Chapter 21

Sam asked, “How are things progressing with the staging operations in Galap?”

General Fox answered, “It’s taking time to set things up. We’re having to build up some infrastructure.”

“It seems to me like Joma already has the appropriate infrastructure. Why would you want to stage in Galap?”

“It gives us the most flexibility in responding to any Jade Empire moves against Joma. From there, we can move to any part of the northern coast of Joma.”

Sandy Dancing said, “It seems to me that would require you to do an amphibious operation.”

“That’s true, but remember it isn’t an assault so we won’t be fighting our way on shore. We’ll have friends waiting to help us.”

Joe asked, “It seems to me that the Jade Empire would be invading Venu first. Shouldn’t you be planning on how to support Venu?”

“It’s more of a political issue than a military one. Venu has been quite clear in stating that they don’t want IFN forces inside the country.”

Every reporter in the room interpreted political as religious. It was well known that Venu didn’t allow people who weren’t followers of Jarjan into the country. The government even got upset when the diplomatic staff in embassies contained nonbelievers. They could just imagine how the country would react to the presence of an army of nonbelievers.

Sam said, “Khung has repeatedly stated that Venu has a large chemical weapons program. Do you think it is likely that they would use chemical weapons against the Jade Empire?”

General Fox hadn’t been expecting a question about the chemical weapon program inside Venu. He was one of those who believed that Venu had a very large chemical weapon program, although the official stance was that there wasn’t any direct evidence of it. In his current position, he couldn’t make a comment without it becoming an official position of the IFN.

He answered, “There’s been no direct confirmation that Venu has a chemical weapons program.”

“If it did have chemical weapons, do you think they would use them?”

“You’re asking me to speculate about a hypothetical situation. I don’t do that.”

“Let me ask this, then. If Venu were to use chemical weapons, would you still consider it to be part of the coalition?”

“That’s a hypothetical. My job is to fight a war. It is the job of the Secretary General to handle the politics of the coalition. Let’s drop the topic of chemical weapons, if you don’t mind.”

“Do you have something to hide?”

“No. It’s just that you’d be asking a lot of questions that I’d be giving non-answers to. That would be a waste of our limited time here.”

“General Fox, why do you keep flying to Termal?” Sandy Dancing asked looking down at her ever present notepad.

General Fox stared at her for a second surprised that someone had picked up on that. If anyone was to pick up on it, he wasn’t surprised that it would be Sandy Dancing. She seemed to have some very good sources of information, including people on his staff. Getting asked the question didn’t matter in terms of his plans since he had arranged for a very good excuse for his trips. He smiled in a friendly manner.

“I’m consulting with General Braun. If I’m to take on the Jade Empire, then it makes sense to talk to someone who has faced the enemy. General Braun has more experience than anyone.”

“He’s in Termal?” Sandy Dancing asked.

“Yes. After his experiences in Eastland, he’s gone into seclusion. He’s hoping to avoid the press. He has taken a rather rough beating from all of you. I’m sure that he doesn’t want to answer questions like what you would probably ask him.”

“Actually, I think some of us weren’t too critical of him at all. He was handed a nearly impossible situation. The IFN forces were shattered and spread out all over Hamasada. It’s not surprising that he had problems pulling it together. The Jade Empire already had the upper hand and he was stuck with it.”

“Please pardon my unwarranted generalization. I realize that you, in particular, have always been rather supportive of the IFN military leadership even when others haven’t been.”

“Thank you. Since I don’t want lose my reputation as a mean reporter, I would like to follow up on his going into seclusion.”

“Go right ahead,” General Fox said.

“Where will you go after dealing with the Jade Empire?” Sandy Dancing asked.

“I’ll probably set up a nice villa in Misera.”

“There’s no need for you to do that. I understand they return prisoners of war,” she said.

The whole press corp went, “Ouch. That’s mean.”

General Fox laughed. He replied, “Now I know why the Secretary General likes you so much.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“In full disclosure, I have to admit that my wife told me the same thing. Of course, she’s my wife and knows my limitations, or at least, that’s what she tells me.”

The press laughed politely at his joke. General Fox did seem to manage dealing with the press a whole lot better than some of his predecessors. At least he knew how to take and make a joke. Too many of the people they interviewed were stiff and formal.

Mr. Cee looked at all of the construction that was going on. There were trucks moving all over the place, people were busy doing interesting looking things, and the skeletons of two buildings were visible. The road and parking lot areas were filled with equipment toiling at tasks he didn’t understand, but the location of the road was clearly obvious.

“Wow. It looks like you’re making a lot of progress.”

Hamid answered, “Considering that there’s not much out here, I’m able to work on a lot of this in parallel. With all of this dirt, I can put in the road and parking lot at the same time. I can also put up a couple of the buildings. There’s going to be a need for some significant landscaping when we’re done with this phase.”

“This is great,” Mr. Ess said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Mr. Cee said.

“When will it be done?” Mr. Ess said.

“That depends on what you’re asking about. The road and the parking lot should be done in three months. The big building in about two. It’s a pretty simple structure. The hotel will take at least six months. We haven’t even started on some of the other buildings.”

Mr. Cee said, “Speaking of other buildings...”

“We were wondering if you could get started on the gas station.”

“We think it’s really important that our customers can refill their cars with petroleum so that they can take all of their purchases home with them.”

“With them buying so much at our mall, well ... getting it all home is going to be big deal.”

“That’s right.”

Hamid verified, “You’re talking about the gas station with twenty pumps.”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t think that is a bit much?” Hamid asked.

He had looked at the plans for all of the building in detail. The gas station was huge. It had storage tanks with ten times the holding capacity that he could even imagine them ever needing. They were acting like Llammadan oil millionaires based on the way they were spending money to make everything bigger than it needed to be.

“No. We don’t want our customers to have to wait in lines.”

“All full service. Nothing second class for our mall.”

“Regular, super, premium, and diesel. We’re going to put in a propane tank and kerosene.”

“Kerosene?”

“If you’re going to offer one thing, you might as well offer them all.”

“That’s what we always say.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want to scale back a little?”

“Quite sure.”

“Our dream was big, real big,” Mr. Cee said while holding his hands far apart.

“Maybe even a little bigger than that.

Shaking his head, Hamid said, “I guess I can get started on that now. I’ll need another check.”

Mr. Ess said, “We have one right here for that.”

“Is this sufficient?” Mr. Cee asked while handing a check over to the man.

“Yes,” Hamid said after examining the check.

Hamid, at heart, was an honest man. He had to admit feeling a little guilty about taking so much money for a project that was undoubtedly going to fail. There was no way that a mall this far from any town required the kind of excessive scale in size they were demanding. In the whole time that he and his crew had been working out here only about ten cars a day drove past it and it was the same ten cars from day to day.

Hamid said, “Are you sure that you really want all of this? You could stop now and only be out what you’ve spent so far.”

“Why would we stop now? We had dream.”

“We both had the same dream. It’s got to come true.”

“It is coming true.”

Hamid said, “It’s just that you’re spending a fortune.”

“Money comes and money goes. With this project, money is going to come our way.”

“Yes. Money is definitely coming our way!”

Hamid said, “I guess I’ll get to work. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Go ahead. The sooner it is done, the sooner we’ll get rich.”

“That’s right.”

“I gotta go,” Hamid said. He jumped in his truck and drove off to one of the buildings.

“Well, Mr. Cee. I would say that he’s not a bad fellow.”

“I agree, Mr. Ess. He seems pretty honest.”

“We must represent a pretty sticky crisis of conscience for the poor fellow.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“Excuse me, Ms. Dancing.”

“Ah, General Fox. I’ve heard that you’re inviting some reporters to be embedded with our troops.”

“You’ve heard correctly. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“What can I do for you, General Fox?”

“I would like to know if you would like to be embedded with troops when we start to move against the Jade Empire.”

Sounding surprised, she asked, “Me?”

General Fox was of the firm belief that a good reporter shared a lot of characteristics with a good spy. They both collected informants, gathered intelligence, and generated a picture of what was happening. Reporters just worked in the open. Of all the reporters he had met, Sandy Dancing was the sharpest. He felt that he could use that to his advantage.

“Yes, you.”

“I’m afraid that I can’t.”

Her refusal was something of a surprise. He figured that she’d jump at the chance of getting information straight from the front. He wondered if she had some reason that was stopping her. He couldn’t imagine anything that would keep a reporter like her away from a major news story.

“Why not?”

She gestured to herself and answered, “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a woman. I can’t walk on the streets alone in Eastland. The followers of Jarjan have rather restrictive views on women’s rights.”

He hadn’t even considered that possibility. He said, “Ah. I had not thought about that. You’re right to be concerned. The attitudes there are rather restrictive when it comes to women. It would definitely be an issue if we were going to Eastland.”

He realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he had made a mistake. Her comment about women not being welcome in Eastland had sneaked past his guard. It was just such a natural reason for her to not want to go there.

Picking up on his mistake right way, she asked, “You’re not going there?”

Trying to dissemble, he said, “We’ll be in Galap.”

“I’m a little confused,” Sandy Dancing said sounding like she wasn’t confused at all. “Do you really expect to fight the Jade Empire in Galap?”