Countdown: M Day (57 page)

“Shit. I was an All-Soviet Champion swimmer in my youth, but that was a fuck of a long time ago.”

“Right …for all of us, everything was a fuck of a long time ago. We’re buckling the wounded into life vests already.”

“Yeah …good idea …even …Christ!”

As close to the cockpit as he was, von Ahlenfeld could see the fist-sized tracers flashing ahead before turning into explosions on the sea’s rough surface. He was half-tossed to starboard as Borsakov pushed the Hip into a violent shift to port.

It was automatic, that port move, conditioned by decades of training and experience. It was also just a bit too violent. The blades of the rotor skimmed the water, tossing the Hip into the beginnings of a sharp counterclockwise spin. Borsakov worked the foot pedals hard, recovering before he lost complete control of the aircraft. Even so, the transmission began to whine as if damaged from the shock, and the helicopter itself shuddered as if the blades were starting to shred.

“Oh, fuck!” Borsakov exclaimed. “We are not, repeat
not
going to make it to the Netherland’s Antilles. Break, break …Baluyev? Borsakov.”

“Baluyev here.”

“Turn around. Don’t spare the horses. We’re dunking.”

El Libertador Air Base (AKA Palo Negro Airport),

Maracay, Venezuela

“All right,” Ortiz agreed, “the air force is in.”
It’s either that, or we find ourselves very much on the outs.

“What do you want me to do?”

“In the first place,” Quintero said, “the navy wants its Marines back. Suspicious bastards seem to think that without a ground combat force they’ll find themselves cut out of the political process.”

And so they would be,
though Ortiz.

“Okay, so?”

“So suspend combat operations.
All
combat operations. We need to make peace with Guyana, which is to say with the mercenaries. The fewer of them we kill, and the sooner we stop trying, the sooner and better that peace will be.”

“All right.” Ortiz held his hand over the receiver and ordered, “Cease offensive operations. Ground all planes,” to the operations crew.

“Consider that done,” he told Quintero.

Su-30, One Hundred and Nine Kilometers

North-northeast of Caracas, Venezuela

“Did you hit it?” Rodriguez asked.

“Not a chance,” answered Barrai. “Maybe got close.”

Rodriguez snarled. “This thing turns like a hippopotamus in ballet slippers. I’ll swing around for another …”

The radio crackled. “Victor Five One, this is base.”

“Five one,” Barrai replied.

“You’re mission is aborted. Come on home.”

“Roger.”
How grand. This hot rodder will not now have a chance to drive me into the sea.
“Juan, orders. Head home. We’re done.”

Hip Number Four, Seventy-nine Kilometers

Northwest of Caracas

“Colonel,” Borsakov said via the intercom, “I can hold this thing steady for a few minutes. You’ve got to get the raft inflated and your people out, fast.”

“What about your folks?” Lava asked.

“I’m sending my co-pilot and engineer out with you. For me, I’ll ride the thing a couple of hundred meters off then ditch it.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry about me. All-Soviet Champion, remember? So what if it was fifty years ago? I’ll be fine.”

“Roger,” Lava agreed.

“Good. The ramp’s going down. Start unassing the helicopter, now. Break, break. Baluyev, turn around …”

I
knew
this was too fucking good to be true
, thought von Ahlenfeld. “Konstantin, get our people off!”

Betram Sport Fisher, Eighty-one Kilometers

Northwest of Caracas, Venezuela

Baluyev started, unaccountably, to laugh. The laughter grew, even over the muted roar of the boat’s engine.

“What’s so funny?” Litvinov asked.

“You can’t hear it?”

“I can’t hear shit but the motor.”

“Wait a few minutes then,” the praporschik advised. “You will.”

Litvinov did as told, as the boat proceeded to the southeast. At first he couldn’t quite believe his ears. As the boat progressed, he couldn’t deny them. Somewhere, maybe a half mile away, a group of people, twenty or thirty of them, were singing:

“Always look on the bright side of life …”

Providence, Guyana

From somewhere to the north, the loudspeakers were playing. The music could be heard, distantly and dimly, even this far back: “ …This is the end …beautiful friend …This is the end …my only friend …”

Sunlight filtered through the trees and down on Lana’s jungle-shrouded and camouflage-netted command post. And it
was
her command post. She had First Battalion now. She’d tried to turn it over to the XO, after cajoling and shaming the troops out of their proto-mutiny. That worthy had demurred, insisting, “When it came down to it, Lana, the boys wouldn’t listen to me. They
would
listen to you. The one who should be in command is the one who
can
command, the one with the
mana.
Always.” Stauer had ratified the XO’s call, making a special effort to find her at First Battalion’s command post, south of the town, and pin on her collar her husband’s old rank.

Already fighting had broken out in the capital between Guyanans and the Marines, as the regiment sealed the place off and the Marines were forced to give up their internal security duties to defend the perimeter.

Lana was in the CP now, hot and bloated and miserable. She was sick, too, with the loss of her husband, and not a little upset that the most they’d been able to do for his body was pack it in ice, drive it around the companies to let the men get a last view, and then put it in a nylon body bag and into the regimental cemetery before it began to swell and stink.

Wiping away a sudden flood of tears, Lana vowed to herself that they’d give him a proper service as soon as they could, as soon as the war was finally over Through the sniffles, she promised softly, “We’ll exhume you and do a proper pyre, Seamus. You deserve that … .the boys deserve that …oh, God, why …”

Schiebel popped his head into the CP, affecting not to notice Lana’s sodden face. “We got a call from a forward outpost, Lana,” he said. It was an Israeli thing, perhaps, but she preferred to be called by her given name, rank be damned. “They’ve got a white flag and a party of three, approaching our position.”

Lana didn’t have the rank or the position—
or the information and insight, for that matter
, she thought—for this one. The Venezuelans had been blindfolded and told to wait. Wait they had, for four hours while Stauer was rounded up.

“No,” Stauer had insisted, to the Venezuelan Marine, de Castro. “No, I’m not letting you go, scot free. You want to eat, you surrender. You’ll get repatriated when Venezuela pays for every goddamned twig and building wrecked and every round of ammunition expended to defeat your wanton aggression. You don’t like that, fine. Stay where you are and die.

“On the other hand, my people, in
Ciudad
Guyana, get repatriated on chartered flights and your people don’t interfere in the slightest.”

De Castro, deeply ashamed, though only at the defeat, not at the aggression, replied, “I’ll have to consult with higher authority.”

“The junta that’s replaced Chavez?” Stauer asked.

The Marine nodded, shallowly. “Yes, them.”

“Inform them that weapons are cheap and replaceable; trained men quite expensive and hard to replace. Especially when you’re facing a probable civil war in your own country. And, by the way, we’re keeping your arms. Don’t try wrecking them if you ever want to see home.”

De Castro sighed. He’d expected no better but his superiors and Caracas had insisted he try. “What about the civilians here who supported us?”

Stauer shook his head. “They stay, so they can be duly arrested, tried and shot for treason. Do this place a
world
of good, too. More important, it will make anyone who thinks about supporting you the
next
time you try this think twice, while denying you a cadre of people to use to keep fucking with Guayana. Live with it.”

“Vae victis,”
muttered de Castro.

EPILOGUE

I

Camp Street Jail, Georgetown, Guyana

The jail was a brightly colored, cheerful seeming—at least from the outside, razor wire encircled hell hole. This wasn’t made any better by the frequent rattle of musketry—a new volley and a single following shot approximately every ten minutes for the last two days—that announced to the town that yet another collaborator or traitor has been stood against a wall and shot.

So much for abolishing the death penalty in 2010,
thought Catherine Person, sitting on the bare floor of an unfurnished cell, awaiting her own call. She tried to be cheerful, amidst the dirt and squalor of the compound. Yet still every volley made her shudder. Sometimes, even, she wept, though as softly as she was able.

Two hours ago her boss from the embassy, Major Pakhamov had come to her, bearing the news that, no, there was nothing he could do. And that, yes, he’d
tried.

I believe him; I really do. No one’s listening to reason around here. No one’s
. . .

The thought was cut off by footsteps, loud on the hard floor outside her cell. The steps stopped close by, followed by the sound of a bar door being squeaked open. She looked up to see three uniformed men, her countrymen, waiting with grim faces. One of them carried a short length of cheap rope.

“I didn’t
do
anything,” she insisted, as hopelessly as she’d insisted in front of the drum head court that had convicted her of treason and collaboration.

“You did enough,” answered the senior of the prison guards, a sergeant. “You must come with us now. Can you walk, or must you be carried?”

She began to rise from the floor, trembling, suddenly weak, and unsteady. Two of the guard moved briskly to stand to either side of her, while the third, the sergeant, stepped behind her and pulled her hands back. Her wrists were forcibly crossed and then roughly bound.

At that, that final, irrefutable announcement that her life had come to an early end, Catherine’s knees began to buckle. The flanking guards grasped her arms, holding her upright, if not exactly standing.

“Take her,” the sergeant ordered.

As they reached the cell door, from further inside the courtyard sounded yet another volley, followed by another single shot. Catherine’s chin dropped to her chest as, again, tears began to flow. “I didn’t
do
anything,” she whispered.

Though, of course, she had.

II

Cemetery, Camp Fulton, Guyana

The regimental band played a slow, German dirge as the First Battalion marched in five blocks along the curving road that led to the cemetery. Behind the battalion, itself, also formed into their own ad hoc marching units, came some hundreds of other members of the regiment; mostly those who cared personally.

Few of the men, and none of the women, knew the words to the dirge. Only Nagy, Thor, and their few fellow Huns could sing along:

“Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden

Einen bessern findst du nit …”

For the rest, they had to content themselves with humming along. In its own way, as loud as it was, arising from a thousand or more, that was more impressive than singing would have been. At the very least, the lack of articulation expressed the universal grief better.

The battalion, and friends, marched under the command of the XO. Lana …any of them would have carried her on their backs before letting her walk, even if she hadn’t been in such an advanced stage of pregnancy. No, she didn’t walk; she rode in an open topped Land Rover, driven by Dumisani and with Dani Viljoen seated in the back beside her.

All cried out for the time being, Lana wore mufti. Battle dress was insufficiently formal for the occasion and there’d been no time to get a maternity dress uniform made up. She rode just behind the band, itself fourth in the order of march, cocooned within the mournful music and the still more mournful humming.

He so loved his fucking Hun music,
she thought.
Well, that and the Irish. Bastard; you promised to be careful.

At that, the tears began to flow again. Viljoen put a beefy arm around her shuddering form, pulling her into his shoulder. With his other hand he stroked her face gently. “There, there …”

She nodded then, unaccountably, giggled for a moment. Viljoen thought she was giggling at her own emotions, her “weaknesses.” It wasn’t that.

I just realized; these two are the only real friends in the battalion I can have anymore. At least with them, no one’s going to be able to accuse me of sleeping with the help.

Lana realized they were at the cemetery’s gated entrance from the change in sound as the leading companies turned right to march slowly through the gate. She wiped her eyes quickly, then sat upright, at attention. It just wouldn’t do to let them see her hunched over and sniveling. Viljoen, understanding, removed his arm and, likewise, sat up ramrod straight.

The cemetery glowed with a couple of hundred tiki torches Gordon had scrounged up from somewhere. The torches flickered in the night, half for light and half to keep off the mosquitoes. In Lana’s view, the first company, Alpha, passed through a gap left in the torches, then peeled off to the right from the straight line of march to follow the curving circle they defined. The others did likewise, until her own vehicle reached the gap. Behind her, the trailing companies swung left, toward the five 105s the artillery battery had donated to the cause.

Dumi drove straight, to where Stauer, the staff, Chaplain Wilson, the RSM, and Sergeant Major George waited. Behind them a great pyramidal pyre of wood stood, atop it a crude wooden casket holding the nylon bag that held the remains of her husband. No one but those few people had been allowed to have anything to do with exhuming Reilly’s body, or placing it in the casket or the casket on the pyre. It had been in the ground for some time, now, and stank. Badly. By plan, not fortune, it was downwind of where Dumi stopped the vehicle.

Viljoen dismounted and raced around to get Lana’s door and help her step down. As her foot touched ground Stauer called the staff to “Present … . Arms.” He had them order arms as soon as Lana nodded. He then walked over and helped Viljoen guide Lana to a folding chair, set up under a stretched out tarp. Dumi drove off as soon as she was seated, while Viljoen and Stauer stood, flanking Lana.

At Stauer’s nod, Chaplain Wilson stood forth. Looking first at Lana, Wilson swept his gaze over the half circle of military mourners. “It is said,” he began, “that no one is truly gone from us until we have forgotten them in our hearts. In this case, that will never happen …”

Even without the sequential booming of the guns, no one who wasn’t standing next to her really noticed Lana’s heartbroken sobbing. There was barely a man there who hadn’t joined her. If there were one or two, Taps got to them.

With the final bugle call dying slowly in the night, Stauer bent down. “Lana,” he said, “I can light the—”

She shook her head. “No …no, I’ll …do it. But if you and Dani could help me stand?”

As they were helping her to her feet, Gordon stepped forward, bearing a torch in his right hand. She took it from him, a little uncertainly. The uncertainty disappeared as he stepped back and extended his left hand, which held a lighter. He held the lighter to the torch, flicked it, and held the flame to the combustible material wrapped around the stalk of the thing until it sprang to life on its own. Then, Stauer bearing her up on one side and Viljoen on the other, she walked forward to the pyre. As she came closer, she could smell that the wood had been liberally doused with some kind of fuel, gasoline or kerosene, most likely. She threw the torch onto the pyre, about midway up. It sat there a moment, flickering alone in the semi dark. Then, suddenly, the fuel caught, causing flame to race from the single torch outward to all sides. Before she had taken even half a step back, the single flame had grown to a pillar of fire, lighting the night even while casting long shadows on the ground, where men, women, and guns stood. As Stauer, Vilgoen, and Lana’s shadows slid across the green-covered earth, the band struck up the old French march,
“La Victoire est
à
Nous.”

They waited until the fire had pretty much burned itself out. Others, not Lana, would sift through the ashes for Reilly’s bones and recognizable ashes to place them in a container much smaller, though altogether nicer, than the crude casket. That would then be buried in the spot that had once held his body.

While waiting for the fire to die, Stauer had searched the ranks for his wife, Phillie. Catching her eye, he motioned her over with a nod of his head. “Why don’t you stay with her, tonight?” he’d suggested in a whisper. “She really shouldn’t be alone.”

“I don’t know,” Phillie answered, doubtfully. “We’ve always been pretty good friends but she knows I never much liked
him
.”

“That won’t matter now,” her husband assured her. “Really.”

“You’ll be okay with the kids?”

“Well, duh.”

The troops marched behind now, with the band trailing and playing something somewhat more upbeat; “Sacred War
.”
Only the Russians knew that one.

Viljoen sat up front, in the Land Rover, next to Dumisani. This was fine by him as, gay or not, he really wasn’t all that good at the whole ever-so-caring-and-sensitive thing. He did care, but showing it? That came harder.
Let Phillie take care of all that.

For her part, Phillie just held the weeping Lana in her arms, trying—if not generally succeeding—in comforting her. Suddenly, she felt Lana’s body stiffen. The next second Lana sat bolt upright, eyes saucer-wide.

“Not home,” she said.

“What?” Phillie asked.

“Not”—shudder—“home”—shudder—“hospital”—shudder …“I’m having the fucking baby.”

Phillie blanched. “Oh, Christ. I’m not that kind of nurse. Ummm …shit …ummm …Dumi, stop the car! Stopitstopitstopit.”

Phillie stood upright in the Land Rover, faced to the rear, and shouted out, “Send Doc Joseph here. Stat. I mean fast. I mean …Dddoooccc!”

Within a minute or so, Joseph arrived at the side of the Land Rover. Unceremoniously, Viljoen stood, reached over the side of the vehicle, hauled the medico in bodily and placed him in the back. Dumi slammed on the gas, racing toward the hospital, which was still in tents in an arc to the north.

Sergeant Major George watched the vehicle speed off for all of perhaps five seconds. Then, putting two and two together—or perhaps subtracting one from two—shouted, “Battalion …double time … .march! Follow that …ah, fuggit; you know what to do.”

Airfield, Camp Fulton, Guyana

Maybe I didn’t much like Reilly,
Stauer thought, watching an Antonov taxi onto the newly cleared airfield, delivering Ryan’s team back from Colombia. The other one, also now released by Colombia from its internment, would be along later in the day, carrying, if the Venezuelans were to be believed, the first increment of their reparations, some 7 tons of gold bullion.
Maybe I didn’t like the son of a bitch, but I miss him.

And I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. Lana’s got the devotion of First Battalion, and to keep them happy we’re going to have to leave her in command there. I wonder, though, does she have his kind of finesse and drive? Time will tell, I suppose. No matter, there’s nothing much to be done about it; they
will
have her or they’ll have nobody. Fucking anarchists!

Tough on First’s old XO, too. Not his fault that Reilly’s
mana
descended on Lana rather than him. Still, he cheered up considerably when I told him we were raising two, maybe three, more infantry battalions and he could have one of them.

Lots of expansion coming, and Venezuela’s going to pay for all of it and then some. The bastards.

Stauer heard behind him the distinctive cough of a Land Rover whose days are numbered. By the time he’d turned away from the airfield, RSM Joshua was dismounting from an ambulance driven by Corporal Manduleanu.
Hmmm …going to overcome his professional scruples, I wonder.

“Curb your filthy thoughts, sir,” Joshua called out. “I needed a ride and the corporal volunteered to give me one …” For a moment, the RSM looked uncharacteristically confused. “Wait, that didn’t come out quite right.”

Stauer’s teeth flashed. “Oh, I’m
sure.
”

Joshua’s eyes narrowed. “If you think, sir …”

Stauer waved it off. He pointed with his chin, half changing the subject with, “Has she decided what she wants to do, now that the emergency’s over.”

“Nah. Confused as ever.”

She’s not the only one.

“How’s Lana?” Stauer asked.

A beaming Joshua answered, “She and the baby are fine. This despite the fact that nearly a thousand drunken louts are camped out around the maternity tent, serenading, if that’s quite the term, mother and child. Yes, before you ask, of
course
with the band. And your chief medic is drunker than the rest. Seems he never delivered a baby before. For that matter, so’s your wife, and for the same reason.

“Oh, and you know how Lana’s never quite had a nickname?”

“Sure.”

Joshua’s smile grew quite broad. “By popular acclaim, she is now, officially, ‘Mother Superior.’”

“She’s not even Catholic,” Stauer objected.

“I know,” the RSM chuckled. “That’s makes it all the better.”

“She’s gonna hate it.”

“Makes it better still.”

Stauer cocked his head, smiling beatifically. “
Yeah
.”

   *   *   *   

A brief note on the geography of Guyana, as presented:

Folks, it’s wrong. Oh, sure, mostly it’s right, but I’m sure it’s wrong, at least here and there. I just can’t tell you where. I used Google maps, some I dug out of the Brandt guidebook for Guyana, the ITMB map of Guyana and the Guianas, and a whole bunch of others. None of them entirely agree. Sometimes I was able to resolve discrepancies by finding photos of the places in question; other times, not. It’s not the number one tourist destination of the western world, so not that many photographs are posted. Live with it. Who knows; in a few years maybe the roads and bridges will be done and might even match
one
of my maps.