Countdown: H Hour

by Tom Kratman

  “There wasn’t going to be one!”

  “Six,” said Pierantoni, over the officers’ shouting, “it’s got the two senior ground fighters aboard arguing like children.”

  “I fucking hate it when you’re right,” Warrington said, sotto voce. Stocker just glared, though the heat of the glare dissipated quickly.

  “Which leaves us with what we’re going to do about it,” Pierantoni said. “Rule One is that we can’t, on our own hook, change the SOP. Any of our people carrying arms will not have them on safe. With what we do, where and when we do it, it’s a bad—a deadly bad—habit.”

  “Reconfigure the ship to separate out your people and mine?” Stocker suggested. “More than they already are, I mean. Maybe set up a different galley?”

  “Doesn’t buy us much,” Warrington said, shaking his head. “And we do need to get used to each other, if we’re going to end up fighting together. And, despite what I said before, we might.

  “How about training your people to our firearms safety standards?”

  Now Stocker shook his head. “Shoveling shit against the tide. That, or maybe starting a shit tsunami rolling downhill. You can’t imagine the trouble we’ve had drilling them into something like fanaticism over putting their weapons on safe. They’re good troops, but they’re still from the Third World. Changing this, now, would toss into question everything we’ve drilled into them. Confusion to us, rather than the enemy.”

  “So what, then?” Warrington asked of Pierantoni.

  “Three days bread and water for Hallinan, for mouthing off to an officer, then ignore it,” the sergeant major said. He shot a glance at Kiertzner, who nodded silent agreement.

  “It was just Emperor Mong,” Kiertzner said.

  Stocker snickered; the emperor was something of an inside joke to Commonwealth forces.

  “Emperor Mong,” Kiertzner sighed. “A malevolent celestial being. You never see him, but his unique talent is to encourage young folk to take the least sensible and most damaging course of action by making that seem like a splendid idea. He’s the one who whispers into a young soldier’s ear, ‘I know it’s Sunday evening and you have an early start tomorrow morning for a heavy week, but surely if you just go out drinking, stay out until 0400 and then don’t go to bed, you’ll be fine for PT at 0600,’ or ‘just go ahead and hook up your boogie box to the vehicle batteries using commo wire. What could possibly go wrong?’

  “It is the emperor’s proud duty to advise the young soldier that there’s no need to use a condom with the girl he just met who is practically leaking on the floor with her unquenched desire. He, too, serves as a kind of Cupid, or matchmaker, who will assure the young soldier that the tart he’s been seeing would make a fine wife. His Imperial Majesty will confidently assure the smallish infantryman that, why of course he’d be a match for that entire gun section of broad-shouldered gunners in the local tavern. His power is unfathomable, and his wickedness beyond measure.

  “His power is particular impressive in Scotland. And at sea. And when that space shuttle blew up? That was Mong, whispering, ‘Go on, see what pushing that red button does.’ ”

  “Oh,” said Pierantoni, “a relation of Murphy’s.”

  “Distantly related, yes,” Kiertzner said, “but they have different functions in the Divine Order. Murphy just fucks you. The emperor grows your dick so you fuck yourself. And one of the problems with the emperor is that perhaps one time in twenty his advice is sound. Which is, as it turns out, just enough for young troops to keep taking his advice.”

  “Ah. I can see that.”

  “Okay,” agreed Warrington, “but what do we do?”

  “Easy, sir. Major Stocker tells his people to ignore our rules; because the”—Pierantoni added the quotes through tone of voice and bracing his neck—“ ‘Guyanans are real soldiers and us Second Battalion pukes are not.’ We sit hard on our people to keep their overactive mouths shut and to minimize any differences.”

  Both the officers looked at him as if he were either crazy or stupid.

  “Then you brilliant bastards come up with something better. That’s what you get the big bucks for.”

  Way back in the dim mists of antiquity, when he’d first been thinking of going either U.S. Army Special Forces or to OCS, before eventually doing both, then Sergeant Warrington had had a company commander who had taken an interest in him, enough so to snag him as a driver, and use the opportunity to explain to him how to be a company commander. This included how to do nonjudicial punishment. Since the Corporation had adopted over U.S. military law pretty much in toto, the advice still held good.

  That long-ago commander had given a number of rules, or guidelines. “Rule One: Nonjudicial punishment should be very rare, indeed. Most problems can and should be handled well before it gets to you. If you find you’re having regular NJP sessions, there is something wrong with your command.

  “Rule Two: Take the time to plan the event. That means write out the script and rehearse it, if only in your mind. If you’re a decent human being, it’s hard to be a bastard. Rehearsal helps.

  “Rule Three: Use it as an opportunity to build your chain of command. Get input from the squad leader, platoon sergeant, and platoon leader. Ask the question: ‘Is this soldier salvageable?’

  “Rule Four: Always max out the guilty bastard, but then suspend any punishment you think is excessive, or likely to do more harm than good. Taking money or rank or both from a married man hurts his family, something you ought not want to do, if it’s at all avoidable. Restricting him to the barracks hurts him, in fact, gives him a serious—possibly terminal—case of lackanookie. Tie that in to the recommendations from his chain of command. Remember, too; suspended punishment reduces the probability of appeal.

  “Finally, Rule Five—and I cannot emphasize this enough: Always, always, always add to the punishment, ‘and an oral reprimand.’ Once you invoke those words, you can give an ass chewing so abusive that it would get you court-martialed in other circumstances. There is no practical limit in what you can say and how you can say it, because you will have invoked the magic words. This also tends to partially cover up your excessively kind and generous nature in suspending a goodly portion of the more material punishment. That said, sometimes you will want to do the oral reprimand first. And, in any case, remember that a commander is always on stage.”

  Having somewhat skirted Rule Four, insofar as he lacked the legal authority to reduce Hallinan’s rank—and didn’t want to anyway; Warrington was on Rule Five at the moment: “And an oral reprimand.”

  Warrington began conversationally. “Just out of curiosity, Sergeant Hallinan, were you sleeping during the classes at SWC”—that was the U.S. Army’s Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, NC—“when they lectured you on the delicate nature of dealing with local forces and their chains of command?”

  “Ummm, nosir,” answered Hallinan, normally somewhat light skinned and now gone positively pale in anticipation of what was coming.

  “Ah.” That was still conversational. But then Warrington’s voice rose a notch. “So you were too fucking stupid to pay attention? Or was it that in your incarnate ignorance and arrogance you figured that applied to everybody but you? Did you figure that your ever-so-fucking precious ego was so important that the mission didn’t matter?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Warrington snarled. “If I ever thought your opinion was worth listening to, I don’t think so right now.” Elbows on desk, he began massaging his temples as if suffering from a terrible migraine. Yes, boss, I remember that a commander is always on stage.

  “Now let me tell you what you’ve done,” he continued, and proceeded to do just that in an echo of the problems he’d previously listed for Stocker and Pierantoni. He embellished as seemed fit.

  When he was pretty sure all the color that could disappear from Hallinan’s face was gone, Warrington added, “Maybe you don’t think it’s a such big deal, compromising the missio
n and such. Certainly nothing to match the bruise to your poor widdle ego. So what if over a hundred million dollars gets paid to terrorists to do Satan knows what with? Small change, right? No big fucking deal?”

  Warrington stood then and sneered. “You stupid piece of dog shit. I ought to just have them weight your feet and toss you over the side. Maybe the frigging fish will get more use out of you then we’re likely to.”

  He began pounding the desk. “What”—bang—“the”—bang—“fuck”—bang—“were”—bang—“you”—bang—“thinking? Oh, silly of me; you weren’t thinking. You’re too goddamned stupid for thought. You’re a six-foot assemblage of shit masquerading as a soldier.”

  Warrington stopped the ass-chewing then, just glaring at Hallinan with feigned disgust. Then, turning to Pierantoni, he asked, “Recommendations., Sergeant Major?”

  “Despite current appearances,” the sergeant major answered, “he hasn’t always been the worthless pile of used tampons he currently appears, sir. They say suffering is good for the soul. I’d recommend three days bread and water.”

  Again glaring at Hallinan, Warrington announced, “So be it. Sergeant Hallinan, commencing at—”

  Whatever Warrington had been about to say was cut off by Pearson’s voice, coming over the ship’s intercom. “All hands and passengers, this is the captain speaking. Assembly on the mess deck in twenty minutes. Commanders of the ground force to my cabin immediately.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A world without nuclear weapons would be

  less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

  —Margaret Thatcher

  Yacht Resurrection, between the coast of Kudat

  and the island of Pulau Banggi, South China Sea

  The corporal poured tea for Janail and Mahmood. Valentin Prokopchenko had set his scotch aside and would not, for politeness’ sake, drink it while the Moslems were in his presence. Daoud al Helma had been left above, guarding Mahmood’s testing equipment and the more personal baggage.

  “You can do an exterior test of both devices now,” said Prokopchenko. Here, too, English was the only common tongue. “Upon deposit of half the agreed sum, in the escrow account I have given you, you may partially disassemble and evaluate one device, of your choosing. Upon full deposit, you may take delivery. I trust this is acceptable to you.”

  Janail looked at Mahmood for confirmation. He knew nothing about such things.

  The scientist nodded. “It’s all right, Janail. I can tell—to a better than ninety-five percent certainty—with the testing materials I have brought.”

  Turning back to Valentin, he asked, “Where and how did you come upon not one but two such warheads?”

  “I had them built,” answered the Russian. “More specifically, as the warheads on what the West calls the SS-27 rockets were changed out from single to MIRV—”

  “MIRV?” Janail interrupted.

  “Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles,” Mahmood supplied, patiently. In his own sphere, Janail was something of a master, but that sphere didn’t include strategic weapons. “A warhead of separate warheads, each of which goes its own way after a certain point.”

  “Like a shotgun?” asked Janail.

  “Yes,” agreed Mahmood, “if you can imagine that each pellet from a shotgun targets—and hits—a separate organ, one for the left eye, one for the right, one for the heart, one for each lung, two for the kidneys . . . ”

  Valentin chuckled softly. The analogy was rather apt, in its way. “Quite. We—the Russian Federation; as if we could actually afford it—are switching out our older warheads for newer ones, MIRV’s, mostly out of fear of the Chinese. The older warheads were broken down to their components and mostly sent for reprocessing.

  “The inert casings, tritium reservoirs, and sparkplug tubes, I bought for scrap. The conventional explosives I had cast anew. The tritium, deuterium, and plutonium-239 were . . . harder. Note that the tritium cartridges are almost brand new.

  “It’s fortunate that our security procedures have not improved noticeably since Lebed first discovered we were missing over one hundred devices. And security over the components is even worse. For example, the gold around the plutonium had been stripped off and disappeared before I got to it. How whoever did that managed it, no one seemed to know. That, I had to have newly plated on.

  “Oddly, the really hard parts were the krytron switches. Fortunately, in a country that has not really fully overcome socialist principles of accounting, shoddy workmanship to meet an imposed plan, unpaid work days to overproduce, and which further accepts the need to write off a certain percentage of what is produced because it is junk, it was possible to obtain enough. I fear that, someday, one of my country’s warheads will not work because it got the junk while I obtained the good material.

  “Yes, of course a fair amount of money changed hands for each step and piece. Hence my price.” Actually, remarkably little money, in the big scheme of things, and what I spent has very little to do with my price.

  “What about the permissive action link?” Mahmood asked.

  “There are none,” Prokopchenko answered. “Since these are privately produced, I saw no need to add any. Moreover, the world being the way it is, how could any buyer be certain I gave the proper PAL codes?”

  Never mind that I really do want you to have and to use these things. I don’t want you to know that for a certainty.

  The Resurrection had an elevator running right from Prokopchenko ’s office down to an indoor pool, on the next to lowest deck. It only made sense to have had it placed there, Prokopchenko, spending as much time as he did in less than sunny climes. Now the pool was hidden by its mechanical covering, strong enough, in itself, to serve as a dance floor. An oval section of lead shielding had been thrown up around it. More lead plates covered the ceiling, as well as the floor where the water of the pool didn’t provide its own considerable degree of shielding.

  Prokopchenko’s mistress, an extraordinary, utterly stunning, indeed breathtaking, six foot tall Ukrainian girl named Daria, was most put out by the loss of the pool. Worse, the guards wouldn’t even let her off the elevator anymore, not at the pool deck. And all the hatches to the pool area were locked. Inconsiderate bastard. I’d fuck a couple of the guards in revenge, but the religious fanatics would just as likely report me.

  Daria’s mood wasn’t improved by being locked in her quarters, with the guards bringing her her meals, since the day prior. “There are things about my business you are better off not knowing,” Valentin had explained. As if that’s an explanation!

  The elevator bearing Valentin, Janail, Mahmood, and his assistant into the bowels of the ship opened its door upon three leveled muzzles, from three submachine guns, in the hands on three very serious looking guards. At the guards’ sighting of their leader, the muzzles were raised, even as the men snapped to attention. The acoustics of the pool deck, which had often enough in the past served as a party room, were excellent; the motions made barely a sound.

  Past the guards, bent over one of the bags, Daoud removed a couple of dark jumpsuits of an odd material, thick and slightly stiff. Various other implements were already unpacked and set up near the sole entrance to the lead oval.

  Mahmood walked to one of the panels and felt it with bare fingertips. Lead, and not thin, was his judgment. It would be an unusually elaborate hoax to set this up just to fool us. He glanced around at the guards and saw one chewing his lip nervously. The others looked anything but calm. Prokopchenko, himself, likewise seemed a tad unsettled. No, no hoax. This may or may not be a pair of functional bombs. But, if they’re not, then more than likely the Russian himself was fooled and believes they are.

  Daoud walked over, bearing two of the jumpsuits and two masks.

  Though much of Mahmood’s testing equipment was old and obsolescent, he and Daoud helped each other into the very latest antiradiation suits—made of demron, a liquid metal—from Radiation Shield Technologies, in the Unit
ed States. Since these had no offensive use, they were not on anyone’s proscribed technologies list. In point of fact, even if those charged with developing such lists had foreseen this particular use, it would have made no difference. The oldest of old-fashioned lead suits would have worked as well; they’d just not have been as comfortable.

  Suited up, they then loaded upon their bodies an Ortec Detective-EX, a portable X-ray digital imaging system from Scanna, the laptop that went with the Scanna machine, a Dewar’s flask filled with liquid nitrogen, a handheld “pager”—which was a low-tech device for measuring gamma radiation, another handheld explosive sniffer, plus a couple of small bags not much larger than a laptop carrier. Under one arm Daoud tucked a flat screen, about two feet by four.

  So laden, the pair more or less waddled to the exterior door, their equipment clanking. The door was mounted in a projection, an irregularity, from the main oval. Throwing a bolt and then turning a knob, Mahmood pulled the thing—ugh, yes, real lead and no hoax—then waddled through, followed by his assistant. The latter then closed the door, before Mahmood opened the interior one.

  Il hamdu l’illah! was the scientist’s immediate thought. He felt a wave of reverence wash over him at the Almighty’s beneficence in providing this means to avenge the many wrongs done to his people, which included all the people of the Ummah, the entire community of Muslims in the world, to include the majority who probably had no interest in nuking anybody.

  The devices, two cylinders of about two feet in diameter by four and a half in length, sat on wheeled cradles atop the pool cover. They shone a dull silver compared to the cover’s matte black. The Russian hadn’t bothered with painting them. Still, paint or no paint, they seemed to the Pakistani ripe with menace. The two unloaded most of their equipment on the floor.