The Time I Started a Civil War in South America (2)
Once the meeting with Ana was over, I shut myself in my room and replayed every word of our conversation. I arranged the hints I'd pulled from it the way you fit scattered puzzle pieces, one by one, until a picture started to form.
Men who spoke polished American English. The ability to manufacture new identities.
This was not a gang. So who had pulled something like this off?
The United States? The CIA?
I turned it over for a moment, then shook my head. What would the world's undisputed champion possibly stand to gain by sticking its hand into this tiny country and blowing the Presidential Palace off the map? The method was far too crude besides. That kind of play might have worked in the seventies, during the Cold War. Try it now and the international condemnation would be more than anyone could weather.
Then another country... no. That doesn't hold either.
On the world stage, San Marcos was a country that might as well not exist — here or gone, nobody would notice. During the Cold War, at least, its proximity to the American mainland had earned it a few love letters from the communist bloc. Once the United States locked in its place as the planet's hegemon, even that geographic value evaporated.
And we don't even have a country we're on bad terms with.
If I had to name one, maybe Chile — Tortilla Seafood had choked off their skate exports — but that had happened after the bombing, not before.
An inside job, then?
That looked like the strongest possibility for now. Suspects sprang to mind immediately. Garcia Coutinho, commander of the 1st Infantry Division. Bruno Leão, commander of the 2nd Infantry Division. Dani Coutinho, commander of the Artillery Regiment. Any of those three might try to seize San Marcos in a power vacuum...
There's no way they wouldn't know Tiago was going to swallow the whole thing.
I looked at the map of San Marcos hanging on the office wall. An island nation shaped like a long sweet potato lying on its side. The west held the capital, Libertad, and the port, where seventy percent of the population was packed in. The east was a relatively backward stretch of rugged mountains and coastline.
Anyone with eyes can see the real prize is the west.
The east, by contrast, had a rural population density. Nothing that could be called a city. No infrastructure worth mentioning, either. In the end, the default rule was simple: if you wanted the government of San Marcos, you had to take the west. But the roads into the west were locked down tight by the armored division. In modern war, the side attacking a well-dug-in defender is always at a disadvantage. Understrength provincial divisions throwing themselves at that would be eggs against a boulder. In other words, even if they'd pulled this off, they'd have cooked the whole feast just to feed it to a dog.
Then who the hell was it?
I stared at the map for a long time before my eyes drifted to the northeastern coast. Barren land with nothing on it. But possibility slept there.
"...The Northern Oil Fields."
Back when I was Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, it was the first project I had taken hold of — and the last one I had kept a grip on until the end. The project itself was a mess. Thanks to my predecessor's disastrous negotiations, an outrageously lopsided contract had already been signed. The terms: if drilling succeeded, Chevron would take seventy percent and San Marcos thirty. I overturned that absurd contract the moment I took office.
It wasn't easy, of course. Both sides had slammed their stamps down on the paper good and hard. But I dug all the way down, proved the previous minister had taken bribes from Chevron, and used that as leverage to demand a contract with a proper split. When things went that way, Chevron played the nuclear option: they pulled out, citing a lack of economic viability. I figured it was a negotiating stunt, so instead of chasing them as they left, I chose to wait out the contract. A hard line against a hard line. That was the relationship between Chevron and San Marcos.
But.
What if it hadn't been a negotiating stunt?
What if they had been trying to flip the entire board all over again? A single hypothesis began connecting the scattered pieces. I put Chevron behind the bombing and looked at the situation again.
If everyone including me dies and San Marcos gets a new government, what does Chevron actually gain?
At the time, the most likely successor regime was Major General Tiago.
If Tiago took power, things would certainly be better for them...
He wasn't like President Juan. A bribe would take with this man. Slip him a reasonable cut and he would be happy to look the other way. Still.
Isn't the payoff a little thin for the risk?
Poor bang for the buck, you could say. For the trouble of killing a nation's president and every member of the cabinet, the return was far too small.
Unless they were going to swallow the entire oil field whole...
A chill ran down my spine.
Take the whole thing?
I traced the route to the oil fields on the map. Rugged mountains and a single road. The worst possible conditions for a large force to enter.
No. They were only going to carve off the east?
"...!"
A hypothesis that made my skin crawl took shape. What if they blew up the president and the cabinet, paralyzed the central government, and then, in the chaos, an eastern warlord declared independence from the center — with Chevron backing him? That way they could take the entire oil field. Even if Tiago seized power, there wouldn't be much he could do. Stabilizing a chaotic government would be hard enough; he wouldn't have the bandwidth to fight a civil war on top of it. And if they simply blocked the pass through the Central Mountain Range, San Marcos's east and west would be perfectly split.
Then the question is who they'd put forward to declare independence...
I thought of the strongest military force stationed in the east.
"Garcia Coutinho."
It was more than possible. He was Dani Coutinho's older brother — the artillery regiment commander — and commander of the 1st Infantry Division, the strongest force in the east. And that meant that as long as those two still held their commands, the plan had not failed. It was still in motion.
"Hah."
Of course, all of this was still a hypothesis. Nothing was certain. If I had to put odds on it, maybe thirty percent? But one thing was certain. True or not, it demanded a thorough investigation.
"Tell the Chief of Staff to come to my office."
I had the secretary waiting outside summon Isabella at once.
One week later, Isabella came to Eugene with a thick report in her hands.
"Your Excellency's prediction was correct."
"Hah... they say a bad feeling is never wrong."
Eugene squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and began turning the pages in silence. Standing before him, Isabella summarized the contents for clarity.
"A considerable quantity of weapons has recently arrived at the 1st Infantry Division and the Artillery Regiment. There is a photograph on the lower half of the first page that warrants Your Excellency's attention."
"...Humvees that weren't there before."
"Punch a hole in the roof, mount a machine gun, and it becomes a military tactical vehicle."
"..."
"In addition, a large number of conventional weapons appear to have been brought in — anti-tank rockets and mortars that look American-made."
"Was any budget allocated to the 1st Infantry Division?"
"None whatsoever."
"Then the question is whose money bought them..."
"Your Excellency will find the answer on the next page."
He turned the page. Printed photographs. The quality was a little grainy, as if shot from a distance, but clear enough to identify the faces. Eugene focused on a photo of Major General Garcia shaking hands with someone. White men in immaculate suits. At a glance, they were not from San Marcos.
"These are the ones who supplied the weapons?"
"Yes."
"Identities?"
"Based on intercepted communications, they have been identified as attorneys from a law firm called Douglas & Kaufman."
"A law firm?"
"The firm that handles Chevron's lobbying and legal affairs."
"How did they get in?"
"They appear to have entered by smuggling themselves in. The vessel they arrived on is on the following page."
"...Lawyers sneaking in as stowaways. These people are insane."
Eugene's eyes sharpened. The lackeys of a massive American oil company, coming and going from a mere division commander's barracks as if it were their own house. There was no more conclusive evidence than this.
"And please look at this as well."
Isabella pointed to a situation board with a map drawn on it.
"Over the past week, the troop deployments of the 1st Infantry Division and the Artillery Regiment have shifted, if only slightly. Using training as a pretext, they are constructing defensive positions on key high ground."
Eugene stared at the map. Connect the lines, and they formed the exact dividing line between San Marcos's west and east.
"As expected, Major General Garcia intends to declare independence."
"Yes."
"What would you recommend?"
"I believe we should move first."
The right answer. Striking while they were still unprepared was a hundred times better than waiting to be hit after they had finished getting ready.
"I'll need to speak with Commander Pedro."
"I will summon him at once."
"Do that."
A short while later, Pedro entered the office with a grim expression. The moment he heard Eugene's explanation, his face flushed red and purple.
"Those... those traitorous bastards! They dare try to sell off the motherland's territory?!"
Unable to contain his rage, Pedro slammed his fist down on the desk.
"Please calm down, Commander. Getting angry won't solve this."
Eugene soothed him evenly and pointed at the map.
"I'd like your military assessment. Can the armored division push in right now?"
Pedro glared at the map, breathing hard. It did not take long for him to choke down the emotion and read the battlefield with a soldier's eye.
"It would be difficult."
"I was under the impression the disparity in combat power was overwhelming."
"The armored division's strength lies in its tanks and self-propelled artillery."
"And?"
"If they've blocked the pass through the Central Mountain Range, there is no way through. Forcing a breakthrough would mean accepting casualties I can barely imagine."
"Hmm."
He had already known this, but hearing it spoken aloud was grim.
"We have to neutralize them before a border gets drawn. Is there a way to reduce the risk?"
At Eugene's question, Pedro recalled a method he had been turning over for some time.
"Overwhelming firepower capable of neutralizing the enemy's defensive positions is the only way."
"When you say overwhelming firepower, what exactly do you mean?"
"Missiles would be the best option."
"That's not going to happen."
There was not a country on earth that would sell missiles to San Marcos — a place so close to Florida you could trip and land on it.
"What about bombing them from the air?"
"Mmm..."
Eugene shook his head. The only bombers San Marcos's air force possessed were nine A-37s leftover from the Vietnam War. He wondered, briefly, if they could at least throw those in...
"They'd all get blown out of the sky on the way there."
The 1st Infantry Brigade's base housed dozens of anti-aircraft guns.
"A few might get through."
"No. We can't burn through what few fighters we have for a single bombing run. More importantly, a bombing would produce far too many casualties."
Pedro nodded as if he had expected that answer.
"Then there's only one option left."
"Which is?"
"Drones."
"Drones?"
"Yes. If we neutralize their defensive line with drones, we can suppress the enemy without taking heavy losses."
"That... would actually work."
Eugene nodded.
"We'll need a great many of them, however."
"How many?"
"The more, the better."
"Time is the issue, then."
"Yes. We don't know when they'll declare independence, so we'll need to acquire them as fast as possible."
"Understood. I'll look into it."
Eugene nodded with a look of quiet confidence.
And that night, Eugene placed a call.
"Hello?"
"Hey — Minsik?"