Don Pendleton - Capital Offensive

“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.