Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  Labaan smiled. “We captured it on the sea, to . . . ummm . . . keep it from the hands of our enemies.”

  “What about the crew?”

  “They were to be sold as slaves, without my chief’s knowledge. Right now they’re locked up below decks.”

  “Slaves?” Simon sounded incredulous. Labaan, after all, seemed a civilized and even cultured man.

  “Sure,” the latter answered. “Why not? They’re the people who’ve done more to ruin this continent than anyone up to and including the European imperialists. Seems only fair.”

  “Oh,” Simon said, shaking his head, “you and Captain Stocker are just going to love each other. How many are there?”

  “Fifty-two.”

  “Guards?”

  “Just three, at any one time,” Labaan said. “But they’re ours. Well . . . probably ours”—Labaan out a hand out and wagged it—“loyalties have gotten pretty fuzzy of late.

  “But you don’t really want those people back, do you? I mean, I’ve met a lot of western do-gooders but these ones were so stupid they didn’t or couldn’t even realize just how bad things had gotten here. Or just who we might blame for that.”

  “Oh. Oh, shit.” He took up the handset once again. “Warrington; Blackmore. We have a chance to rescue the aid workers, if you’re interested.”

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

  “Fuck ’em,” said Stocker, standing on the bridge next to the main radio. “Useless tranzi assholes, eh? Let ’em be sold; they brought us to this.”

  Cagle rolled his eyes. “No, they didn’t. Oh, sure, they had a part in it. Weigh that part against the financial idiots who dropped the world into a depression.

  “Besides, they’re our people,” he said. “Maybe misguided, maybe ignorant, maybe even stupid, but still ours.”

  “Not my people,” Stocker insisted.

  Warrington waved one hand for silence. “Suppose we do?” he asked Pearson.

  The skipper shrugged. “Food, billeting and LCM fuel are the same; no real problem. And maybe we could stuff them on the same lift as we’re going to use for the other civvies. But we couldn’t let them go until well after our mission was complete. They really wouldn’t like that. And any good will you’re thinking the regiment might acquire from saving them—assuming the regiment survives the current contretemps with Venezuela, a highly questionable proposition—is likely to be lost when they aren’t allowed to go when and where they want to. These people are, by definition, willfully stupid.”

  Stocker relented ever so slightly. “Well, we could have a couple of them walk the plank, then send video tapes and demand ransoms for the rest.”

  Warrington shot him a dirty look.

  “I wasn’t entirely serious. Not entirely.”

  “Hmmm . . . you weren’t entirely joking, either. In any case, no, we won’t do it for the ransoms. And not for any questionable goodwill. But, you know, soldiers—romantically self-pitying bastards that we are—live for the chance to do good, for the glory of the thing. We’ll save them, but only because of the good it will do the morale of this detachment.”

  “They can do more good than that,” Cagle said. “That’s not just a freighter. I know the organization it came from. I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t contain four to a half a dozen pretty damned well-qualified doctors and a dozen experienced nurses. And if they’re political idiots, it doesn’t mean they’re medical idiots.

  “Another thing is . . . well . . . I don’t know how much you know about sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a mess, always has been. And there’s a tendency there to irrationally blame perfectly innocent people for their problems, particularly if they’re frustrated and can’t get at whoever is really to blame. I see bad things happening to those aid workers, precisely because we’ll have frustrated the people coming for Adam and his crew.”

  “Hadn’t really thought about those,” Warrington admitted. “Be nice to have adequate medical staff if you and TIC Chick can’t handle the load. And, yeah, I can see a pretty ugly massacre if we leave the humanitarians behind.”

  He keyed the mike. “Simon, you are authorized to attempt a rescue of the aid workers, but only if you can do so while maintaining the integrity of your defensive perimeter, and only if it isn’t going to cost us anyone, or certainly not more than a man or two. Send back the meds, the gold, and the aid pukes with the second lift out. Extraction of your people will be third.”

  “Roger. Wilco.”

  Turning to Stocker, Warrington said, “I’m really taking some risk here. The solution to most risks is greater force. So I want you to start getting the rest of your company, and the last team of mine, ready to go in and relieve young Blackmore if things go to shit.

  “And, Skipper,” he added to Pearson, “if we do have to send in the rest of the force, your boys will have to man the machine guns along the gunwales on their own.”

  “We can do that. For that matter, I can put the cooks on them.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We’re not something wriggling with too many legs

  that you found in your sleeping bag. The proper tone

  of voice is Mercenaries!—with a glad cry.”

  —Miles Vorkosigan, in Borders of Infinity,

  by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa

  Hmmm . . . who actually knows how to do a hostage rescue, which, sortakinda, this is. Aha . . .

  “Sergeant Major Pierantoni!” Simon shouted out, over the pounding of the surf. His heart was pounding, too, but more from excitement than fear.

  “Here, sir.” The return call came from farther inland. Pierantoni and the rest of the Second Battalion men were better equipped than the regular grunts, each man having a personal radio and a boom mike that curved around his face to just a couple of inches from his lips. But if the lieutenant hadn’t used it, why should Pierantoni make an issue of it? Besides, you could follow a voice to a person a lot easier than you could follow a radio signal.

  “I need you and one team for another mission.”

  “Be right there, sir.”

  “Labaan, I’ll want you to go with the Sergeant Major when he gets here.”

  The old man nodded, then unslung his Kalashnikov and partially unseated the bolt, then felt through the ejection port to ensure he had a round in the chamber.

  Simon still couldn’t see crap without his NVG’s. No matter; voice worked even in the dark. “Sergeant Moore?”

  “Sir!”

  “Get one of the Elands ready to go with the Sergeant Major. And start leading the civilians to the LCM.”

  “Sir!”

  “Porter squad?”

  “Sir!”

  Simon went quiet for a moment. My God, he thought, in a moment’s confusion, I just realized that this is the first time I’ve felt at home since joining M Day, Incorporated. Maybe because it’s the first time I’ve really had a chance to do an officer’s work—not just bloody be-damned paperwork—with good troops.

  “Sir?”

  “What?” The lieutenant shook his head. “Oh, sorry, Sergeant. I just had a blinding flash of the obvious. Never mind. Report to Sergeant Moore and help him get a makeshift airstrip cleared for the fixed wings.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Who would have thought it?

  Under cover of a shack, under the red beam from Pierantoni’s flashlight, Labaan traced out a sand sketch of the area around the humanitarian ship.

  Pointing, he said, “The guards are one on the gangway, one walking around on top of the superstructure, and one on the door to where we locked up the aid workers. They’re probably not going to be a problem though. Just let me go first; they’re used to taking orders from me, even if I’m from the wrong tribe. What’s going to be a problem is if we don’t get there quickly, before one of the other fragments of the old clan arrive.”

  Pierantoni puffed out his cheeks, blowing air through clenched lips. E
very passing minute the firing came just that little bit closer. This is not my idea of planning for a hostage rescue: “Hey, let’s just go do it.” But the old man is fundamentally right. What’s easy now will become a lot harder—maybe impossible—if we don’t move quick.

  “Is there a ladder from the pier down to the water?” he asked.

  “There are,” Labaan answered, pointing to a spot on the dirt sketch he’d made. “Here . . . and another one about here.”

  Pierantoni nodded. “Good, because I really don’t like the idea of trying to herd a gaggle of empty headed NGO pukes through what passes for streets in this place.”

  “You want to take them out by water?” Labaan asked.

  “We’ve got the four rubber boats most of my people came in on. Pull ’em up to the ladders, fill ’em with tranzis, then take them here and dump them off. After that, they’re the lieutenant’s problems.”

  “If you’re going to get them out by boat,” Labaan observed, “then you had best leave the armored car here. Those things are all over Africa, and I’ve never yet seen one swim.”

  “Some of them can,” Pierantoni said, “but we never bought the modification kits for ours. We should have. And you’re right. Mostly.”

  At Labaan’s quizzical look, Pierantoni said, “We’ll need all four boats for that many passengers. I’ll want to put six men in the boats, four to steer, one in charge, and one with no other purpose than manning a machine gun and watching out. That leaves eight of us, me, you, and the other half of the team, to get there, get the tranzis freed, and get them organized—cat herding—and loaded. I’ll have the Eland—that’s the name of the armored car—follow us, escort us, about halfway there. Then it can go back and take up a position to cover the withdrawal of the rubber boats.”

  Labaan pointed again to a narrow peninsula on the sketch. “Here. From here they can see all the way across the water to the ship, and also cover a fair piece of the dock, itself.”

  “Works,” Pierantoni agreed. Obviously the old man had been around a bit.

  Though the regiment had some odds and ends pieces of equipment in the inventory, the standard general purpose machine gun was the Russian Pecheneg. This was a mix of, mostly, the older PKM, upgraded with a finned barrel to increase cooling, and with a shroud derived from the American-designed, mostly British-built, Lewis Gun. The PKM was a good piece, in most respects, but had the worst barrel changing mechanism in machine gun history, a sliding bar with a half-moon indent that often had to be hammered out of position to release the barrel. This could be both difficult and painful if the barrel were hot, which was about the only reason to change barrels anyway.

  That’s where the shroud and the fins on the barrel came in. Muzzle blast drew air up it through oval slots cut out of the shroud’s rear. This passed over the fins, keeping the gun cool enough that, in normal practice, barrel changes weren’t required. It had been fired, for testing, in continuous bursts of up to six-hundred rounds without jamming, overheating or damaging the barrel. It was probably the only non-water cooled machine gun in the world, in general issue, firing a full powered cartridge, of which this could be said.

  Sergeant Alex Hallinan, cradling a Pecheneg in his arms, with the sling wrapped around his left hand, sat roughly amidships in the second Zodiac in the four boat column. He, like the other five men in the boats, had a set of NVG’s perched on his face.

  Feeney, of soup-vat fame, guided the boat, his right hand gripping the “throttle” on its electric outboard. He had the power dialed down, keeping his place and his spacing from the lead boat. It would take a while for the other half of the team to reach the NGO ship; no sense in beating them there.

  About halfway to the waiting ship, the lead boat stopped in the water. Feeney likewise cut power, as did the two boats behind him.

  The Eland escorted Pierantoni and the other seven about half way to the ship. Through the winding streets of the city, this worked out to about a third of a mile of travel. Progress was swift; they met no hostiles on the way, even if the sounds of skirmishing ahead said they were not all that far away.

  “As a matter of fact,” muttered Pierantoni, “it is suspiciously swift.” He called a halt in place, the men automatically fanning out to the buildings on either side while the Eland scanned ahead with its superior night vision equipment.

  Suddenly, completely without warning, the Eland’s 90mm gun barked, raising a cloud of dust from the bare street and knocking paint chips off the crumbling ruins to either side. Though the gun was fairly soft in its recoil, the armored car rocked back on its suspension, even so. The sergeant major, and every other dismounted man within fifty meters, winced.

  “What was it?” Pierantoni demanded via the radio.

  “Knot o’ armed men,” replied the Eland’s Guyano-Hindu commander. “Dey have at least one RPG”—rocket propelled grenade launcher—“and meh saw no reason to take de chance.”

  Them’s the rules in a place without civilization, Pierantoni silently agreed. What is not positively identified as friendly must be presumed hostile. Especially if armed.

  “You hit ’em?”

  “We use de beehive on de short fuse. Dey’re colanders.”

  “Anything else out there?” the sergeant major asked.

  “Not’ing dat shows up on de t’ermal, Sarn’t Major.”

  “Roger. Eland stay here and cover. Do not use canister while we’re in your line of fire. The rest of us are moving up on foot two blocks. At that point we’ll take a left. Once we’re out of sight, Eland, beat feet back to the overwatch position I showed you. Shouldn’t be anyone to fuck with you all the way back.”

  “Roger.”

  The moon was still a thin sliver of a crescent, lying low over the sea. It didn’t give off enough light that any of the men in the rubber boats felt they had to worry. It did give off enough to make out the white painted hull of a ship. They still didn’t know its name or, really, much care.

  Hallinan flipped up his NVG’s and crouched forward, settling his right eye into the eyepiece of the thermal scope mounted to his Pecheneg.

  “Hallinan here. I can make out the guy walking post up on the superstructure,” he whispered into the small boom mike. “Just him, though. He definitely notices the gunships circling, but doesn’t seem to want to make that one overtly hostile act.”

  Feeney added, “The Eland just pulled up on the shore a few hundred meters behind us.”

  “And meh sees you, too,” said the Eland commander, on the same radio push.

  Labaan stood at the pier, at the base of the gangway—or “brow,” as the Navy would call it—looking up at the silhouette of a very nervous-seeming guard.

  Inwardly, he sighed. I suppose in this case honesty is not the best policy. Hmmm . . . lie through my teeth completely or just shade the truth a bit? I think . . . lie.

  “It’s Labaan,” he shouted up. “The American Marines have landed. Adam, the chief, has been taken hostage, as has his family. They are willing to trade him for the people we’re holding. You may not be able to see them, but there is a squad of them not far from me. If we do not surrender the hostages, they promise to kill everyone and everything.”

  “What should I do, Labaan?” the guard called back. “And what the fuck caused the Americans to take an interest in this place again?”

  “To the last,” Labaan replied, “I don’t know. For the other, just place your rifle on the deck, put your hands over your head, and stand out of the way. They’ll probably treat you a little roughly, but that’s only for their security. They promise me you won’t be harmed if you cooperate.”

  “Okay . . . okay, I’m putting my rifle down. Tell them not to shoot.”

  OKAY! thought Pierantoni, as two of his men forced the guard to the deck, flipped him over, and taped his hands behind his back. The other four, plus Labaan, were still scampering up the gangway. That’s one down. There’s still someone on the superstructure. Rather not kill anybody we don’t have to,
but—

  Crack! The first bullet ricocheted, whining, off the deck an imperceptible fraction of a millisecond before the muzzle’s report reached Pierantoni’s ears. This was followed by a long, wildly unaimed, burst of fire that hit nobody but caused several of them to nearly shit themselves.

  The sergeant major and the two with him scurried or rolled into whatever protection there was, flush against the bulkhead. The other five became involved in a temporary traffic jam—arms caught in legs caught in rifle slings caught around necks—as they tried just that little bit too hard to get out of the line of fire.

  “Shit!” said Pierantoni.

  Pierantoni heard in his earpiece Hallinan’s voice. “I hear firing. I’ve got no, repeat no, line of sight.”

  “Ah, but meh do,” announced the Guyanan in the Eland. There was a double report, first from the cannon across the water and then, louder, because closer, from the shell as it exploded just above the superstructure. A body—or enough pieces to make up a body; a 90mm was not a contemptible shell—flew off the superstructure, silent and dead. It passed, in loose formation, by the three men cowering on deck and the tangled five on the gangway before splashing to the dirty water below.

  “Like meh say before; he a colander.”

  Pierantoni posted two men as guards on the deck. Then he, Labaan, and the four remaining passed through a hatchway. The passages inside were lit only by dim red emergency lights, apparently running off the batteries. Pierantoni asked about those. “The batteries should be dead by now. What’s it been? A month?”

  “We run the auxiliary generators every few days to keep the batteries up and the medicines cooled,” Labaan answered. “The fuel’s too valuable to waste much of it, though, even at current prices. When you’ve got nothing, fifty cents a gallon is quite a bit.”