Countdown: M Day (26 page)

Around the upper portion of the hull, concealing it and the sub’s small sail, was built up a simulacrum of a cabin cruiser, prepared a couple of weeks prior and thrown up last night. It was, like the
Bastard
’s, a light construction, though unlike the patrol boat’s camouflage job, this one used merely lumber and painted canvas. It wouldn’t hold up in a storm, of course, but it wasn’t expected to, either. For that matter, the disguise was unlikely to hold up under close inspection. Still, all it had to do was survive the gentle voyage downstream, the coastal trip to the mouth of the Waini River and then about twenty-five miles up that course, to where Biggus Dickus Thornton and his former SEALs were building a hide for the submarine.

Concealed on deck but within the canvas were half a dozen purpose-built seabed mines, and three times that in 240mm mortar shells. Four more mines and a half dozen shells were stowed below, along with the adapters, sensors, and detonators for all twenty-four shells.

Won’t close the Orinoco indefinitely, but then again, we couldn’t win a long war.

Airfield, Camp Fulton, Guyana

The Antonovs lumbered down the strip, one at a time, then lifted and pulled to the west. They’d cross Brazil and then Colombia, staying as far the hell as possible away from Venezuela. Each of the planes carried a precisely equal load in their cargo bays. This consisted of four ex-Yugoslav M-70 naval mines, eight thirty-gallon barrel mines, and eleven 240mm mortar shells, plus the detonators, sensors, and adapters for the barrels and shells, and a hundred and twelve flat steel plates. Everything was strapped down tightly, and nothing was armed yet. Indeed, the barrels and mortar shells wouldn’t even have their suites put in until the planes eventually took off from their interim destination.

“So where the fuck are we actually going, sir?” the copilot of Number One in the flight asked.

“Well, since we’ve taken off, I can tell you,” the pilot replied. “We’re heading for the
Isla del Rey,
in the Bay of Panama. There’s a—”

“There’s an old abandoned airfield there, big enough for us. But, Chief, I’ve looked at that. There is
nothing
there but the airfield, a couple of tiny villages, and some rich gringo vacation housing. No control tower. No refuel facilities—and we’re going to need that to get off again.
Nada
.”

“Fuel will be provided,” the pilot assured his second.

“By what? By whom?”

“Guy named Leo Ross. One of ours, First Battalion, from way back. Got invalided out of the regiment, took his rehab in Panama, and settled down with one of the local girls. He’ll deliver about ten tons’ worth, on call, by boat. “After that, we wait.”

“And where do we
live,
in the interim? If I’d wanted to sleep in the jungle I’d have joined the Army.”

The pilot jerked his head back. “We live back there. If that’s all right with you, I mean.”

State House, Georgetown, Guyana

The State House, which was the name given to the official residence of the president of Guyana, was more a collection of additions than a cohesive structure on its own.

Still, not exactly a hovel,
thought Boxer, descending down the left side door of the MI-17 that had brought him to the grounds of the presidential palace. Behind him, eight mufti-clad men of one of von Ahlenfeld’s teams slept, or read, or stared at the opposite side of the helicopter, as the mood took them. They had no rifles or other, heavier, arms, though each man carried one pistol under his light, dress jacket.

Boxer was pleased to see that the captain who met him by the edge of the helipad was in battle dress, rather than the comparatively garish and useless white jacket and green trousers of the Guyanan Defense Force dress uniform. Boxer was reasonably certain that the battle dress was because of the still ongoing rioting, sniping, arson, and not infrequent simple crime that was still consuming the capital.

Turning his attention back to the State House, he thought,
In fact, the white walls and green tile roof are really quite attractive.

“The president will see you immediately,” said the captain, holding on to his soft jungle hat lest it be blown away by rotor wash. Boxer had his own, not dissimilar, headgear clenched in one hand.

“Interesting that you should say that,” said Guyana’s current chief of state, Mansour Bharrat Paul, resting his chin on interlaced fingers. “Yesterday, the Venezuelan ambassador’s secretary called mine, requesting an appointment ‘at my earliest convenience.’ I begged off until next Tuesday. Was that a mistake, do you think, Colonel Boxer? Was he trying to warn me?”

A coup d’etat in the offing he’ll believe,
Boxer thought,
and look to us to save him from. If I’d told him of an invasion from Venezuela, the corrupt, soulless son of a bitch would be legging it trippingly for the Venezuelan embassy, trying to bargain for a good price for his ownership interest in the country.

Boxer shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. President. It could have been innocent enough. Or he could have more solid information than I do. In any case, that’s another reason why I’d …or why the regiment would …like to supplement your security forces with some of our people. Nothing too ostentatious, just a dozen or so …mmm …security specialists, plus a cook. Enough to give you a modicum of protection against any form of military coup. After all, our mutual association has been quite fruitful, ever since your election.”

Which is bullshit; it’s been fruitful ever since you discovered you needed us to keep you from having to learn to speak Dutch. But that’s all right, I bullshat you about the possibility of a domestic military coup; why balk at a little politeness?

“Where are your people, your ‘security specialists’?” Paul asked.

“Eight of them came with me, Mr. President,” Boxer replied. “They’re in the helicopter, waiting for word to dismount. The other four—actually five, counting a cook—are coming by surface road, and should be here sometime this evening. The eight are civilian clad. Their uniforms and equipment will be coming in the Land Rovers that are currently on the road. Do you have quarters for them?”

The president’s dark brow wrinkled. “No place that wouldn’t be inconveniently mixed with my own guard force. Could they, perhaps, squeeze into an apartment?”

“A thousand square feet and at least one bathroom and kitchen with refrigerator would suffice, sir.”

“Ah. Well, they can have the former First Lady’s quarters. They’re almost twice that size and they’ve been open since I evicted the useless, self-absorbed bitch.”

Baylor Rehab Center, Houston, Texas, United States

One of the better features of using a woman, especially an attractive one, to perform physical therapy on a badly injured man was,
I’ll be damned if I show how much this hurts. I’ll be doubly damned if I quit, or even ask for a break, in front of her.
Especially
since she’s been pretty curt with me ever since Panama. Hell, it’s not
my
fault she got enticed into a slave coffle, even if I
am
a man.

The first thing they’d done with Kemp’s spine, after arrival, was subject him to enough noninvasive scanning, X-raying, etc., to make him glow in the dark. At least he thought so. This was followed by a long session where the surgeon, an Indian chap from Mumbai, explained the options and gave his recommendation: “We’d be best off by going in and fusing the vertebrae. No, it’s not without risks but it’s the best chance, in your case, for an approximately normal and active life.”

Kemp had answered, “I laugh at risk,” but then spent a very lonely night worrying about the prospect of permanent, and below the injury, total, paralysis. Finally, he decided,
What the hell; if it doesn’t work I can always eat my gun.

Fortunately, the surgery worked, with no more side effects than quite a lot of pain, since Kemp insisted on keeping the painkillers to the bare, tolerable minimum. But following the surgery …

That’s when the real pain began.

I don’t know what kind of connections Dr. Joseph had here,
Elena thought,
to set this up for me, but they must have been simply awesome. That, or the regiment is stroking one amazingly large check to Baylor to get them to give me all this personal attention.

Not that it isn’t hard, too.

Hard barely began to describe it. Afternoons, she studied and practiced here, for her morning supervised sessions with Kemp or, less often, one of the other patients. Weekends, she drove to Fort Hood to take classes there. Nights, she took more classes here.

Tiring, yes, but I’ll get my degree in under two years. Joseph said he’ll go to the wall, after that, to get the regiment to commission me. I believe he will, if I do my part.

The proof of which will not be just the degree in physical therapy, but Sergeant Kemp back on duty.

Today’s date with the Grand Inquisitor involved the use of two canes. This wasn’t for his back, though it wouldn’t hurt that, but to keep his legs from atrophying. It was a struggle maintaining such an artificial balance while moving.

And it’s a bitch,
thought Kemp.
I never thought I’d be using even one cane, ever. To have to use two, and badly, at my age …a bitch. A goddamned fucking …oh, oh …

   *   *   *   

“Shit!” exclaimed Elena, as she shot from one side of the small therapy suite to the center to catch Kemp before he fell over completely. She deftly dodged the one wildly waving cane on her side, before tucking herself up under Kemp’s shoulder. She grunted at the strain of holding up a man who probably weighed two and a half times what she did.

“Thank you,” Kemp whispered, in lieu of what he really wanted to say. He used the girl’s temporary brace to get the cane set firmly on the theoretically nonskid floor. When he was confident he wouldn’t fall over immediately, he told her so.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Enough for one day, anyway. You wait and
don’t
move while I get your chair set up behind you.”

HQ,
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad
(DAS),

Bogot·, Colombia

The DAS had odd responsibilities, ranging from foreign intelligence, to immigration control. Though it had a number of branch offices, the main office, the headquarters, sat in Bogot·, not far from the intersection of
Carrera
27 and
Avenida Calle
19.

The building, itself, was some twelve stories high, exclusive of basements, and composed of largely undecorated, pale concrete and banks of glass windows. The building had once been subjected to a drug cartel ordered bombing attack—over a half ton of high explosives, hidden in a bus—which attack had killed or injured more than six hundred people. Security around the place remained tight, even decades later.

In the bowels of the place, behind secure gates and armed guards, in a small, cramped and overstuffed office, a military officer, one Lieutenant Colonel Baretto Gomez, went over a partial intelligence summary from the day prior The folder containing the summary was labelled, “FARC.”

It’s always a day late,
fumed Barreto,
a day late getting here and a day late getting disseminated. I’ve
told
them I need more space. I’ve
told
them I need a larger staff, but “nooo, the budget won’t support it.”

Resigned to what could not be helped, Barreto closed the folder he’d been working on and opened another, labelled, “ELN.” Three folders beneath that one lay another. That one was marked, “Venezuela.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night,

and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

—Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

La Linea, Venezuela

There were fifteen unarmed men in the party, along with twice that many armed ones, plus one. Among the unarmed men, twelve were black and wore the field uniforms of the Guyanan Defense Force. The other three were brown and wore Venezuelan camouflage. Half the armed men, significantly, carried an extra weapon.

The hands of the armed men were free. The unarmed were bound, hands behind them. Frightened, with reason, they’d been hauled from cells in Yare Prison two days before, brought by boat to the coast, then disembarked by night. The next morning, unfed but dressed in odd uniforms, their guards had marched them through the jungle, along narrow trails, to the little town of la Linea. Only one man had tried to break away. When the guard had run him down and dragged him back they’d beaten the man unconscious, then draped his body over the shoulders of the largest and the strongest of the prisoners.

From la Linea the group had moved south three or four miles, carefully skirting the Guyanan frontier. The leader checked a GPS to make sure that the incident would take place on their side of the border.

At the final stop—which would prove very final for fifteen men—they’d split up, two guards and one prisoner to a team, while that extra man, the leader of the group, positioned them exactly as he wanted them. Each prisoner was forced to his knees once that position was reached. The still unconscious prisoner was laid on the ground.

“Back off a little,” said the leader, to two of the guards. He waited until they were far enough away to be sure that there would be no powder residue on the prisoner’s GDF uniform. When he was satisfied, the leader said, “Good, now kill him. Aim for the stomach first, then the heart.”

“Please,” the prisoner begged. “No.” The guard, chosen, like the rest, for that special mix of Bolivarian fanaticism and sociopathy, ignored the plea. He raised his rifle and fired, bending the prisoner over with the first shot, then stretching him out on the ground with the second.

With the jungle reverberating with the sounds of sustained fire, the monkeys set to howling even as brightly colored birds flocked into the air, and helpless men fell dead.

“But why?” asked the last of the prisoners.

“So Hugo can make a speech, turning some of you into aggressors and others into martyrs, to support his plans,” answered the leader of the party. “Now kill him.”

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

The night was growing old, even the monkeys were tired of howling. Boxer entered the SCIF, got himself passed through by the guards, and headed for Bridges’ office. Then again, normal working hours were pretty much in abeyance for the time being. Boxer’s boots click-click-clicked past offices, most of them full. Halfway, he met Warrant Officer Corrigan. And,
Sure as hell, her smile does light the world.

And, speaking of lighting up the world, my new toy from China is here. Give it to the air defense folks? Nah, there’s only the one for now, not even enough time to test it and have a couple of dozen more built. And for what the chinks demanded for that one-off job …scary. Well, the price will go way down if we order fifty or sixty, as I’d like to.

There being no immediate contracting or legal problems to deal with, Bridges was wearing his S-2 hat this evening. Truth be told, that had been his most pressing duty for a couple of months now. For the moment he was worrying about an odd discrepancy in the reports from Colombia.

Though I’m going to have to consider suing the United States for cancelling the rotation that’s supposed to be here about now. Close call; never really considered the possibility of an unpredictable riot amounting almost to an insurrection being sufficient cause to cancel. And the contract is ambiguous. Hurricane, flood, or earthquake? Good cause. Is a riot a natural disaster?
Force majeure?
In a place like this it just might be. But if they cancelled because they know we might be hit …

“Any new word from Colombia on when we might get hit?” asked Boxer, walking unannounced into Bridges’ office.

Bridges suppressed a mild annoyance. Boxer’s abruptness was something one just had to get used to. He shook his head, no, then added, “But I’ve found something odd, a chronological mismatch. Took me a while to catch it,” he added, a bit embarrassed.

“What’s that?”

“Well …Colombian Intel told you we would have any pertinent information ‘as soon as available,’ right?”

“Yes.”

“Did they define ‘as soon as available’? Because I think they’re defining it as ‘as soon as we get it and massage it for a while.’ At least, I can’t understand the discrepancies between when they’re reporting a couple of things and when they actually happened.”

Boxer raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

“Remember when Ryan’s team was attacked by a big croc in the Gulf of Venezuela?”

Boxer chuckled in an ‘All’s well that ends well’ way. “Sure.”

“Well, we know that there was an explosion, and that there had been a number of distress flares fired, right? The Columbian border folks duly reported that to higher. But it didn’t get disseminated for a full forty-eight hours. I didn’t catch it because it was old history, by the time you got their agreement. But, you know, paranoia is all in the job description so I started digging back.”

“Then, once I found that, I looked at a couple of other things. Morales reported a test sailing of one of their frigates. Colombia noted that …two days later. Some jets, Canadair-built F-5’s, moved from their normal base to
Ciudad
Bolivar. I found that one on line, in a chatroom. Colombia Intelligence reported the move, again, about forty-eight hours later than it happened.”

Boxer swallowed, nervously. “You mean they might …”

“Yes,” Bridges confirmed. “It’s entirely possible that the Venezuelans have a forty-eight hour head start on what we think we know of them.”

Tomas de Heres Airport,
Ciudad
Bolivar

There were military police thick on the ground, Larralde was pleased to see, all around the loading area. The C-130’s were parked in a line but at an angle. Under the lights of the airfield, something over a dozen F-5’s were being prepared and loaded with ordnance. For a wonder, all four of the Bolivarian National Air Force’s C-130’s were working and waiting, with engines running, while the busses pulled up with Larralde’s troops. Behind the busses came the tank transporters, hauling the two AMX-13/90 light tanks going with them. The tanks’ crews rode the busses.

Shit,
thought Larralde, stepping out of his Tiuna and looking upward to read the numbers, “4951,” just in front of the tail,
I never expected so much good fortune or I’d had asked for another tank and more engineers.

“You know, sir,” said Mao Arrivillaga, “if you had planned on this, we could have maybe brought another couple of tanks, or some more engineers.”

“Well, who would have expected …” Larralde began, then stifled the thought. Instead, he said, “No matter, Sergeant Major, the plan calls for bringing in several additional pallets of supply, mostly wire and ammunition, and another Tiuna, if there were to be an extra bird.”
Hah, gotcha.

Carlos Villareal stood and pulled his own pack over his shoulders, then lifted Lily’s off her lap, reversed it, and held it out for her while she stood. She smiled, gratefully, then turned around herself to slip her arms through the straps. She couldn’t help but grunt with the strain as Carlos released the thing to rest on her shoulders. He gave an affectionate laugh and then patted her on the rump, a move that earned him a dirty look.

“Come on,
querida,
” he said, turning toward the front where a gap had appeared as those nearest the door moved out in a sort of reverse spring. “Mao will skin us and roast us if we slow down the load.”

One after the other, they filed down the bus’s narrow central aisle, then faced right at the stairs to dismount. Laden like mules, as they were, the walk down the few steps to the ground was more of an awkward stagger. The load had formed up outside, even as part of another bus load filled in from the left. And air force sergeant was waiting in the darkness with a lit light wand—a flashlight with a translucent conical projection attached—held in each hand.

And then Sergeant Major Arrivillaga was there, shouting, “You faggots! Get your asses into two—count ’em,
two,
lines, in
exactly
the order you’re supposed to load in. That’s right, just the way we rehearsed.”

El Libertador Air Base (AKA Palo Negro Airport),

Maracay, Venezuela

By the direct airbase lighting, as well as the more diffuse light coming from the city of Maracay, less than a kilometer to the north, many more than a dozen SU-30’s—“Flankers,” in NATO parlance –waited in lines while being serviced and armed at this, Venezuela’s largest and most important aerial base Fuel trucks passed the line of jets, one by one. As each was filled it moved off to the ammunition area to be loaded with anything up to eight tons.

The first four jets to be fully prepared moved via the taxiway to one end of the thirty-one hundred and seventy meter concrete strip. There, to save fuel and wear and tear, they shut down engines. They would restart in time to launch and launch to time their arrival over central Guyana with that of the F-5’s and with the touchdown of the C-130’s at Cheddi Jagan airport. The Flankers had a particular mission, though, in contrast to the general support the F-5’s were to give to the Army and Marines. They were, so the wing commander had told his pilots, to “smash the clandestine imperialist outpost one hundred and forty kilometers southwest of Georgetown, the place the gringos called, ‘Camp Fulton.’”

Tumeremo Airport, Tumeremo, Venezuela

The town had never been large enough to justify the roughly three kilometer long airstrip that had been laid out, and partially constructed, roughly three miles south of the town center. Nor was there anything inside Venezuela within any reasonable range to have justified that kind of expense. The place could only have been intended as an advanced base for an invasion or occupation. And, had Chavez not felt pushed by events, the invasion probably would have waited until the completion of the strip.

No matter, what there was, finished, would do. So, at least, thought the commander of the air force’s single squadron of Brazilian-built Embraer 312 Tucanos.
Since, at max load, we need only three hundred and eighty-one meters to take off, and less to land, this will
more
than do
.

And the Army’s helicopters,
he thought, looking north to where two—
hmmph, should have been three
—MI-26’s and thirty-two MI-17’s had already begun loading troops from the 5th Infantry Division. The MI-17’s, except for markings, were indistinguishable from those owned by M Day, Inc. The MI-26, though getting to be an old design, had begun life as, and still was, the most capable heavy lift production helicopter in the world. Only one helicopter, also Russian, had ever beaten it and that one had never made it into production. Each of the 26s was loading not one, but
two,
Cadillac-Gage armored cars.

Those helicopters were in two groups of an MI-26, sixteen MI-17’s, and two pair each of late model Hind gunships. These last were updated with the latest in western avionics, and were fully night fighting capable.

The squadron commander consulted his watch.
H minus three. Another two hours and fifty-four minutes. I hate waiting.

Tomas de Heres Airport,
Ciudad
Bolivar, Guyana

Strapped in to a starboard side bench seat, swaying as the heavy bird lumbered down the strip with its engines straining for its takeoff run, Larralde took his eyes from his watch and did some quick calculations.
H minus two hours and seventeen minutes. That meets the standard.

The plane gathered speed quickly. In a few brief moments he found himself pressed down into the bench, his heart beating fast, not with fear but with the adventure. Then they were airborne, and on the way.

MV
Manuel de Cespides,
Demerara River mouth,

by Georgetown, Guyana

In the east, there was not yet the first glimpse of dawn.

The ship was docked about three hundred meter north of Stabroek Market, by a very large open-sided metal structure, full of the kind of equipment—forklifts, carts, small tractors, one would expect to find somewhere near docking facilities. Conde’s mission, and that of his Marines, included securing that structure and the equipment. He didn’t need it for himself or his people—they were all lightly equipped. But follow on echelons
would
need it.

Those follow on echelons, Conde knew, would be about a day’s sail behind. He didn’t much like the idea of being out here, on his own, for an entire twenty-four hours.

On the other hand, I like the idea of a contested landing even less. Everything is a tradeoff, I suppose.

Lieutenant Colonel Conde was standing on the bridge, in sailor’s clothes, when the customs man from the port came alongside and aboard. This was not unexpected. Nor had Conde failed to prepare; two of his beefier noncoms, with hidden pistols, were waiting with him.

Drake barely got two words out before Conde ordered, “Take him. Don’t hurt him if you can avoid it.” Turning back to Mr. Drake, he said, “There is no reason to be hurt,
señor
. My men will take you below until you can safely be released.

“And
viva
the Bolivarian Revolution,
señor,
which, after long centuries, has come to liberate her lost sons!”