself in combat, gotten through Cazador School and SCS. And Sevilla had to admit, it was the right thing to do for him to have come with his most forward deployed squad, on his platoon's most dangerous mission. It showed the right kind of heart.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a heart mission; it was a head one. And the next new signifer Sevilla met who had his head in the right place would be the first. Oh, sure; if they lived they learned. And tribunes and legates, who really were important to the Legion, had to come from somewhere. But the price in lives among the enlisted men, non-coms, and centurions was pretty damned high to produce those absolutely necessary higher officers.
Why, why, WHY did it have to be my platoon that got stuck 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."