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In spite of iron self-control, General Calvano shivered in remembrance of the bitter cold of that horrible month spent in the Andes, a young recruit trapped with his platoon in a cave by the unexpected avalanche. When the supplies ran out, the soldiers were forced to eat their boots, paperback books, anything possible. But as the slow days passed in an interminable march toward starvation, at last, straws had been drawn, and the killing commenced. At first a man voluntarily took his life, dying so that the others might live. But then it became a contest of the strongest, the meanest, and the true nature of Man had been brutally revealed to the young private in hellish clarity. Men were beasts, merely another form of animal, and would always revert to their base feral nature when it became a matter of survival.
As the foul memory welled, the general tried to block the taste, vaguely of pork, more like chicken. Acid flooded his gut at the horrid recollection, and he forced away the dark thoughts, denying their very existence. He alone had walked from the cave when a warm rain had finally melted away the blockage of deadly snow. He survived to walk a hundred miles through the barren hills until finding an isolated village and taking refuge near the blazing forge of the local blacksmith. As the teenager lay shivering on the dirty floor, his plan to save the world had been born. It had been crude, simplistic, but over the long years, the youth had become a man, and the plan had also grown in complexity and sophistication until it blossomed into fruition. Those American ICBMs had only been the first step toward salvation.
“Just too many people,” Calvano whispered, the words thick with hatred.
The corporal driving the APC paid no attention to the mutterings of his commanding officer. As did the other soldiers riding in the rear. Brand-new FN-2000 assault rifles lay across their laps, the 40 mm grenade launchers slung beneath the barrels loaded with AP rounds and ready to be released at a moment’s notice. They were the chosen elite, the personal guards for the leader of Forge.
Normally, officers in the Argentine army didn’t have bodyguards, but then the 67th Battalion wasn’t a normal unit, nor was Firebase Alpha. Once the soldiers had been told the truth, they eagerly joined Forge, and now worked for the general, the man who would become the unwanted savior of humanity.
Turning a corner, the APC nearly clipped a parked taxicab. The snoozing driver came to with a jerk and started to curse and wave a fist. The general knew that there was little chance of his losing a fare from the profanity. There were so many people, but everybody was walking. Cabs were expensive, while God had made feet for free.
If there really was a God, Calvano noted sourly, which he highly doubted. Enough prayers had been said over the centuries, and there had never been a reply.
Among the people thronging the sidewalks, Calvano noted drug deals happening, and instinctively reached for the 9 mm Bersa pistol holstered at his side. Then stayed his hand.
Not yet. But soon, the general noted. However, he marked the face of the traitor for later extermination along with the rest of the vermin and filth.
In a passing alleyway, Calvano saw a fat prostitute on her knees, servicing a grinning customer in the reeking shadows, garbage strewed on the ground around them. Disgusting. A professional soldier, the general wasn’t a prude, and very much in favor of recreational sex. He had a wife in Rosario and a mistress in Chivilcoy. But only the wife had been allowed to have children. After that, the general had gotten himself a vasectomy. The very minor surgery was virtually unheard of by the macho men of his backward country, and Calvano had been forced to fly to Canada.
Both of the children had been girls, which was fine with the general. Calvano wasn’t a sexist like so many of his brethren. Argentine culture was an odd mixture of Spanish pride and German rigidity, along with a certain fine madness mixed into the gene pool from the tropical paradise they lived in, and were slowly paving under with concrete and asphalt. But his little girls were fine, safe with their mother in his farm to the north, far, oh so very far away from the coming apocalypse.
As the limo stopped at an intersection, a starving man in rags appeared and started to wash the prow of the APC with a squeegee dipped into a bucket of soapy water. Normally it would have been done to the glass windshield of a car, but the man diligently washed the armor while smiling with a gap-toothed grin.
Not just an old cloth, the general noted sourly. This poor man’s job was to clean the dust from passing vehicles. He had found a way to survive. For that he applauded the man’s ingenuity, even though he hated his very existence.
“Sir, should I…” the driver asked hesitantly, pulling a wad of brightly colored pesos from his shirt pocket.
“Drive on,” the general commanded brusquely. “Give him nothing.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver replied, tucking the money away.
As the light changed, the APC surged forward, leaving the frustrated old man behind shouting obscenities and waving the squeegee in a threatening manner.
The sight made the general deeply sad. Calvano remembered when Argentina had been a beautiful land. The air and water had been clean, and crimes were few because justice had been swift. But the nation had started crumbling when the fat fool Peron and his wife took control, and was nearly bankrupt when they left. And the Americans had written a musical about the stupid bitch! he thought derisively.
Now there were homeless people living in cardboard boxes and under bridges. Crime was out of control, and food was becoming almost too expensive to buy. Only gasoline, made right there, was plentiful and cheap. A mixed blessing, as the smog was getting worse every year, even out on the ranch-lands of the wide pampas. And smog brought lung disease, which meant more sick people, more hospitals, more taxes….
As the APC left the town, the roadway became clear of traffic and the driver dutifully increased speed until the lush green countryside was flashing past the military vehicle. Fresh, clean air came in through the louvered vents, and the soldiers joked about the lack of taste as they breathed in deeply.
Lost in his own thoughts, the somber general didn’t join in the casual banter. Air pollution, water pollution…humanity was a cancer, eating itself alive, choking on the waste products and wondering what had gone wrong. Numbers didn’t lie. World population was over six billion! India and China each had a billion, and soon so would other nations. In a high-secret report, the general had read about the S2 in Brazil acually rounding up their homeless people and machine-gunning them to death in warehouses late at night to try to curb the runaway poverty. Too many people and not enough jobs.
But population control wasn’t the answer. New food technologies weren’t the answer. Oh, no. Only the general seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. One man could live in a telephone booth, but not two, and certainly not five, ten…twenty…There were just too many people in the world. Unfettered and out of control. There was only one solution. Radical surgery. Amputation of the surplus population. There were six billion people in the world, so kill five to save one billion. The numbers were harsh and unforgiving, but acceptable. A soldier’s burden.
Once, long ago, when fighting Communists from Chile trying to invade Argentina, Calvano had stationed a troop of men to hold a bridge at any cost while the rest of his battalion retreated to safety. A hundred men assigned to die so that a thousand could live. On paper it sounds like nothing. But he had looked directly into the faces of those brave men, those soldiers, when he told them to stay and die. And they had done as ordered. They stood the line and did their job, which saved the battalion. How could he do any less?
In sharp detail, Calvano still remembered the looks in their eyes as comprehension came. The flash of shock, the rage, the fear, and then the grim understanding of what had to be done. They died, or everybody died. It was that simple. There was no third option. The soldiers accepted the responsibility and stood their ground in a small foundry overlooking some nameless bridge. Long afterward, when the stripped bodies of his men had been recovered, Calvano found the last two soldiers lying behind a cold forge where they had made their final stand. There wasn’t a bullet in their guns, and three of the rebels lying dead on the floor had been taken out by hammers. Hammers! Those heroic bastards had fought to the very end, beyond hope, beyond sanity, delaying the enemy at any cost. And it had happened at a forge again. The young major took it as a sign from the Lord God, and that very night Forge was born. Soldiers determined to fight to the end at any cost, to give one last chance for a world gone mad.
Slowing to a halt to let a herd of cows cross the highway, the driver floored the APC and headed into the suburbs. Long stretches of track homes appeared, only to be replaced with green, rolling countryside that quickly became dense misty forest.
“Sir, we’d better take the back way in,” the driver said, touching the radio receiver on his head. “There’s a traffic jam on the continental highway.”
“What’s the problem?” the general demanded, frowning. His constant growing fear was that the Americans might send one of the covert assassination squads to kill him before the great task could be finished. He slept with a guard dog in his room, bars on the windows and a loaded assault rifle resting against the headboard.
“Some sort of crash on the Pergamino Bridge, sir. A truck hit a bus, and the cars behind plowed into them and…” He waved a hand in an expressive circle.
And everybody panicked, smashing into each other until cars were falling off the bridge like rats fleeing a burning ship, Calvano noted in repulsion. There was no room anymore, not even on the big roadways. Too many people.
“Do as you think best, Corporal,” Calvano commanded, sitting back and pulling out a cigar from inside his uniform jacket.
“Yes, sir.”
Lighting a match, the general let the sulfur burn off completely before applying the flame to the end. Drawing in the dark smoke with true satisfaction, Calvano pulled the fumes in his lungs until they threatened to burst, then exhaled twin streams through his nose. Tobacco was the only drug of which he approved. Nicotine kept a soldier’s mind sharp, not befogged and stupid, like alcohol or marijuana. Hard drugs were strictly forbidden in the Argentine army, and in Forge their use was punishable by a public whipping for the first offense and a bullet to the head for the second time. Discipline was the key. The whole world simply needed more discipline! Calvano knew.
Veering off the main highway, the APC began a serpentine journey into the wild hills, leaving every trace of civilization behind. Located deep in the mountainous terrain, Firebase Alpha had once been a secret base of operations for the Communist rebels. But after clearing them out with VX nerve gas, General Calvano had then simply moved into the stronghold and taken over the place for himself, and Forge.
The deadly VX nerve gas purchased from a Russian arms dealer had proved to be most efficient, odorless and fast, but extremely painful. The rebels died screaming, ripping off their own melting flesh. Most of the Communists had used handguns on themselves to end the horrible agony. When Calvano rode unopposed into the camp the next day, only a handful of the rebels were still alive, grotesque twitching lumps on the ground. By his command, the troops encircled the dying rebels with wooden sawhorses and left them untouched to slowly die in the hot sun. Naked under the very eyes of God.
The base had proved to be a godsend. It was amazingly well stocked with weapons, fuel, food and communications equipment. The isolated valley was far from the annoying TV cameras of the news media, along with the watchful eyes of Argentine Military High Command. Hidden in the deep woods, the general had the privacy needed to build his private army. Out here in the wild forests of western Argentina, Calvano was king, free to do whatever he wished. There was no law, except his commands.
Surprisingly, the rebels had an underground bunker holding a staggering amount of hard currency, in very short supply in Argentina at the time, along with a tremendous supply of raw heroin they had been planning on selling cheaply to the decadent politicians and lawmakers to help corrode the fledgling democracy from within. Merely another good reason to kill every rebel without mercy, Calvano thought. He was only sorry that so many of them had perished so quickly from the VX gas. Criminals should pay for their crimes.
Debating the matter for only a few minutes, Calvano had taken all of the cash for Forge, and acquired an huge additional profit when he sold the narcotics to the gangsters of the Chilean underworld. In fact, the transaction had proved so profitable, the general regularly sent his private forces into Peru to raid the drug factories there and to seize more drugs to sell to Chile.
Let those fat fool idiots on the coast see to their own problems, Calvano noted callously. My only concern is Argentina.
Millions poured into the coffers of Forge, and a good thing, too. Constructing the other firebases had proved incredibly expensive, but vitally necessary. According to Professor Reinhold, there had to be a minimum of two uplinks to maintain their delicate control of the worldwide GPS network. The scientist tried to explain the technical details once, but the general soon became lost in the mathematical equations, and just took the matter on faith. Reinhold was one of them, a valued member of Forge, and fiercely dedicated to saving the human race from its own stupidity. Although unknown to the professor, there was also a hidden cache of VX hidden in the Black Fortress that the general could release by remote control. Just in case it was ever necessary to purge the mesa of rebellious personnel. Failure came from sloppy work, not a clever enemy, he believed.
“Here we are, sir,” the driver announced, slowing at a gravel road.
Grunting in acknowledgment, Calvano dropped the cigar to crush it under his boot, then reached into his jacket to withdraw a small remote control. He pressed a few buttons and waited. After a moment, there came an answering beep and a tiny LED flashed green.
“You may proceed, Corporal,” he said, tucking away the box once more.
“Yes, sir!”
Now the APC advanced onto the minefield, the loose gravel crunching under the weight of the heavy tires. Swinging around a copse of tall trees, Calvano looked closely, but only caught a brief glimpse of the large satellite dish antenna hidden among the dense greenery.
Passing a brick kiosk surrounded by a low sandbag nest, the general noted the Forge guards stood alert and wary, with hands on their assault rifles. Then he saw the woman.
“Hold!” the general bellowed, already rising from his jump seat.
Quickly, the driver braked the APC to a halt, but Calvano was out the sliding hatch before the vehicle had ceased rocking back and forth.
Walking across the blacktop, General Calvano scowled at the strange woman tied securely to a base of a metal flag pole. High above, the flag of Argentina fluttered in the soft breeze. Her clothes were in disarray, ripped and torn, the exposed skin underneath badly bruised. The nipple of one breast was showing, and it appeared to have been bitten. Gray duct tape covered her mouth. Weakly, she looked up from the ground with an expression of terror.
“And who is this?” Calvano demanded, pointing a finger at the cringing prisoner.
“Shelly Scoville, a news reporter from the capital,” a burly sergeant said, snapping off a brisk salute. “We found her ID in her purse, along with a digital camera and a lot of memory sticks.”
“We caught her trying to sneak into the base,” another man added proudly.
Feeling hot anger building inside his mind, the general said, “And it seems she put up quite a struggle. How many of you did it require to capture the news reporter? Ten, perhaps twelve?”
The sergeant seemed confused, and looked around at his fellow guards. They were staying near the kiosk, as if distancing themselves from the man.
“I…we caught her easily, sir,” the man said warily. “But I…we roughed her up some to make sure she was working alone, and didn’t have any friends lurking in the woods.”
“The woods around the firebase filled with proximity sensors and land mines?” Calvano asked pointedly.
“Yes, sir. I…That is…” The sergeant faltered, unsure of what should be the correct reply. “I was just doing my job, sir.”
“We’ll see about that,” the general replied coldly, turning to the woman. On closer inspection, several of her fingers were broken, the nails bent back. “I assume she talked?”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant answered smartly. “She’s alone, working on a magazine article about forest fires and—”
The gunshot shattered the stillness of the forest, and birds took flight from the nearby trees as the dead woman slumped to the ground.
“We are not rebels, you stinking piece of filth! We’re soldiers! And soldiers do not torture prisoners!” Calvano bellowed, then stopped. As she splayed on the freshly mowed grass, he could see there were fresh scratches along her inner thighs. The stockings were torn to shreds, and there was no sign of her underwear.
“Who did that? ” Calvano demanded in a whisper, pivoting on a heel. The smoking Bersa pistol was still in his clenched fist, the ejected brass shiny near his boot like a fallen star. Then his voice came back in a strident roar. “Who raped a helpless prisoner on my base?”
The other Forge guards moved away from the sergeant, who suddenly started to sweat profusely in spite of the coolness of the day. “Sir, I…that is…” the man stuttered, then took hold of himself. “Sir, we haven’t been to town in months, and since she was going to die anyway, I didn’t see the harm in a little taste….”
With a flick of the wrist, Calvano raised the gun again and fired. A neat black hole appeared in the forehead of the sergeant and he stumbled backward, blood and a sort of thin, watery fluid beginning to pour from the hole in his brain. As the sergeant’s fingers twitched, the FN 2000 assault rifle stuttered, the 5.56 mm rounds stitching a line of destruction directly in front of the general and heading his way. As if he was carved from winter ice, Calvano didn’t move, but instead fired twice more directly into the chest of the dying man.
Crumpling with a sigh, the soldier collapsed and went still.
“We are not killing four billion people only to put animals in charge!” the general stated furiously. His eyes held an insane look, and his gun swept the assembled men, pointing to each one in turn. Nobody moved. Then the 9 mm pistol was smoothly holstered.
“We are not terrorists, criminals or the American CIA!” the general continued. “We are soldiers! The saviors of the human race! And we do not torture prisoners, we kill the enemy! Period. Is that clear?”
The soldiers nodded quickly, saying nothing.
“Now bury her in the trees,” Calvano said, turning his back on the guards. “And throw him into the ravine for the ants to eat.”
As the guards rushed to obey, the general glanced at the waiting APC. His bodyguards were standing near the machine, their weapons at the ready, the driver at the gun turret, only his eyes showing behind the 7.62 mm electric minigun.
Feeling a rush of pride, General Calvano gave them a nod of approval, which was returned. Now those were soldiers, men of honor. There might have to be a thinning of his battalion after the nuclear war. There were just too many unreliables among the troopers.
Turning away from the APC, Calvano strode across the access bridge, his boots ringing against the corrugated aluminum. There was no safety railing for an invading force to hide behind, and a score of land mines were bolted to the underside of the prefabricated bridge in case an invading force needed to be stopped.
With a sputtering roar, the APC came alive and followed after the general, the bridge trembling slightly from the tremendous weight of the military vehicle.
Once past the sighing trees, Calvano smiled as Firebase Alpha came into view. A civilian might find the military installation rather drab and plain-looking, but to any combat soldier it was beautiful. The base was a sprawling expanse of squat concrete buildings surrounded by an electrified fence topped with razor-sharp concertina wire. An insulated fence formed a path of safety for the dogs padding around the firebase on patrol. Dimly seen soldiers watched with binoculars from behind the bulletproof glass of the tall guard towers, and there were subtle movements inside the dark concrete pillboxes at the corner of the electric fence. Canvas sheets covered the gunports, and there was no way to tell there was a 40 mm Vulcan minigun inside each squat redoubt.
More guards walked the flat roofs of interior buildings, and white whisps of mist rose from the ventilation fans of the command center, exhaust from the liquid nitrogen used to cool down the massive Cray SVG Supercomputer in the reinforced basement. The chief hacker for Forge had insisted on the installation of the SOTA hardware, and had proved its usefulness many times over. Nobody could properly pronounce his real name, so the soldiers liked to call the little man Snake Eater. Apparently he had been involved in some trouble in Calcutta a while back, and fled to Argentina. The computer expert had found refuge in the ranks of Forge.
Approaching the armored gate, Calvano snapped his fingers impatiently and the soldiers in the brick kiosk rushed to the control panel. As the APC lumbered to a halt behind the general, the solid slab of steel used as an anticrash stanchion descended from sight with the sound of working hydraulic machinery. Now, woven steel nets were raised, closing off the dog tunnel, and the gate loudly unlocked, then began to ponderously swing aside. The driver of the APC shifted the vehicle into gear, but Calvano didn’t move.
Major Domingo San-Martin rushed toward the front gate from the command center. The short, heavyset officer held a sheet of crumpled paper in his hand. The general grimaced at the sight. That couldn’t be good news.
“Sir…” Major San-Martin gasped, coming to a halt only a few feet away. “I saw you on the bridge—”
“What has happened?” Calvano demanded, snatching away the fax. The paper was covered in complex double lines of alphanumeric code, but the translation was written underneath each in red pencil.
“There is another…warehouse…sir,” the man gasped.
The general went still. “Impossible.”
“The Americans…are preparing all of their remaining missiles for a retrofit,” he said, stumbling slightly over the odd term. “The inspection team in Texas is racing to Puerto Rico, and has a scheduled stay of only an hour.” Color was returning to his face, and his chest no longer heaved.
So they did have more, Calvano thought. Or was it a trap? The Americans often acted stupidly but were rarely fools. If there were more warehouses with replacement INS units, Forge would have to shut down operations. Perhaps permanently.
“We could crash their place on the return flight,” San-Martin suggested. “It would be easy enough to send a few commercial flights into their path.”
“Which would send all evidence to the bottom of the sea,” the general growled, crumpling the fax in his hand. “If there are replacement units in Puerto Rico, I need to know. Have Snake Eater assign a local team to handle the matter. They’re to kill everybody on sight and destroy any INS units discovered. But I want a confirmation either way.”
“Understood, sir.” The major turned to go.
“And send Lieutenant Caramico back to Sonora,” Calvano added.
The officer stopped and turned slowly. “But, sir, we specifically sent her away from the town in case the Americans tried to capture some of our people for questioning.”
“Now we wish to do the same,” the general stated. “The natural place to capture us would be at the warehouse, so have her avoid it completely. Watch the airport…no, the local law enforcement, police, sheriff, whatever they have. The CIA will certainly touch base with the people who were first at the scene of the fire. That will be the place to get prisoners for questioning.”
“Questioning?” the major repeated slowly. He awaited clarification. It was a strange order coming from the general.
Feeling a mounting dread, General Calvano glanced backward at the guard post, the team of men burying the dead news reporter. Something trembled inside his soul, then died. This was a war for survival of the species. Sacrifices would have to be made. So he would perform the first. “Torture the Americans in any way necessary, but get me some answers.”
The major smiled in relief. At least the kid gloves were coming off and the troops were free to do whatever was needed to save their beloved homeland. The rest of the world could die in flames, but Argentina would survive the coming holocaust no matter what.
“No problem, sir,” Major San-Martin replied eagerly. “The lieutenant has Sergeant Mendoza with her. He’s the perfect man for this sort of thing.”
“Yes, I know,” Calvano said. “And have the professor prepare for phase two.”
“It will be my pleasure, sir.” The major saluted, then sprinted toward the communications bunker.
There, it is done, Calvano noted, staring after the officer. I’ve crossed the line between soldier and terrorist. I am no longer an honorable man. Oddly though, a great weight was lifted from his shoulders at the decision, and the general felt exhilarated, almost intoxicated at the rush of total freedom. There were no more rules anymore, only results.
With a low rumble, the APC came alive and started after the general, the great machine advancing until it loomed over the man, casting him into a dark shadow.
CHAPTER FOUR
Makran Coast, Pakistan
“Red alert!” a voice boomed over the PA system of the U.S. Navy frigate as Klaxons blared. “Red alert!”
Erupting into action, the crew of the USS Canton scrambled for their posts even as the Phalanx guns at the bow and stern swung about automatically and started roaring at full blast. Guided by radar, the Vulcan miniguns vomited a fiery barrage of 40 mm shells at the incoming missile, the rapid-fire cannons spraying a wall of soft lead and steel pellets into the air.
