Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  The pirates surprised the team, at first, by not firing continuously until the boat was a sinking colander. It took a while for Eeyore to guess the reason. Fuckers don't want to damage the boat too badly. They're probably only shooting at all to try to entice us to surrender-like that's gonna happen-followed by a few deft throat slices and then over the side with our corpses. I'll turn and ram the bastards first. Try to, anyway. I'll be damned if . . .

  Eeyore's thought was cut off by a . . . well . . . if not an "Earth-shattering kaboom," at least a sea-shaking one.

  "What the fuck?" he asked, risking a look up and a glance backwards.

  What he saw when he looked to the stern was the boat that had been pursuing, on its side, taking in water, while pieces of the hull-crew, too, most likely-sailed up and up.

  Morales started to laugh, the laughter bordering on hysteria. Eventually, he managed to get out, "I guess we mined that one, too, Eeyore."

  Antoniewicz scratched his head, then rocked it side to side for a moment. "Five second fuses always last three," he said. "Maybe, on the other hand, twelve mile limpets always last for seventy-five. Or maybe it was a Friday afternoon limpet. Or-"

  "Should we pick 'em up?" Morales interrupted.

  Now it was Eeyore's turn to laugh. "Those bastards? Fuck 'em. The sharks can have 'em."

  D-Day, Bandar Qassim, Ophir

  Biggus had made sure Wahab and Fletcher boarded the other armed CH-801, before he got on the last one. By the time that was done, and everyone was airborne and approximately safe, the long night was pretty much over and Rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of Morning, was doing her thing.

  She was doing it pretty well, in fact. The harbor was lit up brightly and was amazingly-

  "Empty," Biggus announced. "The bitch is practically empty. They sortied every small and medium boat they had."

  He used the radio to inform the Merciful just how much trouble he thought it, and everyone, was in.

  "What have you got left?" asked the disembodied voice he thought he recognized as belonging to Waggoner.

  "Just the machine guns," Thornton answered.

  "Mmmm . . . that's not a lot," Waggoner observed. "And if they shipped shoulder-fired SAMs aboard any of the boats, they'll outrange you."

  "Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Biggus answered.

  "No," Waggoner said, "you tell me something I don't know, like what's your fuel status?"

  The pilot answered that one. "We've got enough to get back. If you haven't moved too far south."

  "Roger . . . hold a sec."

  Biggus was pretty sure Waggoner was bent over a map, protractor in hand, trying to figure out a way and a place to get all four armed birds onto the so-far-unseen pirate flotilla. Or extract everyone and head south before that flotilla showed up on the Merciful's doorstep. Biggus was pretty sure that with two companies still on the ground, and probably two special operations teams, including the Russkis, none of that fancy shit was likely to work out.

  "What's to work out?" he asked of Waggoner. "I know the map as well as you do. Most we can do is make a single pass and fuck with them a little. Assuming they don't fuck back worse."

  "Mass is nice," Waggoner answered.

  "Mass is nice when it's possible," Biggus countered. "Here and now, it ain't. Maybe later today it might be."

  The voice on the other end changed from Waggoner to Stauer. "Biggus, forget fucking with them. I'd rather know how many they are, and their general layout, than have you bust caps on them to no good end and maybe lose two planes in the bargain. Stay out of potential SAM range. Swing by. Observe and report. Then come home."

  With Stauer there was no arguing, not about operational matters, at least, and at least unless you could pin him between running a mission and his personal feelings.

  "Roger, sir," Thornton answered.

  "Won't argue with those orders," added the pilot.

  D-Day, MV Merciful, off Bandar Cisman, Ophir

  "Options, ops?" Stauer asked of Waggoner.

  "We've got a few," the latter said. "One is, have the Marine company assault Bandar Cisman, now, before Reilly and A Company can reinforce. Having the Ophiri chief's brother and his family on board might be enough to dissuade the flotilla from attacking."

  Stauer made a quick mental calculation of the cost of that option, both in terms of his Marines and in terms of the likelihood of losing some of the captives he needed to the assault.

  "No," he said. "Bad option."

  Waggoner shrugged. "Didn't like that one, anyway. Second choice: Send Chin and The Drunken Bastard north."

  "Death ride? Oooo . . . that's hard."

  "Third choice: Kill the air support we've got going now, retrieve whatever we've got out there, refuel and rearm, convert the dustoff planes back to strikers, and hit them"-his finger traced a section of the eastern coast- "somewhere about here. But that's going to take a while to prep."

  "Send Chin."

  "Remind him that his crew's families are aboard?" Waggoner asked.

  "He won't need the reminder."

  D-Day, The Drunken Bastard

  "Captain, call for you," said Chief Petty Officer Liu, he of the wife with the amazing skill with the gantry.

  Chin stepped up from the charthouse to the bridge and took the radio's microphone.

  "Chin here," he said.

  "Captain, this is operations. We've got thirty-odd boats coming, we think, most smaller than yours and probably none as fast or as well-armed. Still, it's thirty or more. We need you to move north and stop them."

  "One against thirty, eh? I like that," the Chinese skipper said. "Wilco." He handed the microphone back to Liu.

  Liu took it, smiling, then said. "You style yourself a communist. Harrumph. You fool no one. You're no communist, Skipper; you're a romantic."

  Chin didn't refute the charge. Instead, also smiling, he said, "Assemble the men, Chief." To himself, after Liu had begun shouting for the assembly, he whispered, "This is going to be glorious."

  D-Day, fifty-four miles east of Bandar Qassim, Ophir

  With having to concentrate on his flying, the pilot saw nothing. With the drone of his plane's motor, the pilot heard nothing. That is to say, he heard nothing until he heard Biggus Dickus Thornton begin to snicker in his headphones. The snicker became a laugh. The laugh a bellowing cacophony of sheer joy.

  "They're alive!" Thornton shouted, lowering the binoculars he'd had pressed to his face. "They're alive!"

  "Who? What?" the pilot asked.

  "My team: Eeyore, Morales, Simmons. They're alive!"

  "How do you know?"

  "Look left," Thornton said, handing the binos forward before resuming his boisterous laugh.

  The pilot took the field glasses, held them to his eyes, and did look. "What the fu . . . "

  In his view, a large plume of wood and metal and bodies flew into the air, some distance out to sea. That was the first and obvious thing he saw. Rotating his head a few degrees to the left, he saw twenty or thirty boats. All of them stood stock still, no wakes, no bow waves, no white-churned water behind.

  Even as he watched another boat disappeared in a flash of light, a cloud of smoke, and a deluge of spray.

  "They did mine the fucking boats," Biggus said. "And if they mined them, and the boats went out anyway, it means the boats' crews hadn't a clue. If they hadn't a clue, it means my boys got away."

  "Sounds reasonable," the pilot agreed. "But why are the boats still blowing up?"

  "Fuck, I dunno," Biggus said. "Quality control at the factory, I imagine. Who cares, anyway? My boys are alive.

  "Now let's go find 'em."

  "As long as the fuel lasts, I'll try," the pilot concurred. "Don't expect a lot of circling."

  Thornton took the radio, and sent his report to the Merciful. About halfway through, another voice, speaking English but with a Chinese accent, interrupted, saying, "You have no idea how this news distresses me."

  D-Day, Rako, Ophir


  In his hands, Reilly had the photos taken by Buckwheat Fulton and Wahab, weeks prior, showing who was to be taken from the town, once the people surrendered, or were crushed. He turned one over and muttered, "Circles and arrows, and paragraphs on the back of each one, telling what it's about."

  The company surrounded the town, with a brace of tanks each to the northeast and southwest, infantry platoons northwest and southeast, and the gunned Elands interspersed by sections of two to the north, the east-southeast, and the west-southwest. Reilly's own personnel carrier stood on a small copse overlooking the town from the south. He spoke through his translator as his translator spoke through a set of loudspeakers attached to the Eland's sides.

  "I'm not here to negotiate," Reilly said, the microphone picking up and echoing both his words and the translator's from the hills around the towns. Machine gun fire from the tank lager echoed, adding its own bit of punctuation.

  "Whether you live or die matters not a bit to me.

  "It should, however, matter to you. Surrender, then, all the people of this town, before I release my soldiers onto you.

  "Or don't. And in the failing, watch your town burn. See your screaming daughters dragged out and raped before your eyes. Watch dishonor be heaped taller than a mountain upon your family names, forever. See your last little suckling baby tossed on the bayonets of my killers. Witness your stumbling old men and half blinded old women run down and pressed out like grapes to make a red wine of your dusty streets.

  "You will not even be a memory, so completely will you and yours be erased.

  "Come out now, all of you, toward me, and unarmed, or commend your souls to your god."

  Never underestimate the benefits of a classical education, Reilly thought.

  In one of the two T-55's to the northeast of the town of Rako, Lana Mendes sat in the driver's compartment. Behind her, in the turret, hands on a Russian .51 caliber machine gun, Schiebel-face painted black still, though the black was dusty and streaked now-watched the scene. He had a much better view than she did, though she could hear as well as he could.

  "He dudn't mean id," she asked, through her smashed nose, "dud he?"

  "No," the little grunt said, biting back a laugh. The poor girl sounded so funny, and her nose was such a mess, that not laughing was hard. "He's just saying it to frighten them into surrender. He wouldn't let any of those things happen. We wouldn't do any of them, even if he wanted us to." Schiebel hesitated, then added, "Well . . . except for destroying the town. We'd do that."

  Even as he said it, hundreds of people, big and little, young and old, male and female, began to emerge from their shacks to trod, fearfully, to the south and Reilly.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  We few, we happy few, we band of ruthless bastards!

  -From "The Black Seal," The Black Adder

  D-Day, Bandar Cisman, Ophir

  "What the fuck?" Cazz asked of nobody in particular. "About time, but what the fuck?"

  The spur to his question was the armored column, emerging from the dust, led three Ferrets followed by seven tanks he'd have taken for enemy, each of those tanks dragging another one by tow cables. Two of the dragged tanks, once they were close enough to really see, looked rather the worse for wear.

  The tanks pulled into a row. Men, just one per, emerged from the turrets and began undoing the cables. The other vehicles began to split off into two columns, roughly evenly divided between turreted, gunned Elands and the unturreted ones packed with infantry. A third column, consisting of two more Ferret scout cars with some odd, boxy projections on top, and two obviously civilian trucks loaded down-packed to the rafters, really-with locals in their own dress, cut right and headed generally to the beach. A fourth, composed of three more turretless Elands, made straight for Cazz's own mortar platoon.

  A single turretless Eland, with loudspeakers mounted to the sides, headed for Cazz. He saw Reilly riding in the empty turret well, one of his doggies manning the machine gun, the colonel's lady, Phillie, and his big, black sergeant major, Joshua. Also up there was one of the locals, an ancient type, what little hair he had gone steel gray.

  "What's with the wrecks?" Cazz asked Reilly as the latter emerged from the Eland's side door.

  "I'm a scrounge. Six of them we grabbed at the ambush, but two of those broke down. We picked up another three working ones at the lager, then I decided to tow the two that broke down and as many as looked like they might be repairable at the ambush site.

  "I always wanted my very own tank platoon. Or company."

  "He really wants his own division," Joshua said. "But he's a reasonable man and will settle for what he can get."

  "Or division," Reilly admitted. "We'd have taken the rest but . . . they . . . ummm . . . weren't in the best shape. So, anyway, what wonderful entertainment have we got going here?"

  "Nothing much since we penned them in. Oh, sure, we've traded shots back and forth and I lost two men, one dead, one wounded. Probably killed twenty or twenty-five of the locals, and I couldn't guess how many wounded. But basically, nothing much. Now that you're here with the heavy shit we can assault the place properly."

  "Maybe not," Reilly said. "Maybe I've gotten a better idea."

  "Really? What's that? I'm not even remotely averse to something that keeps any more of my boys from getting hurt."

  Reilly pointed at the gray-fringed, mostly bald local. "The old man up there is the father of the chief of Ophir. He's also the father of the head of this town. I think he can talk his boy into surrendering. He seems very reasonable and very eager not to have done to any of his people what I promised would be done if I didn't get a surrender nice and quick."

  Cazz raised an eyebrow. "Just out of curiosity, what did you promise?"

  "Robbery, rape, murder, massacre, demolition, and extinction. Carthage, basically."

  "Would you have . . . never mind, I don't want to know."

  "Neither do I," Reilly admitted. "But having made the promise, and being, as I try to be, a man of my word . . .

  "Anyway, I propose to send the old man-he goes by ‘Zakariye,' by the way-under guard, to his son, to have a little chat."

  "He'd have obliterated the place in no time flat," Joshua said. "Man of his word, after all." Though I am a little miffed, still, that you both cost me fifty dollars to that son of a bitch, George, and are fucking a subordinate. Oh, well, I suppose every man has some failing. And, I admit, the girl is pretty. Or was, before turning her nose to mush. And noses can be fixed.

  ***

  All fire had ceased but ostentatiously armed helicopters, three of them now, and CH-801's, to the tune of four, circled the town menacingly overhead. Above those, and above all the witnesses, the sun beat down hot and fierce.

  "If you try to harm either of these men, Son," Zakariye said, between the lines of occupied buildings and surrounding Marines and soldiers, his head inclining to one side, then the other, to indicate his grim-visaged guards, "or to free me, I have it on very good authority that this port will be obliterated, along with everyone in it."

  The son, a man of no mean years himself, balked. His finger pointed at the circling aircraft as he said, "Gutaale will destroy those things in a moment."

  "Jabir," the older man said, for this was his son's name, "Gutaale's precious new air force was destroyed on the ground. Why do you think his planes have not shown up yet."

  "His fleet-"

  "No," Zakariye shook his head. "That lies on the bottom of the sea. And, before you mention the new tanks he purchased, stand for a moment."

  Jabir stood and the father put one arm across his son's shoulders. "See there?" Zakariye said, pointing. "And there?" The point of aim shifted.

  "Those are the tanks you were about to mention. No, Son, your brother has nothing to send. You can fight, if you choose to, and you, your wives, my grandchildren, all will be killed."

  "What choice, Father?" Jabir asked.

  Zakariye sighed. "It seems that your brother seized someone h
e should not have. That's why these men came here. That's why they destroyed the airplanes, the boats and ships, the armored force. It was explained to me on the way here. They don't know where the man, more of a boy really, taken by Gutaale is. But they know where and who we are. They only want us to trade us."

  "How do they know?" Jabir asked.

  Zakariye laughed bitterly. "Do you recall an American ‘journalist' who passed by here some months ago?"

  Jabir thought for a moment, then shrugged and answered, "Al Ful-tan? He was just a scribbler, a maker of pictures and stories for magazines."

  "Sadly," Zakariye corrected, "not. He was one of these men. They know exactly who we are. Or didn't you let al Ful-tan take a family portrait, and print you a copy?"

  "Oh, shit. That was dirty."

  "Yes, it was," the father agreed. "As to whether it was dirtier than kidnapping a free man from foreign soil and holding him as a hostage, I leave to Allah to determine. The question is now, as was also explained to me . . . quoted to me, "Will you yield and this avoid, or guilty, in defense, be thus destroyed?"

  "Do you think Gutaale will trade?" Jabir asked. "If my brother will not, I'd rather die fighting."

  "He'll trade," Zakariye said. "For he is no different from any of us; no different from Khalid, whose son was taken. Hilarious, is it not?" he asked.

  D-Day, MV Merciful

  Landing craft plied the waves, back and forth, bringing both the prisoners from Rako and Bandar Cisman, as well as recovering the troops and armored vehicles. The latter set included over a dozen tanks, not all of them precisely pristine, that Reilly indicated he was willing to throw a serious tantrum over if he couldn't keep.