“Yes, ma’am,” a Georgia-accented baritone sounded. Amanda wasn’t surprised when Stone Quillain straightened from his leaning posture against the rear wall. The Marine officers had stayed on their feet during the briefing, a dark jungle-camouflaged cluster in the rear of the room.
“I’d like to point out to the Commander that L3 is the easternmost of the hides, only ’bout thirty miles west from the border between Guinea and the West African Union. If one of the other hides gets a warning off, the L3 garrison stands a pretty good chance of bugging out and escaping. If we take out L3 in the first wave and leave one of the other hides for the follow-up, any Union bolters would not only have farther to go, but we’d have forces between them and the border, positioned to intercept. I believe I mentioned that during the mission planning.”
Amanda met the Marine’s gaze levelly. “You did, Captain. That was a very valid point.”
She let the silence hold for a moment, almost to a point of its becoming uncomfortable, then widened her attention to include the other officers in the briefing space. “Thanks to the remote ground sensors planted by our Marines, we know that there will be Union personnel present at at least four of these boat hides. This is good.”
Amanda allowed her voice to rise slightly. “Every time we engage the enemy, we need to make him pay heavily for the privilege in manpower and materiel. We need to make the Union understand that every time they take us on, it will cost them more than they can afford to lose. We need to hit the enemy hard in every way that we can, at every opportunity he provides. We need to make them fear us! Now, let’s get it done!”
Reviere Morbaya Tidal Estuary 2247 Hours, Zone Time;
June 4, 2007
There is a trick to walking quietly through water. First, one must stay at least waist deep, so there is no sloshing as the legs swing. Then one must move very deliberately. The steps are kept small and the body’s weight centered, never trusting the placement of the advancing foot until one is sure about the surface it rests upon.
Such things are second nature to an SOC Marine.
Captain Stone Quillain paused for a moment. Lifting the night-bright visor from his eyes, he took a look around at the real world.
Black. As black as you can only get under a jungle canopy at midnight. Black so palpable that it almost had texture. There was supposed to be a campfire burning somewhere not too far away, but Quillain couldn’t testify to it yet. He lowered the visor and settled it over his eyes once more.
Now he could see again, albeit only in shades of glowing green. The cascade circuits of his AI2 (Advanced lmage Intensifier) night-vision system magnified the traces of starlight filtering down through the overhead cover to a useful intensity. The image was fuzzy and yet more than adequate to make out the sluggish tidewater channel and the looming, gnarled trunks of the salt mangroves overgrowing it.
Quillain glanced back at the ten men of the assault squad who trailed behind him. Strung out at five-yard intervals and wading slowly ahead, each Marine held his weapon ready at high port.
A brightly glowing ball of greenish-white light rode on the right shoulder of each man, as if he had acquired a Tinkerbell-class fairy to escort him through the swamp. These were IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) sticks, a filtered chemical light worn clipped to the load-bearing harness to prevent “blue on blue” friendly-fire accidents in a night battle. Invisible to the naked eye, their infrared emissions were readily discernible to an AI2 visor.
Each Marine also hunched under a burden of body armor and ammunition and equipment. Quillain’s own loadout was typical: the Mossberg 590 with a four-round shell carrier strapped to its stock, ten pounds of Interceptor flak vest and camouflaged K-pot helmet. MOLLE load-bearing harness with a full drinking water reservoir, three sixteen-round shotgun shell pouches, equally divided between slug loads and flechettes, an M9 Beretta pistol with four spare fifteen-round clips, an M7 bayonet, Ka-Bar knife, first-aid pouch, spare batteries, four hand grenades, and an assortment of pyrotechnic and smoke flares.
No rations or field shelter. They were traveling light tonight.
Then there were the electronics. In addition to his nightvision visor, Quillain carried a cigarette-pack-size tactical radio clipped to his helmet. The little AN/PRC 6725F unit linked him in to a squad communications band via an earphone and boom-mounted whisper mike.
A second radio, a SINCGARS (Single Channel Ground Air Radio System) PRC 6745 Leprechaun, was attached to his harness and jacked into the same headset. This larger three pound set linked him in with the seafighter command channels.
Radio discipline was strict. The only sounds on the squad circuit were the softly hissing exhalations of a dozen taut and wary men.
Quillain faced forward again and resumed his advance. Random fragments of thought bounced and jittered in the back of his mind, an ignored backdrop to his focus on the mission.
Damn, but these new AI2 visors are a hell of an improvement over the old NVG series. Not so heavy, more range, and a lot wider field of vision. Still, it’d be nice to have a look around with real light and just plain old eyes.
Right foot … pause … left foot … pause … Watch out for the damn mangrove roots! Don’t trust ’em. Stick to the bottom mud, even if you have to move out deeper into the channel. Look ahead after the squad sergeant and his point man. Watch them for hand signals. Listen for the whispered warning of a pothole .
Right foot …pause …left foot …pause … This is salt water, so we shouldn’t have to worry about that bilharzia bug they warned us about in the environmental briefing. What about leeches? Can the leeches hereabouts live in salt water? Hell! I should have taped up my boot tops and fly. Too late to worry about it now.
Right foot … Easy! Slick patch! Pause … Left foot. Shoulders aching. This damn old shotgun’s getting heavy. Maybe I should stop being such a goddamn individualist and start packing an M-4 like everybody else. To hell with that now too. Focus on your patrol overwatch sector. Look alive, Stone. We’re getting’ close.
The patrol sergeant lifted a hand, signaling a halt. He looked back at Quillain, the broad glassy visor beneath his helmet rim giving him the appearance of an insectoid robot in a man’s clothes. Quillain moved to his side. With helmets nearly touching, they exchanged whispers.
“How far?”
The patrol sergeant and his squad had been here before. They had been the team that had reconned this boat hide and its environs.
“Another hundred meters up this channel, Skipper. Then about half a klick overland to the east.”
“Right. So far, so good.”
At that moment, twenty feet away on the far side of the muddy channel, a beached log looked up and started to crawl toward them.
“Shit!”
It’s entirely possible to scream in a whisper.
Twice the length of a tall man, the crocodile pushed off from the bank, mucky water rippling over the jaggedly ranked scales on its back. Its eyes glowed with white ghostfire in the visual spectrum of the Marine’s night-vision goggles.
The patrol sergeant whipped his weapon, a silenced Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun to his shoulder. Quillain started to do the same with the 590, then realized that the unsuppressed roar of the shotgun would resound through the swamp like a thunderclap. Juggling the Mossberg in his left hand, he tore his Ka-Bar out of its sheath with his right.
For a very long moment, the little group of amphibious predators eyed one another. Then, apparently deciding that the odds weren’t in its favor, the crocodile turned in his own length and slithered back into the mangrove knees, disappearing from sight.
Quillain and the squad leader carefully and quietly released a couple of imprisoned breaths.
“You Tarzan, Skipper?” The noncom whispered, grinning into the night.
Quillain returned the knife to his harness. “Fuck Ta
rzan,” he replied darkly. “Me Cheetah.”
“Carondelet advises they have Hide S1 at Conflict Reef secured,” Christine Rendino reported over the link from Floater 1. “Site unoccupied as per intel projections. No contact with hostiles reported. Rations, light military stores, and fifty gallons of gasoline captured. Miscellaneous documents recovered. Lieutenant Clark is standing by for further orders.”
“That was the easy one,” Amanda replied, speaking softly into her headset mike. “Have the Carondelet’s landing team document the hide on video and then destroy it.”
She had no real reason for keeping her voice low. The seafighter was station-keeping in the shallows five hundred yards off the coastal mangrove line. Still, instinct was strong.
“Have the Carondelet team extract and reposition to support the Queen and the Manassas,” she continued. “Tell Clark to expedite. He’s our force reserve now.”
“Roger. Will comply.”
Amanda sat at the small navigator’s station in the Queen of the West’s cockpit, striving to maintain a situational awareness of both her flagship’s mission and that of the task force as a whole.
All cockpit lights and telescreen gains had been turned down to bare minimum and the blackness beyond the wind screen had a steamed velvet tangibility. Up forward, she could barely make out the silhouettes of Steamer Lane and Snowy Banks. Bulked out by K-pot helmets and by the composite foam and Kevlar battle vests that could serve as life preserver and body armor both, they sat silently ready at their control stations. Overhead, Chief Tehoa manned the cockpit weapons mount, positioned behind a massive pair of Browning heavy machine guns. A blessed trickle of comparatively cooler night air leaked past him through the open hatch.
“What’s the situation with Santana at Rio Compony?”
“Hide L1 is now also secure,” a faint trace of jubilation crept into Christine’s voice. “And Santana has scored! No gunboats, but a garrison was present on site. Three guerrillas captured and one dropped in a short firefight. No casualties our side. Four hundred gallons of gasoline, a stack of documents and large stocks of rations, equipment and armament have been captured. The assault team leader reports at least enough to outfit a full platoon. He has a perimeter established and he wants to stay on the beach until daylight and have another look around for more supply caches in the area.”
“I concur, Chris. This one’s a keeper. Have Santana and her Marines hold on station until Guinean government forces can relieve them. What about the Sirocco and Manassas teams?”
“Still positioning. Should be ready to move soon. No unusual activity indicated in any of the hides we have drone coverage over. No atypical radio traffic. We’re still looking good, boss ma’am. The penny hasn’t dropped yet.”
“Acknowledged, Floater. Maintain operations as per the mission plan.”
“Roger. Floater is out and on the side.”
Christine dropped off link.
Almost immediately, however, another transceiver ID number blinked on the communications telepanel. A digital electronic hail was being received from another transceiver integrated into the command net.
Amanda captured the channel hack with her joystick controller and opened it with a blip of the thumb button. “This is Royalty. Go, Mudskipper.”
“At estimated channel departure point. Turning inland. Request position verification.”
Captain Quillain’s voice was husky and sibilant, a whisper amplified by the com system’s automatic gain control.
“Stand by, Mudskipper. Verifying now.” Amanda turned her attention to the tactical display screen.
From their prior reconnaissance, they had learned of two conventional lanes of approach to the Union boat hide. One was from the sea, a narrow tidal channel running almost a full kilometer back into the coastal mangrove swamp. At that moment, the Queen of the West was standing off the mouth of that channel.
From the landward side, a single narrow, snaking trail ran in along a natural causeway through the tangle of marshy rain forest to an area of higher ground at the head of the inlet.
The last few yards of that approach were covered by both claymore mines and a machine-gun emplacement.
The plan developed by the Queen’s raider force had been to take advantage of a second, smaller tidal channel that ran parallel to, but some 500 yards to the west of, the first inlet. Going ashore at the mouth of the second channel, Quillain and his men would follow it to a point directly opposite the Union boat hide. From there they would brush-bust across through the mangroves, taking the camp from its undefended flank.
Stone Quillain’s SINCGARS radio had an integral Global Positioning Unit in addition to its communications circuits. Now Amanda accessed that unit via an encrypted datalink microburst, acquiring a download of the landing team’s position. A few moments later, a friendly unit hack blipped into being on her tactical display, the Queen’s navigational system integrating the Marines’ position into its operational database.
The hack was at the proper point on the graphics map. Quillain and his men were where they needed to be.
“Mudskipper, your position is verified,” Amanda replied over the voice circuit, relishing the commander’s luxury of knowing the exact location of her deployed forces. “Bearing to objective is zero eight seven true. I say again, zero eight seven true. Range to objective four niner zero meters.”
“Acknowledged, Royalty. Movin’ out.”
“Good luck, Mudskipper.”
There was no verbal response, just a double click on the transmitter key.
Amanda leaned forward and touched Steamer Lane’s shoulder. “We’re starting final approach. Take us in.”
The hover commander nodded. He rolled forward on the propulsor pod throttle and shifted his hand to the dial of the steering controller. The Queen of the West ghosted ahead on her silent electric drives, her blunt bow aimed at the mouth of the tidal channel.
Snowy Banks spoke lowly into her headset mike, a hoarseness to the normally light and true tone of her voice.
“All stations. We are proceeding upchannel. All gunners, we are guns hot. I say again, all gunners, we are guns hot.”
Overhead, Chief Tehoa yanked back the cocking levers of his twin Brownings, the lead shells in his ammunition belts jacking into the firing chambers. Releasing the levers, he allowed the bolts to slam forward again. The metallic chuck chang! of the cocking machine guns rang in the tepid darkness.
It can be startling how quietly a body of well-trained and heavily armed men can move through heavy undergrowth. All equipment is buckled tight and taped down; nothing is left loose to snag and catch. Rifle barrels probe ahead, carefully bending and brushing aside branches and vines without breaking them. Boots are lowered in millimeter increments, sensitive to even the faintest touch of resistance from a cocked twig lying on the ground. And, of course, there is absolutely no acknowledgment of clawing thorns, clinging insects, or the sticky-slimy caress of the jungle.
The coin paid for such silence is exhaustion. In muscle strain and nervous tension, a few hundred yards of such brush creeping can be the equivalent of a five-mile road march.
Stone Quillain noted that the trees and ground cover were thinning out and that his men now had solid ground underfoot instead of the slushy morass of mud and mangrove roots that had made up the floor of the tidal swamp. They had reached their target area, the small island that held the Union boat.
The range of their night-vision visors increased as more ambient light leaked down from the sky overhead. More illumination issued a second new source, a dancing flicker of white through the trees. A fire.
The enemy.
The squad leader required no instructions. He breathed commands into his lip mike, calling in his flankers and redeploying his column of men into a skirmish line. One of the squad’s three four-man fire teams sheered o
ff, heading for the gun emplacement that covered the land-side approach to the island. Using sand maps and computer displays, the raiders had already worked through these actions a dozen times over. Now it was real thing.
Stay low! Use the cover. Hunker down and duckwalk from one brush clump to the next. Snake forward on your belly. Round in the chamber. Safety off. Keep your finger off the trigger.
Scan! Watch for sentries. Watch for fox or spider holes. Watch for the telltale, unnaturally straight line of a gun barrel protruding from a bunker.
Look down! Brush the ground ahead of you with your fingertips. Ever so lightly feel for the monofilament trip wire of a booby trap or a ground flare, or for the prongs of a land mine.
Look up! Watch the trees. The gnarled bolls of the mangroves could hide a sniper.
Breathe! Recharge your senses and flush the fatigue poisons out of your body with deep, silent, and deliberate breaths, then sidle on.
Quillain and the squad leader moved up behind a waist-high mound on the forest floor, the interwoven plastic ribbons and netting of a camouflage tarp becoming apparent as they drew closer. Quillain slipped his hand beneath it and felt the metal of a row of stockpiled five-gallon jerricans. A whiff of petroleum escaped from beneath the tarp. Gasoline.
They moved on. A few yards more and the heart of Union camp was in sight.
As a military installation, it didn’t look all that impressive. A cluster of small lean-tos half circled around a small firepit. Its strength lay in the caches of stores and equipment dispersed in the forest around it and in what it meant to the Union soldiers and seamen who rested and resupplied here. The hide served as a haven, a place where a warrior could let down his guard for a little while among friendly faces.
Unfortunately for them, the Union guerrillas had let down their guard a little too much. They’d gone unchallenged in their coastal strongholds for so long that they had stopped conceiving of a threat creeping in on them from the night. They would pay for that conceit.
Sea fighter Page 17
