Read Online Countdown: M Day by Tom Kratman - Free Book Online Page B

to raise the threat of civil war should the right ever return to power. In practice they had served, at least here in la Dolorita, to arm the death squads that sprang up to preserve security when civilization began to fail.
    Not that Carlos thought of himself as belonging to a death squad. Militia, yes. Vigilante, yes. Death squad? No.
    And, hell , thought Carlos, not without some satisfaction, we haven’t had to actually kill anybody in …oh, must be over a year now; those three boys who beat up and raped the Vargas girl, Lily. For that matter, we didn’t do that. We just rounded the filth up and presented them, bound and gagged, to Lily Vargas, along with a rifle. She actually pulled the trigger on the filth …then signed up with us.
    Like the group leader says, “Justice is a result, not a process.”

    The Revolution had taken over more than a few businesses. Sometimes the businesses concerned survived the experience; sometimes they did not. In this particular case, a former supermarket that had ultimately proved gringo-owned, hence eminently seizable, the business had not survived but the building still provided a place for the weekly party meetings and the smaller, nightly gathering of the barrio’s vigilantes.
    Early, as she usually was, Lily—short, dark, pretty, and hourglassy—stood off to one side of the gathering. She chain smoked, something she hadn’t done before being assaulted. And, sure, the Leader didn’t officially approve of tobacco, but, under the circumstances, nobody was going to yell at Lily over it.
    Carlos, standing in the door, looked around the crowded room of standing, red-shirted vigilantes for the telltale column of smoke. His eyes passed quickly over the group leader, Rojas, and the uniformed man standing beside him on the slightly raised dais at one end of the large room.
    Ah, there she is. He walked over, or at least threaded his way carefully through the crowd, making sure the magazine on his Kalashnikov didn’t poke anyone, to stand at her side.
    Lily gave him a quick and furtive smile, albeit without even the tiniest flash of white. Politeness demanded as much. Still though, she couldn’t help remembering that it was a simple smile that had led …
    She tossed her cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. The group leader was about to speak.
    Normally, the group leader, a balding light-skinned man of medium height and weight, began the meetings with a review of the previous day’s events. This time he didn’t bother. He cleared his throat, but only to catch the attention of the hubbubbing mass below where he stood on the short dais.
    “Your patrolling assignments are on the map on the wall behind me,” he said, once they’d quieted down a bit. “Read them when I’ve finished. You know what to do from there. We’ve got a more serious matter.”
    That shut everybody up, where a simple throat clearing hadn’t, quite.
    “Hugo,” the group leader said, “needs volunteers …for the Army. About twenty-five thousand of them. We’re supposed to come up with twenty, from all six shifts. I can take more.” Rojas’ head inclined slightly, indicating the uniformed man standing beside him, an army officer, the attendees guessed, from the quality and cut of his uniform. The officer looked stout, fairly young, and quite fit. He wore a red beret, which didn’t necessarily imply any revolutionary leanings. “Captain Larralde, here, is from the Army. Fifth Division, was it, Captain?”
    Miguel Larralde shook his head, answering, “Parachute Brigade, only attached to Fifth Division, and that only since about last week. I’m here on behalf of both, though I can only take a relative few of the most fit and capable, from this group and about nine others, into the Parachute Brigade. I’ve got room for both men and women, though I need more of the former.
    “The pay’s not bad,” Larralde continued, “a lot better than the stipend you get for what you’re doing now. But if you