Countdown: M Day (48 page)

“Fire the other refinery,” Ryan ordered.

“Roger.”

The flash came quickly, and the sound of the blast reached them, this time, before the fireball could form. This one was closer, close enough that they just might have been able to hear the screaming, intermixed with the roar of burning oil.

“Our turn,” the team leader said to nobody in particular. He set the detonation control board on his lap, and turned a key.
Now
the armed charges were ready to receive their commands, as he was ready to send them. He flicked a switch. Another great flash told of several charges, probably four, assuming everything worked, going off as one. The tank farm was the farthest target, about two miles away. The flames leapt upward long before the sound of the blast reached them. Another switch was thrown, then another, and another. Each set still more Hells alight. He hesitated over the last switch; that was the one that was set to fire off two very large LNG tanks, which were also unfortunately close to Creolandia, the urbanization to the south of the tank farm.

“Nothing to be done about it,” he said, softly, as he flicked the final firing switch.

Carirubana Tank Farm, Punto Fijo, Venezuela

Fire and smoke were everywhere In the guard shack there was panic. The sound of sirens filled the air, as firefighting equipment rushed to the scene of the disaster.

So far, the blasts hadn’t done all that much damage. The shaped charges, as planned, had burned their way into the tanks, causing some to split at the seams and gush oil in all direction, while others merely began to leak rapidly until the gushing fluid hit upon a piece of burning white phosphorous. Still, the flames were mostly contained inside the protective berms that surrounded each tank.

Then the two shaped charges by the largest LNG tanks went off, along with another two aimed at, in one case, a gasoline tank, and in the other, a simple oil tank. The LNG tanks’ charges had been set to hit center of mass, rather than at the base. Their jet streams punched right through the exterior wall, the several feet of insulation, and then the interior tank. At the same time, the explosions pulverized the cardboard cylinders holding the grenades. In one case, this also shattered the grenade body, released the white phosphorous. In the other, the grenade didn’t shatter, but was thrown out to release its spoon and detonate normally, the shards of white phosphorous forming a flaming flower, brilliant even against the backdrop of burning oil.

LNG, with considerable energy release merely from conversion from liquid to a gaseous state, jetted out of the holes thus formed and began to spread. In milliseconds, the first gas touched the white phosphorous and began to burn. The flames quickly sped back to set the gas alight as it exited the holes formed. This, too, increased the heat inside the tanks. And with the heat, so increased the pressure. Quite quickly. When the first tank exploded, and all that gas went off, it simply leveled the town of Creolandia, killing more people than would be accurately counted for weeks. Indeed, the heat was so great, and the radius of that heat so large, that the town was destroyed, and its people incinerated, even the bones, along with every piece of firefighting equipment, and their crews, that had reached the scene. Moreover, the blast was sufficient to knock over, to completely collapse and crush, dozens more tanks, which then spilled their oil and gasoline onto the ground in a series of floods. That, too, burned.

It was Hell. It was war.

From where he sat in the back of the rubber boat, Ryan watched the spreading flames. He felt …indescribable. Part of him was filled with satisfaction at a job well and truly done. The other part …

I’m a murderer. I was always a killer …but this feels different than any other killing. How many people were there? Could I have done it differently? I confess, I don’t know how.

Sighing, he started the ultra silent electric motor and spun the boat about, until the brightly burning and roaring flames were to his back. “Let’s go get ourselves interned, guys.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Always look on the bright side of life …

—Monty Python,
Life of Brian

Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

Hugo Chavez wept, openly and without shame, his shoulders heaving in great sobs. Even his military staff, quite despite the fact that most of them loathed him, felt sorry for him. The crowds, once buoyant and then grown sullen hostile, that had swarmed the area of the palace were dissipated as the news of the disaster sank in. Venezuela was ruined.

“Make peace, Mr. President,” said Nicholas, the foreign minister. “It’s all that’s left. We don’t know how many more tricks the enemy has to play on us; we only know that he doesn’t seem to run out of them.”

“No!” Chavez shrieked, through his unfeigned tears. “After everything they’ve done to us? No!”

It wasn’t like we didn’t start it,
thought Quintero, the general.
That said, I’m inclined to agree with you, Chavez, you piece of peasant shit. Nobody should be allowed to do this to us and get away with it. Five thousand dead? Six thousand?
Ten
thousand? We may never know.

That said, even if
not
said, we’re getting nowhere …

“Make peace, Mr. President,” Nicholas repeated. “We’re stymied at
Ciudad
Guayana. The mercenaries—not even mercenaries, simple Guyanan troops under mercenary leadership—toss back every assault. Our troops in Guyana are starving. Soon, we’ll be starving here, too.

“Basically, Hugo, we’re fucked.

“And it’s not as if I didn’t warn you.”

“The Cuban minesweepers aren’t coming, either, Mr. President,” Admiral Fernandez added. “The only way we’re getting rid of those mines is if we make peace and the enemy
tells
us how many went where.”

“What …what happened to the minesweepers?” Chavez asked, looking up and using one hand to wipe away the tears coursing down his ruddy face.

“Ambushed at sea, sir,” Fernandez replied. “Most of their crews signed on with the mercenaries. We wouldn’t even know what happened except that some of them, true to their country, refused to sign on. They’re all interned by the Dutch on Aruba, though supposedly the faithful Cuban sailors will be released soon.”

“And, no, Hugo,” Nicholas said, “before you ask, the Dutch are not going to turn them over to us, no more than Columbia is going to turn over the planes that dropped the mines or the special forces team that destroyed Punto Fijo and the refineries. Before it became obvious we were losing the war, they might have …the Dutch, I mean, not the Colombians. Now? They’re just not afraid of us anymore. And Trinidad and Tobago told me to bend over and kiss my own ass, adding that I was a Spanish pirate, to boot.”

“There’s one other thing,” General Quintero said. He nodded in the direction of the blue-uniformed air force. “Right now, the Air Force is doing a good job of making sure that the mercenaries in Guyana stay on the west side of the Essequibo River. Eventually, though, the gringos are going to get across. Maybe by night. Maybe by some ford we don’t know about and they haven’t found yet. But get across they will. And then they’ll hit our starving troops. Starving troops, Mr. President, are unlikely to put up much of a fight.”

“I thought I gave orders for them to live off the land,” Chavez said.

“Yes, Mr. President, you did. That’s not as easy as it sounds.”

South of Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

“Dinner,” announced Sergeant Major Arrivillaga, leading a scraggly looking burro by a rope, “is served. Or will be, once this thing is butchered and cooked.” A dozen chickens, necks already wrung, were draped across the burro’s bony back, as was a double sack of yucca.

Larralde glanced over the animal, distantly hoping it was too dumb to understand its fate. “What did it cost us?” he asked.

Mao sighed. “In money? Nothing. The farmer wouldn’t sell, too worried about the day when
his
family would have had to eat the donkey I had to take it. And the chickens. And the yucca. There weren’t any eggs. Besides the yucca there were no fruits or vegetables near to hand, either. And flour was right out.”

Larralde sighed, “Needs must.”

“Yeah,” Mao agreed. “But you know what? That farmer, who was probably fairly neutral to begin with, is going to be joining the guerillas soon. He’ll have to, because that’s going to be the only way for him to feed his wife and kids, and he’ll
want
to, because he’s got a good reason to hate us now.”

“So why didn’t you just save us the future trouble and kill him?” Larralde asked mildly.

“Because I’m a soldier, not a barbarian. And maybe, just maybe, if they can lift the siege—well, what other word is there for it?—in good time, we might be able to feed those people soon enough that he won’t have to turn guerrilla. Maybe.

“I also ran into some transportation troops, waiting around pulling their puds while their truck sat idle for lack of gas. They said the Marines are eating high off the hog in Georgetown, out of our stores, because, since there’s no way to transport it to us, they might as well.”

“We’d have done the same in their circumstances. Besides, I’ve heard that Georgetown is seething at the rationing. Some of that food is probably going to feed the civilians.”

“Drop in the bucket, that,” Mao snorted. He grinned then. “Gotta confess, it’s a satisfying notion that, if the people in Georgetown rise up and
win,
they’ll get all the revenge on the Marines I’d ever dream of.”

“Too true,” Larralde agreed, likewise grinning at the thought. “On the other hand,” he added, more soberly, “if we lose control of Georgetown, then there’s no way we’ll ever get resupplied.”

“Point,” Arrivillaga conceded. “Well …win a few, lose a few.”

“Speaking of losing,” Larralde said, “the troops are getting pretty convinced we’re going to lose here, and stinking.”

Not that this was any news to Arrivillaga—he kept his hand on the company’s pulse a lot more closely than Larralde did—but he asked anyway, “Who did we lose?”

“Three people. Two deserters in the night, Gollarza and Flores. Their platoon leader thought they were off in the bushes, fucking, and so didn’t report it until a couple of hours after you left. And Ponce shot himself in the foot, about an hour ago.”

Mao scowled,
that,
even more than the desertion, was a bad sign. Very formally he asked, “Have I the major’s permission to handle this?”

A little sadly, Larralde nodded.

“Field rules?”

Again, Larralde nodded agreement.

“Compan-eee,” Mao shouted, loud enough to be heard over artillery fire, “formation …on me …and bring me that son of a bitch, Ponce.”

Mao took one look at the medics, sympathetically carrying Ponce on a stretcher, and let out a scream of outrage. Storming over, he slapped one medic, punched the other, and then reached down and spilled the self-wounded man to the ground. Rifle in one hand, he bent over and grabbed a shrieking Private Ponce by the juncture of his shoulder harness. Then he dragged him, screaming still more with each jolt across the broken ground, and dumped him in the middle of the clearing where the company, minus minimal security, was forming in a C shape. There he let go of Ponce’s harness, then gave the man a kidney kick.

“Bastard!”

“Fall in,” Mao ordered, hate and rage dripping from each syllable. “Parade …rest.”

“Last night,” Arrivillaga announced, “we had two deserters. If I can catch them they’ll hang from the shortest tree I can find sufficient to lift their feet no more than half a millimeter off the ground. This motherfucker, however”—he gave Ponce another kick, for emphasis, raising another scream—“decided to shoot himself to get evacuated back. I don’t have time or leisure to hang the son of a bitch at the moment, so this will have to do.”

Without another word, Mao shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired, spattering Ponce’s head like an overripe melon. The private barely had time to register shock before he was already food for the ants.

“And
that’s
the penalty for a self-inflicted wound. Now where’s Ponce’s squad leader? Ah, there …good. You, you personally, bury the piece of shit. The rest of you, dismissed.”

Lily Vargas alternated between throwing up and crying on Carlos’ shoulder. “He … .he …he …
murdered
him. Just like that …he
murdered
Ponce … .he …”

“Shhhh, Lily,” Carlos said. “It wasn’t murder. It was an execution.”

“There was no trial,” she hissed. “No judge. No court. No
law!
”

“An execution,” Carlos insisted. “There was no time for much else. Laws of war.”
And I can recall an occasion when you were not so insistent on a trial for some criminals, dear.

Again, she threw up—not that there was much for her to toss, given the short rations—and then fell into more sobbing.

“I …I
hate
this,” she blubbered.

I’m not far behind you there, love,
he thought, stroking her hair for whatever comfort it might give.
Maybe we should both take the route Eva and her boyfriend did, and just get the hell out of here.

“Happier now?” Larralde asked, a couple of hours later, passing Arrivillaga a scrounged wooden bowl of donkey and yucca stew.

Mao’s eyes narrowed as he took the proffer. “What are you talking about, sir? That was disgusting. That it was also necessary doesn’t make it less disgusting.”

“No, not much less.”

Mao set the stew down; he didn’t feel very hungry anymore. “I warned you, sir, before we ever started this, that there was going to be a price for the half-assed training we gave these boys and girls.”

“Yeah, I know. Nothing to be done about it then, nothing to help with it now.”

“Even so, Hugo fucked us. We should have had
years
to get ready for this. We should have had minesweepers, and units already at full strength without taking street sweepings in at the last minute. We should have had professionals, properly trained and led, not this …this …rabble.”

“You go to war with the army you have,” Larralde answered. “It’s just the way it is.”

“Bullshit, sir; you plan your war and then make the army you need to fight it.”

Larralde shook his head. “Hugo told me, back when I convinced him to interfere and alter the plan, that there wasn’t time; he had to fight it, now, or there’d never be another chance.”

“Still bullshit,” Mao retorted. “And you can tell my cousin I said so. Hugo, too, for that matter. Moreover, you can—”

Whatever Mao was about to say was lost, as a gun, a very large gun, fired from somewhere to the south, its shell screeching past the company line to explode in the trees to the north.