by Tom Kratman
"Yeah," Eeyore half agreed, "that could be it, too."
"You still want to go with the direct approach?" Morales asked.
"I think that after a night of swimming and a day in the sun without water we're not really up to anything too clever. So shut up and paddle. And aim toward the harbor mouth; we'll let the incoming tide bring us in to the boat quietly."
The oars were put up and both Eeyore and Morales had their APS underwater assault rifles gripped in their hands. These were sub-optimal outside of the water, but could be expected to work for at least a few shots, if it came to that.
Ahead, the pirate boat was quiet enough. The semi-frantic activity of earlier in the day, as someone apparently worked on the engines, was over for the night. There were some men who could be heard speaking and joking near the bow. Their jocular voices carried well across the water.
The slow tide carrying them to the boat also passed them by the long concrete jetty that protected the outer harbor. It was unguarded or, if it were guarded, the guard was looking outward to sea.
Guards in evidence along the jetty or not, Antoniewicz worried. If it was the engines, and the sound it made before hitting the Namu suggests they had their problems, I sure as fuck hope they got whatever was wrong with them fixed.
The small boat in which they'd hidden for the day thumped gently against the stern of the pirate craft. There was a name painted there, but Eeyore couldn't read it. The thump was gentle, and made little noise. Morales grabbed the stern of the pirate boat while Antoniewicz scrambled aboard, his firearm held in one hand.
Whether it was the gentle thump or some faint sound he'd made in climbing over the gunwale, somebody on the boat noticed. Or maybe he just needed to relieve himself over the stern. Eeyore didn't know and didn't much care. Someone was coming and that someone had to die. He took an automatic kneeling firing position at the starboard corner of the boat.
Poor bastard did just want to take a piss, Eeyore thought, as the dark, skinny man standing next to the boat's cockpit proceeded to do just that, his urine splashing noisily in the outer harbor's water. He'd have lived a few minutes longer, and maybe longer still, if he hadn't then turned as if to walk to the stern.
It wasn't that big a boat. Antoniewicz couldn't wait. He lightly stroked his weapon's crude trigger, twice. There was a slight recoil, but no sound. Even though the APS had no suppressor, the cartridges themselves were piston driven, the explosion of the charge never leaving the cartridge casing and thus never causing harm to a diver underwater who fired one or, in this case, two.
He wasn't even a pirate, actually, but just one of the few people in the port capable of maintaining a marine engine. He needed to take a piss, and then decided to get something more or less cool from the boat's ice chest, below. Not that he didn't make his living from piracy, he did, at least in part and indirectly. Still, the mechanic could say with a reasonably straight face that he was an honest man, who'd never harmed another human being in his life.
He didn't understand, therefore, why he suddenly felt a shock in his upper chest, just below his neck, nor the pain that followed it. It hurt so badly he didn't cry out. His hand went automatically to the source of the pain. He didn't understand why his chest was wet with the thick fluid, nor why his fingers touched on a small-no more than a quarter of an inch thick-metal dart that seemed to be growing from his chest. No more did he understand the iron-coppery stink of blood that assailed his nostrils.
He might have figured it out, eventually, but the second shot went into his brain, right through his left eye. After that, he wasn't in a condition to figure out anything.
"Get Simmons in the boat and then get it started," Antoniewicz ordered, softly, head turned over his left shoulder. "I'll take care of the rest of them."
Gingerly, Eeyore stepped over the still quivering body sprawled on the deck.
The men on the foredeck were simply chatting, laughing sometimes, as Antoniewicz crouched by the side of the cockpit and drew bead on them. He was about to fire when he heard the engine start to life with a shuddering cough. All the men looked up and toward the stern in surprise. Then they noticed him. They didn't go for weapons. Indeed, there weren't any to hand so far as Eeyore could see. Instead, they raised their hands.
Fuck; I can't just kill 'em, now. Not after they surrendered.
Eeyore motioned with a jerk of his head and another with the muzzle of his APS for the men to get into the water. No arguments; they stood and jumped. Once they were in the water and no danger, Antoniewicz walked, bent at the waist, placed his APS on the deck, and then picked up and rolled the body of the man he'd killed over the side.
"Eeyore, cast us off," called Morales.
D-Day, MV Merciful, North of Bandar Cisman, Ophir
Soundlessly, barring only the slight soft whine of their electric motors, the rubber boats carrying the Marine company pulled away from the temporary floating docks along the ship's hull. The Marines sat on the gunwales of the inflatables, with their rifles and machine guns in their hands and their personal equipment D-ringed to lines that ran down each boat's center, bow to stern. Cazz's boat took the lead, moving forward initially before veering to port and the shore. The other boats followed in trail before cutting right or left to make a deep V.
The electric motors had been selected for silence more than speed. The boats didn't move especially fast, no more than four and a half knots or so. This would see them to shore in an hour.
While the Marines cast off and headed to shore, the Mexican ground crews for the remaining fixed wing aircraft continued the laborious process of fitting their planes, four of them, anyway, with the machine guns and rockets they would carry on their missions.
McCaverty, after the briefest of naps, watched Luis' boys work. As he watched, he fumed, I didn't sign up for this to be a doctor. And it's not right that they're making me. I signed up to fly and to fight.
I wonder if that bastard Stauer planned this all along.
"I'd accuse you of planning this," Stauer said, to Phillie, as she stood next to Biggus Dickus, "except . . . I can't quite imagine how. Let me make sure I understand." He pointed a finger at Phillie. "You want to get closer to the action?" The finger shifted to Thornton. "And you . . . you? Trained pinniped par excellence? You want to go on the standby medevac flight heading north?"
"Why not, sir?" Thornton asked. "I started life as a corpsman. You don't have enough doctors to put them on the medevac birds. I'm a better medic than anyone else here, except"-Thornton's head shifted Phillie-ward- "maybe Miss Potter. Might be a matter of life and death for somebody."
Thornton smiled benignly at Phillie. She'd been a much easier sell, when he'd approached her, than he'd expected.
Stauer glared at his lover. "Did you clear this with Doc Joseph?"
Phillie nodded. "He said with McCaverty in OR, and the Chinese women having proven pretty competent, and the Romanian girls to help, that he's more likely to save people if they don't get back to the ship exsanguinated, in shock, and probably infected."
Stauer was not fooled. Pointing at Biggus Dickus, he said, "Him, I understand. He's got people out there lost and he's worried sick over them. But you? I thought I had a sensible girl."
"Didn't you tell me once, Wes," she asked, softly "that a rational army would run away?"
He glared at her. Not fair to bring up old discussion points, sweetie.
"I knew what you meant," she continued, "which is almost certainly not what Voltaire intended; that it took something beyond pure reason and rational selfishness to make an armed force work.
"I'm not asking you for this for the excitement," she said, "though I won't deny that the self-satisfaction from doing everything I can to help is in there somewhere. But the fact is, I'm either a part of this or I'm not. If I'm not, I don't belong here at all. If I am, then I need to be where I'll do the most good, for everybody."
Stauer turned away from the two, walking to the pot of invariably vile coffee always b
rewing on the bridge. He filled a Styrofoam cup with the nasty stuff, then sipped it, thinking, It might be the right thing to do. It might be the only right thing to do. But, dammit, she's my girl.
Which gives me zero excuse.
"Fine, then. Do it," Stauer said, with something less than good grace.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Marines have landed,
and the situation is well in hand.
-Richard Harding Davis
D-Day, Beach Red, north of Bandar Cisman, Ophir
The dust became a little more noticeable the closer they came to shore. Behind him, Cazz could feel his radio-telephone operator, or RTO, hmph-hmphing, trying to suppress a cough.
The beach was a grainy-green image of sloping sand and light surf in Cazz's night vision goggles. Twenty meters out from it the man on the motor cut power and rotated it out of the water. Thereafter, the rubber boat drifted in under its own inertia. With each meter closer to the beach, Cazz could feel the tension rising in the boat.
I guess it's all pretty academic until you actually get near the beach, he thought.
The boat scraped along the sand and gravel below it, then shuddered to a stop. The company commander was out of the boat and churning through surf to shore in an instant. His RTO followed a few steps behind. The other members likewise slid over the sides and raced forward, except for one, the one who had been manning the motor, who more deliberately picked up a metal stake attached to the bow by a rope. This one walked until the slack was taken up, then dragged the boat farther up until its bow was out of the water. Then he drove the stake into the sand.
About fifty meters up the gently sloping beach, Cazz took one knee. His RTO dropped likewise behind him. Seconds later, the rest of the first boatload ran past him, continuing on maybe another three hundred meters.
Yeah, maybe they're all old codgers like me, Cazz thought, chest swelling with pride, but we had a lot of time in Brazil to work the kinks out. And, still, "once a Marine, always a Marine."
Inland, the old men then began to spread out to form what would become a perimeter. These men went prone as soon as they'd reached their immediate objective. Their rucksacks were still behind them, in the rubber boat. They'd send a party of two back to retrieve those after the perimeter was set up and secured.
Cazz looked around behind him to where the rest of the rubber flotilla was coming to shore. As boats touched in, more short lines of men streamed, forming themselves on the first group to go to ground. Almost directly behind him the mortar crews struggled to get their guns and a few rounds each across the surf, two men stumbling and falling once as the uneven ground, the pulse of the water, and the massive baseplate they were trying to hump proved too much.
They'll be a while.
More mortar ammunition, twenty-two rounds of 120mm per gun, would come in by helicopter, later.
D-Day, MV Merciful, four miles off the coast
There were three landing craft, each capable of carrying two of the armored vehicles, or three of the Ferret scout cars, or one AML and two Ferrets, to shore at a time. There simply wasn't room for more than that, though the boats wouldn't sink under considerably more weight. The round trip took about fifty minutes. Loading took twenty-five minutes to half an hour, and that only because Mrs. Liu was good at her job. It would be at least five hours from when the first LCM left to when the mechanized company was fully ashore.
Just as Cazz had been the first man to hit the beach, so Reilly, as a matter of principle, was going in the first load of heavy equipment. Lana was already loaded on her boat, number three. Standing with one leg over the gunwale, his foot locked in the net, Reilly passed on last minute instructions to his exec, FitzMarcach.
After five minutes of that, Fitz held up his hands, palms out, and said, "Enough, sir. I know what has to be done and how to do it."
For half a moment Reilly felt anger building. Then he realized, Yeah, what the fuck am I doing? He knows what to do.
"Sorry, Fitz. Maybe I was just remembering back when you were a lieutenant."
"I could do this back then, too. Just relax, boss. Go have fun. Top and I will follow in the last boat to unscrew whatever you fucked up ashore."
"Right. See you ashore."
With that, Reilly twisted to bring his belly to the gunwale, and his other leg to the net. He then carefully climbed down to where the LCM Number One waited. Once he felt his feet touch the cleated deck, he turned to the rear and walked between armored car and hull to stand under the raised cockpit. James, carrying a radio, followed, as he'd followed his chief down the net.
Looking upward, one thumb raised, Reilly said, "Take us in."
Back in LCM Number Three, Lana Mendes felt the sudden surge of the engines as the boat eased away from the hull.
Oh, my God, she thought, I'm really doing this. It's not a dream. I'm going to go and get to fight in an armored vehicle, and nobody's stopped me just because my plumbing's wrong.
For this, Reilly, you old bastard, I will even learn your fucking Nazi song. She smiled then, unseen by anyone, even Viljoen and Dumisani, thinking, And you can't even imagine the other things I'll do for you, for letting me do this.
D-Day, Beach Red, Ophir
The ramp splashed down, raising spurts of surf and sand around its edges. Instantly, one of the armored cars' engines revved. The car itself spun wheels on wet, cleated steel for a moment, before the wheels caught traction and it surged forward. Up it went, up the sloping front, before thudding across the space between ramp and hull. It went straight for a moment, then nosed down slightly as it took the ramp into the water. Whitish spray surged around the wheels. Then it was off and moving to the shore.
By the time the next vehicle from LCM One moved off its ramp, Number Two had ramped down, while Number Three was perhaps fifty or sixty meters out from the shoreline.
James following, Reilly walked off, down the ramp, and into the surf. There he was met by Cazz.
"Quiet as soft shit," the former Marine said. "There's nothing out there but us, for at least five hundred meters in every direction. I think this is going to work."
"It's not like we didn't pick the loneliest, most desolate strip of nothing for fifty miles," Reilly answered.
"I know. But this just feels too easy."
Reilly thought about that for a few seconds, then answered, "I think it'll get a lot harder, pretty soon."
"With a little luck."
D-Day, MV Merciful
With the Marines gone, likewise the landing craft, a good chunk of the mechanized infantry, and all the special operations types but one, the ship was unusually placid and quiet. Kosciusko didn't have a lot to do; the ship's Dynamic Positioning System-a computerized method of keeping a ship in the same spot-did its job rather well. Cruz was at the stern with the helicopters. The CH-801's, the six of them left, were mostly ready, though Luis' Mexicans busied themselves with them even so. And why not? Four of the Mexicans were going to ride them as door gunners.
Down in the hold the staff kept track of things nicely. All Stauer had to do was stand on the bridge at the moment, and watch . . .
Watch . . . not much of anything, really. Mrs. Liu's doing a fine . . . oh, shit.
Forward, on the starboard side, a sudden bright glow that should not have been there grew from among the containers.
While the LCM's were away, Mrs. Liu busied herself and her gantry with repositioning containers so that other containers, holding armored vehicles, would have their doors freed so the vehicles could move into the open for loading. She had most of them available to be opened by now. Indeed, all but a few of the vehicles were lined up in position for the gantry to lift and shift them over the side. And most of those few, notably barring a somewhat smoky Ferret the mechanics were working on inside one of the containers, were moving into position for loading.
FitzMarcach lay atop the container with his head over the edge, looking in- and downward at a scout car from the engine of which smoke see
ped. The mechanics had the engine cover off and were muttering darkly as they rattled about with wrench and spanner. The driver sat at his station, inside, while the commander of the vehicle stood in the turret hatch, offering helpful and completely unwanted advice to the mechanics. Fitz glared at the thing, as if trying to get it to move by sheer will.
The Ferret seemed notably unintimidated by the XO's glaring. Quite the opposite. Indeed . . .
Suddenly, one of the mechanics said, "Oh, shit," dropped his wrench and went scrambling for the far door to the container. Meanwhile, the other mechanic, followed by the vehicle commander, very nearly flew out the open front door as a large burst of flame erupted from the engine compartment. The flame reached the inside top of the container and spread out in a bright mushroom. Fitz didn't get his head out of the way before the flames singed his eyebrows and made his hairline recede even more than it already had naturally.
And then the flames reached the driver, who began to scream. The mechanic who had headed away from the already open door soon joined him as he discovered that that door couldn't be opened.
There was a fire extinguisher with the Ferret. Neither the mechanics nor the crew had time to use it. Thus, the first people on the scene with any serious firefighting capability were the flight deck crew. They raced over, the first two men jumping from the flight deck level a bit over eight feet down to the level of the armored car containers. These received the heavier and larger than normal fire extinguishers normally found on the flight deck as they were passed down. Then deck crew dragged the extinguishers to the open door from which flames poured and began to spray foam inward.