“Can the two mech divisions do that?” Boyd asked, skeptically. “Can they do that after conducting a fighting retreat over the… ummm…” Boyd consulted the scale of the map, “seventy-five kilometers from the San Pedro to Nata?”
“I think so,” Suarez answered. “I have a trick… well, two related tricks actually.”
“Tell me.”
“You know how the gringos say you can’t use rockets against the Posleen because they can detect them and shoot them down in flight? Well… I started thinking about that. The rockets, rockets like the Russian Grad, have a very short boost phase. If you fire from behind high ground, very high ground, the rockets will burn out and stop accelerating before the Posleen can track and engage very many of them. That’s trick one.”
“And trick two?”
’The Posleen are incredibly hardy. They are, so I’ve been told, immune to any chemical agent we might throw at them, nerve, blister, choking, blood… or even some of the more exotic Russian shit. But they need to breathe. They must have free oxygen. I propose that when we hit them with the artillery, mortar and rocket barrage we drench them with thermobarics and white phosphorus and burn up all the oxygen in the air. If we can hold the Nata line until nine or ten the next morning after they arrive, there will be an inversion. We’ll be able to trap the hot, oxygen-depleted atmosphere under a layer of cold air. No fresh oxygen will be able to get in for a couple of hours. They’ll suffocate, most of them. The mech, supported by mobile artillery, should be able to handle whatever is left. And the air with nothing but burned up oxygen will rise after the inversion layer disperses under the sun, letting fresher air in.”
Jesus, what a gamble, the dictator thought. If the mech divisions don’t get out, we’re dead. If the Nata line he’s talking about doesn’t hold, we’re dead. If the inversion layer he says he needs doesn’t show up, we’re dead. But… what choice do we have? Not a lot. Because if we don’t take the risks we’re dead, too.
“Write it up,” Boyd ordered, “and give me, um, two days to think on it. Now what are your recommendations for purging the chain of command?”
Suarez turned over a sheet of paper showing the changes he thought required. Boyd looked it over, then asked, “Whatever became of Cortez?”
Smiling, Suarez answered, “I turned him over to that woman’s people. You know, the one he had gang raped?”
“Ooooo,” Boyd shuddered. “You’re not only a bastard, you’re a cruel bastard.”
Suarez shrugged. “I’ve already given her and her head man a pardon in your name, suitably post dated.”
Digna, still weak, sat on a folding chair with arms on the lip of the slope overlooking the old golf course. The sun was high and Colon Province’s muggy heat was already a weight bearing down on her and all of her people clustered in the tent city below. Most of those people, the ones not on guard or some absolutely necessary work detail, stood below in the sun, looking upward at the scene.
A badly beaten and bruised Manuel Cortez lay on his stomach, naked and spread eagled. On each of his arms and legs sat one of Digna’s grandsons, stout boys and solid. Tomas Herrera stood, a twelve pound sledge hammer gripped tightly in his hands, handle sloped with the head pointing to the ground. Another of Digna’s grandsons held a long stout pole, sharpened at one end, and with a cross piece firmly tied about three feet from the point.
The entire crew had pretty much the same thoughts. Have our lady raped, will you, you bastard? We’re going to enjoy this.
Despite being held down, Cortez twisted and writhed. He tried desperately to turn his head, to try to make eye contact with Digna. He hoped, in his unthinking way, that if he could somehow make her see he was another human being she might not kill him in the horrible way she obviously had in mind.
“Please! Please don’t do this,” Cortez begged. “It’s barbaric! No one deserves this.”
“No one deserves to be raped,” Digna answered quietly. “But you do deserve this. Tomas?”
“Si, doña,” Herrera answered.
“No!” Cortez pleaded. “Nonononononono!”
Herrera tipped his chin at the grandson holding the long, stout pole with the cross piece affixed. Cortez’s begging turned to a scream followed by incoherent sobbing as the rough point was pushed a few inches into his rectum. Digna’s grandson grunted with the effort.
Herrera said, “Cant the pole towards me so it stays far from his heart.”
Tomas then swung the sledge hammer. Wham. The pole lurched five or six inches upward, splitting Cortez’s anus so the blood welled out. His sobbing turned into a high pitched scream, like a rabbit or a child being skinned alive. Wham. Another scream, louder than the first. Down below, mothers covered their children’s eyes and turned away themselves. Strong men winced. Wham. The point forced its way through the intestinal wall and into the body cavity. Cortez’s teeth bit at the dirt. A woman standing below cried out in sympathy. A man bent over and vomited. Wham. A bulge formed, unseen, below Cortez’s sternum. Wham. The point forced its way through the abdominal wall, digging into the dirt. Wham. Cortez gave another cry, part plea, part sob, but mostly agonized shriek as the pole lurched forward until the cross piece came to rest against his naked, bloody buttocks.
“I’d have had you crucified,” Digna said, with a voice as cold as a glacier, “but that would have been an affront to God. This will have to do.” Silently, Digna fumed that Suarez had simply had all of the guards shot who had followed Cortez’s orders to violate her. She might not have remembered who the guilty parties had been. But if Suarez had left all the suspects into her care she’d have impaled the lot, just to make sure. Oh, well. God will punish them for me.
Cortez being fully impaled, Herrera and the others strained to lift him and the pole. His arms strained and grasped futilely at the air, like a cockroach stabbed by a needle. With a mass grunt, the men dumped the free end of the pole into a deep narrow hole in the dirt. Cortez screamed again at the rough violation.
Two of Digna’s grandsons balanced the pole against Cortez’s frantic writhing while each of the others held wooden wedges against it, their pointed ends partly in the hole. These Herrera drove downward, fixing the pole with Cortez firmly upright, his feet flailing weakly a foot or so above the ground.
Digna beckoned Herrera to her chair. With his help, she stood and walked unsteadily to stand next to Cortez. She reached out with her right hand and took a good grip of the sobbing Cortez’s hair. She twisted his head until she could look straight into his agonized face and pain-filled eyes. Then she spit in his face, released his hair and, Herrera supporting her, shuffled slowly away.
As soon as Chief Davis opened the EM proof case CIC was filled with the sound of the Darhel’s attorney-AID, sobbing as if from a broken heart. The chief placed the AID on a map-covered metal plotting table. Daisy’s avatar leaned over and appeared to look very closely at the little black box.
“Care to talk to me now?” she asked coolly.
The Darhel AID projected a very small image, no more than six inches high, on the table next to the box. “Yes, ma’am,” it sniffled. “Whatever you want.” Sniff.