Countdown: M Day (55 page)

“
Mierde,
” Chavez muttered under his breath, “the bastards are everywhere. There’s no going forward until this section of the upper colonnade is free.”

“What are we going to
do,
Mr. President?” Marielena asked, in a hush.

Hugo smiled, though the smile came hard under his very hard circumstances. He took the gilded pistol from his waistband and handed it to her. “
Miel,
” he whispered back, “under the circumstances, just call me ‘Hugo.’ Now back up and stay put unless and until I call for you. Shoot, but only if you’re absolutely sure the target is a threat to us. Understand?”

She nodded and took the pistol as if frightened of it. Chavez folded her hand around it and carefully placed her trigger finger inside the guard. Then he pushed her gently backwards. He slid up to the very corner of the walls and took a knee. The president’s rifle pointed for the moment at the ceiling.

The door down the corridor resounded with a double kick. Four or five seconds later came the blast, followed in a small fraction of a second by automatic fire.

That last grenade blast, coming from this side of the palace, was his signal. It was also a reminder of the reason he hadn’t decided to wait until the gringos passed the small corridor in which he sheltered; before passing, they’d have donated a grenade and a stream of fire to it, too.

In a motion remarkably smooth for someone so heavyset, Chavez shifted one foot forward, and leaned forward as well, while bringing the rifle down to horizontal. Even as the rifle was swinging down, as close to the corner as he could keep it, Chavez continued to lean forward. By the time the rifle reached vertical, it was lined up as nicely as one could expect on the gringo shouting out in Spanish. Chavez fired, center of mass. At this range, he couldn’t miss. Nor did he. The bullets struck where aimed; the gringo ceased his shouting and went down, arms and legs flying, to the floor.

Hugo then shifted his aim to the gringo nearest him, with his back pressed to the wall. He fired again and that gringo toppled over with his feet toward Chavez.

Chavez felt a hard punch on his right side. It forced him backwards, exposing more of his body to the first gringo he’d hit, now, unaccountably, sitting up with his rifle to his shoulder. Again he was punched, just as the first turned from a blow to a blood-gushing internal inferno. He flopped back to his rear end, rifle still held loosely in his arms. Again he was hit, though his solid construction kept him upright. Marielena screamed, though he heard it only distantly and distorted, as if through a waterfall.

Shit,
Chavez thought, looking straight up,
all I wanted to do was to uplift my people. Was that so wrong, God?

The next bullet smashed through the right side of Hugo Chavez’s jaw, changed direction slightly, then passed through his brain, knocking a piece of his skull flying.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

All who served the Revolution have plowed the sea.

—Simon Bolivar

Miraflores Palace, Caracas. Venzuela

“You all right, Auntie?” asked Casavedes’ teammate. The other door kicker was out against the colonnade railing, his rifle aiming at the corridor from which the unidentified and now very dead assailant had sprung.

“To hell with me; check Rogers.”

“I did,” the door kicker answered sadly. “He’s deader than chivalry.”

Remorse swept over Casavedes. “Fuck; I didn’t want to lose anybody.”

“Shit …”

Whatever that door kicker had been about to say was lost as the other one opened fire on a pale shape emerging from the same little hallway. He didn’t care if that shape had been womanly; fire had come from there and one of his teammates and friends was dead. Anyone else coming out was not going to get the chance to shoot. The woman was tossed back like a rag doll.

“Check ’em out,” Auntie ordered, his chin pointing at the two bodies as he struggled to his feet against the pull of his arms, armor, and equipment.
I will never again bitch about the weight of the armor with inserts,
Casavedes swore to himself.
Never.

The door kicker trotted to the bodies. He didn’t recognize the woman, laying spread-eagled with her hair in a halo and her midsection a ghastly, bloody ruin. He did note she’d been very pretty and still had a pretty pistol clutched in one hand. The other was …

“Holy shit! Get on the horn, Auntie. Tell Lava the target is dead. Repeat, Chavez is dead.”

Standing on the west side, von Ahlenfeld kept one eye on the firefight developing between his strikers who had landed at the palace helipad and the baseball diamond beyond it and the honor guards in and around the burning barracks to the northwest. He’d also been listening carefully and occasionally talking it up to encourage, guide and coordinate the troops. Then he heard the magic words, “Chavez is dead.”

“Confirm that, Auntie,” he’d demanded.

“I confirm, Lava. I’m looking at his face now. Nobody else in this country is quite that ugly, is likely to have a dead mistress quite that pretty, or is so recently and totally dead. For that matter, he had his driver’s license in his pocket and that says, ‘Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias’. And we’re not talking about a little bit dead here, Lava; we’re talking all the way dead. Open the dictionary to the word ‘dead’ and—”

“Can it, Auntie! I understand. Chavez is dead. Drag his body down here.” Von Ahlenfeld consulted his watch.
Twelve minutes since we crashed in. Not bad, really.

“Sergeant Major!” he shouted across the courtyard.

“Sir!”

“How many wounded have you got?”

“Two and one dead,” Rattus Hampson replied.

“Account for everyone inside the palace. Collect a couple to help you with the wounded
and
the dead. It’s time to torch the helicopter and leave.”

Hampson’s lip curled with distaste. He was a Christian man, not given to needless destruction. The burning Hip was very likely to lead to a burnt palace.
On the other hand, not my call whether it’s needless or not.
“Roger, sir. Colonel Cruz?”

“Over here, Sergeant Major,” Cruz called from the other side of the ruined Hip.

“Get your prisoners on their feet and send them running out the south entrance. Then I’ll need your help and those of your team to move our wounded.”

“Wilco,” Cruz answered. To his own people he said, “You heard the sergeant major. Get ’em on their feet, point their faces to the south, and slap ’em along.”

Miraflores Park Helipad, Caracas, Venezuela

I’ve been in worse spots
, thought Major Hilton, commanding the two short teams stretched out west of the palace, facing the Honor Guard barracks across Urdaneta.Hundreds of tongues of flame lanced out from the building’s windows, in every quadrant where flame hadn’t taken hold. The lead launched on those eloquent tongues split the air, chipped wood and bark from the trees of the park, including the one behind which he sheltered, and occasionally found purchase in the flesh of Hilton’s strikers. His one Delta and one ex-Navy corpsman worked on keeping those hit alive at the southern end of the park, west of Bicentennial Plaza. They also took turns at seeking out the wounded to drag back, which wasn’t the safest job in the battalion.

I’ve been in worse spots …but I can’t quite remember when or where.

The two Hips that had carried Hilton’s men had arrived on station from the west just about as Cruz had put the brakes on his helicopter, over the palace. Number Two had come to a halt thirty feet over the northern corner of the baseball diamond, while Number Four had stopped over the Miraflores Park helipad. Both had swung their noses left and begun lashing the guard barracks with rocket fire, the rockets being guided by TV camera by the copilots in the Hips.

The
Ugroza
upgrades were a massive improvement on the old, unguided 55mm rockets. Even so, the windows of the guard barracks were not so large that more than one in three actually got into the building before detonating. Most of the street lights shattered from the concussion of warhead against exterior wall.

Number Two was the first to expend its single pod of sixteen. As soon as it had done so, it dropped down to the ball field, disgorging fourteen men who fanned out, six to the west along
Calle Puente la Union
, six to the north along
Avenida
Urdaneta, and two to set up an aid station west of Bicentennial Plaza. Those men discharged, Two pulled pitch, rising again over the trees to rake the barracks with machine gun fire from its single pod. Once that was seen to be in action, Number Four dropped to dismount Hilton and the nine other men with him. They, too, fanned out along Urdaneta, bringing the total of men facing the barracks to sixteen.

At that point Hips Two and Four ceased fire and pulled south, out of small arms range of the barracks, saving their ammunition for what was certain to be a difficult withdrawal.

The Honor Guard’s initial reaction had been stunned silence, except where interrupted by the screams and cries of the wounded. They were not slouches, however, and had one company at all times on alert. These had poured like a flood toward the palace to secure their president. Caught in the crossfire of two machine guns facing the barracks, west of the palace, two marksmen firing from the northwest corner of the palace, another machine gun firing along from the intersection of Urdaneta and Eighth, and several rockets fired by Hips One and Three, that flood had evaporated, leaving, so far as Hilton could tell, fifty or sixty bodies littering the roadway. The
Pechenegs
could fire two-hundred-round bursts routinely and without overheating If any of the guardsmen had made it across, it would have been a miracle.

Hilton, the guard commander’s personal opponent, pictured in his mind what the guard commander was going through.
Half your troops are married and, barring your alert company, home with their wives, aren’t they? And most of those are senior, no? Plus any of your officers that aren’t married or living with a girl are elsewhere, at a BOQ, right? So you’ve got an inherent chain of command break, with not too senior privates taking charge of squads, corporals leading platoons, and sergeants trying to command companies, don’t you? Your arms and ammunition are mostly locked up, and the Charge of Quarters or Staff Duty Officer is desperately trying to open the locks on the arms room doors, isn’t he? And somebody who isn’t even a supply clerk is hunting for the batteries for your night vision devices …or will be as soon as somebody notices they need batteries and aren’t stored with them in.

Or maybe
you’re
the SDO, a junior lieutenant with no experience. No matter; first, you’re going to try to get them armed, while you try to figure out what you’re facing and what to do about us, while maybe desperately hoping someone senior shows up to take the burden off of you.

Still, you’re an officer of Chavez’s personal guard and you weren’t hand-picked because you wouldn’t try, or if your political loyalty was anything less than fanatical. And you’re probably not stupid, even if inexperienced. So you’re not going to try the unsupported mad rush across the avenue; you’ve seen how that worked out. And you’re not going to try to come pouring out the doors, because you know that’s exactly what my machine guns are focusing on now. You might try to come east, around the
Palacio Blanco,
but you’ve seen our helicopters there and won’t want to get caught in the open of that parking lot.

I’m guessing you send your first company to report “Ready to move” west, across the road past where we can see, with orders to outflank us. For the rest, those who take longer to get organized and armed, you’ve got to take the direct approach if you’re to have a chance, you think, to save Hugo. And of those, some, some of the second tier to report “ready,” you’re going to send to man the windows to beat our fire down.

Which you can do, by the way, if Lava doesn’t frigging hurry up and get Chavez.

JESUS!
Hilton winced as a bullet from the barracks found a leg.
Oh …GOD, that hurts. Shit, shit, shit. Come on, Lee, kill the bastard and order the evacuation!

Trying to keep as low to the ground and as much behind his covering tree as possible, Hilton let his rifle fall from his grip and bent at the waist to inspect the damage. He couldn’t see anything much but his fingers touched no arterial spray.

Beats the alternative.
Hilton’s hand sought out the combat dressing attached to his harness and pulled it out. The plastic he ripped off with his teeth before unfolding and pressing the thing to his leg.

Unfortunately, at about that time, as he lifted himself slightly to get a little better angle, another bullet struck him on the shoulder where the ceramic plates didn’t cover him. That bullet lost some energy burrowing through the fibers of his armor, but not enough that it couldn’t penetrate the armor, his skin, smash into the bone of his shoulder, and then careen off to pass above his heart, through his brachiocephalic artery, and then through his right lung.

The lung wound hardly mattered; Hilton was effectively dead already.

Located right by where the turn off from
Avenida
Sucre, North, led to Urdaneta, east, Searles, nicknamed “Opto,” B Company’s sergeant major, heard von Ahlenfeld give “mission accomplished” and the order to begin the evacuation. He waited several seconds for Hilton to acknowledge, then sent across the company net, “Hey, where’s the fuck’s the CO?”

Nobody had a clue.

Ah, shit.
Searles jumped up and ran, rifle in hand, to the northeast in the general direction he had last seen Hilton heading. He stopped about halfway to the road and took a knee behind as stout a tree as was to be found in the area.
Let’s see …the place where there’s a gap where nobody is returning fire is …over there.
He leapt again to his feet much more nimbly than one might expect of a man of more than five decades and, with bullets dogging every step, ran forward.

He saw the still, twisted form on the ground in the green glow of his NOD’s. Flopping down beside the body, Searles felt for breathing and then for a pulse.
Crap.

“Lava, Opto. Hilton’s dead.”

“Shit,” von Ahlenfeld answered. “We’ve got to get out of here. Can you evac the body? Can you do it while controlling the retrograde to the PZ?”

“Maybe. I’ll try. Break, break. Bravo West, this is the sergeant major. The major’s down. It’s time to pull pitch. But it’s gonna be
tricky
…”

As he spoke flames began rising from what looked to be inside the palace. Hurriedly, Searles took a Russian clone of a Claymore mine and a VP-13 seismic fuse, then connected them and set them out pointing to the north. He didn’t set the arming sequence and skedaddle until he saw the last of the men along Urdaneta had passed him. They, too, if they’d followed instructions, had left mines behind to discourage pursuit.

The southern entrance was suddenly lit orange yellow as the spilt fuel from the Hip caught fire, flames torching the shattered remnants of the palm tree and licking at the exposed wooden beams holding up the tile roof. In the glow, reflecting off white stucco, Chavez’s cooling body had been laid out, spread-eagled, beside the doorway. Von Ahlenfeld’s orders were that there was to be no doubt in Venezuelan minds that their president was dead. His rifle was not in evidence, leaving the bloody corpse looked strangely and pathetically helpless.

Von Ahlenfeld glanced down at the body and whispered:

“‘Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end.’”

Hampson, with a body draped across his shoulders, slapped von Ahlenfeld’s back and said, “Last man’s out, sir Cruz’s party is controlling the evacuation.”

Lava nodded and said, “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Bicentennial Plaza, Caracas, Venezuela

Cruz watched as men dropped their armor at Konstantin’s feet as they entered the plaza area. There was maybe enough fuel to make it to internment. There certainly wasn’t an excess.

“Cruz, Number Five. They’re pouring out of the barracks. I’m engaging.”

“Roger,” he answered.

“This is Four, ditto.”

“Roger.”

To his north and northeast, Cruz heard the double booms of rockets burning off their fuel in just over a second and then slamming into the ground to explode. A fair volume of screaming came right on the heels of that. From the east came the sail-ripping sound of a machine gun pod, joining the fray.

Out on the plaza, itself, Cruz’s erstwhile engineer stood with arms outstretched and cone-topped lights gripped in his hands. Number Two guided in on the lights, came to a halt and began to settle to the ground. As soon as it was down, and well before it ceased bouncing, the former copilot began hustling, pushing, and generally moving people aboard. Some of those people were hobbling, others were being carried. It seemed that no one wasn’t either wounded or dead or helping carry someone who was.