Countdown: M Day (41 page)

“Sergeant Peters?” Peters led First Battalion’s heavy mortar platoon.

A tall noncom—who could have had a direct commission in the regiment if he’d wanted, it, but didn’t—spat some tobacco juice into a can. “Here, sir.”

“Your heavy mortar platoon is OPCON”—under the operational control of—“to the battery.”

“Roger.”

“Well,” Bunn agreed, “the really nice part of firing from there is that the company east of Mahdia is lined up nicely right along the gun-target line. Their reverse slope won’t do them a lot of good then. And we can use the shit ammunition.”

“Quite. ADA?”

“Here, sir,” said that battery commander. His unit, too, had given up attachments to the other battalions. Fully sixty percent of it, though, and all the self-propelled quad 23mm guns, was Reilly’s.”

“Split your coverage between Garraway Stream and the gunners.”

“Wilco, sir.”

“Scouts?”

“Here, sir.”

“You have your platoon, plus the Elands from Third Battalion that didn’t go to the Philippines. You are attached to Bravo Company.”

“Roger, sir.”

Reilly scanned around for a familiar face. He found one, but not the one he expected. “Maintenance?”

“Sir,” said Dumisani, a Zulu who was, improbably enough, partnered with Dani Viljoen, a Boer. Dumisani had one of those South African voices that had made Ladysmith Black Mambazo an international sensation.

“Where’s Viljoen?”

“Ass deep in a tank, sir, trying to get the turret not to squeal so much as it traverses.”

“Does the turret work?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Well, it did before Dani built two tripods from trees and had it lifted.”

“Tell him to drop it back.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, we’re good to go, sir. Or will be, as soon as I tell Dani.”

“Roger,” Reilly said. “Bravo?”

“Here, sir,” answered Snyder. He was a tiny sort, stature-wise, but approximately as broad in the shoulders as he was tall.”

“You, my friend, are the main effort. While Alpha, Charlie-tank, the ditch diggers, and I make a great show of trying to get across the river at Garraway Stream, you, plus the scouts and Third Batt’s Elands, with all the
scunion
the artillery and battalion mortars can bring to bear, are going to wade the river”—again Reilly’s laser settled on a spot, this time by the town of Tumatumari—“here, move to Konawaruk, here, then attack to the west along the cattle trail, to seize Mahdia.”

Snyder smiled broadly, if not quite as broadly as the span of his shoulders. “Wilco.”

Reilly consulted his watch. “Gentlemen …at the tone the time will be …zero-one-five-three …ready …
tone
. We cross the line of departure in three hours and seven minutes, precisely at five AM.”

With a truly evil smile, Reilly finished, “Let us make a joyful sound, unto the Lord.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Panzergrenadiere,

Vorwärts, zum Siege voran!

Panzergrenadiere,

Vorwärts, wir greifen an!

—Robert Seeger,

“Lied der Panzergrenadiere”

Bartica-Potaro Road, Guyana

For the last two hours ground guides had been leading armored combat vehicles into position to either side of the road. The engines, once the vehicles were in place, were left running. A powerful, heavy, and usually much-abused engine, already running, was much more likely to keep running than one was likely to start again, once shut down.

The troops were used to the sound; they’d long since—decades since in many cases—learned to listen and speak over it. This included the not insubstantial minority who were half or more deaf from it. The Venezuelans, thirty miles or more away, were not going to hear it anyway, not even with all seventeen still functioning tanks, sixty-seven Elands, and twenty-one Ferrets,

Reilly flipped on his night vision goggles, watching a platoon from Charlie Company—five tanks, in this case—grind their way up to his left. The goggles flared suddenly, then went dark, as one and then another of the self-propelled, quad 23mm guns opened up on something overhead. They were radar guided and really quite good pieces, although the Russians had newer and allegedly better systems on offer. The ripping-sail sound reached Reilly’s ears a moment after the flash blacked out his NVG’s. Then a much louder sound struck him, an aerial explosion in the one ton range.

Most likely a Tucano,
he thought,
both for the size of the explosion and that fact it was even around here. All the fast movers are busy fucking with Cazz in
Ciudad
Guyana; Tucanos are all that’s in range of us. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen many of those, lately, either. Probably Hugo’s boys have supply issues at the main airport.

Every combat vehicle in the column had a frequency-hopping radio. Thus, there was no need of clever call signs.

“Black Six, this is Bravo Six; ready to rock … .Charlie Six Romeo, the old man says
‘Es braust unser Panzer’
…Team Alpha, here; what’s the hold up?”

Reilly flicked the switch on the side of his combat vehicle commander’s helmet, announcing, “Black, this is Black Six. ‘We’ll come in low out of the rising’ …oh, wait, wrong movie, wrong soundtrack.”

His own vehicle crew literally giggled. Schiebel thought,
The old man can be goddamned funny when action impends.
More than a few in the other First Battalion tanks and Elands snickered likewise.

One of the crewmen in his vehicle watched Reilly intently. As soon as he gave the signal, the crewman flicked a switch. Out from the loudspeakers mounted on several of the turretless Elands burst a jungle-shredding riff, followed by:

“I AM IRONMAN!”

“Now
that
,” Reilly said into his boom mike, “
that
is the right soundtrack.” He consulted his watch, waiting for the seconds to tick off. “Black, this is Black Six. Roll, motherfuckers.”

Engines that had been mostly idling roared to life and purpose. Hundreds of barely human voices began rising in an inarticulate scream of hate and rage. Over a hundred horns started to blare, creating a sound wall of pure aggression. They’d been bombed enough, and now it was payback time.

“HAS HE LOST HIS MIND …”

Nothing quite like Black Sabbath when you’re going to go kick someone’s ass.

M-1 Abrams tanks could sneak up on people, more or less. Their engines were quiet enough for it, in any case. No matter; M Day, Inc. owned no M-1’s, nor was it likely they’d ever be allowed to buy any. T-55’s, on the other hand, which they did have, weren’t going to sneak up on anyone not completely deaf. However much updated, they were still powered by conventional diesels. That meant a roar that could be heard miles away. Elands? They were better, but not by much. And that didn’t matter either, because the tanks’ roar overrode the lesser cacophony of the wheeled vehicles. As for great heavy trucks hauling cannon? They added a few decibels, but not so much that anyone would notice over the tanks and APC’s.

So the wise soldier didn’t bother with sneaky things. Instead, he put his efforts into making the most noise possible, creating the greatest terror in the hearts of his opponents that that noise could generate. If he could throw in a little high explosive, too, that was all for the better. If he could be sneaky somewhere else, with something quieter than tanks, that was good, too.

Tumatumari, Guyana

Company B had been in the lead of the column, with battalion’s scouts, reinforced with Third Battalion’s turreted Elands, in the lead of the company. When the company reached the intersection of Konawaruk Road and Bartica-Potaro Road, Bravo split off to the south, aiming for the ford at Tumatumari. The maps said there was a bridge. That was wrong. What there was, was a marginally navigable strip of boulders, above the cataract, that linked Tumatumari and Tumatumari Landing, south and north of the river, respectively. It also served as the least pleasant leg of the already unpleasant drive along Konawaruk Road.

In other words, it was perfect.

Less than ten minutes after peeling off from the main column, Snyder was at the riverbank, staring at the white foam frothing the river’s surface. He ordered the dismounts of his second platoon—twenty men if at full strength, seventeen now, after the air attacks—into the foam. They waded, rifles at the ready, forward. Most were surprised to see that the water barely rose above waist level unless one slipped on the boulders, as several did. Under their platoon leader, the men pushed on past the river’s southern bank. Dogs in the town barked, but no one else paid much attention from the twenty-odd huts and shanties that made up the place.

Listening to his radio, Snyder heard, “Come on across; the water’s fine.”

Garraway Stream, Guyana

Firing actually started before the tanks reached the river. The Venezuelan commander had done the right thing and pushed at least two observation posts across to the other side. One of these the gunner of Charlie 26, the second platoon leader’s tank, found, through his night sight, scampering for the river. He duly engaged the two men, his tracers arcing through the woods and over the water to the far side. The platoon leader, up top, joined in with his KORD 12.7mm almost as soon as he saw the tracers.

I think I probably got one,
thought the gunner.
No matter; it isn’t like they haven’t had a chance to figure out we were coming.

The tank rolled forward, the turret for the most part remaining within a few degrees of forward. One could use tanks in jungle, assuming it was only jungle and the trees were far apart. But one still had to watch out for getting the gun pointed in one direction, while the driver took his tank around a tree, in another.

Others from that platoon, four of them, rolled around in pairs to either side of the platoon command tank. Forming a rough line—the trees ensured the line would be at best, rough—the platoon moved forward, firing intermittent bursts from both their coaxial and their top-mounted machine guns.

The platoon leader didn’t hear the call sent—naturally enough since the artillery and mortars worked a different sequence of frequency hopping—but he could see white phosphorous shells hitting the far bank on a line as rough as his own. The shells burst with small, muffled explosions that sent glowing white fragments arcing and spinning through the air, trailing thick smoke behind them.

It’s very beautiful,
the platoon leader thought,
for certain values of beauty.

Some tracers came in from the other side, harbingers of the half dozen or so bullets that rang off the tank’s glacis and the front of the turret. Automatically, the platoon leader’s hand reached down to yank the bar that kept his seat so high. The padded chair dropped, carrying him down with it until only his eyes and the tops of his CVC helmet showed above the hatch ring. He radioed orders to the rest of the platoon to do likewise.

Not so far back from the front, close enough, in fact, for the odd tracer to reach that far, Reilly took a report from Green, the Charlie Company commander.

“I let ’em see who and what we were, sir,” Green said. “I let ’em get a good look before calling in the smoke. We’re pelting the bejeezus out of the far bank. Time for the engineers to check the bridge, I think.”

“Roger,” Reilly replied. “Break, break; Ditchdigger Six”—Trim—“into the water and check out that bridge.”

Mahdia, Guyana

Military Intelligence was often, and in more armies than one, called a, “self-propelled oxymoron.” That wasn’t entirely fair. Certainly it was not a case, as many a pacifist, self-righteous antimilitarist, and the occasional outright coward put it, of “soldiers showing their stupidity by their choice of profession.” Rather, it was that both sides to a conflict were usually quite bright. Thus, they went to considerable pains to fool each other. The Venezuelan commander who had set up his forward command post at the podunk town of Potaro Landing hadn’t known until it was too late how close the gringos were until they lunged south.

Conversely, despite Michaels’ reports and the more timely ones from the RPV’s, Reilly hadn’t known, for example, that his opponent’s name was Camejo, that said opponent was not a lieutenant colonel but a full colonel, that he commanded a brigade of which not one but two infantry battalions were present, or that those battalions were accompanied by a battery and a quarter—eight guns, with more on the way, eventually—of 105mm mountain howitzers.

There had been indicators, of course. One flight that Michaels had not been able to see unloaded had brought in more communications wire than a single battalion could have used in two wars, for example. Two, larger, planes, landing at Kaieteur Airport, had brought in eighteen Oto-Melara 105’s, and enough mules to, interestingly enough, move eight of them. Being mule-ported, they’d stayed off the road until reaching a point about three kilometers south of Potaro Landing. Hence, Michaels had missed them.

Moreover, and this was by no means Michaels’ fault, alone, since the use of the laser had shut down most air traffic at Cheddi Jagan, and since the cargo planes were still available, they had to go somewhere. That somewhere was generally Kaieteur Airport, which had improved the logistic position of the brigade there immeasurably.

The key thing Michaels missed, though, was none of that merely technical detail. What he’d really missed was that one of the planes that had come in to Kaieteur had been an Airbus, carrying none other than Hugo Chavez, who had proceeded to browbeat Camejo into moving to and past Mahdia, even while promising him the means to do so.

On the other hand, there are some things one really can’t expect a sergeant, leading a small team, to pick up on. A field marshal would likely have missed it, as well.

Camejo picked up the chattering field phone. “Yes, I’m not deaf,” he said. “I can hear it perfectly well. What are you facing? God damn it, Colonel, calm down!”

Angered, Camejo broke communication, slamming the phone back into its cradle. “Sergeant Major!”

“Here, sir,” answered that worthy.

“I can’t get a stinking clue about what’s going on at the bridge from the battalion commander there. Get …”

But Sergeant Major Zamora, the commander’s second set of eyes and ears, had already slung a portable radio over one shoulder and was already racing for one of the autos the brigade had commandeered on entering the town.

Good man,
thought Camejo. “Somebody get me those useless sit on their asses artillerymen on the line!”

Garraway Stream Bridge, Guyana

The bridge hadn’t been “wired for sound,” something Trim and the one squad of engineers he’d taken with him had figured out very quickly. The rest of the platoon was waiting, belly down behind the tanks, to be called forward if and when needed.

What they hadn’t figured out yet, and perhaps never would, was how to get back to the friendly side of the river. Rather, shortly after entering it, they’d been chased all the way across by an enthusiastically pumped Venezuelan machine gun. That gun, or maybe its cousin, still had them pinned on the far, and very
un
friendly, bank. The occasional hand grenade that exploded in the water just past them, along with the steady stream of tracers cracking back and forth overhead, were proof enough of how unwelcome they were there.

“On the other hand,” Trim muttered, as the first of a number of artillery shells exploded in the trees on the far side, “maybe we
don’t
want to be on that bank.”