Don Pendleton - Capital Offensive

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.