Countdown: M Day (10 page)

“Since the boss is not going to listen to me about the big thing,” Boxer said, with poor grace, “I’ve no objection to the trivia. Except you should not match your departure to the ship. Leave soon, as soon as possible.”

“Be smarter,” said Lox, “if you send me first, with Terry, as in tomorrow or the day after, to contact and coordinate with Mrs. Ayala and Philippine Intel.”

Stauer thought about that for all of two seconds before saying, “Agreed. Except …”

“How do we buy time,” Lox interrupted, “while we’re waiting for the ship to get there? A lot can happen in seven weeks.”

Boxer shook his head. “As much as I don’t like this idea, in general, Filipino kidnappers rarely have any issues with hanging on to their captives for years at a time. Worse than FARC that way. God save us from patient terrorists.”

“Advise the family,” Stauer told Lox, “rather, advise the matriarch, to buy time with token payments, a few hundred thousand here and there. If there’s a chance, use that time to get as much information on the Harrikats as possible.”

“What if we can grab a few?” Welch asked. “Grab them in some way that doesn’t point to a rescue.”

“Break out the pincers, the charcoal, the pliers, and the field telephones,” Stauer answered soberly. “These people have no rights. Moreover, they must not get and keep that money, because there is no difference in practice between the money and what it can buy.”

“Now go.”

“Okay,” Stauer told Boxer, once the meeting had broken up in haste on his utterance, “Go.” “What did you need to talk about? I know you’ve got a bee in your bonnet over Venezuela. What I don’t fully understand is
why
.”

In four short sentences, Boxer explained why. “Venezuela’s economy is crumbling. Chavez needs a foreign adventure to distract the people. Colombia and Brazil are too tough. That leaves us, here.”

Stauer considered that. It was a persuasive case, for all that it was a brief one. “So what do you think we should do about it? I’m not going to start a war with a sovereign country—especially one that much bigger than us—preemptively.”

“No, not that,” Boxer said, shaking his head. “But warning could be critical, as could a fast reaction. I want to rent an apartment—or, minimally, a hotel room—in Puerto Cabello and move a couple of our people in, maybe Morales and Lada, to keep an eye on their navy. At least I want them to stay until I can make contact with Colombian Intelligence and get them to watch the things for us.

“I want to recon the Lake Maracaibo area. And I want to insert some ground recon to keep an eye on their military establishment in the area nearest to us, Bolivar State. Also, I want to do some overflights of some of the eastern parts of their Bolivar State. Lastly, since we can’t take out their navy preemptively, I want to make sure it’s not capable of doing a second sortie against us, once they launch the first. Also to cripple them economically.”

“How?”

“Mine their major harbors and the entrance to Lake Maracaibo. There are only three ports and a river that need to be blocked to effectively shut off their imports and exports. Two ports to cripple their navy, which go along with two of the other three …more or less. And, really, we can skip el Palito.

“Also we need to be able to mine Georgetown, here. And we need a good way to shut down the airports.”

“They’ll clear the mines,” Stauer said, “even if we had the mines and the means to emplace them, which we don’t.”

“No, ‘they’ won’t,” Boxer countered. “Venezuela owns not a single minesweeper. Fairly typically, for a Third World force, they’ve bought the flashy and showy, and neglected the less flashy but critical.

“They could get some from Cuba, I imagine, but I doubt it would be quick. For that matter, it’s not clear how much, if any, of Cuba’s once impressive minesweeping force even floats anymore. And we can get mines, says Victor, though we might have to steal them.”

“The United States’ reaction?”

Boxer shook his head. “Not much, I think. Oil’s a glut on the market and America’s stockages are more than adequate for the first time in maybe forty years, since with a nine dollar a gallon tax on gas for anything except public conveyances nobody, hardly, can afford to run a car much. They might condemn, but I doubt they’d do anything about it.”

Stauer consider that. “Still …be damned uncomfortable having a battalion or two here, on our base, if we defended ourselves …mmm …actively and they got the order to prevent us from doing so.”

Boxer sighed. “Yeah, I know. I wonder if they’d obey those orders though.”

“I wouldn’t count on them not obeying. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Would you?”

“Maybe not. We still need to dig into Venezuela’s shit and find out what they’re up to.”

“Will you be happy if I order the recons?” Stauer asked.

“No, but I’ll be happier.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Memories, light the corners of my mind …”

—Alan and Marilyn Bergman,
The Way We Were

Camp Fulton, Guyana

By night, the hospital was quiet, with only the chirping of the insects and the occasional howls of the monkeys lurking in the trees of the camp to interrupt the steady hum of medical machinery. One of those humming machines—the “pain machine” they perversely called it—fed a steady if not quite frequent enough dollop of some opiate or other. Kemp didn’t know the name except that it wasn’t Demerol.

Opiate or not, Kemp would have been a lot happier if only he could have figured out what to do. Those choices were broken down: Houston and severance pay,
Houston and return here, stay here and get back to work, as soon as I’m able, risking worse damage …Assuming, of course …

Some of the differences were subtle and personal. Going to Baylor, in Houston, didn’t frighten him, exactly. What did frighten him was the prospect of being alone, with not a fellow soldier for miles, and no friends at hand. Maybe worse was the prospect of unutterable boredom.

I suppose I could catch up on my reading. Bah. I’d rather be
doing
than reading.

On the other hand, would it be just as bad here, being surrounded by the best regiment I’ve ever been in, and me restricted to pushing papers? And if I stay here, what are the odds I get first class therapy? Best available in country? No doubt. But how good is that going to be on the ass end of nowhere?

Goddamn bad luck, that shell. On the other hand …

The thought was interrupted by the entrance of a pretty nurse, a young blond girl. Kemp wasn’t quite sure where he’d seen her before, though he was certain he had.

“Weren’t you …?” he began.

“I helped unload you from the dustoff bird,” she answered, in an accent he couldn’t quite place. She made a little mock bow, not deep enough to expose any cleavage in the prim nurse’s uniform. It wasn’t a terribly feminine gesture, though she was plainly female enough, prim clothing or not. “Elena Constantinescu, at your service.”

“Ohhh …you’re the angel,” he said, in dawning, if fuzzy, recognition.

“And you’re neither dead nor in Heaven,” she replied. “You were very lucky.”

“Interesting subject, luck,” he answered noncommittally. Then, changing the subject, he asked, “Where are you from? I can’t quite place your accent.”

The nurse’s eyes flashed. “My English is as good as yours,” she said huffily. “As good as anyone’s. And I am from the regiment. No place else is home.”

Kemp, suddenly realizing, if not quite why, that the question of origins was a touchy one with the girl, apologized hastily. “Your English is probably better than mine, Elena. I think your accent is really nice, lovely even. I was just making talk.”

“Okay,” she replied, relenting. She turned her attention from him then, as she puttered about, checking the readings on several machines and making notes on a chart. Satisfied for the moment, she added, “I was born in Romania. The regiment saved me from …well …from something really bad. Now it is home.”

“
Legio Patria Nostra,
” Kemp muttered.

The words sounded very familiar to the nurse. “What was that?” she asked. “What language?”

“Latin, I think,” Kemp answered. “It means …”

“It means, ‘The Legion is our fatherland,’” she supplied. Romanian was yet another of Latin’s many daughters. “Exactly so. The regiment is my home …now …forever …as long as it and I exist.”

“Well …that I can understand.” Kemp’s face fell, where it had brightened considerably upon her arrival, at once again facing the prospect of being homeless and rootless.

“Are you in pain?” she asked, her face suddenly full of concern. She hustled over to check the “pain machine.”

“No,” he answered, waving her away. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do or where I should go.”

“Ohhh,” she said. “You should go to Baylor, in Houston. No question about it. At least for long enough to be sure that there’s nothing wrong with you that we haven’t caught and to get a start on your therapy.”

“But I thought this place was …”

“We’re a good hospital of our type,” she interrupted. “But we have our limits. Our doctors are good, very good even. But we don’t have a specialist in spinal injuries. Baylor,” she finished.

“Baylor?”

“Baylor.” She was quite definite on the point. “For a while, at least. It’s your best chance for having a normal life.”

Kemp blew air between rattling lips. “Okay,” he agreed, “you’ve sold me.”

Elena smiled then. “Of course, I did. That’s why Doc Joseph told me to come see you. Full disclosure: There’s something in it for me, too.”

Officers’ Club, Camp Fulton, Guyana

From the main bar came the sound of a mix of American, British, German, Russian, and Chinese voices singing, “Always look on the bright side of life …” The singing was not precisely good, though perhaps the alcohol had something to do with that. Reilly and Doc Joseph both winced at one particularly off key singer, who, sadly, was also one of the louder ones.

Reilly had many flaws, a point with which he would readily have agreed. Among these, however, was not lack of consideration for his troops. He might kill them in training them, to be sure, but if they didn’t outright die, he’d take care of them.

“I don’t want my man to be alone up there, Doc,” Reilly said.

“He won’t be,” the Egon-of-Ghostbusters’-fame look-alike assured him. “I’m killing two birds with one stone.”

“Eh?”

“I’ve got some nurses we sent to school in the States for their degrees—”

“The Romanian girls?” Reilly interrupted. “I knew about them.”

“Them, plus two of the girls we liberated in Africa, both of whom have now married into the regiment and can’t be sent elsewhere. Anyway, we only had time to send them to a two year RN program and none of them are specialized yet. I want to send one of them—Elena—to a specialist course for physical and occupational therapy–”

“Why her?”

Sighing with exasperation, Joseph said, “Would you
please
stop interrupting?”

“Sorry,” Reilly answered, looking down. “I have many flaws—”

“Among which is impatience. Fine. Anyway, both of those require a certain hardness, not exactly lack of sympathy with pain but ruthlessness when dealing with it. They also require something highly analogous to combat leadership. I think she has all of that. My opinion, of course, is questionable, but Coffee agrees and his is not. So she goes to Baylor with Kemp, becomes an assistant under a certification and training program in their rehabilitation section, with Kemp as her training dummy, and, at the end of some months, you get back a trooper who is as fit as he’s going to be, while I get back a therapist.”

“Clever,” Reilly said, admiringly.

“Isn’t it just?”

Reilly swirled his drink in his glass, contemplatively, making ice cubes tinkle. “I wish everything had that clever a solution.”

“Eh?” queried Joseph.

“My wife. She’s having to give up her company—sooner or later …and the sooner, the better, as far as I’m concerned—because she just can’t stay in the field with us while carrying a baby. Or, even if she could, past some point—”

“About five months.”

“Now who’s interrupting?”

“Sorry.”

Reilly shrugged it off. “Anyway, it might be unhealthy for her. And I don’t have a place to send her. And, knowing her, sitting around doing make work would drive her insane. And the baby’s going to make her insane enough. But there’s no really good slot for her.”

Joseph shook his head. “You’re a dumb ass, you know that?”

“Huh?”

“If a slot doesn’t exist,
make
one. Jeez …”

“I’m kind of skidding on thin ice with Stauer as is,” Reilly said, putting his hand out, palm down and fingers spread, wriggling it.

Joseph smiled. “I’m not. How’s this sound? Right now, I’m ‘commander’ of the medical company. I don’t know how to be a commander. To quote a certain fictional character: ‘I’m a doctor, Jim, not a miracle worker.’ Master Sergeant Coffee, who is a miracle worker, has his hands full playing first sergeant, and I’m not a lot of help to him. So we create a new slot for Lana, and make her the medical company commander.”

“I dunno,” Reilly said, doubtfully. “She despises REMFs, in general, though she’ll make personal exceptions.”
The unambiguously gay duo, for example.
“If you knew the trouble I had getting her to take over Headquarters Company, rather than the tank company she wanted …”

“Coffee’s no REMF,” Joseph insisted.

Reilly snorted. “No. Oh, no, he’s not. We went to Ranger School together, you know.”

The doctor’s eyebrows raised of their own accord. “I didn’t. Isn’t that a hoot?”

“Yeah. Also served a few years in the same infantry battalion. He’s pretty stout. And I don’t mean fat.” Reilly laughed, for no obvious reason. “Someday, remind me to tell you the story of when he was my platoon sergeant for a while. That was back in Panama …”

As if at mention of the name, “Panama,” the clouds above poured forth a deluge onto the camp. This was no gentle pitter-patter, but loud enough hitting the roof to make hearing difficult.

Joseph signaled the barmaid for a couple more drinks. “You’re not going anywhere in this shit. Tell me now,” he insisted, his voice raised over the pounding rain.

The afternoon rain had come and gone, leaving behind it a simmering stew of oppressive heat and cloying moisture. With a curse—“Motherfucker!”—a very young Lieutenant Reilly used his folding shovel to lever a rock out from the floor of the fighting position he, along with his radio telephone operator, were digging. Bending over and picking the thing up, he tossed it outside.

“
Save that one for the burster layer,” he told the RTO, who was prone with his rifle pointed down range toward where the rest of headquarters company was setting up targets for the coming live fire exercise.

Muttering, “Son of a bitch had probably been down there since they dug out the Gaillard Cut,” he went back to his digging. Sweat pouring off him, he continued until he was standing about waist deep.

“
Your turn, Ramirez,” he said, exiting the rectangular excavation.

“Roger, sir. You need a break?”

“Not that so much. I need to troop the line.”

Ramirez snorted as he jumped into the hole, saying, “Lotsa luck, sir.” The RTO was the only man from Reilly’s usual platoon. For the rest, he’d been stuck with an odd collection of cooks, medics, truck drivers, wire layers, mechanics, and clerks.

Pulling on his load-carrying equipment and taking rifle in hand, Reilly walked the line of troops busily digging fighting position. That is, they were all busily digging, until he came to the shallow scraping of one Private Gilbert, a cook. Gilbert, himself, was asleep, though he’d propped his face on his rifle in an attempt to look alert.

Reilly’s mud-encrusted boot connected with the private’s midsection, hard enough to sting if not to raise a bruise.

“Wake up, asshole!”

“I wasn’t sleeping, sir,” Gilbert lied.

“Bullshit,” Reilly said, squatting down. Grabbing both sides of Gilbert’s helmet, he forces the private’s eyes generally forward and asked, “Do you see that copse of trees over there, Gilbert?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s the OP. Get your ass out there and relieve the man on duty. Do you know what you do on an OP, Private?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Go. Now.”

Reilly saw the cook off then, shaking his head, turned to walk the rest of the line. Things were basically okay further on, and the medics manning the fifty caliber machine gun were doing a fine job. That, he attributed to his platoon sergeant for the exercise, Sergeant First Class Coffee, now down in a hole, covered with mud, while slinging spoil out of the hole onto a poncho laying next to it.

“Oh, Ranger Buddy!” Reilly said.

Coffee picked up the litany without batting an eyelash or taking his attention from his work. “Please, please forgive me. I did not mean to run away and leave you all alone. I still love you, Ranger Buddy.”

“
How’s it going, sir?” Coffee asked, more seriously. Looking up, he let the shovel rest for the moment.

Smiling benignly, the lieutenant answered, “My ticks are well fed and fattening up nicely, thank you. The chiggers are dug in to standard, with overhead cover. My ringworm garden overfloweth. My athletes, foot is coming along, though I think I need to wrap my feet in plastic bags for a while to get a really world class case. And then there’s some kind of rot on my crotch that I can’t quite identify but which definitely shows promise, character development-wise …Oh, you mean
besides
those?”

Coffee kept his face serious, for all he thought the litany funny. “Yes, sir; besides those.”

Reilly sighed, then squatted down. “Well …I haven’t shot Gilbert yet. That’s got to be a good thing, no?”

“Caught him sleeping, too, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do with him? Ass chewings just don’t work. And I need a good excuse for my methods.”

“Sent him out to the OP. I figure, if we forget about him, he can be down range when we open fire.”

Coffee did a double take. He didn’t think Reilly would actually leave Gilbert out there, but you never really knew.

“Oh, stop worrying I’ll get him before we shoot the miserable son of a bitch.”

Coffee breathed a little easier. Sure, Gilbert would be no great loss, but Reilly actually showed considerable promise and it would be a shame for the Army to lose such a fine officer. Indeed, most of the senior non-coms in the battalion felt the same way and informally took turns watching out for the boy.