Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Phillie's moping was cut short, suddenly and unexpectedly, by a subdued and highly artificial cough coming from the opposite end of the tent. The question, "Nurse Potter?" followed the cough. She sat up and faced the man asking.

  "I'm Phillie Potter," she announced to a man she could have sworn she'd seen in a movie. "And you are?"

  "Doctor Scott Joseph," the man said. Phillie was sure she'd seen him in a movie, but clearly not as the leading man. "You'll be working for me. Come on, I'll show you around sick bay."

  She turned away and lay back down on her narrow cot, resuming her hands-behind-head stare at the canvas above. "Not interested," she said.

  "I see," Joseph said, very calmly. Then he shouted out, "SERGEANT COFFEE!"

  "Sir?!" answered an eager voice from someone Phillie hadn't seen.

  "Nurse Potter seems to be having a morale problem. See to it, would you."

  "Sir. . . ."

  Phillie never heard the footsteps. All she knew was that one side of her cot suddenly lifted up and she found herself flying through the air before impacting on the muddy ground. And then a mean looking white dude, not so much large as amazingly broad shouldered and solid was standing above her, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. "The doctor gave you an order, Nurse Potter. Get on your feet and follow him to the aid station."

  Phillie was too frightened even to cry. She never figured out how she managed to get to her feet so quickly. But cry she didn't and stand she did.

  "HURRY, Nurse Potter!"

  Behind her scurrying posterior, Sergeant Coffee smiled his broadest and happiest smile. She'll work out, he thought. Nice ass, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  They rise in green robes roaring from

  the green hells of the sea Where fallen skies and

  evil hues and eyeless creatures be;

  -Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "Lepanto"

  D-88, Gulf of Mexico, Patrol Boat The Drunken Bastard

  The sun was but a distant memory. Conversely, the rain and spray were a miserable present reality, coming in horizontally and driven at better than a hundred miles an hour sometimes, between boat speed and wind. The boat was on a water roller coaster, with some of even its hard-bitten, sea-legged crew vomiting occasionally. Simmons, who never got seasick, and Eeyore, who was able somewhat to control it, huddled behind the windscreen, Simmons' hands gripping the wheel firmly. Biggus Dickus Thornton, a line running from waist to a stanchion, was further aft, looking forward generally, while inspecting the deck for a minor leak that was making life in the engine room a misery.

  Worse, the liberated slave girls below were doing their best to fill the crew dayroom with vomit, to the extent that Morales and Mary-Sue couldn't keep up with emptying the buckets over the side . . . when they and the girls managed to hurl into the buckets, that is.

  The girls all wept and prayed and screamed, in between bouts of vomiting. Though they didn't exactly share a language, but only a language family, Morales didn't have a doubt that they were invoking the aid of the Almighty. That, or perhaps praying for death.

  Above, straining to make himself heard over the roar of wind and sea and engine, Antoniewicz said to Simmons, "I fucking told you we should have put in at Havana, you asshole."

  "Chief says we push on, we push on," the latter answered calmly, if loudly, likewise to be heard over the roar of the gale. Indeed, he answered amazingly calmly considering the boat was riding through waves almost as tall as it was long. "The last place he wants us or we ought to want to be is Cuba. That's enemy territory, still. Besides, Eeyore, we've made it fine so far. What makes you think it'll get any worse."

  Antoniewicz's face, already a pale green, suddenly assumed a truly ghastly look. "That," he said, pointing astern.

  Simmons looked over the stern and saw looming what was absolutely the biggest wave he'd ever seen. His hand automatically reached for the throttle and pushed hard. "Oh, fuck; rogue wave . . . CHIIIEEEFFF!"

  Waves at sea, like radio waves and other electro-magnetic waves, operate at a frequency. Moreover, different waves, even in near proximity, will operate at different frequencies from other waves. Occasionally, a series of waves, all normally at different frequencies, will meet. At that point, there can be created an enormous wave, holding within it the mass, and rising to about the height of all the waves operating at the different frequencies that comprise it, together. This is called a "rogue wave," and, once formed, it can swamp a ship, break its back, or roll it over before so much as a "Mayday" can be sent out.

  Biggus Dickus Thornton never heard Simmons' call. The waves and the gale were too much for that. He did, however, feel the stern rising rapidly in a way that he hadn't felt the Bastard quite move before. He looked astern on his own and saw the suddenly rising mass of foul looking white spray and foam and vertical greenish sea. He didn't have a throttle to push automatically. Instead, he reverted to his childhood, making the sign of the cross-head-abdomen-left shoulder-right-and saying, "For what we are about to receive, O Lord . . ."

  And then he felt himself thrown from his feet and sliding to the stern, past where a forty millimeter Bofors had once been mounted, his ass skimming along the wet deck. He never quite finished his prayer. In English. Rather, he compressed it into a long, "Aiaiaiaiaiai!"

  Eeyore had a little more warning than Thornton had had. Oh, he still lost his footing and began to slide sternward. But he was able to grip the rope that ran about his waist and stay, approximately, within the confines of the bridge. On the other hand, it hurt like the devil when he smacked his head off of the raised housing, just aft."Holyfuckingbastardmotherfuckingcocksuckingsonofabitchasshole!" This would have upset Mary Poppins deeply, and for more reasons than one.

  Still, the stern of the ship continued to rise. Now Antoniewicz slid forward, slamming into Simmons' feet and causing that sailor to fall backwards, losing his grip on throttle and wheel. Rather than try to outdo Mary Poppins' fourteen syllable neologism, Simmons contented himself with a wild, inarticulate, "Gaaa!"

  Mary-Sue and Morales found themselves against the forward bulkhead, in a tangle of lifejackets and decidedly post-pubescent and nicely female arms and legs and heads and breasts. Had the tangle not taken place in a rising tide of puke, and had the lifejackets not covered all too much of the breast mass, and had the screaming not reached concussive levels of volume and power, they might have enjoyed it. Morales didn't think it was even possible for the volume of the shrieking to go any higher.

  But then the Bastard began shooting upwards, as near to straight vertical-though subjectively toward the stern-as one might imagine. Morales discovered that, No, there is no theoretical top limit to the amount of sound that can come from massed female lungs.

  Not being a churlish sort, he elected to join them. "AYAAAHHH!"

  Thornton found himself sliding away from the stern and back towards the raised engine housing. By pushing down with one hand, he was able to quarter turn himself so that he impacted sideways, rather than head first. It still hurt, but not as badly as a head blow would have. From somewhere inside the boat, he heard a massed scream.

  The combination of boat pointing almost straight down, rising waves, wind and sea, and shooting up like a rocket had totally overridden Biggus Dickus' inner ear. He had no idea whatsoever which way was up, which down. Then, from under the stern, he heard the high pitched whining of triple propellers, spinning out of water. The boat made a last spurt upwards, hung in the air for a long moment, then slammed back down into water. It started to level out, then tilt toward the stern.

  This particular rogue wave was composed of four others, in descending order of size and also speed that could have been called, "A," "B," "C," and "D." Having joined at precisely the wrong place and time, from the point of view of the Bastard's crew, these began to separate out again almost as soon as the waves made their final effort to launch the patrol boat into low orbit. A continued on, dropping substantially in height and power, as the rest dropped beh
ind.

  The Bastard slammed into B-C-D from above. The girls screamed. B then moved ahead, leaving C and D in its wake. The Bastard-no water underneath to support the hull-slammed into the remainder. The girls, and Morales, screamed. C then continued on, letting the Bastard slip down into the trough formed behind it.

  Wave D then slammed into the Bastard, hitting at an odd and bad angle. It spun the boat, nearly capsizing it. D smacked Antoniewicz and the chief around like a pimp with a couple of his more recalcitrant and lazy whores. As the boat turned approximately seventy degrees from the vertical, everybody, including the chief and Mary-Sue, screamed.

  D-86, 111 Miles North-northeast of Nombre de Dios,

  Panama, MV Merciful

  Where are they?" Kosciusko fumed. "Where the fuck are they?"

  Ed had binoculars grasped in both hands, pressed to his eyes, scanning from about ten o'clock to two. His exec, similarly accoutered, did the same from two to six. Chin, as perhaps the most nautically experienced man aboard, likewise searched from six to ten. It was Chin who spotted the boat.

  "When did your navy start putting young girls at the helms of small boats?" he asked. Chin concentrated a bit on what he could see of chest of the girl at the wheel. "Well, maybe not all that young."

  Kosciusko swung his glasses around to see. "Ugh," he uttered. Not only was there a girl at the wheel, one he'd never seen before, the charthouse itself was about half gone, as were what he'd have expected to see of antennae, the radio mast, the life raft, the lights, the . . .

  "What the hell hit them?" Chin and the Exec both shrugged. Dunno.

  Worse, maybe, than what was missing, the boat that should have danced across the water like a ballerina across the stage limped along, on one engine, at best. And that one seemed to be putting out a lot of smoke. The boat was also riding very low in the water.

  They used the gantry to haul The Drunken Bastard aboard the Merciful, a series of straps passing underneath the boat. Chin's people had gone down to the patrol boat to outfit the straps, before returning to the mother ship.

  They'd have let the crew come aboard first, for safety's sake, except that not a one of the males had more than three completely functional limbs, except Eeyore, and he was too badly concussed for reliable balance. And none of the girls would leave the men.

  The boat lifted out of the water without any sound but that made by the gantry's electric motor. Even the girls were all screamed out. The gantry operator, Mrs. Liu, an itty bitty Chinese woman who smoked bad cigars, and was picking up vernacular from the crew at an amazing rate, kept the boat's long axis parallel to the ship's, as it rose along the side of the hull. Water poured from its hull. She kept it parallel still as she allowed the water to finish draining, then hoisted it above the gunwales and over the cradle designed and built for it. Once there, she reversed lift, letting the thing settle gently down.

  As soon as it touched, Chin's crew were all over it, strapping it down and tightening the screws that moved rubber padded blocks of wood in around the mahogany hull. A ladder was produced from somewhere, and more Chinese boarded up it. After that, one by one the Bastard's crew was helped off, Morales on a stretcher, with several worried looking girls following.

  Biggus Dickus Thornton was last off, on his own feet but helped by one of the Chinese as his arm was in a sling. He also had his head inexpertly wrapped. Once on the deck-actually on the roof of one of the containers-of the Merciful, Thornton sat down heavily. Kosciusko walked across the container top and squatted down. Chin's people were already erecting the container tops and frame that would hide the boat from casual observation.

  "What happened, Chief?" the captain asked.

  "Biggest fucking wave you ever saw, sir. Came out of nowhere. I still don't know how we survived it. It just came, nearly swamping us, and then-POOF!-it was gone and we were falling. That's all I know. That, and that Simmons and Morales managed to get the girls to pilot the ship to this rendezvous. And the engines are fucked. I think we did a complete three-sixty roll, but I'm not sure. We'd have been fucked, too," he added, "except that there was a Spetznaz issue medical kit aboard and one of the girls could read Russian. Most of the medical stores we used up."

  "They'll do that, I'm told," Ed answered. "Rogue waves, I mean." I really don't want to think about the Romanian girls right now. "Hey look, I have a doctor aboard but she speaks only limited English and has no equipment at all beyond her little doctor's bag. And even that's nineteen fifties technology. Can you and your men wait until we get to Guyana or, better, to Brazil?"

  Thornton's face was gray, ashen. He nodded wearily, and seemed almost confused. "I think so. Nothing wrong with us really but some broken bones and a couple of concussions. We oughta be able to wait a few days . . ."

  Cruz and Borsakov, standing behind Kosciusko, looked at Thornton, at Morales being carried off, and at a very broken and bedraggled looking Simmons and Antoniewicz. They then looked at each other and shook their heads. "We don't think so," Cruz said. He looked at the Bastard and added, "This heap shouldn't be in the water again until it's refitted. But Art and I can take one of the Hips and fly these guys to Panama City. There are some good hospitals there, English-speaking, even, and I doubt Stauer will balk about paying for the best care. They can fly to Georgetown later. It's maybe . . . three hours round trip to Panama City and back."

  Ed thought about it, weighing the options, the issues, and the problems. A Russian chopper in Panama has got to be an unusual event. Flying off a ship that isn't supposed to have any is even more likely to raise eyebrows. But we need these guys on their feet by D-30. If they're worse hurt than I hope, they might not be ready. They might never be ready. It's a risk to send them to shore but . . .

  "It's a risk worth taking," Kosciusko said. "Break out a chopper. Land . . . where? Right at the airport?"

  "Probably less noticeable than anywhere else," Cruz offered.

  "Right. Okay then, land right at the airport. Rent a car. Take them to hospital that way. If it looks like any of them can be released quickly, like within a few hours, wait for them and bring them back. We'll keep it down to ten knots, here."

  "Wilco, skipper," Cruz agreed. He was actually senior to Kosciusko, in retired rank, but the latter was skipper of a ship, the former was a Marine, and the captain of a ship is its monarch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We become what we do.

  -May-lin Soong Chiang

  D-85, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil

  The broad dirt path from A Company's camp, generally to the north, to the airfield passed around the outskirts of Central Camp. Phillie was busy inventorying medicines and equipment lest Sergeant Coffee become more unhappy with her, a fate devoutly to be feared. She stopped what she was doing for a moment when she heard the singing coming through the open portal of one of the aid station tents.

  . . . d Nächte stand nie der Motor,Wir stürmten und schlugenUnd kämpften uns vor,Mit den Panzerkameraden treu vereint,Immer die Ersten am Feind.

  That was odd enough to bring Phillie out of the tent. German? Sounds like German. Sure as shit, there was the armored company, in the same battledress she now wore, marching in four groups, forty files of three and change, the big red-headed guy she knew as George marching by the left flank, all of them singing some bloody awful foreign-Gotta be German.-song. The men in the ranks looked to average somewhere in their early to mid forties, but there were some considerably older ones among them. Sergeant Major Joshua, marching at the head of the column, had to be over sixty, she thought.

  Over the singing, George somehow managed to make himself heard. "Column Riiighghght . . . .MARCH!" After another step, the point of the long column turned right, heads erect and arms swinging.

  Panzergrenadiere,Vorwärts, zum Siege voran!Panzergrenadiere,Vorwärts, wir greifen an!

  Phillie stopped what she was doing and pulled on her camouflage jacket, the same kind as the troops wore though she filled hers out rather differentl
y. I don't want Sergeant Coffee pissed at me anymore, she fretted, as she took the time to button the thing. She clamped the broad brimmed hat on her head. Then it was out the tent door, trailing the marching company. She saw a couple of others following. She assumed it was out of curiosity.

  She froze when she heard Coffee's voice, "I thought you were doing an inventory, Nurse Potter."

  "I was but . . . "

  "Never mind. This will be useful education for you, too."

  Phillie breathed a mental sigh of relief. "Now come on," Coffee said, "hurry up and we can fall in on the last platoon."

  He ran; she followed. She found it hard to keep in step until Coffee said, "Listen to the stressed beats. That's when your left foot hits the ground." Then he joined the singing.

  . . . Wird jeder Feind gestellt,Bis die letzte Festung fällt,Und im Sturm drauf und dran überrannt.

  "How do you know the song?" Phillie asked from the side.

  "No talking in ranks," he admonished her. "But I used to be his platoon sergeant for a while."

  "Whose platoon sergeant?" she asked, ignoring the admonishment.

  "Reilly's, the fucking maniac."

  Von Panzergrenadieren,

  Panzergrenadieren überrannt.

  Von Panzergrenadieren,

  Panzergrenadieren überrannt!

  Ahead, the dirt path through the jungle opened up to the airstrip's clearing. The volume of the singing, if anything, redoubled. One of the airplanes Phillie had learned was called a "Pilatus Porter" was turning around, midway down the strip. George called out, "Column Leeeffft . . . MARCH!"