Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Antoniewicz aimed and pulled the trigger again, only to be rewarded with a very disappointing nothing. No time to reload, he threw the submachine gun at the crewman, causing the latter to duck behind the bridge's control station. As he was ducking, Eeyore launched himself across the deck, his right hand reaching for his knife. He found it, pulled it, and thrust it generally forward as the crewman re-emerged from his shelter, trying to line up his Kalashnikov.

  Antoniewicz couldn't get the knife lined up in time. Instead, he collided with the crewman, knocking both of them to the deck and causing both to lose their grip on their weapons. They rolled over each other for a few turns, with the crewman emerging on top and reaching for Eeyore's throat. The former SEAL batted away that questing grip, and then drove his knee upward into the crewman's groin. The crewman's eyes widened, even as he gasped with the pain.

  Putting both hands together to form a flesh and bone hammer, Eeyore batted the crewman on the side of his head, sending him flying off to the side. Eeyore caught a glimpse of his lost knife (he'd completely forgotten about the pistol for the moment) and lunged for it. His hand wrapped around the hilt just as the crewman decided that a little gonad agony was a small price to pay for retaining those gonads. The dripping wound on Antoniewicz's arm flared anew with pain when the crewman grasped his wrist and twisted.

  Eeyore formed one hand into a fist and struck the crewman on the ear. Then he twisted his other wrist, pain be damned, and freed the knife. With one hand over his insulted ear and the other outthrust, the crewman begged, "La, min fadlak, la."

  "I don't speak Arabic," Antoniewicz said as he feinted first for the crewman's face, then brought the knife down and around and, point first, stuck it into the crewman's stomach. Blood welled out and a scream escaped the crewman's throat. Eeyore ripped downward with the knife, then twisting inside the crewman's body, ripped upward again, effectively eviscerating the man. The scream tapered off into a moan. Then sound, except for that from some terminal thrashing, ceased.

  Leaving the knife where it was, Eeyore stood and glanced around quickly. Now he remembered the pistol at his waist and drew it, but there was no one else to engage. He bent to pick up his submachine gun and reloaded it from one of the magazines in his vest. Taking a firing position to one side of the control panel, he placed his last grenade in front of him and called to the Bastard in a false southern accent, "Y'all come a-runnin', now, y'hear?"

  If I could kill the lights the NVGs would give me a considerable advantage. He looked around the bridge for a main light switch or power switch for the entire ship. He found something, a button, and pushed it. The light duly went out on the bridge, except for some faintly glowing red emergency lights. A quick glance out the broad, side to side, windows that faced forward told him that only the running lights were showing on the ship, forward. Best I can do.

  As Antoniewicz waited, as calmly as one could under the circumstances, for the enemy to make their move, he wondered, How the fuck did we get ourselves into this?.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Every normal man must be tempted

  at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,

  and begin to slit throats.

  -H. L. Mencken

  D-106, 318 miles south of Reykjavik

  The Bastard, skipping across the waves, showed no running lights whatsoever.

  "I hear firing, skipper," announced Simmons at the helm.

  "Fuck ‘hear,'" said Biggus. "You can see the motherfucking muzzle flashes." He lifted off his Russian NVGs. "Hell, you can see ‘em with bare eyes. Flank speed! Come alongside on the starboard. Morales!?"

  "Chief!"

  "Stand by on the port side gun."

  "Aye, aye."

  "Simmons," the chief said, "when we get in the Galloway's wake slow down to give Morales a reasonable chance to hit something. And us to hook the ladder to board."

  "Aye, Chief. You still going in first?"

  "Natch."

  The sailor sighed. "Aye, Chief."

  Eeyore felt something striking the steel deck upon which he lay, followed by muffled screams coming from below.

  "Stupid bastards! Don't you realize that your own bullets will ricochet off the steel? And not stop until they hit something soft? Like you?"

  There were more bodies now littering the bridge. From his prone position, it was hard to tell how many. But he thought he remembered at least six men going down. Antoniewicz still had one last grenade; he'd used the rest. He figured he'd have to use it, too, for the next rush.

  And a bloody good thing you fucks don't have any, or haven't dug them out of storage if you do. Or . . . ah, shit.

  In the grainy, greenish glow of his NVGs, Eeyore saw two sparking objects, approximately egg-shaped, he thought, sail up to bounce off the ceiling and then fall to the floor. He opened his mouth wide as he rolled left, back behind the control console. Then they went off in a great burst of light that immediately disappeared to be replaced by thick, dark smoke.

  The console saved him from most of the shrapnel, barring what ricocheted off the other metal and found him on the rebound, but not from the concussion, which was bad enough to blow some of the windows out, pummel his eardrums, and to make him feel like he'd had every square inch of his body simultaneously pummeled with an infinity of Louisville Sluggers. To say he was stunned would have been an understatement.

  But even stunned men can operate off of long-trained and conditioned autopilot. He rolled out to the right again, felt something dig into his chest, and fired a very badly aimed burst in the general direction of the ladders. He didn't know if he'd hit anything. And he couldn't hear if he had either. He rather doubted it, to the extent he was cognizant enough to doubt.

  His hand released the submachine gun's grip and sought under his chest to clear it of the object pressing into him. The hand came to rest upon his last grenade.

  "What the fuck? Why not?" he said, and didn't even really hear himself.

  Antoniewicz grasped the grenade and rolled back behind the console. He tried sitting up to get his back against the thing but found that what that did to his head just wasn't worth it. Unsteadily he pulled the pin out and rolled back to his semi-exposed position. Quite certain that he wasn't up to throwing the thing, he slid it across the deck with as much force as he could muster. The spoon flipped off as he did.

  The grenade slid for point two seconds until hitting a body from which it careened at a low angle. It then hit a dropped Kalashnikov at about the point five second mark. From the rifle it bounced, returning to approximately its previous course. After the passage of point seven seconds it hit the back wall behind the ladders leading to the bridge and bounced forward and down. It hit three steps and a couple of ankles, each about a tenth of a second apart. On the sixth step, which was about as far as the center of the assault party had reached, it had been over one point two seconds since spoon release.

  Boom!

  Morales began pressing the trigger of the Russian .51 caliber machine gun they'd mounted to the port side at exactly the same time Eeyore's grenade exploded. The grenade flash had the effects of illuminating a row of people ascending the ladders on the port side of the superstructure, and then causing Morales' NVGs to overload, which then left him completely in the dark even as the .51 began spitting out bullets. At the same time, the Bastard passed through the ship's wake and rocked violently. This threw off his aim so that, while he fired, he hit absolutely nothing smaller than the ship. And then the Bastard was past the point where the corner of the superstructure blocked off any possible target. He heard the shout, "Grenade!" Almost instantly, there was another explosion aboard the Galloway and Chief Thornton and two men were hooking a ladder over the Galloway's side and scrambling up.

  No sense in sticking with the machine gun anymore. Morales let it go, took off his defunct NVGs, and picked up a night vision scoped Dragunov sniper's rifle. He leaned against the Bastard's port gun tub and, putting his eye to the scope, began to scan.
It was a fairly useless activity, even at this short range, as the Bastard's rocking made the chance of a hit a matter of flukes.

  ***

  Biggus Dickus liked the Russki grenades, in principle. It's quality control at the factory that gives me the willies. Thus, he didn't even contemplate trying to cook one off. With two of his men, Rogers-known as "Mary-Sue"-holding the bent ladder and Bland-called "Jalapeño," though he had not a trace of Mexican in his background-overwatching with his Russian SMG, the chief pulled the pin, kissed the grenade, released the spoon and tossed the thing onto Galloway's rear deck.

  The explosion came so soon after Biggus had tossed the grenade that, Yeah, quality control at the factory left something to be desired. No fucking way I should have held that thing long enough for the impact feature to arm. I could have been holding it, cooking it off and Kaboom.

  Mary-Sue, scrunched low, wasn't fazed by the blast. Besides, he assumed his chief knew what he was doing. As soon as the thing went off, he was on his feet, hooking the ladder over the gunwales, pronounced "gunnels," like "tunnels," which were the hull's uppers.

  The chief had been supposed to lead, as a matter of principle. When he delayed for a moment, caught up in the conflicting emotions of very nearly having his arm blown off and relief that this had not happened, Jalapeño charged up, balancing on the balls of his feet. He jumped over the gunwales and onto the deck. He was then caught in a moment of indecision. He'd been supposed to turn left, after Biggus Dickus had turned right. Since Biggus hadn't turned right, his back would be uncovered if he turned left, per the plan. While he was caught in this moment of indecision, one of the ship's company or their terrorist passengers-probably having come rearward to look for more grenades and just having missed being caught in Biggus Dickus' explosion-saw Bland and fired a long burst. Two bullets impacted on the protective plates in his Russian body armor. Twenty-seven went high to very high. One impacted onto Jalapeño's face, killing him instantly and knocking his body against the gunwales, from whence it slid to the deck.

  That brought the chief from his reveries. In fact, it brought him to a killing rage. Swearing aloud, Thornton ascended two steps, lined up his laser aiming device on the firer, and fired his own short burst, three rounds, directly into the man's chest.

  "Come on, Mary-Sue," the chief shouted as he scrambled up the ladder. The chief did turn right once he'd reached the deck, but there was nothing there to see. He took a step forward to make room for Rogers. Once he felt the SEAL touch down on the deck behind him, and satisfied that there was nothing of danger forward, he ordered, "Take point. Around the superstructure. Go! Go! Go!"

  The two SEALs ran toward the bow and cut right, then right again. The terrorists Morales had missed were still lined up on the ladders. As soon as he rounded the superstructure, Mary-Sue opened fire, letting his muzzle climb up the row of enemies. His hose stream of frangible alloy bullets sent first one, then another, then a third and fourth into a Spandau Ballet, their bodies twitching and dancing under the impacts, some of them being hurled right over the railing to crash upon the deck.

  It was at that point, caught between two fires, that ship's crew and passengers began dropping their weapons and raising their hands, crying out things in Arabic and Urdu that sounded submissive and plaintive.

  The Bastard was properly tied off, in tow behind the Galloway. All of the enemy bodies had been weighted and dumped over the side. Only Bland's corpse had been salvaged, and his remains, scrunched up like a fetus, were freezing in the big meat locker on the Bastard. The prisoners, all nineteen of them, excepting only the ship's captain and first officer, were stripped and secured inside the container that had formerly served as Antoniewicz's hide, the televisions still remaining having been dropped over the side. Eeyore had been left to guard, about all he was good for at the moment, while Morales wired the ship for demolition. Simmons had even managed to tap Galloway's bunkers for fuel to top off his own boat. This was critical as the stop after next, St. John's, in Newfoundland, was quite close to the Bastard's maximum range anyway. That would be important if Narssarssuaq, Greenland, couldn't or wouldn't refuel them.

  A search of the containers, such as could be accessed-and most couldn't be-revealed little of obvious consequence to the larger mission. In one they'd found a baker's dozen of teary-eyed, teenaged Romanian girls, living in rags and filth, and grateful to be freed. It had probably been intended to sell the girls somewhere as whores, and quite possibly somewhere in Europe, Canada, or even the United States. It was unlikely that sexual slavery was ever really going to go completely out of fashion, anywhere.

  Another had a great deal of explosives, which set Morales to chortling, as he began carrying the crates to the main deck.

  A search of the crew quarters turned up more al Qaeda propaganda than any of them had seen in one place, at one time, in a long time. This fit Thornton's rules of engagement for eliminating the entire crew.

  They did find one other interesting container, down on the lowest level, that had a chain and a leg iron welded to the container frame. They brought the captain and the executive officer down to it, stood them on chairs taken from the galley, put noosed ropes around their necks and secured the ropes high to a cross piece set up on the top levels of the containers.

  "Don't try to bullshit me," Biggus Dickus said, mostly to the wog with more braid on his uniform. "If you're senior merchant fleet people, and you are, you will speak perfectly good English, and you do. I will ask this once of each of you. Who was in here?"

  The captain of the boat barely got out, "Fuck you, you inf-" before Thornton had kicked the chair out from underneath him. The noose had been tied very tightly and the captain was a smallish man, and slight of build. The drop was no more than the rope would stretch. Thus the noose barely tightened, at first, not even enough to cut off blood to the brain and certainly not enough to seriously impede the flow of air. It did make talking difficult, what with the forced gagging the captain endured.

  "Tsk," Biggus Dickus said, "such bad manners toward your guests."

  The captain, naturally enough, panicked as soon as he felt the rope biting into his neck. Mindlessly, like an animal, his feet flailed about for purchase. He set himself to swinging, quite by accident, and three times managed to get his feet against the vertical walls of the containers. This, of course, was not something he could stand on. With each kick the rope tightened by a millimeter or two.

  The ship's exec, captivated, watched his captain die slowly. He began to moan with fear and then to pray aloud. As the captain's struggles grew less frenzied, the front of the exec's trousers suddenly grew wet with urine as he lost control of his bladder.

  Thornton also watched the captain slowly strangle, but with complete impassivity. He hadn't started out hating "wogs," but after seeing the crisped bodies of his people in Afghanistan, two years prior, he'd learned to. Once or twice he thought he heard the captain trying to speak through his gag reflex.

  "Fuck you," he said. "I gave you your chance."

  The captain's kicking, twisting, and twitching gradually subsided, though there were occasional interruptions as he somehow found the strength to give another major effort at getting his feet on something. In time, though, only the feet twitched, and the only sounds beyond those of the machinery of the ship and sea were the steady drip-drip-drip of piss and liquefied shit sliding off the late captain's toes.

  Biggus turned toward the first officer. "As I told the captain, you get one chance. Who-"

  "I never knew his name," the Galloway's exec blurted out. He could already feel his bowels loosening, too. "Only saw him twice, il hamdu l'illah. Some black we picked up in Boston Harbor. We dropped him off at Port Harcourt, in Nigeria, safe and sound. Yes, yes: Safe and sound."

  "Do you know where they were taking him?"

  "To the airport; that's all I know. All I know . . . all I know."

  "You're sure now?" Thornton asked.

  "Yes, yes. Sir, I am sure."


  "Good. This is for Petty Officer Bland." Thornton then kicked the chair out from under the exec, and left to check on Morales' progress with the demolition preparation. Before he left the area completely he turned around to where the exec was kicking his life away, as the captain had. "So I lied," the chief said. "So sue me. Doesn't the Koran permit one to lie to an unbeliever? Well, you and I don't share a belief system. Infidel."

  Thornton found Morales standing by the gunwales, amidships, connecting one of the radio detonators to a piece of wire. Morales was wearing a wet suit of a very odd design, with the letters CCCP emblazoned.

  "You didn't wear that shit, did you, Morales?"

  "Why not? You said you wouldn't risk your life but ours might be acceptable."

  "You know I wasn't serious."

  "Yeah, but I needed to use their shit to get down under the hull. I've got five hundred pounds of . . . well, I suppose it must be SEMTEX, or something just like it, based on the color. It was in one of the containers. Anyway, it's down there under the ship. When we set it off it's going to seem like a torpedo hit it, or maybe a drift mine . . . if anyone tries to reconstruct it, that is."

  "How'd you get it under the hull?"

  Morales pointed to either side. "Two floats connected by a line, with another line in the center of the first one connected to a stanchion at the bow, and a line from each float to the hull. I walked the floats down to where I wanted then, connected the lines, and then sort of keel hauled the stuff under. Course, once I had it roughly in position I had to go down myself-and let me tell you, that center line was mighty useful for that-to prep it all nice and proper." Morales laughed. "This is gonna be beautiful, Chief."