Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

  In a more ideal world, Chavez would have set up his personal command post on some military base, possibly at El Libertador, or maybe all the way forward in Tumeremo. But …

  I don’t live in an ideal world. I live in a world where the senior command of my own forces hate my guts. So, thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stay here, with my own guards, and these assholes can keep me briefed.

  Chavez snuffed out a cigarette in an already overfull ashtray and looked at his man, Martinez, for another. Martinez shrugged, Ain’t got any more, Mr. President, causing Chavez to scowl.

  A steady stream of runners moved between Chavez’s conference room cum command post and the radio room down the corridor. Each, as he—or she—entered, made some announcement. “Task Force Larralde, in the air,” or “Force Alpha Four, Checkpoint Three,” before going to the map and presenting a written update to be posted. There was a particular flurry around H Minus Forty-five.

  At H plus Ten, one wag, a young lieutenant wearing a broad smile, stood to attention at the door and shouted, “The Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand.” Chavez, who was a lot better read than his enemies would have given him credit for, recognized the reference, and laughed. After the lieutenant turned from the situation board the president made a “come hither” gesture.

  “Son, do you happen to smoke?”

  The lieutenant hung his head in shame—everyone knew Chavez disapproved—but admitted, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Gimme. And go take up a collection from your buddies. Tell ’em it’s for the good of the country.”

  Assembly Area “Mule,” Guyana

  Cazz lit a new cigarette from a dying one, then ground the embers into the muck below. Good thing about Gordo, he thought, he understands that men will have their vices and includes those in his log planning. To punctuate, Cazz sipped a concoction of about three quarters reconstituted fruit juice and a quarter rum from his half full canteen cup.

  From a spot just below Peaima Falls a cattle trail ran west-northwest to the airstrip next to the six hundred and twenty-nine foot drop of Sakaika Falls. From that airstrip ran another cattle trail, first generally north, towards the Cuyuni River, then west to the cross-border ferry at Venezuela’s San Martin de Turumban. The ferry crossed the Cuyuni River below the Eteringbang Falls.

  Above those falls were an additional two airstrips, one north and one south of the river.

  From San Martin an all-weather, hard-surfaced road led northwest to Venezuela’s Highway 10, at the juncture of Casa Blanca. About fourteen miles northeast of Casa Blanca, by Tumeremo, was what was believed would be a major logistics and aviation support base.

  Cazz and his staff—to include the special staff, his engineer platoon leader, and his battalion’s scout platoon leader, USMC Master Sergeant (retired) Austin—huddled over a map in the command tent. The S-2 held a red-filtered flashlight focused on the map. In the gloom, Austin’s shiny black skin was harder to see than his silver-gray hair.

  “I need to know the following four things, Top,” Cazz said. As he spoke, he drifted a twig over the map to indicate the precise location he meant. Austin scribbled notes in a waterproof notebook, and occasionally made a mark on his own, acetate-covered map.

  “First, I need a team to scout out the trail to Sakaika Falls’ airstrip. They need to find me a covered and concealed assault position for at least one company. Got it?”

  “Clear, sir,” Austin replied. “That’ll be Sergeant Ahern. He’s local, but a good’un.” Austin had a hard time keeping his voice calm. This is going to be so much fun.

  “Second, one team is to scout out the ferry at San Martin and to find us a possible crossing point …I should probably say, ‘a crossing point, if possible,’ for the whole battalion, somewhere between the ferry and a point on the river about eight miles east of that.”

  Austin nodded, thinking, You can cross anything on a poncho raft, at least until the raft fills with water, sinks, and you drown.

  “Third, one team is to escort the heavy mortar platoon leader as far as they can get him, while he scouts a good mortar position, nine klicks north of Sakaika Falls.”

  Austin looked dubious. “North, sir?”

  Cazz nodded. “If we hit—if we can hit—the airstrip at the falls and the ferry at the same time, the ferry’s the only place the Venezuelans can mount a counterattack. But they’re not going to be able to do it quickly. It’ll be at least two hours, maybe three, possibly even four, before they can assemble and move a mobile force from Tumeremo to the ferry. I want the mortars in position to support at San Martin before that happens. If they’re firing from near the cattle trail, north of Sakaika, they can break the guns down and haul ass to get in range of the ferry.”

  Austin’s obsidian head rocked from side to side for a few moments before he pronounced, “Makes sense. And my last team?”

  “They’re going to break the rules,” Cazz said. “I want them to cross the river, east of the ferry, and find me a good antiarmor ambush position somewhere on the Casa Blanca-San Martin road, within six miles of San Martin. Then I want them to move generally north to Tumeremo and find me where the Venezuelans have the log base we believe they’ve put up. Those frigging helicopters—at least I think they were just helicopters—we’ve been hearing for days are coming from somewhere in that area.”

  Again, Austin looked pretty dubious. “The doggies couldn’t get through, sir.”

  “Yeah, but the Venezuelans who had that screening mission don’t need to worry about OPSEC once the invasion gets close; everyone in the world will know they’ve invaded Guyana. Since that can’t be too far away, they’ve probably been pulled back. And besides …”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Besides, we’re not doggies. We’re Guyanan jungle runners led by the finest group of retirees Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children ever shat out.”

  A red-tinged smile flashed in the old noncom’s face. “Yeah …yeah, sir, I guess we are. And …mmm …since you put it that way, sir, I’ll be going with that last group then.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Cazz said. “Go, brother.” He turned to his engineer platoon leader, Master Sergeant Rutledge. “Rutt, I want you to follow that first scout team to here”—his twig touched on a spot where two streams converged to form one, before the one emptied into the Mazaruni. “There I want you to put up a couple of three-rope bridges for the foot troops, and find or make me a crossing site for the mules and mortars.”

  “Clear, sir,” Rutledge replied.

  “Signal?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “That ridge to our east? Did you get the half-rhombic antenna up, pointed directly at Camp Fulton? Did you finish running wire down to here?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good. I hate being cut off from commo. In a couple of days, I’m going to want to know the main regiment’s status.”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “Supply and Transport Platoon—and you, too, Sergeant Daly—We’re going to have to figure out what we can carry on mule back, then displace what we can’t as far forward as possible without getting caught at it.”

  “Can’t carry more than eight tons, sir,” Daly said, “between my mules and your own, not with having to haul the mortars and with a few of my critters being lame or otherwise indisposed.”

  “I know. But every ton we can move a mile forward now is a ton that’s easier to retrieve when we must …”

  Cazz stopped speaking to listen for a moment. There was a sound, arising in the west. He waited very briefly until the sound became distinctive enough for him to tell the radio operator, “Screw listening silence. Call base. Tell them they’ve got vampires inbound! Shitloads of ’em.”

  EXCURSUS

  From Legio Patria Nostra:

  The Continuing Rise of the Mercenary Profession,

  Baen Historical Press, Copyright ©, 2027

  It is a truth not without its amus
ingly ironic aspect that those who most decry the proliferation of not merely military contractors, but of genuine mercenary organizations, around the globe, are also those most responsible for that rise.

  There are other factors and influences involved, too, of course. The continuing depression, coupled with military drawdowns everywhere the troops were paid more than a pittance, fed more than scraps, and armed with anything better than worn out and rusty rifles, provided the manpower and the motivation. Yet motivated manpower could have starved just as well within those mercenary organizations as outside of them, had there been no employment for those regiments.

  Employment, however, there generally has been, whether by Pavlov’s Guards (see Chapter XIX), paid by the Russian state to keep a large portion of the southern glacis of the reborn Russian Empire from becoming a route into the Rodina, the NORINCO-owned and run Black Flag Brigade, busily hunting down Moslems for pay in China’s Xinjiang and Gansu provinces (see Chapter XXI), the German-speaking GvB AG, based in the Congo (see Chapter XX), or the Guyana-based M Day, Inc. (see Chapter XXIV), whose funding is more mysterious but appeared at last reckoning to have made a great deal from training regular American forces and a great deal more from other investments and payoffs.

  This, however, is to beg the question of precisely why there has been such steady employment for these mercenary corporations.

  The answer is simplicity itself: the mercenaries are hired because national forces, in most cases, have become useless.

  This is not, for the greater part, because those forces have dwindled to insignificance. Indeed, most of the traditional military powers maintain substantial forces, generally well equipped and well trained. Rather, it is that those regular forces now find themselves constrained by an ever-tightening mesh of treaties and limitations, which put their officer corps at risk of prosecution for doing the military and politically necessary but aesthetically distasteful, and even subject national civilian leaders to the threat of prosecution by politically motivated courts and prosecutors, egged on by an often rabid press, an always politicized international judiciary, and an invariably corrupt transnational bureaucracy.

  Sadly for those who thought to expand civilization by placing legal limits on uncivilized conduct, only those who were civilized—some have said, “too civilized”—feel any constraint from that web of treaties or any obligations to what is called “international law.”

  The mercenaries feel no such constraints. Sometimes sheltering behind figurehead sovereign states, sometimes serving as fronts for sovereign states, sometimes totally independent but locally quite powerful, they will do, for pay or principle, the distasteful things no one else is permitted to, and will laugh in the face of judge or prosecutor bold enough to try to bring them to heel. Indeed, sometimes they will do more than laugh in their faces.

  Thus, the net effect of trying to exercise excess control of force through law has led to a substantial segment of force providers over which law has no control whatsoever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mass, Objective, Security, SURPRISE,

  Maneuver, Offensive, Unity of Command,

  Simplicity, Economy of Force

  —The Principles of War, FM 3-0

  Quarters One, Glen Morangie Housing Area,

  Camp Fulton, Guyana

  Lana was moaning softly as Reilly moved, carefully, inside her. She had been surprised to discover that pregnancy made her unbearably horny, most of the time. Worse, the horniness increased as the pregnancy progressed.

  That soft sound of love and desire was soon overwhelmed in an unusual sort of “did the earth move for you, too” moments.

  The screaming of the sirens didn’t beat the first bombs by all that much. The difference was enough, if barely, to get a cursing—“dirtynogoodrottenpuritanicalantisexmotherfuckers!”—Reilly out of Lana and into his battle dress trousers. His feet went into his boots without bothering to lace them. On his way out of the house he grabbed a razor, his hat, his pistol, and his jacket. Everything else was already in his Land Rover.

  He shouted over one shoulder, “Just follow the plan, Lana!” as he burst out the front door. In fact, the only delay he suffered was getting his left arm out of the screen, as he’d punched entirely through it, in the rush.

  Lousy fucking timing, Lana thought, in a mix of anger and sheer frustration, as she struggled to don her own uniform. She wasn’t as quick as her husband, despite being quite a bit younger, as she had to battle to get her let-out-by-the-post-tailor battle dress over her distended belly. She was buttoning the jacket by the time the first bomb struck, shattering the glass in every window in the house, rocking it on its foundation, and knocking her to her rear end.

  “Never actually been on the receiving end of this shit before,” Reilly muttered, strapping himself in automatically, then tossing the Land Rover into reverse and backing quickly out of the driveway. “Should have combat parked, you asshole, Reilly! You’re getting old; you’re getting old. Lana remembered to.”

  Cutting the wheel, he threw the shift into forward and began weaving his Land Rover up the asphalt of the road leading to his own battalion’s headquarters. “And I don’t like it.” Though the sun was not yet up, he’d kept the presence of mind, barely, not to turn on the Rover’s headlights. This didn’t make the driving any easier.

  Something—a jet, he supposed—screeched overhead, close enough to shake the vehicle. This was followed by a not terribly well aimed bomb, behind him and not all that far away. The flash lit up the housing area, even as the concussive wave shook the Land Rover. It skidded momentarily, making him jerk the wheel to regain control.

  The last house in Glen Morangie passed quickly behind him. Then the jungle began on his left. A flat, grassy open area sometimes used as a parade field and other times as a pickup zone for helicopter operations opened up on his right. On either side of the asphalt, a deep concrete-revetted drainage ditch paralleled the road. The lights of the post illuminated a row of white buildings—barracks—on the far side of the field. A single rocket lanced upward, following that jet in a revenge shot. If it hit, Reilly couldn’t see it for the immense fireball that suddenly arose over the horizon in the direction of the airfield.

  Reilly felt a momentary surge of despair. Let’s hope that was just the surface filling station tanks, not the buried ones.

  Another jet streaked overhead. Its first bomb landed in the field, the second halfway to the buildings, while the third struck one of them either directly or close enough to directly to crumple it like a cast-off origami. There was a fourth bomb, farther on, but Reilly didn’t know where that one landed.

  Then a rocket, one of a salvo of seven, coming from behind him somewhere, streaked by. It missed the Land Rover, itself, but landed close enough to the left front wheel to shred that, to shatter the glass of the windshield, and to send the auto careening to the left, into the drainage ditch.

  Reilly never noticed the propeller driven Tucano that passed by, overhead, following the road.

  State House, Main Street, Georgetown, Guyana

  The security team Boxer had placed on President Paul was something of an interior guard. They left security of the perimeter of the State House grounds to local forces, concentrating on securing the president’s person. This meant four men, operating two hours on, four off, at night, and four and eight in the day, fully armed, wearing the best body armor available on the open market, with night vision goggles either ready or worn. Their arms they’d drawn from Second Battalion’s special weapons armory. These were silenced Sterling submachine guns, with aiming lasers fitted. Each man also carried a pistol and wore a short range radio, with earpiece and boom mike. Other, heavier arms remained with their vehicles.

  The team leader, Jose “Little Joe” Venegas, had two men on the president’s door. Another one walked the second floor porches and balconies. When it was his shift, Venegas roved, sniffing for trouble. Right now he was on the first floor, in the main hall.
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br />   The first notice of trouble came not from his nose or his eyes, but from the earpiece stuck in his left ear. “Little Joe, I got people in formation moving through the streets, a shit pot of them.”

  “Changing of the guard? Or the GDF people on riot control and support to the cops?” Venegas asked.

  “I don’t think so since—”

  Venegas heard the shots fired toward the east, but close, as if just on the other side of the fence. He pulse jumped.

  “Everybody!” Venegas ordered, over his radio. “Move out, now. Prez team; get the big guy off of his latest bimbo. Who’s awake in the hooch?”

  “Baker, chief,” came the answer.

  “Everybody up. Get the cars ready. Order of march as rehearsed, His Sticky-fingeredness in Number Two. Go.”

  The two men at Paul’s door looked at each other and grinned. The horny bastard had been pumping away steadily for freaking hours, with some whore who couldn’t have been over fourteen. New one every goddamned night, too. And when they couldn’t have any? Oh, yes; great fun.

  As one man they turned around, bent their legs up, and kicked in the presidential door. It came completely off its hinges, loudly clattering to the floor. The girl screamed. The president screamed. And then the troops were on him, one to each side, dragging him out of the for-the-nonce quadrupedal hooker, and then backwards out the door, down the stairs, through the hall, and out to the thrumming Land Rovers.

  Venegas, already behind the machine gun mounted atop the first Land Rover shouted, “You fuckers couldn’t have left him his pants?”