Countdown: H Hour (7 page)

“It’ll have to,” Graft agreed. “Now as for firearms; We need half a dozen .45’s with four mags and five hundred rounds each. Suppressed would be nice, but only if you can get us some subsonic ammunition . . .”

“No sweat.”

“Good. Also, two AA-12 shotguns; those, or Akdals, or Saiga 12s. And I’d like to get a pair of these Russki PP-90M1’s . . .”

“Can’t help you with those,” Ben said. “Sold the few I had a while back, maybe three months. I’ve got
Sterlings
, though,” he added brightly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

O Curse of marriage,

—William Shakespeare,
Othello

MV
Richard Bland, mid Atlantic

I suppose it had to be
something, thought Warrington, seated behind a built-in desk in the office that went with the ground force commander’s quarters, within the
Bland
’s superstructure.
Why not this?

“This” was an altercation, verbal only, between Captain Stocker and Sergeant Hallinan, on the mess deck, centered on proper safety procedures for a rifle but really about the very different kinds of personnel that tended to gravitate to, on the one hand, the special operations world and, on the other, the—more or less—“regular army.” Strictly speaking, of course, there was precisely
no
segment of M Day, Inc. that was actually regular. Still, attitudes carried over. One of these attitudes was concerned with the technical; what, in fact, was safe and what wasn’t. The other was legal and moral. Among the American and even Commonwealth spec ops types, rank had long been a fairly fuzzy proposition: Captains cut grass and picked up cigarette butts, while, often enough, sergeants led missions. Let a PSYOP major show up to support a Special Forces A Team led by a captain? That captain was in charge. Conversely, among the regulars, rank and position were hard, fast, and even sacred. “If senior, I will take command . . . ”

The regulars’ position was, generally speaking, that the Special Forces community sacrificed long-term order, stability, and discipline for short-term tactical gain. SF generally thought the regulars had something up their butts, possibly a stick, but often enough, their heads.

They were both at least partially right.

And they’re both basically right, here, too.

Warrington looked up at the tall, skinny, brown-eyed Hallinan, with distaste. “And your story, Sergeant?”

Standing just forward of his company’s sergeant major and the first sergeant for A Company, a few feet from the seated Stocker, Hallinan braced to attention. Sure, special operations forces, to include 2nd Battalion, M Day, were pretty informal. But there’s a time and place for everything. Since he didn’t know how much, if any, trouble he was in, this seemed like it might be one of those times and places.

“Sir. It’s like this. I’d just come off the sub-cal range, forward. I was heading to stow my rifle in the arms rooms. The galley was on my way—can’t avoid it really—and it was lunchtime, so I got in line. Didn’t bust the line or anything, just jumped in behind one of the Guyanans. Then Captain—”

“Major,” Warrington corrected, even while thinking,
Silly damned custom
.

“Right, sir. Major Stocker came over and asked me about my safety, which was not, per SOP, engaged. I help up my hand, extended my—be it noted, sir—
trigger
finger, and said, ‘This is my safety.’ The captain—”

“Major.”

Hallinan glanced down at the line officer, then returned to attention. “Right; the major told me to engage my mechanical safety. I said we didn’t do that. He made it an order. I said my orders come from Lava, who’s a colonel, and Terry, who’s a
real
major. At that point . . . Cap . . . Major Stocker told me I was under arrest. Then the sergeant major showed up and marched me here.”

Warrington nodded. “Is that substantially correct, Sergeant Major?”

Straight faced, Puerto Rican accent subdued but noticeable, Sergeant Major Pierantoni answered, “Yessir. Substantially, sir.”

“First Sergeant Kiertzner?”

Kiertzner had actually retired from the British Army as a sergeant major, held the rank of master sergeant as the senior NCO of the team that was the cadre for C Company, and was a first sergeant by virtue of being the senior noncom in C Company. He wore his old British Army rank on a leather band around his wrist, since M day wasn’t really all that touchy about such things. He also sported a Vandyke, since the Regiment wasn’t especially anal about facial hair, either. The troops, in deference to his old rank, tended to call him “Sergeant Major” rather than “Top.”

Like many of the senior noncoms in M Day, Kiertzner could have taken a commission if he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d
liked
being a noncom too much to give it up.

The Brit-born, if Danish extracted, first shirt ahemed and said, “Umm, yes. Substantially, sir. Sergeant Hallinan left off a few minor details.”

“Like referring to my entire company as wannabes,” offered Stocker, shooting Kiertzner a dirty look. “Like saying that if my men weren’t competent enough to be trusted with loaded weapons maybe they should find another line of work? Like—”

Holding up a silencing hand, Warrington said, “I get the idea, Andrew. Sergeant Major?”

“Yessir, that kind of detail,” Pierantoni agreed.
But you’ll have to ask for it, Tracy; I’m not volunteering anything.

“I see. Hallinan, you are dismissed to your quarters. Stay there until I send for you.”

“Sir.” The sergeant executed a sharp—unusually so for 2nd Battalion—salute, took a step back, faced about, smartly, and then departed through the hatch. Pierantoni closed the hatch behind him. Then Pierantoni took a seat, himself, opposite Stocker. Kiertzner leaned against the wall.

“This shit always happens,” Warrington said, as soon as the hatchway clicked shut.

“Indiscipline and insubordination?” Stocker queried.

“It isn’t, you know,” Warrington countered, wagging one finger. “Or not exactly what you mean by it. Hallinan’s a good man. I can trust him to do the right thing even if nobody’s watching him. I can tell him to sit in a muddy hole for three days and watch X, and he will stay there, wide awake, watching X, if he has to prop his eyelids open with sharp twigs or wire his own balls to a field telephone. But it’s a different kind of discipline and a different kind of subordination. And that’s appropriate for the kind of soldier he is, which is a different kind of soldier than what you’re used to.

“
But
, whenever we mix the two, regulars and spec ops, we have this kind of problem. Because the two outlooks just don’t mix for shit.

“How loud was Hallinan?” Warrington asked of Pierantoni.

“The cap . . . the major’s troops heard the exchange, sir, enough of them. At least the last part, once the two of them got heated.”

Placing an elbow on the desk’s Formica top, Warrington made a fist and rested his cheek on it. “Right. Of course. Wouldn’t do to be subtle.” He glanced at Stocker. “I don’t suppose any of that was your fault.”

“Might have been,” the Canuck admitted. “I’m not used to being told to fuck off, for all practical purposes, by a noncom.”

“Major Stocker,” said Pierantoni, “screamed at Hallinan, ‘Put your fucking safety on, you blockhead.’”

Stocker shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I suppose I did.”

“And thereby made this much more complex and difficult than it needed to be. Shall I lay out the problems for you?” Warrington hadn’t made an offer. He intended to lay out the problems, whether Stocker wanted to hear them or not. Fingers began to extend, one by one, as he ticked off the problems.

“One, and the one you probably care about most; I have to punish Hallinan, who did nothing wrong by our ethos, or you lose prestige and authority in your company.

“Two, assuming I do punish him, it’s going to create bad blood between my people and yours.

“Three, if I don’t punish him, your people are going to feel that their form of discipline has been spat on.

“Four, if I do punish him,
my
people are going to feel like their form of discipline has been spat on.

“Five—”

“I get the idea,” Stocker said.

“Oh, no,” Warrington corrected, “I’ve just begun to scratch the surface. Five, your people might or might not be needed. But we know my people will be. So because you had to butt in—”

That touched a nerve. Angry now, Stocker raised his voice. “Now wait a God damned minute. In case you didn’t notice, this is a metal ship. An accidental discharge
was
going to ricochet until it hit somebody.”

“There
wasn’t
going to be one!”

“Six,” said Pierantoni, over the officers’ shouting, “it’s got the two senior ground fighters aboard arguing like children.”

“I fucking hate it when you’re right,” Warrington said,
sotto voce
. Stocker just glared, though the heat of the glare dissipated quickly.

“Which leaves us with what we’re going to do about it,” Pierantoni said. “Rule One is that we can’t, on our own hook, change the SOP. Any of our people carrying arms will
not
have them on safe. With what we do, where and when we do it, it’s a bad—a deadly bad—habit.”

“Reconfigure the ship to separate out your people and mine?” Stocker suggested. “More than they already are, I mean. Maybe set up a different galley?”

“Doesn’t buy us much,” Warrington said, shaking his head. “And we do need to get used to each other, if we’re going to end up fighting together. And, despite what I said before, we might.

“How about training your people to our firearms safety standards?”

Now Stocker shook his head. “Shoveling shit against the tide. That, or maybe starting a shit tsunami rolling downhill. You can’t imagine the trouble we’ve had drilling them into something like fanaticism over putting their weapons on safe. They’re good troops, but they’re still from the Third World. Changing this, now, would toss into question everything we’ve drilled into them. Confusion to us, rather than the enemy.”

“So what, then?” Warrington asked of Pierantoni.

“Three days bread and water for Hallinan, for mouthing off to an officer, then ignore it,” the sergeant major said. He shot a glance at Kiertzner, who nodded silent agreement.

“It was just Emperor Mong,” Kiertzner said.

Stocker snickered; the emperor was something of an inside joke to Commonwealth forces.

“Emperor Mong,” Kiertzner sighed. “A malevolent celestial being. You never see him, but his unique talent is to encourage young folk to take the least sensible and most damaging course of action by making that seem like a splendid idea. He’s the one who whispers into a young soldier’s ear, ‘I know it’s Sunday evening and you have an early start tomorrow morning for a heavy week, but surely if you just go out drinking, stay out until 0400 and then
don’t go to bed
, you’ll be fine for PT at 0600,’ or ‘just go ahead and hook up your boogie box to the vehicle batteries using commo wire. What could
possibly
go wrong?’

“It is the emperor’s proud duty to advise the young soldier that there’s no need to use a condom with the girl he just met who is practically leaking on the floor with her unquenched desire. He, too, serves as a kind of Cupid, or matchmaker, who will assure the young soldier that the tart he’s been seeing would make a fine wife. His Imperial Majesty will confidently assure the smallish infantryman that, why of course he’d be a match for that entire gun section of broad-shouldered gunners in the local tavern. His power is unfathomable, and his wickedness beyond measure.

“His power is particular impressive in Scotland. And at sea. And when that space shuttle blew up? That was Mong, whispering, ‘Go on, see what pushing that red button does.’ ”

“Oh,” said Pierantoni, “a relation of Murphy’s.”

“Distantly related, yes,” Kiertzner said, “but they have different functions in the Divine Order. Murphy just fucks you. The emperor grows your dick so you fuck yourself. And one of the problems with the emperor is that perhaps one time in twenty his advice is sound. Which is, as it turns out, just enough for young troops to keep taking his advice.”

“Ah. I can see that.”

“Okay,” agreed Warrington, “but what do we do?”

“Easy, sir. Major Stocker tells his people to ignore our rules; because the”—Pierantoni added the quotes through tone of voice and bracing his neck—“ ‘Guyanans are real soldiers and us Second Battalion pukes are not.’ We sit hard on our people to keep their overactive mouths shut and to minimize any differences.”

Both the officers looked at him as if he were either crazy or stupid.

“Then you brilliant bastards come up with something better. That’s what you get the big bucks for.”

Way back in the dim mists of antiquity, when he’d first been thinking of going either U.S. Army Special Forces or to OCS, before eventually doing both, then Sergeant Warrington had had a company commander who had taken an interest in him, enough so to snag him as a driver, and use the opportunity to explain to him how to be a company commander. This included how to do nonjudicial punishment. Since the Corporation had adopted over U.S. military law pretty much in toto, the advice still held good.

That long-ago commander had given a number of rules, or guidelines. “Rule One: Nonjudicial punishment should be very rare, indeed. Most problems can and should be handled well before it gets to you. If you find you’re having regular NJP sessions, there is something wrong with your command.

“Rule Two: Take the time to plan the event. That means write out the script and rehearse it, if only in your mind. If you’re a decent human being, it’s hard to be a bastard. Rehearsal helps.

“Rule Three: Use it as an opportunity to build your chain of command. Get input from the squad leader, platoon sergeant, and platoon leader. Ask the question: ‘Is this soldier salvageable?’

“Rule Four: Always max out the guilty bastard, but then suspend any punishment you think is excessive, or likely to do more harm than good. Taking money or rank or both from a married man hurts his family, something you ought not want to do, if it’s at all avoidable. Restricting him to the barracks hurts him, in fact, gives him a serious—possibly terminal—case of lackanookie. Tie that in to the recommendations from his chain of command. Remember, too; suspended punishment reduces the probability of appeal.

“Finally, Rule Five—and I cannot emphasize this enough: Always, always,
always
add to the punishment, ‘
and an oral reprimand
.’ Once you invoke those words, you can give an ass chewing so abusive that it would get you court-martialed in other circumstances. There is no practical limit in what you can say and how you can say it, because you will have invoked the magic words. This also tends to partially cover up your excessively kind and generous nature in suspending a goodly portion of the more material punishment. That said, sometimes you will want to do the oral reprimand first. And, in any case, remember that a commander is always on stage.”