Countdown: M Day (28 page)

Eyes swimming from the fumes, Larralde looked across the dimly lit cargo compartment. Half the people there were bent over. The rest seemed to be getting ready to hurl or just recovering from a spasm. The only except was:
that bastard Villareal. He must have the stomach of a buzzard.

Carlos really didn’t understand. Sure, the place stank. And he’d never imagined that the fumes from the gastric juices would be enough to make his eyes water. But was it worse than the uncollected garbage back in the barrio? He didn’t think so. In any case, while he’d had to gulp down his rising bile a couple of times, that hadn’t been all that hard to do. And natural tearing took good enough care of the eyes.

Ah, but poor Lily,
he thought, rubbing the bent-over girl’s back for whatever little comfort that might provide her.

Capitano
Sebastian, in control of the lead C-130, looked left. Yes, there was Number Two, so tight onto his own plane’s wing that the two would appear as one, as indeed the three had appeared as one, when he’d been queried by the control tower at Cheddi Jagan, an hour previously.

“CAL Flight 483, Miami to Georgetown,” he’d replied, in good but accented English. Not that an Hispanic accent in a flight originating in Miami was likely to draw notice.

“You’re early, 483,” the control tower had answered.

“Grace of God,” Sebastian had told them, which seemed as good an explanation as any.

Now, however, the illusion had to end. Not only were the jets due to strike Camp Stephenson, housing the whole Guyanan—Sebastian struggled not to laugh—Air Force, but also their much more serious artillery park and command, but the flight of three had to split up simply to allow one to land.

He gave the word, received confirmation, then glanced again to his left to ensure Number Two was veering off. Then he began a rocky descent to the airfield.

“If the control tower calls,” he said, “ignore them. Unless they turn off the lights. In that case, tell them to turn them on again, quick, or we’ll hang them with their own guts.”

If the trip down had been sickening, the sudden lurch and violent right turn, followed by a way-too-hard impact on the airstrip was positively terrifying. Larralde didn’t cry out, though more than a few of his troops did. Some of that was pain from restraining belts cutting into laps and legs as the plane bounced. As much was fear of the wild swaying of the light tank strapped down near the loading ramp. More was simply:
ohmyGodwe’regonnacrash;we’reDOOMED!

Just as the bouncing reduced to something tolerable, the plane’s four stout engines kicked into reverse. The rear duly rose. Now the AMX-13
really
strained at its leash. Larralde looked and, as far as he could see, almost no portion of the tread was resting on the deck.
Fuckfuckfuck.

Of course, the sudden rapid slowing of the plane had forced his torso forward, so naturally the big chunk of metal was foremost in his field of view.
Fuckfuckfuck.

And then the plane was actually and noticeably slowing …slowing …slowing …and gently turning.

The plane rumbled along to the east, then virtually stopped as it swung its ass far around. The engines picked up again, moving it forward. It stopped again, swung right, and then came to a complete stop. The rear of the plane began to whine. A growing sliver of artificial light began to creep in over the loading ramp.

Larralde, never so grateful for a flight to be over in his life, unbuckled himself and stood. “On your feet! Unleash the cargo!” He felt a sudden pride swelling in his chest.
By God, we’re really going to
do
this!

Unsteadily, slipping in puke, the men and woman of Task Force Larralde stood. Some staggered to the tank, others to the Tiuna. A couple slipped and fell into the thin but chunky, yellow sea.

At the vehicles muscle memory took over. The vehicleswere undone almost as soon as the crews had mounted. The AMX-13’s engine cranked …coughed …cranked and then started, adding diesel to the already noxious fumes of puke and airplane fuel. The commander of the AMX-13 looked around to make sure all the unbucklers were clear, then squatted low in his turret, with only the top of his head and his eyes showing. The was, after all, no sense in having one’s torso nipped off by the top of the cargo door. He flicked a switch on his hastily donned helmet and gave a command. Then, slowly, the tank lurched forward and began to descend the loading ramp.

As the tank treaded off, it shook the plane. The plane shook still more as the first concussive waves from the aerial attack on the adjacent Camp Stephenson reached it.

Beginning to recover now, with approximately fresh air washing the interior space clear of the smell of vomit, or at least diluting it, the men and women of the port side trundled forward, peeling off to the left at they reached the edge of the ramp. Their mission was to secure the control tower. Fortunately, that was less than five hundred feet away, northeast across the grassy strip between it and the taxiway.

Wineperu, Guyana

Several things were acting in concert to trash the regiment’s small naval base outside this nothing much town on the Essequibo. First, the place hadn’t had its warning sirens installed yet. It was a case of “on the to-do list.” Second, with Chin running
The Drunken Bastard,
and Kosciusko with
Maria Walewska,
along with any number of the Sixth Naval Squadron’s more senior people, there had been no one there to push for a higher priority. Third, the senior naval officer left present on the base, a recent former Federal German Navy acquisition by the name of Thorsten von der Kehre (nickname, “Thor”), hadn’t had either the political clout nor the inside contacts and insights to get the base moved up to a higher priority. Fourth, the charge of quarters had been making the rounds, a matter of some twenty minutes effort, while, fifth, his runner had a sudden overwhelming urge to visit the latrine, all at about the time the staff duty officer at Camp Fulton remembered them. This, sadly, also happened about the time the first two Venezuelan F-5’s showed up, a couple of miles up the river, screaming into a northward-aimed turn.

The one thing that the regiment owned that could have given them more warning was a radar. Sadly, this was on the Dvora, and quite masked by buildings, riverbanks, and trees.

Under glaring lights set up on deck, Kehre, stripped to the waist and with grease up to his armpits, emerged from the
Dvora
’s engine compartment with a look of immense satisfaction. His glasses were streaked with grease, likewise his sun-lightened hair. Broad shouldered, tall, at over six feet, and fairly beefy at one hundred and ninety pounds, squeezing out of the compartment was as tight a maneuver as squeezing in had been.

Three days the bitch’s engine’s been down. Three
unbefuckingglaublich
days!
He’d made a pretty fair estimate of how long it would take to fix her, and had the ammunition and stores brought aboard the previous night. The landing craft were likewise loaded and armed, awaiting the order to scatter to their preplanned hide positions.

Kehre made a thumbs up-finger pointing motion at the helmsman, standing by the wheel. The seamen nodded and turned away. A few seconds later, the engine coughed to ragged life before settling down to a steady
thrummm.

That steady
thrummm
would have been considerably more satisfying had it not been drowned out by the screech of the approaching aircraft. Kehre heard them, gave a single look, and lunged across the deck and up a short ladder for the only siren Wineperu Base had available, the
Dvora
’s own.

Ahwooogaaa! Ahwooogaaa! Ahwooogaaa!

Scheisse. Fight or flight? No question: Flight. Wait for the crew or run now? We’ve got many men, but only one
Dvora
. We run.

“Take her out!” Kehre screamed over the wail of the alarm, to the helmsman, next to him. Then:
The forward mounted 30mm? No use. Good for surface, not so much for air. At least I’ve not seen it tried for air defense. The twenty, then.

Back down the ladder Kehre went, then took at a run the thirty odd feet to the rear mounted, already loaded Oerlikon 20mm, tossing his shoulders into the semi-circular shoulder supports. Several more cylindrical magazines for the gun were secured to the deck at his feet.

With a grunt and a curse, Kehre pulled the bolt back until the sear engaged it. Then, with the boat gaining speed under him, he stepped around the deck and twisted the gun to the south.

It is worth noting that, from 1942 to 1944, roughly a third of all Japanese aircraft downed by the United States Navy fell to the Oerlikon Twenty. Notwithstanding this admirable history, with the boat pulling away from the dock, the plane coming in at about over hundred knots, the cross angle, and the fact that the target was just too close to track well, Kehre’s magazine of sixty rounds was emptied, in seven and a half seconds, without a hit. If the fire streaking by the pilot’s nose had done any good, it was tolerably hard to see; two of his wing-carried rockets slammed into the first LCM on the boat line, shattering it and sending the just-mounting crew into the river and onto the bank, some of them in pieces. Another one pierced the shed which lay over
Naughtius’
defunct twin. Wherever it actually hit, the empty hull went up in a flash and a bang, pieces of its steel flying into the air.

Namu,
sheltered behind the LCM, was not obviously damaged. The rest of the rockets in the salvo mostly went into the river or onto the fast emptying base. The other attacking plane aimed its ordnance at the workshops and huts of the base. Some of these went up in fireballs; others were left unscathed.

Kehre saw that the remaining LCM’s were beginning to make headway. He let go of the gun and went back to the helm. Pointing at the falls to the south, he shouted to the helmsman, “Get us close up under the falls, bring her parallel, and set the ship to hold position. Then get on the weapon station for the forward gun. Might not help, but can’t hurt. I want to be able to cover the landing craft until they can scatter to their hides. Shoot at what I shoot at.”

There wasn’t long to wait. Within a few minutes, two propeller-driven craft—Tucanos, Kehre thought—swarmed over the falls. They immediately aimed themselves for the struggling LCM’s, ahead and below. Kehre opened up, once they were well past, firing ahead of the foremost and letting it fly into his fire. The Oerlikon pumped shells out at its usual slow rate, yet the Tucano was itself a slow flyer. The 30mm joined it, but wasn’t particularly on target. In any case, one, at least, of the 20mm shells hit
something
explosive. Before the plane could fire a rocket or drop a bomb, it exploded in a very satisfying fireball. The other one, in a fair simulation of panic, flew off, wings wagging, and with its ordnance unspent.

“Motherfuckers! Try to sink
my
boats, eh?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Long years ago when men were men

and fancied May of Long

Or lovely Becky Cooper or Maggie’s Mary Wong

One woman put them all to shame,

only one was worthy of the name

And the name of that dame was. . .

—Traditional, “Dicey Reilly”

Camp Fulton, Guyana

Tatiana almost missed the Land Rover, three quarters overturned in the ditch. In the jungle shrouded, still early daylight gloom of the road, all of that further cloaked by smoke from the explosions and the many fires they’d started around the camp, and with the bulk of the vehicle down out of sight in the ditch, it would have been an easy enough thing to miss.

She wasn’t slow to report but, in the absence of orders to move onto post once she’d re-enlisted, she’d stayed in her own home.

“I’d have you move in, Tati,” a towel clad Reilly had said, after administering her oath of enlistment in the Teahouse of the August Nooner, “but I haven’t a single space in the barracks to put an enlisted woman. Certainly not one who looks like you. Maybe when we can work out something to get you back to the medical company …”

It was the shrieking of the attacking jets, followed by the concussions emanating from the direction of the camp that had woken her up and gotten her moving. As was, in its own way, proper, she hadn’t really dressed before jumping into her Benz and roaring off to the camp. In practice, this meant that her trousers were on, up, and half buttoned, her boots on but unlaced, her jacket on but open, and—since sleeping naked was not only more comfortable, but also sound business practice—her breasts quite unconstrained by a bra.

“What the hell,” she’d muttered, tooling down Honey Camp Road at a speed that had more than a little contempt for death to it, “there’s one in my pack. And maybe I’m ‘an absentminded beggar’ …but my regiment won’t need to send to find me.”

She smiled, remembering the tall, black sergeant major she’d learned that particular line from. The remembrance brought a sudden tear of love unrequited. The tear caused her to shake her head, to toss it off. That caused her to notice the upturned Land Rover. She slammed her foot to the Benz’s brakes, burning up a considerable amount of rubber as, automotive ass wagging, she skidded down the road.

The smell of leaked diesel was strong in the air as Tati scurried down the concrete embankment of the ditch.

Blood dripped steadily from a cut somewhere on Reilly’s scalp. Since he was hanging upside down, held in place by seat and shoulder belts, that meant that it collected in a not unimpressive pool on the Land Rover’s hardshell roof. That wasn’t the only spot from which blood came, as a thin rivulet flowed down his neck, to his chin, and across one cheek. Yet another trailed from his right arm, hanging, like the left, loose and draped on the roof.

“Head wounds bleed freely,” she said, softly, once she’d seen. “It’s not necessarily all that bad a sign.”

“It’s not a particularly good one, either,” Reilly whispered, then flinched, as if the sound of his own voice were painful.

“Thank God you’re alive!” she exclaimed.

“Marginally.” He opened one eye, glanced at the girl, and said, “Since I am obviously concussed, hence not entirely responsible for what I say, I say, ‘gorgeous tits, and I didn’t even have to pay to see them.’”

She flushed, something she almost never did. Then she smiled, saying, “Dirty old man; you’ll live.”

“I hope so. Now get me the fuck out of this. My right arm seems broken, but I think my spinal column is okay. Middling bad headache.”

Tati hesitated. “We really should have a team of us here and get you into a backbrace,” she said doubtfully.

“If there were time, I’d agree. There isn’t.”

“Yes, sir.” She pulled a small utility knife from her belt and began sawing at his restraints. “We’ll have you to the hospital and splinted and bandaged up in no time, sir.”

“Screw the hospital. Get me to the SCIF. That’s where headquarters will fall in on, because that’s the only place with two-meter-thick concrete walls and roof. You can call a doc from there …Did I ever tell you that you have an excruciatingly sexy voice? It matches the tits.”

She smiled. “You never came by for your free sample. Dirty old man.”

“Lawyers, Guns, Money” (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana

“Hospital took a bad hit, sir,” Joshua said somberly. “I passed it on the way in.”

“How many did we lose?” Stauer asked. His voice held a mix of cold fury and pain at the damage a half hour’s worth of attack had done to his regiment and his home.

At least I know Phillie wasn’t on duty. What if she had been? Don’t think about that. Don’t
let
yourself think about that.

Joshua shook his head. “Too much of a mess to say. Only a wall and a couple of corners standing at one end. Dr. Joseph is trying to assemble a list. He told me we’d lost at least fifty, between patients and staff. And maybe close to seventy. He’s in a pretty bad way, the doc is, sir. I think you ought talk with him. Earliest convenience.”

Stauer nodded.
Yes, of course. As soon as possible
.

“Unit status?” Stauer asked.

“The XO of first battalion is trying to get them assembled at least into company teams in the woods,” Waggoner replied, wearily. Half that weariness was shock and fear. He’d been only a minute’s walk from Regimental Headquarters when it had gone up in blast, fire, and smoke. “George says he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Reilly, though Lana Reilly says her husband left their quarters moments before she did.”

“Losses in First Batt?”

“Under fifty men, dead and wounded combined. Three tanks. Five Eland APCs. A dozen trucks and other thin skinned vehicles. First is combat capable, anyway. Viljoen and Dumisani say they can get all but one tank and two APC’s up if they’re given some time.”

“Time?” Stauer sneered. “We don’t have any time …”

“Yes, we do,” Boxer said.

“Bullshit, they’ll …”

“Yes we do,” he repeated. “Let me explain.” A broad smile, inexplicable in the circumstances, lit Boxer’s face.

“Go ahead,” Stauer grumpily agreed. Just having Boxer disagreeing was, in its way, calming.

“This,” Boxer said, twirling a finger to indicate the entire base area, “is an epically lousy spot for a parachute jump. Only the DZ we cleared to the east would be worth a shit, and we know they didn’t jump there. We also know to a considerable degree of certainty the maximum helicopter lift Venezuela can generate. It’s enough for two battalions, give or take. If they had come in with two battalions, right on the heels of the air raid, they could have taken us.

“So why didn’t they? Simple: They think there’s a lot more than one battalion here to face them. They think we’re all here, a full regiment, something that, even hard on the heels of the air strikes, would kick their asses as they struggled to dump their chutes and get organized. So they didn’t even try.”

Stauer thought about that. He looked again at the still smiling face of his Chief of Staff. Suddenly, a brilliant sunrise of a smile lit his own features. “So they haven’t a clue …”

Boxer shook his head. “That we’re planning on invading them? Not clue one.”

Stauer’s face took on a vicious cast. “Oh, those fuckers are
so
gonna pay. But we need Reilly, even if I hate to admit it. What the hell happened to him? Where the hell is he?”

“Here, sir,” came from the door to the conference room. Everyone looked for a moment, before shifting their gaze—like a mob of meerkats watching a car go by—to the gloriously open shirt of the medic supporting him.

Sometimes,
Stauer thought, forcing his eyes away,
your problems will cancel each other out.
“Somebody tell Joseph to drop what he’s doing and get a medical team here. Now!”

Sergeant Major Joshua was momentarily nonplussed by the image.
Oh, the things I’ve given up to maintain a professional appearance.
His confusion didn’t last long.

“Corporal Manduleanu,” he said, “well done.” His voice rose incrementally. “Now put down your patient, and get in
uniform,
woman!”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” Tatiana answered, as she walked Reilly forward to ease him into a chair vacated by one of the others. Setting him down, she turned around to button her battle dress jacket. Looking over her shoulder at Joshua, her face said,
See? I
told
you what you’ve been missing.

Outside, a couple of the regiment’s four twin-barreled 23mm towed anti-aircraft guns began a steady pounding, presumably skyward. They were also, presumably, missing, since yet another series of much larger explosions rocked the camp.

Georgetown, Guyana

“Hah! Motherfuckers missed me again!” Venegas exulted, aloud, as he cut down a half a squad of guards posted at the key Mandela-East Bank intersection. The enemy seemed not to have been expecting it. They got off only a few wild shots before the machine guns mounted atop the three Land Rovers made an end of them.

“Can I
please
get up now?” asked President Paul, still lying across the seat, naked, to the boots of the gunner standing atop him.

“Not until the chief says so, Mr. President,” replied Sergeant Coursus, the submachine gun bearing man to the driver’s right.

“But I’m naked! This is so undignified. I am politically
doomed
if word ever gets out!”

“You’re better where you are,” said Coursus. “But …um …Rogers, you’re about the president’s size. Dig in your pack and find him some trousers he can wear when we can let him up.”

The small convoy stopped at the east side of the Demerara Harbor Bridge, one of the world’s longest floating bridges, covered by buildings on both sides. Venegas was thinking fast and furious.
Just bull our way over? No sign of the enemy in the last several blocks but they might have a heavy gun aimed to cover the bridge. Too big a risk, since we
must
get the president safely to Camp Fulton. Do they have our descriptions? Yeah, probably, but that description’s going to be three vehicles, green, military looking, with machine guns, not one, green, without. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Venegas keyed his microphone. “Okay, cut the chatter. Everybody, pull in your guns and hide them. Coursus, you go first, then me, then Number Three. We reassemble on the other side. Got it?”

“Sure, Chief …Roger, Little Joe.”

It took a couple of minutes to pull in the machine gun, have the gunner sit on President Paul, and doff all helmets, armor, and battle dress jackets. When he turned around and visually confirmed that all was as ready and civilian looking as possible, Coursus ordered his driver around Venegas’s Land Rover and onto the bridge. The driver moved tentatively, at first, until the vehicle commander said, “No, you idjit! We move like this we look like people expecting to be shot at. Innocent, got it? Just drive.”

The driver stepped on the gas, expecting every minute to find a newly grown hole in his head. He was
very
pleased to reach the far side with all his expectations having been disappointed.

Once Venegas saw that the president was over to the other side and safe, or as safe as one could hope for, under the circumstances, he likewise ordered his driver to make the crossing. Whoever was supposed to be on the west bank collecting tolls had apparently deserted his post sometime in the night. This was all to the good, as actually busting through the barrier was likely to attract unwanted attention.

Breathing a heavy sigh of relief once they’d made it over, Venegas ordered the driver to pull in next to the Land Rover carrying the president. The President, Venegas saw through the windows, was hurriedly dressing in a uniform someone had provided him.

Probably Rogers,
Venegas thought.
They’re about the same size.

You know,
thought Venezuelan Marine Corps Corporal Serafimo Lopez,
one vehicle going by, green, of a particular size, wouldn’t be suspicious. Two? That’s suspicious. And when we’re told to watch out for a group of three?

Lopez sat on the ground, at the riverbank in the Houston area of Georgetown. Beside him was a MAG machine gun mounted on a tripod and aimed generally south, toward the big bridge. He slapped the gunner and said, “Emilio, you see another big, boxy, green, station wagon sized vehicle trying to cross that bridge, you fire it up. But don’t, repeat don’t, hit the pontoons the bridge floats on, got it?”

“
Si, Cabo,
” answered the gunner, hunching himself down to make doubly sure his sights were set to engage anything on the bridge.

Venegas, helmeted and again in his body armor, had just finished getting the machine gun back on its pintle when he heard the sound of firing from across the river. He jumped up on the Land Rover’s hardshell roof and stepped to the rear, peering around a sheltering corner. From there he had a good view of the very top of the bridge, as the vehicle on it began to fly to pieces under a relentless hammering coming from the other side. Apparently driverless, the targeted Land Rover veered left, then crashed through the barrier on the bridge, spinning end over end, spilling limp bodies and parts of bodies into the drink.

Venegas’s first impulse—there was too much rage in it to call it a “thought”—was to get back in his gunning position, have his driver back up and,
Kill the son of a bitch who just killed five of my men!

That, however, just wouldn’t do.
I’ve got a mission, goddammit.
He dropped back inside and ordered, “Roll north, then west, following the river and the coast.”

Mouth of the Orinoco River, Venezuela

The Bertram moved slowly, with Kravchenko on the fishing chair to the rear, trolling, and Lada on the foredeck, sunbathing sans bikini top. The scene was as unremarkably innocent as the several tons of arms and explosives below were not.

Rocking gently with the sport fisher’s gentle speed, Baluyev scanned ahead with a pair of binoculars. What he saw was not remotely to his liking; a Venezuelan coastal patrol vessel had a civilian yacht hove to, while uniformed men searched the vessel. They looked, in his eye pieces, quite thorough and very intent. Worse, and the thing that made him absolutely decide not to proceed, was that that was no random search; three more civilian boats swayed in a ragged line, apparently waiting for their turn to be searched.