“I read about that. I looked up Revelation after our last chat. Hold one. Bring her around to two-seven-zero, make revolutions for ten knots. This old girl is doing well. That does sound like Belial getting back to work, doesn’t it?”
“What I want to know is, how come Revelation predicted all this stuff so accurately? It was written two thousand years ago and its been perfect up to date. Every Bowl exactly as described.”
“Oh, that’s easy Sophia. Yahweh didn’t make the prophesies to fit future events, he’s making today’s events fit old prophecies. It’s an old trick, been used for centuries. Either make the prophecies so vague and ill-defined that anything can fit them or manufacture events to match the prophecies. Let’s just hope the city defense people can abort any sky-volcano attacks before we get another Detroit.”
(Props to Chewie for the first two parts).
Chapter Fifteen
Border Post 1147E, North of Maesot, Thailand
Being part of the Tahan Phran militia had its advantages. Having the opportunity to operate this border post was one of them. Technically intended to provide border surveillance and cut down on cross-border infiltration, it was also a nice little money-earner for the local militia. It was a secure, well-run stopping point for travellers and tourists who could leave their cars and trucks and walk around in perfect safety. The women from the nearby village came up and cooked food for the visitors. When a bus load of tourists arrived, it was a great day for everybody involved. The tourists would take delight in eating real Thai food, not the bland approximation that most restaurants catering to tourists served. They would buy the jewelry and souvenirs that the local people had made, take advantage of the clean latrines and wash basins, paying a purely nominal charge of course and quite forgetting that what would have been a nominal charge in Bangkok was truly exorbitant out here. Especially since all the necessary supplies were issued cost-free by the Army.
There were even a few guest huts where people could stay overnight if they wished and that was both another source of income and the supply of some more basic entertainment. The Tahan Phran contingent was mostly comprised of young men in their early twenties, fit and well turned-out. The younger European women in the tourist busses seemed to find them quite irresistible and the arrival of a tourist bus for the night usually meant that at least one of the young militiamen would get lucky. The girls in the Tahan Phran outfit might have been expected to object but they had their own suitors. It seemed that the male tourists found girls who handled guns with nonchalant competence equally irresistible.
Captain Momrajong “Lon” Thongtaem smiled happily at the stray thoughts, then continued his inspection of the border post perimeter. Despite the various distractions of the day, the post had continued to function as a military base, sending out patrols to check the border and establishing road blocks so that trucks could be inspected for contraband. Sometimes drugs, sometimes people, sometimes just the small luxuries of life that were commonplace here in Thailand but unknown over the border in Myanmar. Smuggling was a well-established local tradition here. Now dusk had fallen, the need for an alert status had increased. Lon knew that the serious smugglers only moved at night and keeping them under control meant night patrol work. Fortunately, no tourist busses were staying overnight in 1147E today and the local villagers had all gone home. That meant the base was a purely military facility once more.
“Any sign of movement out there Kip?” Like most Tahan Phran outfits, the members of this unit had grown up together and knew each other far too well for military formality to take hold.
Sergeant Charnvit “Kip” Chachavalpongpun frowned. “I don’t think so Lon.” He hesitated. “Nothing I can put my finger on but…”
“I know. Something’s out there. I can sense it too.” Lon joined his sergeant in frowning. One of the advantages the Tahan Phran had over the regular army was that they were locals who knew the area intimately. They knew the jungle, understood its moods, could listen to it when it tried to speak to them. The regulars couldn’t have that level of local knowledge. Now, the jungle was telling them that there were strangers around.
“You think there’s Baldricks coming?” The sergeant spoke quietly but the concern in his voice was obvious. The Tahan Phran still had 5.56mm M16A1s, weapons that were virtually useless against the Baldricks. Units in the cities had the heavy-caliber weapons that were more suitable for that kind of enemy.
“Not Baldricks, no.” Lon peered out into the darkness. “Those attacks are over. Might be angels, but I haven’t heard of them launching marauder raids.”
“Thai Rath had news today, said the Myanmar mob were moving troops around.” The sergeant read the Thai Rath newspaper daily, not least because his wife had been killed in a car crash about 18 months earlier and he was watching the daily list of Thai people freed from the Hellpit. Once day, her name would be there and he could go to welcome her back.
“So I saw. I’d be happier if we had a back-up force to help us.” That had always been the case in the past, usually a cavalry outfit with light armored cars that could move to help the militia out if an action turned out too big for them. But both cavalry divisions, along with Thailand’s only armored division, were in Hell, part of the Human Expeditionary Army. “But the nearest reserve is in Kanchanaburi and they’d take hours to get here. Get some of the boys together, send them out to do a sweep along the river. Might be a big drug convoy is coming over and we’re in the way.”
The Sergeant nodded and turned away to organize a squad-sized patrol. It was possible a big drug shipment was being smuggled over and that meant the post would come under attack to stop them interfering. The only problem was that there had been no such shipments for two years or more. It was whispered that the Myanmar Junta had a huge new customer who was taking all the street corner pharmaceuticals they could produce. As he turned, over in the tree-line beyond the post perimeter, a flock of birds took to the skies, screaming in protest at the interruption of their nightly rest. Sergeant and Captain looked at each other with their eyes widened in recognition of what the disturbance signified, the Lon’s hand smacked the alert button. The wail of the ‘to arms’ siren almost drowned out the whistle of the descending mortar rounds.
Whoever the mortar crews were, they were good. The first salvo of rounds crashed into the barracks area, shattering the timber buildings and setting the ruins ablaze. By the light of the fires, Lon saw the men and women of his unit scattering to their pre-set defense positions on the perimeter. The warning had been adequate, just, to get most of them out of the barracks but he could see from the numbers that some hadn’t made it and that his little force had already been depleted. Then the ground shook under his feet as further salvos of mortar rounds struck home. His command post had been one of the targets of the latest barrage and he saw it crumpling under the impacts. Even worse, the radio shack was also a burning ruin. Border Post 1147E was isolated from help.
Lon knew something else, the mortar fire was too precise, too accurate for this to be a normal border incident. The troops out there were Myanmar Army regulars. Not just regulars but troops from one of the few really competent units in the Myanmar Army. Most Myanmarese units were a joke, a ‘battalion’ might be as few as twenty men, armed with light infantry weapons, and with a few porters to carry their supplies. This unit was different, they knew what they were doing, were here in strength and had a full complement of weaponry. As if to confirm his impression, the whole post area was suddenly bathed in brilliant light. The mortars had switched to firing flares, illuminating their targets while the surrounding jungle remained in darkness. The crackle of machine gun fire from his defenses just confirmed what he already knew, the main attack was just starting.