Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  Graft streaked by Semmerlin’s firing position, unfriendly shots following closely.

  “Keep going!” Semmerlin shouted. “I’ll hold ’em here long enough.”

  Graft didn’t need the advice. Still holding the frail little man over his left shoulder he sped past his partner, straight up the trail on his way to the cliff and safety.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  All men dream, although not in the same way.

  The ones who dream by night in the dusty shelters of

  their minds, wake up the next day and discover that

  it was just vanity; but the ones who dream by day are

  dangerous men, because they can represent their

  dreams with the eyes open to make them possible.

  —T.E. Lawrence

  Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

  Republic of the Philippines

  There’s a time and place for stealth and then there’s a time and place for, “Get your fucking asses up the ladders!”

  Warrington uttered those words roughly a millisecond after hearing the first explosion coming from the enemy camp, to his northeast. It wasn’t as if the men on the beach or scrambling up the rope ladders were slacking off, but they had been trying to be careful and quiet. There’d be no more of that; legs pumped and arms grappled as they pushed up, one man’s head often enough close enough to smell another’s ass, if he hadn’t wiped properly.

  The two and a half teams under Warrington represented about a platoon in manpower, or a little less. In power, though, there was little comparison. They had fully five Pechenegs and two recoilless rifles, with almost all the ammunition for the latter being antipersonnel. Every man had his own radio, and everyone had some kind of night vision capability, scope or goggles. Moreover, all the scopes were thermals. Every man carried at least one claymore. Perhaps best of all, they were sufficiently strong and fit that they ported about twice a normal infantryman’s load in ammunition.

  Feeney appeared at the edge of the cliff, recognizable by the outline of his ogre’s shape. At the top he stopped and bent a knee, reaching down to haul his normal partner, Hallinan, up and over. At the other ladder Cagle, bowed under a positively huge aid bag, stopped about waist high at the lip, then swung a leg over. The next leg followed right enough, leaving Cagle fully prone almost at the cliff’s edge. Then the medico pushed himself and his load up from prone to hands and knees, then stood up fully.

  “Cagle, find a low spot.”

  “Roger.” The medic trundled off. About fifteen meters from the cliff’s edge he found something, terrain-wise, that would do, a shallow depression sheltered by a rock outcropping and with trees to either side. Dumping his bag to the ground, he took a couple of red chemlights from his load-bearing vest, bent them, shook them, and pinned them low, near the roots of the neighboring trees.

  Shadows formed into small groups, then the groups ran past Cagle’s aid station toward the camp. They didn’t go very far toward it, just enough to provide some standoff distance between the enemy they expected and the cliff. There was a minimum of shouting, though clearly they were being pushed, prodded, and folded into something resembling a cohesive perimeter. As soon as they were set, some of the men took over security, other broke out their “wretched little shovels” and began scraping out rough fighting positions, while still others began to set their claymores out, generally fifty feet to the front.

  MV Richard Bland, Sulu Sea

  The MI-28 gunships had already gone; a night vision scope pointed toward the island would have seen them, almost skimming the waves, about halfway between it and the ship. Following along with a pair of roaring whooshes, one after the other, the CH-750s sped down the Marsden Matting, lifting off long before they came even near the end of the strip. They sank under their loads, pulling up just before touching the sea. Both gained altitude, just enough, then veered toward the island.

  Welch’s eyes followed the light planes down the runway. Once they lifted, and got out from the mild glow of the chemlights placed along the runway, he lost them.

  Terry became aware of a tiny shape standing next to him, likewise staring forward, though not necessarily comprehending what she saw. He didn’t look. He didn’t need to. Only one person aboard ship had that size, or that peculiarly aristocratic presence.

  “Yes, Madame?” Terry asked Paloma Ayala, without looking away from the view presented through the bridge’s forward windows.

  “This will work, Major Welch?”

  Madame was dressed as she always dressed, tastefully, richly . . . well. She wore pearls, remarkably large, perfect and—so Welch suspected—not at all cultured, as befitted her age and station. Her hand stroked a gold crucifix at her neck, as if seeking comfort from her God. She sounded quite calm, and so Welch would have taken her, had she not asked the same question roughly once every waking half hour since boarding the Bland.

  Terry consulted his watch. Yep, right on time.

  “I know,” the woman said. “I know.” Terrified for the fate of her husband, she allowed fear to creep into her voice. “But . . . but . . . my husband is my soul mate. I couldn’t find another even if I were still young and beautiful. I must have him back.”

  Thinking of his own wife, Ayanna, back in Guyana and, so it had been reported to him, safe and home again following the war with Venezuela, Welch said, “Madame, I assure you, you are still beautiful.” And I understand about soul mates.

  “There are no guarantees in this sort of thing, Madame,” Welch said, as he had said to her so many times before. “Anyone who says otherwise is a fool. Or a liar. Or both. But if I didn’t think we had a good, even an excellent, chance of success, I wouldn’t have come this far.

  “For what it’s worth, though there’s a lot still to do, and the risks are still large, we have your husband away from the Harrikat.”

  Though at an intellectual level Paloma knew that that meant a lot less than she’d like it to, at a purely emotional level it was the next thing to Heaven. Tension drained from her shoulders at the news. She slumped and began, softly, to cry. “Thank you. No matter what . . . thank you.”

  Glad you’re appreciative, Welch thought, because I’m going to be asking for a very large favor here, very soon.

  Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

  Republic of the Philippines

  The very first explosion had awakened Janail with a start. His first thought had been, Oh, crap, one of the idiots dropped a match in the ammo dump. I’ll have his balls—

  That thought cut off as he heard the next explosion, bare seconds later. No . . . no, those were about the same power. That wouldn’t happen at the ammo dump. Oh, shit.

  The slave girl at his side whimpered. He paid her no mind.

  He raced half naked and shoeless, stopping only to grab a rifle, before emerging into the dirt road in front of his hut. Already flames were arching to the sky from a burning hut to the south. He guided himself like a homing pigeon toward those flames.

  He heard the moans of the dying in what remained of the guard shack. They don’t matter, he thought, turning away from that and toward Ayala’s hut. The left side of his face nearly burned from the heat from the burning hut nearby. Already, the material of Ayala’s hut was beginning to smoke.

  The explosive blast inside had extinguished the candle. No matter, there was enough light leaking from outside through the entrance and the newer hole for him to see that not only was Ayala gone, but the entire area was littered with pieces of bodies.

  “My prisoner,” he murmured, “my money.” Then he shouted, “My weapons!” With shoulders slumping he thought, My sultanate.

  Whatever his others flaws and deficits, Janail didn’t lack for either decisiveness or determination. Stepping back outside, he called for his datus, his officers. A tracer from somewhere to the south zipped by. Janail paid it no mind.

  Small knots of the slave girls and their brats streamed by, heading to presumed safety in th
e north. As four of Janail’s six datus gathered around him—Who knows where the other two are?—he set his mind and heart on winning. They can’t be off the island yet. If they were, there’d not be any firing. No, I have to assume Ayala is still here, somewhere. Where? Probably in the direction that firing is coming from. Sure, why not? They got ashore unseen. That means the cliff.

  “Camana, Ampuan,” he addressed two of the datus. “Assemble your companies and drive to the cliff. Camana, you’re in charge.”

  “Salic,” Janail addressed the datu of his weapons company, “support them.”

  “Yes, Janail,” answered the scar faced, older datu, in the turban.

  “Be sure to spread them out. I haven’t seen or heard any, but they may have aircraft in support. Now, all of you; go!”

  With acknowledging head nods, those three sped off to gather their men, followed by their own radio telephone operators, or RTO’s.

  Janail didn’t really care overmuch about the datu who served, in effect, as his number two. The missing company commander, though; he was important. Janail shouted out, “Molok?”

  “Here, Janail,” came the answer from the shadows. Datu Molok had been more sensible than most, taking up a covered position before a bullet found him.

  “Get your men into their positions along the western beach. I don’t know if there’ll be more coming by sea, but I don’t want it to surprise me, either.”

  “Ampatuan, your company is with me. Bring them here, but do not cluster them. Get me a radio and someone to carry it.”

  Something to the east and moderately high in the air fired, rockets and machine guns both. Further flames began rising from the direction of the piers.

  Fuck, thought Janail, they’re going after the boats, too.

  Semmerlin fired a short burst at a head that poked around the mosque. The head was a little too quick for him; he missed. Where the Moro had gone, he couldn’t be sure, though a fair bet was that he’d taken to ground and was crawling forward.

  That wasn’t the first miss he’d had, either. Not long after Graft had passed on his way to the cliff, the first Moros had begun showing up in something like an organized fashion. He’d dropped two, he thought, and those only because of surprise. Since then? No luck. If they showed themselves it wasn’t for more than an instant.

  Problem is, these little fucks are actually pretty good. If they’d just rush me I could drop a shit pot with the daisy chains. As is, there aren’t enough to justify it.

  I think maybe it’s time for Mrs. Semmerlin’s little boy to unass the AO.

  And, since I’m not going to get a lot of use out of the daisy chains, I may as well expend them to drive the little shits’ heads down. It’ll give me some smoke to cover my withdrawal, too, which, given the light from the fires, I’m probably going to need.

  As if to punctuate that last thought, a burst of fire from somewhere off to his left chipped bark just a few inches over Semmerlin’s head.

  Thinking, Oh, Mommy, I’m a comin’ home, he reached for the clackers.

  Datu Salic had three platoons in his company, one of mortars, one of heavy machine guns, and the other of recoilless rifles. The mortars could pretty much see to themselves. At least, they could once they got the ammunition from the dump and established radio contact with Camana. The heavy machine guns were way too heavy to move easily, and impossible with a useful load of ammunition. They were mounted on high tripods for antiaircraft work, with at least a fighting load of linked .50 caliber or 14.5mm, depending on the type of gun, piled behind them. They were Salic’s least favored platoon, not because there was anything wrong with the men but because he was fairly sure that if the Philippine Armed Forces decided to evict them from their little island the eviction notice would come in the form of some bomb-carrying aircraft he couldn’t hope to touch with mere machine guns.

  The recoilless rifles didn’t need a lot of ammunition, being direct fire weapons. What they did need the crews were able to retrieve from the dump in passing.

  Salic only had four of them, and those four were all U.S. designed, Chinese-built, M18, 57mm jobs. They were all pretty old, having seen service with the People’s Liberation Army and the Moro Liberation Front, before finally being stolen from the latter by the Harrikat. Ammunition was fairly plentiful, if rather old and therefore a little iffy. It had a nice little high explosive warhead and a useful white phosphorus rounds, though the anti-tank warhead had never been worth much. Salic had only kept a couple of dozen of the latter, expending the rest for training purposes. He’d been just paranoid enough to have each crew load up with two of the AT rounds.

  The crews, six or seven men per gun, were in a widely spaced column, trotting behind Salic, far enough from the steadily firing machine gun that he felt comfortable having them trot upright rather than crawl.

  Two sets of explosions, so close together as to be almost indistinguishable, off to Salic’s left front, had him and all his men diving for cover in a flash. Mere fractions of a second after that, explosions seemed to erupt all around, though none were precisely on target.

  “What the fuck was that, Datu?” asked the recoilless platoon leader.

  “I don’t know,” Salic answered. “But whatever it was I didn’t hear so much as a pebble reach us from the first blasts. Check that your men are all healthy and then get them back on their feet and into the trees.”

  Because I think we’ve got company up above and I wish I hadn’t left all the heavy machine guns behind.

  With one hand gripping his rifle around the stock and the other curled around the carrying handle of his Pecheneg, bent over at the waist so low that the firearms sometimes slapped the ground, Semmerlin sprinted back toward the cliff, staying just off the trail. He’d been on the right side, previously, so he looked for a place on the left side from which he could delay the Harrikats’ advance. As the wise old sergeant had said, Randomization is your friend. He was definitely in doggie mode—which is to say, “any tree will do” mode.

  He settled on something he found about two hundred meters back from his previous position. This was a large tree with the advantage of having a solid looking boulder between it and the trail. It was actually the boulder that had first attracted his attention. Between the two was a nice little gap, maybe eighteen inches across. The machine gun he reloaded and set aside, though he left it close enough to grab at need. The suppressed .510 caliber he also reloaded, with a seven-round magazine, and then settled himself and the rifle into a firing position from which he could cover the trail junction.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.

  —Jane Austen

  Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

  Republic of the Philippines

  “They were there,” fumed Slepnyov to his gunner. The man’s actual title was “Weapons and Navigation Officer,” but “gunner” would do.

  “I mean right there! Maybe thirty men carrying four or five, maybe even six heavy weapons. In the fucking open. Meat. Just meat. And then some fucking asshole on the ground had to set off some explosions and they all ducked. Why? Why, why, why did he have to do it while my finger was pressing the firing button? Why? A whole pod of rockets! Wasted. Why? Is there no God?”

  “Slepnyov,” answered the gunner wearily. “You—oh, deny it if you like, but I know better—are still, at heart, a communist. You already didn’t believe in God.”

  “And there’s my fucking proof!” the pilot snarled.

  “Where’d they go by the way?” the gunner asked.

  “Scattered and somewhere in the trees. We don’t have any really superb weapons for people inside forests, you know. And there’s more proof, as if I needed any.”

  Providing proof of friendly intent and disposition was always a tad problematic for those who just had to run towards groups of nervous, essentially trigger-happy, friends. For this there was something called
the “running password.” No, no, it didn’t pass from mouth to mouth. Nor did it resemble a running joke. It was something the soldier shouted for all he was worth when running for his life from the enemy.

  The running password had a couple of criteria associated with it. It had to be easy to remember, even when scared out of one’s wits. It was good for it to be more or less unpronounceable by one’s enemy-du-jour, words with “W,” for example, if fighting Germans or Slavs; “L’s” and “R’s” were good for most Asians, “V” wasn’t bad for Latins.

  It was also supposed to be followed by a number, for the number of people attempting to pass lines. This could, in some circumstances, be a problem.

  “Schickelgruber Twwwooo! Schickelgruber Twwwooo!” Graft screamed, as he passed between Feeney and Hallinan. He’d been shouting the same thing for about three hundred meters.

  That one would have worked, even with a German, since the German would have pronounced it too correctly. The problem was in the “two.”

  “Hallinan,” Feeney said dramatically, “I only saw one man pass by; Graft, I think it was. That means somebody’s still out there . . . gotta be Semmerlin. One of our own is out there, Hallinan. I gotta go get him.”

  Hallinan himself wasn’t sure. Unlike Feeney, he’d noticed the burden on Graft’s back. Maybe that was the “two.” But, on the other hand, there had been a two man team, so maybe “two” was Semmerlin, maybe shot and bleeding in their flight. Graft would have wanted to go back for him, if so, but Graft, Hallinan knew, was a real pro. He wouldn’t have risked the mission for a single man, except when, as now, a single man was the mission. Sooo . . . I dunno.