Amanda Garrett flashed a sober smile that transcended the room’s muddy incandescent lighting. “Aye, aye, sir.”
Yelibuya Sound Naval Station 0121 Hours, Zone Time;
June 30, 2007
The Union naval base at Yelibuya was neither a Norfolk nor a Portsmouth, but Captain Jonathan Kinsford was content with his command. As he walked slowly down to the command post bunker, he surveyed his realm by the light of a three-quarters moon.
Yelibuya Base had once been one of Sierra Leone’s colonial era palm-oil plantations. The aging, white-pillared mansion house still overlooked the estuary of the nameless little river that emptied into Yelibuya Sound. Now, however, the mansion served as a combined officers’ club and billet, while the old plantation dock had become the base fueling pier, a gasoline barge moored to its downstream side. Upstream, a rank of smaller finger piers now lined the east side of the estuary channel, the Boghammers gunboat force slotted neatly in alongside them. A row of ordnance and engine maintenance sheds had been constructed behind the piers along with a boat railway for hull repair work.
Upslope from the water, beyond the mansion but still inside the forest line, were the clustered tents of the enlisted men’s quarters and the small base motor pool along with the heavily sandbagged mound of the ammunition bunker. And directly downslope, between the mansion and the shore, centered in what had been the estate’s broad front lawn, was a second, sandbagged emplacement, the base command post to which Kinsford was bound.
Kinsford was proud of that command post. He liked for things to be secure. That was why a quarter mile downstream at the river’s mouth, he’d had two more sandbagged emplacements built and manned. One on either side of the entry channel. Each fortification mounted a Bofors L70 40mm antiaircraft cannon, positioned and ready to sweep the sea or sky approaches to the base.
The base was blacked out as per Kinsford’s orders, and the only ground light to be seen was the occasional flash of a hand torch as the night watch went about their duties. Music still tinkled past the drawn curtains of the officers’ club, however.
The boat commanders of the Boghammer squadrons were hard at work celebrating their victory over the U.N. interdiction force. The base commander had lingered late in the club, sharing in their triumph, and he suspected that the party would rage until dawn. However, as base commander, Kinsford knew that he needed to set a good example. He also suspected that the big bugs from Monrovia would descend upon them at first light for a debriefing, and that was something not to be faced with a hangover. Accordingly, he had waved off half a dozen offers for “just a last one, mon,” and had stepped out into the night, taking this final slow stroll and look-about both to clear the beer fumes from his head and to ensure all was battened down for the night.
His jungle boots crunching on the gravel path, he strode on to the command post. He’d have a final check with the officer of the day and then turn in on the cot they had tucked away in a corner of the bunker. From the sound of it, there would be precious little sleep to be had up in officers’ country.
The command bunker smelled of mildew and of the metallic two-cycle exhaust of the communications generator. “Situation, Lieutenant?” Kinsford inquired. Descending the narrow steps into the thick-walled confines of the bunker, he brushed aside the mosquito-net door screen.
“All quiet, sir,” the duty officer replied, looking up from his field desk. He and the two signalmen manning the radios were the only staff on watch at this hour. “Nothing new to report.”
“Any advisories on U.N. reaction to our strike yet?”
Underlit by the glow of the low-turned gas lantern resting on the floor, the watch officer shook his head. “No, sir. Nothing on the landline or the Navy channels, and the coastwatcher net is still off the air. The Americans are still buggering the sideband commo.”
“Bloody marvelous.” Kinsford grunted. “We’ll probably have to wait for the post to arrive before we can get a clue as to what’s going on.”
Kinsford moved toward the blanketless cot set up on the duckboards in the corner of the bunker. “At any rate, I’m for a bit of sleep, lieutenant. They’re having too much fun up at the big house to manage it there.”
“Very good, Captain. You will find it most quiet down here at night.”
The watch officer’s words were rapidly disproven. As Kinsford unlaced a boot, one of the field telephones gave a rasping buzz. The watch officer scooped up the handset and exchanged a few rapid words with the caller.
“Captain, one of the gun positions reports an offshore sighting.”
“Can they identify the target?”
“No, sir. Just what looks to be three unidentified vessels in the sound.”
PGAC-02 USS Queen of the West 0134 Hours, Zone Time;
June 30, 2007
The Queen’s swimmer motors slowed, as did the flickering of the numerals on the readout of the Global Positioning Unit. “Steady as she goes,” Amanda murmured “Steady … All stop! Initiate station keeping.”
The position hack on the GPU display now exactly matched the one preset and locked in on the fire-control board.
“Station keeping, aye,” Steamer Lane replied quietly. Deftly, he began to work the motor throttles and propeller controls, keeping the Queen stationary on her GPU fix against the tug of current, wave, and wind.
“Rebel, at firing point,” Lieutenant Tony Marlin’s voice issued from the overhead speaker. The word from Clark aboard the Carondelet followed a few moments later. “Frenchman, spotted and station keeping.”
A bare mile off the bow lay the mouth of a small jungle river, glinting silver in the moonlight as it snaked back into the coastal forest. And by cranking up the magnification and light amplification of the Mast Mounted Sight, the buildings of the Yelibuya Boghammer base could be made out along its banks.
They had arrived. Now to do what they had come for.
“Little Pigs,” Amanda spoke into her command mike, “this is little Pig Lead. Rig for shore bombardment.”
Servos moaned and weapons pedestals elevated to firing position. Loading arms stabbed downward, acquiring and lifting rocket pods onto the mount rails.
“Frenchman, loaded and standing by.”
“This is Rebel. We are hot. Datalinks open.”
“Rebel and Frenchman, Little Pig Lead acknowledges.” Amanda toggled over to intercraft. “Fire control, link your systems. Stand by to commence fire.”
Below the cockpit, Danno O’Roark touched the key sequence that interlocked the Queen of the West’s fire-control system with that of her two sisters. Cybernetic whispers passed between the three craft. Targeting lists and engagement sequences were exchanged, the ones Danno and the Fryguy and Amanda Garrett had so carefully worked out on the voyage here. Weapons pedestals traversed and elevated, hunting with an almost biological eagerness for the proper angles and bearings.
“Fire-control systems have integrated, Captain. Initiating target selection and sequencing program … Program is up…. Systern safeties are off. All boards are green. Ready to fire.”
“Proceed, Mr. O’Roark. Commence firing.”
Two rocket pods per pedestal mount. Two mounts per hovercraft. Six mounts within the squadron. Twelve salvos of 2.75-inch artillery rockets hurled in a space of three and a half seconds. A rippling shriek of sound that tore the sky open and a molten gold glare on the wavecrests.
The pedestal ejectors hurled the emptied and smoldering rocket pods over the side. The weapons mounts whipped back to vertical and the loading arms slid the next flight into place. Again the pod muzzles panned and tracked. There was no human involvement at all now. All was tasked to the onboard computers and to the meticulously detailed fire-control program that purred and clicked within them.
Seven rockets per pod. Twelve pods per weapons bay. Two bays per hovercraft. Seventy-two pods to
be expended.
Lightning sprang from the sea and thunder echoed from the land. Fire trails arced across the dark zenith, the Hydra rounds, like burning coals, raining down into the little pocket of hell that had been Yelibuya fleet base.
Seventy-two pods, five hundred and four rockets, each bearing a seventeen-pound high-explosive warhead. And all arriving on target within a three-minute interval.
“Captain Kinsford, the unidentified vessels have opened fire! We are—” A sharp terminating crackle issued from the field telephone as the set, man, and installation at the other end of the circuit ceased to exist.
The hammering roar of the Hydra salvos destroying the 40mm battery drowned out the wavering howl of the rounds coming in on the main base. Night became day as a holocaust glared in though the observation slits of the command bunker.
By chance, Kinsford had been looking inland, toward the mansion house/officers’ billet, and he saw its end. The tropics softened wood of the aged structure offered no resistance to the initial rocket cluster. They drilled through and burst within the building’s heart. The entire two-story structure seemed to lift off its foundations and float in midair for an instant before dissolving into a spray of flaming timbers and shredded sheet metal roofing.
Concussion buffeted the command bunker and Kinsford and the men of the night watch were hurled around its interior like dice in a gaming box. Clinging to the internal braces for support, the Union base commander caught fragmentary glimpses of his installation disintegrating around him.
The boats and finger piers were next. An interlocking string of explosions walked deliberately down the edge of the estuary, kicking the piers to splinters and hurling the moored Boghammers aside like the broken toys of a child in tantrum. Marching on, the shell bursts reached the fueling pier and the old dock and its gasoline barge both were engulfed within a mushroom of blazing petroleum.
The string of interlocking detonations reversed itself, working back up the shore, devouring the maintenance sheds and the boat railway like a ravening dragon, leaving nothing—no structure, no wall, no stick or stone unblasted.
The destruction of the boat line complete, the monster shifted objectives, springing across the ruins of the base to the ranked tents of the enlisted men’s billets, smashing, shredding, enflaming. Kinsford could only pray that all hands had fled to the forest in terror.
The motor pool was last, the exploding fuel tanks of the base’s few vehicles adding only a little to the devastation.
And then it was over.
The echo of the high-explosive avalanche reverberated away across the jungle, leaving only a crackle of burning wood and the pop and bang of ammunition cooking off aboard the charring hulks of the gunboats.
Dazed, Kinsford made the rounds of the observation slits, taking stock by the light of the numerous fires. Nothing was left. Or almost nothing. The only two structures left untouched were the command center and ammunition store. Recognizing that the reinforced bunkers might have been sturdy enough to survive even multiple hits by the artillery rockets, their attackers had elected to distribute their fire power to better effect elsewhere.
What good was ammunition, though, when there was nothing or no one left to fire it? And of what use was a command post with nothing and no one left to command?
The radios had toppled off of their stands and the signal men lay beside them, one in a dazed sprawl, the other curled in a fetal position and sobbing. Crossing to them, Kinsford slapped and kicked the operators back into some form of functionality.
“Get me a channel to Fleet Headquarters in Monrovia … No, wait, get me the direct channel to the Mamba Point Command Center. I must … I must report this.”
It was the only thing left that could be done.
Mamba Point, Monrovia 0140 Hours, Zone Time;
June 30, 2007
It had been a jubilant evening in the Union headquarters building, in all quarters, barring one.
“It is not good, Sako. It is not good. We failed.”
“Obe, I hear you speaking,” Brigadier Atiba replied patiently, leaning back against his general’s desk, “but I do not understand what you say. We have won a great victory. You have won a great victory.”
Belewa himself paced the centerline of his office, scowling at the floor. “That is not the point, Sako. Yes, winning a victory is a very good thing. But winning the war is what is important. Yes, disabling the British minesweeper was useful. Yes, we scored against the blockade. But no, we failed in our primary mission objective.”
Belewa paused in his pacing and aimed his scowl at the wall chart of the Union coast. “If we had destroyed that radar ship, that would have been a true victory. That would have stuck a stick in the Leopard’s eye. I should have known she would have arranged for some kind of onboard defense, and I should have massed and concentrated our forces against the one truly critical target. Instead I allowed myself to become greedy. I allowed myself to become distracted by a target of opportunity. General? Pah! I’m a fool!”
“Then let me buy a fool a drink.” Reaching behind him, Atiba caught up the bottles of beer he had brought with him to Belewa’s office. One after another, he struck the bottle caps off on the edge of the desk. Grinning, he held one of the bottles out to Belewa. “Who was it who told me? ‘Sometimes you can’t win every battle on the first day. Sometimes you must grit your teeth and try again tomorrow.’”
Gradually, a grudging smile crept onto Belewa’s lips. “A fool who was a simple army officer at the time,” he replied, accepting the beer. “I am the leader of a great nation now, Sako, and I must achieve perfection yesterday.”
“To yesterday’s perfection, then.”
The two brown bottles clinked lightly and the two warriors drank to the toast.
“Ahh!” Obe Belewa’s face relaxed for a moment, then the frown returned. “Sako, have you verified that all of the gunboats did, in fact, return from this mission?”
“For the third time, Yelibuya Sound has counted every boat home.”
“No contact with the American gunboats at all?”
“None!” Atiba shook his head impatiently. “By the sacred names of God, Obe. Are you disappointed we didn’t take casualties?”
“Of course not. But I have to wonder why we didn’t.” Belewa circled his desk and sank down into his chair. “If there was no indication of an American pursuit, it makes me wonder just what they might be up to out there.”
“Isn’t it conceivable that we just might have gotten lucky,” Atiba asked with forbearance, coming to sit on the desk edge, “or that they might have fumbled their own operations?”
Belewa cocked an eyebrow. “No, it isn’t. If the Leopard isn’t nipping at our heels, then maybe she’s already gotten ahead of us and is lying in ambush.”
The Chief of Staff laughed shortly. “You and your Leopard, Obe. You make her sound as if she’s some kind of witch doctress.”
“I begin to think that she is, Sako. At times in our briefing sessions, I feel her spirit sitting on my shoulder, laughing at my follies.”
“For the love of God, man. She’s just a woman!”
“Hah! And how many times has ‘just a woman’ made a fool out of you, my friend.” Belewa grinned back and took another draw from his beer bottle. “I seem to recall something about a little dancer in a club in Lagos—”
The corridor door burst open with no preliminary knock. A frightened signalman leaned in through it. “General Belewa! There has been an emergency transmission from Yelibuya Sound! Yelibuya Fleet Base has been destroyed!”
“What?” Brigadier Atiba sprang to his feet. “Who is attacking them? How badly are they hit?”
“They didn’t say, sir. There was only the single transmission. And they didn’t say the base was under attack. They said that they had been destroyed!”
“Get them back.” Belewa rose to his feet as well. “Get some particulars of what’s happened. Find out what’s going on out there.”
“We’ve tried, General. Yelibuya Base does not reply.”
PGAC-02 USS Queen of the West 0140 Hours, Zone Time;
June 30, 2007
The seafighters turned away from the Union coast and from the glow in the sky over Yelibuya Base. Igniting turbines, they came up on the pad for their sprint home. Yet there was still one blow left to strike. Coffin shaped, the four-round heavy missile cell elevated out of the Queen’s weather deck, up-angling to forty-five degrees.
“SeaSLAMs armed and spinning up for launch, Captain. Ready to initiate firing sequence.”
“Very good, Danno. Launch at your discretion. Let’s finish the job.”
In the screenlight of the fire-control console, Danno O’Roark glanced across at Dwaine Fry. “I got number one, you got number two. Let’s do it right. I don’t want those clowns on the Carondelet to have to clean up after us.”
“Just push the buttons, my man,” the Fryguy replied, his slender fingers closing around his controller grip. “The rock is as good as in the hole.”
A launching charge thudded and the plastic cap of the first missile cell shattered, the nose of a sleek torpedolike projectile bursting through. Spring-loaded swept wings extended from the midpoint of the fourteen-foot fuselage as it cleared the tube, tail fins unfolding and locking outward a microsecond later. Arcing up and clear of the seafighter, a command flashed from one of the SeaSLAM’s onboard computers to the booster module at its stern. The solid-fuel rocket engine ignited and the projectile lunged skyward again.
The booster burn lasted only a few seconds, but during that time ram scoops snapped open, channeling air into the compressor blades of the small turbofan engine. As the rocket burned out and staged away, the jet power plant ignited, taking over propulsion. Guard panels also blew away at the projectile’s nose, revealing the glassy lenses of a low-light camera system.
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