Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  Half asleep, letting the water soothe away the aches, Reilly was alerted by the sound of a heavy auto scrunching across gravel, followed by very faint footsteps, and the sound of something mostly soft being dropped to the ground outside.

  By the time Sergeant Major George knocked on the inner screen door, closed to bar the entry of mosquitoes, he was fully awake. He’d recognized his sergeant major’s footsteps easily enough.

  “Sorry to bug you, boss,” George said, once invited in, “but I’ve had a sort of problem presented to me and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Reilly sensed there was someone else, waiting outside. Lifting a quizzical eyebrow, he asked, “A personnel problem?”

  “Yup,” George agreed, bobbing his head vigorously. “Just that; a personnel problem.”

  “Bring it in, Sergeant Major,” Reilly said, his voice tinged with resignation.

  “As you wish, sir,” George said, drily, followed by, “Corporal Manduleanu; post!”

  Manduleanu? Reilly wondered. We don’t have anyone in the battalion named …

  “You son of a bitch, George!” he shouted, lunging for the towel as a uniformed Tatiana marched in, stomped to attention, locked her eyes on a spot on the far wall, saluted, and reported:

  “Sir, Medical Corporal Manduleanu, Tatiana, Regimental Number 00607, requests permission to rejoin the regiment for the duration of the emergency!”

  Hill 890, Guyana

  It was an unending drum roll, overhead. Rain poured down like a reenactment of the Great Flood, sans only Noah and the Ark. The thickly intertwined branches and their leaves didn’t stop the rain, they simply slowed it down on its way to the ground and the men who walked it. Between the rain and the churning feet, every path Third Battalion trod had become a morass. Every step was three times harder than a normal step, on a normal path, because of the energy it took to pull boots sunk up to the ankle from the slimy, grasping, sucking mud.

  The men were beat. Moreover, the rain and muck had slowed them enough that they’d eaten their last food and drunk their last canteened water the day before. Since then it had been snatch a cupful, here and there, as they waded the stream. Of forage there’d been essentially none. They were hungry, somewhat thirsty, and very, very tired.

  Still, they were nearly at their first rest stop. And the mules had been eating well.

  Ah, shit! Cazz mentally cursed as his feet began sliding back down the muddy trail leading up the east face of the hill. Automatically, his hand lunged out for nearest tree that might support him. Sadly, that tree was—“Godfuckingdammit!”—a respectable member of the palm family, specifically, an Astrocaryum, and Cazz’s hand had closed on a row of closely set, organic, black spikes.

  At the loss of a handgrip, Cazz’s legs slid out from under him. Falling to one side, he began a swift and muddy descent to the bottom of the hill. As he neared and then began to pass Singh, a few meters behind, the latter squatted down, quite despite his heartbreakingly heavy rucksack, and snatched his colonel by where his shoulder straps went over his shoulder. Cazz came to an abrupt stop.

  “Thanks, Singh,” Cazz said and he rolled over to hands and knees. The Bihari made the struggle to his feet a bit easier by hauling upward on the old man’s rucksack.

  Once on his feet and steady Cazz wiped his muddy hands on his battle dress trousers, then used the hands to wipe the rain from his face. It was an automatic gesture and one that, under the circumstances, did no real, lasting good.

  “Excelsior, motherfuckers,” he whispered as his feet began to churn him forward and upward through the mud, to his rest, awaiting on the other side of the hill.

  Cazz’s uninjured hand absently plucked at the dozen or two vegetable spikes embedded in it. If it hurt like the devil, pulling them out, his face never showed it. They’d leave their residue behind, he knew, but there was nothing to be done about that. And better the points than the whole damned things, being driven farther in.

  Hill 590, Guyana

  About forty-five miles to Cazz’s northwest, on the western slope of Hill 590, Gordo fumed at the weather. I did so not special order this shit.

  He looked up at the distant clouds, ruefully, then admitted, But it’s not without its advantages. Nobody can see us in this crap. And the stream that leads down to the Mazaruni is swollen enough that I can move the supplies to within two miles of this place. That’s a big help when only twenty-two Indians agreed to come this far west to port for pay.

  Pity I couldn’t keep more than a platoon of Trim’s engineers. But they’re needed elsewhere. Still, while I have them, let them work.

  Hill 890, Guyana

  Cazz sat under a stretched out poncho, atop his rucksack, boots off, inspecting his water-logged and wrinkled feet. Water ran off all four sides of the rubber sheet, pattering to the mud below and then running off in streams in the general direction of the supply dump. There, lines of men moved forward to claim their rations while Sergeant Daly supervised the loading of the mules while the latter munched sodden grain from soggy feedbags.

  There were some blisters on his feet, painful but not agonizing. Cazz was pretty sure there were few men in his battalion who didn’t have any. At least the medics were very busy with lancing, disinfecting, and wrapping feet, pretty much everywhere within and on the perimeter. It was just one of those things to be expected and endured; march in the mud, soften the callus, and expect to blister.

  Everyone in the battalion changed into dry socks. It was more a moral thing than a practical one; the socks would be soaked soon enough.

  On the other hand, at least the for-the-time-being-dry socks are clean, Cazz thought. It won’t do a lot for the blistering but will help head off infection.

  And who the hell does Gordo think he is, ordering our entire supply of inclement weather now, when we plainly don’t need it, and so soon before the dry season is supposed to be upon us? What will we use to make the troops miserable with if tomorrow’s rain’s used up today? Fucking thoughtless doggie!

  Seven Miles Northeast of Peaima Falls, Guyana

  Victor Babcock-Moore shuddered and said, “Oh, shit,” when he saw RSM Joshua—bigger than he was, blacker than he was, and twice as mean—step off the newly arrived hovercraft at the tree-covered landing spot. “I so do not need this distraction.”

  Moore had a pack frame with a shelf on his back. The eighty pounds—two 120mm mortar shells, in their packaging, plus a case of rations—he’d previously lugged on it had been dumped off at the center of the camp. He was returning, now, at a pronounced limp, to the landing spot for more.

  Joshua took one look and said, “While I admire your leading by example, Moore, you have better things to be doing. Drop that pack and show me around.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major,” Vic said, sliding the pack frame from his shoulders and tossing in upon a squared-off pile of tarp-covered crates.

  More genially, Joshua added, “I made sure to stop off to check on Elizabeth and your daughter before hitching a ride here, Vic. They’re fine and ready to move out at a moment’s notice.”

  Vic nodded appreciatively.

  Joshua’s voice grew hard, then, “And while I appreciate your initiative in ignoring your orders and using demolitions to clear the ramps around the falls, Moore, you still violated orders and I am not one of those from whom it is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission. There will be repercussions.”

  Moore hung his head. “Yes, Sergeant Major. Um …Sergeant Major, how did you know?”

  “I have eyes to see with, don’t I?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major. This way, Sergeant Major.”

  “You neglected to clear away and hide the spoil,” Joshua said, genial again, aware of the couple of odd samples he’d found that he carried in his pockets. “No reason for rock fragments to be scattered in a circle in this shit. They should have washed away years ago. Unless the demo was quite recent.” For illustration, he held his hand out to catch the rain in his palm. “Don’t do it
again …until you learn how to do it without being caught. By me.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  Although the smile never reached his face—one rarely did—Joshua actually quite liked the self-made Brit. That wasn’t especially because they were both from the Caribbean, nor even that they’d both remade themselves to be soldiers for the polity they chose to join. Rather, it was that Joshua saw in Babcock-Moore a somewhat younger version of himself.

  If I can just knock the geniality out of him, and make him as hard as I am.

  The assembly area cum log base—for this one was a real base, rather than a rest and resupply stop—was crouched in a sort of uneven bowl, mostly defined by the Werushima Mountains. A full stream ran through the western quadrant of the bowl, a steady source of water and also a highway for the hovercraft, who were able to use it to get within a three quarters of a mile of the base. That, in practice, meant that each of the hundred plus engineers of Trim’s company here could move about a quarter of a ton a day, on his own back, from hovercraft landing to inside the perimeter. Of course, for the far side of that perimeter, much less could be toted

  Laying out camps was an engineer specialty in any army. This one was no exception. Ninety small general purpose—in the parlance, “GP, Small”—tents, suitable, if cramped, for nine hundred men had been hauled in and set up in a serrated triangle on the perimeter and a cluster at the center. Along with those, the center held a half dozen larger ones. Over each was stretched a camouflage screen, not only useful for foiling visual identification but also containing many small metal rings that played havoc with ground or aerial radar. Other nets stretched inward from the edges, these intended to cover the men as they did their routine movements for food—which would usually be cold, no stoves were provided and only enough hexamine for a lukewarm meal per man per day—or to the latrines.

  With the tents came the other impedimenta it was hoped would see Cazz’s Third Battalion through the coming campaign. There would be sixty tons of packaged food, seventeen tons of ammunition, several tons of medical supplies, approximately a ton of batteries for the radios, night vision devices, field telephones, and GPS receivers, roughly five tons of miscellany, and several more of the battalion’s heavy weapons There was little liquid fuel—just some cans for the lanterns—but ten tons of high quality fodder for the mules that were coming.

  At this range from the regiment’s home base, at and around Camp Fulton, each hovercraft could make, at best, one round trip, carrying four tons, every other day. Between the tents, the camouflage screens, the food, the heavy weapons, and everything else, it would take a full two weeks to complete preparations, what with the engineers not being able to devote every man-day to portage.

  “It will do,” Joshua said, once he’d seen the whole thing.

  “If the hovercraft hold up it will,” Vic corrected.

  “You have reason to worry about them?”

  “Just that we’re using them hard, Sergeant Major.”

  Joshua nodded. “When I get back, I’ll check with maintenance and see.”

  Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela

  M Day was not the only group that had ever been capable of moving a secret military force around, by sea, via clandestine freighter. For one thing, the Germans had done it, in 1940, in Weser¸bung, their seizure of Denmark and Norway. For another, American writer Tom Clancy had done it, literarily, for his novel, Red Storm Rising.

  And we’re going to do it, too, thought Venezuelan Second Marine Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Conde, as he watched a forty-foot container hoisted aboard the container ship, Manuel de Cespedes, leased from Carimar, in Old Havana. The container, he knew, contained a fully equipped platoon of his battalion. Like the rest of Conde’s battalion, that container had been loaded near a tent city much farther inland before being trucked here. The tent city remained, but the troops?

  Almost fully loaded Along with that television team from VTV that had to give their families as hostage to come with us. Cretinous rats.

  Conde wasn’t sure if his battalion had been chosen to lead the way because of his and its intrinsic quality, or because he was a second cousin to the commander of the Corps. He rather hoped it was the former but, all things considered, and this being Venezuela, he had to admit to the possibility of the latter.

  No matter; if they picked me because of my relations …well …then I’ll just have to do both the country and the family proud.

  Farther to Conde’s west, near Puerto Cabello and the port of la Guaira, the rest of the Corps’ two infantry brigades were encamped, taking turns loading their transports in the sort of desultory way that the unquestioned and unquestionable presence of Colombian spies would be sure to see and report as, “Situation normal.”

  What the Colombians—and anyone else who was interested—might not see, or at least might not note, was that for every twenty vehicles that were loaded on the landing craft, only eighteen ever left. Within a day or two—or, this being Venezuela, maybe three or possibly even four; it isn’t, after all, like Hugo gave us any money to train until a few months ago—the time-consuming work of heavy loading would be complete, leaving only the relatively quick job of forming the men of the lift and marching them aboard.

  The container settled down with a clang. Conde listened carefully for any human sounds that might have come from it. Nothing. Good. Well …I have good boys, and a few girls, after all. While the captain of the de Cespedes knew perfectly well what he’d been chartered for, as did his first officer, the swabbies of the crew did not, nor did Conde see any good reason to let them know until the ship was at sea.

  And soon enough, we sail. Course, we’ll have to make the briefest of brief stops at Port of Spain, just to eliminate reference to here. But we won’t do more than anchor, take on some water from a lighter, and leave again.

  Conde—a Bolivarian, yes, but also a devout Catholic; this was not necessarily a contradiction in Venezuela—crossed himself, thinking the silent prayer, Lord of Hosts, Defender and Savior of the People, be with us.

  But I think we have a good trick going, Lord, and I would be happy if You just saw fit not to fuck with us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  All warfare is based on deception.

  Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;

  when using our forces, we must seem inactive;

  when we are near, we must make the enemy

  believe we are far away; when far away,

  we must make him believe we are near.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  MV Maria Walewska, Point Fortin, Trinidad

  One of the sergeants, an engineer named Collins, supervised a five man crew of sailors, down in a cavity created by piling up containers around a flat space. The cavity had a broad tarp stretched over it, with just enough space to let in a little air. It had the effect of changing the enclosed area from a metal frying pan to a convection oven. The sweat-dripping crew was busily assembling what appeared to be mostly lumber, plus a small power winch, into an odd framework. There was a steel I-beam there, too, but this would not be assembled today as it was too long to fit under the tarp.

  The “lumber”—which, essentially, it was—came out of a container marked, appropriately enough, “lumber.” It had come trimmed, but uncut, until Collins had turned some plans into reality.

  Some of the lumber went into assembling a turntable, mounted atop one of the bottom containers. Most of the wooden chunks were smaller, now, than when they’d begun. The same container had also held the winch, some chain, lots of heavy duty nuts and bolts, very heavy-duty springs, some very large ball bearings, steel trunnions and braces, steel cable, and a sort of steel net. Oh, and a hook; that was important.

  They’d been practicing, off and on, for weeks. They could almost do the assembly in the dark.

  The really tricky part has been setting things up—in good part by underbidding other carriers—so that most of the cargo was both legitimate
and legitimately headed for Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. Somewhat like AirVenture, Inc., the regiment’s naval arm, minus the obviously military stuff like the landing craft, minisubs, and patrol boats, was held under civilian corporate ownership, and—as was normal in merchant marine circles—through so many cutouts, dummy corporations, leases and leasebacks, that no one could really say who owned what. Also, like AirVenture, though to a much greater extent, not everyone who served those ships was in the regiment. Indeed, it was only a small minority of the officers and crews that were M Day personnel.

  This ship, however, was fully regiment-crewed while looking essentially Chinese crewed.

  * * *

  Though the continent to the south was under a deluge, the port of Point Fortin was dry for the nonce. Muggy, but dry, thought Ed Kosciusko, standing the bridge of the MV Maria Walewska (Antigua and Barbuda registry). For this mission, Kosciusko was a commodore, leaving the ship’s normal captain, the former PLAN noncom, Liu, as nominal commander. Liu, however, answered to Kosciusko.

  The ship, Countess Marie, or the Countess, as her crew thought of her, was not nearly beautiful enough to live up to her namesake. For one thing, she needed a paint job. Even given that, though, she just wasn’t a very pretty ship. One hundred and thirteen meters long, nineteen in beam, with a low freeboard; the Countess was of sixty-six hundred and sixty gross registered tons, and carried up to four hundred and thirty-six TEU. She had two thirty-five ton cranes mounted slightly to port. Both of those were currently engaged in transferring a number of containers from another of the regiment’s ships to the Countess. That other ship had recently finished a very circuitous voyage from Trieste to Kotor, Montenegro to Tel Aviv and then Capetown via the Suez Canal. Its next stop would be Georgetown.