Countdown: M Day (31 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of

war one observes the rules of politeness.

—Otto von Bismark

“Lawyers, Guns, and Money” (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana

Though Sergeant Major Joshua looked Guyanan enough, he was not, of course. Corporal Hosein looked just what he was, a Bihari-descended Indian, but he was Guyanan. Origin, however, didn’t really matter. The two—uniformed and armed—flanked the similarly uniformed president, just behind him and just in front of a Guyanan flag, hung on the wall, for local color. Similarly, Lahela Corrigan, she whose smiles lights up the jungle, sat just to one side. Corrigan wasn’t Guyanan or Guyanan-looking, in any sense. She was, however, quite tiny and very, very cute. Boxer expected her to help trip the “save the women and children” reflex, around the world, with both categories in one person.

Joshua rolled his eyes—
this being a stage prop gets old, quick
—when Boxer ordered, “One more time, please, Mr. President, and this time, put a little anger into it; a little righteous anger, if you can muster it.”

“I
can’t,
” President Paul insisted. His voice taking on a note of hysteria, he added, “I’m just too exhausted and I have been through too much. You people have put me through too much.”

Us people, huh?
Joshua thought.
And there I could have sworn it was Venezuela.
The RSM bent down and whispered something in Paul’s ear that apparently shocked him enough to make him turn pale and gulp, nervously. As the tall, black RSM straightened up again and faced the camera, the President of Guyana said, “I think I can go on. But could I have a drink for the nerves?”

Boxer nodded and said to Hosein, “There’s a bottle of scotch and a couple of glasses in my desk. Could you bring them, please, Corporal?”

Scotch, apparently, had amazing medicinal virtues. Two drinks, just enough to calm him, not enough to translate to a glazed look on his face, had done wonders for Paul’s composure, and no little bit to grease his tongue.

“. . . and, so,” President Paul summed up, “I call on every loyal and true Guyanan, our resident foreign friends and neighbors, our corporations, our brothers overseas, our friends in America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, to resist this vicious, illegal, trumped up, imperialist, and cowardly land grab, with every means at their and our disposal, until the invader is driven from our dear country with his tail between his legs.

“I instruct our embassies overseas to issue letters of marque to any legitimate, commercial shipping firm that applies, authorizing them to attack Venezuelan commerce. I further declare a blockade of Guyana’s ports. Neutral shipping has seventy-two hours to vacate, after which those ports may be considered blockaded.

“I order the regular and reserve forces of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana to make the invader’s life here a living hell. Deny them the use of our roads. Deny them the use of our ports. Deny them the use of our airports.

“I command our people to give the enemy no aid, no comfort, no sanctuary.

“And, finally, I call upon our mother country, the United Kingdom, and the Queen to whom we pay joint homage, to relieve us in this, our hour of distress.”

Not bad delivery,
thought Boxer.

“What did you say to him, Sergeant Major?” Boxer asked, later, after the president had finally been allowed to go to a dark office and sleep on a couch.

Joshua chuckled. “I told him fuck what he thinks he’s been through. I told him that I’ve lost friends, and that he would either do what you said, and make it good, or I would build a large wooden cross and nail him to it, then wait for him to die.”

“Jesus!” the Chief of Staff exclaimed, not without a certain admiration “Stauer was right, way back in Brazil. You are descended from some Roman centurion.”

The sergeant major nodded seriously. “On both sides, I suspect. God knows, my mother was even more of a hard ass than my father. Damned if I know how any of my ancestors ended up as slaves in what became the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

“Just lucky, I guess, like old Buckwheat Fulton.”

Joshua smiled, though there was tinge of sadness to it. “Ah, Buckwheat. Now there was a fine soldier.”

“Yes,” Boxer agreed, equally sadly, “yes, he was. On which note, the weasel left us some scotch. Sergeant Major, Corporal Hosein, Mrs. Corrigan, let us have a drink—maybe two or three—to the memory of a good man and a helluva soldier.”

Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

Chavez knew he had a tendency to engage his mouth before his brain was fully in gear. He knew, and tried to combat it …sometimes, anyway. Now? Now he just wasn’t sure enough of the
whys
of the thing to comment.

“How many internet sites are hosting this thing? And how many news networks are covering it?”

“Even FOX, in the United States, isn’t bothering to cover this, Mr. President,” Hugo’s flack-in-chief, said. “Too much of a
fait accompli,
really for them to bother. Guyana ranks somewhere below the Marshall Islands in importance, as far as the gringos are concerned. As for websites, fifty to sixty sites, Mr. President, from Afreeca to Zoopy.”

Chavez asked, “Can we shut down those sites?”

The flack shrugged. “Some of them, Mr. President, we could. Youtube, in particular, has a reputation for bending over under pressure. However, not all will. And I’d recommend against shutting down any. It would just be free advertising for the video. As is, it matters little. Advertised? Well, it wouldn’t be to our betterment.”

Hugo nodded.
Okay, I think I can see that. I may not like it, but I can see it.

“Besides which, Mr. President, your personal popularity is up over eighty-seven percent over your actions in Guyana. And that was from an
honest
poll.”

Which is why,
Chavez thought, smiling broadly,
I launched this thing.

“What about this letter of marque bullshit?”

Chavez’s legal advisor stood and began a tedious and lengthy lecture on the legality of letters of marque, the nature of sovereignty, the possibly dubious nature of a declaration of war issued by the chief of a democratic state without legislative approval, the probable legitimacy of said president acting in defense of his country’s sovereignty, even without that legislative approval, the law of the sea as concerned privateering and piracy and …

“Shut the fuck up,” Hugo said, waving his right hand, palm out, the heel resting on the table. The gesture meant the same thing. Once the lawyer had, he said, “Just tell me what it might mean.”

“Private vessels can attack our shipping. And the one power that really matters, the United States, still allows letters of marque and reprisal. In theory, anyway.”

“What do you mean, the gringos are the only ones that matter?”

Admiral Fernandez took that question. “He means, sir, that the United States Navy, alone, can take on all the rest of the world’s navies, together, and probably win. And that’s without recourse to nuclear weapons, too, or even recalling any of their mothballed ships or reservists. At sea, they’re
that
powerful. The British Empire, in its glory days, never presumed to be able to fight more than the second and third naval powers at once. America, however, considers that to be unacceptable passivity and overconfidence. They insist of being able to take on the whole world at sea.”

Chavez scowled.
Fucking gringos.

“Okay, so they could attack our shipping. But we don’t really have much shipping of our own,” the president objected.

“They could, in theory, still blockade our ports. That …man said neutral shipping has seventy-two hours to vacate our ports.”

Chavez turned his attention back to Admiral Fernandez. “Can anyone do that, as a practical matter? Any civilian, I mean.”

Fernandez shook his head. “Can’t see how, Mr. President. Pure bluster. We’ve got quite a nice little surface and submarine fleet again. No civilian ship is going to want to take it on. Besides, blockades to be binding must be effective.” Fernandez snorted. “They couldn’t mount an effective boycott, let alone a blockade.”

The admiral’s enthusiasm, and he did
sound
enthusiastic, was somewhat feigned.
After succeeding in this, Chavez, you baboon, we’ll never get rid of you, will we? I suppose I’d best get used to it.

Naughtius
Base, Waini River, Guyana

The sun beat down mercilessly on the trees overhead. That it didn’t quite reach the hidden shelters had the effect of turning a frying pan into an oven. From the chicken’s point of view, of course, that wasn’t much of an improvement.

Biggus Dickus Thornton wiped sweat from his brow. No matter, it was instantly replaced.
Getting old for this shit,
he thought.

The decoded message sat on a field table next to a chart of the local waters, all the way to the mouth of the Orinoco Rover. Biggus Dickus had studied the chart so long and so closely that he thought he could probably draw it from memory.

The river’s got hundreds of mouths but only seven really matter, and of those seven, we could block them all by mining just two small stretches further in. Of course, I’m not exactly enthused about trying to get that far inland in the
Naughtius
. So …I’m thinking four M-70’s and six 240mm shells in the Rio Grande, stretch, east of Curiapo. Then maybe two and three southeast of the San Francisco de Guaya Mission. Then one and three northeast of Jotajana. And another one, plus three 240mm, southeast of La Esperanza.

That leaves us two M-70’s and nine shells. Maybe we use them to reseed the Orinoco—though going blind into a river we’ve mined is …fuck that; ain’t happening. The ones we put out work or they don’t. We’re not going back up that river. So, no, after we finish the Orinoco, we’ll use what’s left further out.
He glanced down at the situation summary then began his orders.

And our orders are to begin laying them in
—Thornton checked his watch—
thirty-seven hours, and set the timers to arm forty-eight hours after laying. Best to put the boys to sleep now, minus a lookout, so they’ll be fresh tomorrow night.

MV
Maria Walewska,
Puerto Cabello, Guyana

With the excuse of her purely spurious engine problems, the captain had had the
Countess
towed to the maintenance facilities down by the southeast arm of the port. This was not a disadvantage; when you really want to close a port down, it’s not a bad thing to mine it from one side to the other. And for the transverse arms, of which there were arguably four, they had another trick.

“Are we cleared to leave, Captain Chin?” Kosciusko asked.

The Chinese seaman nodded. “I terr Po’t Autholity boys we got engine fixed up good enough and want get out before brockade happen.”

“What did they say about that?”

“They laugh. Terr me I wolly about nothin’. Hah! They in for big fuckin’ supliz, heheh. You want get tlebuchet put together now?”

“Not just yet, Skipper. Have your wife move the ‘lumber’ container to where we can get at it, yes, and put up the cavity around where we want to build it. And she can start moving the mines. But let’s wait for dark to actually rebuild the trebuchet.”

Coco Point Airfield,
Isla del Rey,
Panama

The airfield ran east-northeast to west-southwest. Jutting out from it, and nearer to the sea, was a sort of a D-shaped taxiway, flattened at one end. The cops who’d eventually showed up insisted on the two planes being moved there.

“We need to keep the runway clear,
señor,
” the senior cop had said, over beer. “Besides,” he added with a wink, “it’s a lot easier loading from there, no?”

The senior pilot of the four had winked back. “Of course. Yes. Thank you.”
And if he thinks we’re running drugs, and has no problem with that, who am I to correct him?

There, at the curved part of the taxiway, so close to the sea that one could almost jump from a wingtip into it, the two crews had gotten in a little fishing, a little snorkeling, and a whole lot bored.

The loadmaster, a Sergeant Lindell, stuck his head into the cockpit. “I put in the call to Leo,” he said to the captain and pilot. The latter was going over charts, doing some pencil drilling, and punching flight data and locations into his navigation set.

The pilot, looking up from his charts, asked, “Any problems?

“Nah. As long as we’ve got the money his brother in law will deliver. But he’s coming along to make sure.”

“Tell him to bring some fucking iced beer, too. Preferably XX, since the local stuff is mostly piss.”

“Already thought of that, sir,” the loadmaster answered, with a chuckle. “Leo says, ‘no sweat.’ And gratis, no less. We go back to First Battalion, we do, before I got just too damned old for it and shipped over. Good troops, he is.”

The chief seemed to be pondering something for a brief moment. “You want we should start assembling the mines …oh, and testing the real mines.”

The pilot thought about that.
Why not? The local police came by and left, much happier and not a little richer, without caring a damned thing for what we were carrying except that we had beer

Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, start getting them ready. Inside the aircraft. Do not start the timers. Wait on setting the counting devices until we assemble them in the order we’re planning to drop them. And you may as well get the roll-out platform assembled on the deck.”

“Wilco, sir.”

The chief turned to go but stopped when the pilot called out, “Hey, can Leo bring us some food? I am sick to death of packaged rations.”

“He thought of that, too. His wife’s making up a special batch of
empañadas
for us. Oh, and some fried chicken and such.”

“Good man.”