by Tom Kratman
And then the helicopter was sitting on the flight deck, rocking up and down. Mike breathed a sigh of relief and began the shutdown cycle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within."
-Patricia de Lille,
South African Politician, quoting Cicero,
with regards to a corrupt arms deal
D-103, Durban, South Africa
They came to the port in fifty-three foot shipping containers; the vehicles within driven up on log ramps to reduce the space taken up inside, and with commercial boxes at each end to cover against the chance of a casual inspection. Additional containers had nothing each but three turrets mounting 90mm guns inside. A further two contained ammunition, one with a mix of anti-tank and anti-personnel, the other with a hefty load of TP, or training practice, and a small amount of high explosive. Not a one of the containers was properly and accurately marked.
Victor, Dov, Viljoen, and Dumi were all present for the loading. Only Victor planned on leaving the ship before its departure. The others, billeted in what would nominally have been crew's quarters and in containers, would stay aboard through the rebuild.
"I'm almost surprised you could move so quickly," said Victor.
"Went downtown," Viljoen replied. "Found a bunch of unemployed black fellahs, offered them a thousand Rand apiece for four day's work. Course, it was more complex than that. Had to get them all uniforms and spend a half a day teaching them to at least look semi-military. And Dumi and I did all the driving. Paid the same friend of ours in the Ammunition Corps that provided the ammunition to arrange the transportation."
"There's nothing that isn't for sale here," Dumi added.
"Nothing that isn't for sale with your people in charge," Viljoen said, smiling.
Dumisani answered seriously, though his eyes said he was joking, "Well . . . I think yours were actually the better thieves, but mine have to work so much harder to catch up."
Victor shook his head. Bad these people might be. Worse than Russia? Not a chance. "And your people?" he asked of Dov.
"They're inside the ship and won't come out until we're in international waters. But they're ready and have all the tools and spares needed for the job."
"Can they do it in the twenty-one sailing days to Guyana?"
"Should be able to," the Israeli answered. "Assuming decent-"
Viljoen saw a girl-well, no, not just a girl, this one was clearly a woman-emerging from the hatchway at the base of the superstructure. She walked over to stand next to Dov, though she seemed to be trying not to stand too close to him. She was olive skinned, tall, slender, and extraordinarily pretty; high cheekboned, delicate chinned, with full lips, and with exceptionally large brown eyes. Her long, wavy hair-brown with traces of red-flooded over her shoulders and down her back. Even though he was gay, he still had to notice: beautiful was still beautiful, whatever one's sexual orientation.
"Lana," Dov acknowledged, before making introductions all around. Rather than Israeli, the woman's accent sounded pure Cape English. "Lana's our senior optics . . . person. She's originally from here; Cape Town, wasn't it, Lana?"
"Cape Town, yes," Lana Mendes answered. "Then Israel, then the Army."
"What did you do in the Army, Boeremeisie?" Dumisani asked. The term didn't precisely fit Lana; she was neither a Boer nor a farm girl. But the Zulu had meant it well and so she took it. More importantly, Lana had grown up with a Bantu nanny. The Zulu's voice and accent represented something very close to ultimate security and comfort at a level well below the conscious.
"Tank driving and gunnery instructor," she said
"Oh, really?" Bantu and Boer asked, at the same time.
D-102, San Antonio, Texas
Both Cazz and Reilly had remained behind since it was their job to recruit, personally, the largest two contingents, the light armored and amphibious infantry companies. Unsurprisingly, they'd each gone immediately for a first sergeant, starting with the best they had known-both of whom had retired as sergeants major-and then working down from there. Rather, Cazz worked down from there. Reilly's first choice had jumped at the chance. Cazz had to strike off two names from his list before settling on the third. Admittedly, this may have been just as well as a former Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps was perhaps a bit too noticeable a personage for what was still, hopefully, a clandestine mission.
Oddly enough, both non-coms were former Marines, since Reilly's choice, Roger George, had spent four years in the Corps, three of them in Southeast Asia, as an infantryman. He'd then gotten out and discovered that civilian life, after the excitement of combat, left much to be desired. The Marines being full at the time, and the Army recruiting system plagued by idiocy on an heroic level, then Corporal George had been enlisted into the Army Band, as a piccolo player. That had lasted about four months before he put in for a transfer to First Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield, in Savannah.
He knew Reilly from approximately the latter's seventh day in the Army, when then Private Reilly had been herded from Fort Polk's replacement detachment to a training company on Fort Polk's South Fort. George had been Reilly's junior drill sergeant through basic combat training.
In any case, Sergeant Major (Retired) and First Sergeant, pro tem, George and Sergeant Major (Retired) and First Sergeant, pro tem, Webster, got along famously. So had they in Vietnam, as a matter of fact, when they'd been members of Second Platoon, B Company, Fifth Marines.
It was truly a small world, and smaller still within the military.
Reilly and Cazz got along. Reilly and Webster got along. Cazz and George got along. But.
"We haven't had any personnel problems or interpersonal issues because nobody's really been collected and shipped onward yet," said Webster. George nodded knowingly on the other side of the table.
"It's gonna be ugly," Cazz added. "With A Company entirely Army-excepting only you"-he inclined his head toward George-"and B Company entirely Marine, I'd expect all kinds of hate and discontent down in the Alpha Alpha. And then when we board ship? Ugh."
"I'm not so sure," Reilly replied. "Especially about aboard ship, where there'll be all kinds of air and naval types for the Army and Marine infantry to get together in peace, love, and harmony and hate jointly. And then, too, we're all fucking old, gentlemen. Too much past that young and full of come and essentially brain dead status of our misguided and misspent youths. The youngest man in B Company will be thirty-seven; the youngest in A Company thirty-nine. That's getting to be a little old for interservice rivalry. In any case, First Sergeants, pro tem, it's going to be your job to squash any of that shit within your companies."
"Easy say, boss," said George.
"But maybe hard do," finished Webster. "Once a misguided child too often means always a misguided child, with the emphasis on ‘child.'"
"Yeah, well, that's why both of you are going down with the first major lift, here to Houston, to Port of Spain, to Georgetown, departing tomorrow morning at 10:24."
"You know," said George, "you really ought to keep Webster here to help with transportation. I can handle the Army and Marines well enough until we hit the two hundred man point."
"No," said Cazz and Reilly together. Reilly added, "The critical mass, so to speak, will assemble there. So there you two will be. Cazz and I can handle trans. Shit; with colonels commanding companies and former divisional sergeants major playing first shirts, it's not as if we aren't the most grossly overled military group outside of the Army of Andorra."
"Andorra?" Cazz asked.
Smiling, Reilly replied, "Just reserve officers, no enlisted men or non-coms. They haven't fought anybody in about seven hundred years. Poor babies, too, what with having to carry their own luggage and all." That last was said with a sneer.
"You still can't tell us the mission?" Webster asked.
Cazz took the question, "Not until Stauer says okay, Top. Sorry. I think he'll tell
you in Brazil, and give you a chance to opt out if you don't like it."
"That's something, I suppose."
"Oh, and Top," Reilly said, quite certain that George would never back out, "make sure they all know the song, old hands and newbies, alike, before I get there."
George shook his head but half-sang, "Von Panzergrenadieren, Panzergrenadieren überrannt."
"Hey, I wanna know that one," Webster said, perking up.
D-102, Georgetown, Guyana
Terry and his boys, and Konstantin and his, looked thoroughly refreshed when they stepped off the plane from Port of Spain. That only added to the intrinsic dislike Harry Gordon had for Special Forces types. He hid it well, generally, but then Terry-Must resist saying ‘Terry and the Pirates,' thought Gordo-and crew hadn't been around much, first shunted to Stauer's country place and then off to Myanmar. Why the dislike? If asked, Gordon probably couldn't have articulated it. It had to do, perhaps, with a certain ‘more military than thou' attitude he'd found in some SF types over the years.
"Had a good time in Trinidad and Tobago, did you guys?" asked Harry Gordon, sarcastically.
"If sleeping well and eating well and drinking well and fucking bloody damned well constitute a good time," Terry admitted, "then I guess you could say, ‘yes,' Gordo. And, after all, it's not as if Stauer wanted us here one minute before now. Or that we didn't deserve a little I & I"-intercourse and intoxication, the unofficial name for R & R-"after springing Inning from, as you said, ‘durance vile'."
Gordo agreed, with somewhat bad grace, and asked, "Who are your new pals? The Russians I heard about?"
Terry nodded and called out, "Konstantin, come meet Harry Gordon; you and he are going to be working together."
"'Working together?'" Gordon asked as the Russian ambled over.
"Part of Victor's contribution to the war effort," Welch explained. "Konstantin and his men are going to help you with transshipment."
"Some of the equipment is coming in mixed, disassembled, hidden, what have you," Konstantin said. "We know how most of it goes together. After all, we've been doing this with Victor for quite some time now. I think you'll find we are useful."
"Can you and your men drive?" Gordo asked. "Can you drive the way they do here, which is to say like maniacs?"
"Ever been to Moscow, Mr. Gordon? Or should I use your former rank?"
"We're all misters or first names here," Gordon replied, shooting Terry a dirty look for his previous use of Konstantin's rank. "Later on, and further south, we can expect to have a more military social hierarchy."
"Works for me," Konstantin answered.
"Good. Anyway, Terry, you and your boys fly out tonight via one of our Pilatus Porters. The people who didn't go to Myanmar are waiting for you at the camp, down south.
"In the interim, there's a safe house between town and the airport. You'll go there and, I guess, that's where the Russians can stay. At least until I work out something better. The safe house is close to Barama Company, with which we've had some useful dealings. Enjoy."
"Useful dealings?" Welch asked.
"They've given us secure computer time and office space, plus access to their truck fleet. We've told some of the bureaucrats hustling them for bribes that death ends all need for money," Gordo said. You're not the only type of soldiers that know how to make a credible threat of violence.
D-101, Helmdon, Northampton, United Kingdom
Sergeant Victor Babcock-Moore, black, and Captain Gary Trim, white, both late of Her Majesty's Royal Engineers ("With the rank and pay of a sapper!"), took turns ground-guiding and backing the armored cars into their shipping containers, three to a box. The Ferrets were angular little things; at about two meters by two meters by four, they weren't so very much larger than a normal SUV, and rather smaller than some such. Indeed, they were dwarfed by some SUVs, most notably the Chevy Suburban. On the plus side, a Suburban could fit upwards of nine. A Ferret was cozy for two, with their personal gear and the ammunition.
Armored against small arms fire up to 7.62, the scout cars carried a sting of their own in their small, one man, turrets. That is to say, these used to carry a sting. They would again, too, as soon as they were taken to Brazil and modified back. Even then, though, they'd be carrying Russian PKM machine guns rather than the .30 caliber Browning. Exactly how the different guns were to be mounted was still a matter of some conjecture.
Trim and Babcock-Moore had had one task to accomplish before booking a flight for Georgetown, whence to be flown somewhere further on to take up a position as assistant engineer and section sergeant to a small group being assembled for mission or missions unknown. That job had been to inspect and, if found serviceable, buy and ship onward nine Ferret scout cars, Mark II or higher. In this Babcock-Moore had been of rather greater use than had Trim, since the sergeant had actually been a Ferret driver early on in his career.
It had been Babcock who'd known to jack up first one side and then the other of each vehicle, turning the forward wheels by hand to ensure the rear wheels on the same sides turned as well. On one occasion Babcock had pronounced, "Blown bevel box, sir. They'll have to replace it before we can take delivery." Babcock had said it, as he pronounced everything, in an accent sufficiently superior to Trim's own that had they not been old comrades and friends the former officer might just have been insulted. Instead, given that the sergeant was an immigrant from Jamaica, Trim found it highly amusing. It had been even more amusing when Trim had been a mere subaltern, but the song-"Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?"-had eventually gotten a bit old.
Likewise it had been Babcock who taught Trim how to start the things properly, a complex procedure for what was supposed to be a very simple machine. Babcock, too, had explained that except for hills and such, it was better to start in second gear, that the gear change pedal was not a clutch-"And for God's sake, sir, don't use it as one."
The engines had all been Rolls-Royce and dating from before the days when nationalization had ruined the British auto industry. They'd all been fine, or better than fine. Of course, they all used gasoline, rather than diesel, and this could be expected to impose certain logistic issues in the future. Still, the engines were Rolls and what was a little complexity in providing two kinds of fuel compared to the advantage of utter reliability? (The same could have been said for .30 caliber Browning machine guns, which Victor was sure he could procure. "The Vietnamese have a shitpot lot of them captured in the war there," he'd said. But while changing out the engines would have been a major job for a minor logistic advantage, using .30s would have been no job at all but at a significant logistic disadvantage. Besides, the Vietnamese record for caring for captured arms since the war was not a particularly good one. "No, we'll fit PKMs," Stauer had insisted.)
None of Babcock's checks had incited any anger in the dealer until he'd done a stall check on the first Ferret. This had involved leaving the handbrake on and starting in third gear, then fourth, with the foot brake depressed and the accelerator floored for five seconds.
"What the fock do ye think ye're doin'?" the dealer had asked, belligerently, though he knew exactly what Babcock was doing.
"Ensuring my investments are sound," Sergeant Babcock had answered.
"What do you need so many of these things for?" the proprietor asked.
"Movie props," the black man lied, with a perfectly straight face.
In the end, Babcock's checks and insistences had had three effects. One was to drive the cost of the Ferrets up to roughly the six thousand, five hundred pound point, each, on average. The second had been that all nine were reasonably mechanically sound before delivery was accepted. The third was to delay acceptance by about ten days.
Still, "All's well that ends well, and all that rot." The cars were ready now, loaded in containers, even, and would be leaving this evening for Portsmouth, a roughly two hour drive. From there, they'd be loaded on a freighter within the next two or three days, thence to Georgetown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They are lost like slaves that sweat,
and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods
when tyranny was young.
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "Lepanto"
D-100, Suakin, Sudan
Adam could feel the armed guards on the other side of the curtain that hung in the coral-framed door. He couldn't see them, generally, nor even hear their bare feet most of the time. They almost never talked when on duty. But the fact of their presence, that he could feel even when no other indicator said so.
The room outside of which the guards kept watch was a cubicle of about three meters on a side. Once, when Suakin was still a busy port, it had had plastered walls. The plaster had long since fallen off, except for a few stubborn little traces here and there. It was also an interior cubicle, windowless. What light there was came from bare bulb, run by a generator Adam could hear whining in the distance. Warmth, when needed, came from a light blanket and the slave girl, Makeda. She and he lay under the blanket, on a foam rubber pad with a sheet. A few times a week the girl took the sheet out and washed it by hand, early in the morning.
Adam couldn't be sure how long it had been since his capture. At least fifty-seven days that I've counted. But he'd spent enough time sedated or-since arrival here-genuinely ill, that it might easily have been seventy-five or even eighty. Labaan, in any case, refused to tell him, and Makeda didn't know.
"It would just upset you, and for no good end," his captor insisted. "Trust me that you will not be going home any time soon. And if you ever are released, what you return to will not be what you think of as home." Not after my chief finishes squeezing. "So try to be happy-as much as you can-in the life you have here, or wherever else you may be brought." The enemy tribesman had seemed to Adam to be almost regretful as he'd said the words.