Countdown: M Day (22 page)

“Clear, sir.”

“You may not use explosives. You are on radio listening silence. Any medevac will be by hovercraft or ground, not airplane or helicopter. Still, clear.”

Trim nodded. “I don’t like it, sir, but, yes, it’s clear enough.”

“Good.” Waggoner shifted attention. “Cazz, you will, not later than three days from now, take your Third Battalion, minus its heavy vehicles, across the Mazaruni River at Kartauri and Turesi Falls. You will have a train of mules from Eighth Service Support Battalion attached to you, as well as your usual support from the Air Defense battery, minus the guns. You’ll also have a SATCOM team, and a medical team. You may take light vehicles as far as they’ll get you, which is unlikely to be all the way to your assembly area. You will move to that assembly area, roughly paralleling the Mazaruni. Under no circumstances are you to get your main body within five miles of that river. If you have a dustoff requirement, get the man or men back by ground, or to the river by ground, and wait for a hovercraft. Yeah, it sucks. Tough.”

“Gordo?”

“Yeah, I know,” answered the tubby S-4, “my part of this job is to get supply sufficient for Cazz’s battalion to operate for at least a month to his assembly area, plus put in a week’s worth of consumables at the northwest corner of Hill 890, and another five days worth northeast of Hill 590.”

Waggoner nodded, then turned back to Cazz. “Third Battalion will move to its assembly area, then wait on radio listening silence for the word that the attack has begun. Once that has begun, you are to secure the airstrip above Sakaika Falls, then attack across the border, generally to the northeast, ruining the log and aviation base we expect Chavez to set up in the vicinity of Tumeremo. From there, you march onward to
Ciudad
Guayana. It would be a good idea to capture trucks, where possible.

“You are to capture and hold the core of
Ciudad
Guayana, until relieved or ordered to move. I’ll cover it in more detail later, but Baluyev’s Spetz are tasked to take out the Second Orinoco Crossing, the bridge near
Ciudad
Guayana. They’ll escape and evade to you following your seizure of the town.”

Cazz shook his head. “You are shitting me, right? That’s no town; it’s a fucking city, a big fucking city.”

“No, he isn’t,” Stauer said, which cut off debate right there.

“Fuck,” Cazz muttered, darkly. “Well …I’ll try. I’ll need priority on the tire house and all three of the mock villages for the next few days. Plus tell the ammo people to fuck off over forecasts, I’ll need what I’ll demand. Fast.”

“Agreed,” Stauer replied.

“Fourth Battalion,” Waggoner announced, again shifting his gaze, “your assembly area, which you are to occupy as soon as possible, is to be approximately six miles south of Crab, Maripa, and Tarpe Falls, south-southwest of Bartica, straddling the cattle trail …”

“You mean I have to just sit here and take the first punch?” Reilly asked. “That’s absurd!”

“Shut up, Reilly,” Stauer said. “You and the bulk of the aviation have to sit here because you’re the most noticeable. If Chavez overflies us, and he might, indeed, he may already have, your presence tells him we’re expecting nothing. And don’t give me any of your bullshit about, ‘Tell me what you want done, not how to do it,’ because, in this case, what I want done is for you to present a certain kind of bait, in a particular way.”

“Yessir,” Reilly answered, with suspicious good grace.
I’ll just do that, but don’t be surprised if I thin the line enough to protect my core assets.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” Gordo finished, “that concludes my logistics brief. Colonel?”

Stauer stood and announced, “you’re all dismissed except for Second Battalion, Sixth Naval, and Seventh Aviation commanders, plus Gordo, Boxer, and Waggoner. You people meet me in the small conference room.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It is through being wounded that power grows

and can, in the end, become tremendous.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Airfield, Camp Fulton, Guyana

The morning rain had come and gone, a sudden ferocious downpour that departed as quickly as it had come. Now the sun was busy, turning the rain into a steam that rose in streams around the people waiting for departure and the aircraft waiting to take them.

“I feel like a deserter,” Kemp said to Elena Constantinescu, pushing his wheelchair from behind. A line of four more wheelchairs followed behind Elena, each pushed by a medico in battle dress. She, like Kemp, like everyone wheelchair-bound, wore mufti. Other lines of ten or twelve also snaked across the airfield, though in any given line, not more than nine were civilian-clad. Most of the others, including four medical personnel carrying litters, were in battle dress.

“Nonsense,” she answered, confidently. “The way you are, you would be useless to the regiment. This way, you can come back and be useful. And I can come back and be more useful.

“Don’t worry, Dan,” she added, “the regiment will win without either of us.”

“Not the point,” he insisted, “and I still feel like a deserter.”

A stout, eyeglass wearing, camouflage-uniformed aviator walked up to meet the party. Kemp thought his bearing had “jarhead” written all over it. Then he saw the nametag, “Cruz,” and recognized the head of the regiment’s aviation squadron.

“Sergeant Kemp?” the former Marine asked.

“Here, sir,” Kemp answered. Since Elena was a nurse, hence out of the chain of command by the regiment’s rules, he was actually the senior man in the party.

“If y’all would follow me”—“y’all,” from Cruz, was pure affectation; he came from Pennsylvania—“you’re on Flight One, the Pilatus PC-12, here to Tocumen Airport, Panama.”

The regiment owned a number of aircraft. There were two MI-28 helicopter gunships. These had been a sort of gift from Victor Inning’s father-in-law. There were also eight MI-17 cargo helicopters, of which six were usually fit to fly at any given time. These had all been purchased on the open market. There were a half dozen each CH-750 and CH-801 light STOL birds, useful for everything from guided tours to command and control to medevac to light resupply. Both models were, in fact, little more than scaled down and upgraded Fieseler Storchs, built from kits assembled in the Czech Republic. They owned two Antonov AN-32 cargo aircraft, which were not quite as capable as American C-130s, but had come a lot cheaper. Then there were three Pilatus PC-6’s, generally useful planes, and a single PC-12, the executive model. In addition to that, the MI company ran a variable number—variable because they tended to crash the things—of Israeli-made remote piloted vehicles. It was, all in all, a respectable fleet for a private concern.

The more or less military aircraft, the helicopters and most of the CH-750’s and -801’s, plus the RPV’s, were all in camouflage and the regiment’s colors. The Antonovs and the PC’s, however, along with two CH-801s, were owned by a fairly notional subsidiary, AirVenture, Inc., a corporation set up by Matt Bridges (the “lawyer” desk of Lawyers, Guns, and Money) under the laws of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Their paint scheme reflected that, being white and blue, with brightly colored birds, sunshine, and flowers on the tails. That legal distinction, however, was spurious; there was no practical dividing line between Seventh Squadron (Aviation), M Day, Inc., and AirVenture, just as there was no real distinction between Mike Cruz, CEO of AirVenture, and Colonel Cruz, commanding Seventh Squadron. Their staffs were the same, barring only three of the regimental wives, one of whose job was to answer the telephone, in as sweet a voice as she could muster, “AirVenture, Incorporated,” and another two who alternated serving from time to time as a stewardess on the PC12. As a matter of fact, the pay for both CEO Cruz, his pilots, and the ground crews came to a whole Guyanan dollar a year, each. On the other hand, they drew full pay and allowances from the regiment.

“How long to Panama, sir?” Kemp asked.

“Fourteen hundred and seventy miles, as the crow flies,” Cruz answered. “Be closer to sixteen hundred for you, though, since the pilot’s going to skirt around Venezuela. Call it, maybe, five hours in the air, or a tad more.” Cruz pulled at one ear and added, somewhat ruefully, “Your pilot’s Dr. McCaverty, which has its good points and its bad.”

Thinking of his back, Kemp thought,
Oh, this is so going to suck.

Man, this is the life,
Kemp thought, leaning back in the plush leather seat at the rear of the aircraft, while the dark and slender Mrs. Major Welch poured him a scotch over ice.
Beautiful woman. No tits to speak of, but still beautiful. Reminds me of that model, the one married to the ambiguously sexual Brit singer. What was her name?
He looked over at Elena, seated to his right.
I’m surrounded by them. Wish I knew how to surrender
.

Elena glanced back, flashing him a brilliant smile.
Good boy
, she thought.
Never even sniveled as we levered him into the seat. And having to stop at the stairs, turn around and sit, lever his ass all the way up, then crawl to the back? Yes, a good boy, a tough boy.

The plane suddenly hit an unexpected air pocket and bounced. Kemp flinched with the pain transmitted through his back. Still, he managed to get a smile out. More importantly, he kept the scotch from spilling.

Yes, a good boy. It will be rewarding working with him to get him back to duty.

   *   *   *   

The passengers were mostly asleep, or at least doing a good simulation of it. In any case, none of them seemed to need her at the moment. The pilot called Ayanna forward and said, “Time to do your stuff, Honey. The island and the airstrip are coming up.”

She nodded, then turned and retrieved a digital camera from her purse. With that in hand, she walked to one of the windows and looked out. The plane began a gentle descent, then banked left before straightening.
There it is.

Ayanna wasn’t quite sure why she had to take pictures of the airfield at the southern end of the tadpole-shaped island, while McCaverty circled, low and slow. She just knew that Colonel Cruz had asked her to, while someone from Regimental Intelligence had drilled her in working the camera. That, for her husband’s tribe, was reason good enough.

Tocumen Airport, Panama

Though the Republic of Panama was not without its natural resources, nor entirely unindustrialized, its economy was primarily trade and service-based, and built around its location and its shape, in roughly equal measure. Its location, midway between North and South America, and Europe, Africa, and Asia, ensured it was a nexus for trade and travel between those five continents. Its shape, the narrow isthmus between the Oceans Atlantic and Pacific, in conjunction with the Canal, gave it a favored position for taking a cut of trade across the world. For that matter, even without the Canal, Panama would still have been a prime spot for trade, as it was in the days when convoys of slaves, mules, and burros ported the looted gold and silver of the Americas across the central mountains, on their backs.

Thus, it had been no real problem for the regiment to arrange transportation and helpers to get its wounded off of the PC-12, onto their wheelchairs, through customs, and to a not particularly ostentatious hotel near the airport, while they awaited their next flight.

“You’ve been to Panama before?” Elena asked, sitting in a chair in Kemp’s room. She had a small, color brochure on her lap. Her room was next door, with the other four members of the group scattered about close by.

Kemp lay on the bed. Even the best seats on an airplane eventually grew uncomfortable. And the drive over potholed streets had been sheer agony.

“Not the way you mean it,” Kemp replied. “I’ve been to the country, over at the old Jungle Training Operations Center, before we pulled out. I was a young troopie then. But I never got to Panama City.”
In fact, the furthest into Panama I ever got was to the brothels of Colon, but you’re a nice girl and don’t need to know anything about that.
He smiled
Fun times, though, that they were
. “This place is the dark side of the moon, to me.”

Elena looked at him suspiciously. “I suspect I know what you’re smiling about.” She smiled, as well, adding, “I have heard from First Sergeant Coffee that this country was a dream for a young soldier, a wet dream.”

Kemp tried to shrug. The effort was painful.

Elena held up the brochure she’d had on her lap. “This says there is more to see to this place than brothels and bars. I have called for a taxi. Would you like to see the ruins of old Panama? It’s not large; I think I can push you enough for that.”

“As much as my ass hurts,” he answered, “I’d rather lie down. But, still, a little fresh air would be better than staying here.”

The four-storied cathedral tower had stood through the centuries. It had been a ruin even since before the fateful day, in 1671, when Welsh pirate Henry Morgan had attacked and sacked the town. The town had been burned in the attack, though not necessarily at Morgan’s order or even by his men. Still, through earthquake, Indian attack, pirate attack, fire, and any number of other disasters, the bare stones of the cathedral tower remained standing.

Standing inside the roofless walls of the cathedral, abutting the tower, Elena pointed at a bare stone altar. “Your Colonel Reilly, says First Sergeant Coffee, once fucked a girl on that. What sacrilege!”

“The colonel wasn’t always as he is now,” Kemp answered, apologetically. “I understand he mellowed with the years.”

Elena sneered. “Phillie Stauer says he’s an asshole, too, and still.”

“With that I can’t argue,” Kemp replied. “But, if so, he’s
our
asshole, and he’s good at it.”

“He must be good at something, since Colonel Stauer puts up with him.”

“Let’s just say that he takes some getting used to,” Kemp replied. “And if the process of getting used to him doesn’t kill or cripple you, then he’s a good man to work for.”

“He crippled
you
,” Elena observed.

“He set up a problem that I was crippled in,” Kemp countered. “I was at that problem of my own free will, as I came to the regiment of my own free will. I came to the regiment precisely because it was the kind of place where my life and health would be risked, because those would make me feel like, and become, the man I aspire to be.”

A degree or two of heat crept into Kemp’s voice. “I had a choice, you know. I could have gone to one of the other battalions, at a higher rank, too. I went with First because it was the kind of organization I wanted to be in, because Reilly made it that way. So, if you don’t mind, you can please stop shitting on my colonel who isn’t here to defend himself.”

Elena snorted in derision. Then her face grew slightly contrite, corners of her lips turning down and her nose more or less imitating a rabbit’s “You’re right,” she admitted, “it’s bad manners. I am sorry.”

“Fair enough. Let’s see the rest of this place.”

“May they rest in Hell!” Elena cursed at a ruined building. She then spat at the juncture of bare stone wall and grassy ground for emphasis.

Kemp read the bronze plaque on the wall, such as he could of it. It was in Spanish, so that wasn’t much. “The Grillos?” He pronounced it wrong, too, like Brillo, rather than “Griyo.”

Romanian and Spanish, however, were close enough. “Slavers. “ The nurse spat again. “Filthy swine.”

“Oh …well …sure. But?”

“I was a slave once,” Elena admitted. Her face was impassive but her eyes burned with hate. “Not for long, but for too long. I was on my way to being auctioned off—thirteen of us there were—when the regiment saved us.”

“Ah. I understand.”
No, I don’t, but it’s not my business to pry, either.

“No you don’t,” she said. “There were fifty men on that ship. We were all raped at least a half dozen times a day. I was sixteen. Three of us were only fifteen.”

Elena turned him from the building. “Come on,” she said. “I don’t want to see anymore.”