Countdown: M Day (25 page)

Almost fully loaded Along with that television team from VTV that had to give their families as hostage to come with us. Cretinous rats.

Conde wasn’t sure if his battalion had been chosen to lead the way because of his and its intrinsic quality, or because he was a second cousin to the commander of the Corps. He rather hoped it was the former but, all things considered, and this being Venezuela, he had to admit to the possibility of the latter.

No matter; if they picked me because of my relations …well …then I’ll just have to do both the country
and
the family proud.

Farther to Conde’s west, near Puerto Cabello and the port of la Guaira, the rest of the Corps’ two infantry brigades were encamped, taking turns loading their transports in the sort of desultory way that the unquestioned and unquestionable presence of Colombian spies would be sure to see and report as, “Situation normal.”

What the Colombians—and anyone else who was interested—might not see, or at least might not note, was that for every twenty vehicles that were loaded on the landing craft, only eighteen ever left. Within a day or two—
or, this being Venezuela, maybe three or possibly even four; it isn’t, after all, like Hugo gave us any money to train until a few months ago
—the time-consuming work of heavy loading would be complete, leaving only the relatively quick job of forming the men of the lift and marching them aboard.

The container settled down with a clang. Conde listened carefully for any human sounds that might have come from it.
Nothing. Good. Well …I have good boys, and a few girls, after all.
While the captain of the
de Cespedes
knew perfectly well what he’d been chartered for, as did his first officer, the swabbies of the crew did not, nor did Conde see any good reason to let them know until the ship was at sea.

And soon enough, we sail. Course, we’ll have to make the briefest of brief stops at Port of Spain, just to eliminate reference to here. But we won’t do more than anchor, take on some water from a lighter, and leave again.

Conde—a Bolivarian, yes, but also a devout Catholic; this was not necessarily a contradiction in Venezuela—crossed himself, thinking the silent prayer,
Lord of Hosts, Defender and Savior of the People, be with us.

But I think we have a good trick going, Lord, and I would be happy if You just saw fit not to fuck with us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

All warfare is based on deception.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;

when using our forces, we must seem inactive;

when we are near, we must make the enemy

believe we are far away; when far away,

we must make him believe we are near.

—Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

MV
Maria Walewska,
Point Fortin, Trinidad

One of the sergeants, an engineer named Collins, supervised a five man crew of sailors, down in a cavity created by piling up containers around a flat space. The cavity had a broad tarp stretched over it, with just enough space to let in a little air. It had the effect of changing the enclosed area from a metal frying pan to a convection oven. The sweat-dripping crew was busily assembling what appeared to be mostly lumber, plus a small power winch, into an odd framework. There was a steel I-beam there, too, but this would not be assembled today as it was too long to fit under the tarp.

The “lumber”—which, essentially, it was—came out of a container marked, appropriately enough, “lumber.” It had come trimmed, but uncut, until Collins had turned some plans into reality.

Some of the lumber went into assembling a turntable, mounted atop one of the bottom containers. Most of the wooden chunks were smaller, now, than when they’d begun. The same container had also held the winch, some chain, lots of heavy duty nuts and bolts, very heavy-duty springs, some very large ball bearings, steel trunnions and braces, steel cable, and a sort of steel net. Oh, and a hook; that was important.

They’d been practicing, off and on, for weeks. They could almost do the assembly in the dark.

The
really
tricky part has been setting things up—in good part by underbidding other carriers—so that most of the cargo was both legitimate and legitimately headed for Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. Somewhat like AirVenture, Inc., the regiment’s naval arm, minus the obviously military stuff like the landing craft, minisubs, and patrol boats, was held under civilian corporate ownership, and—as was normal in merchant marine circles—through so many cutouts, dummy corporations, leases and leasebacks, that no one could really say who owned what. Also, like AirVenture, though to a much greater extent, not everyone who served those ships was in the regiment. Indeed, it was only a small minority of the officers and crews that were M Day personnel.

This ship, however, was fully regiment-crewed while looking essentially Chinese crewed.

   *   *   *   

Though the continent to the south was under a deluge, the port of Point Fortin was dry for the nonce.
Muggy, but dry,
thought Ed Kosciusko, standing the bridge of the MV
Maria Walewska
(Antigua and Barbuda registry). For this mission, Kosciusko was a commodore, leaving the ship’s normal captain, the former PLAN noncom, Liu, as nominal commander. Liu, however, answered to Kosciusko.

The ship,
Countess Marie,
or
the Countess,
as her crew thought of her, was not nearly beautiful enough to live up to her namesake. For one thing, she needed a paint job. Even given that, though, she just wasn’t a very pretty ship. One hundred and thirteen meters long, nineteen in beam, with a low freeboard;
the Countess
was of sixty-six hundred and sixty gross registered tons, and carried up to four hundred and thirty-six TEU. She had two thirty-five ton cranes mounted slightly to port. Both of those were currently engaged in transferring a number of containers from another of the regiment’s ships to
the Countess
. That other ship had recently finished a very circuitous voyage from Trieste to Kotor, Montenegro to Tel Aviv and then Capetown via the Suez Canal. Its next stop would be Georgetown.

For
the Countess,
however, the next stop would be Puerto Cabello, Venezuela.
Where we shall promptly develop engine difficulties, get towed to the southeast corner, and begin to pile up demurrage, no doubt much to the joy of Venezuelan port authorities. While that joy lasts.

For Kosciusko knew, as the port authorities at Point Fortin did not, that the cargo containers coming aboard, marked with such innocent labels as “Ocean Buoys,” “Consumer Electronics,” “Acoustical Sensors,” and—unintentionally, because all too suggestively—“Deep Mining Adapters” was, in fact, a mix of purpose built, heavy duty, naval mines, heavy mortar shells, naval mine sensors and detonators, explosive-filled barrels, and adapters

Which is why I am burying them as deep in the hold as I can get them.

Watching the loading, Kosciusko frowned and pressed a button on the intercom.

“Mrs. Liu, here, Skippah,” came the accented answer.

“Little rough on that one, Mrs. Liu.”

“Felt like cargo shift inside, Skippah. Dumbasfuckinglockscunts who packed it not know what they cocksucking doing, me think.”

“All right, but watch it next time.”

“No next time, Skippah. Last one being hauled aboard by Number Two clane now. But think bettah check that container I did. Maybe damage, you know?”

“I know. We will.”
Any real damage and we’d likely have wrecked half the port.

“I start bulying new containahs undah o’d,” Mrs. Liu said.

“Fine, Mrs. Liu,” Kosciusko answered. “Just make sure the ‘lumber’ stays near the top.”

The legal and open captain, though effectively Kosciusko’s first officer, was Mrs. Liu’s husband. He clucked disapproval. “She not ta’k rike that in Chinese,” said Captain Liu. “We mally fo’ty fuckin’ years ago and she nevah ta’k rike that. You fuckin’ Amelicans contaminate nice gir’.”

Mrs. Liu was over sixty, perhaps four foot, eleven in height, fairly rotund, gray, and—except in the eyes of her doting husband, not nearly a “girl.”

“Yeah,” Kosciusko agreed. “But, you know, it’s not like she doesn’t have a natural talent for vernacular.”

“Mebe so,” Liu conceded.

“Did you get the package from Victor?” the captain asked.

“By boat, via Fedex, twenty minutes ago. Boat come arong po’t side. Give me. I open and rook. Got instluctions for mines, adapters, bombs. Evelything. Must study awhire, though.”

“Should have a few days.”

San Francique, Trinidad

This time the Bertram Sport Fisher, still under Baluyev’s command, came loaded for bear. This time, too, Lada came with them. She was still pretending to be a whore—
not that it’s much of a pretense,
she thought—but had agreed with Timur that it would be only a show. No, she wasn’t his girl, she was …
We’ll talk more, and get to know each other, and think about it. But we
will
talk. I promise.

Baluyev had, of course, a somewhat different take on things.
Mosin, the best of my men, is happy. Better still, none of us have to eat Kravchenko’s personal campaign of culinary sabotage directed against the masses. Lada, along with whatever vices and virtues she may have, can cook.

Still, I wish Konstantin were here. Then it would really be like old times.

Airfield, Camp Fulton, Guyana

There was a single, unarmed observer plane, a CH-801, almost hovering overhead in the updrafts. Two men manned it, an observer and the pilot, Warrant Officer Harley. It wouldn’t do anything to interfere with an attack, but might provide a minimum of warning.

Konstantin paid no attention to either the early warning plane above, or to the nearby ground as four heavy transporters pulled up to the strip, behind the two hangar-parked Antonovs, painted in bright, civilian colors. Each heavy truck bore on its back a twenty foot container. Even as the Russian drove in the direction of the half dozen MI-17 helicopters being refueled on the other side of the strip, an engineer crane was lifting one of the containers from the back of the truck that bore it, while a backhoe waited to drag the thing into the shelter of the corrugated metal hangar.

The MI-17s waited in a widely spaced and staggered line—technically it was called, “Staggered Trail Left”—as two fuel trucks leapfrogged around the formation, filling the tanks. Crew chiefs and maintenance personnel crawled over the helicopters, under the supervision of the Chief of Aviation Maintenance, Luis Acosta, walked from one bird to the next, sometimes asking a question or two, sometimes peering in.

Acosta held the rank of chief warrant officer in the regiment (and, incidentally, Chief of Maintenance of AirVenture, Inc.) A former illegal immigrant to the United States, he’d been enticed into serving as part of what he’d thought at the time was a drug running scheme. Nearer to forty than thirty now, he was short, stout, and brown. Stiff hair, black in the main but shot with gray, jutted straight up from his hairline before rolling back over his head. When he’d decided to stay on, he’d convinced the other sixteen Mexicans who had worked for him to stick it out as well.

Manuel, Acosta’s number two man, much taller and much lighter skinned than his chief, was deep in conference with the squadron commander, Mike Cruz, when Acosta reached them at the front of the helicopter formation. Manuel’s collar sported the silver bars, each with a single black square, of a much more junior warrant. Behind Cruz stood another man, a master sergeant, with the deep set lines of worry that said “loggie” written across his face.

“I was just telling the colonel,” Manuel said, turning to Acosta, “that I don’t think number five’s going to make two trips; not without we break out the engine and figure out what’s causing it to run rough.”

“Have we got a replacement engine?” Cruz asked Acosta.

Luis nodded and said, “Yessir. But we’d have to do the switch out here. Be a lot faster and better than trying to do it where we’re going.”

Cruz’s head turned to ask the master sergeant, “What have we got on number five, this lift, and what are we planning on carrying next?”

“Mostly fuel pods, this time, sir,” the sergeant answered. “Armament packages and troops next lift. Gonna seriously fuck with the plan unless we have the fuel at the holding area to lift forward to Aguaro-Guariquito national park. Especially since we’re losing a lift to bring Colonel Boxer and an escort to Georgetown.”

And,
thought Cruz,
despite Boxer’s protestations to the contrary, we’re really not sure how much time we have.

Cruz knifed a hand toward Acosta. “Chief, get everything set up here to do a quick switch on the engine. She flies this lift, then we’ll break her down on the return.”

Patrol Boat Number One,
The Drunken Bastard
,

North of Tobago.

The guns were stowed away below, while a purely nominal superstructure had been built up out of cheap lumber and styrofoam. Even the bow had been camouflaged, in an attempt to disguise the rakish lines that would have told any knowledgeable observer that this was no innocent fishing boat. In order to preserve the illusion, the old, eighty foot and change, ex-Finnish torpedo boat kept her speed down to a sedate twelve knots. A couple of fishing chairs and a railing completed the mask. None of that would take five minutes to undo.

Cramped down below were Ryan and his entire team, minus the two left to guard the equipment at the safe house in Colombia. Also hidden below was a truly outrageous stockpile of arms, explosives, and other equipment. The real crew, mostly Chinese under Captain Chin, with Chong reverting to Chief of Boat, was also mostly hidden. The short and swarthy enough to be genetically indeterminate Bronto, and a few others, remained above.

Chin consulted his GPS and then took a quick glance at the chart laid out before him. “Set course for two-eight-five,” he told the helmsman.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Bronto replied, “Our course is two-eight-five. He spun the wheel, cutting it hard left. Like a ballet dancer—a Margot Fonteyn in her later, but still graceful, years—the old girl twisted practically on her tail, heading away from the rising sun.

“Not so nimbly, Mister,” the Chinese skipper counseled. “We are a sporting boat, not a warship.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

“See that it does not.”

Wineperu, Guyana, on the Essequibo River

Stauer, possibly the only man in the regiment busier than Reilly and Gordo, stood in the early morning shade and wondered. Looking up, he thought,
No, nothing to see from above. All is as innocent as a newborn baby. Never mind the mines—and mine fixin’s—we unloaded last night.
His eyes dropped down to ground level as his head and body turned to scan the entire area.
Nothing to see on land but those half dozen metal sheds, a few workshops, the chain link fence surrounding and a couple of watch towers. But those are normal and manned, as normal.

Walking forward, toward the river and the rushing sound coming from Head Falls, to the south of the settlement and base, Stauer came to the boat line, holding a number of the LCM-6s that had brought the mines from Urisirima the previous night. There was a gap in that line, courtesy of the one boat heading to the Philippines. In the gap sheltered
Namu,
the killer minisub. Next to those, toward the falls, was the single Dvora Class patrol boat, which was altogether the wrong shape and size for a quick camouflage job to hold for very long. Boat crews puttered about with the landing craft and the
Dvora,
as usual for a warm but not yet hot morning. On the
Dvora,
the engine cowling was fully open with a pair of legs sticking up nearly vertically.
That would be Kehre. Let’s hope he’s right about that engine.

They’ll scatter on warning.
A sudden chill went up Stauer’s spine.
If we have warning. I wish Morales and Lada hadn’t been compromised.

North, in the opposite direction from the falls, past the line of landing craft, and farthest from the settlement, more shed space jutted out over the water.

Under the shed sat the ex-Yugoslav, ex-Montenegrin commando sub,
Naughtius,
on the surface of the stream. She could be seen from the land, if not the sky. Still, a landsman’s view wouldn’t have shown much. For, much like the
Bastard,
the
Naughtius
had received a face lift. They’d shortly—as soon as
Naughtius
and its disguise moved off—be moving one of the unserviceable hulls they’d gotten as part of the
Naughtius
deal into its place and putting in it a few fuel cans and twenty pounds of explosive.