"Why just the machine guns?" Cruz asked.
"Son, you don't want to be on this tank if we fire the main gun," Perez answered. "It… hurts."
"I understand, Sergeant Perez," Cruz shouted back. "Just give me the high sign when it's time to get off."
Perez replaced his combat vehicle crewman's helmet and said something, presumably to the driver. Cruz barely had his men positioned when the tank took off again with a shudder and a lurch.
Mendoza was probably the loneliest man in or on the tank. Perez had del Rio for close company. Even the grunts on back could see each other. All he had was his lonely, isolated compartment… that, and the intruding memory of a beautiful light brown girl in a white hat and yellow print dress singing "Ave Maria," in a church choir.
Brutally, he pushed aside the thought of the unknown, nameless girl to concentrate on his driving. He had a set of Volgan-manufactured night vision goggles on. These were plugged into the tank for juice. They were infrared, the oldest technology, but had the advantage of being able to pick out any mines that the tank's infrared light might illuminate. Jorge saw none but maneuvered around a few suspicious spots anyway, his abrupt movements throwing Perez and del Rio around the turret and certainly pissing off the grunts hanging on over the engine compartment.
Mendoza actually smiled slightly, a sort of schadenfreude, when he thought about the grunts trying desperately to hold on despite his maneuvers. He felt a little ashamed. It isn't that funny, he told himself. Well… maybe it is.
He heard in his headphones, "Tank, halt. Gunner, coax, eleven o'clock, antitank gunner in building."
The coaxial machine gun began to chatter as Cruz felt the sergeant in the hatch tap his shoulder. "Off now, and get low," the sergeant shouted, then turned to use his own pintle-mounted heavy machine gun to fire forward.
Obediently, Cruz pushed Correa off the tank, then turned to give the boot to Sanchez and Robles. Cruz then dove off himself and rolled to a stop next to Correa.
No sooner had he done so than the tank's main gun spoke, the muzzle blast assaulting Cruz's ears painfully and causing his internal organs to ripple. Downrange a building flashed, then exploded, as a high explosive round with delay set on the fuse burst through its wall and detonated inside. Men and parts of men flew out with the walls. The tank rolled forward, its machine guns still spitting at the buildings opposite.
Even though stunned by the muzzle blast, Cruz stood up to a crouch, Correa doing likewise beside him. He looked to the left and saw Sanchez and Robles doing the same. Cruz pointed at the tank's rear panel and pulled Correa along to get them both behind it. Sanchez and Robles joined them there a split second later.
Advancing with the tank, Cruz leaned out and fired a burst at nothing in particular. He hoped the tracers would remind the commander of the tank that he had infantry following. The only thing more frightening to a foot soldier than a friendly tank lurching about without control is an enemy tank lurching about with malicious intent. And the difference in fear factor is not large.
Other tanks, to the left and the right, fired machine guns and high explosive shells into the town. To these suppressive fires were added those of the Ocelots and the supporting infantry. There was some return fire, but the wall of lead put out by the attackers made it, at best, unaimed.
At the very edge of the town, taking cover behind still smoking buildings, the tanks stopped. Like the other infantry, Cruz and his boys surged into the town, to root out the defenders with rifle, bayonet and grenade.
Interlude
13 May, 2092, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, European Union
Her breathing was labored now. No matter, it wouldn't be long and Margot Tebaf already had had a life with much to be proud of in it.
It has worked out, she thought. It has worked out as we hoped it would.
The pattern of outworld emigration, demographic flux, and expansion of political control by the United Nations, other supranationals, nongovernmental organizations and their supporters had been intimately linked.
The toughest part had been maintaining a working population sufficient to meet needs while getting rid of only enough useless mouths that the progressives of the European Union could maintain power. Once that power had solidified, though, it had become possible to so undercut the semblance of democracy that the votes of the elderly and indigent, the culturally unassimilated and inassimilable had become superfluous.
Old people don't riot when their pensions are cut or eliminated and their children, if any, refuse to take them in, Margot thought. They just die.
Without off world emigration to dump the Moslems, their departures spurred by almost total elimination of welfare and the unavailability of work, it wouldn't have worked either.
Yet their colony on the New World was also a great draw. May they have luck with it.
Better and more satisfying, the cut-off of European immigration forced the United States to accept larger and larger numbers of immigrants as inassimilable as the Moslems were here. Now? Better than half their population owes and feels no loyalty to America, and votes for what it does feel loyalty to. And as we have expanded our power around the world, we have been able to force the United States to accept more and more of our way of doing things. They're still an economic powerhouse, but they can't impose their will anymore.
Even better than that, though, has been the effect of off-world emigration on the Americans. For each one that left has made the place less comfortable for those that remained. And each drop in the comfort level has made more leave. They still think of themselves as a real country. But they're dying. They predicted demographic death for us, but we will be at their funeral.
It was a cheery, if not perfectly accurate, thought for Margot. Thus, when the evening nurse came to check on her, her corpse was smiling broadly.
Chapter Twenty-Three Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure. -Leutnant Weiner, 24th Panzer Division,
Stalingrad, 1942
Ninewa, Revolution Square, 6/3/461 AC
Cruz turned and began to throw up at the base of the half-crushed wall behind which he had his team sheltered. It was bad enough seeing the things done to men in the town. But when a donkey staggered by, dragging its entrails on the ground until its rear legs twisted in them and it fell, bleating piteously? That was just too much.
Sanchez apparently couldn't stand it either. He took the Draco he was carrying, sighted it, and put the poor animal out of its misery. Sanchez beat Robles, carrying the light machine gun vice Rivera, by only a fraction of a second.
"How long we been here?" Robles asked.
" Here, here, or in the town, here? Five days in the town. Here by the square maybe twenty minutes," Sanchez answered. "This time. Last time we got here we lasted a whole hour before they kicked us out again."
"Anyone know how Correa's doing?" Cruz asked through a dry, dusty and overtaxed throat.
"He… died, Cruz," Sanchez answered, sadly. "Yesterday. The medics told me last night."
"Damn," Cruz said, too tired to show any emotion. "Kid was only eighteen."
"Hey, Corp," said Robles. "I'll be sure to let you know when being eighteen saves you from anything. Besides, what are you? Nineteen?"
"Yeah… almost nineteen," Cruz answered.
As Sanchez had said, the square had changed hands numerous times. The statue of Saleh, the Sumeri dictator, that stood in the center of it was pockmarked and missing an arm. Bodies, both from the legion and from the Sumeri Army, littered it. The bodies, like those of Cruz and his two remaining men, were covered with a mix of dust, minute particles of pulverized adobe, concrete and stone, sweat, explosive residue and-in the case of those lying in the square- blood. There were many times more Sumeri bodies than Balboan, largely a function of the body armor worn by the legionaries; that, and their superior training in marksmanship.