Boyd felt months of frustration welling up from inside him. Engraved on his mind he saw sickening images of troops sitting around bored and useless because the fuel and ammunition they needed for training was “no tenemos.” He saw roads and bunkers half finished and workmen standing idle. He saw mechanics kicking broken down vehicles because they simply didn’t have the parts needed to repair them.
He felt these things, and the anger they fed, growing inside him until he just couldn’t stand it anymore.
“If that no good, thieving, treasonous, treacherous, no account, stupid bastard who claims to be our president can figure how to rob a country, I can figure out how to steal it back!
“And if I have to, if you think it will work, I’ll steal whatever it takes to get your son’s project off the ground.”
The ceiling fan churned slowly above the bed. Like the hotel itself, the fan was ancient. Unlike the rest of the hotel, however, the fan had not been especially well maintained.
Stolen moments are often the sweetest, thought Julio Diaz, lying on his back with his girlfriend’s head resting on chest.
The girl, Paloma Mercedes, was quietly crying. The bastard had waited until after they’d made love before telling her the grim news.
Except he isn’t a bastard… or if he is, I love the bastard anyway.
“I just do not understand how you can leave me, how you can volunteer to leave me,” she sniffled. “You could have had a deferment. If your father wouldn’t have arranged it, mine would have.”
Julio stared up at the ceiling fan. How do I explain to her that I volunteered for her? How do I explain that I couldn’t have looked at myself in the mirror to shave if I’d let other men do that job for me?
Instead of explaining, Julio offered, “My father would never do such a thing. And your father would beat you black and blue if he knew we were seeing each other.” Julio sighed before continuing, “And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It would be so wrong.”
Seventeen-year-old Paloma lifted off of his shoulder, taking Julio’s hand and placing it on her breast. “It would be wrong for you to stay here for me? Wrong for you to keep holding me like this? That’s… the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard!”
She pushed his hand away and stood up, her eyes fierce and angry. Paloma walked around the bed, furiously picking her clothes off the floor and pulling them on with no particular regard for placement. She completely skipped replacing the bra, preferring to stuff it into her pocketbook and leave her breasts to bounce free and remind Julio of what he was giving up by his pigheaded refusal to see the truth: that the war was only for the ants of the country and that the better people should stay out of it.
Even angry as she was, maybe especially angry as she was, Julio still thought she was the most beautiful person, place or thing he’d ever seen. Hourglass figure, aristocratic nose, bright green eyes… sigh. He tried to get up to stop her but she held up a forbidding palm.
“When you’ve come to your senses and decided that I am the most important thing in your life, call me. Until then I do not wish to see you or hear from you.”
Without another word she turned and left, slamming the hotel room door behind her.
Digna Miranda saluted, as she had been taught, when she reported to Boyd’s sparsely furnished office in one of the wooden surface buildings sitting above the honeycombed hill. He could have furnished the room lavishly, but had an ingrained frugality that simply wouldn’t permit it.
Boyd returned the salute, awkwardly, before asking the tiny lieutenant, politely, to have a seat. Though she’d agreed to meet him — indeed, legally she could probably not have refused — Digna was suspicious. She had few illusions. She knew her looks were, minimally, striking and in some views more than that. Why this new-old general wanted to see her privately she did not know and, inherently, distrusted. All men were to be distrusted except close blood relatives until they proved trustworthy.
She sat, as directed. Boyd noticed her eyes were narrow with suspicion.
“Lieutenant Miranda, this isn’t about what you might think,” Boyd said defensively.
“Very well,” she answered, though her eyes remained piercing, “what is it?”
“You said something at the reception at Fort Espinar that struck my interest. You complained about the ‘soft city boys’ we are commissioning. I wanted you to explain.”
“Oh,” Digna said, suddenly embarrassed by her suspicions. “Well, they are soft, despite the gringos’ attempts at toughening them. They don’t know what it means to live rough, not really. Pain is foreign to them. Maybe worst of all, they don’t have the intrinsic loyalty and selflessness they need to have.”
“Are they all like that?” Boyd asked.
She thought for a moment, trying very hard to be fair. “No… not all. Just too many.”
“You mean we’re in trouble then?”
“Serious trouble,” she agreed, nodding.
Boyd asked the serious question, with all the seriousness it deserved. “What can we do about it?”
“We don’t need as many officers as we’ve created. No company of one hundred and fifty or two hundred soldiers needs six officers to run it. Three would be more than enough. If it were me, I’d watch those we have very carefully and very secretly. Then I’d send about half to penal battalions and let the decent remainder run the show.”
Harsh woman, Boyd thought. Harsh.
From the United States Department of Defense a credit in the amount of several score million dollars was issued to the government of Panama for purposes of buying diesel fuel. Presidente Mercedes was aware of the sum but was also aware that it was far too soon for any of it to disappear.
Instead, the money was duly paid, part to a company which owned four Very Large Crude Carriers, and more to the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, which would provide the fuel. Though the VLCCs normally carried crude oil, in this case they were slated to haul diesel.
Some of ARAMCO’s payment went to transportation, pipeline usage fees for the most part. Roughly half of that went to a Royal Prince of the al Saud clan, some to the plant that produced the diesel, the rest actually went to the company — another Saud clan sinecure — which owned and operated the pipeline. These excess fees were simply built in to the cost of the fuel.
There were some additional fees that also had to be also paid. Perhaps it was the strain of war that was driving up the cost of everything.
In time, the four tankers pulled up to the docking facilities of a large oil terminal on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. Diesel fuel was pumped, a lot of diesel, though perhaps rather less than had been paid for.
At the appointed times, the tankers withdrew from the oil terminal and proceeded generally south, paralleling the east coast of Africa. Rounding the Horn of Africa, the tankers headed generally northwest, nearly touching the northeast coast of Brazil before entering the Caribbean sea.