Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (30 page)

Standing in the back, Sergeant Major Joshua was thinking, I wonder how long before Reilly suggests using the cooks to supplement the mortars?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I have never smuggled anything in my life.

Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on

approaching a customs barrier?"

-John Steinbeck

D-84, MV
Merciful
, Georgetown, Guyana

The port didn't even have cranes sufficient for the three containers holding nine Ferret scout cars. This wasn't a problem, however, as the ship transporting them did have an integral crane and the Merciful had the gantry to move them around once they were aboard her. The transfer took place in the river, west of the port facilities, such as they were. The Georgetown authorities didn't much care as long as the deputy chief of customs, a subsidiary to the Guyana Revenue Authority, got a small donative for his retirement fund for his subverting of Section 204 of the Guyanan Customs Act. Since he'd been getting a fair number of such donatives, of late, from Gordo, his retirement fund had grown handsomely over the last several weeks. At least in theory. For the nonce, it was all locked up in escrow.

In any case, thought the deputy, standing on bridge of the Merciful, watching the containers sway at the ends of their cables as the transfer took place, what takes place in the river and doesn't set foot on land isn't really my concern. On the other hand, the . . . packages that are due in two days, and twelve, are coming ashore. I think I'll need a little more than usual to look the other way for those, if not so much as I demanded for the crates full or arms and ammunition. "Sporting equipment," indeed!

Though dark, the deputy customs inspector was of indeterminate genetic background. Probably, as were many, he was a mix of English or Irish or Scottish, or all three, with African, Dutch, East Indian, local Indian, and perhaps a spot of Chinese. He wore a uniform almost devoid of insignia but with large sweat stains radiating from under his armpits. He had a badge, and a nametag that read "Drake," an unsurprising name, given the locale.

Trim, Babcock, and Gordo all watched the transfer along with Drake, while Kosciusko sat his captain's chair nearby. The ship's exec, who was in fact a former chief petty officer rather than a commissioned one, supervised more closely.

The Guyanan spoke English, or a near enough dialect of it that the others couldn't talk too freely. Gordo did feel comfortable saying to the Englishmen that they'd be going ashore with his assistant and the inspector, while he conducted some business with the captain of the vessel. Nobody mentioned any further movement for anyone from that point, though both Trim and Babcock understood they would be moving on from Georgetown. They didn't know precisely where they were going, of course, and wouldn't until they were in the air.

The gantry, a container full of Ferrets swinging in the air beneath its extendable arm, whined as the entire mechanism railed towards the stern, then whined some more as the Chinese woman at the controls, that swearing, cigar chewing, Mrs. Liu who had already proved herself deft with the thing, slung the load a bit to port, a bit to starboard, then port again. It whined again, a long drawn out screech, as she lowered the container downward to where a few more men stood just out of the way to correct the container's orientation by hand.

"And that's that," Kosciusko said, leaning his head back against the rest surmounting his chair, as the container holding the last three Ferrets clunked home. "Now we just wait a few days for the next shipment"-Victor's turrets- "to get here."

"You going to allow your men shore leave, Ed?" Gordo asked, once Trim, Babcock, and the Guyanan customs man had departed.

"Is there anything worth doing here?"

Harry Gordon shook his head. "Not really. Booze there is, but you're not running a dry ship. Sex is pretty easy to come by," he added. "And the beaches aren't bad. Usually."

Kosciusko thought upon that for a moment. "Can you arrange to send a dozen or two whores out?"

"I could," Gordo said. "But that's inherently suspicious when you could just go ashore. Plus you've got those nice Chinese women aboard. Why inflict the whoring on them?"

"Point. All right then; shore leave it is. Speaking of suspicious, that customs agent, is he reliable?"

"Inherently? I wouldn't think so," Gordon answered, "not even remotely. Why should he be? But he is loyal to the escrow account we set up and that won't be released until we are long gone and the mission complete."

In fact, Drake was intensely loyal to the escrow account still controlled by Harry Gordon, enough so that-while he might be willing to gouge some, to pad it a bit more-he had no intention whatsoever of screwing up the nice little arrangement he had going. Still, more information could lead to higher donatives. He spoke, mostly to Babcock, in the local Creole that was very similar to the speech of the black sergeant's birth, particularly in its rhythms.

"Yah bais, yah unnastan wah meh ah seh?"

"I understand you, old man," Victor Babcock-Moore answered. "I don't speak it very well anymore, but I understand it."

"Where yah gwhan fum here?"

That was close enough for Trim to catch it. He did, and at the same time caught Vic's eye. Quite unnecessarily, he gave his sergeant the look, Tell him nothing.

Vic gave a look back, How can I tell what I don't know? To Drake he said, "Oh, we're going to the Pegasus for now, catch up on sleep. Then we're thinking of doing some fishing and maybe a little camping. We'll be leaving in a few days. Maybe as long as a week."

"Where yah learn speak so guh?"

"Public school," Babcock-Moore answered.

"Nuh public school hay teach lahk dah."

"Neither do most of those back home," said Vic resignedly.

Drake nodded. He wasn't stupid and had a suspicion that education was failing around the world even if he wasn't sure quite why. Then again, theoretically better minds with higher class backgrounds and more education than his couldn't agree on why Johnny couldn't read. He looked over the black man and had a sudden, not entirely unpleasant, thought.

"Mah daughter, she speak lahk dah. Mosly. Teach herself. Try kuurect meh ass ever day. Yah bais come dinner tonight?"

The sergeant looked hopefully at his captain. Trim had apparently understood. He signaled agreement with a couple of curt nods. Vic answered, "We'd be pleased to, sir."

"Meh pick yah up de hotel. Faive."

Trim would have been late to the lobby without his sergeant to provide- "Sir, I haven't had cooking like home since I left bloody Jamaica and if you don't move your aristocratic ass"-motivation. It didn't matter much; Drake was half an hour late anyway. This bothered Vic rather more than it did Trim, who didn't expect much from the Third World, to include Her Majesty's former possessions, anyway.

Somewhat surprisingly, at least to Trim, Drake had changed out of his sweat-stained customs uniform and looked really quite presentable in loafers, lightweight slacks, and an embroidered, short-sleeve shirt. He was still driving his government-issue car.

The drive was long and Trim quickly found himself getting used to Drake's patois, enough so that it sounded merely different, about as different as northern Scouse-flavored English, perhaps, or perhaps a bit more so, rather than utterly foreign.

Past the low built city of Georgetown, the car broke into mostly open farmland. Guyana didn't have a lot going for it and many of the people practiced subsistence agriculture.

Still, "What's that?" Babcock-Moore asked, pointing at a gate blocking a road leading into a swamp. The gate had a sign on it: "CGX."

Drake sneered. "Oh, dah de government. Dey sells hunert seventy-five t'ousand acres for four hunert dollars each to an oil company. Never use. Back for sale, Ah t'ink."

Trim did some quick and rough mental calculations, U.S. dollars to pounds, sterling. "That's bloody cheap, Sergeant, even for swamp, roughly two hundred pounds an acre."

"Nah," corrected Drake who, again, wasn't stupid. "Yah don' unnastand. Dat's Guyanan dollars. Maybe four-hunert to de pound."

"Two U.S. dollars an acre?" Vic exclaimed. "A pound?"

"Bout dat," Drake agreed. "What you expect?" he asked with a shrug. "Like man say: ‘Country got no secure border have to sell for what it can.' For us, dat about two U.S. dollar an acre." Drake pointed generally to the west. "See, Venezuela just over dat border and dem folks, dey got plans."

Trim immediately raised an eyebrow. "What the hell are you thinking, sir?" Vic asked.

"Oh, just musing. I wonder if there isn't someone, somewhere, who could provide a secure border."

"Ah."

"Yah dreamin'," said Drake. "Nobody cares enough about us for dat."

Which, Vic reflected, is probably all too true.

Babcock-Moore thought Drake's daughter, Elizabeth, was dream enough. She showed her father's mixed heritage, with a touch more African from her mother, long deceased.

Still, thought Trim, she's pretty enough for any taste. My sergeant could do worse. And, he mentally added, after spearing a bit of mutton from the stew, she's not a bad cook. And best of all, when her father pries . . .

"Father," the girl had said, "these are our guests. Cease, at once."

Which absolutely endeared her to Victor.

D-83, en route to Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil

"Well didn't you at least get the girl's number, Sergeant?" Trim asked, over the roar of the Porter's single engine.

The two Brits were the only passengers on this flight. Still, the compartment was crowded. At this point, with the personnel mostly transferred and too much food required to buy it all in Manaus without raising suspicions, Air Gordo was having to fly in a ton and a quarter of comestibles daily. Thus Trim and Babcock found themselves sitting, approximately, upon several sides of beef, a good-sized crate of canned vegetables, and who knew what else.

"She's obviously not that kind of girl, sir," Babcock-Moore replied.

"How do you know if you didn't ask for her number?"

"A gentleman just knows, sir."

Trim looked very intently at his sergeant. "You're actually taken with her, aren't you?"

Vic sighed. "She seems very nice," he admitted, and wouldn't say more on the subject.

The two stiffened as they felt the plane shudder slightly and veer left.

"Base camp coming up on the left," the pilot announced over one shoulder.

D-83, Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil

The drone of an airplane filtered through the thick jungle cover above. Beneath it, one hundred and twenty-nine men, including some of the attachments and minus a couple on duty or sick call, marched on rather less than twice that number of good knees. Reilly, personally, was marching on two bad ones.

I'd forgotten, he mentally groaned, just how goddamned painful this is. And I never really considered how much worse it would be at my age now. Fuck me to tears. I thought I had all the character building anyone could ever need.

Behind him, in two long lines snaking through the trees, with leaders spaced out between them, marched Alpha Company. Sergeant Major Joshua took up the rear, just behind the stretcher-borne mortars, with First Sergeant George beside him. On one shoulder the sergeant major carried a machine gun that he'd borrowed for the occasion from the armory. He just liked the heft of the thing.

The heavy guns had been rotated among the platoons several times by now and were now back with the mortar section. The men lugging them groaned-and not just mentally-with the effort. Nor were they the only ones with some cause for complaint.

"Quit bitching, George," Joshua said, sotto voce.

"I wasn't bitching, Sergeant Major," George replied. "I was observing that we are all pretty much getting too old for this shit. My knees are killing me. And it's hot."

"Stop quibbling, George. And stop bitching."

"Doesn't that asshole officer know it's hot?" complained one of the larger former tankers, Adkinson by name. He was tall enough that there'd been some question as to whether he'd fit inside the turrets of the armored cars. The man made an effort to look intelligent, though there was some question about that, too. "And besides, what the hell purpose is there in us marching? We fight from vehicles. Typical, dumb as shit officer! If he'd ever been enlisted he'd have more sense."

Adkinson marched at the tail end of the armored gun platoon. Just behind him a small infantryman named Schiebel carefully stepped on the tanker's heel, causing him to twist his ankle and fall to the jungle floor.

"Sorry, Adkinson," Schiebel said. He didn't sound very sorry. As he stepped over Adkinson's prostrate form, he added, "And just FYI, the CO was enlisted for four years."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Eros mocks Mars.

-Brian Mitchell, Weak Link

D-82, Camp Stephenson,

Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Guyana

Gordo poured sweat as from a fountain. It didn't do anything too very good for his disposition, either.

It was sweltering in the hangar housing two of the five Guyanan Short Skyvans and one large container holding three partially disassembled armored car turrets on cradles. For various reasons, looming large among them the fact that Gordo thought the chief pilot, Samuel Perreira, to be a pure weasel, he had brought along Major Konstantin and two of his sergeants, Musin and Litvinov, for a little added muscle. True, the Russians (and Tatar) were unarmed. They gave the impression of men who didn't need to be armed to execute murder and mayhem.

Because he was fat, and often looked altogether too jolly, people sometimes underestimated Harry Gordon's innate ruthlessness. They likewise tended to overestimate his need to be liked.

"Yes, Major," Gordo said to Perreira, in a very unjolly tone, "we are both ‘officers and gentlemen.' Notwithstanding that, you get not a penny from the escrow account until these three items are safely landed at the location I've given you."

"But how do I know-"

"How do you know you'll be paid?" Gordo interrupted. "Because the money is safely in escrow and I can't get it back for myself, even if I try. I can only keep you from getting at it and that I would have no interest in doing unless you piss me off. Which you will, unless my . . . machinery is loaded on your planes and moved to where I want it before daybreak."