Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  Baker, who wasn’t precisely young anymore, grumbled as he stumbled across his darkened room to the doorway that led to the hallway bath. “Goddamned, bladder. If they’d told me I’d be pissing half a dozen times a night once I hit forty-five; I’d have arranged to die young.”

  It was an emergency thing; Baker didn’t have time to put on his armor.

  After flicking on the light to find the doorknob, a blinking Baker stepped out into the dusky tiled hall. Only to bump into a little tattooed, barefoot and brown guy, with a gun . . . who duly panicked, putting three rounds in rapid succession into Baker’s abdomen. He didn’t have to go to the bathroom after that though he did have to scream.

  “What the F . . . !” Malone, the only member of Benson’s half team who was both unshot and undrugged, was out of bed, alert, if confused—and not a little frightened, within a fraction of a second of the last shot being fired. His rifle was handy enough, but at the probable ranges inside a house a large bore pistol, with its superior knock-down power, was better. He eased his pistol out of the shoulder holster resting on the night table beside the bed.

  Malone squatted down and duck walked to his door as fast as worn and arthritic knees would carry him. Pistol aimed up at forty-five degrees in his right hand, his left began to turn the knob, slowly, gently, and quietly. He hadn’t quite finished the motion when the door thudded with a kick and flew open.

  The muzzle of some kind of firearm—Malone guessed a pistol—flashed about eighteen inches above his head, generally horizontally. It was close enough to hurt, close enough to burn, but wasn’t aimed at the low spot he’d taken. Malone fired two rounds. The next muzzle flash went up toward the ceiling. He shifted himself and his aim to a dimly sensed presence farther back in the hallway, firing twice more. He couldn’t be sure, thereafter, whether the flop he’d heard was a body or a man trying desperately to find some cover.

  Shouts and a scream told the American that there was more than one stranger in the house. Oh, shit! Baker’s down. Shit, fuck, suck . . . we’re being raided. But why? And what about the guards? And where the fuck are Benson and Perez? And poor Maricel’s probably scared shitless.

  It was that last, the thought of a helpless woman cowering under her bed, that sent Malone out—still squatting—into the darkened hallway.

  Goddammit! Crisanto mentally cursed, as soon as he heard the first shot. Stupid, fucking, hot-rodding, undisciplined rabble. And Lucas thinks I can make something out of this shit!

  Though his service with the Philippine Marines had been prematurely truncated by court-martial—a little matter of losing track of a truck carrying seventeen Singapore-built light machine guns and about half a million rounds of ammunition—Crisanto was still proud of his service, in both senses, and still measured all things by the standards—the tactical and disciplinary standards, if not the moral ones—of the Philippine Marines. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the weapons hadn’t been, most embarrassingly, the property of the Philippine Army, on loan to the Corps. But, as Crisanto had told his lawyer, “If they’d been Marine property, I’d never have sold them to the New People’s Army. But Army guns? What’s the big deal? It’s not like they were fucking Moros, after all.”

  The lawyer hadn’t been impressed with that argument, nor had the judge been impressed with the arguments the lawyer had come up with. In the end, only lack of certain evidence had kept Crisanto from a very hard period of penal servitude. At least, that was the official reason. Unofficially, Crisanto had had to pay over everything he’d made on the deal to the judge. He’d still been discharged. At loose ends, thereafter, and broke, to boot, he’d wandered home, to his old neighborhood of Tondo, only to discover it was under new management. Since he’d needed a job, and TCS had needed some military expertise it just didn’t have, it had been a perfect match.

  Or almost perfect; there was still the little problem of trying to instill some discipline into the human material.

  Nerves or anger, or just too small a target, when Crisanto saw the very top of the Kano’s head rising over the edge of the top step, he fired . . . and missed. On the plus side, when the Kano fired back his three rounds impacted the wall, about five feet over Crisanto’s head sending plaster dust and shards to air and floor. It was a reasonable guess that neither of them ever got a good look at, let alone a sight picture on, the other.

  Dumbass! Dumbass! DUMBASS! Malone thought. Seven rounds and one in the chamber. And I’ve fired seven and left the other magazines back in the room. And the last three were a complete waste. Dumbass, dipshit, cocksucker. I almost deserve what’s coming.

  But deserve it or not, I’d rather avoid it.

  Keeping the pistol horizontal, he duckwalked back to his room door and slithered inside. Only then, only when he was behind cover, did he stand and race for the other three magazines. He rotated his body to bring the pistol over the bed, then pressed the round magazine release. The empty mag fell without a sound audible from more than a few inches away. The fresh mag went in with an audible click, but he didn’t really care about that.

  What the hell happened to the rest of them? Jesus! What about the guards. Risk it? Got to.

  “Bennssonn! Perrezzz!” Nothing. No answer.

  “Crap,” Malone whispered. He tried again. Still nothing.

  Maybe they got away. That . . . or they’re dead . . . or they’re down. Not here and fighting, that’s for sure. So . . . a little Drizzle-drazzle; “time for this one to come home.”

  Dressing took one more hand free than Malone had. Instead, he stuffed his cell into his trousers, slid the magazines into the elastic band of his underwear, put the trousers over one shoulder and went to the window. His free hand punched through the screen, then bent and pulled back, taking the screen with it.

  Course, I’m screwed if they’re covering this side of the building. “Help me, Mister Wizard!”

  Bare feet were fine, superior even, for smooth floors. For smooth, bloody floors, however, they really weren’t worth a damn. For smooth, bloody floors, with two bodies to trip the feet without stopping the torso, they were completely worthless. Crisanto went flying over the body of one of his erstwhile underlings. As he did, he thought he saw the top of a head disappearing from the bottom of a window frame. His torso did stop, eventually, but only after his own head struck the wall at the opposite end of the hallway.

  He came to, some minutes later, with Lucas standing over him, the lights on, and the only body in evidence one of the Kanos.

  “Wha . . . ?”

  “They were still alive,” Lucas answered. “I had the boys put them in the van. They might make it.”

  Nodding hurt, Crisanto discovered. “The targets?”

  “Four of them, stretched out unconscious in the back of the van. Time to go, though.”

  “I wanna punish the motherfucker who shot my boys?”

  “Him, we’ll probably never get. But we’ll still punish him,” Lucas agreed. “We’ll punish him all the same.”

  PART II:

  Coast of

  East Africa

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dawn, and as the sun breaks through

  the piercing chill of night on the

  plain outside Korem it lights up a biblical famine,

  now, in the Twentieth Century. This place, say

  workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth.

  —Michael Buerk, BBC Correspondent,

  24 October, 1984

  MV Richard Bland, Coast of Africa, off the city of Bajuni

  These were—or at least had been, when there’d been enough trade to justify the effort—pirate waters. Now the pirates had to range much farther afield to earn their daily kat. There were always armed guards on the deck of the Bland, even when they weren’t involved in guarding their own. Now, though, a platoon of armed troopers manned heavy machine guns lining both sides of the ship, just in case some pirate hadn’t gotten the word. As a class, pirates were not, after all, cum laude. />
  More stood at the bow and stern, likewise manning heavy weapons. All, bow, stern, and amidships, were dressed up in full torso armor, with ceramic inserts, helmeted, and with boom mikes swinging from somewhere just behind the ear to just in front of their mouths.

  While another platoon, reinforced, and laden even more than the deck guards, prepared to load, the remainder of the company, also reinforced—by the aviation detachment and ship’s crew, assembled the flight deck. Two of the three cranes squealed as they lowered the landing craft, already part loaded, and a section of the floating platform that eased the use of rubber boats.

  The steel cables lowering the LCM stopped their tortured squealing as the boat reached and then settled into the water. Lieutenant Simon Blackmore, ground commander for the mission, pulled his night vision goggles down over his face and looked over the gunwale, down at the landing craft. The coxswain who had ridden down with one other crewman, waved an infrared chemlight. All okay.

  Blackmore shifted his shoulders under the armor. The beastly stuff was damned uncomfortable.

  “Right then,” Blackmore said to the reinforced squad lined up at the gunwale to either side of him, “over the side with the net.” He joined with the troopers, straining and grunting, to lift the heavy net up over the gunwales.

  The moon was still down, and wouldn’t be up for another two and a half hours. Until it arose, Bajuni would be lit only by fires, and only a few of those. Cagle stared across the water, musing back on the good he’d once hoped to do here. He did so with regret, and that mixed in with a sense of profound hopelessness and helplessness.

  The world was not supposed to turn out this way.

  “Once the world went into full-blown depression,” Cagle said to Warrington, standing on the deck, waiting for the landing craft to be lowered to the water and secured, “the never-ending supply of bleeding heart humanitarian aid mostly dried up. The smart locals got out and linked up with their bank accounts in Switzerland or Lebanon or the Caribbean. But the ruler of this place wasn’t smart. He spent his money, most of it, trying to help people weather the storm. Even brought in my contact from a hostile tribe to help; they having some history together.”

  “The kid we rescued a few years back?” asked Warrington.

  “Yeah. His old man died, leaving him the chief. But without an endless supply of funds and food, he wasn’t able even to hold his extended clan together. It broke up into septs, or even smaller groupings. Some are outright gangs. And all of those were at war with every other in no time.

  “Might have been different,” Cagle added, “if we hadn’t so thoroughly financially raped and shot up the major opposing clan. But we did and that removed the threat that helped keep the Marehan together.”

  “We did what we were contracted to do,” Warrington countered. “And it might not have been different, either.”

  Cagle sighed. “I know . . . and it was before my time with the regiment, anyway. But I wonder if the old chief, Khalid, would have been so enthusiastic about us smashing the Habar Afaan if he’d foreseen where that would lead.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Warrington said. “That kind of prescience exists only in fiction.”

  “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Cagle asked. “The skipper expects the weather to pick up.”

  “Even if we didn’t need the drugs,” Warrington answered, “I’d order this anyway. And, yeah, the weather’s going to get worse. But now’s the time the light data suits; so now it has to be. Why? Because we absolutely need a common mission to bring this crew together.”

  “Is that why you put the kid in charge?” Cagle asked.

  “That, and that Lieutenant Blackmore is both new and neutral, whereas Stocker and I are neither.”

  “Besides that,” Cagle said, “the kid handled the riot pretty well. No more force than needed. No less, either. And impartially.”

  Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa

  “Would you have come to us if you had known how it would end?” asked Adam, erstwhile chief of the disintegrated Marehan, of Labaan, his former captor and friend. Both men had Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.

  How it was ending was with Adam’s family, the solitary Labaan, a dozen loyal guards with their wives and children, three pallets of medicine, and about a quarter of a ton of gold, waiting in the darkness not too far from the sea. There were no electric lights, not anywhere in the city. Oh, a few people still had generators, and some of those may have had gas, but incandescent light bulbs had become quite precious of late. There were a few fires, but very few, there being so little left to burn. The night was lit, where it was, by the flash of tracers, or the thunder-accompanied lightening of exploding mortar shells. The other fragments of the sundered clan were moving in for the kill, albeit slowly, each in dread fear that some other fragment might manage to scavenge a little more off the bones of the dead city than they could.

  One of the very few generators remaining, and a gallon of so of rare for the area gasoline, powered the computer through which Labaan had been contacted by, and kept in contact with, their rescuers. That hummed next to the pile of luggage, with a single one of the older boys in attendance.

  “I didn’t have a lot of choice,” Labaan answered. His voice held the trace of a chuckle, as if he found life, the universe, and everything some vast comedy routine. “Gutaale, upon him be peace, never quite forgave me for your rescue, even though I had nothing to do with it, and did everything I could to prevent it. If I hadn’t come, I was for the chop. At least I was once the madness began to take him.

  “So, not only would I have come, my young friend, I am eternally grateful that you found a place for me. As time went on, Gutaale developed some very advanced and sophisticated ideas on how to do away with those who had displeased him.”

  At that last a shuddering Adam stole a glance in the direction from which he had last heard the sound of his wife and children. If we don’t escape, what will happen to them? Chains and bondage, rape and all other forms of degradation, isn’t advanced. It’s the oldest thing in the world.

  “It might have gone better for you, you know,” said Labaan, “if you hadn’t tried to really outlaw slavery here.”

  “No choice,” answered the younger man. “It was a condition of Makeda becoming my wife.”

  “The more fool her,” Labaan said, “and the more fool you, especially since absolutely nothing can be done about it. And there’ll be more people enslaved as a result of the breakdown than ever were in normal times.”

  The older man sighed and shook his head. “But . . . never mind. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  MV Richard Bland, Coast of Africa, off the city of Bajuni

  Stocker was stuck with Warrington up on the bridge. No matter, Kiertzner was there to see young Lieutenant Blackmore over the side. It was the boy’s first real mission with the regiment, and though he hadn’t volunteered the information, the first sergeant knew it was also his first combat mission.

  The boy was nervous, understandably. The first sergeant slapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Wish I were going with you, sir, for the sheer fun of it.” Then, leaning close, he whispered, “The thing you’re feeling inside right now, the nervousness, is only fear of being afraid. I’ve been there and done that. Now let me tell you a little secret. You’re going to be too busy to be afraid. You won’t have time for it. Period.” Raising his voice again, Kiertzner finished, in a frightfully “posh” accent, “Now over the side with you, sir, like a good lad.”

  The wind had picked up and, with it, the waves. To the Bland it made a little difference, but nothing the maneuvering thrusters and stabilization system couldn’t handle. To the men of Second Battalion, trying to inflate the rubber boats, and the crew of the LCM, on the other hand, it was royal pain, with the boats barely controllable against the push of the breeze and the LCM rocking badly in the now choppy sea.

  The landing party had practiced with the nets, of course, in the te
mporarily darkened spaces of the mess deck. It isn’t quite the same though, when it’s not only the ship moving, but the other vessel you’re trying to board is bobbing like a cork and only half succeeding in keeping station against the mother ship.

  Descending, as was proper, first of all the landing party, Simon Blackmore shivered on the swinging net. He’d grown up on stories—old soldiers’ stories—of men losing their grip on the nets, falling, and, under the weight of their equipment, sinking like rocks, never to be seen again. In the abstract, he knew that the LCM was only ten meters or so below. The rhythmic pounding of metal on metal would have told him that, even if he hadn’t known. But in the real, and really dark at the moment, world, it might as well have been a mile down.

  And I wish that bloody landing craft would stop banging against the side of the Bland. Reminds me of scissors . . . or a mechanized guillotine in a metal-working shop. Crap! “Too busy,” the man said. Hah.

  The net was too long; that was one of the mistakes. For a tiny extra increment of safety, the coxswain, Kirkpatrick, had his crew haul up as much as they could of the thing, draping the fold over the inside of the landing craft. The edge still hung well down to the sea.

  Looking through his NVG’s, Kirkpatrick saw a dim shape descending the net. From the shape, I’d say it’s that new limey exec from Charlie, Fourth; the one who came with the Gurkhas. Two of the LCM crew were already moving to guide the lieutenant’s legs down safely into the well of the boat.