The press added, "Travesty of Justice" and "Death Squads" to their existing repertoire of "growing lawlessness and terror."
"In the long run, though," Sada told Carrera, "however necessary they seem now, the hangings might do us more harm than good on their own."
"Why's that?" Carrera asked, puzzled.
The two men sat conversing in one of the university buildings, the entire complex still being under occupation by the legion. Fortunately, the furniture had not been looted precisely because of that occupation. The rest of the town had been somewhat looted, what little there was to take, by the returning people. It was only "somewhat" because of a dozen or so street lynchings that had taken place supervised by the men of Sada's brigade.
"We're not individuals the way you people are," Sada explained. "Everyone we hang is a member of a family and a tribe. It doesn't really matter if the bastards we string up are guilty because right and wrong here do not mean objective right and wrong, they mean, "What is good for my tribe is right; what is bad for my tribe is wrong." Executing young men who could bring in money and eventually father families is therefore inherently wrong."
"How many have your boys hanged so far?" Carrera asked.
"Eighty-seven," Sada answered, instantly. "As of yesterday. Fortunately, they're mostly from two of the smaller tribes. Also, fortunately, they were mostly here in Ninewa where tribal affections are slightly looser."
"How did the dictator maintain control if killing a tribe member makes enemies of the entire tribe?" Carrera asked, even more puzzled than he had been before.
"Well… see," Sada explained. "He changed the equation. Resistance meant something between tribal culling and tribal extermination and not a man or woman in the country but believed he meant it. Therefore that became the ultimate wrong, risking the complete death of the tribe."
"I can't exterminate entire tribes," Carrera said. Jesus, I've got some decency left. "You have a solution?"
"Work? We have to provide work for the young men. We might also slip some money, under the table, to the leaders of the tribes we've affected."
Carrera answered, "No… I won't reward people for failure to control their young men. I'm willing to provide work, though."
"It'll help," Sada answered with a shrug. And I can take care of bribing the tribal leaders, even if Patricio will not.
"Let's look at the map," Carrera suggested.
The map, marked up with grease pencils, showed the borders of the BZOR, which was a near square of about two hundred kilometers on a side. Ninewa was approximately in the center of the eastern side along the River Buranun.
"We need to build a base here," Carrera pointed to a spot just northeast of Ninewa. "I'll also need one more smaller base for each infantry cohort, though those will need to be big enough to house three times that many, eventually, and assuming the war goes the way I expect it to. Can your people handle that kind of construction?"
Sada snorted. "Back on Old Earth my people were building magnificent palaces and cities when yours were still painting themselves blue." He did some quick calculations in his head. Let's see. An average cohort base will need to house about fifteen hundred men when it grows. At sixty square meters per man that would be ninety thousand. A square of three hundred meters on a side…
"How are you planning on building your bases?" Sada asked.
"Basically square. Ditch. Earthen wall," Carrera answered. "Maybe adobe housing. Small airstrip inside for the Crickets. A full-length strip, maybe twelve-hundred meters, at the main base."
"Okay… that would be about one square kilometer you'll need to rent or lease-trust me, Patricio, you'll want to lease it rather than just take it-for each cohort base. A fair price, depending on the quality of the land, would be somewhere in the range of twenty to fifty thousand FSD per year for each."
"That's all?"
"Yes, somewhere in there. Probably on the low end provided you make it clear that the housing will stay when you leave. Then, for the walls… ummm… call it two or three thousand men employed with shovels for a month, for each base. Housing would be… honestly I don't know anything about housing."
"I know someone who does," Carrera answered. "Get me Tribunes Cheatham and Clean," he shouted out the office door.
"Two to three thousand each would work for the outlying bases," Carrera said. "Here in Ninewa it would have to be quite a bit larger."
"Yes," Sada agreed. "Including my brigade it would have about four times the area and twice the perimeter. Call it four to six thousand men for a month."
"That would make a big dent in the unemployment situation here in Ninewa," Carrera said. Unenthusiastically, he added, "But only for a month or so. Speaking of your men and families, has yours arrived here safely?"
"Yes, just this morning. I've taken over a couple of rooms here in the compound for them."
"We'll need to secure the families of your men as well, you know," Carrera observed.
"Just so. But the university hasn't enough space. For now, the families are safer where they are. When we build the base, we can make room for them as well and move them there."
Cheatham knocked on the door, accompanied by the Anglian, Clean. "You called us, sir?"
"Yeah… how much would we need in housing, presumably adobe housing, for the troops?"
"Adobe?" Clean asked, visibly interested. "As it so happens, I've always had a great interest in adobe construction. Did you know that it can be as strong as concrete and, if labor is cheap, also much, much cheaper? It's a wonderful building material for the very rich and the very poor."
It took Clean and Cheatham some days to work out the plans and the requirements. Still more time was spent in negotiations with local leaders for the leasing of land. After that it took more time for PSYOP and word of mouth advertising to assemble work crews. Within a month or so, however, about fifteen thousand of the otherwise unemployed Sumeris had found work in base construction. This was less of a drop in the bucket than it seemed as each Sumeri with money to spend created jobs for the otherwise jobless.
It helped, but not enough.
Zabol, Pashtia
Fadeel al Nizal was a man with a problem.
Actually, I have more problems than I can count. Starting with this one.
"This one" meant Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana. And Mustafa was not a happy camper, nor even a happy troglodyte.
"You shame me for being a member of the same race," Mustafa stormed. "I gave you money, hundreds of thousand of FS drachma, and what do you show for it? Nothing!" he raged. "I've given you access to our data base to recruit your own group and what have those you have recruited done to resist the infidel? Lain around buggering each other for all that anyone can see!"
Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb, standing well off to one side, flinched even though he was not the target of the tongue lashing.
"Sheik Mustafa," Fadeel began, "I admit, we were taken by surprise by the speed of the infidel conquest. But then," and Fadeel looked around at the walls of the cave as if to say, Aren't you a little surprised to find that your impregnable Pashtia, the Pashtia that did to death the might of the Volgan Empire, is reduced to this little hole in the ground?
"Don't try me, little man," Mustafa glared. "If we are here it is due to the will of Allah. He is the great strategist. Ours is but to fight in His cause."
"Indeed," Fadeel agreed. "And all will turn out well, even in Sumer. But we do have problems there."
"Like what?" Mustafa demanded.
"Number One is a turncoat Sumeri general named Sada. For reasons I dearly pray the Almighty will reveal to me someday, this man fought the infidel gloriously… and then surrendered and joined him. Worse, this Sada, the dog, took his brigade over with him."