New England 07 - The Lines of Laredo, page 2
“Yes,’ Hernando de Soto smiled proudly, ‘every day in every way she is truly her mother’s daughter.’
This said, the President of the Republic gestured for his guests to be seated. He waited while they settled. Normally, there would be secretaries, aides-de-camp present but today he had asked to be briefed informally, personally ahead of what he confidently anticipated would be a stormy meeting of the full Cabinet of his Popular Coalition Administration that afternoon.
The three military men wore battledress fatigues bearing badges over their left breasts identifying them by name and rank. The coming of the war had put an end to the last vestiges of braggadocio which had once seen the country’s martial figures festooned with row upon row of meaningless medals, staggering beneath golden epaulets, ludicrous sashes, clanking with swords and hobbled with boots and spurs.
The Republic had taken giant strides; less than twenty years ago previous occupants of El Palacio de Los Pinos de Oro had thought nothing of sending men into battle in parade ground uniforms with weaponry so thoroughly polished it was already worn out.
It was hardly surprising that the Republic, and before that when it was still part of the colonia of Nuevo España, had lost every border war against the English.
Fifty-seven year-old General of the Army of New Spain, Minister of Defence Felipe de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, who sat at Hernando de Soto’s right hand had been the man who had used his position as Chief of Staff of the Mexican Armed Forces – the ‘Army of New Spain’ title was a meaningless honorific these days and had been for over a century – to bolster the fledgling National Democrat Movement in the pre-de Soto era, had only been a lieutenant colonel at the time of the most recent major war.
That war had been the death of the last military Junta to rule the Republic. Historically, the Army had governed, off and on, for over half its existence up until then. Coup and counter-coup, dictatorship followed by periods of flawed democracy always under the shadow of the generals had ensured that Mexico remained trapped in a bygone age within a cage of theocratic, feudal orthodoxy, unable to join the modern world.
But never again.
Santa Anna had emerged as the hero of that last lost war. Notwithstanding he was just a lowly lieutenant colonel, he had been the man who had marshalled the remnants of the broken Army of West Texas and finally halted the English advance when it seemed as if the very Valley of Mexico itself was at their mercy.
However, nobody had ever forgotten that but for a desperate action fought by the 4th Chapultepec Cavalry – under the command of a certain reserve officer, Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano – the English might have been in Mexico City before he was ready to counter-attack. Afterwards, finding that most of his superiors had already fled the capital, Santa Anna and his battle-hardened survivors – the ‘thin blue line’ - had been all that stood between the Republic and civil war. Afterwards, he might have declared himself Jefe, and installed himself in El Palacio de Los Pinos de Oro.
But he had not and in that moment the history of the Republic had turned a corner, embarking upon a new path and finally, for the first time in its existence, embraced, and fallen in love with democracy.
When the English had returned to their garrisons on the Rio Grande and they judged it was safe to return, the failed old guard had attempted to reclaim the capital, the government and the country; Santa Anna had stepped in to prevent civil war, refusing to be acclaimed dictator by his men.
‘The Army’s duty is to protect the people; not to rule over them!’
The Navy had not been amenable to such ‘quaint’ notions but eventually, even the Admirals, still mostly the descendants of the old, conquistador aristocracy had got on board with the new realities of the age.
Which was not to say that Santa Anna’s relations with Vice Admiral Count Carlos Federico Gravina y Vera Cruz, the Chief Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armada de Nuevo Granada, and the High Admiral of the Fleets of the Triple Alliance, had always been a bed of roses. Until lately, that was, when the exigencies of war had finally united – blood brothers both – the two men in common purpose.
Presently, there was a fifth, unoccupied chair at the table.
“Gaspar will be with us shortly,” President de Soto promised, ruefully as he contemplated his coffee cup, a ghost of a smile touching his eyes if not his lips.
Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel de Olivares, who preferred to be known simply as Gaspar Olivares, the Director of Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), was the government’s spymaster. Distantly related to the great ducal houses of Sanlúcar and de Olivares of Old Spain, and a second cousin of the disinherited, 18th Duke of Medina Sidonia, Alonso of that house, now believed to be an adviser to his father-in-law, Viscount de L’Isle, the Governor of the Commonwealth of New England in Philadelphia, ‘Gaspar’ was, like de Soto, and his newly-appointed National Security Adviser, Don Rodrigo, a former academic. He had swapped the Chair of Political History and Economics at the University of Guadalajara for a senior analyst post at the CNI after the return of democracy, and within months, been appointed its first civilian jefe, a position he had held for the last thirteen years.
“We will make a start without Gaspar,’ de Soto decided in the same collegiate, fatherly tone he employed with road sweepers and Senators, students and foreign leaders. He hesitated, pursed his lips briefly and continued: “Before I speak to my other ministers later today it is very important that I know what goes well with the war; and exactly what goes badly, my friends.”
The initial ‘war fever’ had subsided in recent weeks.
Each new victory was now set against the lengthening casualty lists. The devastating surprise air attack on San Juan, the capital of Santo Domingo which had wrecked the naval base, sunk practically every ship in port, burned down half of the city and destroyed much of the Dominican air force on the ground, killing and injuring over three thousand people had been the first setback to take the edge off the initial euphoria. Subsequently, the news that the Hispanic Navy had lost several ‘cruisers’ – albeit, ancient obsolete ironclads and smaller vessels – in being driven away from the Lesser Antilles and that the Royal Navy had assigned at least one powerful cruiser squadron to deter further Triple Alliance raiding of the Leeward and Windward Islands, effectively blockading the eastern Caribbean had been withheld from the people until the last few days.
The media had been vitriolically critical of Gravina for not ‘sending a fleet’ to drive the English away; but that exhortation ignored the fact that it would be impossible for such a fleet to operate in those waters, so far from air cover, in the face of enemy forces likely to be supported by overwhelming carrier-based air support.
The calculus of the war at sea had been further altered by events in the distant, northern Pacific in recent weeks.
“The ignominious defeat,” the High Admiral of the Fleets of the Triple Alliance remarked, “of the Russian Siberian Fleet in the Gulf of Alaska has dramatically altered the strategic situation in the Pacific, where, as you know, we have no significant naval forces other than the small squadron based at San Diego.”
Hernando de Soto waited patiently.
“As I reported when we were belatedly notified of the Tsar’s decision to make war on the British in the Canadian territories of the North West of New England, it appears that every available ship from the Russian Far East Fleet was despatched, with the object of defeating the English fleet at Vancouver and seizing coastal territories as far south as the Oregon Lands. It seems likely that all that remains of Russian naval power in the Pacific are ships in dock and vessels unfit to go to sea, most of which were stripped of men to man the so-called Amerika Flot.” Gravina, a handsome man in his mid-forties with a haughty manner that his friends knew hid a cultured, contemplative officer who could be oddly ill-at-ease in company, shook his head. “Well, the Amerika Flot no longer exists. It was engaged in the Bay of Alaska and destroyed in detail by the English fleet. As you know, I was never optimistic that the Russians would defeat the English; although, I confess, I had hoped and we entertained expectations that they might at least maul the Vancouver Squadron to such an extent that it would cease to be an immediate threat to our coastal colonies in Alta California, or to the western shores of Nuevo Granada. Further to this, it now seems inevitable that the Japanese Empire will seek to fill the gap left by the destruction of the Russian Siberian Fleet. This may take the form of an attack on Russian territory; or forays to the south or towards the Central Pacific. We know the Russians had designs on Hawaii, logically, it is possible that with the English occupied with threats to New England, that the Japanese might decide that their time has come…”
The door opened behind him and the bespectacled, as always, somewhat wild-haired figure of Gaspar de Olivares shuffled into the room.
“Apologies, apologies, gentleman,” he announced breathlessly, “I was detained in my office talking treason!”
Santa Anna rolled his eyes.
Hernando de Soto raised an eyebrow.
The newcomer slumped, gratefully into the waiting chair.
He looked around, a little amused.
“Everybody finds a way to talk to everybody else at times like this, amigos,” de Olivares chuntered. “Well, apart from the bloody Dominicans, anyway.” He met Gravina’s eye. “They think the rest of us are apostates, of course.”
Entering into a military alliance with people who were not backward in coming forward telling one that by rights you were going to burn in Hell, and that if there was any justice in the world that you ought to burn on Earth too, had been an interesting if somewhat tautological exercise. It ought to have surprised nobody around the table that in battle, the Dominicans had proved something of a liability…
“We were talking about the Russians,’ Santa Anna observed.
Gaspar de Olivares tended to think any question, in any meeting was directed at him: “The English now own all of Russkaya Amerika,” he declared. “Lock, stock and barrel, as they say in London. All the oil everybody thinks is under the ground up there, unlimited lumber, coal mines, they control the fishing and sooner or later they’ll set their sights on the Catherine Islands and blocking off the Bering Strait. Tsar Peter must have had some kind of psychotic episode sending that fleet to the Bay of Alaska!”
Gravina was scowling, he and his country’s spymaster had always been chalk and cheese.
“That’s the Russians’ problem,” he retorted, frowning at the spymaster. “Our problem is that we now have several thousand miles of exposed western coastline to protect.”
“It is a problem,” Santa Anna agreed, soberly. “The Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre have always protected Alto California from the east; but the ocean has always been an open flank. Inevitably, it raises the question of the viability of defending San Francisco and the coastal settlements around its bay area.”
He had been looking at Don Rodrigo as he said it.
The older man shrugged.
“Once the gold rush was over a lot of townships were just abandoned, most of those that survive around San Francisco Bay have been in decline for years.”
The province had been too remote for governments in Mexico City to be willing to underwrite large infrastructure projects like roads or railways, which would have enabled systematic industrial rather than piecemeal, cherry-picking exploitation of the gold and other mineral reserves of the region. The relative ease with which the English had seized San Francisco in the last war – granted, they had pulled out after the armistice – had further discouraged private investment in the area. San Diego, over four hundred miles to the south, was a less clear-cut case. It was defensible, at least from the landward and potentially, its sheltered harbour might one day be a major gateway to the ports of the southern continent, or even, to markets in Asia. However, it was all wanderlust unless there was a lasting peace.
“A lot has been made of the threat posed by the Royal Navy’s super submarines, Carlos?” De Soto asked Gravina.
“I have reason to hope that our own submersibles, operating in the shallower areas of the Gulf of Spain, may present a defence against those vessels. Elsewhere in the Caribbean all shipping is advised to avoid deep waters wherever possible,” he sighed. “Thus far, we believe that the English have not risked these vessels in either the Caribbean, or the Gulf of Spain. They may regard them as too valuable to lose; more likely, they are biding their time.”
Hernando de Soto sighed.
“There have been no submarine attacks in the last three weeks?”
“No, Il Presidente.”
“Why,” the old man posed, “do we think the English have not repeated the San Juan attack since the end of the ceasefire?”
“I do not know,” Gravina admitted candidly.
Gaspar de Olivares coughed.
“They may have lost more aircraft than we thought at the time.”
Gravina shook his head.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then what?” De Soto re-joined.
Santa Anna stirred, resting his arms on the table.
“They are waiting for the right time, and,” he half-smiled, “now that the Hamilton administration in London has been forced to call a General Election, there is no policy consensus at the top. The man running the war is the Governor of New England and, I suspect, his hands may be tied. Thus, the English are doing their best to do what they always do when they do not see a way ahead; they are holding the line and waiting for something to turn up!”
Don Rodrigo had been watching his nation’s chief spy’s face while the discussion crabbed sidelong.
Gaspar de Olivares was getting irritated.
“What do your friends in Philadelphia tell you, Gaspar?” The President’s National Security Adviser asked.
“That’s the thing. Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I suspect that the Governor has a new spymaster,” the Director of the CNI grunted, not concealing his disenchantment which was understandable, given that the network he had spent years building in the First Thirteen had fallen silent in the last ten days. Not piece by piece but wholesale, like the lights of a house suddenly being switched off, all at once by the mechanism of somebody taking an axe to a fuse box. “No doubt the work of an outsider who came upon our people in Philadelphia like a wolf upon the fold.”
The others were giving him very odd looks.
“How do you know this, Gaspar?” Santa Anna inquired quietly.
Actually, he had a horrible feeling he knew exactly what had happened but he could hardly go into the sordid details. Not yet, not until he knew for sure.
“I feel it in my bones.”
This satisfied nobody; but Gaspar de Olivares did not care. Better they thought he had been momentarily caught with his pants down around his ankles than demanding a mole hunt. If they knew how blind he was they would never take him seriously again.
“What else do your bones tell you?” Gravina put to him acidly.
“That we didn’t know half as much about the English and their new weapons as we thought we did before the war.”
Don Rodrigo scratched his head.
“That’s no lie,” the man who had discovered proof that the British had been testing nuclear weapons in the remote deserts of the New England South West, admitted dryly. “We didn’t know about their wonder submarines, either. It makes one wonder what else we don’t know?”
Santa Anna sat back, appraised his companions.
“We know that their build-up at Trinity Crossing has halted, presumably so that men and supplies can be diverted back east of the Mississippi. We know that resistance has stiffened all along the line in the Alabama Country and on northern Floridian ground. We surrendered air superiority in northern Tejas; but we have control of the skies over the fronts to the east. Our navies have blockaded the Straits of Florida and patrol the Yucatan Channel in force to deter the operations of the English ‘super submarines’, and many of the ships that were in need of refitting after the first phase of hostilities are now returning to the fleets of the Triple Alliance. We know that conquering New England is an impossible dream; that was why it was never our objective. More importantly, it seems to me that we are still on schedule to drive deep into the Colony of Georgia. I reserve judgement at this time whether it will be feasible to sustain advances further into the interior to threaten, if not invest Atlanta, while simultaneously marching north east to reach the Atlantic coast at Savannah, thus cutting off the Floridian isthmus, and restoring it to the bosom of the Triple Alliance.”
The President of the Republic did not demur.
Fresh formations from Cuba and Hispaniola, many of them manned by fanatical ‘crusader’ warriors, had replaced the exhausted but still otherwise intact Mexican assault battalions. Those professional troops were now resting up, re-equipping as they acted as a highly mobile, as yet unneeded, tactical reserve on the primary, right-hand wing of the eastern offensive. The forces now deployed in the Alabama Country were effectively in blocking positions guarding the left flank of the main force.
“Forgive me,” Il Presidente smiled, “I may not have made myself clear, Felipe,” he put to Santa Anna. “What might we have missed? And what are we most afraid of?”
“The English are raiding aggressively west of the Sabine River,” the soldier said, thinking aloud. “They have maintained a high frequency of aerial reconnaissance operations all the way south as far as San Antonio. They probe the Sabine River line with patrols and provoke occasional artillery duels. Apart from at Trinity Crossing in the north they are present nowhere in strength west of the Mississippi. If you recall, I was afraid that at the outset of Phase Two of Operation Marcha al mar,” March to the Sea, “in the east, my primary concern was that the enemy would abandon the South West and pull his forces back behind the line of the Mississippi. As it is, at least one-third of all his available troops remain unengaged, mainly in the west while east of the Delta our forces are opposed in the main by volunteer and ad hoc Territorial, or reserve formations…”
