A state of disobedience

Matamoros, Mexico

Hanstadt never did quite buy in to the whole nonviolent civil disobedience idea. It just wasn't in his nature. He measured things materially; so many guns, so many tons of rations, so many artillery shells . . . so much X . . . so many Y. That was what made him a prize as Schmidt's G-4 and something of a cipher for the governor's other plans.

"How many shells did you say came with those things?" he asked, pointing a finger at a passing CONEX on its way to Camp Bullis. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of massed diesels.

"Carl" answered, "Seven hundred fifty rounds, mixed high explosive, illumination and smoke, with each 85mm gun. two-fifty to three-fifty with the others. Plus you're getting a fair number of pure ammunition loads."

"And you say these things are self-propelled?"

"The SD-44s, the 85mm jobs, are auxiliary-propelled. That is, they have an engine, a steering wheel, a driver's seat and a small gas tank. For the 122s and 152 you're going to have to rig up something on your own and use civilian trucks."

"And the manuals are inside?"

"Every CONEX comes with a manual and firing table printed in Spanish. I figure you have enough Spanish speakers in Texas. Though, I've got to tell you, those manuals were translated from Chinese by people maybe none too good. You'll have some problems."

Hanstadt normally wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but these guns were no gift. Texas had paid for them with the ships about to be seized while going through the Panama Canal. They had also forked over no small amount of cash for all the stock to Materiales de Seguridad, SA, the Mexican-incorporated, Panamanian-run arms company that had held these particular weapons.

He figured this entitled him to check the teeth. "Where and why did you get all of this? Why did you hide it?"

Carl hesitated before answering. Some of what Hanstadt was asking was very close-held. In the U.S. military and intelligence communities it would have been called "Special Compartmentalized Information." "We bought it from China, Russia and North Korea when this sort of thing was a glut on the market. We have kept almost two-thirds of it out of Panama expressly to avoid antagonizing the United States. And that is all I can say . . . except that some Panamanians have been in the surreptitious arms business for quite some time . . . TOW missiles to Iran in the 1980s . . . rifles and mortars for Croats in the 1990s . . . that sort of thing."

"Fair enough. Though I insist that it is not fair for you people to grab over five hundred newer and heavier guns we paid good money for and replace them with three hundred fifty lighter and older ones for even more money."

Carl shrugged. "General . . . if we didn't get them those arms were going to be seized anyway. We are also, as part of the deal, paying very good money to arrange a strike on the Panama Canal when that brigade from the 1^st Marine Division is stuck in the middle of Gatun Lake between the locks. That strike is going to cost us money and cost us big. You are hardly paying any more than what this is going to cost us and I think you should stop bitching about it. You are getting some artillery and you ought to be happy with that. Me, personally, I think my boss is making a mistake."

"A mistake? My ass. You're screwing us plain and simple."

Carl shrugged again and began to walk towards the line of tractors hauling the flatbed trailers northwards.

"Where are you going?" demanded Hanstadt.

"Why, I'm going to turn these trucks around since you seem to think the deal is so bad."

"Now wait a minute . . ."

"Then stop bitching about it."