Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  “What …what happened to the minesweepers?” Chavez asked, looking up and using one hand to wipe away the tears coursing down his ruddy face.

  “Ambushed at sea, sir,” Fernandez replied. “Most of their crews signed on with the mercenaries. We wouldn’t even know what happened except that some of them, true to their country, refused to sign on. They’re all interned by the Dutch on Aruba, though supposedly the faithful Cuban sailors will be released soon.”

  “And, no, Hugo,” Nicholas said, “before you ask, the Dutch are not going to turn them over to us, no more than Columbia is going to turn over the planes that dropped the mines or the special forces team that destroyed Punto Fijo and the refineries. Before it became obvious we were losing the war, they might have …the Dutch, I mean, not the Colombians. Now? They’re just not afraid of us anymore. And Trinidad and Tobago told me to bend over and kiss my own ass, adding that I was a Spanish pirate, to boot.”

  “There’s one other thing,” General Quintero said. He nodded in the direction of the blue-uniformed air force. “Right now, the Air Force is doing a good job of making sure that the mercenaries in Guyana stay on the west side of the Essequibo River. Eventually, though, the gringos are going to get across. Maybe by night. Maybe by some ford we don’t know about and they haven’t found yet. But get across they will. And then they’ll hit our starving troops. Starving troops, Mr. President, are unlikely to put up much of a fight.”

  “I thought I gave orders for them to live off the land,” Chavez said.

  “Yes, Mr. President, you did. That’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  South of Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

  “Dinner,” announced Sergeant Major Arrivillaga, leading a scraggly looking burro by a rope, “is served. Or will be, once this thing is butchered and cooked.” A dozen chickens, necks already wrung, were draped across the burro’s bony back, as was a double sack of yucca.

  Larralde glanced over the animal, distantly hoping it was too dumb to understand its fate. “What did it cost us?” he asked.

  Mao sighed. “In money? Nothing. The farmer wouldn’t sell, too worried about the day when his family would have had to eat the donkey I had to take it. And the chickens. And the yucca. There weren’t any eggs. Besides the yucca there were no fruits or vegetables near to hand, either. And flour was right out.”

  Larralde sighed, “Needs must.”

  “Yeah,” Mao agreed. “But you know what? That farmer, who was probably fairly neutral to begin with, is going to be joining the guerillas soon. He’ll have to, because that’s going to be the only way for him to feed his wife and kids, and he’ll want to, because he’s got a good reason to hate us now.”

  “So why didn’t you just save us the future trouble and kill him?” Larralde asked mildly.

  “Because I’m a soldier, not a barbarian. And maybe, just maybe, if they can lift the siege—well, what other word is there for it?—in good time, we might be able to feed those people soon enough that he won’t have to turn guerrilla. Maybe.

  “I also ran into some transportation troops, waiting around pulling their puds while their truck sat idle for lack of gas. They said the Marines are eating high off the hog in Georgetown, out of our stores, because, since there’s no way to transport it to us, they might as well.”

  “We’d have done the same in their circumstances. Besides, I’ve heard that Georgetown is seething at the rationing. Some of that food is probably going to feed the civilians.”

  “Drop in the bucket, that,” Mao snorted. He grinned then. “Gotta confess, it’s a satisfying notion that, if the people in Georgetown rise up and win, they’ll get all the revenge on the Marines I’d ever dream of.”

  “Too true,” Larralde agreed, likewise grinning at the thought. “On the other hand,” he added, more soberly, “if we lose control of Georgetown, then there’s no way we’ll ever get resupplied.”

  “Point,” Arrivillaga conceded. “Well …win a few, lose a few.”

  “Speaking of losing,” Larralde said, “the troops are getting pretty convinced we’re going to lose here, and stinking.”

  Not that this was any news to Arrivillaga—he kept his hand on the company’s pulse a lot more closely than Larralde did—but he asked anyway, “Who did we lose?”

  “Three people. Two deserters in the night, Gollarza and Flores. Their platoon leader thought they were off in the bushes, fucking, and so didn’t report it until a couple of hours after you left. And Ponce shot himself in the foot, about an hour ago.”

  Mao scowled, that, even more than the desertion, was a bad sign. Very formally he asked, “Have I the major’s permission to handle this?”

  A little sadly, Larralde nodded.

  “Field rules?”

  Again, Larralde nodded agreement.

  “Compan-eee,” Mao shouted, loud enough to be heard over artillery fire, “formation …on me …and bring me that son of a bitch, Ponce.”

  Mao took one look at the medics, sympathetically carrying Ponce on a stretcher, and let out a scream of outrage. Storming over, he slapped one medic, punched the other, and then reached down and spilled the self-wounded man to the ground. Rifle in one hand, he bent over and grabbed a shrieking Private Ponce by the juncture of his shoulder harness. Then he dragged him, screaming still more with each jolt across the broken ground, and dumped him in the middle of the clearing where the company, minus minimal security, was forming in a C shape. There he let go of Ponce’s harness, then gave the man a kidney kick.

  “Bastard!”

  “Fall in,” Mao ordered, hate and rage dripping from each syllable. “Parade …rest.”

  “Last night,” Arrivillaga announced, “we had two deserters. If I can catch them they’ll hang from the shortest tree I can find sufficient to lift their feet no more than half a millimeter off the ground. This motherfucker, however”—he gave Ponce another kick, for emphasis, raising another scream—“decided to shoot himself to get evacuated back. I don’t have time or leisure to hang the son of a bitch at the moment, so this will have to do.”

  Without another word, Mao shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired, spattering Ponce’s head like an overripe melon. The private barely had time to register shock before he was already food for the ants.

  “And that’s the penalty for a self-inflicted wound. Now where’s Ponce’s squad leader? Ah, there …good. You, you personally, bury the piece of shit. The rest of you, dismissed.”

  Lily Vargas alternated between throwing up and crying on Carlos’ shoulder. “He … .he …he …murdered him. Just like that …he murdered Ponce … .he …”

  “Shhhh, Lily,” Carlos said. “It wasn’t murder. It was an execution.”

  “There was no trial,” she hissed. “No judge. No court. No law!”

  “An execution,” Carlos insisted. “There was no time for much else. Laws of war.” And I can recall an occasion when you were not so insistent on a trial for some criminals, dear.

  Again, she threw up—not that there was much for her to toss, given the short rations—and then fell into more sobbing.

  “I …I hate this,” she blubbered.

  I’m not far behind you there, love, he thought, stroking her hair for whatever comfort it might give. Maybe we should both take the route Eva and her boyfriend did, and just get the hell out of here.

  “Happier now?” Larralde asked, a couple of hours later, passing Arrivillaga a scrounged wooden bowl of donkey and yucca stew.

  Mao’s eyes narrowed as he took the proffer. “What are you talking about, sir? That was disgusting. That it was also necessary doesn’t make it less disgusting.”

  “No, not much less.”

  Mao set the stew down; he didn’t feel very hungry anymore. “I warned you, sir, before we ever started this, that there was going to be a price for the half-assed training we gave these boys and girls.”

  “Yeah, I know. Nothing to be done about it then, nothing to help with it now.”

  “Even so, Hugo fuc
ked us. We should have had years to get ready for this. We should have had minesweepers, and units already at full strength without taking street sweepings in at the last minute. We should have had professionals, properly trained and led, not this …this …rabble.”

  “You go to war with the army you have,” Larralde answered. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “Bullshit, sir; you plan your war and then make the army you need to fight it.”

  Larralde shook his head. “Hugo told me, back when I convinced him to interfere and alter the plan, that there wasn’t time; he had to fight it, now, or there’d never be another chance.”

  “Still bullshit,” Mao retorted. “And you can tell my cousin I said so. Hugo, too, for that matter. Moreover, you can—”

  Whatever Mao was about to say was lost, as a gun, a very large gun, fired from somewhere to the south, its shell screeching past the company line to explode in the trees to the north.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

  —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

  Paku Rapids, Essequibo River, Guyana

  Like everything else in war, building the bridge, smoothing a path from the west bank of the Essequibo, through the rapids, prepping to drop some hundreds of trees to make a way suitable for heavy vehicles between the bridge and the highway, and corduroying the bridge’s entrance and exit, had taken twice as long as it should have, and been twice as hard. It had also cost the lives of three men, two drowned while working in the jungle’s pitch black nights, and a third crushed by a falling tree. Considerably more had fallen by the ruined bridge to the north, as they strove to make the appearance of repairs.

  Two men stood in the early evening gloom, by the east bank of the island that split the river, overlooking the gently undulating pontoon bridge that lay parallel to the bank. One of these was in full combat gear, with helmet. The other wore the same, except that his helmet was missing, replaced by a floppy jungle hat. Both were soaked to about chest level.

  Reilly took the floppy hat from his head, clutching it tightly in one hand. “I’d feel better about this if you were a good Catholic,” he said. “But, still, you’re a man of God. Do your thing, Chaplain.”

  Chaplain Wilson removed his helmet, passing it to Reilly. From his left cargo pocket he pulled a sodden tippet, a thin scarf, which he draped across the back of his neck, letting the long ends hang toward the ground at about knee level. Then, raising both arms Heavenward, he began to pray, “Lord, God of Hosts, Heavenly Father, bless this bridge …”

  And the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, Reilly mentally, and irreverently, added.

  To the west, as if to punctuate, began a series of explosions, joined by the sound of falling trees. The engineers were clearing the way.

  A placid jaguar, high in a tree overlooking the river, watched the proceedings without any real comprehension. Even the explosion far off to the west didn’t unsettle the beast. After all, it had been hearing similar sounds from the same direction for quite some time without any ill effects.

  The gasoline motors of two small engineer boats sputtered to life. Under their coxswains’ control, they pushed the boats away from the bank, taking the slack from the connecting coils that linked boats and bridge. On the opposite bank, a grunting crew of engineers, sweating in the sodden jungle’s heat, likewise strained, pulling taut the ropes that led to the bridge’s exit end.

  Once the pontooned span was into the current, the river took over. Now it was the boats’ task to control the rate at which the bridge swung outward. Their motors roared furiously with the strain, trying but not quite succeeding at their current power in holding the thing steady against the current. The bridge’s swing picked up speed.

  Now the crews on the ropes leading to the far side came into their own. Under the lashing tongues of their sergeants, they first pulled the ropes tight, then bent their own lines to bring the stout cables first against and then halfway around still stouter trees. Tree trunks smoked, as did thick leather gloves, but slowly the rate of swing dropped.

  Then, inch by inch, with the engineer boats pulling steadily, the bridge was allowed to rotate down to where the prepared embankments awaited it. There, too, awaited still another crew of engineers, this one with strong steel cables to bind it fast to the trees to either side. Even as these leapt to, a further crew made the bridge fast to the near bank.

  Sergeant John Wagner, tank commander of Charlie Three-three, kept his left hand on the pintle-mounted machine gun to his front. With the other he absent-mindedly stroked the ears of a placid basset hound, Three-three’s mascot, that rode between the loader’s hatch and Wagner’s own. In action, the hound was trained to get down into the turret’s bustle. For now though, riding atop the thing, having its luxurious ears stroked, was very nearly the basset’s idea of short-legged, long-eared, doggie Heaven.

  Wagner’s tank emerged from the jungle and pivoted onto the rapidly crumbling black-surfaced road. An MP with flashlights directed the tank to follow the road to the north. This, Three-three did, until it met upon yet another flashlight equipped MP, whose signals directed it back into the jungle, but to the opposite side. Another tank, Charlie Three-one, Wagner was sure, preceded his own into the jungle.

  Just before the hard right turn, Wagner flipped his night vision goggles down over his eyes. He almost didn’t need them; the smell of recently detonated explosives was strong enough practically to mark the trail on its own. And the exhaust from Three-one filled in for whatever the explosive’s fumes didn’t cover.

  Once off the road, the tank plunged down into a depression—it was too broad to call it a ditch—that lined the side. Wagner braced for the impact, and absorbed it. The basset ignored it.

  With a roar of the engine and a shuddering lurch, Three-three then climbed up again out of that depression. Once past it, Wagner saw a trail marked on both sides with chemlights. They must be infrared, Wagner thought, or I’d have seen them without the goggles. Lightsticks, mounted higher up, marked trees that had to be avoided.

  The way was twisted, winding, and jolting. That the engineers had, arguably, traced out the best path for the battalion and cleared it to the best of their abilities didn’t mean that it was a good path.

  After a kidney-jarring drive that took well over an hour, Wagner halted his tank a couple of hundred meters from the rapids. He had to; Charlie Three-one was stopped, blocking the way. After a wait of perhaps ten minutes, Three-one rattled off. Wagner ordered his own forward to take the same holding position. There the tank waited, stationary but with its motor running, awaiting its ground guide. Even stationary, the churning engine caused it to vibrate like some live thing. To the dog, that was all gravy.

  Wagner became aware of a shadow, a short-seeming shape, just to one side of the tank. “Charlie Three-three?” the shape shouted over the engine’s roar.

  “That’s us,” Wagner shouted back, both hands cupping his mouth.

  Hey, where’s my petting? the basset fumed. I’ve got my rights, you know. Who do you think brings the luck to keep this monster moving, huh?

  Two cone-topped flashlights lit up in red. “Sergeant Sayer here; Bridge Platoon. Follow me!”

  At the riverbank Sayer crossed his flashlights, bringing the tank to a stop. A good distance away a line of lights—white, red, white; one rising above the other—shone. The guide climbed aboard and shuffled across the steel deck to stand beside Wagner, who removed his helmet.

  Pointing to the far bank—at least Wagner thought it was the far bank—the ground guide asked, “See those lights?”

  “Roger.”

  “You’re on your own from here to the island. Keep those lights lined up and you’ll be fine. It’s an island. Another guide will meet you there and guide you to and across the bridge. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay, lemme unass and then go. Oh, and have your driver button up or he’ll drown and flood your tank. This will piss off everyone w
ho’s supposed to be coming behind you. And then Colonel Reilly will shoot you.”

  The path down, Wagner was surprised to discover, was also corduroyed. Nothing else would feel quite the same as the tank lumbered—pun not intended—down it. The gun was hyper-elevated, to keep it out of the water. Indeed, once the tank reached its tipping point and bounced down, the 105mm barrel remained parallel to the river’s surface, until the tank leveled out on the rocks. After that point it aimed mostly at the sky. It served, as it turned out, as a pretty fair aiming marker for the three lights rising from the island ahead.

  “I hate this fucking shit, Sergeant,” the driver grumbled. No tank driver enjoyed driving blind.

  “Would you rather be breathing water, Corporal Glass?” Wagner asked conversationally.

  The water, though the river here was not deep, surged over the tank’s hull and around the turret. The dog eyed the flood nervously. Sure, it knew it could swim the river, but it wasn’t nearly as confident of the ability of the humans to do so. And without them, who the hell feeds me and scratches my ears?

  “Tell your driver to unbutton,” Babcock-Moore told Wagner, at the western edge of the island. “From here on, he has to watch and listen to me; there’s no space or time to risk delayed commands.”

  “Roger, Top,” Wagner replied, then intercommed Glass to tell him.

  “Thank God,” Glass said, as he hoisted the heavy hatch from over his head, letting in blessedly fresh air for a change and, for a change, able to see for himself. “If I’d wanted to be on a sub I’d have signed up for the Naughtius.”

  The first set of pontoons, already bobbing from previous crossings, sank down better than a foot and then buoyed right back up. This was the first event of the evening to upset the pooch. You guys can’t be fucking serious, it howled, “Ahhwhoooh …rooo.” This is a tank, a metal monster. It doesn’t belong on a float bridge. I shoulda listened to the frigging mules and deserted when I had the chance. “Ahhwhoooh.”