Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  "What for?" Ed asked.

  "Helicopter landing pads off of the main deck. And you need a lot of paint stored. And sprayers, and . . . "

  "How are we going to get you and your people out of here?" Kosciusko asked. "If your departure would be a security concern . . . "

  "I am the only real problem. Well, myself and my wife, Kai-ying. Most of my people and their families can be smuggled aboard. For us, we'll have to meet you somewhere on the water. I . . . we . . . have a small boat. It wouldn't do to take us out very far to sea, but it would do to link up with you somewhere past, say, Lamma Island."

  "That should work," Kosciusko agreed. "Assuming, of course."

  "Yes, assuming."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Forbid a man to think for himself or to act

  for himself and you may add the joy of piracy and

  the zest of smuggling to his life.

  -Elbert Hubbard

  D-112, Mae Hong Song Province, Thailand

  Outside the hut in which the former Special Forces and Spetznaz men rested, Mike Cruz and Artur Borsakov supervised as their ground crew repainted the helicopters from World Food Bank colors to new ones, with the words "Exploratory Mining and Drilling Support, Inc."

  Inside, with the snores of his rescuers droning in his ears, Victor Inning was mildly insulted. Not a word, not a blessed word. Here I am, the most notorious arms dealer at large in the world and the bloody Burmese never even announced my escape. Oh, maybe they told their neighbors, on the sly, but as far as a public announcement goes, nothing. What's the use of smuggling arms to half the countries in the world, and every continent, when no one appreciates you for the master of the trade you are? Why, it's almost enough to make me give up the calling.

  He snorted softly. Nah. This is too much fun. Where I'm going to come up with everything on the requisition list, however . . . ?

  Inning stopped scribbling in the note book in front of him and asked Welch, "This patrol boat your people are picking up in Helsinki, how big is it?"

  "Good size," Welch replied, "eighty feet and change. Why?"

  "Well . . . for reasons best kept to myself, I've got a number of equipment and supply sets stashed in various places. They're generally set up to equip a squad, or a platoon, or a company. One of these, for a small platoon, is near Tallinn, Estonia. So they'd have little trouble picking it up with a big enough boat, sailing from Finland. But."

  "But?"

  "It's a twenty-four man set. Has everything. Arms-suppressed submachine guns, Kalashnikovs, PKs, Dragunovs, and RPGs, in this case-plus ammunition, night vision-yes, with batteries-individual equipment, body armor, uniforms. Even combat rations, though they may not be to taste."

  Konstantin made a ugly face, which earned him a dirty look from Inning. "Well, Jesus, Victor," the major said, "the meat in the things is fifty percent fat. Okay to make a soup with, maybe, but straight out of the can it's vile," he further explained to Terry. "I'd strongly recommend that your people stock up on canned or smoked meat, cheese, and fish in Finland."

  "What's so bad about it?" Welch asked.

  "Ever have a dog?" Konstantin answered. "Well . . . think of what you fed your dog."

  Other than the dirty look, Victor ignored him. "Plus one 60mm mortar and eighty rounds, mixed, HE, HC, and illuminating. Also one 30mm automatic grenade launcher. One heavy machine gun. There's a demolition kit, plus another two hundred kilograms of SEMTEX. It even has scuba-actually rebreathers-since it's near the sea, and two rubber boats, big enough to carry a dozen men each, with small engines. But if I crack it, it's gone to me. It either all goes or none of it does. You people will have to buy the whole set and guarantee to move it all out."

  "Wherever did you get 60mm mortars?" Welch asked. "The Soviets never made them."

  "Portugal via Mozambique," Victor said, further explaining, "They're short range commando types. Eight hundred meters range, max."

  "Cost?" Terry asked. "For the set, I mean."

  Victor seemed to consider that for a while, possibly subtracting from his initial asking price the value of one rescue from a Burmese hell hole. "One hundred and eighty thousand USD. Trust me; it's a bargain."

  "Where do you hide something like that?" Welch asked.

  "Baltiyski. The locals call it Paldiski. Or did you mean specifically? That you won't know until the money transfers."

  "Don't be silly, Victor," Konstantin said. "They're not going to stiff you over such a measly sum when they need you to get them ever so much more."

  Inning considered that. With a shrug, he answered, "On the grounds of the Orthodox Church. I have the priest on retainer. And, believe me, he needs the money."

  "I'm not familiar with the place," Welch said.

  Konstantin spoke up. His voice seemed mildly tinged with embarrassment. "It was a Soviet naval base for training nuclear submarine crews. Had its own reactors-two of them-and a mock up of a submarine. Those, and the usual crappy socialist living arrangements. Estonians weren't, for the most part, allowed in. Barbed wire, guard towers. Now that the navy's gone, it's practically a ghost town, some Estonians and a few thousand Russians abandoned by the motherland."

  "Sounds lovely."

  "Anyway," Victor interjected, "do you want the package, the whole package, or not?"

  Welch nodded. He had authority from Stauer to commit a lot more funds than that. "How do our people get the goods? Just pull into port, knock on the priest's door, and say, ‘Hi, we're from Victor and we want all the weapons you've been hiding?'"

  Inning smiled at the sarcasm. "It's a little more complex. There's a code phrase. Once your people give it to the priest, he'll turn over the stuff readily enough. And I can download a map to the church for you to forward."

  Welch put a palm across his mouth and drummed his fingers against his left cheek. "All right," he agreed. "The price seems reasonable, even if we don't need all of the equipment. I'll have my boss make the transfer-you do have an account you want the money sent to, yes?-later today.

  "Now what about the other materiel?"

  "All the small arms and smaller items I have or can get. But for the armored cars I'm going to have to go to South Africa. And Israel."

  "South Africa I can see," Welch said. "I've been told they had a huge stockpile of the things. But why Israel?"

  Inning cocked his head to one side. "There's a company in Tel Aviv that more or less specializes in rebuilding armored cars, especially Panhard AMLs and the South African version, the Eland."

  "I don't think we have the time to move the things to Israel, get them built, then move them to Brazil, in time to train crews."

  "Good point," Inning agreed. "Israel first then. We'll steal them and then fix them in South Africa before sending them on to Brazil. Or maybe even fix them up at sea on the way."

  Victor closed his eyes for a moment, in deep concentration. When he opened them he wrote a series of words, in English, on a piece of paper. He then drew a simplistic map below the word. "This is your code phrase, and how to find the church. I suggest your people go in during the daytime. Night would be more suspicious in a place like that than day. They can move the cache at night. I will notify the priest."

  "What if your cache doesn't have what the team needs?" Welch asked.

  "Then I can't help you in time," Victor answered. "What's there is what's available within a reasonable time. Still, I think your people will be pleasantly surprised."

  At that Konstantin snorted. "Oh, I imagine. Except for the food, of course. Once they sniff that swill they'll wonder why we didn't get rid of the reds long before we did."

  Which earned him another dirty look from Victor.

  D-111, Paldiski, Estonia

  It had been about a four hour trip, Helsinki to Paldiski. And that was without really straining the engines for more than was required to test them and the hull. Even at that, the time zone change made it only a three hour time difference.

  Biggus Dickus Thornton was sin
ging something about a "three hour tour" as he twisted the patrol boat's tail hard aport to ease it into the completely unguarded small harbor west of the town. They'd considered naming the boat after President Kennedy, what with PT-109 and all, but since that one sank, it was perhaps a bad omen. Calling it the Mary Jo Kopeckne had similar issues. But since one person, and a close relative of President Kennedy, to boot, had proven well night unsinkable, in any sense, the PT boat now bore upon its stern the name, The Drunken Bastard, or Bastard for shorts.

  High gray cliffs arose on the right, towering over questionable docks with a few fishermen seated on them. Biggus Dickus cut power and eased in to the docks. One of his team members, a short, dark sort named Michael Antoniewicz, nicknamed by his team mates "Eeyore" because he could carry a house on his back and would sink into the earth before bending under the strain, leapt across the water, rope in hand, to tie the boat off.

  There was a gray haired, heavily bearded, cassocked priest there waiting at the dock, as well. The priest walked over and said something in Russian to Antoniewicz. The sailor just shrugged. Despite the Eastern European name, he had not a word of Russian or any other Slavic language.

  Pointing at Biggus, Eeyore said, in English, "See him. He has what you need."

  The priest held up thumb and forefinger a couple of millimeters apart and said, "I spik leetle Englizh." Then he shrugged, himself, and went to stand by the boat from which Biggus jumped with the grace of a much younger man.

  "Father Pavel?" Biggus asked.

  The priest nodded as if solemnity was in his very nature.

  "Victor sends, ‘Saturn-Concert-Bagration.'"

  The priest nodded again and said, "You come." He then turned and began to lead the group up the crumbling stairs that led up the cliffs and toward the town.

  "Simmons, guard the boat," Biggus ordered the biggest and meanest looking of his crew, barring only himself.

  "With what?"

  "With your dick. And, while we're gone, get us an update on the position and schedule of the George Galloway."

  At Pakri street the group turned away from the sea. Off in the distance was a white painted, stone church tower. "Lut'eran," Father Pavel said, pointing. Biggus' eyes glanced left and right continuously, not searching for threats, but in wonder at the nearly complete ruin of a naval town. There were apartment buildings, crumbling, not just empty of people but empty of wooden doors and glass windows as well. On the plus side, off to the east, there were at least eight power-generating windmills in sight.

  "My name is Ozymandias," the chief whispered, despite the windmills. A few modern artifacts couldn't overcome the wreck of the city. Biggus' eyes glanced at a hand painted sign, in both Cyrillic and Latin letters. "Welcome to Hell," said the bottom half of the sign, in English. "I believe it," Biggus agreed. Below that, someone had added "Gays." Thornton couldn't imagine, Why the hell should they be worrying about gays, given everything else?

  "You know, Chief," Antoniewicz said, "it's odd. I haven't seen a cop yet."

  "What's to steal?" Biggus answered, reasonably.

  "My truck if not keep gun," Father Pavel answered.

  The stash turned out to be hidden under the crumbling concrete of a ruined building next to Saint George's Orthodox Church. The church, itself, was one of the very few buildings they'd seen since arrival that was not a complete and utter wreck. The Lutheran church was another. Biggus commented on that to Father Pavel.

  "Victor generous," the priest answered. "Finns . . . Swedes more generous to own peeples." He pointed with a finger at a particular section of concrete chunks and said, "You move this. Bring out material. I get truck."

  "You heard the man, boys," Biggus said.

  Eeyore looked down at the mass. "How the fuck do we move all this shit?"

  "The usual way, Michael," the chief answered. "One piece at a time."

  By nightfall, the team of former SEALs was standing in a concrete lined excavation that led into the basement of the collapsed building near the church. A large and solid looking metal door barred the way in. Pavel produced a key for the massive lock on the door and opened it. Inside was a single metal shipping container. The priest also had a key for the lock on that.

  When the double corrugated doors were opened, Antoniewicz was the first to speak. "Holy shit!" he said.

  "I not know vhat inside," Father Pavel said. "Not vant know, eit'er. I go. You load truck. I drive to boat once you load. T'en you unload, t'en you go."

  The chief answered, "Thanks, Father." Then, turning to Antoniewicz, he said, "Eeyore, you keep inventory. And the rest of us, let's get to work."

  D-110, Paldiski, Estonia

  The sun was just illuminating the sea to the north and west. The boat was still in the shadows, though distancing itself from the cliffs.

  "I still can't believe this shit," Eeyore said, over the thrum of the engines. "How the fuck did he know exactly what we'd need?"

  "He didn't," Biggus said. "There's all kinds of shit we don't need. And if you think I'm going to trust my life to ex-Soviet scuba gear, you're insane. Your life, maybe. Mine? Never.

  "No," the chief continued, "Victor didn't know. He just put in everything that might be useful to a naval op, that he could get and stuff into a twenty foot container. Still, we have what we need. Set course for Londonderry. Three quarters speed."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "A brave heart and a courteous tongue," said he.

  "They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling."

  -Kipling, "The Jungle Book"

  D-110, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp,

  Amazonia, Brazil

  Monkeys? Check; they could be heard in the distance. Rotting vegetation? Check; it assailed the nostrils. Flowing water? Check; moving in a fine horizontal fashion. Mosquitoes?

  "Son of a bitch!" exclaimed Stauer as he slapped one of the little demons into the netherworld, the blood from the bug spurting over Stauer's neck and the collar of the expeditionary dress he, like the rest of the thirty odd men in the party, shared.

  "Fortunately, we've all had our shots," said the expedition's doctor, Scott Joseph, a recruit who had taken a long overdue sabbatical in order to go on the operation. The doctor looked for all the world like a cross between Egon, of the Ghostbusters movie, and Noah Levinstein, from American Pie. "That said, there's no shot for malaria. I trust I don't have to explain to anyone that mild diarrhea from the anti-malarial pills is infinitely to be preferred over the twitching awfuls. For that matter, a good portion of the malaria risk down here is Falciparum, which is pretty damned deadly."

  "We know," said Stauer. He turned to look over his shoulders. "Sergeant Major Joshua?"

  "Sir!"

  "This-assuming you don't disagree-is home."

  The tall, Virgin Islands black looked around at the jungle floor. The best that could be said of it was that it was high enough not to flood, flat enough for tents, and covered enough by forest growth not to be visible from the air or space without using technical means. He sneered but indicated no more than a general disapproval thereby. "It will do, sir."

  Stauer nodded. Between two people who had worked as long together, and knew each other as well, as had he and the sergeant major, a nod was all that was necessary. Set up the camp, primus pilus, as think you best.

  The sergeant major turned on his heels and began taking long strides in the direction of the leased landing craft that had brought the party, along with minimum mission essential equipment, up from Manaus. Stauer smiled with anticipation of the immediate sense of order and discipline that was about to be inflicted on the score or so of troops waiting at the river's edge.

  "You sure about the Malarone, Doc?" Stauer asked. Malarone was a multi-drug particularly useful against Falciparum.

  Joseph shrugged one shoulder. "Best we can do. Now if you could have found someplace more than nine hundred meters above sea level…"

  "Nobody's mapped this area since the 17th century," Stauer said. "We m
ay find such a height, still close enough to the river, in which case we move camp. Remember, though, that with our limited surface transport and needing most of that for construction, ‘close enough to the river' is, in fact, pretty damned close. Doubt we'll find anything."

  "Fair enough. In the interim, I'll be spraying everything with Malathion."

  "Why did you opt for that, rather than good old DDT?" Stauer asked.

  Joseph gave off a small snort and began rubbing his hands together. "Brazil has the misfortune to be almost First World. They're just wealthy enough, and just well organized enough, to have almost eradicated malaria. Unfortunately, they weren't quite wealthy enough, or quite well organized enough, to quite eradicate it. The local mosquitoes now have a considerable degree of DDT resistance. Besides, the Malathion is almost as good, and almost as cheap. Some would say better and cheaper."

  The doctor looked puzzled for a moment. "Say," he asked, "do you think I should go and make sure they set up the camp for proper field hygiene?"

  Stauer laughed. "Scott, let me tell you something about the sergeant major. It is mere surmise on my part, to be sure, but I am pretty certain that a hundred generations ago one of Joshua's ancestors wandered in from the desert, after trekking up the Nile, and enlisted in the first Roman legionary recruiting office he came to, rising thereafter quickly to the highest offices to which such a man might aspire. I am also certain, and no one can prove me different, that the knowledge gained by that ancestor was passed down genetically. There is nothing you, or I, or anyone, can tell the sergeant major about setting up a camp that he wasn't born knowing."

  Joseph rolled his eyes at that.

  "Don't believe me, eh?" Stauer raised his voice, "Sergeant Major, how long to dig a six foot deep, twelve foot wide ditch around the camp, and use the spoil to build a wall, after cutting enough timber to palisade that wall?"