Countdown: M Day (54 page)

But how likely is it,
Cruz mused,
that someone on the mountains will scan one hundred and eighty degrees and know what he’s seeing? And how likely that any given one of those high rise offices will be occupied at this hour of the morning? Hell, if they’re up and in those places at all it’s probably because they’re fucking somebody they shouldn’t be fucking And besides, if they haven’t reported us yet, or don’t in the next thirty seconds, they’re too late.

Von Ahlenfeld consulted his watch.
About time.
He signaled for the radio to be set to high power. Then, switching from intercom to radio, he ordered, “Report.”

“Two in position …Three; ready …Four, up …Five, let’s do it.”

“Gentlemen …good luck and godspeed. Now fucking
CHARGE!”

Cruz half-dropped the ramp and gunned his engines. Hip Number One went from a couple of miles an hour to one hundred and fifty-six miles an hour in just a few seconds. Back in the cargo hold, the entire load of soldiers was forcibly bent at the waist, held in position only by their tightly cinched seatbelts. Once their inertia matched the speed of the helicopter, they straightened up again. Then they unbuckled as quickly as possible and lay down on the deck. Better to risk a broken bone or two than what was about to come through the cabin.

This is
sooo
going to suck
, thought Rattus Hampson.

A veritable Charybdis of suckage,
mused Lava, tugging off the headphones connected to the helicopter and pulling over his ears a different set with a boom mike to communicate with his ground troops by radio.

“You guys can’t even begin to imagine how much this is going to suck!” shouted Cruz. Then he laughed, maniacally.

Fort Tiuna passed below in a blur. Over and past highways, cemeteries, monuments, and hospitals they flew. Cruz paid no attention to the folds of the ground now, except to stay enough above them not to crash. Speed was everything.

The Francisco Fajardo Highway passed below, then the marquee lights of the theater district. And then they were above Miraflores Palace. Cruz put on the figurative brakes, causing the cargo to scrunch forward, cursing.

A quick glance left told the pilot,
Good, no more than a few hundred people milling around Miraflores Park.

Cruz looked down, confirming he was hovering directly over the palace’s central, partially palm treed courtyard. Then he almost completely cut power to the rotor before unbuckling himself and crouching as low as the cramped space of the cockpit would allow. Strobe flashes—rockets being launched by some of the other Hips—lit the cockpit from the outside.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

A man shall and must be valiant;

he must march forward, and quit himself like a man,

—trusting imperturbably in the appointment and
choice

of the upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all.

Now and always, the completeness of his victory over

Fear will determine how much of a man he is.

—Thomas Carlyle,

On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

Marielena, the late Sergeant Major Arrivillaga’s cousin, had a room at the palace. That was one of the major reason’s Mao had mistakenly assumed she was one of Chavez’s mistresses. True, she was only a secretary, but she was a
personal
secretary, and Chavez always wanted his personal secretary kept very close.

She’d drifted off to sleep worried sick about her favorite cousin and at least mildly concerned with his commanding officer, Larralde. She knew the mercenaries had crushed and routed the brigade of paratroopers—she was too close to the center of power not to know—but of personal word there’d been none. Certainly Hugo had been too proud to establish communications with the mercenaries and they, themselves, had shown no interest so far in communicating with Caracas. And the normal routes for such things, the Red Cross or the Swiss government, were still keeping to a hands off approach.

Somebody, though,
the woman had thought before sleep took her,
had better start talking to somebody or this thing will never end. We should never have started …

Her dreams were fitful and disturbed, full of images sounds either partially or wholly misunderstood. Thus, when the sounds of the helicopter over the palace, coupled with those of several more moving to spots around it, awakened her, she thought for a moment that she was still dreaming.

Cruz felt his stomach leap up as the chopper fell.

The tail rotor was the first thing to hit the tiled roof of the palace. It shattered, throwing its fragments for the most part into the southern wing. The tail boom then sheared, but stayed attached just long enough to push the nose somewhat downward. This caused the five blades of the main rotor to strike at the roofs of the other three sides of the palace and to begin chopping down the palm trees that graced the courtyard on those sides. With sounds partially composed of breaking tiles and chopping wood, but more of self-destructing transmission and shattering fiberglass, the rotor blades mostly disintegrated, sending deadly shards of ragged composite through everything in their lines of flight. More than a few ricocheted back, making jagged holes suddenly appear in the hull. From outside of the helicopter someone screamed with heartbreaking agony, a Venezuelan guard chopped in two by a piece of flying blade.

Descending at a speed that was, oh, way the hell out of anything the designers had had in mind, the landing struts collapsed. Before they did, one tire burst with a sound like a cannon shot. The helicopter began to roll to one side before the spinning rotor struck at the columns and then the ground, forcing it upright again. Still more chunks of deadly spinning debris flew through the air, to clang off walls and careen back. The already perforated hull of the helicopter began to resemble a colander. Someone inside cried out with pain.

Cruz smelled spilled fuel.
Fuck it; I’d rather be chopped or shot than burned.
He half stood and shouted, “Getoffgetoffgetthefuckoff!”

Hampson was next up. From his prone position on the deck he leapt to his feet and charged down the ramp, rifle in both hands and muzzle forward. “Move it, people!” he shouted.

Through his NOD’s Hampson saw a single guard, shaking in shock. He felt sorry for the man, even as he cut him down with a burst from the hip. The Venezuelan was tossed against the wall by the impacts. Before the dying guard slid to the floor, leaving a bloodstained section of wall behind him, the sergeant major was on one knee, aiming outward, rifling swinging first this way and then that, seeking a threat.

Behind the sergeant major a small flood of soldiers poured forth over the ramp, boots ringing on the metal. Two of them dashed under arches held up by square columns. Their boots pattered across the tile and then they were into the palace and moving on to the southwestern corner, under a tower. This was to prevent both escape and reinforcement from outside. Two more teams of two did the same for the southeastern and northeastern corners. Out of Hampson’s vision, a fourth pair emerged from the forward door, scurried past von Ahlenfeld, and made for the northwestern corner. Automatic rifle fire drummed the air as those forward teams killed anyone in their path. With the flash of grenades, windows shattered from shrapnel and concussion. This was the strikers making sure of their posts before taking them.

Hampson mentally counted the men off and, coming up one short, added that to the earlier scream and came up with,
One wounded inside.
He turned and bounded back inside the collanderized hull, emerging a few moments later dragging a wounded trooper by his combat harness.

You can make a Delta a sergeant major but he’s still a Delta,
Hampson thought, as he began cutting away cloth to get at a ragged wound.

Of the remaining nineteen men, including Hampson, the wounded man, and the three flight crew, a dozen, in three teams of four, followed hot on the heels of the men seizing the corners, barring those who had gone for the northwestern one. Once there, they stormed upward, then began cleaning out the upper floors of the building, in a counterclockwise fashion, with bullet, bayonet, and hand grenade. Shocked men screamed out in Spanish with their fear and pain. So did more than a few women: maids, cooks, mistresses, secretaries, and a bureaucrat or two. A Spanish speaker with each team shouted out, repeatedly, “Assemble in the courtyard. Keep your hands open and above your heads. Armed persons will be killed on sight. Assemble in the courtyard …”

Cruz and his flight crew, supplemented by one Second Battalion man, took charge of the prisoners as they emerged from the palace, pale, fearful, and—often enough—weeping. Each was roughly and rudely searched before being flung face down to the dirt. There, deadly serious troopers pulled hands behind backs and flex-cuffed the wrists. Objections were slapped down and resistance met with tortured joints. The shots and explosions coming from the upper stories helped ensure cooperation even as they set the prisoners to more trembling and weeping.

Bolting upright, half awake, Marielena thought at first that the helicopter crash was part of her most recent dream. Only when she felt the blast of a grenade coming from some room down the corridor did she realize that, no, this was far too real to be any dream. Bit by bit, information fought its way through to her mind—the sounds of many helicopters, the shouted commands in English, the stream of tracers that seemed to pass by her bedroom window, unidentifiable explosions coming from outside the palace.

Oh, God, we’ve pissed off the United States and the gringos have come to spank us like naughty little boys and girls!

That thought was followed by a more frightening one.
Hugo! “Regime change.” Imperialism. They’ve come to kill or capture Hugo! He, he above all, must be saved.

Lack of loyalty was not one of the woman’s failings, if, indeed, she had any. She jumped from the bed and took a robe from where it lay, folded over the back of a chair. Pulling it on, Marielena ran the few steps to her door and listened for a moment. The sounds of fighting—or perhaps of massacre—she heard did nothing but frighten her from opening the door. As they intensified, she thought,
The longer I wait, the harder it is.
She opened the door and stuck her head out.

To her left, someone shouted in Spanish, commands to move to the courtyard or be killed. Near the shouter, two men—
big
men; in Venezuelan terms, huge ones—kicked open a door. Another, leaning back against the wall, tossed something into the room thus opened. The door kickers flattened themselves against the wall to either side as a cloud of thick black smoke erupted on the wave of a blast. Then they went in, firing.

They won’t shoot a woman, not if she’s not doing something offensive. Be the woman they expect, girl; scream and run with your hair flying! Save Hugo.

It didn’t require any great acting skill for Marielena. More than anything except to save the head of her country, she
wanted
to run, screaming, with her hair flying. She did; out the door and down the corridor towards Chavez’s suite, the whole time shrieking like a madwoman, hands raised to the sky, with her hair and robe, both, trailing behind her.

Almost at the far end, a beefy arm reached out and yanked Marielena out of the main corridor and into a side one. She sucked in air to begin to scream. Then she saw who had pulled her off of her course.

“Mr. President,” she said, as calmly as she could manage, which wasn’t very, “the gringos are here and they’ve come to kill you! You must get to safety.”

Where Marielena had had to awaken from a dream, Hugo Chavez had been fully awake and pacing his rooms when the helicopter had stopped overhead and begun its crashing descent. The president had been alone, having sent his mistress of the day to her own quarters lest his pacing disturb her rest.

Hearing the crash, Hugo’s first thought had been,
Coup. Those bastard generals and admirals are trying to get rid of me. But …no …no I know how a coup sounds and that’s not it.

He’d raced then for the ornate and gilded pistol he kept in the drawer of his nightstand. Tucking that in his belt, he knelt down and reached under the bed for the rifle he habitually kept there. He took care to jack the bolt as slowly and quietly as he could, consistent with feeding a round.

Standing, Chavez hesitated in indecision, trying to make some sense of the sounds that seemed to come from everywhere.
No, no coup. That would have come by ground, surrounded the palace openly, and presented an ultimatum
He listened closely at a series of bangs, whooshes, and serious blasts coming from somewhere to the northwest.
And it wouldn’t be preemptively rocketing the honor guard’s barracks across the street, since the guard itself would hesitate until its commander figured out who was going to win out in the coup. If, indeed, they weren’t at the heart of the thing.

No, that’s not fair. The Honor Guard is
loyal,
even if no one else is.

Unmistakably English commands rang from the courtyard.
So, the United States or the mercenaries based in Guyana that have been such a pain in the ass? No, probably not the United States; their government loves me the more I shit on them and the more I bash America in public. It’s the mercenaries. And they’re going to want me dead.

So …run or fight and die?
Hugo walked to the window that looked east. There, at the intersection of Urdeneta and Eighth, a Hip, the same model his own forces used, was disgorging a thin stream of troops. Those troops ran as if they were in heavy armor, something his own people rarely wore.

Most likely, the others I hear are doing the same, in between bouts of shooting up the town. The palace is surrounded and there is no practical escape above ground. Is there a place to hide? Yes …or at least maybe …down below …but can I get to it? If I can get to it, can I get to the tunnel that links with the metro station? If I can, is the exit inside or outside of the attackers’ perimeter? Are they down there in the station? I’ve got to risk it; If I can get to the people and speak to them I can assemble a militia of a hundred thousand to drive the invaders off. Then, with some gringo bodies to display, I can pin the blame on the United States for everything, to include the fiasco in Guyana. I don’t even have to make logical sense; everyone likes to blame the gringos. And then, maybe, just maybe, I might politically survive.

The palace was hardly a maze of secret passages. Yet, given that Venezuela has seen its share of coup and countercoup, it was the rare chief of state who hadn’t taken some effort to make an escape possible. That’s why there was a tunnel on the lowest level. Indeed, that tunnel had helped foil Chavez’s own coup, back in 1992. It was also why it was possible to move from some rooms, at least, to others, without using the colonnade surrounding the courtyard. From his own quarters, Chavez went into a closet and emerged in the adjacent room.

I’m willing to bet that one was only put in so some president past could sneak a maid in for a quickie without her being seen. And probably maintained by most presidents past for similar reasons.
Mentally, Hugo sneered.
I’ve got my failings, but at least I don’t exploit the women of the poorer classes. Fuck them, yes, and why not, since I’m of the same class? But exploit them? No.

From that trysting room, Chavez opened a door to a narrow service corridor. He listened for a moment, straining through the sounds of helicopters, muzzle blasts, grenades, and commands shouted in hateful English.
No …no one’s in this corridor yet.
He walked along it until it bent inward, toward the courtyard. Here, the sounds of the gringos were strong. He waited, in indecision, until he heard a shrieking woman—
Marielena, I think
—fleeing down the colonnade. Wondering if it was the right thing to do, let alone the smart thing, Chavez snaked out an arm, grabbed her, and spun her into his temporary shelter.

“Mr. President …”

“Hey, where’d that woman go?” asked the grenadier who tossed the last grenade.

“What woman?” asked his team leader, Sergeant Emanuel Casavedes, nicknamed “Santa Ana” or “Auntie,” for shorts.

“The one who ran off screaming from two doors down. She was there, and loud, and then she was gone, and quiet.”

“Dunno. Was she armed?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Then ignore her. Next room; standard entry.”

The third member repeated his shout. “Assemble in the courtyard. Keep your hands open and above your heads. Armed persons will be killed on sight. Assemble in the courtyard …”