Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  And then she was sobbing again, into his shoulder, as if she’d said nothing of the kind.

  All of which goes to show not that I’ve got something to learn about women, especially pregnant ones, but that I know nothing about women, especially pregnant ones. But at least I don’t think it’s the sex she’s been missing.

  At which point Lana backed off again, gave him a nasty, dirty look, but took his hand and led him off to her own nearby tent for a little …privacy.

  Standing not too very far from Lana’s tent, Coffee and Doc Joseph smirked while smoking one of Coffee’s vile cigarettes. The doctor never, of course, bought cigarettes. This didn’t stop him from bumming them from time to time.

  “Think it’ll help?” Coffee asked, as the tent flap closed behind the couple.

  “Can it hurt?” Joseph asked, with a broad grin across his face. “I was ready to try the old sex prescription trick …or anything else I could think of that might have settled her down.”

  Coffee answered, “No, Doc, probably won’t hurt any. How about you? You still hurting?”

  “Good question,” Joseph said, sobering. “And not one I particularly want to answer.” He tossed the cigarette to the ground. “And on that note, I need to go make my rounds.”

  “Cazz’s battalion gave us our window,” Reilly told his wife, as the two lay together, fitted like spoons, front to back, on an altogether too narrow military folding cot. The cast on the arm he’d thrown over her was something less than comfortable, but better than no arm at all.

  “While the Venezuelan air has been concentrating on him, I’ve been able to shuffle people around, move more freely to give orders, inspect, and buck up the troops, and push out a little more recon.”

  Lana faced the tent wall, her sweat-soaked back to him. She didn’t turn as she said, “But they’ll be back, as soon as you start to move.”

  “Not quite as soon,” he replied, confidently. “Bridges thinks all the air has been pulled north of the Orinoco River, all the way to Caracas in most cases. They’re afraid Cazz is only resting for a day at Ciudad Guayana, and will roll on Ciudad Bolivar. He’s left one bridge over the Caroni River open, after dropping the other two, just to give that impression. It will be anywhere from hours to a half a day before they can get onto us. Maybe more, depending on whether they’ve succeeded in moving the ground crews and the ordnance from their forward airstrips.”

  “But Cazz isn’t going past Ciudad Guayana,” she objected. “They’ll be back forward.”

  “They don’t know that. In their position, I’d be worried, too.” Reilly gave a little laugh.

  “What’s funny?”

  Unseen, he smiled. “Well …here I am, with the mechanized force, and there he is, with a light infantry force and some stolen trucks. But—while I’d have to dig in my books, assuming my library survived—”

  “It did,” she said. “I checked. Though the books are still there waiting for a bomb and the windows are blown out so the bugs can get at them.”

  His casted arm moved with a shrug. “Nothing to be done about that now. Anyway, while I’d have to check the books, I think Cazz and his—be it noted, light infantry battalion—are the current holders of the world historical record for miles of contested advance, across the surface of the Earth. It was something like one hundred and ten miles in twenty-four hours, held by one of the SS formations in France in 1940. Third Battalion went well over that, maybe a hundred and sixty miles, in twenty-four hours.”

  “Then you’ll have to beat that, won’t you?”

  Intersection, Bartica-Potaro Road and Issaro Road, Guyana

  Sergeant Michaels had done good work, within his limited capabilities. Now, with two RPVs—for the nonce, at least, still under control—snooping over the Mahdia area, Reilly had a much better idea of what was facing him. Inside his TOC tent, he watched the map being updated as more and more information came in from his attached MI section.

  Basically, it looked like he was facing one reinforced battalion.

  A single Venezuelan infantry company was dug in along the Potaro River, opposite Garraway Stream, which wasn’t important because of a stream, nor because it was the locus of an unincorporated town, of sorts, but because there was a bridge there.

  Even as Reilly watched, one of the TOC-rats began grease-penciling in a thin minefield on the southeastern bank.

  “How do we know?” Reilly asked.

  “The RPVs picked up the heat signatures of small, round, likely metal objects,” answered his S-2, Sadd. “Matching that with Sergeant Michaels’ report on mines being unloaded, and I think we’re facing a minefield. Probably not dug in, and surely not with antihandling devices yet. But not something we want to charge through, anyway.”

  “Concur,” Reilly said. “Trim, will the bridge take the tanks?”

  Trim, the rump of whose company—including the bridge platoon—was attached to First Battalion, answered, “Yes …but. We’re lucky that the old 1930’s era suspension bridge went down in the nineties. What they put up to replace it is considerably better. Again, though, but. The bridge is not stout enough to stand the passage of seventeen upgraded T-55’s, at forty-four tons each, charging across at full pelt. Still, if you take them across at a crawl—and I do mean a crawl, two or three miles an hour—the bridge should survive.”

  “Right,” Reilly said. “We weren’t going to charge the bridge anyway. One of your sapper platoons is going to have to go into the river to make sure the thing isn’t wired for demolition.”

  Trim notably paled; that had potential to be a ghastly, bloody exercise. On the other hand, if ordered to do it, his troops would try. Therefore he had no choice but to lead them in it.

  Looking back to the map, Reilly noted another infantry company, situated on the reverse slope of some high ground five miles east of Mahdia, right where the cattle trail from Konawaruk crossed the hills. The expected third company was in the town of Mahdia.

  “Artillery?” Reilly asked.

  “Here, sir.”

  “Except that I want a thin screen of smoke paralleling the far side of the river to either side of the bridge, your priority of fires are going to be to Bravo Company.” He pulled a small laser pointer from a keychain attached to the loop of his trousers and pointed it at the map. The light rested on a spot just north of the Potaro River, and about three miles east-southeast of Garraway Stream. “I want you to support the attack across from here.”

  The battery commander, Bunn, short, stout, and balding, chewed his lip for a moment, then asked, “That’s awfully close to the firing line isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but nowhere here do I see any mortars that can range. And I don’t think they’ve moved in anything longer ranged than a 120mm. And from that point I marked, you can support us all the way past Mahdia Airport.”

  “Sergeant Peters?” Peters led First Battalion’s heavy mortar platoon.

  A tall noncom—who could have had a direct commission in the regiment if he’d wanted, it, but didn’t—spat some tobacco juice into a can. “Here, sir.”

  “Your heavy mortar platoon is OPCON”—under the operational control of—“to the battery.”

  “Roger.”

  “Well,” Bunn agreed, “the really nice part of firing from there is that the company east of Mahdia is lined up nicely right along the gun-target line. Their reverse slope won’t do them a lot of good then. And we can use the shit ammunition.”

  “Quite. ADA?”

  “Here, sir,” said that battery commander. His unit, too, had given up attachments to the other battalions. Fully sixty percent of it, though, and all the self-propelled quad 23mm guns, was Reilly’s.”

  “Split your coverage between Garraway Stream and the gunners.”

  “Wilco, sir.”

  “Scouts?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “You have your platoon, plus the Elands from Third Battalion that didn’t go to the Philippines. You are attached to Bravo Company.”
/>   “Roger, sir.”

  Reilly scanned around for a familiar face. He found one, but not the one he expected. “Maintenance?”

  “Sir,” said Dumisani, a Zulu who was, improbably enough, partnered with Dani Viljoen, a Boer. Dumisani had one of those South African voices that had made Ladysmith Black Mambazo an international sensation.

  “Where’s Viljoen?”

  “Ass deep in a tank, sir, trying to get the turret not to squeal so much as it traverses.”

  “Does the turret work?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Well, it did before Dani built two tripods from trees and had it lifted.”

  “Tell him to drop it back.”

  “Yes, sir. Anyway, we’re good to go, sir. Or will be, as soon as I tell Dani.”

  “Roger,” Reilly said. “Bravo?”

  “Here, sir,” answered Snyder. He was a tiny sort, stature-wise, but approximately as broad in the shoulders as he was tall.”

  “You, my friend, are the main effort. While Alpha, Charlie-tank, the ditch diggers, and I make a great show of trying to get across the river at Garraway Stream, you, plus the scouts and Third Batt’s Elands, with all the scunion the artillery and battalion mortars can bring to bear, are going to wade the river”—again Reilly’s laser settled on a spot, this time by the town of Tumatumari—“here, move to Konawaruk, here, then attack to the west along the cattle trail, to seize Mahdia.”

  Snyder smiled broadly, if not quite as broadly as the span of his shoulders. “Wilco.”

  Reilly consulted his watch. “Gentlemen …at the tone the time will be …zero-one-five-three …ready …tone. We cross the line of departure in three hours and seven minutes, precisely at five AM.”

  With a truly evil smile, Reilly finished, “Let us make a joyful sound, unto the Lord.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Panzergrenadiere,

  Vorwärts, zum Siege voran!

  Panzergrenadiere,

  Vorwärts, wir greifen an!

  —Robert Seeger,

  “Lied der Panzergrenadiere”

  Bartica-Potaro Road, Guyana

  For the last two hours ground guides had been leading armored combat vehicles into position to either side of the road. The engines, once the vehicles were in place, were left running. A powerful, heavy, and usually much-abused engine, already running, was much more likely to keep running than one was likely to start again, once shut down.

  The troops were used to the sound; they’d long since—decades since in many cases—learned to listen and speak over it. This included the not insubstantial minority who were half or more deaf from it. The Venezuelans, thirty miles or more away, were not going to hear it anyway, not even with all seventeen still functioning tanks, sixty-seven Elands, and twenty-one Ferrets,

  Reilly flipped on his night vision goggles, watching a platoon from Charlie Company—five tanks, in this case—grind their way up to his left. The goggles flared suddenly, then went dark, as one and then another of the self-propelled, quad 23mm guns opened up on something overhead. They were radar guided and really quite good pieces, although the Russians had newer and allegedly better systems on offer. The ripping-sail sound reached Reilly’s ears a moment after the flash blacked out his NVG’s. Then a much louder sound struck him, an aerial explosion in the one ton range.

  Most likely a Tucano, he thought, both for the size of the explosion and that fact it was even around here. All the fast movers are busy fucking with Cazz in Ciudad Guyana; Tucanos are all that’s in range of us. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen many of those, lately, either. Probably Hugo’s boys have supply issues at the main airport.

  Every combat vehicle in the column had a frequency-hopping radio. Thus, there was no need of clever call signs.

  “Black Six, this is Bravo Six; ready to rock … .Charlie Six Romeo, the old man says ‘Es braust unser Panzer’ …Team Alpha, here; what’s the hold up?”

  Reilly flicked the switch on the side of his combat vehicle commander’s helmet, announcing, “Black, this is Black Six. ‘We’ll come in low out of the rising’ …oh, wait, wrong movie, wrong soundtrack.”

  His own vehicle crew literally giggled. Schiebel thought, The old man can be goddamned funny when action impends. More than a few in the other First Battalion tanks and Elands snickered likewise.

  One of the crewmen in his vehicle watched Reilly intently. As soon as he gave the signal, the crewman flicked a switch. Out from the loudspeakers mounted on several of the turretless Elands burst a jungle-shredding riff, followed by:

  “I AM IRONMAN!”

  “Now that,” Reilly said into his boom mike, “that is the right soundtrack.” He consulted his watch, waiting for the seconds to tick off. “Black, this is Black Six. Roll, motherfuckers.”

  Engines that had been mostly idling roared to life and purpose. Hundreds of barely human voices began rising in an inarticulate scream of hate and rage. Over a hundred horns started to blare, creating a sound wall of pure aggression. They’d been bombed enough, and now it was payback time.

  “HAS HE LOST HIS MIND …”

  Nothing quite like Black Sabbath when you’re going to go kick someone’s ass.

  M-1 Abrams tanks could sneak up on people, more or less. Their engines were quiet enough for it, in any case. No matter; M Day, Inc. owned no M-1’s, nor was it likely they’d ever be allowed to buy any. T-55’s, on the other hand, which they did have, weren’t going to sneak up on anyone not completely deaf. However much updated, they were still powered by conventional diesels. That meant a roar that could be heard miles away. Elands? They were better, but not by much. And that didn’t matter either, because the tanks’ roar overrode the lesser cacophony of the wheeled vehicles. As for great heavy trucks hauling cannon? They added a few decibels, but not so much that anyone would notice over the tanks and APC’s.

  So the wise soldier didn’t bother with sneaky things. Instead, he put his efforts into making the most noise possible, creating the greatest terror in the hearts of his opponents that that noise could generate. If he could throw in a little high explosive, too, that was all for the better. If he could be sneaky somewhere else, with something quieter than tanks, that was good, too.

  Tumatumari, Guyana

  Company B had been in the lead of the column, with battalion’s scouts, reinforced with Third Battalion’s turreted Elands, in the lead of the company. When the company reached the intersection of Konawaruk Road and Bartica-Potaro Road, Bravo split off to the south, aiming for the ford at Tumatumari. The maps said there was a bridge. That was wrong. What there was, was a marginally navigable strip of boulders, above the cataract, that linked Tumatumari and Tumatumari Landing, south and north of the river, respectively. It also served as the least pleasant leg of the already unpleasant drive along Konawaruk Road.

  In other words, it was perfect.

  Less than ten minutes after peeling off from the main column, Snyder was at the riverbank, staring at the white foam frothing the river’s surface. He ordered the dismounts of his second platoon—twenty men if at full strength, seventeen now, after the air attacks—into the foam. They waded, rifles at the ready, forward. Most were surprised to see that the water barely rose above waist level unless one slipped on the boulders, as several did. Under their platoon leader, the men pushed on past the river’s southern bank. Dogs in the town barked, but no one else paid much attention from the twenty-odd huts and shanties that made up the place.

  Listening to his radio, Snyder heard, “Come on across; the water’s fine.”

  Garraway Stream, Guyana

  Firing actually started before the tanks reached the river. The Venezuelan commander had done the right thing and pushed at least two observation posts across to the other side. One of these the gunner of Charlie 26, the second platoon leader’s tank, found, through his night sight, scampering for the river. He duly engaged the two men, his tracers arcing through the woods and over the water to the far side. The platoon leader, up top, joined in with
his KORD 12.7mm almost as soon as he saw the tracers.

  I think I probably got one, thought the gunner. No matter; it isn’t like they haven’t had a chance to figure out we were coming.

  The tank rolled forward, the turret for the most part remaining within a few degrees of forward. One could use tanks in jungle, assuming it was only jungle and the trees were far apart. But one still had to watch out for getting the gun pointed in one direction, while the driver took his tank around a tree, in another.

  Others from that platoon, four of them, rolled around in pairs to either side of the platoon command tank. Forming a rough line—the trees ensured the line would be at best, rough—the platoon moved forward, firing intermittent bursts from both their coaxial and their top-mounted machine guns.

  The platoon leader didn’t hear the call sent—naturally enough since the artillery and mortars worked a different sequence of frequency hopping—but he could see white phosphorous shells hitting the far bank on a line as rough as his own. The shells burst with small, muffled explosions that sent glowing white fragments arcing and spinning through the air, trailing thick smoke behind them.

  It’s very beautiful, the platoon leader thought, for certain values of beauty.

  Some tracers came in from the other side, harbingers of the half dozen or so bullets that rang off the tank’s glacis and the front of the turret. Automatically, the platoon leader’s hand reached down to yank the bar that kept his seat so high. The padded chair dropped, carrying him down with it until only his eyes and the tops of his CVC helmet showed above the hatch ring. He radioed orders to the rest of the platoon to do likewise.