With those factors in mind, Digna began to make her plans.
The sign outside the abandoned school proclaimed, “Tactical Operations Center, 10th United States Infantry Regiment (Apaches).”
Standing in the schoolyard, Preiss contemplated the curious things soldiers, who — as a class — tended to have no fixed home, would do to give the impressions and sensations of normalcy to create one. The sign was one such example. There had been no particularly good reason to bring it, absolutely no reason to make it the number one priority — well, tied for number one along with setting up the radios — in establishing the TOC, yet there it stood, even while the long-range antennas were still being erected. Preiss could only account for it by the need for soldiers, as people, to have someplace called home, with the trappings of home.
Preiss looked at the sign again, shook his head and entered the former schoolhouse turned tactical operations center. Inside he removed his helmet — useless thing really, given the enemy’s weaponry — and ran his fingers through sweat-soaked hair. His eyes wandered over the map, tracing not only the positions of his forward units but also the positions of the landing craft from the 1097th Boat that were bringing in the rest of the troops of the regiment, their supplies, and their vehicles. The landing craft came in full of troops and gear and left crammed to the gunwales with anything up to five hundred civilians each, fleeing the oncoming horde. Curiously, thought Preiss, not a single one had yet called out “Gringos go home.”
The thing is, Preiss mourned, we don’t have the first goddamned idea of what’s ahead of us. My RPVs lasted maybe two minutes after cresting the Continental Divide. My lead scouts are still struggling up the jungle slopes. Well, he corrected, not “no idea.” I know there are about ten or fifteen thousand more civilians heading this way, refugees from the debacle in Chiriqui Province.
“XO,” Preiss said, “I’m taking my Hummer and heading north. Keep in touch. You’re in charge until I get back.”
Her horse was behind her, hidden among some loose boulders remaining from when the pass and road had been excavated. Digna, herself, lay forward, between two rocks, looking south through her binoculars.
Instead of leading, Digna saw, the alien flying sleds were following the mass of the ground-bound ones that first surmounted the southern military crest. The sleds fired occasionally, but only at the rear of the groups of the ground bound, as if driving them forward. With her field glasses to her eyes she scanned the Posleen on the leading edge of the wave. She’d seen their faces — similar faces, anyway — many times on the long march back from her home. They had struck her, before, as fierce, threatening and confident, to the extent one could read confidence on such a strange visage.
Somehow, they didn’t look confident anymore. Neither did they seem particularly fierce.
They’re frightened, she decided. They look just like rats caught in a trap. Or maybe like wild animals caught in a drive. Hmmmm.
Keeping low, Digna crawled back to her horse. The dirt, rock and asphalt were a pain to her breasts and belly but not so bad as a railgun shot would have been. Reaching the horse, she led it a few score meters through the pass and then mounted it, riding hell for leather for the northern military crest along which she had strung about half of her armed and able defenders.
Digna had exactly four working radios now, including those she had scavenged in Gualaca. Two of these were with the marksmen she had stationed to either side, east and west, of the highway. These had settled in among the trees and rocks atop the crest, protected from a ground assault by the sheer rock walls rising above the gentler slope below. The third radio was back with Edilze and the artillery and mortars. Digna had the fourth, waiting with yet another descendant by a sheltered spot more or less by the road that she had picked for her command post.
At that ad hoc command post Digna dismounted hastily and passed her reins to an armed thirteen-year-old great-great-granddaughter, waiting for just that purpose. The girl led the horse away as quickly as she was able to behind the shelter of the northern military crest. There the girl would wait, rifle in hand, until either her clan chief came to take the horse or the aliens overran her.
From behind the shelter of a bush, Digna looked out to where the road broke free of the artificially widened pass. The ground bound aliens entered the pass tentatively and fearfully. Followed by their God King, the normals crept through, and then began to spread out once they reached the northern side.
Digna waited until one of the aliens’ flying sleds was into the open, behind what looked to be a thousand or so of the others.
Calling her forward subordinates by name she ordered, “Jose, Pedro… kill the God Kings. Now.”
Within scant seconds a few shots from the crest were joined by dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Through her binoculars Digna saw the one sled that had come through the pass swept by a massive fusillade. Bullets sparked where they struck alien metal. In a few moments the God King riding the sled was riddled. The rifle fire continued, however, as men posted along the east-west running treeline continued to engage the few God Kings driving normals forward, south of the pass.
From her own position, centered on her line, Digna shouted, “One magazine. Open fire.”
The Posleen didn’t even return fire. Less still did they charge. Instead, with their point elements falling in shrieking agony and the strange thresh projectiles whistling around their ears, the bulk of the aliens turned and ran back through the pass from which they had come.
“Cease fire,” Digna shouted, the cry taken up and passed on by her underlings.
Turning to the nearest of her platoon leaders Digna then gave the order, “Take your men out and finish off the wounded. Carefully.”
Preiss had expected to have to fight a human wave of panicked civilians on his way up the winding road. Instead, he was surprised to see them walking calmly, in good order, and parting to leave a path for his Hummer as he approached. He smiled, more than a little pleased, to hear the murmuring, “Gracias a Dios. Los gringos son aqui.” Thank God; the gringos are here.
It was only a few minutes more travel before Priess understood the reason, or at least a substantial part of the reason, for the unexpected order and discipline of the refugees. Rounding a bend in the highway he came upon three men, kicking a few feet above the ground. A small, tough-looking crew of Panamanians watched them die, keeping onlookers at a distance. No sign proclaimed the crime for which the men were being hanged, but the fact that some very young and very old were being loaded onto a small pickup nearby suggested to Preiss the reason.
One of the tough-looking Panamanians, the eldest of the crew, detached himself and walked over to Preiss’s Hummer, a young boy in tow.
Through the boy he announced to Preiss, “Looters and thieves. They bring disorder and endanger better people than themselves. So… the rope.”
Preiss just shrugged. Whatever worked, worked. None of his business.