A Desert Called Peace (32 page)

"
Ala
?" Parilla asked.

"Latin for 'wing,' as in 'cavalry wing.' But all the real cavalry is in the air now, so . . ."

"Bring up the aviation slide, would you, Mitch?" Carrera asked.

When the slide was shown, Carrera frowned. "General, this one makes only limited sense
except
in terms of its being a training vehicle for a cadre for a much larger air organization. It's the largest group after the service support cohort. It has fifty aircraft including remotely piloted vehicles. That doesn't include medical evacuation aircraft. Of those fifty, it has sixteen helicopters, twelve medium and four heavy. We don't know yet which medium and heavy lift helicopter we will choose or what we can afford. I am inclined towards Volgan and there are a sufficient number for sale, usually used and rebuilt, at an acceptable price. We are probably going to use modified crop-dusters built in the FSC for the close air support role." Carrera saw Parilla's smile and hastily added, "No, sir, don't laugh. They have impressive capabilities—over two tons of ordnance, thirteen hardpoints and can turn on a dime—and have already been combat tested in the close support role in Santander."

"In any case, in designing the air
ala
, our twin goals were: every asset that would be in divisional level air support wing must be there, and it must be able to lift the combat elements of one infantry cohort plus the Cazador cohort in not more than two lifts with eighty-five percent of the helicopters operationally ready. This does that but the personnel inefficiency when dealing with numbers of aircraft this low is just
appalling
.

"Naval slide, Mitch."

Parilla looked that over and saw a few light warships plus a number of merchant ships. He shrugged. Soldiers were soldiers and didn't care about ships. One thing did catch his eye, though.

"What's this intelligence collection ship?"

Omar Fernandez, sitting next to Triste in the left rear of the room piped in, "That one's for me, General."

"We need to have a long talk about that, Fernandez," Carrera said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "And soon. Like, say, after this meeting is over."

"Anyway, General, that's it. You have detailed diagrams of the tables of organization in your packet. Pending your questions . . ."

Carrera stopped to sip at a cup of coffee. Parilla sat digesting the rest of the chart of the Headquarters. Parilla asked about the unusual staff set up.

"A good question, General. There are basically four staff arrangements in use in the civilized world. The FSC's system of four equal sections, which is what you are used to, and which they inherited from the Gauls in the Great Global War, is designed to be something of a committee. I believe it has a number of defects, chief among them being that these staffs inject an equality into the planning and conduct of military operations that has no place in battle. The Anglian system is needlessly complex and badly over officered; we don't have enough trained officers to hope to emulate it anyway. The Volgans could be said not to really have much of a staff structure below division level.

"Instead, the model we have chosen is the same staff form that the Sachsen used with great success in the Great Global War and before. Historical experience says that this is much the best form for a highly mobile force. To some extent I expect this to make up, partially, for the fact that our organization is not really geared to highly mobile warfare. This staff form also does not suffer the defect of permitting the rear echelon to act as a dead weight upon the fighting line. Instead, everything goes to support the front. Lastly, this form for the staff does not permit the personnel managers to have much of a say in operations. It locates the clerks so that they cannot harass the line with constant demands for timely information that no personnel management system can do anything useful with in a timely manner."

Parilla chewed his lower lip for a few moments before saying, "I don't think I like that, Patricio. Armies are composed of people; hence personnel management is a critical component of the force. It's as important as, maybe more important than, logistics."

Carrera jerked his chin slightly sideways, then chewed his own lip for a bit. "I am put in mind of a story I read once," he said, "a true story, about a day in August, 1944, Old Earth Year, when the American Army in France had a total infantry replacement pool of one rifleman for perhaps twenty or so divisions. Imagine, if you will, General, a situation where thousands of personnel managers are in a position to manage one poor rifleman. How privileged that man must have felt! I have always thought that if those personnel managers had been mostly infantry themselves they wouldn't have been managed quite so thoroughly, but there would have been more than one man to replace the hundreds killed and wounded that August day. Computers, by the way, do not seem to help this problem much once the shooting starts."

Parilla thought about that for a minute and decided Carrera was probably right. His face said as much. He thumbed through his hand- out packet and said, "I note you have General Abogado in charge of our foreign trainers. How is old Ken doing?" He remembered Abogado rather fondly from his days as commander of FS Army troops in Balboa.

Carrera smiled. "He's fine and raring to go last I saw him, Raul, which was here, two days ago. He asked about you. In any case, he says he'll be ready within six weeks to begin the first course he is going to be running for our senior officers, a sort of truncated CGSC, a command and general staff course. He'll also be running a number of other courses to train and select lower leaders and technicians."

"Good, good," said Parilla. "I remember—with envy, too, I admit—the way he used to train the FSC troops here. A fine old soldier."

"He was that," Carrera agreed.
Pity about having feet of clay. Still, Abogado is superb at what he does provided you keep him away from women.

"Where are we going to train the troops, by the way, Patricio? Most of the old FS facilities have been sold off. The Civil Force lacks facilities, generally."

"Mitch, bring up the Fort Cameron slide, please."

The previous slide disappeared to be replaced by a map of a small area well known to Parilla from his days as commander of the
Guardia Nacional.

"Sometime, someday when we can afford it, Raul, I hope to buy the Isla Real outright and turn it into a base for us," Carrera explained. The
Isla Real
, or Royal Island, was about eighty kilometers north of
Ciudad
Balboa and was about two hundred and seventy square kilometers in area. "But that alone will cost twice our total budget now to buy and build up. It will have to wait. In the interim . . ."

He pointed at the slide. "This is a map of the old
Centro de Instruccion Militar
at
Fuerte
Cameron. As you can see, it is sufficient to our current purposes, with enough range space and well-drained, open, flat areas for tentage. Most of the buildings will go for housing cadre, offices, and school rooms."

Again, Parilla accepted that. He asked, "What about rank structure? I see lots of old Roman military titles, few modern. Is there a reason?"

Carrera nodded. "We'll be working mostly with the Army of the Federated States and the Anglians. They are extremely rank conscious. I simply do not want them, initially, to have the slightest clue as to the ranks of our people they are dealing with. Thus, signifers are roughly second lieutenants, but could be considered first lieutenants or captains. Tribunes I through III are, for our purposes, 1st lieutenants through majors, but could be considered majors through colonels. Legates 3rd through 1st are lieutenants colonel through brigadiers. On the other hand, in Latin 'legate' means lieutenant general, three stars, or ambassador, which is a four star equivalent. The sole
dux
, or
duce
, is yourself. The centurionate runs from optio, basically a platoon sergeant, through 1st centurion, the senior noncom of a cohort, and on to sergeant major, of which
this
expeditionary force needs only one at this time, Sergeant Major McNamara."

"Seems silly to me, Patricio."

"Give it time, Raul. Are you ready for dinner?"

Adjourning to the mess, Parilla asked about a set of thirteen carved and silvered or gilded eagles perched atop poles.

Carrera gestured toward the table and chairs, mahogany and intricately hand carved. "There is a furniture factory in
Valle de las Lunas
,
Fabrica
Hertzog, that does fine wood carving and makes some really superb furniture. They made this table, the chairs, the sideboard and the china cabinet. Good work, very good. When you gave me this mission, I gave some thought to what the units' symbols should be. I had
Fabrica
Hertzog make these up.

"We'll present them to the legion, cohorts,
ala
and
classis
at a solemn, probably half-religious, ceremony sometime in the future."

Carrera moved to take one of the eagles from its rack against the wall. He presented it to Parilla. "As you can see, sir, the eagles themselves are of gilded or silvered wood. The plaques we just had made up. They give the name and number of the unit that will carry it. This one, for example, is for the 8th Artillery Cohort,
Terremoto
." Earthquake. He put down the Eighth's eagle and picked up another. Pointing to its plaque he read off, "Eleventh Air Ala . . . Jan Sobieski, who beat the Turk at Vienna with his
winged
hussars." Carrera went down the list, pointing to each in turn. "Legion: Ruy Diaz de Bivar, Legio del Cid for short . . . First Cohort: Principe Eugenio, Prinz Eugen who led the Austrians against the Turks . . . Second Cohort: Roberto Guiscard, the Crusader . . . Third Cohort: Ricardo, Corazon de Leon, the Crusader . . . Fourth Cohort: Barbarossa, Crusader . . . Fifth: Carlos Martillo who stopped the Moslem advance at Tours in old France . . . Sixth: Vlad Tepes who fought the Turk for Transylvania . . . Seventh Combat Support: the sword of El Cid, Tizona . . . Ninth Service Support: his horse, Babieca . . . Tenth: the Headquarters, Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moor killer . . . Twelfth
Classis
: Don John who crushed the Turk at Lepanto."

"You see where I'm going with this, right?"

Parilla laughed, "Oh, yes, I see, my friend."

Dinner commenced and carried on more or less silently. Parilla was on information overload and the staff knew better than to talk plainly. After all, they worked for Carrera, not Parilla. When it was done, and the maids were clearing the table, Carrera asked the general—no,
el Duce—
yet again, if he had any further questions.

"No, none. You have done a fine job . . . by the way, what is your rank in all this?"

"We have to talk about that, privately. At this moment I probably have no official legal rank beyond a mandate from the Legislative Council to be your deputy and to help prepare the Legion. Shall we repair to the living room for a nightcap to discuss just that? We also need to talk about your own rank." Carrera nodded to Kuralski to keep the rest of the staff away while he and Parilla chatted.

"The day after tomorrow I am flying to Hamilton, FD to speak with, umm, my family senator. She owes my family a great deal. She also needs our support for future campaigns. Frankly, I despise the bitch on principle but she ought be a useful conduit to greater FSC support."

An hour and a half later, while Bowman and Morse drove the general home, Kuralski, Sergeant Major McNamara, Fernandez and Carrera relaxed on the back porch of
Casa
Linda, overlooking the sea. The salty smell of ocean, overlaid with the smell of decayed organic matter from the coast, wafted up.

McNamara chided his boss. "Now, sir, if you had been t'at good at dog and pony shows back in the FS Army you would have gone far. Why I can just picture you as some four star's aide de camp."

Carrera made a gagging sound and then leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, satisfied at a job well done. "They tried to grab me to be someone's aide de camp three times, Top. The idea made me ill; I
despise
general officers, for the most part. And, besides, don't confuse inability with unwillingness. I could always dog and pony with the best of them. I just wouldn't do it without a really good reason. Tonight I had a good reason.

"And, Mac, tell the boys to put on the uniforms starting tomorrow. With the ranks I gave them when they first got here, with the proviso that Kuralski and Kennison are Legates I and the ex-captains are Tribunes III. And they can skip the promotion party for my having made Legate III. It's just another tool. Besides, we are going to be much too busy for that nonsense over the next several months."

"As shall I be, Legate Carrera," smirked Fernandez. "So if we could have that talk now . . ."

For such a sensitive matter neither the front steps to the
casa
nor even the dining room would do. Instead, Fernandez and Carrera repaired to the basement conference room.

"What the hell do you need an 'Intelligence Gathering Ship' for, Fernandez? There is no way I can afford the equipment you would need to gather intelligence from a ship. You have no people trained for the equipment anyway. I cannot afford more people from Europe or the FSC, either, not with what I am paying for trainers."

Fernandez gave a tiny and wintery smile. "It is not to gather intelligence
from
the ship. It is to gather intelligence
in
the ship. I have in mind a prison
cum
interrogation vessel."

"But why on a ship? We can put up tents and string wire much, much more cheaply."

"Yes, you can, Patricio. And you can have Amnesty Interplanetary, Liberation International, Freedom of Conscience, the World League and every other cosmopolitan progressive organization breathing down your neck and harassing you twenty-four hours a day. A ship— a ship that never comes to port—prevents that."

"But what do I care if . . . oh, you are talking about them objecting to . . . what shall we say? 'Rigorous' interrogation methods?"