Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  As vast as was her satisfaction, Madame still fumed. I offered to spare one of them, if he’d tell me who in my family set up my husband. None would, the filthy swine. I suppose that was my mistake for admitting that I wouldn’t spare them anyway, earlier. Silly me.

  But it doesn’t really matter. I’ve had the girl my husband was with questioned. It was a lovely little book Peter loaned me. Pity the tramp didn’t survive. So I know it was Junior. And Pedro and his partner should be dealing with that little tumor from my own womb very shortly.

  III

  Yacht Resurrection, Gulf of Thailand

  All the money in the world, thought Valentin Prokopchenko, will not save me from this.

  Even down here, down in the lead-lined compartment over the pool, Prokopchenko could hear the fighting ranging below decks. And that sound grew closer by the minute. Daria, seated on the deck, whimpered with fright, occasionally crying out at particular explosions.

  I wonder how Vympel defeated my yacht’s radar? It must be Vympel; it’s their job. That they could do so I never doubted. I’d like to know exactly how, though.

  Who betrayed me? he wondered. Who even knew, besides prospective customers? And there were few of those. I doubt it was the Harrikat. Maybe Shedova from Kazakhstan. He, certainly, still had close ties with the FSB.

  Not that it will change anything, the knowledge. They’re going to capture me, and then I’m going to envy the ones who died in Beria’s prisons and camps.

  I still remember throwing up as a boy at what my father told me his grandfather told him: The days on end without sleep, the beatings. And those were only the start, the old man said. After that they went to work on the fingernails. Then the whippings . . . the burning . . . the hanging by the wrists with the arms tied behinduntilyourshoudersdislocate . . .

  Daria present or not, Prokopchenko leaned over and vomited on the floor.

  “I can’t let that happen,” he said. “No . . . not to me. That can’t be allowed.”

  Why did I come down here? What was I thinking? In his terror, Prokopchenko’s mind went fuzzy and confused. For a moment he could barely remember what was going on above him. A hand grenade that shook the ship served as a reminder.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember now.” He looked down at the control box he’d brought from a safe in his quarters. “Yes, I remember.”

  Control box in hand, Prokopchenko walked to the hatchway that led into the bombs. Twisting the latch he eased it open, then walked through.

  “Valentin,” Daria cried, “don’t leave me!”

  IV

  Lawyers, Guns, and Money (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana

  Boxer was white faced as he reported to Stauer, the commander, which was to say the CEO, of M Day, Incorporated. They were both at least fairly good sized men, but Stauer topped Boxer by several inches.

  “There’s been a nuclear detonation in the Gulf of Thailand,” Boxer said. “Nobody’s claiming responsibility.”

  “Your contacts?”

  “Won’t say a word. Not a word. And I think they know who’s responsible. This is . . . worrisome, Wes. I mean really worrisome. I’m scared. I knew things were bad, but . . . ”

  “Yeah, whole other order of bad. Can we do anything about it?”

  Boxer shook his head, saying, “Nothing I can think of.”

  “Then we worry about what we can fix.”

  The sound of hammer and saw was everywhere, a symphony of buzzing and banging, with accompaniment from the cement mixer chorus and the jackhammer percussion section. The natural sounds of bird, insect, and reptile had little chance to be heard, even had those creatures elected to stick around. Barring only the mosquitoes, they generally had not.

  Little by little—aided by labor from Venezuelan prisoners of war; at least until the final reparations payments were made—Camp Fulton was rising from the ashes left in the wake of weeks of air strikes. Even down in the concrete-shrouded depths of Lawyers, Guns, and Money, sometimes one could feel the vibrations through the ground and air.

  Rising, however, wasn’t quite the same thing as risen. The place was still largely a ruin, and would remain so for some months. Most of the troops were in tents, plus a few shacks and shanties. It said something of the corporation’s degree of organization and discipline, that those temporary shelters were at least dressed right and covered down, close by their ruined former barracks and offices.

  The corporation, which is to say, “the regiment,” was in better shape, but by no means in good shape. Casualties had been severe, and in the worst hit units, crippling. They’d ended up by losing almost all their air assets, most of their little combat and amphibious flotilla, a frightful number of armored vehicles, and—between killed and seriously wounded—almost fifteen hundred men; which was more than a quarter of their starting strength.

  One does not take on a major regional power with a single regiment and not pay for it . . . exorbitantly.

  And yet the boys are happier than I’ve ever seen them, thought the Regimental Sergeant Major, RSM Joshua, as his boots clicked and clacked up the corridor’s bare concrete floor, between the bunker’s entrance and the major conference room. He spent most of his time in among the troops, after all—judging, gauging. Except for First Battalion—the regiment’s mechanized force, still hurt and bitter over the loss of their commander—everywhere he’d gone since the end of the war it had been nothing but bright white smiles shining from faces either tanned or naturally dark. Then again, why shouldn’t they be happy, and proud, too? We won, after all.

  Joshua found himself smiling, as well, not least with pride, as he turned the knob to the conference room, opened the door, and stepped in. As he did, he could feel the pride, right in there with no little fatigue, bordering on exhaustion.

  About half the required people were there already. Among these very prompt ones were Lana Reilly, nee Mendes, born a Jewish South African and late of Tel Aviv and Tzahal. Great with child and nearing her term, Lana was, by popular acclaim, commanding her late husband’s First Battalion. She was no more comfortable with the one than she was with the other, but at this point had little real choice about either.

  Lana glanced down and put protective hands over her distended belly.

  Joshua caught the movement and the glance. When Lana raised her head and lowered her hands, he gave her a confident, co-conspirator wink. You’ll do fine, the RSM thought. The men worshipped your husband and, bitter and hurt or not, would die supporting you rather than let down the memory of him. And, if you’re younger than most of your privates . . . so what? Received divinity counts for more than age. And, sister, you have done been injected with it.

  Joshua, himself, steel hair topping black, leathery skin, was well into his sixties. Indeed, most of the regiment, or at least that portion of it made up of Americans and Europeans, were pretty long in the tooth.

  Joshua’s eyes left Lana Reilly and swept the room. There was Chavez—no relation to the late and unlamented Hugo Chavez—head of the regimental recruiting detachment, looking grimly and intently over some spreadsheet or other. Chavez’s normally highly intelligent face was drawn and weary.

  Yeah, thought the RSM, I don’t know for sure where we’re going to make good our losses from either, let alone expand to the almost ten thousand men Stauer and Boxer are thinking of.

  On one side of Chavez sat the Adjutant, DeWitt, while the other flank was held by Dr. Scott Joseph, the chief medico of the regiment. Both stared just as intently at Chavez’s spreadsheet as he did, himself. Lahela Corrigan, Comptroller’s office, “she whose smile lights up the jungle,” looked over Chavez’s shoulder at the same information.

  “No, sir; we can’t afford anything like that,” she said, definitively. “Not long term; not even with Venezuela’s reparations payments.”

  Chavez scowled, even as Joseph deflated and DeWitt turned away.

  “What’s the problem, gentlemen,” Joshua asked, taking a seat at the long mahogany conferenc
e table, opposite the other four.

  “We need to add about six thousand, five hundred people to the rolls,” Chavez explained as his fingers absently drummed the spreadsheet. “Guyana just doesn’t have them; it’s neither that populous, nor does their culture turn out huge numbers of prime military material. And if we actually found whatever Guyana does have, and tried to recruit them, this place wouldn’t even run in the half-assed fashion it does. Not after the divergence of all that human capital.”

  DeWitt shook his head. “And we can’t recruit any substantial numbers of Latins. They’re not bad soldiers, properly trained, but we’re talking highly incompatible cultures, and that’s even worse because we just stomped the shit out of one of their sister countries.”

  “Even worse than that, Sergeant Major,” said Lahela, “by our own rules we’d end up paying more for the Latins than we pay the locals, as long as the cost of living increment of pay is indexed to home country. That would be bad internal politics.

  “And if we tried to fill the new table of organization with Americans and Euros, we’d just go broke, because their pay is also indexed to the cost of living in their home countries.”

  Joshua thought, with exasperation, Officers! And the bloody warrants are not better.

  “Look north,” he said. “There are a bunch of islands out in the Caribbean with economies that aren’t a lot better off than Guyana’s, and have similar cultures. Maybe even look as far as Belize, which is dirt poor, or along the Carib coast of Panama and Costa Rica which, just like the islands and here, are mostly descended from English-speaking slaves. Just like me,” the RSM added with a smile.

  “I have it on very good authority,” said Doc Joseph, “that you are descended from some African who wandered north to Egypt and enlisted in the legions, eventually rising to senior centurion.”

  “Both sides, I suspect,” the RSM said, agreeably, “since my mother was even more of a hardass than my father.”

  “The other Caribbeans; they decent military material?” Doc Joseph asked.

  “Some are; some aren’t,” Joshua replied, with a shrug. “But I’ll tell you, one of the finest soldiers I ever met in my life was a black, English-speaking, Colonense from Panama. And, if that fails, look to South Africa for Zulus or Zimbabwe for Matabeles. Or both. And most of them speak English, too.”

  He turned his attention back to Chavez, gesturing with a waving finger. “Between the Caribbean coastal areas, the poorer islands, and some Latins, plus—if we have to go that far—Zulus and Matabele, you can find your six and a half thousand. And our prestige in the Carib has grown to amazing heights. I don’t know if it has in southern Africa but it wouldn’t surprise me.

  “Failing all that, the Indian Army discharges on the order of three thousand or so Gurkhas a year. Be willing to bet some of those would like to sign on, given the chance, and we don’t have to pay them like we do the ex-British Army Gurkhas we have.”

  “As for some Latins, Colombia’s internal war is winding down, while their per capita income isn’t huge, so it wouldn’t upset the pay index much. And I’d be very surprised if they weren’t just tickled pink that we stomped the shit out of the Venezuelans.”

  “That means a major split of my recruiting organization,” Chavez said doubtfully. “I’ll need more people. Do you think the boss will buy it?”

  “Count on it,” the RSM answered, with utter certainty. Then, smiling as if at a secret, he told Lahela, “And we can afford more than you might think. Why do we need so many by the way?”

  Warrant Officer Marc Tyrrell—from Marketing, which mean, in effect, Future Threats—spoke up then, from one of the chairs lining the wall. “Well . . . Sergeant Major, there’s been some trouble for some time, down in Mexico. Now it seems to be spreading north fast.”

  AFTERWORD

  Usual disclaimers: Read this at your own risk. If you trend left—or libertarian, for that matter—and you read this, and your head explodes, it’s on you; you have been warned. Note that you didn’t pay anything extra for it and you don’t have to read it. Admit, in advance, that if you whine about it you can only be whining because it’s here for others to read. And then go look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re quite as committed to free thought and inquiry as you thought you were.

  Further note that, unlike some, I have no interest in doing your heavy thinking for you. This little piece isn’t dispositive, nor do I intend that it be. It is mostly a set of hints, clues, and directions of places to look. Taking the hints and running with them? Following the direction to some place in the conceptual universe? Reading the clues? That’s all on you. At most, this is a loose framework around which you may, perhaps, build something useful for yourself, once you start looking at and past the hints and clues.

  Finally, remember the difference between a true believer and a true disbeliever. Rejecting someone else’s fantasy makes you the latter, not the former. And you should be proud of yourself if you are.

  Intellectually Challenged, Part I

  So, you wanted to know if I really think the world’s going to be as bad as I present it in the COUNTDOWN series? Short answer: Hell, no; I think it’s going to get much, much worse than that. I’m just showing the early stages, when fighting the descent into barbarism is still possible, and brave men and women are still trying. They may not win, and the odds, frankly, are stacked against them. At some point in time, even the bravest get tired of slamming their heads into brick walls. That, or they die.

  Moreover, most of the dismal and depressing background in this series is already visible, in proto form, at least, in the world we live in, today. Give it a little time. Or you can just relax, because we probably don’t have that much time.

  But why are we crumbling? Read on.

  Anyone else could have told me this in advance, but I was blinded by theory.

  —Bertrand Russell

  I’m often accused of being anti-intellectual, a charge to which I can only reply, “Guilty! And why are you saying that as if it were a bad thing?”

  I make that reply, of course, largely for the outrage it causes.

  Even so, we are where we are, and we’re going where we’re going, because of where we’ve been over the last couple of centuries. And where we are and we’ve been is in the age of the intellectual: Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Shelley, Sartre, and even Nussbaum, for example, on the one hand, and Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, on the other. (“What? Hitler? Stalin? Mussolini? Intellectuals?” Oh, absolutely. The only real difference between the last six and the first is that the last were simply more effective at bringing their dreams to life, at remaking the world in their image, than the first six were or are.)

  In any case, that outraged charge of anti-intellectualism seems to me to be a bit confused and misguided. You see, it springs from the notion that intellectuals are, and intellectualism is, inherently and always intelligent and that to be against either is to be pro-stupidity.

  Are intellectuals intelligent? Always? Reliably? Enough to bet your future and your children’s on? I’d suggest not.

  One example: Jean Paul Sartre once—in 1935, I think it was—visited Nazi Germany. Upon his return he pronounced that he could see no difference between Nazi Germany and Republican France. Sartre also famously said, “We were never so free as under the German occupation.” Now, while I’m not a strong Francophile, it seems to me that there were a few nontrivial differences there to be seen between Nazi Germany and Republican France, as well as between France under its own rule and under Nazi rule, by anyone with eyes to see and a brain to process the information. How bright did one have to be to see them? And yet Sartre—an intellectual darling of the twentieth century—could not see them. This was intelligence?

  Nonsense. While there are intelligent intellectuals, surely, this kind of intellectualism is the opposite of intelligent. It is profoundly unintelligent, as any mode of thought must be considered unintelligent that reasons only within the brainpan, t
hat rejects objective truth for things the thinker desperately wants to believe are true.

  Rather than burden the reader with more examples, let me suggest a couple of lines of inquiry you can take for yourself. Go think hard upon Marx’s insistence on there being a progressive income tax, and match that against what control over the means of production actually means. See how intelligent you find that disconnect. Similarly, turn to Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality and ask yourself how probable it was that the first to declare ownership over property merely bluffed his neighbors, as opposed to credibly threatening them.

  In any case, when you get through those little exercises, you might come to agree with me that the case for granting a presumption of intelligence to go with the title of intellectual is, perhaps, something less than airtight.

  Let’s be charitable, though. Anyone can be wrong, on occasion; it’s only human. But how about a studied unwillingness to learn?

  I remember very vividly, a few months after the famous pacifist resolution at the Oxford Union, visiting Germany and having a talk with a prominent leader of the young Nazis. He was asking about this pacifist motion and I tried to explain it to him. There was an ugly gleam in his eye when he said, “The fact is that you English are soft.” Then I realized that the world enemies of peace might be the pacifists.