by Tom Kratman
Mao still had the radio in one hand, a rifle in the other. He moved the radio to his lips and said, “You go report to him, boss. The XO and I can handle this well enough.” Rather, we can handle watching it turn into a disaster as well without you as with you.
Despite Mao’s and the XO’s best efforts, the thing unfolding on the field looked disastrous, just a ruin of a plan. Troops milled about aimlessly. Two sets of two had taken to fisticuffs on the field. Chavez, though more politician than soldier, noticed. He couldn’t help but notice. And he had to ask.
“What do you expect, Mr. President?” Larralde answered. “It’s their first full speed run through so of course they fucked it up. We’ll be doing this fifty more times before we’re done.”
Chavez nodded, saying, “I believe you.” He was really kind of pleased that Larralde had actually thought through what looked like a competent rehearsal plan. It wasn’t something one could count on, with the army in the state he’d driven it to.
“Bottom line, Larralde; are they going to be ready?”
“That’s …a qualified ‘yes,’ Mr. President. By M Day, they’ll be able to board the aircraft, fly, unload in a hurry, overcome light resistance, if there is any, and secure the airport. The specialist teams will be able to do their part, running the control tower and refueling from the stocks there in Guyana. That’s the most I can promise. I think it’s enough for your purposes.”
“Do they know what their mission’s going to be?”
The major shook his head in negation. “Mao does; my XO, too. Nobody else beyond very broad lines we’ve tried really hard to blur.”
“When are you planning on telling them?”
“Not more than forty-eight hours out, sir. And they’ll be in isolation by the time we do. I can’t vouch for operational security from any other group. Mine …we’ll have it.”
Chavez gave off a snort. “I can’t vouch for operational security, either,” he said. “I can tell you that we don’t have any reason to suspect we’re compromised. Yet. And I can tell you that all the other components are going into isolation, too, three days before we jump off.”
“Oh, and I can tell you one other thing. The gringos won’t have any troops in country at that mercenary cum training base.”
Larralde thought about that for a moment. If he were inclined to be honest with his president he’d have said he really didn’t want to fight the gringos. Instead, he simply asked, “How did you manage that, sir?”
“Two ways. One is that we’re behind—far behind, but behind—the riots that have been sweeping Guyana of late. That gave the gringos the excuse not to send any troops for a while. The other way is that someone in the White House is our ally.”
“Their president?” Larralde asked. He didn’t believe it.
“No,” Hugo replied. “Oh, he’s sympathetic, but it isn’t him. One of their president’s mentors has pushed to cancel that deployment, even before we got the riots started. The riots helped. The riots also got us a few other things we can use, but you donneed to know about those.
“And now, if you don’t mind, Major, get your people back on those mockups and show me a dry run that doesn’t end in disaster. However many it takes; I’ve got all day.”
The sun was long down. Monkey and other jungle dwellers were out, the monkeys, in particular, raising a hellacious racket.
Lily Vargas—who normally did not much care for spiders and snakes—groaned as she lay down atop her poncho. Sore and tired, even putting up a mosquito net was beyond her strength. At least she’d found the strength to douse herself liberally with insect repellent.
Carlos Villareal, standing over her, said, “Mao sees you sleeping without your mosquito bar, he’ll stake you out over an ant hill. He said he would. I believe him.”
“I’m just so tired, Carlos,” she replied “We did that pointless shit all day. In the sun. With hardly a break. And my fucking rucksack and rifle together weigh more than I do!”
“Yeah …yeah,” he said, “I understand.” Without another word he took one knee beside her rucksack and began to rifle through it. Eventually, he touched upon the unmistakable stiff mesh of a fairly new mosquito net. This he took out and began to erect over her supine form, using a couple of trees that framed her at head and feet.
The alignment wasn’t perfect so, since trees were not going to be moved, Carlos walked around to the other side of the girl and dragged her by the poncho to a better position. Then he spent a few minutes arranging the net so it would have a fair chance of not coming in contact with her skin. He’d already learned the hard way just how many of the little winged bastards could gather for a feast on any flesh that touched the net. He was still scratching from that one.
“Thanks, honey,” Lily said when he was done. She thought about it for just a moment—Carlos always does things like that, whether it’s helping me over an obstacle or feeding me when I’m sick or just generally being nice. A girl could do worse—before adding, “Would you like to join me in here. I stink, but …”
“I didn’t do it for that,” Carlos replied, turning away, embarrassed.
“I know,” she agreed. “If you had, I wouldn’t have invited you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When an army is overthrown and its leader slain,
the cause will surely be found among the five dangerous
faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“Lawyers, Guns, and Money” (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana
Tucked away at one end of the SCIF was a small auditorium, a multifunction screen against one wall and a dozen tiers of fabric-covered theater seats rising toward the back. The room contained enough seats for the regimental command and staff section, the battalions’ commanders and their staffs, the company commanders and first sergeants, plus a few to spare. There were some openings in Second Battalion’s section, due to the departure of the bulk of Welch’s company for the Philippines. Ordinarily, Second Battalion would have even more open spots. The United States having cancelled the next several rotations to the regiment-run jungle warfare course had left that battalion’s companies out of the jungle for a change.
Other battalions, likewise, had a couple of vacant seats each for their deployed companies doing contract work around the globe. Still, the rows of seats were mostly filling up, old men complaining at the pain in the knees from walking the steeply descending central aisle.
Unusually enough, in the back, next to Raffick Hosein, Stauer’s driver, sat a stunning, slightly olive skinned, rather young woman in a brightly flowered silk dress. Tatiana had never before been invited to one of these, not even when she was still in the regiment. In this case, though, Stauer—on Joshua’s advice—had thought she should be, if only because she was the de facto leader of what amounted to the regiment’s recreational specialists. Hosein had driven her to the assembly.
Besides, Stauer thought, Tati is loyal to the regiment, maybe even more loyal than she knows.
Tatiana stared intently at the tall, ramrod-straight, black regimental sergeant major standing to the left—her right—of the screen. Joshua was patently trying to ignore her presence, so much so that it became obvious he was extremely aware of her.
That’s all right, the courtesan thought. If you did anything else, you wouldn’t be you, and then I would not love you so.
In the front row, flanking the regimental staff, sat Lada, Morales—sporting a not unimpressive shiner, Baluyev, Ryan, and the leaders of two of the ground recon teams that had crossed the border—rather, tried to cross the border—on foot. They hadn’t gotten far before some surprisingly aggressive Venezuelan patrolling had forced them to abort. That was quite significant, in itself. The front row was distinguished from most of the rest by actually having a slight majority of people in it who were not gray-headed and pushing—or past—sixty.
Well past sixty was the RSM. His lips were curled in an habitual sneer. He glared at the �
��snivelers.”
“Shut the fuck up and take your seats,” Sergeant Major Joshua ordered. “Christ, you would think you people were twenty-somethings, the way you whine, whine, whine. ‘Ooo, my pussy hurts!’”
I’m twenty-something, Tatiana thought, and you can hurt any part of me you like, any time you want to. Foolish man.
At the opposite side, leaning slightly on a podium, Stauer suppressed a rueful smile. My fucking back and knees hurt, too, Top, he thought. And so do yours; you just refuse to admit it, even to yourself.
Joshua’s curt ass chewing was sufficient to quiet the hubbub and get people scampering to their seats rather nimbly, ancient and arthritic knees notwithstanding As soon as the last man was seated, the RSM gave the nod to Stauer. He didn’t need it, of course, but the procedure was traditional, an informal equivalent of an exchange of salutes at a formation. In effect, it said, “Okay, now they’re yours.”
“Chilluns, we got problems,” Stauer said. He shared a look with his young wife, Phillie, that said, I couldn’t tell you anything before. The look she returned was, You are so going to pay for that.
Stauer shrugged. Cost of doing business.
“The short version of that is that we think—no, we’re pretty damned sure—that Guyana is about to get heavily ‘liberated’ by Venezuela.” Stauer pointed at the front row, sweeping his hand back and forth. “Over the last month, plus, we’ve had teams reconning our Bolivarian neighbor. They’ll give you what they found—or, in the case of some of the ground teams, what they were blocked from finding—later. For now, we’ve got some decisions to make.
“Our choices are basically to hit Chavez first, to wait for him to hit us, then defend and counterattack, to run like hell for another base in some other country, or to convince Venezuela—which is to say, Chavez—that we’ll hurt him too badly to be worth this place.” Stauer let a sneer flash across his face. “Oh …or we could try to cut a deal. For reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s the staff’s consensus that no deal that leaves us to continue to practice our trade is possible. I concur in that consensus.”
“Also, the first option is right out. Ladies, gents; we’re mercenaries. The whole fucking world hates our guts on general principle. We hit a sovereign country—however fucked up, however much an international pain in the ass it may be—we’re going to find ourselves at the bottom of a funnel with more military force than we can handle being poured in.
“Some of that force just might come from the Unites States.”
Stauer shook his head. “I’m not going to fight the United States. Just isn’t happening. That oath I took, same as most of you? It didn’t have an expiration date on it.”
“Option Three—pack up and move out—has some problems.” Stauer looked up toward Tatiana and said, “Corporal Hosein, please stand.” That’s right, son, there are reasons I wanted you here that had nothing to do with chauffeuring everyone’s favorite hooker and sometime field medic.
“Raffick,” Stauer asked, “suppose we left? Would the Guyanan troops want to come with us or would they stay to defend their country?”
Hosein shrugged, “I can’t speak for everyone, sir, but all the good ones, I think, would prefer to stay and fight.”
“Sergeant Major?”
Joshua nodded. “The boy’s right. Most of the dirtbags got driven out after we fought Suriname. The ones who are left …mostly …would stay and defend their country. I’m not sure we’d want the ones who wouldn’t.”
Neither am I, Stauer silently agreed.
“So we’ve got a moral problem, folks. We wrecked these people’s own army to build our regiment. When we did that, we inherited the obligation to defend them. Worse, when we took all these Guyanans under our wing—all thirty-five hundred of them—we also acquired, even if we didn’t know it at the time, an obligation to them, the same as we’d have to any troops, not to abandon them.
“Leaders don’t run out on the led.”
Looking back up into the seats, Stauer ordered, “Sit down, Corporal Hosein.”
“That leaves us options two and four. The problem with four is that, while we can beat Venezuela, here, and hurt them really badly, there, we can only do it if they’re not expecting it. We tell them how we’d do it, they’d be perfectly able to guard against it, and they we’d have lost our chance. The short version of that is that deterrence, to work, has to be something both obvious and which cannot be guarded against. We fail on both counts.
“Sad, ain’t it?”
Seated next to Reilly, Sergeant Major George raised his hand.
“Yes, Sergeant Major?” Stauer asked.
George stood and said, “I’m not interested in running out, either, sir, but we’re not the only ones at issue. A good chunk of our men, U.S., Euro, and local, have wives and families. How fair and moral is it to expose them to a real war with a not entirely insignificant regional power?”
Stauer nodded. “Yeah, that’s come up in planning. We’re thinking of evacuating the families—maybe mostly to Brazil—and using them to give the impression that we’ve all bugged out. Not sure on that one yet.” Looking up for a moment, Stauer waited for the next comment or question. Will it be Phillie or Lana Reilly?
“Colonel Stauer?”
Ah, Lana. No matter, they’d both say about the same thing.
“Yes, Lana.”
She, as had George, stood, her belly standing out just enough to be noticed, even through her loose-fitting battle dress. Lana’s normally cascading hair was done up in a bun at the back of her neck. “Some families are also with the regiment, as soldiers.” She looked down, adding, “Or passengers. “
Lana hesitated for a moment, glancing at her husband first, then back to Stauer. She then said, “Like Corporal Hosein, I can’t speak for everyone, only for me and my passenger. I’m not leaving. We’re not leaving.” She sat down.
Love it when a plan comes together, Stauer thought. Now none of the men can bug out, even if they were so inclined. Even old men hate being shown up by a girl. Heh. Good girl, Lana!
Stauer couldn’t resist a searching look at Reilly, Senior, who seemed torn between pride and utter horror. Serves you right, you bastard.
“All right then. Is there anyone present who disagrees with the following: The regiment, also known as ‘M Day,’ Inc., stands and fights? If there are, just go to the rear.” And let a nice Jewish girl show you all up as pussies.
Seeing that there were no takers, Stauer looked up at the Second Battalion’s section and said to von Ahlenfeld, “Lava, change to your plans; Welch in the Philippines is on his own. You’re staying here.” Then he turned his attention down at the rough center of the front row. “Order of brief is Chief of Staff, S-2, S-3, S-4, S-1. Boxer, your show. Take it away.”
The big screen at the front of the auditorium projected a map of the northeast corner of South America and its nearby waters and islands. To the lower right, the map showed part of Suriname. To the upper left was the Colombian-Venezuelan border area. Parts of Brazil were shown, as was all of Guyana and Venezuela. Various arrows and other symbols, all in red, illustrated Boxer’s best guesstimate of the presumptive enemy’s plans.
“The really bad part,” Boxer said, after laying out what he did know, or thought he could guess at, especially as concerned how a Venezuelan invasion might come, “is that I have no human intelligence on a time line for this. None of my contacts at State, NRO, NSA, or the Agency are looking at Venezuela, and the ones who will still talk to me tell me they wouldn’t tell me even if they did know something. Apparently, Hugo has become Washington’s fair haired boy. That is unlikely to change until Chavez says something good about the United States, which is to say, never.”
He shrugged, with resignation, then sighed, “As you may imagine, I consider this a bad sign.
“Colombian Intelligence, on the other hand, does keep close track of Venezuela. How-the-fuck-ever, they’ve got limited capabilities. They mostly keep track of their common bord
er area, which doesn’t interest most of us much, their air force, and the coast. The Colombians have agreed—very willingly agreed—to keep me posted on the activities and positions of Venezuela’s not inconsiderable amphibious fleet and the combat aircraft, which is all Colombia really cares about, air force-wise. They might be willing to tell us what they can of the activities of certain …personages.”
Boxer pointed at Lada and Morales. “We already know from those two that Venezuela’s five amphibs are very nearly ready for sea, after months—even years—of neglect. I should know when they begin loading. That will be our key to when to begin to disperse and to move the families out of here.”
“We have to be careful about provoking Colombia by violating their neutrality. Doesn’t mean we won’t do it, just that we have to be careful.”
The S-3, or Operations Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Waggoner, took over from Boxer. Waggoner was grayed blond, where he wasn’t balding, and chubby, almost to the point of cherubic, but amazingly strong in every particular.
Waggoner looked out over the rising tide of faces, scanning left to right, bottom to top, trying to gauge the regiment’s leadership’s emotional reaction to the news. Some seemed grayed or paled, or at least deeply concerned. Still others, most especially Reilly and his sergeant major, George, seemed almost thrilled, broad smiles shining, eyes glowing. At the top of the tiers of seat, seated next to the colonel’s driver, Tatiana’s lower lip had almost disappeared into her chewing teeth. She seemed as if uncertain of her future, as they almost all were, and still more uncertain as to what she should do.
“Change slides,” he said. Almost instantly, the map on the screen updated with various other symbols and arrows, these ones blue in contrast to Boxer’s red.
“As Colonel Stauer told us,” Waggoner said, “we cannot deter Venezuela; we can only beat them by giving them no warning of what is coming or what is awaiting them. Therefore, we must delay any obvious moves on our part until they’re committed, on theirs.