To Sail a Darkling Sea

by John Ringo

  He’d already connected a laptop to the port on the TV and now brought up a video file. It showed the complex from a high, sideways angle. He froze it as it showed a group on the roof, then zoomed in several times until their faces were clearly visible.

  “Is this Predator, sir?” Sophia asked.

  “Satellite,” Chen answered, drily. “Turns out it’s pretty detailed. But that’s not all. This is a recent satellite pass. They’re not moving them for stuff but they sweep constantly and they happened to be in the area. You’ve got no idea how big this video file is. Nearly a terabyte.”

  He zoomed out until the rooftop was barely visible, then pointed with his cursor and zoomed in again.

  “There are rooftops, like this one, with plantings on them, here, here, here, here, here and here. Also in this small, unnamed town over to the side, here. There are two there and they have . . .” he said, zooming in. “Catwalks between their buildings. This one should be easy. We’ll pull out the people with the security teams from DivTwo. The main town,” he said, zooming back, “is another issue. The Avenue de Colon follows the waterline for about a kilometer then bends back up the hill and joins the Calle Juan Sebastian Alcano. Then about another kilometer to the first site. The entrances to the primary building seem to be on top. They are blocked to prevent entry of infected. There are three buildings that have survivors and they are all connected on top. There are two additional buildings nearby and, well, several in the interior. It is the determination of command that those cannot be cleared at this time absent this being an easier clearance than it looks. Lieutenant Smith . . . Shewolf, any thoughts?”

  “I saw the sub video when we got punched down here, sir,” Faith said. “This is bigger but not a lot. All I’ve got is the obvious. Land, grab some wheels, roll hot to the door, extract the survivors and roll back, sir. The one thing I’ve got is . . . Okay, couple things. You know, sir, and I know that with these screwy, twisty roads . . . Infected aren’t that smart, sir. Most of them are going to get trapped up on the cliffs trying to go straight for the lights. So we’re not going to get most of them down on the beach, sir.”

  “Yes, I do realize that,” Chen said. “It’s one of the reasons that I contacted Squadron and asked for support.”

  “And as we move along and engage, it’s going to attract more of them,” Faith said, taking a deep breath in thought. “We’re going to have to create fall-back points, move a team forward, have them attract them, bring them back to the defense points and engage. Then do it again. It’s going to be slow, sir.”

  “If I may, sir,” Sophia said.

  “Seawolf,” Chen said.

  “Go straight, Sis,” Sophia said. She took the cursor and went straight from the beach to the first set of survivors.

  “That’s a two-hundred-foot cliff, Ensign,” Chen pointed out.

  “No, sir,” Sophia said. “With respect. It’s a hundred and fifty feet of condo, a fifty-foot cliff and more condo, sir. The gunboats with security teams cover infiltrators down Avenue de Colon. Marines clear this condo complex,” she said, pointing to one at water level. “Then they send up an assault ladder from the roof, go up and clear that complex, if it has infected internal, then extract the survivors down. It probably has internal infected. Otherwise they wouldn’t be getting around with ropes on the exterior balconies, sir. But going straight means your supply and extraction line has less sides to get hit by the infected. Sir.”

  “You just like that one ’cause you like to climb,” Faith said. “That’s your sort of thing.”

  “But does it make sense to you, Shewolf?” Chen asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes, sir,” Faith said with a sigh. “We’ll probably need support getting them down the ladders, though. And it doesn’t cover extracting the other refugees. But . . . gimme a moment, please.”

  She zoomed the image in and out, then hunted around on it.

  “Okay,” she said, finally. “This is still going to take at least all day. Maybe more. We go up the cliff. Ugh. Then we put in machine-gun points here, and here,” she said, marking two points on one of the condos. “That will give us coverage down this road here. Then we cross, go up this condo, which doesn’t have survivors but is the shortest distance, cut over to this one, which does have survivors, and extract them. Pretty much the same with this one to the left. Sir, we’re going to need all your ground-capable security personnel to man these points and help extract survivors, sir. I’d recommend that the extraction in the second village be held until we complete this one, sir.”

  “I’d agree with that, sir,” Lieutenant JG Elizabeth Paris said. The instant lieutenant had been the sole survivor of her family on a sailboat. She’d been into sailing and boating since childhood, knew small boats and the ocean and was still sane despite her experiences. Now she was in charge of three.

  “Concur,” Chen said. “I will manage the overall operation. Lieutenant Smith, Shewolf, will be in charge of the Marine force and primary clearance. Ensign Smith, Seawolf, will be in charge of the forward security teams and extraction. Lieutenant JG Paris will be in charge of over-the-water extraction and the local security teams for that. Hand-off will be at the water. Seawolf will cover Avenue de Colon. Callsigns will be Team Shewolf, Team Seawolf, Team Paris. All clear?”

  “Clear, sir,” Sophia said.

  “Let’s start figuring out the teams and detailing it out as well as we can,” Chen said. “After all, we’ve only got all night . . .”

  * * *

  “Ahem,” Olga said as the captains were preparing to depart. “Lieutenant Chen, sir?”

  “Yes, Seaman Recruit Zelenova?” Chen said formally.

  “Since there is nothing to do for a while, would it be okay if I accompanied you to the Wet Debt? I was wondering if I could play with your big guns. The Marines only gave me little guns and I’m longing for some big guns.”

  “We usually fire in the morning . . . Seaman Recruit,” Chen said, rolling his tongue around in his cheek. He knew he was being played but sometimes being played wasn’t all that bad . . .

  “Can’t I just . . . stroke the trigger on your guns a little, sir?” Olga said coquettishly. “I really like to fire off big guns in the dark. Maybe with a little light . . .”

  “Sir, if I might suggest you just give in on this one?” Sophia said. “She’s really into big . . . She likes weapons, sir. And there’s no real issue with firing off some of the BMGs at night. The zombies don’t care. Sir.”

  “All aboard, Seaman Recruit.”

  “I just love being a recruit,” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly. “I like being trained. On the way over, perhaps you can teach me something about seamen, sir . . .”

  * * *

  “Ooooh,” Olga said, stroking the breach of the Browning machine gun. Her eyes were closed and she was writhing in time to the stroking. “Ooooh, ooooh . . .”

  “You wanna . . .” Mcgarity said, trying to keep some professional demeanor. “You wanna . . .” He finally just started laughing.

  “I think I need some alone time . . .” Olga panted.

  “You need some alone time?” Rusty said. “What about us?”

  “I dunno, big boy,” Olga said in a perfect Mae West voice. “Is that a roll of silver dollars in your pocket or are you just glad to meet me?”

  “So . . .” Mcgarity said. “You wanna blow off a few rounds on the big gun?”

  “I’m not sure I can get my mouth arou— Oh, you mean fire it?” she asked. “That would be swell!”

  * * *

  “Where’d you find her?” Skipper Poole of the Noby Dick asked.

  “She was one of the chicks on the Russian yacht,” Chen said, sipping a beer. They were up on the flying bridge of the fishing boat watching the team prepare to fire. Okay, watching Olga prepare to fire.

  “She’s a pistol . . .”

  * * *

  Anarchy went through the procedures for arming and firing an M2A1 BMG Mod1 while Rusty opened up the ba
ttle box and got it loaded. The battle box was a customized waterproof rounds case produced on the Grace Tan that held ten thousand rounds of linked ball. One of the reasons to use the fishing boats as gunboats, besides hard points, was that they could handle the weight of all the rounds.

  When they’d all donned hearing protection and the gun was ready, Olga let loose a five-round burst at the dimly visible cluster of infected on the shore. Most of the rounds were high but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Oooh!” she said. She fired another, longer, burst. That one was on target. “Mmmm . . .” she moaned. She held down the trigger . . .

  “Oh, God! Oh, God! Yes, yes, yes! God YES, YES, YES, OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GAAAAAA . . .”

  She stopped firing when all the infected were clearly down.

  “Oh,” she moaned. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Seaman Recruit Zelenova?” Chen called from the bridge. “A moment of your time?”

  * * *

  When Olga got up there, Chen gestured with his chin for Poole to find business elsewhere and patted the vacated seat.

  “Sit, Seaman Recruit,” Chen said. “You said you liked to be trained. Time for some training.”

  “Of course, sir,” Olga said throatily.

  “That would be ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ ” Chen said. “I enjoyed, as any heterosexual male would, your little display. But this is not play time. This is professional time. Can you distinguish the difference?”

  “Yes, sir,” Olga said. She’d dropped the accent.

  “The display was more or less what I expected,” Chen said. “Which I didn’t mind. It was good for morale. All good. But tomorrow, you’re going to be over there,” he said, gesturing with his beer bottle to the shore. “With a bunch of other people. With guns. Surrounded by infected. Trying to do a very demanding and stressful job. People will be barking orders. Some of them conflicting. Things will go wrong. Problems will have to be solved on the fly. Even if things go wrong, people will have to stay focused. They cannot, absolute can not, be focused on Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova and her shapely ass and legs. Which means that Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova has to be a nonentity. Just someone to be given orders and obey them to the best of her ability without being Olga the Great and Sexual. The question, S.R. Zelenova, is can you do that? Because if you cannot, you need to be back on the boats, not on the land.”

  “I can dial it down, sir,” Olga said. “I can even turn it off without . . . turning people off, sir. Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Chen said. “I hope you’re right. Because Petty Officer Mcgarity will be your boss tomorrow. And I need him thinking about the mission, not how he can convince you to get in a little quickie in an unoccupied condo. ’Cause sure as God made little green apples, the shit will hit the fan right when he’s thinking about it. And, Seaman Recruit, if you actually do bunk off for a little bunk time, or wall time or floor time, I will put both of you off these boats so fast it will make little blue Cherenkov radiation trails.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.

  Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

  “Go, go, go,” Sophia said, waving for the crew to get off the boat. She’d been the first one from the security team to set foot on the island.

  Olga stepped off the dinghy and looked around. A couple of the security guys were looking a little pale, but she’d been on one of the forensic cleaning crews cleaning up infected-held boats and the Boadicea. She’d seen messes before.

  And there was a mess. A few more infected had trickled into the park overnight giving the gunboat crews something to fire up in the morning. Not many, though. She’d gotten most of them earlier in the evening. The pile of bodies was covered in shrieking seagulls, making it hard to hear the ensign.

  Uniform for the day was Navy “bluecam,” body armor and helmets. They were wearing Marine body armor since the Navy version was just a flak jacket.

  She peeled right, covering “her” sector, as the team assembled to follow the Marines.

  “Steinholtz,” Mcgarity said. “Keep an eye on your sector.”

  Seaman Recruit Matthew Steinholtz had been a Brinks armed security guard who won an all expense paid trip on a cruise liner. It was the worst cruise of his life. But he sort of knew how to use a gun and that was about as good as they were getting.

  There were seven security specialists considered “functional” for this operation. Some needed to stay back on the gunboats to provide cover. Others really weren’t “up” for a landing in an infected-held town.

  And the ones they had weren’t really trained in this.

  “PO, you take point,” Sophia said. “We’re going to swing down to the vehicle opening. Just follow the Marines.”

  “Roger, ma’am,” Mcgarity said. “Steinholtz, again, look that way,” he said, pushing the SR’s weapon to the south. “If I hear one of you lock and load without my or the ensign’s specific orders, I will personally shoot you. We’re more likely to get killed by ADs than zombies. Move out. Slowly.”

  The group began to shuffle down the beach, stepping around dead infected.

  “Zombie,” Olga said.

  “Where?” Steinholtz said, spinning around.

  “Steinholtz!” Mcgarity said, grabbing him by his harness and spinning him back around. “Keep your eye on your sector!”

  The Marines had spotted the infected loping down Avenue de Colon. They turned as if they were one mind and each fired a burst. The zombie was hit by at least thirty Barbie gun rounds and dropped like a stone. Then they all swiveled back to covering their sectors. It was over in less than a second.

  “For any of you who saw that, that is not how we do it,” Mcgarity said. “Cover your sector. Lock and load if I tell you. Fire if I tell you. Do not load, do not fire if I don’t tell you.”

  By the time they got to the vehicle entrance to the park, the Marines were already across the road and into the far building. The building had a metal gate with an electronic lock that the Marines had “bypassed” with a Halligan tool.

  “Okay,” Mcgarity said. “We plant ourselves here until we get called forward. Olga, there,” he said, pointing to one of the parked cars. “Steinholtz, there,” he said, indicating the opposite side. “Hadley, Larson, on Olga north. Yu, Hill, on Steinholtz, south.”

  “Can we lock and load now?” Steinholtz asked.

  “No,” Mcgarity said. “Because we’re going into that building over there. And I’m not going to have one of you idiots AD in a stairwell and have it bounce around until it hits me in the ass.”

  “Infected, Petty Officer,” Olga said.

  “Your sector,” Mcgarity said, putting a hand on Steinholtz’s helmet to forestall him turning around. “You have to trust me and Olga to handle it. How far, Seaman Zelenova?”

  “End of the road,” Olga said. She still hadn’t charged her weapon.

  “These things are trickling in from that direction,” Ensign Smith said. “Stand by. I’ve got this. Keep them on target. Golden Guppy, Seawolf, over.”

  There was a burst of fire from inside the building and everyone flinched.

  “Your sector, Steinholtz. Larson, I see you trying to turn around, too. Keep an eye on your sectors . . .”

  “Golden Guppy.”

  “Jerry’s Kid loping down the road. See it?”

  “Roger, Seawolf.”

  “Take him out for me, please.”

  There was another burst of fire from in the building, followed by more from the .50 offshore.

  “Your sector, Steinholtz, Larson, Hill. Do not look at the fire . . .”

  Olga fortunately did not have to turn around to see the effects. Then again, she’d seen them from behind one of the guns. The infected splashed when the massi
ve machine-gun rounds hit her.

  “Okay, okay, Mcgarity,” Steinholtz said excitedly. “There’s one this way, too . . .”

  “Hill’s sector,” Mcgarity said. “Keep on your sector, Steinholtz . . .”

  “Noby, Noby, Seawolf . . .” the ensign said as there was another burst of fire from in the building. “Can you engage that infected headed north on Colon?”

  “Negative. Our security team’s moving to the beach and they’re too close for us to want to risk it, over.”

  “Anarchy, one, say again, one of our people can engage . . .”

  “Hill, your sector,” Mcgarity said. “Lock and load one thirty-round magazine.”

  “Okay, okay,” Hill said, pulling back his charging handle.

  “The correct response is ‘lock and load one thirty-round magazine, aye,’ ” the ensign said. “And keep your freaking finger away from the trigger.”

  “Lock and load one thirty-round magazine, aye,” Hill said. “I’m loaded, can I fire?”

  “Jesus, it’s getting close . . .” Steinholtz said.

  “Watch your zone, Steinholtz,” Mcgarity snapped. “Hill, take a good firing position. Calmly. You’re on a range. You want it to get close. Trust me, I’ll take it out if it gets too close . . .”

  “I got another one,” Olga said. She was just barely following the conversation. She was paying close attention to her sector.

  “Guppy, you got the Jerry Kid . . . ?”

  “Take your weapon off of safe . . .”

  There were several bursts of fire from inside the building and another infected exploded with .50 caliber fire . . .

  “Aim for the chest . . . Deep breaths, just on a range . . .”

  “Division, Shewolf. At the top of the building . . .”

  “Fire single, aimed, rounds . . .”

  “Oh, just let him shoot it!” Steinholtz yelled.

  “Steinholtz,” the ensign said. “One more word out of you and I will pull the trigger on this pistol. Do you understand me?”