Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  “The whores?” Lox suggested.

  “Nah. People who come here to run the hookers come singly or, at most, in trios. Six is just too many.”

  “Crime?”

  Again, Graft thought not. “Our people even look like they’re involved in any kind of crime and we’ll attract the kind of attention we really don’t need. Someone’s going to want their cut, and we won’t have any cut to give them.”

  “Well what then?” Lox asked, with exasperation.

  “Dunno. Let’s get a car and go find that real estate agent. Maybe something will suggest itself.”

  “Better make it an SUV,” Lox said. “And we’d better make it quick, since the other six are coming in this evening.”

  South Green Heights Village, Muntinlupa City,

  Manila Metro Area, Republic of the Philippines

  “It’ll do,” Graft agreed, once the realtor had stepped away to lock the place up.

  Lox shook his head. “You’re just tired because, after two and a half days of continuous house hunting, this is the first one we’ve seen that isn’t awful.”

  “No,” the master sergeant disagreed, “I’m serious. This one will do.”

  “This one” was a smallish mansion, on about a one and a half acre lot. White stuccoed and with square, fluted columns, the place boasted seven bedrooms, plus maid’s quarters, a head-high surrounding wall, also white and stucco, plus sufficient messing facilities and a living room large enough for group planning. The furniture was sparse, but the house itself was pretty plush. A garage, tucked in underneath the bedroom level, had walls on three sides with the opening facing the perimeter wall. The gate was offset so that there was no easy direct view from the street of the parking space. No one would see anyone entering or leaving, not in any detail that wouldn’t be obscured by the SUV’s tinted windows.

  “And we’ve got roads,” Graft added, “that will do for a quick getaway. In fact, we’ve got a lot of roads, so it would be a quick and unpredictable getaway. If that turned out to be impossible, there’s unbuilt wooded area”—he pointed to the northwest—“about three hundred meters thataway. And more, even closer, to the south. We’ve got the big lake, Laguna de Bay, a mile to the east, too, so a water exfiltration is, at least, a possibility. There are some expats around, so a few gringos, more or less, won’t excite any excess curiosity.”

  Lox still looked skeptical. “Okay, so why are they here? Six Kanos in one house, even if it’s a big house, is still freaking suspicious.”

  “That’s one of the beauties of the place,” Graft answered, grinning with enthusiasm. “It’s fancy enough that an American or European businessman with an administrative assistant and four bodyguards wouldn’t be out of place.

  “By the way, how much did the realtor say the owners wanted?”

  “Two hundred thirty-three thousand USD. I can get it for two hundred, if I slip the realtor ten under the table.”

  “Wouldn’t happen in the States,” Graft sneered.

  With a chuckle, Lox replied, “No, in the States, these days, I’d have to slip the realtor twenty but I’d get it for a hundred and ninety. Speaking of which,” he added, seeing the realtor coming back, “make yourself scarce for a bit. They’re corrupt here, though maybe not as bad as we’re becoming. Even so, they’ve enough sense of propriety not to want witnesses.”

  “And, speaking of witnesses,” Graft said, leaving for the SUV, “it would be suspicious as all hell for an American businessman with an administrative assistant and four guards not to have a maid and/or cook.”

  “One thing at a time, Sergeant,” Lox chided. “Now we go to the realtor’s office and close on the property. Then we’re going to see if an old acquaintance of mine can set this crew up with, at least, a few shotguns. Or whatever. Then we worry about a maid and a cook.”

  Samurai Arms, Inc., National Road, Bucal,

  Calamba City, Republic of the Philippines

  “Samurai Arms?” Graft asked, seeing the business’ name neatly painted on the plate glass window fronting the street. A spotless, apparently brand new, van sat in an alley next door.

  Lox gave a half shrug. “The Filipinos can hold a grudge, just like anybody else, but they don’t make a religion of it. And the war was a long time ago. In any case, this place exists in good part for ‘gun tourism,’ Japanese who can’t have weapons come here—a few other places, too—and get to make a joyful sound unto the Lord.”

  “What’s going to be available?”

  “You never can tell,” Lox answered. “Legally, he usually keeps around three hundred open and aboveboard guns on the premises. But he runs a little side business where it’s catch of the day.” Pointing with his chin at the glass door with the warning sign that absolutely no loaded weapons were allowed within, Lox said, “Come on.”

  As the door swung open, a guard—it was most unlikely that the proscription on loaded weapons applied to him—leveled a shotgun at the pair of Americans. Lox just stood there calmly while Graft began raising his hands.

  “Knock it off, Manuel,” commanded a fair skinned Filipina standing behind a glass case. “These are clients.” Sheepishly, the young guard lowered the shotgun.

  “Ben’s in back, Peter,” the woman said.

  “Thanks, Gracie,” Lox answered, starting forward toward a steel door to the right of the display case.

  “Haven’t seen you in—what is it? Five years?”

  Without stopping he answered, “Closer to six, Gracie. Been busy.”

  “Hmmph,” she grunted. Clearly “busy” was not an acceptable excuse. Careful of her well-shaped and painted nails, she reached a delicate finger, bearing a perfect almond nail, down to press a button. From the door came a loud buzz and the sound of a bolt being electronically thrown.

  The office behind the door was nothing remarkable. A wooden desk held a computer, along with a pile of files, most quite thin. There were a couple of loose papers that looked like invoices. Behind the desk stood a couple of tall bookcases, holding titles like Small Arms of the World and Jane’s Infantry Weapons, as well as three ring binders hand labeled with sundry titles and years for various gun magazines, almost entirely American. A few other binders bore official sounding names or numbers. Those were probably the local firearms laws and regulations.

  On the wall above the desk were several graduation certificates, ranging from Advanced Handgun to Submachine Gun (Distinguished Graduate) from Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada. There was also a certificate for the Tactical Explosive Entry Course, from the Philippine National Police Special Action Force. Next to that was a BS degree in Criminology from the UPHSL, the University of Perpetual Help System Laguna. Lastly, though placed above them all, was a promotion certificate to the rank of Master Sergeant (Reserve) from the Philippine Army.

  At the desk, and matching the names on the certificates, sat one Bayani—Ben—Arroyo. He looked very damned young to be a master sergeant, even in the reserves.

  At the sound of the bolt retracting, Ben had swiveled his chair to face the door. As soon as he recognized Lox, he was out of the chair, pumping the American’s fist and pounding his shoulder. “Dooode, where ya been?”

  Before Lox could answer, or even introduce Graft, Ben directed both him and Graft to chairs against the wall opposite the bookcases.

  “Ah, never mind. You won’t tell me anyway. Whatcha need? Right . . . stupid question. What kind of guns do you need?”

  “Depends on what you have, Ben.”

  “Right.” The Filipino turned and walked the step and a half to the bookcase. He took from it a relatively thin binder, which he opened and handed to Lox. “These are what I have in stock right now.”

  Lox flipped a page, then another, and then a third. “Prices have gone up, I see. Police making life difficult?”

  Ben shook his head. “No, dude, demand has skyrocketed. Nobody’s happy with just a shotgun and a revolver anymore. People, especially people who can afford bet
ter, are running scared. They want the real deal and fuck the law.”

  “Business must be good then,” Lox said.

  Ben put out a hand, palm down, and waved it a few times. “It is and it isn’t. I’m tellin’ ya, dude, crime has gotten a lot worse than the government will admit to. I lose customers all the time; kidnappings, robberies, murders, you name it.”

  Lox shrugged; times were tough all over. He handed the binder to Graft, saying, “Pick what you think the men will need.”

  Graft began to thumb it. “Right off, I want a half dozen sets of under the jacket, level three, partial body armor. These En Garde Executive vests look about right.”

  “What sizes . . . by the way, who are you?”

  “My fa—” Lox started to say. “No, wait a minute; your fault. You never gave me a chance. Ben, this is my . . . co-worker, Michael. He knows what he needs better than I do.”

  “Okay. Anyway, Michael, what sizes?”

  From a pocket Graft pulled out a small notebook in which he had the jacket sizes for each man in his team. He read off those of the six who would be going to the second safe house.

  “I can handle everything except the really big guy,” Ben said. “Just not a lot of demand for large sizes here. I can get you an old PASGT in extra large. It won’t hold SAPI plates, of course, but I can get those and a harness to hold them. Will that do?”

  “It’ll have to,” Graft agreed. “Now as for firearms; We need half a dozen .45’s with four mags and five hundred rounds each. Suppressed would be nice, but only if you can get us some subsonic ammunition . . .”

  “No sweat.”

  “Good. Also, two AA-12 shotguns; those, or Akdals, or Saiga 12s. And I’d like to get a pair of these Russki PP-90M1’s . . .”

  “Can’t help you with those,” Ben said. “Sold the few I had a while back, maybe three months. I’ve got Sterlings, though,” he added brightly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  O Curse of marriage,

  —William Shakespeare, Othello

  MV Richard Bland, mid Atlantic

  I suppose it had to be something, thought Warrington, seated behind a built-in desk in the office that went with the ground force commander’s quarters, within the Bland’s superstructure. Why not this?

  “This” was an altercation, verbal only, between Captain Stocker and Sergeant Hallinan, on the mess deck, centered on proper safety procedures for a rifle but really about the very different kinds of personnel that tended to gravitate to, on the one hand, the special operations world and, on the other, the—more or less—“regular army.” Strictly speaking, of course, there was precisely no segment of M Day, Inc. that was actually regular. Still, attitudes carried over. One of these attitudes was concerned with the technical; what, in fact, was safe and what wasn’t. The other was legal and moral. Among the American and even Commonwealth spec ops types, rank had long been a fairly fuzzy proposition: Captains cut grass and picked up cigarette butts, while, often enough, sergeants led missions. Let a PSYOP major show up to support a Special Forces A Team led by a captain? That captain was in charge. Conversely, among the regulars, rank and position were hard, fast, and even sacred. “If senior, I will take command . . . ”

  The regulars’ position was, generally speaking, that the Special Forces community sacrificed long-term order, stability, and discipline for short-term tactical gain. SF generally thought the regulars had something up their butts, possibly a stick, but often enough, their heads.

  They were both at least partially right.

  And they’re both basically right, here, too.

  Warrington looked up at the tall, skinny, brown-eyed Hallinan, with distaste. “And your story, Sergeant?”

  Standing just forward of his company’s sergeant major and the first sergeant for A Company, a few feet from the seated Stocker, Hallinan braced to attention. Sure, special operations forces, to include 2nd Battalion, M Day, were pretty informal. But there’s a time and place for everything. Since he didn’t know how much, if any, trouble he was in, this seemed like it might be one of those times and places.

  “Sir. It’s like this. I’d just come off the sub-cal range, forward. I was heading to stow my rifle in the arms rooms. The galley was on my way—can’t avoid it really—and it was lunchtime, so I got in line. Didn’t bust the line or anything, just jumped in behind one of the Guyanans. Then Captain—”

  “Major,” Warrington corrected, even while thinking, Silly damned custom.

  “Right, sir. Major Stocker came over and asked me about my safety, which was not, per SOP, engaged. I help up my hand, extended my—be it noted, sir—trigger finger, and said, ‘This is my safety.’ The captain—”

  “Major.”

  Hallinan glanced down at the line officer, then returned to attention. “Right; the major told me to engage my mechanical safety. I said we didn’t do that. He made it an order. I said my orders come from Lava, who’s a colonel, and Terry, who’s a real major. At that point . . . Cap . . . Major Stocker told me I was under arrest. Then the sergeant major showed up and marched me here.”

  Warrington nodded. “Is that substantially correct, Sergeant Major?”

  Straight faced, Puerto Rican accent subdued but noticeable, Sergeant Major Pierantoni answered, “Yessir. Substantially, sir.”

  “First Sergeant Kiertzner?”

  Kiertzner had actually retired from the British Army as a sergeant major, held the rank of master sergeant as the senior NCO of the team that was the cadre for C Company, and was a first sergeant by virtue of being the senior noncom in C Company. He wore his old British Army rank on a leather band around his wrist, since M day wasn’t really all that touchy about such things. He also sported a Vandyke, since the Regiment wasn’t especially anal about facial hair, either. The troops, in deference to his old rank, tended to call him “Sergeant Major” rather than “Top.”

  Like many of the senior noncoms in M Day, Kiertzner could have taken a commission if he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d liked being a noncom too much to give it up.

  The Brit-born, if Danish extracted, first shirt ahemed and said, “Umm, yes. Substantially, sir. Sergeant Hallinan left off a few minor details.”

  “Like referring to my entire company as wannabes,” offered Stocker, shooting Kiertzner a dirty look. “Like saying that if my men weren’t competent enough to be trusted with loaded weapons maybe they should find another line of work? Like—”

  Holding up a silencing hand, Warrington said, “I get the idea, Andrew. Sergeant Major?”

  “Yessir, that kind of detail,” Pierantoni agreed. But you’ll have to ask for it, Tracy; I’m not volunteering anything.

  “I see. Hallinan, you are dismissed to your quarters. Stay there until I send for you.”

  “Sir.” The sergeant executed a sharp—unusually so for 2nd Battalion—salute, took a step back, faced about, smartly, and then departed through the hatch. Pierantoni closed the hatch behind him. Then Pierantoni took a seat, himself, opposite Stocker. Kiertzner leaned against the wall.

  “This shit always happens,” Warrington said, as soon as the hatchway clicked shut.

  “Indiscipline and insubordination?” Stocker queried.

  “It isn’t, you know,” Warrington countered, wagging one finger. “Or not exactly what you mean by it. Hallinan’s a good man. I can trust him to do the right thing even if nobody’s watching him. I can tell him to sit in a muddy hole for three days and watch X, and he will stay there, wide awake, watching X, if he has to prop his eyelids open with sharp twigs or wire his own balls to a field telephone. But it’s a different kind of discipline and a different kind of subordination. And that’s appropriate for the kind of soldier he is, which is a different kind of soldier than what you’re used to.

  “But, whenever we mix the two, regulars and spec ops, we have this kind of problem. Because the two outlooks just don’t mix for shit.

  “How loud was Hallinan?” Warrington asked of Pierantoni.

  “The cap
. . . the major’s troops heard the exchange, sir, enough of them. At least the last part, once the two of them got heated.”

  Placing an elbow on the desk’s Formica top, Warrington made a fist and rested his cheek on it. “Right. Of course. Wouldn’t do to be subtle.” He glanced at Stocker. “I don’t suppose any of that was your fault.”

  “Might have been,” the Canuck admitted. “I’m not used to being told to fuck off, for all practical purposes, by a noncom.”

  “Major Stocker,” said Pierantoni, “screamed at Hallinan, ‘Put your fucking safety on, you blockhead.’”

  Stocker shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I suppose I did.”

  “And thereby made this much more complex and difficult than it needed to be. Shall I lay out the problems for you?” Warrington hadn’t made an offer. He intended to lay out the problems, whether Stocker wanted to hear them or not. Fingers began to extend, one by one, as he ticked off the problems.

  “One, and the one you probably care about most; I have to punish Hallinan, who did nothing wrong by our ethos, or you lose prestige and authority in your company.

  “Two, assuming I do punish him, it’s going to create bad blood between my people and yours.

  “Three, if I don’t punish him, your people are going to feel that their form of discipline has been spat on.

  “Four, if I do punish him, my people are going to feel like their form of discipline has been spat on.

  “Five—”

  “I get the idea,” Stocker said.

  “Oh, no,” Warrington corrected, “I’ve just begun to scratch the surface. Five, your people might or might not be needed. But we know my people will be. So because you had to butt in—”

  That touched a nerve. Angry now, Stocker raised his voice. “Now wait a God damned minute. In case you didn’t notice, this is a metal ship. An accidental discharge was going to ricochet until it hit somebody.”