Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  and fancied May of Long

  Or lovely Becky Cooper or Maggie’s Mary Wong

  One woman put them all to shame,

  only one was worthy of the name

  And the name of that dame was. . .

  —Traditional, “Dicey Reilly”

  Camp Fulton, Guyana

  Tatiana almost missed the Land Rover, three quarters overturned in the ditch. In the jungle shrouded, still early daylight gloom of the road, all of that further cloaked by smoke from the explosions and the many fires they’d started around the camp, and with the bulk of the vehicle down out of sight in the ditch, it would have been an easy enough thing to miss.

  She wasn’t slow to report but, in the absence of orders to move onto post once she’d re-enlisted, she’d stayed in her own home.

  “I’d have you move in, Tati,” a towel clad Reilly had said, after administering her oath of enlistment in the Teahouse of the August Nooner, “but I haven’t a single space in the barracks to put an enlisted woman. Certainly not one who looks like you. Maybe when we can work out something to get you back to the medical company …”

  It was the shrieking of the attacking jets, followed by the concussions emanating from the direction of the camp that had woken her up and gotten her moving. As was, in its own way, proper, she hadn’t really dressed before jumping into her Benz and roaring off to the camp. In practice, this meant that her trousers were on, up, and half buttoned, her boots on but unlaced, her jacket on but open, and—since sleeping naked was not only more comfortable, but also sound business practice—her breasts quite unconstrained by a bra.

  “What the hell,” she’d muttered, tooling down Honey Camp Road at a speed that had more than a little contempt for death to it, “there’s one in my pack. And maybe I’m ‘an absentminded beggar’ …but my regiment won’t need to send to find me.”

  She smiled, remembering the tall, black sergeant major she’d learned that particular line from. The remembrance brought a sudden tear of love unrequited. The tear caused her to shake her head, to toss it off. That caused her to notice the upturned Land Rover. She slammed her foot to the Benz’s brakes, burning up a considerable amount of rubber as, automotive ass wagging, she skidded down the road.

  The smell of leaked diesel was strong in the air as Tati scurried down the concrete embankment of the ditch.

  Blood dripped steadily from a cut somewhere on Reilly’s scalp. Since he was hanging upside down, held in place by seat and shoulder belts, that meant that it collected in a not unimpressive pool on the Land Rover’s hardshell roof. That wasn’t the only spot from which blood came, as a thin rivulet flowed down his neck, to his chin, and across one cheek. Yet another trailed from his right arm, hanging, like the left, loose and draped on the roof.

  “Head wounds bleed freely,” she said, softly, once she’d seen. “It’s not necessarily all that bad a sign.”

  “It’s not a particularly good one, either,” Reilly whispered, then flinched, as if the sound of his own voice were painful.

  “Thank God you’re alive!” she exclaimed.

  “Marginally.” He opened one eye, glanced at the girl, and said, “Since I am obviously concussed, hence not entirely responsible for what I say, I say, ‘gorgeous tits, and I didn’t even have to pay to see them.’”

  She flushed, something she almost never did. Then she smiled, saying, “Dirty old man; you’ll live.”

  “I hope so. Now get me the fuck out of this. My right arm seems broken, but I think my spinal column is okay. Middling bad headache.”

  Tati hesitated. “We really should have a team of us here and get you into a backbrace,” she said doubtfully.

  “If there were time, I’d agree. There isn’t.”

  “Yes, sir.” She pulled a small utility knife from her belt and began sawing at his restraints. “We’ll have you to the hospital and splinted and bandaged up in no time, sir.”

  “Screw the hospital. Get me to the SCIF. That’s where headquarters will fall in on, because that’s the only place with two-meter-thick concrete walls and roof. You can call a doc from there …Did I ever tell you that you have an excruciatingly sexy voice? It matches the tits.”

  She smiled. “You never came by for your free sample. Dirty old man.”

  “Lawyers, Guns, Money” (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana

  “Hospital took a bad hit, sir,” Joshua said somberly. “I passed it on the way in.”

  “How many did we lose?” Stauer asked. His voice held a mix of cold fury and pain at the damage a half hour’s worth of attack had done to his regiment and his home.

  At least I know Phillie wasn’t on duty. What if she had been? Don’t think about that. Don’t let yourself think about that.

  Joshua shook his head. “Too much of a mess to say. Only a wall and a couple of corners standing at one end. Dr. Joseph is trying to assemble a list. He told me we’d lost at least fifty, between patients and staff. And maybe close to seventy. He’s in a pretty bad way, the doc is, sir. I think you ought talk with him. Earliest convenience.”

  Stauer nodded. Yes, of course. As soon as possible.

  “Unit status?” Stauer asked.

  “The XO of first battalion is trying to get them assembled at least into company teams in the woods,” Waggoner replied, wearily. Half that weariness was shock and fear. He’d been only a minute’s walk from Regimental Headquarters when it had gone up in blast, fire, and smoke. “George says he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Reilly, though Lana Reilly says her husband left their quarters moments before she did.”

  “Losses in First Batt?”

  “Under fifty men, dead and wounded combined. Three tanks. Five Eland APCs. A dozen trucks and other thin skinned vehicles. First is combat capable, anyway. Viljoen and Dumisani say they can get all but one tank and two APC’s up if they’re given some time.”

  “Time?” Stauer sneered. “We don’t have any time …”

  “Yes, we do,” Boxer said.

  “Bullshit, they’ll …”

  “Yes we do,” he repeated. “Let me explain.” A broad smile, inexplicable in the circumstances, lit Boxer’s face.

  “Go ahead,” Stauer grumpily agreed. Just having Boxer disagreeing was, in its way, calming.

  “This,” Boxer said, twirling a finger to indicate the entire base area, “is an epically lousy spot for a parachute jump. Only the DZ we cleared to the east would be worth a shit, and we know they didn’t jump there. We also know to a considerable degree of certainty the maximum helicopter lift Venezuela can generate. It’s enough for two battalions, give or take. If they had come in with two battalions, right on the heels of the air raid, they could have taken us.

  “So why didn’t they? Simple: They think there’s a lot more than one battalion here to face them. They think we’re all here, a full regiment, something that, even hard on the heels of the air strikes, would kick their asses as they struggled to dump their chutes and get organized. So they didn’t even try.”

  Stauer thought about that. He looked again at the still smiling face of his Chief of Staff. Suddenly, a brilliant sunrise of a smile lit his own features. “So they haven’t a clue …”

  Boxer shook his head. “That we’re planning on invading them? Not clue one.”

  Stauer’s face took on a vicious cast. “Oh, those fuckers are so gonna pay. But we need Reilly, even if I hate to admit it. What the hell happened to him? Where the hell is he?”

  “Here, sir,” came from the door to the conference room. Everyone looked for a moment, before shifting their gaze—like a mob of meerkats watching a car go by—to the gloriously open shirt of the medic supporting him.

  Sometimes, Stauer thought, forcing his eyes away, your problems will cancel each other out. “Somebody tell Joseph to drop what he’s doing and get a medical team here. Now!”

  Sergeant Major Joshua was momentarily nonplussed by the image. Oh, the things I’ve given up to maintain a professional appearance. His confusion didn’t last long
.

  “Corporal Manduleanu,” he said, “well done.” His voice rose incrementally. “Now put down your patient, and get in uniform, woman!”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major,” Tatiana answered, as she walked Reilly forward to ease him into a chair vacated by one of the others. Setting him down, she turned around to button her battle dress jacket. Looking over her shoulder at Joshua, her face said, See? I told you what you’ve been missing.

  Outside, a couple of the regiment’s four twin-barreled 23mm towed anti-aircraft guns began a steady pounding, presumably skyward. They were also, presumably, missing, since yet another series of much larger explosions rocked the camp.

  Georgetown, Guyana

  “Hah! Motherfuckers missed me again!” Venegas exulted, aloud, as he cut down a half a squad of guards posted at the key Mandela-East Bank intersection. The enemy seemed not to have been expecting it. They got off only a few wild shots before the machine guns mounted atop the three Land Rovers made an end of them.

  “Can I please get up now?” asked President Paul, still lying across the seat, naked, to the boots of the gunner standing atop him.

  “Not until the chief says so, Mr. President,” replied Sergeant Coursus, the submachine gun bearing man to the driver’s right.

  “But I’m naked! This is so undignified. I am politically doomed if word ever gets out!”

  “You’re better where you are,” said Coursus. “But …um …Rogers, you’re about the president’s size. Dig in your pack and find him some trousers he can wear when we can let him up.”

  The small convoy stopped at the east side of the Demerara Harbor Bridge, one of the world’s longest floating bridges, covered by buildings on both sides. Venegas was thinking fast and furious. Just bull our way over? No sign of the enemy in the last several blocks but they might have a heavy gun aimed to cover the bridge. Too big a risk, since we must get the president safely to Camp Fulton. Do they have our descriptions? Yeah, probably, but that description’s going to be three vehicles, green, military looking, with machine guns, not one, green, without. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  Venegas keyed his microphone. “Okay, cut the chatter. Everybody, pull in your guns and hide them. Coursus, you go first, then me, then Number Three. We reassemble on the other side. Got it?”

  “Sure, Chief …Roger, Little Joe.”

  It took a couple of minutes to pull in the machine gun, have the gunner sit on President Paul, and doff all helmets, armor, and battle dress jackets. When he turned around and visually confirmed that all was as ready and civilian looking as possible, Coursus ordered his driver around Venegas’s Land Rover and onto the bridge. The driver moved tentatively, at first, until the vehicle commander said, “No, you idjit! We move like this we look like people expecting to be shot at. Innocent, got it? Just drive.”

  The driver stepped on the gas, expecting every minute to find a newly grown hole in his head. He was very pleased to reach the far side with all his expectations having been disappointed.

  Once Venegas saw that the president was over to the other side and safe, or as safe as one could hope for, under the circumstances, he likewise ordered his driver to make the crossing. Whoever was supposed to be on the west bank collecting tolls had apparently deserted his post sometime in the night. This was all to the good, as actually busting through the barrier was likely to attract unwanted attention.

  Breathing a heavy sigh of relief once they’d made it over, Venegas ordered the driver to pull in next to the Land Rover carrying the president. The President, Venegas saw through the windows, was hurriedly dressing in a uniform someone had provided him.

  Probably Rogers, Venegas thought. They’re about the same size.

  You know, thought Venezuelan Marine Corps Corporal Serafimo Lopez, one vehicle going by, green, of a particular size, wouldn’t be suspicious. Two? That’s suspicious. And when we’re told to watch out for a group of three?

  Lopez sat on the ground, at the riverbank in the Houston area of Georgetown. Beside him was a MAG machine gun mounted on a tripod and aimed generally south, toward the big bridge. He slapped the gunner and said, “Emilio, you see another big, boxy, green, station wagon sized vehicle trying to cross that bridge, you fire it up. But don’t, repeat don’t, hit the pontoons the bridge floats on, got it?”

  “Si, Cabo,” answered the gunner, hunching himself down to make doubly sure his sights were set to engage anything on the bridge.

  Venegas, helmeted and again in his body armor, had just finished getting the machine gun back on its pintle when he heard the sound of firing from across the river. He jumped up on the Land Rover’s hardshell roof and stepped to the rear, peering around a sheltering corner. From there he had a good view of the very top of the bridge, as the vehicle on it began to fly to pieces under a relentless hammering coming from the other side. Apparently driverless, the targeted Land Rover veered left, then crashed through the barrier on the bridge, spinning end over end, spilling limp bodies and parts of bodies into the drink.

  Venegas’s first impulse—there was too much rage in it to call it a “thought”—was to get back in his gunning position, have his driver back up and, Kill the son of a bitch who just killed five of my men!

  That, however, just wouldn’t do. I’ve got a mission, goddammit. He dropped back inside and ordered, “Roll north, then west, following the river and the coast.”

  Mouth of the Orinoco River, Venezuela

  The Bertram moved slowly, with Kravchenko on the fishing chair to the rear, trolling, and Lada on the foredeck, sunbathing sans bikini top. The scene was as unremarkably innocent as the several tons of arms and explosives below were not.

  Rocking gently with the sport fisher’s gentle speed, Baluyev scanned ahead with a pair of binoculars. What he saw was not remotely to his liking; a Venezuelan coastal patrol vessel had a civilian yacht hove to, while uniformed men searched the vessel. They looked, in his eye pieces, quite thorough and very intent. Worse, and the thing that made him absolutely decide not to proceed, was that that was no random search; three more civilian boats swayed in a ragged line, apparently waiting for their turn to be searched.

  “Turn around and set course to the north,” he ordered Litvinov. “Skip the river.”

  “But I thought …” the former Spetnaz operative began.

  “Yes, well circumstances have changed Sonsabitches hit us early. We were supposed to already be on station before that happened. Now? We are not getting into the river to get anywhere near that bridge. Head to Trinidad. We’ll think of something there. Dammit.”

  As the little yacht turned, Baluyev continued his scanning, this time to the north. He counted aloud what he saw, “One …two …three …call it five amphibious craft, two freighters, and five frigates, a couple of smaller ships with helicopters on deck, all heading to Georgetown.”

  He let the field glasses drop from his eyes. Averting those eyes—after all, Musin could be touchy—he said, “Lada, do up your top and go below. Prep a coded message to regiment on what’s coming. Tell them we had to abort. Remember to leave it in the draft folder so it doesn’t pass through anyone’s server as having been sent.”

  Waini River, Guyana

  There were several rather neat features to the regiment’s coding system. One was its fairly unsuspicious format. Another was that messages were never actually sent, nor even posted on a bulletin board, but rather left in the draft folder of unique e-mail accounts for each subunit. The third was the key, which were PDF files of various books, one per subunit, from which page numbers, line numbers, and word order in that line, were extracted. A program within a few select laptops, plus those desk tops at base, selected the words from the key, encoded them, and placed them in the message, eliminating them from possible future use in the code. When decoded at the receiving station, those words were likewise automatically removed from possible future selection. Use of them a second time sent up a serious red flag. The books themselves, easily replaceable from on-line sources if lost,
were generally lengthy.

  At the little ad hoc base for the Naughtius, some distance upstream from the mouth of the Waini River, under a camouflaged tent, beneath declining light, a satellite dish connected a laptop with an e-mail account held by a server in the states. From the screen of that laptop, Richard “Biggus Dickus” Thornton read the situation and his orders. In fact, he read them aloud to the sailors gathered around him.

  “‘We have been attacked, earlier than expected. Losses were bad, but not crippling. Georgetown is under enemy control. We believe the main airport is, as well. The enemy is moving by leaps, in two main efforts, via helicopter, to occupy the western portion of the country. We do not have the chief of state safe and in our control. We have him, not the other side, but getting him to base will be difficult. Do not, repeat, do not begin your operation until we do. If you do not hear from us, but do hear on television, that he has authorized your mission, proceed. You should aid the cause in any other way possible that does not risk your command or its future mission. End of message.’”

  “Why’s that, Chief?” asked Eeyore, once he’d heard.

  Biggus Dickus didn’t answer immediately. When he did, it was to say, “I think it’s probably a law of war issue. Us mining Venezuelan waters, on our own ticket, is illegal and just possibly piracy. For us to mine those waters, however, as the activated reserve of the Guyanan Defense Force, would be a legitimate act of war. I think.” He shrugged. “Not my specialty, after all.”

  Thornton went silent again for a moment, then told Antoniewicz, “The regiment didn’t say, but I’ve got a hunch that we no longer have the capability of mining Georgetown or the mouth of the Demerara.”

  “If we can’t mine the Orinoco or be considered pirates, Chief,” Eeyore asked, “can we maybe use some of the mortar shell-mines to mine Georgetown?”