by FARMAN, ANDY
They had not heard gunfire as the wind was at their backs. The launching Vega had of course been a very spectacular last view.
A bare fifty metres lay between themselves and the guardroom when the Vega launch took place. Ten faces could not help but follow its fiery splendour upwards, its tail flame illuminating them rather conveniently for the thirty calibre crew at the north gate who were now stood-to and on the lookout for bogus legionnaires.
“Night ranges, sir? Local gun club perhaps?” the warrant officer suggested to Captain Li.
“At this time, when rockets are launching?” Li responded. “No, that is not very likely. The ‘big sky’ theory is frequently disproved by stray rounds and ricochets.” He shook his head. “It would be prudent to work on the assumption they are blown, and the brown stuff is about to hit, I think.”
The two troopers tasked with ensuring there was nothing on the small Kourou airstrip that could be used against them arrived back at a fast jog.
“Something is stirring in town, sir.” One reported.
“Quiet as the grave when we went through it the first time, but there’s people moving about and cars starting up now. Some fat bastard in pyjama bottoms and combat jacket nearly trod on me on the way to his car.” The troopers had been moving quickly and quietly along silent streets when they had been surprised by house lights coming on and the sound of car engines starting up. Dropping prone in someone’s flower bed and remaining motionless had been instinctive.
“Seven bellies he had.” Put in his mate. “Like a stack of jellies jogging, they were, and he farted at every other step!”
“What is it with you guys?” asked Captain Li, his face screwing up in distaste at the description.
“Is there some ‘Instilling graphic and unpleasant mental images, course’ you all attend or something?”
He gave consideration to what he had just been told. The out of shape resident in combat jacket hurrying out to his car was more than likely a member of the reserve platoon formed from retirees.
“Where were they headed?”
“North, sir.” The first trooper replied.
“So, good news for us here but not so good for the launch pad teams.” muttered Li. Not good news for the town either, he thought, knowing that the orders in his safe would have to be carried out regardless of his personal feelings.
The captain of Bao would have a sealed copy in his safe, to be opened on the death or incapacity of Li, the next senior officer in the flotillas chain of command.
His executive officer also knew, Li had briefed him of course. The only other member of the crew to be intimate with that part of the mission would of course be his own ‘steward’, who may even have received a briefing by the admiral himself before the orders had even been written.
However, there was still time, they did not know for certain that the launch pad teams had been compromised, and even if they had it did not automatically follow that they were prevented from completing their missions?
He had his fingers crossed for Jie and those nineteen men to show before the refuelling was done and the bridge dropped into the muddy Kourou.
Across at the bridge the demolition preparations were well under way. Two troopers stood watch, one for trouble approaching from Cayenne and one keeping an eye on the quartet of caiman in the river. The biggest and strongest had claimed the sentry’s corpse so the others were watching another pair of troopers hanging by ropes below the bridges roadbed, wiring it up.
An adult caiman’s tail can lift 80% of its body vertically upwards, clear of the water for just long enough to snatch unwary birds and monkeys from the lower limbs of overhanging trees, and Li could imagine what was going through the minds of the hungry trio as they watched the troopers suspended below the bridge, working swiftly and methodically like temptingly dangling Piñatas.
The trooper watching the trio of reptiles obviously thought they were thinking the same thing as he suddenly fired a long burst, the spent cases hitting the tarmac road surface and making more noise than the fired rounds had. One of the beasts reared up, threshing and twisting…the other two immediately turned on it, sinking their teeth in and instinctively rolling their wounded brother, seeking to subdue it by drowning before tearing off chunks and devouring it.
“That’ll keep them busy until we’re done.” Senior Sergeant Yen observed aloud but broke off as an armed rating relayed a message from the front gate, shouting across that the telephone was ringing non-stop at the gatehouse.
“Well.” Said Captain Li. “If they answer it then whoever is on the other end will know something is wrong and they will come in force, or they can leave it and maybe just a few will come to see if anything’s wrong in which case you can thin out the opposition a bit…but it’s your call Senior Sergeant, you are the on-site authority on dry land combat.”
Twelve armed sailors and the four troopers who were not engaged at the bridge was hardly a substantial force.
Senior Sergeant Yen departed to arrange what he had called a greeting for the unwelcome with some of the Type 72 light anti-tank mines they had brought. Not as effective as bar mines they were good for wrecking a tanks tracks and a road wheel perhaps. They could temporarily incapacitate any current main battle tank and devastate soft skin vehicles. As the French in Guiana had none of the former and plenty of the latter the relatively small but powerful AT mines could prove useful.
As Dai’s fuel tanks reached absolute capacity the Bao arrived, holding station in midstream as Dai cast off, and again moved beyond the dark and silent Fliterland, still operating on battery power in the hope of keeping their presence a secret as long as possible.
The maw-like air intakes and even larger exhausts’ covers remained closed and hopefully would remain so until they were again back out to sea.
Perhaps the telephone call was the guard’s wife? Perhaps it was a wrong number or even his bookie…?
It arrived with a thunderous roar, its undercarriage just clearing the white painted roof of the covered parking area, overflying the Fliterland and the two Chinese submarines to disappear in a shock of noise and downwash beyond the jungle canopy of the southern bank.
Neither Dai’s or Bao’s air sentries fired, so suddenly had the big Chinook appeared and departed that only Bao’s 23mm and a trooper on the road bridge fired a shot. The 23mm cannons gunner failed to aim ahead of the aircraft before letting rip so naturally he missed by as much as four aircraft lengths, the tracer curving harmlessly behind it. The troopers lighter and sound suppressed rounds ‘lacked the legs’ as they say, falling short.
“I thought they booby trapped that bloody thing?” Li shouted across the warrant officer on the dock who had paused to duck and watch the big shape cross the river.
The sound of the big rotor blades drowned out the reply as the machine cleared the trees downriver, flaring as it crossed back over to the north side and obviously aiming for some open space four hundred or so yards away around the bend. Li could barely make it out in the dark.
It was impressive flying by a military or ex-military pilot with plenty of experience in heliborne assaults. Flying so low as to minimise the opportunity of effective ground fire.
Li realised that his own air sentry was unable to engage it with the Strela as the submarines bridge was in the back blast area of the weapon. It was his own fault for not repositioning the sentry on the casing when the opportunity arose and he cursed himself for a fool now.
Don Caldew had been flying for the ‘My T Oak’ logging and lumber company for over two years, since right after getting out of the service in fact, flying the companies surplus Boeing CH47 Chinook.
The pay cheques were fatter than the ones Uncle Sam had given him but the work was as dull as ditch water. He missed the excitement, the adrenalin rush of flying into a hot LZ, he missed the guys and he missed something else too, the mission purpose, the sense you were doing something important. He recognised that that was what had made him sign on the dotted line
in the first place.
Don came from a little town in the American Midwest where he was born in the same hospital his folks had been born, went to the same High School his folks and their folks before them had attended, and was expected to get a job at the local plant, just as his parents and their parents had. They hadn’t even considered setting up a college fund for him. Why should he want or expect anything more? Don did want more, but he didn’t know quite what it was that was missing from the life plan his parents had presented him with. The answer, when he found it, had changed his life forever.
The army recruiter at the local county fair had seen a light appear in young Don’s eyes as he looked at the glossy photographs in the pamphlets and the poster with the ‘Be All You Can Be’ title. Most of the first questions the recruiter got from visitors to his stand were “What’s the pay like?” or “Did you ever shoot anyone, mister?” The first category, if they signed on, would wash out in 70% of cases, the second would come back in ten years when they were old enough and ask the same question as the first category. But Don’s had been “Do you make a difference?”
With his level of education, Don joined the infantry as a rifleman and he loved the life, the camaraderie and the sense of doing something with a purpose.
Another life altering experience was his first flight in a helicopter, a Blackhawk. While his buddies were staring out at the ground Don had been craning his neck to watch the AC, the Aircraft Commander, and his co-pilot.
It had just been an air experience flight, an introduction to the drills required to get on and off without walking into a rotor blade or grabbing hold of something you shouldn’t in order to climb aboard when fully loaded down with weapons and equipment. They had a short cross country hop to a wide green meadow where the aircraft had landed and shut down while they all had lunch, army style of course, but Don had sought out the AC, asking him about what it took to be an army helicopter pilot. The answers had been a little sobering but Don was not one to be easily put off.
Back home at that time his friends were marrying high school sweethearts and making babies, although not always in that order, and buying houses on the same street where their parents and grandparents lived. Don went home on leave after passing basic, but apart from attending his sister’s wedding the following year that was it, he never went back again.
The army ran further education courses and Don applied himself with a will. His first tour in Iraq was as a rifleman, but his second was in the left hand seat of a CH47 Chinook.
A chunk of metal taking off Don’s right leg below the knee during a hot extraction in Helmand province ten years later was the only reason he had left, not because he wanted to but because the army was downsizing and younger, 100% fit AC’s were preferred over the prosthetic limb owning variety.
Lifting tree trunks out of the woods kept his mind focussed but flying personnel and equipment from A to B was as interesting as watching traffic signals change, at least he was still flying though.
‘My T Oak’ won the ESA contract to clear the jungle from around the facility and other small jobs appeared in-country too, mainly at the behest of the Governor’s office to clear trees around the small marine bases on the Suriname and Brazil borders, and the legion camps of course. Being a Vet and having seen combat went a ways to establish a cordiality with the normally frosty legionnaire’s that led to a respect for his flying skills, so it was to him and not his boss, that they had come to request assistance with boarding the fleeing freighter Fliterland a hundred miles out in the Atlantic. Don’s ‘Pinnacle’ manoeuvre, keeping station on the moving vessel without making contact but close enough to drop off troops, had allowed fifteen Legionnaire’s to step off the lowered rear troop ramp and straight on to one of the bridge wings and seize the vessel.
Tonight, at the logging camps accommodation near the airstrip outside Kourou, Don had been dozing in front of the communal TV set with his prosthetic limb beside him, lightweight, strong alloy tubing instead of something pretending to be a living lower leg. The false leg sensibly allowed one handed operation in its attachment and removal as the designers realised the owner may not always be in a position to sit whilst performing those tasks. The free hand could prevent the owner from falling on his ass.
Don was called to the telephone in the office and told it was urgent, so having hopped one legged to the ‘phone Don attached it as he listened. On the other end was the legions operations centre and the duty watch keeper, a major, explained their Puma was still tied up on the border so could Don take the platoon of reservists from Kourou up to the Soyuz site as there had been an attempt to infiltrate all the launch pads. Once he had dropped them off he wanted Don to collect one of the Cayenne reservist platoons and deliver it to the ESA final assembly building.
Don was practically rubbing his hands together. All he needed was assurances that the company had been informed because they had torn him a fresh one after the Fliterland incident.
He roused his co-pilot and crew chief, a pair of French Canadians with attitude, that is to say they considered themselves more French than the French. It would be fair to say that Don’s enthusiasm for the evening’s unscheduled flying was not shared by them on any appreciable level.
Half a dozen members of the Kourou platoon were already at the airstrip when Don arrived, hobbling on his false leg but keen as mustard nonetheless.
The Chinook was only a half dozen years younger than Don but older than both his co-pilot and his countryman. He set them to carry out the pre-flight walkabout as he settled himself into the right hand seat.
Checking that nothing had fallen off since the aircraft had last been used was a job he had once carried out himself, religiously, but he was not that nimble anymore.
Don attached night vision goggles to his flight helmet; they were absolute essentials here in the equatorial tropics where day does not gradually become dark over a couple of hours, the transition will occur in scant minutes. Airfield lighting with a backup generator was also in short supply in these parts so that was another good reason to be able to see in the dark whenever necessary.
Cars were arriving all the time now, a pick-up truck with eight middle aged men crammed into the back was the last to arrive.
The platoon commander, a grossly overweight baker, and possibly his own best customer, was pulling on combat trousers over pyjama bottoms as the senior NCO got the men in three ranks and called the roll.
Don counted twenty three men in total, the Chinook seated fifteen but he would bend the rules under the circumstances and deliver them in one trip.
His co-pilot took his seat and buckled up as the crew chief finished seating ‘Pères Armée’ and stood outside the aircraft ready to spot any problem visually during the start-up.
Don spoke aloud as he ran through the ‘before engine start’ and start-up checklists because even under the circumstances he wasn’t about to bend the rules for that!
It was only thirteen miles to the Soyuz site, but forty five from there to Cayenne. He left the troop ramp down for the three minute hop to the launch pad.
No sooner had they left the ground when they were diverted south to check the jetty and bridge guard across the Kourou River. The four man guard of reservists were not answering their radio and there may be a problem at the gatehouse to the nearby ESA dock. The local gendarmerie patrol car was not answering its radio either or they would have sent that instead, he was told.
Don was enjoying himself. Not a problem, had been his response, he banked around and overflew the gatehouse and jetty.
“I found your police car…a bunch of armed men and two for-godamned-real submarines…we got ground fire from the bridge and the subs!” he reported a minute later.
“Far be it for me to tell you your job, but do you want me to put these guys on the ground at the clearing between the town and the jetty and then go fetch the rest from Cayenne?”
The Governor had been alerted to the Chinese troops in Foreign Legion garb a
nd now on learning that there were two surfaced submarines at the jetty with more troops on the ground he could be forgiven for wondering, just briefly, if an invasion force had somehow been missed?
There were troops guarding the launch pads and they had destroyed two groups attempting to infiltrate. They were stood to and that was the best he could hope for under the circumstances. This ‘new’ force though, for that is how he thought of them, needed to be engaged, to spoil whatever they intended or delay them until regular forces could be brought to bear.
The nearest regular troops to the Kourou river bridge and the ESA Jetty were the commandant of the jungle warfare school who was in a little Peugeot P4 utility vehicle, the French ‘Jeep’, enroute to check up on his students. However, he had only the schools sergeant major and his driver with him.
The legions commanding officer was ordered to start moving troops to the ESA launch facility, and his Puma and small Gazelle were the obvious means but the process would take over an hour before the first men arrived.
One corvette was at sea and had been turned about, its sister ship was preparing to sail.
The corvettes were on detached duty from Toulon and their crews enjoyed the Cayenne nightlife when on a stand down. The gendarmeries visited the bars with commandeered taxi cabs in convoy behind the police cars, spreading the word, rounding the crew up and filling the cabs.
The patrol boats were based at Cayenne though; the crews had homes in many cases and were summoned by a telephone call. One boat readying to leave, the second patrol boat was on the slips having a shaft replaced as the old one had been struck by a hidden deadfall whilst manoeuvring in the Mahury estuary. It was a constant hazard, colliding with the dead falls, the trees that had toppled into the river to be washed out to sea. The most dangerous were those waterlogged trunks that were not yet so saturated as to settle to the bottom, but instead sailed just below the surface, invisible in the muddy brown river water, mother nature’s own malicious timber torpedoes.
