Countdown: H Hour (18 page)

“Very sure.”

“All right. Let’s get that hatch open.”

Labaan was used to the hatch. He stood, walked to it, stepping gingerly over the leaking corpse on the deck, and spun the wheel. As soon as the bolts unseated with a loud
click,
he pulled the door open.

Pierantoni had reached him by that time so, with Labaan, he was treated to the complete orchestra of screaming and the full aroma of unwashed bodies and human waste.

“You didn’t let them go to the bathroom?” Pierantoni asked, a measure of disgust creeping into his voice.

“We gave them buckets,” Labaan answered. “Good enough for us; good enough for them. It’s just that the guards just didn’t change them all that often.”

“Jesus.” Then, putting his head through the hatchway, Pierantoni announced, falsely, “U.S. Army. This is a rescue. Now shut the fuck up.”

“You don’t like these people any better than I do, do you?” Labaan asked.

The sergeant major thought about that for all of a quarter of a second. “No. If it came down to it, the dead guard had more value to me than they do. He still does, for that matter.”

“But—”

“But the mission I was given wasn’t to save the guard.”

“Sarn’t Major P?” Pierantoni heard in his earpiece, coming from one of the men left topside.

“Yeah, Rogers?”

“Have we still got priority on the gunships?” The voice sounded amazingly calm, even conversational.

“Yyeeaahh . . . why?”

Rogers suddenly sounded much less calm and conversational. “Because we’ve got about two or three hundred armed men starting to cross the parking lot between the ship and the town. I think just the two of us up here are at least a little outnumbered.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Close air support covereth a multitude of sins.

—Howard Tayler, Maxim Four of
Schlock Mercenary
’s

The Seventy Maxims of Maximally

Effective Mercenaries

Bajuni, former Federation of Sharia Courts, Africa

Standing on the beach, Simon watched the LCM pull away with a full load of civilians, their few guards, the gold, and the required medicines.
Glad to get them out of my hair
, he thought,
even if they were generally pretty cooperative. Glad, too, we didn’t need the airstrip. And it gives me an extra squad, now that I need one.

Adam had, over his apparent wife’s protests, elected to stay behind. “You might need some local insight,” he’d told Simon. With a shrug, he added, “I might have it.”

Blackmore had heard a couple, or maybe three, explosions off to his right, where he’d sent Pierantoni and one of the spec ops teams to collect up the tranzis. The gunships were still noisily beating the air overhead. And from off in the distance, if not so far off as they had been, came the sounds of anywhere from dozens to scores of minor firefights.

“That’s mostly my cousins, fighting amongst themselves,” Adam volunteered. “Can’t be many of my own followers left.”

“Fighting for
what
?” Simon asked.

“The gold. The ship. The aid workers. The medicines. The freaking food. To get rid of me and try to make a claim to right of succession. All those things . . . and because we really don’t know much of anything else.”

Ahead and to the right, out on the peninsula, an Eland’s cannon boomed across water and sand. Another shot followed on that one within seconds.

Simon held up one hand for silence. Pierantoni—every word punctuated by firing—was shouting in his ear. The short version was, “I need the gunships.
Now
!”

Pierantoni and four men were up on deck now, trading shots with the locals. The incoming fire generally ricocheted off the steel of the ship and bounced upwards with an unnerving shriek.

The other two, plus Labaan, were helping guide the humanitarians up on deck. These emerged by staggering ones and twos from the hatchway behind the sergeant major.

“Get on your bellies and crawl to the other side!” Pierantoni shouted. At least one didn’t get it, or didn’t get it in time. A long machine gun burst from somewhere ashore pinned the former hostage to the bulkhead, dancing with the impacts. When it let off the dead man slid down the white painted wall, leaving a long, wide splotch of blood behind him. A woman, and at least two of the men, screamed.

“Labaan!”

“I’m here,” answered the African, from the other side of the hatchway.

“No way we can get them down to the dock. Is there another way off the ship? An emergency ladder or something.”

“Maybe. I’ll go look.”

One of the former hostages offered, “There are two on the other side. I can point them out.”

“Do it. Zodiacs?”

“We’re here,” came the answer over the radio. “Don’t think we can help you fight them off. No cover at all out here, of course.”

“Don’t want you to,” Pierantoni said. “I want you to get in the lee of the ship from the fire and stand by.”

“Wilco.”

M Day had been given its MI-28’s as a gift of sorts, or perhaps a payback, for rescuing the son-in-law of a fairly highly placed member of Russia’s FSB, the successor to the “disbanded” KGB. Although there were newer helicopter gunships in the world, the MI-28 remained one of the better ones. It was not only all-weather and limited-visibility capable, and armed to the teeth, but, like its Hind predecessor, could carry either extra ammunition or a small number of passengers in a compartment.

Armaments varied. It could normally carry up to forty unguided rockets and another sixteen anti-tank guided missiles, along with two hundred and fifty rounds for its 30mm chin gun. In their current configuration, both gunships carried eight ATGMs, ten 122mm rockets with
Ugroza
guidance packages, and forty 80mm unguided rockets. They had the guidance packages available for those, but simply decided they wouldn’t be needed. Besides, the guidance packages weren’t cheap.

As they were upon receipt, the MI-28’s remained crewed by Russians, with Russian ground crews still back aboard the
Bland
. Fortunately, over the space of five years, the Russians had learned to speak the regiment’s language, English, rather well. They mostly kept their accents, however. Among themselves, naturally, they tended to converse still in Russian.

“
Starshina
Pierantoni;
Praporschik
Slepnyov. What you gots?”

“Starshina” wasn’t actually equivalent to Pierantoni’s rank, but was about as close as Russian military terminology could come.

The sergeant major could speak or at least get by in several languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Pashto. Of Russian, however—
I don’t know enough Russian to negotiate a blowjob from a whore
. He stuck with English.

“I’ve got four rubber boats in the water and fifty-two . . . no, make that fifty-one, now, hostages. Plus eight of my own people on the ship. We can all fit the boats, which I’m bringing alongside on the friendly side. But those things are pretty slow. And loading’s going to be slow. I need the bad guys held back for about twenty or thirty minutes, while we load, and then kept back another fifteen or so while we putt-putt across the water.

“They’re mostly in the long parking lot, northwest of the ship, and the buildings north of the parking lot.

“There’s going to be a space of time, when I pull my own people from the side of the ship to the boats, when nobody’s returning fire. They’ll sure as shit rush the ship then. And we can’t get at the gangway to haul it in. Not even sure we should—as long as it’s there it’ll keep their attention and keep them from finding some other way to get at us.”

“Okay,” agreed Slepnyov. “Best way do this: Self and wing man go west, swing north, then east. Come along parallel to long parking lot. Fire off maybe six or eight smaller rockets, each. Cut in behind ship, turn around, and pop up over. Then fire chin gun, let know we still here. Drive away to west and north. Probably can’t evict from buildings.”

“Works for me. Do it.”

“Roger.” Slepnyov said that last without a trace of accent.

“This is it,” said the hostage, breathing heavily with fear and stress. He pointed to a narrow hatch that seemed to lead into the superstructure. “There’s another one farther forward.”

He opened the hatch and began pulling out a flexible ladder. Almost immediately, two lights on the ladder began to blink. Labaan took hold of it and began to feed it over the side. “Go get the other one ready,” he said.

Though there were still bullets cracking the air overhead, they were all
far
overhead. Even so, even though they were approximately as safe as in their mothers’ arms, the people awaiting transport out—or, at least, some of them—wept or screamed whenever a particularly low-flying projectile passed over. When the two gunships began their run, several hundred meters away and closing, their fire lighting up the sky like God’s own personal strobe light, they all screamed.

“Jesus, people,” shouted the sergeant major, “will you all just shut the fuck up?”
Man, I can’t stand whiners.

Hallinan’s boat, Feeney steering, followed the lead Zodiac to the nearer of the two ladders that had appeared, blinking in the gloom. The other two went forward to where another ladder, likewise blinking, had been lowered down the side. Feeney cut power and waited while the first boat filled. This took a while; people just released from durance vile usually lacked strength and coordination, both. Still, there were no mishaps as the first fifteen people made their way down, some of them crying, others still trembling with shock.

The chief of that boat put his hand up, catching one of the females on the ass. She huffed and began to curse.

“Shut up, honey,” that sergeant said. “Now hold your place, like a good girl, until the next boat comes along.”

Turning to the man on the motor, the sergeant said, “We’re full up. Pull us back to the peninsula.”

Without a word, the steersman applied power. The boat surged forward, then began a long, sweeping curve away from the ship. The sweep of the curb tightened considerably, once they were about thirty feet from the hull. Feeney, likewise applying a little juice, moved in to take the first boat’s place. Once the blinking ladder was alongside, he reversed thrust to stop the forward motion, then cut power completely. Hallinan crawled to the ladder and grabbed hold with one hand. With the other he helped down the still muttering woman whose ass had been used as a stop signal.

“Go sit up by the bow,” he told her. “
Don’t
touch the machine gun.”

“I wouldn’t touch the obscenity if my life depended on it,” she answered, with a verbal sneer.

“Good. See that you don’t.”

The next one was directed to the stern, where Feeney pushed him to the starboard side. “Sit. Shut up.”

Overhead, one of the men kept up a long string of bitter complaints, ranging from the unnecessarily violent rescue to the failure to give the hostages’ well being first priority, to the failure to secure the area so that they could leave like the heroic and noble ladies and gentlemen they were. When the MI-28’s passed nearby, then rose to take a position over the Zodiac, he raised his voice to make sure everyone heard how badly abused he was, how worthy of sympathy, and how contemptuous of his rescuers.

“Stupid soldiers,” said the aid worker, in a British, more specially a “received pronunciation” accent. “Bloody-handed murderers.”

As if to punctuate, the MI-28 nearest to directly overhead let out a long burst with its chin gun. Spent casings rained down, mostly splashing in the water though one managed to land on the whiner’s shoulder, eliciting an indignant, much aggrieved howl.

“Inconsiderate morons!”

Hallinan shook his head.
Is this guy incapable of drawing the logical inferences of his own claims? If he really believed we’re as bad as all that, then insulting us is the
last
thing he ought to want to do.

He directed the complainer to the portside space nearest to Feeney.
Which may be a mistake
, thought Hallinan.
Or maybe it isn’t.

“Slepnyov? Pierantoni.”

“Here,
Starshina
.”

“To my profoundly mixed feelings, we’ve got the last of the civvies out. I need you to cover our withdrawal. We’ll need about eight minutes to load the last boat.”

“Wilco,” Slepnyov answered. “We do other swing by but from opposite direction, east to west. We expend last of on-board ammunition, so if you get in trouble after that, you on own until we rearm at ship.”

“Works.”

Hallinan winced at the words of the tranzi seated next to Feeney: “I
demand
that you take us to the British embassy.”

“You ‘demand’ it, do you?” asked Feeney, conversationally.

“Yes, I—”

Uh, oh. Wrong choice of words.

Sergeant Feeney leaned over the tiller of his outboard, placing his right hand flat on the Brit’s chest. One push and the man was over the side, struggling in the water. “Swim to the embassy, bitch,” the sergeant said.

“Wait,” the splashing ex-hostage sputtered. “Wait! Help me.”

“Fuck you,” muttered Feeney, who made no move to bring the boat around, nor even to face around. He didn’t, therefore, see that the Brit was swimming after the boat. “I fucking hate limeys, anyway.”

That latter comment wasn’t precisely true. Feeney liked British soldiers very well indeed. What he hated were British civilians. But then, he hated
all
civilians.

“You’ll all be up on charges,” said the woman who’d earlier objecting to having her ass used as a brake. “Now I insist you go back and recover Dr. Saffron.”

“Ummm . . . no,” said Hallinan. “I don’t know what the sergeant major told you people, but we’re not going to be on anyone’s charge sheet. You see, you are all the guests of M Day, Incorporated.”

There was a collective gasp of horror from the civilians aboard.

“That’s right,” continued Hallinan, affably enough, even cheerily, “mercenaries. ‘The frightful ones.’ Lawless. Uncontrolled. Not answerable to the community of the very, very caring and sensitive. And we don’t really give a shit about or for any of you. Now shut the fuck up before Sergeant Feeney decides that more of you need swimming lessons.”

And let’s hope that keeps them quiet before another one pisses Feeney off. I swear he’s starting to worry me.

“Start loading,” Pierantoni shouted to the men with him. “I’ll be along.”

While the MI-28’s danced a tango overhead, lashing out at the parking lot and the buildings beyond, crumpling and setting alight buildings and automobiles, Sergeant Major Pierantoni spent a few minutes ensuring that, even if there were a pursuit, it would run into a snag.

From a pouch on his load-bearing equipment he took a single fragmentation grenade. From another he lifted a small spool of wire.
Never know when wire’s going to come in handy.
He flicked the safety clip off and laid the grenade on the deck, after which he unwound a short length of wire.

Be better if I still had the cardboard cylinder this came in
, he mused, as he tied a loop of wire around the metal spoon of the grenade.
But, needs must . . .

The running end of the wire he bent and twisted, spinning the twist until the wire broke. That end he tied off to a stanchion inside the gunwale. He then took the recently broken end and tied it to the thin neck of the grenade just under the spoon. Stretching the wire across the lip of the gangway, he tied it off to another small stanchion. Only then did he remove the ring and pin from the grenade.

The moon was up enough now to allow a cursory visual inspection of his little trap. Satisfied, he felt a moment’s amusement at sundry treaties purporting to ban landmines, the framers of which treaties never seemed to realize that there were such things as field expedients.

“Ought to give ’em a moment’s pause, anyway,” he muttered as, still crouching, he began the short shuffle around to the other side, the ladder, and safety.