Countdown: M Day (38 page)

“I was worried about those,” he admitted to himself. “I’m still worried about their air force.”

Most of the battalion was scattered around the airfield, with their looted trucks. Nearly forty more trucks, from cargo to fuel to long beds with trailers, were lined up in groups of three to five north of the strip. Some of those were the dozen he’d started with. Others were newly acquired. Slowly, too slowly, the trucks were being loaded with loot from the dumps.

We’re lucky, too, that the Venezuelans had a mix of ammunition. Most of their people are carrying 7.62 Kalashnikov. Enough of them have 5.45 for us to take two thousand rounds per man, or so. They don’t have the mortar ammunition for our 120’s. But they did have a couple of thousand rounds of Russian 120mm. We can use that, even if the range is comparative shit and the firing tables on both sides all wrong. We’ll figure the right factors for range adjustment, given a little time. For a wonder, we got a few thousand rounds for our light mortars. Fuel, we’ve got now, in abundance. Food is food and we’ve captured enough to feed the battalion for about six months. There was even a pile of mines. Damned considerate of Hugo to provide them, and I’ll tell him so to his face, if I ever get the chance. God knows why they bothered carrying light antiair missiles here—doctrine, I suppose—but thank God they did. I only had twelve of them before. Now we’ve got over a hundred.

And, when the two dozen trucks I sent back for Alpha Company and the rest get here, we’ll move out. Hope there’s …

Cazz stopped thinking and started shouting as, from the west, a flight of four Sukhois rolled into an attack.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

War was so destructive, argued the false prophets of fake

enlightenment, that only a madman would start one.

—Walter Russell Mead

Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

The news of the attack into Venezuelan territory—different not merely in kind but in principle from the mining of her harbors—fell not so much like a thunderclap as like the news of yet another mudslide in Caracas, a thing that left most silent with horror, and others—those most affected—dead.

Outside the palace, people gathered by groups and individuals until there was a mass there as large as that for any preplanned rally. The crowd was silent for the moment, but for a confused murmuring.

And that murmuring,
thought Chavez,
could as easily turn into “hang the bastard”—with me being the bastard in question—if I can’t redirect it and salvage the campaign. Above all, we must get our harbors clear so we can import food. The few little ports the enemy missed mining just aren’t enough.
He listened again to the forming crowd.
And it’s a
bad
sign that they’ve managed to gather so early in the day.

Everyone in Chavez’s conference room
cum
command post stood respectfully as he entered.

“Seats,” he ordered. There was a scraping and shuffling as men, most of them uniformed and most of those overweight, sat down on their well-padded duffs. The atmosphere in the room was far, far past “tense.”Truth be told, it was almost all the way up to panic-stricken.

“All right,” said the president, “what do we do now? Intel, you first.”

A man, uniformed and portly like most of the rest, stood. “Mr. President,” briefed the chief of Venezuela’s intelligence service, “there’s not a lot we
can
do.” It took everything the man had to keep panic out of his own voice. Indeed, it said something good for Intel that he was able to speak as forcefully and openly as he did.

“Navy says Second Marine Brigade is unfit for combat, having spent most of the last four months getting First Brigade ready. Army tells me that there are no forces between Tumeremo and the Orinoco to throw into the mercenaries’ way. They also insist that with the loss of most of their helicopter fleet they can’t pull back the 5th Division or the Parachute brigade from Guyana—the parachute brigade that just
closed
on Guyana, actually, and that the soonest the lead elements of the Novena Division can get into the area is three days from now. Even if we hadn’t moved them to the Colombian border—”

“There’ll be no pullback from Guyana.” Chavez’s tone was absolute, brooking no question or argument.

“Which movement the Colombians have matched and overmatched, Mr. President,” said Hugo’s Chief of the Army Staff, Quintero. “Between the cross border raids you”—the general cleared his throat—“
authorized
FARC to undertake, and the fact that we’ve moved the rest of the army, minus your own guards, to the Maracaibo area, they’ve gotten frightened. There are usually two Colombian divisions in or close to the border region. Now there are four, there or moving there, and the divisions appear to be receiving an additional brigade each. In terms of raw numbers …that’s about a hundred and forty thousand soldiers, Mr. President, against which we have under twenty thousand in the area.”

Chavez looked considerably paler than usual already. Still more color drained from his face at the news. Some of that was perhaps that he’d been spending so much time indoors. More was fear. He felt his revolution hanging in the balance, even as he felt a purely psychosomatic noose tightening around his neck.

This was
not
supposed to happen. It should have been easy. Up until a couple of days ago, it
was
easy. And now the country’s laid out like a whore with her legs spread? Where was the mistake? The correlation of forces in Guyana favored us totally.

Hugo looked intently at his intelligence chief.
You never spotted that battalion that was waiting to cross the border, did you? I wonder why? Did you want us to fail? You never spotted that the enemy could lay mines. I wonder why? And then there are those persistent rumors of high ranking officers being unhappy with me and wanting to do something about it.

Nodding, as if he understood, Chavez looked around for the two personal guards stationed by the door. Pointing at the head of his intelligence service, Hugo’s intent look changed to a glare, his face transforming itself into a mask of rage. His pointing finger trembled as the president said, “Arrest this man. Take him to Yare Prison. If he tries to escape, shoot him.”

The way that was said, between the tone and the look on Chavez’s face, the guards rightly took to mean, simply, “Take him outside and shoot him.”

In the time between his former chief of intelligence being hauled off and the flurry of gunshots from just outside the palace, Chavez said nothing. Nor did he permit anyone else to speak. Instead, he glared at the large map mounted on the wall. The glare was replaced by a smile as soon as he heard the gunshots. The smile grew almost broad as the murmuring buzz from outside the palace walls began to diminish as the people, satisfied with the sacrifice, moved off.

After listening for a moment, Chavez said to Army, “Move the Novena Division to
Ciudad
Guayana, as quickly as possible. We’ll have to delay the enemy some other way until Novena gets there.”

To Nicholas, Chavez said, “Call off FARC and make kissy face with Colombia. Tell them, ‘A terrible misunderstanding.’ Offer them anything they want, within reason.”

“What if FARC won’t back off?” Nicholas asked.

“Then we arrest and shoot their high-living leaders.”

Turning to the Air Chief of Staff, General Ortiz, Hugo asked, “What can you throw at them?”

With the example of the late chief of Intelligence before him, the Air Chief was understandably nervous. Still, he was by background a fighter pilot. Those are rarely the kind of men who can be frightened off all that easily. He arose to his feet.

“Not as much as we’d like, Mr. President,” Ortiz said. Before Chavez could order him shot, as well, he hastened to add, “The problem is multifold. All of the Tucanos, minus the ones we’ve lost, are already forward in Guyana. Because of the logistic issues there, they’ve very limited fuel and ordnance. And they’re far away. And slow.

“None of our F-16’s are serviceable, since the gringos cut off our spares; something I really expected the current regime up there to have corrected by now. They have not, of course.

“Our F-5 fleet is close enough to intervene, but old. And we’ve been using them hard. Most are down for maintenance. They’re not great strike aircraft, in any case.”

Chavez let that go. Yes, he knew they were ancient birds, tired and worn.

“Of our forty-six Sukhois,” Air continued, “fourteen are in for service. Again, we’ve been using them hard, Mr. President. Eleven are currently heading to or returning from a mission. Nine are on station, over Guyana. I’ll have four ready to intervene at Tumeremo in about an hour, and can launch another four every two hours after that, assuming we launch no more missions into Guyana. I can do that until they simply break down from overuse.”

Air, finished, sat down, looking significantly at the Army Chief.

Army said, “If I were that battalion commander, assuming it is a single battalion, I wouldn’t want to get over thirty tons of ordnance dropped on my head every two hours for however long it takes.”

“Which brings me to my next question,” Hugo said. “All this time we’ve been presupposing that there were three or even four battalions of Guyanans led by gringo mercenaries. That’s why we haven’t attacked their base yet, yes? If one of them is here, in Venezuela, I wonder how many beyond that one might not be at their base, either.”

Army shrugged. “Perhaps the late chief of Intelligence could have told you, sir. I can say with considerable certainty, because our troops have run into them in their patrols, that there are some of them, at least, dug in and defending Bartica and points south, along the Essequibo. That, and that their heavy battalion is unlikely to be too far from their base because they can neither hide it, nor support it, very far from there. I can also say, again with considerable certainty, that if you pull our air away from pounding their base area—more importantly, soaring overhead
threatening
to pound anything that moves—we might find that heavy battalion showing up somewhere we don’t want them to show up at.

“I can also say—and this time with complete certainty—that our troops at Kaieteur Falls have barely budged from their airstrip there, so we don’t know if the enemy heavy battalion is at the base, east of it, or even considerably south of it.”

Hugo pounded the conference table hard enough to upset coffee cups. “And
why
are they still sitting on their asses there? Do I need to have another officer shot?”

“It’s not unwillingness, sir,” Army replied. “There are no roads from Kaieteur and where that brigade is supposed to move to. He can’t send more than a fraction of his men very far from there or they’ll starve.”

Hugo’s eyes narrowed. He stood and walked around the conference table to the far wall. There, he peered closely at the map. His finger tapped it. “I see an airport between the Potaro River and Mahdiana Eagle Mountain. If he’s supplying by air at Kaieteur, why not there?”

“Dirt field, Mr. President,” the Army Chief answered. “Dirt and short. We can use it, with small aircraft, lightly loaded. But not enough to supply more than a battalion.”
And a battalion would be tough. Moreover, for every ton we land there we could land almost two someplace else. But you’re not going to listen to that, are you?

“Then move a fucking battalion there!”
Chavez nearly screamed, pounding the map with a clenched fist. “And arrange some animal transport to support a second battalion there! Take the fucking initiative away from the enemy!
Jesus,
how did any of you people ever get promoted to general? Is the highest competent officer in the army a fucking major?”

“Yes, Mr. President …I mean, no, Mr. Presid …I’ll give the orders.”

Hugo turned to his foreign minister, Nicholas, “Speaking of which, have the Brazilians agreed to let us rent vehicles and buy
food,
at least, to ship across the border?”

“Oddly enough, Mr. President,” Nicholas replied, “they were supposed to sign the agreement this afternoon. About the time they should have gotten the word about Tumeremo, they backed off. I begin to think they doubt our eventual success.”

“Portuguese-speaking bastards,” Hugo sneered. His face scrunched up in thought for a moment. Then he said, “Get one of my planes, one of the smaller ones, to take me to Kaieteur.”

Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

At least some supplies were getting through by vehicle from Georgetown. It was irregular, intermittent, and rarely exactly what was needed, but it portended better things to come.

At least, it did,
thought Larralde, returning to his command post after an interminable meeting at brigade.

“You’ll be pleased to learn, Sergeant Major,” said Larralde to Mao, as he walked through the door, “that we have permission to leave the perimeter.”

Arrivillaga sat up at the makeshift desk the troops had thrown together for him. His face immediately grew suspicious. “Why?”

“Because a column of trucks was ambushed two nights ago on the road to Georgetown, and we lost three of them. Three, need I add, that we couldn’t afford to lose?”

“The gringos?”

Larralde shook his head no. “Brigade doesn’t think so. We didn’t find a single white or Hispanic body, and the one prisoner said it was Guyanan reserves, acting on their own. ‘242 Company,’ he said.”

Mao scratched his head, trying to remember a long ago intelligence brief. “Hmmm …there were only four of those companies. And that one was based …mmm …between Georgetown and New Amsterdam, yes?”

“Correct,” Larralde agreed.

“What took brigade so long?” Arrivillaga asked.

“They had to work out how far forward we’d sweep, against how far the Marines would go. We’re going as far as the north edge of Friendship, a little town about a day’s road march from here, or about three days moving tactically. The Marines are not to go south of three hundred meters north of that.”

Mao nodded his head. “When do we move out?”

Larralde gave a chuckle that was totally devoid of mirth. “Two and a half hours ago, according to the order. You see, they didn’t give it to me until the meeting was over and …”

“Right,” the sergeant major agreed. He’d been in the Army a long time; this was nothing new. “I’ll start working on finding that time machine. In the interim, will as soon as possible work for you, sir?”

“I think that’ll do fine.”

“As soon as possible,” in Mao’s capable hands, turned out to be under an hour.

“Would have been less, sir,” he informed Larralde, “except that, since we’re in brigade reserve, brigade had them digging a bunker …oh, not just any old bunker, no, sir. This one was fully thirty meters by fifteen, with …ah, fuggit. We’re ready.”

Mao had the company lined up in a well-spaced column, northwest of the control tower and pointed toward the Demerara River. They’d move from there to East Bank Road, appropriately named since it paralleled the Demerara’s east bank, then spread out in an echelon right to sweep the road from the riverbank to a line roughly eight hundred meters from it.

Before Larralde could give the order—“move out”—the company heard a big jet coming in from the left, already with its landing gear down. Resupply was always welcome, so, as one, every man and woman in the company turned head and eyes to face it. Larralde and Mao did, as well. Then they, like everyone else in the command, uttered something like, “Oh, shit,” or, “ouch,” or, in Mao’s case, “Motherfucker,” before immediately turning away in pain.

Thus they missed, as nearly every soldier on the base missed, the sight of the airplane—it was a chartered Rutaca Boeing 737-230—flipping over to one side and plowing into the ground, before spreading flames, bodies and body parts, and an awful lot of equipment, from the southeast point of the main airfield to past the control tower.