ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (13 page)

Captain Li squinted against the downpour and pulled up
his collar to minimise the discomfort of having water running down the back of his
neck. He had a hood but he preferred keep his hearing unhindered.

Raising night glasses to his eyes he picked out the
channel marker. They remained on electrical power, draining the batteries
precious charge but preserving the element of surprise as Li conned the vessel
slowly forwards keeping diligently above the deepest part of the rivers dredged
channel.

His nose wrinkled as the salt tang of the ocean became
polluted by the scent of the jungle, the rotting vegetation and wet mud from
the mangrove swamps that lay just outside the small towns influence.

The trees, the creepers and dense jungle undergrowth
closed in on them, overhanging the river banks as soon as the town had slipped
behind them in the darkness.

A nightscope picked out a wooden dugout canoe drawn up
on the bank, the Stone Age
existing
just a stone’s
throw from the twenty first century and all its internet broadband glory.

Their world became that of the tropical downpour and
the ominous dark mass of the jungle, picked out by a fractionally lighter sky.

It was claustrophobic. They were out of their comfort
zone, away from the deep waters they were designed to hunt in and this added to
the diligence with which the bridge crew kept watch.

Li allowed himself to swing his glasses up and down
river every so often, taking in the black and impenetrable gloom of the banks.

Amid the leaping strikes of raindrops upon the river
two bright dots appeared beside the bank, he kept his glasses upon them as he
tried to work out what they were, a surveillance device? He lowered the glasses
and they disappeared, invisible to the naked eye in the darkness but with the
glasses raised once more he immediately picked them out again as they were now
moving towards his command, creating a faint V of a wake in the rivers surface.
A seabird swam into his vision and into the path of the glowing dots, its own
head pulled back into the protection its furled wings afforded against the rain.

There was a splash, a flurry of movement and both bird
and dots disappeared with the swish of a caiman’s leathery tail, leaving only a
few floating feathers.  Li shivered despite himself at the suddenness with
which death had visited this primeval place.

The river bent around to the right and Li leant over
the side of the conning tower so as to more quickly sight the ESA jetty,
glasses held to his eyes with one hand and the other clutching a microphone to
his mouth, thumb just touching the transmit switch and the order to open fire
ready on his lips. The rating on the 23mm cannon clutched the weapons cocking
handle tightly, his knuckles white and bracing himself to ratchet the lever to
the rear.

Below decks the tension was palpable. In engineering
they were awaiting the call to throw the engines into full reverse for a
fighting withdrawal back to the ocean under fire from surface warships. The
torpedomen stood ready, and between them and the control room waited the armed
ratings who would be their sentries along with the Fassing party in the central
passageway. All were bathed in red light, clutching small arms with the
awkwardness of the unfamiliar, but ready to carry out the fuelling procedures
from the novelty of a rock steady surface for once.

The darkness of the jungle on the northern bank
altered with the appearance of a silhouette that possessed straight lines. It
separated from the unruly mass of the night time rain forest to sit stationary
a hundred metres off the north bank. As it came into the view of the 23mm
gunner he immediately took aim.

“Belay that!” Li commanded sharply. “It’s the
Fliterland
.”

Bulky, specialised derricks sat above the elongated
ships hold where the
Soyuz
rocket sections and delicate payloads were stored but
the freighter was riding high in the water, empty, her last cargo unloaded
weeks before.

Rust streaked here and there, the freighters blue hull
and white superstructure loomed over them as they slowly motored along her
cliff-like port side.

The dock beyond the freighter was empty of warships
too. Li was not as relieved as he might have been. He still did not know where
the French corvettes and fast patrol boats were.

“All stop.”

The rain showed no sign of relenting as
the
Dai
sat motionless in midstream. Li took up his glasses
again, to peer downriver at the road bridge, and to look for any sign of sentries.

It was both a modern and no frills,
functional, construction for carrying a two lane highway as well as an
effective barrier preventing anything more substantial than a large motor
launch from progressing downriver beyond that point.

Ten prefabricated concrete supports had
been sunk into the riverbed to carry the highway. Li guessed that a minimum of
three spans would need to be dropped for it to hinder a determined engineer
beyond a week. Ideally those supports should be destroyed too but they were substantial
and solidly built. It would require the services of a demolitions expert and
more time and explosives than they possessed.

As for sentries, Li saw a shape midway
across in a rain slick waterproof cape slowly pacing about; head down in the
manner of the truly bored and thoroughly miserable. He looked slightly
hunchbacked on account of his weapon hanging by its sling off one shoulder
beneath the cape to keep it dry, the muzzle pointing downwards and of no
immediate offensive use to man nor beast.

This was not what he expected of one of
the vaunted legionnaire jungle fighters of
3e
Régiment étranger d'infanterie.
This
must be either a student from the jungle warfare school or one of the local
reservists

As Li watched the soldier suddenly leaned
back against the guardrail and sat down heavily upon the bridges tarmac
surface. He did not move again.

Two more figures appeared from the north
end of the bridge, and in contrast to the sentry the butts of their weapons were
in the shoulder and they were up in the aim. Bulky sound suppressors panned
from side to side as they moved rapidly in that odd gait that keeps the upper
body and shoulders level and stable, the knees seemingly joined together. They
did not pause on drawing level with the slumped figure, they did not tarry to
feel for a pulse or to offer aid, the nearest of his SF detachment briefly
lowered his aim and Li saw two flashes at the muzzle as he double tapped his
victim in the head, just to be certain.

They continued on across the bridge,
walking rapidly and looking for further targets as they disappeared from his
view.

Two minutes later they returned at the
jog but this time they did stop at the supine figure. One stood guard as the
other stooped, getting a good hold before straightening up with his arms under
the sentry’s armpits and draping him over the guard rail. He bent again to
grasp the ankles and upended the body into the river. The splash of it hitting
the water was followed by others with the forms of eager caiman sliding down
the southern bank. Long tails propelled them swiftly through the water in a
race to claim their supper.

On the road bridge, the Chinese trooper
peered over the side at his victim before looking up and into the darkness,
directly at the otherwise invisible shape of the Juliett’s conning tower. He
raised a hand to give a little cavalier salute to the submarine and then both
jogged back the way they had come.

Li looked away from the bridge and what
was about to be the disquieting sight of large reptiles feeding on a human
corpse.

“Open main seawater valves… vent ballast,
blow one and two.”

High pressure air displaced the water in
her ballast tanks, forcing it out into the river and
Dai’s
casing rose up out of the muddy brown waters.

The sound of a car engine swiftly drew
all eyes back to the dock in time to see a police car, ‘Gendarmerie’ emblazoned
on its side, approach the jetty, flashing its headlights rapidly.

“Captain?” asked the rating on the 23mm
cannon, again in the aim.

“It’s okay, just two of our supercargo
arriving in borrowed transport.”

The car halted on the jetty beside the
freighter. Two
special forces
troopers exited the
vehicle.

Li depressed the transmit button on the
microphone, updating his executive officer before getting busy putting the
Dai
alongside the jetty fuel valves, one of which was connected to a storage tank a
high grade diesel.
      “All back dead
slow…get the sea duty and the security details topside.”

The
Dai
moved past the
Fliterland
again, with the sea duty linesmen taking post as Li
skilfully backed them up against the jetty behind the freighter’s looming stern.

Lines were thrown to the two troopers who
made the lines fast, securing the
Dai
to the side of the jetty.

An extending ladder was brought up from
below and laid against the jetty’s side, and the dockside security party
hurriedly climbed it and hustled away to form a perimeter.

The senior NCO commanding those SF troops
re-boarded and reported that all was going to plan at their end. The dock was
secure; the logging company’s Chinook at Kourou’s small airfield was being
booby trapped even as they spoke and the other two detachments were ashore
without incident and approaching their targets.

At the bridge, ropes were being tossed
over the sides as a preliminary to wiring the road sections for demolition and
the rain stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned off a tap.

“Fasser’s topside and begin fuelling
operations…oh, and make to
Bao
,
‘Come and
join the party’
.”

As the fuelling crew appeared on the
casing he shook his head in wonderment and spoke aloud to no one in particular.

“Damn me, but I think this could actually
work.”

Route de l’Espace:
‘
Ariane’
compound:
French Guiana.

There is a road that runs from
Brownsville USA, going south along the Atlantic coast all the way until it ends
suddenly on the shore of the Beagle Channel at Tierra del Fuego. Pretty much as
far as you can drive on continental America, clocking up thirteen thousand
miles on that twisting and turning road from Texas. It follows the coastline
for all but a twenty mile section where the original road runs straight through
the cluster of rocket launch pads on the equator.

A newer section, a wide sweeping detour
now cuts through the rainforest keeping traffic far away from the ESA and
Soyuz
sites. The no-longer-public section was renamed Route de l’Espace and came to
represent the single most valuable item in the entire country.

Low lying and low profile reinforced concrete
pill boxes at the side of the road command the approaches to the launch pads,
each with five sets of twin thirty calibre machine guns spaced to provide 360
° of overlapping coverage. The guns were set to fire
at shin height, and anyone hit would then fall into the thirty calibre stream.
It was a method first devised by the German Imperial Army way back in 1912 as
the most effective method of despatching multiple attackers, rather than
leaving some wounded, and still a threat.

At the southern entrance to the complex a
rattrap gate allowed one vehicle at a time into a controlled search area with
optical underside scanning built into the roadbed and ESA security staff
checking for vehicle borne IEDs, weapons and stowaways. The exit gate could not
open whilst the entry gate was closed.

Concrete lined drainage ditches had a
dual anti-vehicle role, and outside the entry point a concrete
blockhouse/Guardroom controlled access.

Captain Jie Huaiqing and his nine
troopers moved along the roadway in Indian- file with its staggered spacing
making fire from the flanks less likely to take out pairs of troops. It was
basic fieldcraft.

They held to the roadway, not avoiding
the occasional approaching vehicle. Trucks, cars and vans splashed past, adding
a little more to their already soaked camouflage uniforms as the tropical
deluge had not relented.

It suited Jie’s purpose, bad weather was
better in his chosen line of work.

They moved with deliberateness and they
moved as if they belonged, leaning forward slightly at the waist as that best
allowed them to balance themselves under the burden of the 15 kilo cratering
charges each carried.

After thirty minutes they saw stationary
red tail lights ahead of them. After several minutes more Jie got the
impression there was more than a single vehicle, the sound of idling engines
confirmed that, but they were still well short of the ESA controlled area, now
visible far ahead, its access point lit up.