“You got nuthin’ to bitch,” the sergeant replied sullenly, knowing how the contents of the envelopes compared with his own army pay.
“We get plenty to bitch if we go down to the Big Hotel for oil running. Lot of men Frenchside already gone down. Lot of ’em from our village, too. Be gettin’ too dangerous to dodge the monsters. You tell your big man, next time, more money! Else we go back to fishing.”
The noncom replied with another coast English phrase, a well-corrupted form of “shove it up your ass.” Kicking out the beacon fire, he turned back to his trucks. The smugglers responded obscenely in kind and started down the beach to their boats.
The transport sergeant paused to double-check the load lashings on the truck carrying the oil drums. Few as they were, he didn’t want to lose any of them. His captain wasn’t going to be pleased with this haul. But at least this time they were bringing in some fuel. There had been other nights recently when none had gotten through at all.
“Hey, Sleeper … Sleeper … Hey, buttfuck! Wake up, will ya!”
“Now what?”
“Something’s going on. They just kicked out the fire. I think they’re getting set to move out.”
“Lessee.”
The Bear moved the nite-brite binoculars to the point where he knew Sleeper’s hand would be waiting. The second Marine accepted the glasses, and a minute smear of faint green light leaked from around the eyepieces as Sleeper keyed the photomultiplier system.
“Yeah. The boat guys are taking off.”
Engines sounded over the hiss and rush of the nearby surf—the burble and buzz of two-cycle outboards and the deeper rumble of truck diesels turning over. Headlights snapped on, two twin-sets and a cyclopean single.
“Here come the trucks. They’re heading this way.”
“Check ’em out good, Sleeper. The Skipper and the Lady’ll want the word on any cargo.”
“I know, shit-for-brains. Gimme a second … Okay, we got oil drums on the last truck. Only the last one. The other two are empty.”
“They got a truckload through, huh? Trust the damn swabbies to screw up the job.” The Bear reached for his personal weapon, a 9mm Heckler and Koch MP-5. The bulky cylinder of a silencer had been screwed to the stubby barrel of the sub machine gun and a second cylindrical unit, a night-vision sniper scope, had been clipped to the grab-tight rail atop its receiver.
“Hey, Bear? What you doing?”
“Cleaning up, dude. Cleaning up,” the Bear replied, keying on the nite-brite optics and setting the fire selector to semi auto.
One after another, the Union army vehicles rumbled by. Their headlights brushed over the hide where the two Marines lay concealed, revealing nothing to the sleepy men slouched in the cabs. As the third truck rolled past, the Bear came up onto his knees, flinging back the flap of the ghilly net. Bringing the MP-5 to his shoulder, he settled the sights on target. Feather-light, his finger caressed the finely tuned trigger.
There were noises, more like a series of soft explosive sneezes than anything that could be construed as a gunshot. Holes magically appeared low on the oil drums strapped to the truck’s rear deck, each hole streaming a jet of oil, the Israeli Military Industries FMJ slugs punching cleanly through both rows of containers. The tinny thunk, thunk, thunk of sheet metal being pierced was lost in the roar of the gutted mufflers and the crash of the vehicle jouncing over the disintegrating pavement. Likewise, the smell of the spilling raw diesel merged with the exhaust fumes of the poorly tuned engine.
With the lifeblood of the Union dribbling out on the pavement behind it, the convoy went on its way. With their own mission completed to their satisfaction, the Bear and Sleeper did likewise.
Mobile Offshore Base, Floater 1 1036 Hours, Zone Time; August 7, 2007
Stone Quillain doffed his utility cover as he entered Amanda’s quarters. “You wanted to see me, Skipper?”
“Um-hmm,” Amanda replied absently from the far side of the desk, her attention still focused on the sheets of hard copy she held. “Sit down, Stone. I was just looking over the reports from the Observation Posts we had on the beach Unionside last night. I wanted to talk to you about one of them.”
Quillain lifted a hand. “No need to say another word, ma’am. I know exactly what you’re about to say. One of the OPs broke cover and shot up a load of smuggled oil drums. Their platoon leader and I have been tearing strips off the two men responsible all morning, and I can promise you it won’t happen again.”
Amanda chuckled softly “I hope you left a few shreds of meat on the bone. You see, those men of yours have given me an idea. I want to see what you might think of it.”
“What y’all got, Skipper?”
Amanda tossed the patrol reports onto her cluttered desk top and tilted her chair back, thoughtfully studying the ceiling of the quarters cubicle. “Maybe a way to crank up the pressure on Belewa a little.”
“That sounds like a worthy project. I’m listening.”
“So far, our campaign to bleed off the Union’s oil reserves has been essentially passive. We’re embargoing Belewa’s oil imports, but we haven’t been able to do anything about the reserves he already has in-country.”
“Yeah?” Quillain replied cautiously.
Amanda let her chair flip forward again. Reaching for a file folder, she passed it across the desk to the Marine. “Take a look at these.”
“What are they?”
“Photo printouts. Photographs of the Wellington Creek tank farm, located in Kizzy township, just east of Freetown and inside the Sierra Leone river estuary. Formerly it belonged to the Shell Oil Company. Currently, however, it’s being used by the West African Union as their primary petroleum storage and distribution center for both their western provinces and for their military campaign against Guinea.”
Quillain glanced up, frowning suspiciously. “Excuse me, but just what are you thinking about, ma’am?”
Amanda leaned forward over the desk, intently meeting Quillain’s gaze. “Something I want you to think about too, Stone. What if we could take out Wellington Creek? Not only would Belewa’s operations against Guinea be derailed, but we could shorten this entire campaign by months at least.”
“Lord A’mighty! You are serious!”
“You bet I’m serious.” Amanda rose to her feet and paced off a few steps. “The target is there, it’s critical, and it’s vulnerable. Just by forcing the Union to shift their remaining fuel reserves around to cover its loss would take a huge bite out of whatever POL stocks they’ll have left. This is a natural, Stone. This is a body blow!”
“Hell, Skipper, I’m not arguing the point,” Quillain replied. “It sounds like just a hell of an idea to me. The problem will be with selling it to the Diplo-dinks. I don’t think the Security Council would authorize a direct boots-on-the-dirt raid on Union territory, at least not without arguing about it for six months. The idea makes too much sense.”
“I agree, Captain. That’s why I wasn’t going to ask for authorization.”
“Lord … A … mighty!”
Amanda’s golden hazel eyes glowed with an almost impish enthusiasm, and she arched an eyebrow at the Marine. “Like the man said, it’s only illegal if we get caught.”
Quillain slapped his utility cover against his knee. “Begging the Captain’s pardon, but how in thee hell does she figure on doing that? Taking out an oil depot is going to cause talk! We pull a stunt like that and those Union boys over there are going to run screaming to the General Assembly and the Third World media. You were able to justify that strike on Yelibuya by the skin of your teeth. You try this one and for certain-sure you’re going to end up getting yourself fried for exceeding your mandate!”
“The potential definitely exists,” Amanda replied, shrugging her slim shoulders. “And if it blows up in our faces, I’ll just have to take
the fall for exceeding my authority. So be it. But if we can pull it off … aborting this whole damn war and maybe preventing thousands of casualties … I think the risk will be worth it.”
She started to pace again, slowly. “The keys to this operation are going to be no linkage and a low profile. We’ll have to make it look like some sort of local vandalism or sabotage launched against the Union government by its own citizens. That means no overt U.S. presence ashore, nothing left behind that could connect our forces to the act, and most importantly, no casualties. Theirs or ours … Oh, and also we’ve got to figure out some way to eliminate a couple of thousand tons of petroleum without blowing up or burning down half of Kizzy township.”
Quillain wiped a hand across his face and muttered something under his breath.
“What was that, Stone?”
“Nothing, Skipper. I was just thinking about this damn fool I knew once who went around talking about candy-assed female officers.”
Wellington Creek Petroleum Depot
Kizzy Township, West African Union 0310 Hours, Zone Time; August 10, 2007
Rain poured from the night skies, the heavy, misting, blood temperature rain of the African Gold Coast. The two middle-aged Union militiamen on sentry-go at the depot’s main gate were long used to such deluges. Nonetheless, familiarity didn’t make the sodden weight of their cheap cotton uniforms any easier to bear. Nor did it allow their vision to extend much beyond the feeble yellow circle of the gate arc light.
Nothing had happened during the first half of their watch except for the hourly pass of the Military Police motor patrol. Nothing ever happened around Freetown. That was why the security of the depot had been left in the hands of the local Home Defense battalion.
Propping their rifles behind them to protect them from the wet, the sentries leaned back against the corroded chain-link fencing of the gate. It was a futile gesture. The bluing had long ago been worn from their ancient Lee Enfield rifles, and rust already was setting in. Another chore to deal with before going home.
There was only one good thing about militia duty on such a night. It would be a full week before it would come around again. With half-closed eyes, the sentries stared into the darkness.
Then, gradually, the sentries became aware of voices and music growing louder over the hammering patter of the rain. Half a dozen men clad in ragged dungarees approached down Parsonage Road, one of them bearing a cheap tape player balanced on his shoulder. Afro-Pop blared from it into the night, blurring the jocular babble of their conversation, and bottles glinted in their hands.
Boatmen or oil workers, the sentries mutually decided without comment, coming from the bars and disco clubs up around Macauley Street and heading home to their shacks along the beach. A common enough thing. Common enough to be ignored.
According to the standing orders of the sentry post, anyone approaching the oil depot after dark was to be challenged and asked to present identification. However, after being told, profanely, what they could do with their identification for the hundredth time, the militiamen had abandoned the practice.
One of the raggedly clad men waved a beer bottle in the direction of the sentries, calling out the universal coast greeting of “Howdebody!”
The sentry nodded a reply, thirstily wondering if he could ask for a drink.
Then, just as the group of boatmen came opposite the sentry post, a silenced pistol whispered out a single bullet.
The arc light over the depot gate shattered and went out. The party of “boatmen” pivoted and lunged at the sentries, launching a silent, furious assault. The hard-swung tape player decked one of the militiamen, while a sand-filled sock took out the other. Neither Union soldier had the chance to cry out even a single word of warning.
Other forms materialized out of the darkness, uniformed, helmeted, armed, pushing open the gates and swarming through. Some raced toward the looming white cylinders of the oil storage tanks, while others rushed the lights of the guard shack a few yards away.
Within the guard shack, the sergeant of the security detail and his corporal sat at the shack’s desk, playing cards, while the members of the off-duty sentry team sprawled asleep in the room’s two bunks. When both the front and rear doors exploded open, surprise was again total. The “boatmen” stormed in and piled on, swinging callused fists and a variety of blunt instruments.
The sergeant and the two sentries went down, lunging for weapons they were not permitted to reach. The corporal tried for the telephone, another act of futility, as the phone lines had already been cut. Battered into unconsciousness, the occupants of the shack, along with the two gate sentries, were gagged and blindfolded with rags and bound with coarse locally made cord taken from a captured smuggler’s pirogue.
With that accomplished, the leader of the “boatmen” stepped back out into the night.
“All secure, Skipper.”
Stone Quillain nodded to Sergeant Tallman, rain dripping from his helmet brim. “Good enough. Now you and the rest of your guys rejoin the Marine Corps. We still got work to do.”
Touching the “Press-to-Talk” pad on his Leprechaun transceiver, Quillain spoke lowly into his whisper mike. “Royalty, this is Mudskipper. Phase one complete.”
Elsewhere in the darkness, hunters converged on prey. There were two other groups of Militia sentries to be dealt with, a pair of roving two-man security patrols within the confines of the tank farm itself. An Eagle Eye recon drone hovering just beneath the overcast tracked each patrol on its FLIR sensors, its systems operator coaching a Marine fire team in on each target.
Only a few of the tank farm’s arc lights still burned; failing maintenance and energy rationing had extinguished the rest. The Marines had night-vision visors, the militiamen did not. Unaware of the threat converging on them through the shadows, the Union patrols walked into ambush.
Grenade launchers leveled. Invisible targeting lasers lashed out, designating impact points. Fingers contracted on triggers.
A series of soft, tinny thumps sounded in the night, the noise almost lost in the beating of the rain.
The grenade launchers had been loaded with silent-discharge shells. Rather than firing their projectiles directly from the launcher tubes, the hot gases released by the low-yield propellant charges were contained inside telescoping shell bases to vent away slowly and silently. The pistoning action of the shell bases explosively doubling in length hurled the payloads on their way.
The projectiles launched were nonlethal “beanbag” rounds, small disk-shaped envelopes filled with high-density plastic beads. They struck with the force of a .38-caliber revolver round but with the impact dispersed out over several square inches rather than at a single point.
To the targeted militiamen, the experience was similar to being slugged in the gut by an invisible heavyweight boxer. Even as they crumpled retching to the muddy ground, the Marine ambush parties charged in, finishing the job with carbine butts and sap gloves.
Binding and gagging the members of the security patrols with the same kind of coarse local cord that had been used at the guard shack, the Marines carefully dragged the unconscious Union soldiers up onto higher ground, away from the fuel storage tanks. They were also careful to seek out and recover the discharged beanbags, each round having been marked with a dollop of the same luminescent chemical used in the Marine IFF light sticks.
“Phase two complete. Patrols are down. Tank farm secured.”
“Acknowledged. Proceed to phase three.”
Stone Quillain looked around at the remainder of the strike force clustered behind the guard shack. Sergeant Tallman and the other black Marines who had masqueraded as the Free-town boatmen had redonned their uniforms and equipment harnesses. Padded tool rolls had been opened and heavy-duty bolt cutters and steel pipe cheater bars were being distributed.
“Okay, boys, you know the dr
ill,” Quillain said, pulling down his AI2 visor. “Corporal MacHenny, your fire team maintains gate security. Be ready to fall back to the extraction point the second you get the word. The rest of you know your objectives. Remember to watch your equipment inventories! If we brought it in, we take it back out! Let’s go!”
Breaking up into two-man assault details, the Marines dispersed, Quillain and Tallman heading for the nearest of the multithousand-gallon storage tanks.
Scrambling over the pressed-earth leak-containment berm that surrounded the tank, the two men followed the feeder pipelines to its base. Christine Rendino had discreetly hacked the Shell engineering database and had acquired a set of technical schematics for the Wellington Creek installation. Thus, Quillain and Tallman knew exactly what they were looking for and where it would be located. Powering down their tactical electronics as an antispark precaution, they set to work.
The maintenance dumping valve was located on the north side of the tank and, as expected, a heavy, padlocked safety chain had been looped through the valve wheel. The bolt cutters and the brawn of the two Marines made short work of it, however. Rust provided a second line of defense, but a second application of brawn defeated that as well. Creaking, the valve opened.
Pressurized by its own weight within the tank, diesel oil burst forth. Half a dozen turns of the wheel sent a horizontal jet of fuel eight inches wide and thirty feet long spewing out on the rain-sodden ground, hundreds of precious gallons wasting away each minute.
Tallman yanked the wheel off the valve stem and spun it away into the night like a steel Frisbee, while Quillain unwound a grounding wire from the cheater bar, stamping its free end into the soil at the base of the tank. They fitted a cheater bar over the vertical shaft of the stem, and then, with muscles bulging and boots slipping in the mud and oil, the Marines strained against the length of pipe.
Slowly, the valve stem gave way, bending from the vertical to the horizontal and farther. Even after the open valve was discovered, closing it again would be no small chore.
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