by FARMAN, ANDY
It was not unusual of course for Orientals to be serving in the Legion, but possibly a whole squad could raise a curious comment. However there was nothing else for it but to trust in luck and a little bluff to get onto the site.
Tucking away the PNG’s he nodded approvingly and then lifted a heavy bergen onto his shoulders.
“Bonne.”
Their communications were a problem in a country this size with only ESA, the military and the gendarmeries having access to anything above cell phones. Any transmission made could come from a relatively small number of known sources, so secure encrypted transmissions were out. They would stand out like a sore thumb. Likewise plain speech, that would also register as being ‘off’ so no “Broadsword calling Danny Boy?” on the air waves and microwaves tonight.
Using the cellular system was too easily spiked by its being simply turned off once the French woke up to the fact they were under attack.
The solution was pre-arranged text in apparently accidental transmissions of seemingly innocuous material, the greatly annoying ‘open carrier’, ‘open channel’, or ‘Permanent Send’ momentarily, if you prefer. Jie’s chosen offering was a classic, of the musical variety, as he informed Senior Sergeant Yen, the unit’s warrant officer and the senior amongst the eight troops remaining with the Dai that they were ashore without incident and proceeding.
Jie sang softly to himself apparently absent minded and depressed the transmit button on his Thales tactical radio.
“…La mer…Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent…La mer…Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie…”
He certainly did not do Charles Trénet full justice but following a calculated pause a single flick of Senior Sergeant Yen’s radio transmit button acknowledged receipt of the message.
Jie turned directly away from the sea, heading towards the highway known as Route de l’Espace.
“Allons-y!”
The Kourou estuary: French Guiana.
It would be with extreme caution that Li approached Paracaibo Wharf, the European Space Agency dock sitting three and a half miles downriver from the coastal town of Kourou at the river’s northern lip.
No intelligence updates had been received for over a month. The last they had received merely stated that pair of Atlantiques was at that time believed to have been attached to the colony defences along with a pair of corvettes. There was nothing to indicate where the French naval flotilla was basing out of, either Kourou or the capital? The colony’s main port of Dégrad des Cannes, which had grown to become the southern suburb of Cayenne, housed a permanent detachment of marines in a barracks beside a jetty extending into the Mahury River estuary. It was easily deep enough for even a destroyer to dock there and the river was wide enough for it to turn even without the aid of tugs.
Their intelligence briefing included only that of an armed civilian security guard was present at the ESA dock in Kourou except when freighters carrying the rocket sections or satellites were due, or had docked and were still unloading. There was nothing in the way of warehousing at the ESA dock to interest a thief, that all took place at the colony’s main port. All the ESA dock boasted was a solid, modern jetty and a crane on the river. The quayside was little more than a car park, half covered to provide relief from the sun for waiting heavy duty transporter vehicles and their crews.
A small tank farm sat to one side in a jungle clearing, it was connected to the jetty by all the plumbing necessary to accept deliveries of petrol, Avgas and diesel fuel.
Tall security fences topped by razor wire surrounded the dock and tank farm. Motion sensors and CCTV provided a second layer of security, monitored from a guardhouse at the main gate.
Unlike the port at the capital, Kourou required the regular services of a dredger to keep the main channel deep enough for the freighters to navigate their way safely. When completely unloaded the freighters had to be towed stern first back to the sea by tugs.
As such neither Dai nor Bao could remain completely submerged for their eventual jaunt downriver.
Li did not imagine that storming the dockside facilities would be anything but counterproductive, and so the low key tactics Captain Huaiqing had suggested were being employed.
Having dropped off the submersible, Dai flooded two forward torpedo tubes and two rear tubes. He also opened the outer doors so as to be fully prepared for a surprise encounter with one of the warships, if in fact they were indeed operating out of the ESA dock.
Half of their YU-6 21” torpedoes were armed with the new sodium hydride warheads which released the sodium on impact, producing 2000°C of heat as the compound reacted with the hydrogen in the seawater, or at least that is what it said on the tin.
Li had four forward tubes loaded with conventional warhead torpedoes because everything new has unforeseen bugs somewhere in the system. If he was going to be at knife fighting distance with the French flotilla then he wanted proven technology to hand. The last two forward tubes contained YJ-12 anti-ship missiles. Useless within the confines of the river but they would be ready for immediate use when they returned to the ocean. No time costly unloading and reloading of tubes to delay their immediate use.
The rear tubes were also loaded with conventionally tipped weapons but he only had four of the smaller, and aging, 16” torpedoes. There were four rear tubes in a torpedo room a third the size of the one forward as there was no storage for reloads, the stings-in-the-tail sat in their tubes ready for use during the entire duration of deployments.
All the torpedoes were set to run shallow.
Thus, suitably prepared for the worst, Dai moved along the coast to within five hundred metres of the town itself without encountering any further mines.
This part of the operation was lacking several ingredients from the rehearsed plan they had trained for in China. The loss of Tuan, her submersible, the special forces detachment and their explosives would mean some ingenuity and adaptability on the part of the much smaller force that was taking on their tasks.
Captain Li was reassured by the quality and enthusiasm of the men.
No cannon fodder, these.
He watched them prepare themselves and their equipment to knock off the Kourou police station and night duty personnel, to render useless any air assets on the small airstrip outside the town, blow a bridge and lock horns with a fearsome regiment of jungle fighters.
Each man would be carrying a FAMAS F1 5.56mm assault rifle, bayonet, three APAV40 rifle grenades, a bespoke detachable sound suppressor, smoke grenades, CS gas grenades, plastic explosives, detonators, an anti-armour mine they could adapt with electrical detonators or simple use as a mine, various ‘switches’ for booby traps, cheese wire garrottes, ropes and a host of other items that made the submariner feel fatigued just imagining having to carry it all.
Half a kilometre off Les Roche Point the eight remaining special forces troopers exited through the rear escape hatch and swam ashore.
Kourou was a very modern place given its moderate size. Thanks to the commerce and cash associated with the space centre it had good roads, street lighting and orderly housing. Microwave masts for the local cellular telephone system were visible, as were the satellite dishes that linked the residents to the motherland via the internet and satellite TV. Had it not been for the war the street lights would be lit, the bars neon signs ablaze and the populace would be enjoying themselves, but blackouts did not engender good nights out so most stayed home and only a lone police car had been visible on the streets through the search periscope’s lo-lite TV.
Li felt a little self-conscious as he had strode from his cabin with a webbing cartridge belt, holster on his hip and camouflage cream on his face. His men nodded respectfully but one unseen wag mimicked the sound of clinking spurs.
“Laugh it up boys.” He’d responded. “If it gets so that me and this gun are the only thing between success and swimming home, you’d better be wearing your water wings.�
� His expertise with small arms was limited to one day a year when he was required to demonstrate safe handling drills on a range. The ten rounds he fired during that process did not in any way count towards his annual requalification, which was fortunate for him.
Bao remained submerged beyond the river mouth with her Lo-Lite TV equipped search periscope raised along with the ECM and communications masts.
Dai entered the estuary at periscope depth; a bare twenty feet of water beneath her keel.
The control room was now illuminated with red lighting in order that the bridge crew and landing parties eyes would already be acclimatised to the dark.
Li was glued to the periscope until he saw a broad slipway off to their left. The road that served it was the remains of the original main highway to Cayenne.
“All stop.”
The slipway belonged to the old ferry service that had existed for centuries in progressively modern form, and profited at that spot since the Portuguese had first claimed the land. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards and Englishmen had also fought over ownership of this country but the Kourou river ferry had survived and prospered despite them all. Only when a Swiss built a bridge downriver did the fat lady finally sing for the ferry. It sat abandoned now, a mere marker for a Chinaman at the point where the river started and the deeper estuary ended.
Dai slowly arose, her masts emerging from the waters like a clutch of Excaliburs.
Brown, silt laden, water flowed off the Juliett’s bridge and down the grey steel sides of the conning tower, but her bulk stayed hidden beneath the surface, giving them the radar profile of a small boat.
Li undogged the top lid and locked it in place as he emerged into the rain. Lookouts took post and four ratings strained to haul a 23mm cannon up the ladder from the control room and mounted it as quietly as possible, loading a belt of ammunition but not cocking the weapon as the harsh metallic sound would travel far across the water despite the rain.
It was a snug fit now in the conning tower with look-outs, the Strela air sentry, 23mm and Captain Li.
The Strela had a back blast area which limited its arcs of fire. The ideal was for two sentries on the casing, one forward and one aft of the conning tower. In heavy weather though, the best-of-a-bad-job position was aft of everyone on the conning tower, perched above them all and attached to the ECM mast by a safety harness. This position was of course not conducive to engaging targets approaching from the rear. Nevertheless, Li had his air sentry assisted up there to allow more freedom of movement on the bridge.
Captain Li squinted against the downpour and pulled up his collar to minimise the discomfort of having water running down the back of his neck. He had a hood but he preferred keep his hearing unhindered.
Raising night glasses to his eyes he picked out the channel marker. They remained on electrical power, draining the batteries precious charge but preserving the element of surprise as Li conned the vessel slowly forwards keeping diligently above the deepest part of the rivers dredged channel.
His nose wrinkled as the salt tang of the ocean became polluted by the scent of the jungle, the rotting vegetation and wet mud from the mangrove swamps that lay just outside the small towns influence.
The trees, the creepers and dense jungle undergrowth closed in on them, overhanging the river banks as soon as the town had slipped behind them in the darkness.
A nightscope picked out a wooden dugout canoe drawn up on the bank, the Stone Age existing just a stone’s throw from the twenty first century and all its internet broadband glory.
Their world became that of the tropical downpour and the ominous dark mass of the jungle, picked out by a fractionally lighter sky.
It was claustrophobic. They were out of their comfort zone, away from the deep waters they were designed to hunt in and this added to the diligence with which the bridge crew kept watch.
Li allowed himself to swing his glasses up and down river every so often, taking in the black and impenetrable gloom of the banks.
Amid the leaping strikes of raindrops upon the river two bright dots appeared beside the bank, he kept his glasses upon them as he tried to work out what they were, a surveillance device? He lowered the glasses and they disappeared, invisible to the naked eye in the darkness but with the glasses raised once more he immediately picked them out again as they were now moving towards his command, creating a faint V of a wake in the rivers surface. A seabird swam into his vision and into the path of the glowing dots, its own head pulled back into the protection its furled wings afforded against the rain.
There was a splash, a flurry of movement and both bird and dots disappeared with the swish of a caiman’s leathery tail, leaving only a few floating feathers. Li shivered despite himself at the suddenness with which death had visited this primeval place.
The river bent around to the right and Li leant over the side of the conning tower so as to more quickly sight the ESA jetty, glasses held to his eyes with one hand and the other clutching a microphone to his mouth, thumb just touching the transmit switch and the order to open fire ready on his lips. The rating on the 23mm cannon clutched the weapons cocking handle tightly, his knuckles white and bracing himself to ratchet the lever to the rear.
Below decks the tension was palpable. In engineering they were awaiting the call to throw the engines into full reverse for a fighting withdrawal back to the ocean under fire from surface warships. The torpedomen stood ready, and between them and the control room waited the armed ratings who would be their sentries along with the Fassing party in the central passageway. All were bathed in red light, clutching small arms with the awkwardness of the unfamiliar, but ready to carry out the fuelling procedures from the novelty of a rock steady surface for once.
The darkness of the jungle on the northern bank altered with the appearance of a silhouette that possessed straight lines. It separated from the unruly mass of the night time rain forest to sit stationary a hundred metres off the north bank. As it came into the view of the 23mm gunner he immediately took aim.
“Belay that!” Li commanded sharply. “It’s the Fliterland.”
Bulky, specialised derricks sat above the elongated ships hold where the Soyuz rocket sections and delicate payloads were stored but the freighter was riding high in the water, empty, her last cargo unloaded weeks before.
Rust streaked here and there, the freighters blue hull and white superstructure loomed over them as they slowly motored along her cliff-like port side.
The dock beyond the freighter was empty of warships too. Li was not as relieved as he might have been. He still did not know where the French corvettes and fast patrol boats were.
“All stop.”
The rain showed no sign of relenting as the Dai sat motionless in midstream. Li took up his glasses again, to peer downriver at the road bridge, and to look for any sign of sentries.
It was both a modern and no frills, functional, construction for carrying a two lane highway as well as an effective barrier preventing anything more substantial than a large motor launch from progressing downriver beyond that point.
Ten prefabricated concrete supports had been sunk into the riverbed to carry the highway. Li guessed that a minimum of three spans would need to be dropped for it to hinder a determined engineer beyond a week. Ideally those supports should be destroyed too but they were substantial and solidly built. It would require the services of a demolitions expert and more time and explosives than they possessed.
As for sentries, Li saw a shape midway across in a rain slick waterproof cape slowly pacing about; head down in the manner of the truly bored and thoroughly miserable. He looked slightly hunchbacked on account of his weapon hanging by its sling off one shoulder beneath the cape to keep it dry, the muzzle pointing downwards and of no immediate offensive use to man nor beast.
This was not what he expected of one of the vaunted legionnaire jungle fighters of 3e Régiment étranger d'infanterie. This must be either a student from the jungle warfare school or one of
the local reservists
As Li watched the soldier suddenly leaned back against the guardrail and sat down heavily upon the bridges tarmac surface. He did not move again.
Two more figures appeared from the north end of the bridge, and in contrast to the sentry the butts of their weapons were in the shoulder and they were up in the aim. Bulky sound suppressors panned from side to side as they moved rapidly in that odd gait that keeps the upper body and shoulders level and stable, the knees seemingly joined together. They did not pause on drawing level with the slumped figure, they did not tarry to feel for a pulse or to offer aid, the nearest of his SF detachment briefly lowered his aim and Li saw two flashes at the muzzle as he double tapped his victim in the head, just to be certain.
They continued on across the bridge, walking rapidly and looking for further targets as they disappeared from his view.
Two minutes later they returned at the jog but this time they did stop at the supine figure. One stood guard as the other stooped, getting a good hold before straightening up with his arms under the sentry’s armpits and draping him over the guard rail. He bent again to grasp the ankles and upended the body into the river. The splash of it hitting the water was followed by others with the forms of eager caiman sliding down the southern bank. Long tails propelled them swiftly through the water in a race to claim their supper.
On the road bridge, the Chinese trooper peered over the side at his victim before looking up and into the darkness, directly at the otherwise invisible shape of the Juliett’s conning tower. He raised a hand to give a little cavalier salute to the submarine and then both jogged back the way they had come.
Li looked away from the bridge and what was about to be the disquieting sight of large reptiles feeding on a human corpse.
“Open main seawater valves… vent ballast, blow one and two.”
High pressure air displaced the water in her ballast tanks, forcing it out into the river and Dai’s casing rose up out of the muddy brown waters.
