How I Started a Civil War in South America (5)

Having made up his mind to go to war with Garcia, Eugene made one request of Pedro.

"We must win with the fewest casualties possible. If it looks as though there will be mass casualties, we would be better off abandoning the operation entirely."

In other words: keep the body count as low as humanly possible.

"Is there a reason we have to go that far?"

"The enemy soldiers are someone's sons. Someone's older brothers, someone's younger brothers. We cannot slaughter countless young men simply because they followed orders."

Pedro was moved to his core.

The true leader of San Marcos has finally appeared...!

History had proven it time and again. Those in power would not hesitate to set their own people ablaze to keep that power. Hitler had started wars. Stalin had purged more than a million. Mao Zedong had smashed his nation's history and culture to pieces.

But Eugene was different. Here was a man prepared to call off an attack rather than pile up corpses — and they were the enemy. Confirming that philosophy with his own ears, Pedro shed fat, round tears.

"Khuh...!"

He stayed up through the night drawing up the operation.

I will never... disappoint His Excellency!

Working from intelligence that SIA operatives had risked their lives to obtain, he turned the problem over and over in his mind: how to end this war with the fewest casualties possible. And as always, he found the answer.

Cut off the enemy's supply.

The results showed on the very first day.

"How did it go?"

"Yes, sir! We destroyed twelve of the enemy's transport trucks."

"Casualties?"

"We concentrated the strikes on the rear of the convoy, so nothing beyond minor ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠injuries."

"Good. Well done."

Wars are fought with weapons, but it is people who wield those weapons. And people who do not eat cannot move. Pedro put high-performance drones with a flight range of over twenty kilometers to full use, sending them behind enemy lines to destroy every incoming supply truck.

As a soldier, he had to admit it felt a little cheap.

Right now, carrying out His Excellency's great will matters more.

Following Eugene's request far outweighed any need to show off how much of a real man he was.

In any case, the enemy dug in on the mountaintop now had no choice but to starve. To lock down the western road through the Central Basin, Garcia had brought the bulk of his 1st Infantry Division and artillery brigade — a force of no fewer than sixteen thousand men. The amount of food they burned through in a single day was staggering. Some of them would have packed their own rations, but from drinking water to actual meals, they would be desperately short.

A person can survive thirty days without food, they say — but that is merely staying alive. Starve for five days and you stop seeing straight. Soldiers slipping away from hunger were bound to multiply.

Go on. Try to hold out.

Pedro had no confidence whatsoever.

No confidence that he would lose, that is.

"Tell Captain Jose and Lieutenant Carlos to report to the command tent immediately."

And with that, he moved on to the next step.

"Goddammit! It blew up again?!"

"Yes, sir... Five trucks from the 3rd Transport Unit were completely incinerated as they tried to come in from the rear."

"Drones again?"

"...Yes."

"Son of a bitch!"

Garcia ripped off his beret and hurled it to the ground. The 1st Infantry Division, which had sealed off the gorge through the Central Mountain Range and been preparing for a decisive clash with the armored division, was collapsing without having fought a single engagement. The reason was simple. The food had stopped coming.

"This is driving me insane."

Garcia looked up. Not a cloud in the sky — a stretch of blue so calm it was almost insulting. And yet from that peaceful sky he could feel an unseen gaze looking down.

"Drones... those goddamn drones!"

Drones from God-knew-where were watching the 1st Infantry Division's supply route around the clock, day and night. And they were good. The moment a truck loaded with food or water drew near, a drone would appear without fail.

What made his blood boil even more was that they refused to attack people. At first they had only targeted the rear of the transport trucks. Later they would surround a vehicle as if to say go on, get out, and wait until every last man had climbed down. Once word of that got around, the transport troops made a habit of abandoning their trucks and running the instant they spotted a drone.

Garcia was no fool. The moment he grasped the situation, he sat down with his officers and drew up a plan to stop the drones. He hid troops along the trucks' route and ordered them to shoot the drones down with Javelins — anti-tank rockets supplied by Chevron — the instant they appeared.

But there were simply too many drones. Shoot one down and two more came. Shoot two down and four arrived. The Javelins were dwindling faster than the drones were.

How many of the damn things do they even have...!

Garcia felt as though he had been plunged headfirst into the ocean. And within three days, that feeling became reality.

"S-sir. The men's complaints have hit the ceiling. Since yesterday they've been holding on with a handful of cornmeal."

The food had begun to run out in earnest.

"Tell the transport boys to carry the supplies in on foot. The drones won't shoot if they're walking, will they?!"

He tried to find a way — any way.

"That much food... on foot, sir?"

"Yes! I don't care if their legs give out or their backs break — tell them to haul it themselves!"

"Y-yes, sir."

That did not last long either.

"What? Desertion? The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entire transport company?"

"...Yes."

Faced with an order that was simply impossible, the soldiers who were supposed to move the food had run.

"......"

We're going to starve to death without even getting to fight. The thought crossed Garcia's mind.

"...That's it. We're done."

In the end, he made his decision.

"We're pulling back."

"What? Are you insane? You want to give this place up?"

His younger brother Dano Motinho's immediate protest did not shake Garcia's resolve in the slightest.

"If we stay here, we all starve. We're better off falling back to headquarters. We've got food and ammunition stockpiled there. We hold out and request support from Chevron."

"And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠how exactly do you plan to face an armored division on open ground?!"

"You still don't get it?"

Garcia fetched the wreckage of a downed drone from the corner of the tent.

"What does this look like to you?"

"A drone our guys shot down."

"Is that all you see? Just a drone?"

Garcia's hands picked through the wreckage, turning fragments this way and that.

"Look. These chips — what do they look like to you?"

"I... I don't know?"

"They're APs."

"What's that?"

"Application processors. Tiny CPUs. It means these drones are cutting-edge weapons you'd only see in the United States. And those bastards are operating hundreds of them."

"So what? What's that got to do with anything?"

"Does San Marcos have the money to field weapons like this?"

"You don't mean...?"

Garcia pointed east, toward Libertad.

"Eugene Choi has a sponsor of his own somewhere."

He spoke as if delivering a warning.

"We cannot win this war as it stands. We have to buy time somehow and request additional support from Chevron, or we will never be able to match them."

"Ah..."

The retreat was decided.

"The enemy has abandoned their trenches and begun to move!"

At the observation officer's report, a look of fierce satisfaction spread across Pedro's face.

"At last. The rats are crawling out of their holes."

They say patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. All that waiting was finally paying off. Pedro snatched up the radio at once.

"We pursue the enemy. Starting now."

A deep, rolling rumble answered him. Eight massive M41 tanks roared to life as one, belching black exhaust, and the vibration of the earth itself traveled up through the soles of their boots. Pedro switched frequencies immediately and called the men assigned the most critical role in the entire operation.

Static crackled. A burst of white noise, then a voice.

Pedro signed off and climbed into his armored vehicle.

By the time the blazing sun had caught on the western ridgeline, Garcia's retreating column was a living hell.

"Hah... hah... water... water, please..."

After three days without food, the soldiers were no longer soldiers. Using their rifles as walking sticks, they dragged themselves along like the remnants of a broken army. Discipline had bled out of the formation until it stretched for kilometers, and men tossing their heavy packs by the roadside were too many to count.

But it was not the burning thirst or the physical agony that truly tormented them. The real weapon driving them mad was something else entirely.

"Wh... what is this?"

Flyers, scattered by the special operations battalion that had infiltrated over the mountains, were shaking the men to their core.

The sound of dry throats swallowing ran up and down the column. After three days of starvation and the terror of dying, fear of their superiors was nothing but a hollow shell. One soldier clutched a leaflet in a trembling hand. He swallowed again. All down the line, eyes began to waver.

And that evening, as the sun went down and darkness settled in, they began to move, one by one.

A rustle. Another rustle.

From the rear of the column, from the middle, even from the lead group — soldiers melting into the forest came in a flood. Officers who caught on too late tried to stop them, but there was no controlling hundreds, thousands of men vanishing into the dark.

"You bastards! Where do you think you're going! Fall in! Get back here!"

Shots cracked into the air as they drew pistols and fired at the sky, but a levee already broken could not be plugged.

"S-sir! Half the 3rd Battalion is gone!"

"The 2nd Battalion too! Some of the radios have gone dead — the officers may have run with them!"

At the sudden reports, Garcia—

"Goddammit! Has everyone lost their minds? There's food at headquarters!"

Fear and rage were stripping him of reason. The armored division was coming up behind them. His own men were fleeing on every side. There was only one way out. Get back to headquarters before things got any worse.

"Damn it! Pick up the pace! Full retreat!"

"Sir, the men's stamina—"

"Shut up! I don't care! Anyone who doesn't follow my orders gets shot on the spot!"

Garcia clung to a single thought.

I just have to get back!

Fill their bellies, open the armory, regroup, request support from Chevron — then they would have a chance. No. They had to have a chance. Garcia had stopped seeing anything else. The desertions kept coming, but he drove them on.

They ran through the night without sleep, and at last the far end of the canyon came into view — the mouth of the road that led to headquarters.

"We made it! We're alive! Once we get through there, it's a straight shot to base!"

But—

"We're almost there! Stay sharp, all of you—"

More than half the force was already gone.

"No. What is this..."

And Pedro's operation was not finished yet.

"Wh-what the hell is that?"

The road that should have been wide open was blocked. Enormous boulders, felled logs, and what looked like their own transport trucks had been piled into a massive barricade, sealing the mouth of El Paso Canyon completely. And it was not only the road that was closed.

Soldiers with faces blacked out in camouflage paint looked down on them from every vantage, heavy machine guns already mounted and ready. Their eyes burned bright — nothing like the exhausted remnants staring up at them.

"Y-you...!"

There was no mistaking them. The special operations battalion Pedro had poured his heart's blood into raising.

"That's a lie... that's impossible! Even a special operations battalion couldn't have come over that...?"

A fully armed battalion, infiltrating across cliffs that even mountain goats would struggle to cross, to cut off the retreat. Garcia could not believe it. Of course, he could not simply stand there either.

"Break through! Clear that shit out of the way! We get through there and we live!"

He screamed himself hoarse, but the soldiers no longer had the strength to even lift their rifles.

And then—

"S-sir! Behind us...!"

A rising whine filled the air, swelling into a shriek that swallowed the sky. A swarm of drones blacked out the heavens, sealing off every path of retreat. There were easily two thousand of them — a locust plague occupying the sky.

A deep, bone-shaking rumble answered from below. The tank column came on in a boiling cloud of dust, the earth itself trembling under their treads.

Ahead, the special forces barricade. Behind, the armored division's tanks. Overhead, two thousand attack drones. And of their own force, not even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠half remained.

"Ah... ahh..."

Defeat washed over him. Garcia's legs gave out, and he sank to the ground.