“Thirty-seven, Lord Fain, after subtracting for the prisoners, yourself and your key Indowy,” the AID answered tonelessly. “That is based on seventy of their kilograms per adult. More children could be taken but without knowing exactly their sizes and weights accurate calculation would be impossible.”
“Very well, then,” the Rinn Fain hissed. “You make take thirty-six adults with you or some, presumably greater, number of adults and children. But they must be ready to go, at the prison where your war criminals are being held, within four of your hours.”
“You promised me that you would take my entire family as well as those of my key staff and supporters,” Mercedes roared. “This is how the Darhel keep their contracts?”
“Don’t speak to me about keeping contracts, Mercedes,” the Rinn Fain coolly hissed back. “You had a contract with your country. Have you kept it? In any case, we can try to get out your supporters, their families, and the rest of yours later. But I predict that if you do not get out soon you will not live to enjoy your vacation.”
Mercedes swallowed his bile, his rage and his fear. “I… will be there.”
The ship had come in, in the middle of the Pacific, to keep as far from Posleen defense batteries as possible. From there it had skimmed the waves for thousands of miles. Despite its surface-skimming speed, it used a form of reactionless drive that, unlike a human aircraft moving at a similar height and speed, left neither a visible wake nor a trail of dead fish and cetaceans behind it.
Three hundred and forty-seven of the humans’ “miles” south of Panama City the stealth ship had abruptly slowed and then plunged under the waves. It had continued down until reaching a depth of just under five hundred and fifty meters below sea level. From there, at a much slower speed, it moved by inertial guidance toward the humans’ city and the cargo for the delivery of which the Darhel were willing to pay such a handsome price.
Himmit were preternaturally clever and effective scouts. That they were also remarkably successful smugglers went almost without saying, though the Galactics avoided saying it, even so. The ability of these creatures to avoid taxation and control was an infuriation to the Darhel, an annoying chink in an otherwise very tight system, the futile machinations of the Bane Sidhe notwithstanding.
Among the Himmit scouts and smugglers, the captain of the Harmonious Blend owned no great name. This was a source of pride to the captain, Hisaraal din Groykrok. Himmit scouts took great pride not in their fame but in their subtlety. Let others — the Himmit warrior, scientist and bureaucrat castes, the Indowy master craftsmen, Tchpth philosophers, Darhel lawyers and bureaucrats — seek glory and recognition. The Himmit, contrarily, would seek their glory in having no name, in having no trail or trace for that matter. Hisaraal was in no way inferior to any of his people in this. For his services his clan could command top price in the certain knowledge that no one would ever know Hisaraal had been there, and never find a trace of where he had gone.
Inertial dampening ensured that Hisaraal felt no serious jarring as his ship slid under the waves. Instead, there was only the slightest shudder, hardly to be remarked upon. Descent was rapid and unnoticed save for one sperm whale which promptly swore to lay off squid ink for a while.
Hisaraal’s pilot seat was a kind of couch set amidst controls, instruments and viewing screens. The Himmit lay on the couch, eyes at each end checking screens and instruments, four equal hands manipulating controls and sensors. Somewhere up ahead a ship of the humans, rather, what they fancied to be a ship though it was bound to the surface of this world, patrolled back and forth at a pitiable speed, frantically pinging with what Hisaraal assumed was some form of sensing. He wondered idly for a moment if the Posleen had learned some new trick, using the sea to mask their maneuvers, and if that was the reason for the humans’ actions.
In any case, it was none of his worry. His ship was more than adequate for any such crude and primitive sensing. He wished the humans luck, though, if it was Posleen they were searching for.
The guns of turret two were still moving up and down like tapping fingers.
One sweep wouldn’t do, Daisy knew. However good CA-134’s sonar was, for what she had in mind she needed more than a single sweep could provide. Each pass up and down Panama’s Pacific coast added to the digital image stored in Daisy’s crystalline brain. What she found she passed on to Sally, who returned the favor. Little by little a clear image — a surveyed image — emerged.
Would it be enough to spot the Himmit ship when it first emerged and was vulnerable? I don’t know. I can’t know. But it is the only chance Sally and I have to stop that ship. Once it pops up above the water, assuming I am even right about that, it will disappear beyond my ability to target.
How to tell? How to tell? Are they coming this way?
It doesn’t matter, she finally decided. For my purposes they must come by sea. It’s the only chance I have unless young Julio got through.
The police forces of Panama, prior to the beginnings of the Posleen war and after the gringo invasion of 1989, had consisted of civil police, militarized police, small air and coast guard detachments, technical police and a substantial Presidential Guard. Most of these latter had been levied upon to help provide cadre for the rapidly expanded army. Mercedes had used the slots thus opened up to provide safe sinecures for his lesser relatives and those who could provide substantial enough bribes or, more commonly, were considered to be politically reliable enough to justify putting on the rolls. Some few of the Presidential Guard had been given to Cortez for a cadre around which he could build the force he used to effect the arrests he had been ordered to make.
The rest were sent to the eastern side — the Panama City side — of the Bridge of the Americas to prevent the passage of the force they were told was coming from the west to overthrow the government, arrest the president, and free certain criminals. By and large the Guard lacked heavy weapons and experience in using what few they had.
Still, the position was naturally strong. The bridge itself was overlooked by the western face of Ancon Hill. Buildings, some strong gringo-built ones north of where the bridge debouched into the city, others lighter and newer in Panama’s Chorrillo district, provided fighting positions ready made.
Of course, the Guard had no mines. Instead, they stopped the first fifty civilian vehicles that showed up at the bridge and took them, sometimes at gun point, to form a roadblock across the friendly side of the highway. The roadblock they covered with machine guns placed in some of the buildings. Closer to the road, some in the buildings, some among the roadblock cars, others dug in into the ground, they placed Russian-supplied rocket propelled grenade launchers. These were few, both in the Guard and in the regular forces, as they were not really very effective against the Posleen.
The commander of the Presidential Guard, Raul Mercedes, was another nephew but one who had seemed to Mercedes as having more promise than Cortez. Indeed, it had hurt Mercedes to order Raul to buy him time to evacuate key family members. The president had salved his conscience, and purchased Raul’s continued loyalty, by placing this nephew’s wife and children on the list.
It had been hard enough for Raul, short and somewhat plump but still diligent, to train himself while training his men to be police officers and riot control troops. He was unversed in the military arts. His commission had come directly from his uncle, the president, without any real intermediary training involved. Even so, marksmanship was of a fairly high standard; he’d done well there. Riot control techniques, procedures and formations he’s taught himself and then his men from a book. More detailed military training, however, was lacking, except for some theoretical exercises in classrooms and a few practical exercises in city fighting. Even this much had been difficult, what with a quarter of his few hundred men being on guard duty at any given time and the not infrequent calls from the Palacio de las Garzas to assemble a larger show for some foreign dignitary.