With each step, the burning pain in their legs increased. When they realized that they were walking in circles around a single summit, getting nowhere, the frustration, and the pain, brought tears to the eyes of some. In the morning, the CI would tell the patrol leader that he hadn't been lost at all, but that his lack of self-confidence had cost everyone. Montoya, the leader, told the squad what had happened. He hung his head for days.
Unknown to the patrol, it was all planned. Cazador Instructors evaluating each patrol did the very same thing at about the same time. Each patrol, as a result, became lost and wasted the night. The number of students dropped still further.
Jungle Camp, Yaviza, Balboa, 13/4/462 AC
Now what's the holdup? Cruz cursed under his breath at the school, the CIs, the rain, the piss warm swamp water that sloshed around his waist. Wiping rain from his brow-the hat he wore was so soaked that it didn't shed water anymore-Cruz felt his feet sinking slowly into the mud below him. He shifted to a fresher spot and let the sinking process begin anew. Lightning flashed, illuminating the murky scene.
I am so hungry. So very hungry. He thought warmly for a moment of his wife, Cara. He felt a moment's chagrin as he realized that he didn't think of sex anymore, hadn't in weeks. And a sad thing it is, too, when your pecker stops working. The stress- and starvationinduced impotence was something of a class joke for every Cazador class. "Hung our balls on the centurion's office wall when we reported in."
As he sometimes did when there was time and nothing better to do with it, Cruz played a mental game. He had discovered, almost two months prior, that just dreaming of having enough to eat was unsatisfying. Instead, he gave himself an imaginary twenty drachma, then went on an imaginary shopping spree at the supermarket with only that twenty to spend. The limitation, imaginary and artificial as it was, gave more substance to his dreaming. It also, sometimes, caught his stomach up in the dream so that the organ stopped nagging, Feed me, Motherfucker, feeed meee.
He roused himself back to reality as he realized the patrol was moving on. The man to his front reached back to tap him; too many times a patrol had become separated after a halt to a seemingly interminable march. Men had learned that they could fall asleep on their feet. The students no longer took chances. Cruz likewise tapped the man behind him. "Come on, Montoya. We're moving out again," he whispered.
Montoya nodded. Speech took too much energy. The group continued their fight with the water and the muck.
Jungle Camp, 16/4/462 AC
A light rain, unusually light for Balboa, fell on the patrol. Montoya walked back to the center of the perimeter, where Cruz minded the radio. "I failed another one, Cruz."
"Shit."
Montoya collapsed in a heap next to the radio. "Not to worry, friend. They're going to keep giving me back-to-back leadership phases until I pass. I'm leader, again, for this one. I'm fucked. You all are even more fucked."
Cruz, who had already tabbed out-made the requirements to graduate the course-made sympathetic sounds. Saldanas, Ramirez, and Dominguez walked over and sat down as well. They, too, already, had made the grade.
"Heard you're on the intensive track, Montoya." That from Ramirez.
Cruz interjected, "It just isn't possible. He can't do any more." Montoya didn't argue the point.
"He can't, but we can. Listen." Cruz listened as Saldanas laid out his plan for how the four of them would do as much of Montoya's work for him as the CIs would permit.
Montoya looked up, hope dawning in his eyes. His eyes clouded. "I can't make it on charity."
Dominguez took his shoulder in a firm grip. "It's not charity, Montoya. When Saldanas, here, froze on the log walk, who went up and talked him across? You, friend.
"And when Dominguez fell off the side of the hill at Camp O'Higgins, rolling end over end while his own machine gun tried to beat him to death, who carried the gun and the pack for two hours until he was capable of carrying them again?"
"Me, too, Montoya," said Cruz. "When I fucked up and didn't order chow for the platoon… and we all had nothing at all to eat for a day. Who talked me up to keep on going. They're right. We can help you, and it isn't charity. It's just paying a debt."
Montoya bowed his head, humbled and grateful.
Ramirez, silent until now, said, tersely, "Now let's get to work."
Graduation Exercise Area, Camp Gutierrez, 5/5/462 AC
Unique among militaries, the legion, at Carrera's insistence, had a requirement that all officers and centurions be combat tested before receiving their commissions or centurion's batons. This was so even though almost everyone sent to the Cazador School, followed by OCS, CCS or WOCS, was a veteran of combat already.
"Eventually, there will be peace, however transitory it will prove," Carrera had said. "The tradition of combat testing starts now so it will be kept then."
This was the most dreaded mission in the school, although much of the danger was still more apparent than real. Nonetheless, students were wounded or killed by design rather than by accident.
The live fire took place on an area of rough ground. The objectives consisted of well fortified battle positions, with bunkers and trenches, protected by broad belts of barbed wire and concertina. Interspersed among the bunkers, sometimes in place of them, very heavily uparmored tank turrets with anti-spalling liners-lead shields to absorb the little splinters of steel that often flew off of the inside of armor when it was struck by fire-were set into concrete. These held the defenders of the positions.
The tanks had the main guns removed. Unlike the ones the school used elsewhere, however, the crews of some of these tanks would try to hit the students rather than merely frighten them. Ordinarily, this would mean serious casualties. To keep these within acceptable limits, the turrets' machine guns only carried one round in ten live. The rest of the belted ammunition was plastic tipped. This was still dangerous close up but the plastic rounds lost velocity rapidly due to their low density. Every burst would be aimed with evil intent, but only one round in ten would actually have a bullet in it. The machine guns were, moreover, set loosely in their cradles to allow the fire to spread to cover an area as a normal ground-mounted machine gun would. Therefore, even if the gunner was dead on target, inclined to shoot that target, and that target was a real student, and the burst happened to have a live round in it, the odds were good that the bullet would go low, high or wide.
Other turrets had both main gun and machine guns removed. These had sniper rifles locked firmly into place. The "sniper" turrets fired all live ammunition, but their job was to try to fire as close as possible to the students without actually hitting any of them. Still, mistakes happened. And, it was widely rumored, the CIs manning the sniper rifles would deliberately shoot a man if provoked by incompetence. The rumor was only occasionally true and they never shot to kill.
Still, the students weren't entirely helpless. The things they had learned, careful reconnaissance, thorough planning and rehearsals, control, and teamwork could, properly applied, allow them to put effective fire on the turrets. The turret crews would cease fire for fifteen seconds after taking a hit from a bullet. There were also two small, upper body shaped, targets on the front of each turret. If the students hit both of these in an area about ten inches in diameter, the tank would cease fire completely. It was possible, though very uncommon, for no turrets on an objective to have a chance to fire.
Turrets never fired deliberately at a CI. Indeed they avoided them as completely as possible.
As an added measure, the students were issued the heavy, fiftyfour pound, ceramic torso armor and extra-heavy helmets. Face, arms and legs were still exposed, but the odds of a fatal hit were lessened. Statistics said that out of a typical class of about three hundred to three hundred and fifty, 8.4 men would be shot as a result of the day's training, 1.4 of them fatally.