Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  Besides, it held all the regiment’s and corporation’s secrets. All of them. This accounted for its two less formal names, one of which was “the Warren.”

  “Details,” Boxer ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Eeyore. “We spent a bit over two weeks in Venezuela, based mostly out of Caracas. We checked all of the major naval bases—Puerto Cabello, Punto Fijo, and la Guaira. There we saw four LST’s, six frigates, two corvettes, one larger supply ship, two LCU’s, and three submarines, one of them one of the newly built Kilos.

  “Sir, they never moved. None of them. They didn’t look like they even could move. It’s hard to explain …but when a ship’s seaworthy, it looks, it feels seaworthy. At least to the trained eye it does. Their fleet looks like compressed rust held together by paint.”

  Morales gave Eeyore a dirty look, and shook his head, saying, “Sir, that’s an exaggeration. The most we can fairly say is that their ships don’t look well maintained.”

  “Could they sail?” Boxer asked.

  Morales shook his head slowly. “Not without some work, I don’t think, sir. Well …maybe the Kilo could. Probably the Kilo could. At least there were crew that went to the Kilo every day. Couldn’t say that about the frigates or the corvettes, the amphibs or the other subs.”

  “Just to confirm I was seeing what I thought I was seeing,” Morales continued, “I went down by the port until I found a sailors’ bar. We’re talking a seriously demoralized crew there, sir.”

  “The Air Force vas chust as bat,” Lada said. “Vile Peddy Ovizer Morales vas scouting out ze whore barz—“

  “It wasn’t a whore bar,” Morales interjected. “It was a sailors’ bar.”

  “What’s the difference?” Boxer asked, grinning. “Oh, never mind. Continue, Lada.”

  “Anyvay,” she said, “I pud on an Aerovlot stewardess’ univorm and vent to ze airport. If anyvun asked, I hat my Russian pazzport. I vaited for one of zeir air vorce pilots to pick me up, which took approximately fife minutes. Including small talk. Two zirds of zeir aircravt vill not vly. Zis includes eqvipmend newly purchazed vrom Russia.”

  Something about that last datum brought a look of utter disgust to the Russian woman’s face.

  “While they were doing that,” Eeyore said, “I went to look over the harbor; the main naval one, I mean, Puerto Cabello.

  “It’s a really nice harbor, sir. Except that it has one entrance, narrow, and easily mined. The only defense there was a fortress I make to be late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, with no armaments except for some antique ones on display, and no defenders except a bronze bust of a seriously pissed off looking dude with a bow tie. Mine that, sir, and their fleet, for all practical purposes, is locked up, even if it could sail, which it can’t. The Namu would be overtaxed but the Naughtius could do a decent job of mining it.”

  The Namu was the regiment’s first submarine, lost during and then recovered just after the operation in Africa. It had lost its long ago killer whale paint scheme, trading that in for naval gray. Still, the name stuck. The Naughtius, larger and more capable, was an indirect purchase from Montenegro, through the good offices of the government of Guyana. The regiment had actually had to purchase both of the midget subs Montenegro had had for sale, along with Croatia’s Velebit, to make one decent one, and then pay for major refit for that one. It was even arguable which submarine the Naughtius really was. The hull had been Velebit’s but slightly more than half of the interior components had come from the other two. They’d attached the name Naughtius, as a sop to Croatia, which didn’t want to be blamed for the possible misuse of its former submarine. It had been a difficult project On the other hand, since nobody else wanted the things, Montenegro and Croatia had been quite reasonable on the price.

  The regiment still had two hulls, though one of those was up on blocks, on land, at their small base of Wineperu.

  “You know we don’t own any real naval mines, right?” Boxer asked. “Just the concrete dummies we use to support the jungle school.”

  “Yes, sir,” Antoniewicz answered. “Maybe Victor should fix that.”

  Boxer considered that for a moment. “Round up the rest of your team, please, along with Captain Kosciusko. I want to meet after lunch.” Then he punched a button on the intercom on his desk and said, “Lox, come on in, would you?”

  Not everything secret was informational. Some of it was process. Other portions were personal. Since he was a person wanted for arms trafficking on every continent except, possibly, Antarctica, and since he had the process down pat for producing illegal arms pretty much wherever and whenever asked for, Victor Inning was, so to speak, a secret in himself.

  Down the carpeted hall from Boxer’s office, there was a sign or, rather, there were three of them. One, with an arrow pointing straight ahead, said, “Contracting,” aka Lawyers. That was Matt Bridges’ purview, though he double-hatted as the regiment’s S-2, or intelligence officer. On the next one down, with an arrow pointing to the left, it said, “Procurement,” aka Guns. The third, headed toward the comptroller, Meredith’s, office, said, “Comptroller and Investments,” aka Money. This accounted for the other unofficial name for the facility: “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”

  Around the corner to the left from where the SEALs and the Russian woman briefed the regimental Chief of Staff, behind a door with the innocent label, “PROCUREMENT,” Victor Inning conversed with his former subordinate, Major Konstantin.

  “Ever since the old man passed on,” Victor said, “life has sucked. Dull, dull, dull. I’m telling you, Konstantin, Hell is not a hot place, it’s a dull one.”

  The old man of whom Victor spoke was his late father-in-law, a very high ranker in the FSB, which was the successor to the old KGB.

  “So leave.” The major shrugged. “Nothing holds you here.”

  Inning sighed. He shook his head, saying, “It’s not that easy anymore. This is the only place I can hide now. Here, just up the road from the middle of nowhere. The old man’s enemies back in the Lubyanka want me dead. Most of the governments in the world want me dead. The world economy is so shitty hardly anybody can afford decent arms anymore.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Victor,” Konstantin chided. “It isn’t that bad. Stauer still gives you the odd mission, here and there.”

  “Oh, sure, he does,” Victor agreed. “Provided that the recipients meet his ideological standards. Arms for Christians in the Sudan? Fine. Arms for the anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, since the Americans gave up on most of that horrible place? Fine. Rifles for the IRA? Not. Antivehicular land mines for FARC or the ELN? Not.

  “Bah! The things he lets me do aren’t even a challenge.”

  “Well, if you want more excitement,” Konstantin said, “there’s an opening in Second—”

  The knock on the door stopped whatever it was the major was about to offer. Without waiting for a welcoming answer, Peter Lox, Bridges’ senior assistant turned the knob and walked in.

  “Major,” greeted Lox to Konstantin. “Glad I caught you here.”

  “Peter Petrovich,” the major answered, with a head nod.

  “Boxer wants the three of us, plus Captain Kosciusko, Bridges, the SEALs and Lada, Waggoner from Operations, plus Meredith and Gordon, to meet in his conference room after lunch.”

  Harry Gordon, nicknamed “Gordo,” was fat. He was not jolly. He wasn’t even happy. Then again, logisticians are rarely very happy. Tankers who are not allowed to play with tanks are less happy still. And Reilly refused to let him command the First Battalion’s tank company, since he already had somebody there he was happy with, while Stauer refused to let him leave the Four Shop, since he had no adequate replacement.

  He wasn’t made any happier by Inning’s news: “I’ve got some limpets, still, but that’s it. I don’t have any serious naval mines in stockpile, not anywhere, and, frankly, I don’t know where to get any. Could we make some?”

  Every set of eyes turned to look at Victor with disdain
.

  “Um …I guess not,” he admitted.

  Richard “Biggus Dickus” Thornton, supplied, “I don’t know about you fuckers, but neither myself nor any of my people are going to carry, set up, or have one fucking blessed thing to do with any homemade, jury-rigged, contraption that goes boom in the water. Not happening. No how. No way.” That Thornton was physically huge, a cross between a human being and a gorilla on steroids, gave his words considerable in emphasis.

  “Frankly,” said Gordo, “I don’t understand the problem.” He turned to Boxer, saying, “You’ve told us—or the trained pinnipeds have—that there is essentially no way for Venezuela to get to us as they are now. So why worry about mining their harbors?”

  “SEALs,” said Biggus Dickus, bristling, “not ‘trained pinnipeds.’”

  “Close enough,” Gordo replied, with a lack of a smile that reminded Thornton, Never fuck with the supply people. They can get even.

  Boxer leaned back in his chair, rested his elbows on the arms, put his hands together and let his chin rest on them. He sat that way, silently, for half a minute before he began to speak.

  “Ed,” he asked of Captain Kosciusko, “if the way the SEALs and Lada described their ships is accurate, how long would it take you to get their fleet seaworthy again?”

  “Minimum six weeks; maximum twelve months,” Kosciusko answered. He rubbed his hand across a bald pate and added, “Assuming someone shat them the money, of course. And assuming that everything they might need, to include expertise, is on hand or can be bought.”

  “Between six weeks and twelve months is a lot of variance,” Boxer said.

  “Ships are the most complex machines ever made by man,” Kosciusko replied. “You never really know until you start digging into them. Six weeks is based on the fact that the individual ships are fairly small. Twelve months on the fact that their flotilla is fairly large and, as reported, in poor shape.”

  Boxer turned his attention to the operations officer, Waggoner. “Ken, also assuming that what they’ve reported on the Venezuelan air force and army is accurate, how long to make them combat worthy?”

  “To fight who?” Waggoner asked. “All the really important parts of training are in the society outside of the military. And ‘you are what you were back when.’ They’re not a culture that produces any really large number of first class soldiers. Some? Sure. Everybody produces some. But to fight, say, the United States, they’d have to have started about five hundred years ago, when the Spanish took over the area. To fight Guyana, minus us …three months, probably. If they’re serious about preparing and if the money is there. But why?”

  With his chin still resting on his hands, Boxer answered, “Because Venezuela’s economy is tanking along with the world’s, only a bit faster. Because Chavez needs a foreign crisis and can’t play the gringo card anymore; DC—rather the current regime there—is his moral ally. Because of the three places he could create that crisis, two—Brazil and Colombia—would kick his ass. Which leaves us, here.”

  “I don’t think they could do it even here,” Gordo said, “not even if they were the best soldiers since Caesar’s legions. There’s just no good way to get here. Not a single road connection and only a couple of really shitty cattle trails between the two countries No rail lines between them.”

  “Which leaves the sea and the air,” Boxer said, “which is why I’m going to Stauer to recommend we prepare for that, given that we probably are on Chavez’s to-do list. Which is why I’m giving you people the heads up to prepare to block those avenues. Because everything you folks are telling me is that no matter how long Chavez’s lead time may be, ours is longer still.”

  CH801 Number Six, over the Mazaruni River, Guyana

  A lone harpy eagle, light against the jungle’s green background, floated on the breeze, scanning for its next meal. Below the eagle, the river appeared as more a series of narrow islands with watery borders than a river, pure and true. South, to the left, one could catch faint, misty glimpses of white-stuccoed camps set along and among the flatter spots of the Ebini Hills. To the west of that, bright flashes and the occasional glimpse of an armored vehicle creeping or charging, as circumstances warranted, told that Reilly’s battalion was once again assaulting the impact area north of Hill 780.

  “Those two sets of falls,” a pointing Stauer told von Ahlenfeld from the airplane as it banked right to give a better view—he had to shout to be heard over the roar of engine and wind—“are Koirimap and Mora. We don’t own but do lease a chunk of the north side, about three miles in radius. You can’t see it from up here, but there’s a small base camp there we use as a final objective—one of five different ones we’ve set up here and there—for the jungle school.”

  Von Ahlenfeld looked at the two sets of falls, then had his attention drawn by four large muzzle flashes. “What guns are those?” he asked, also shouting.

  “We’ve got a dozen French LG1’s we bought—well, Victor bought—surplus from Singapore,” Stauer answered. “We had them reconditioned and improved with the Canadian package, minus the muzzle brake. And that’s just a question of ordering replacement barrels from Depro GVB in Canada when we need to.

  “Nice guns, very light, good range. Only downside is that they’re a little unstable in action and the barrels wear out about annually. They get maybe a fifth of the barrel life the French claimed for them. Fortunately, Victor also bought fifty extra barrels from the Singaporeans, so we’re good for several years.”

  Von Ahlenfeld nodded deeply—the gesture the typical exaggeration when hearing is difficult—as the light plane moved on. As it wound over a broad, placid spot in the river, he asked, “Is the river fordable?”

  “Depends on the season and the spot,” Stauer answered, still shouting. “A lot of places that are unfordable during the wet season are anywhere from possible to pretty easy during the dry. If you’re that curious about fords you can ask the S-2 shop. Or Reilly, who has a more practical appreciation for the problems and possibilities. Of course, the sneaky bastard creates fords he won’t tell any of the other battalions about until after he’s snuck a company up their rectal cavities.

  “Son of a bitch has been pestering me for months, too, to buy him eighty or so Polish Opal-I’s, so he can cross even where there’s no ford. It’s just not in the budget, though.”

  “With all the rapids and falls, how the hell do you operate landing craft in the river?” von Ahlenfeld asked.

  Stauer shook his head. “For most of it, we don’t. We own a small facility of about twenty acres at Wineperu, on the Essequibo River. That’s where we keep the landing craft, patrol boats, one old one and a newer Israeli-built Super Dvora Mark Three”—Stauer shuddered in remembrance of the cost of that one—“which we call, unoriginally enough, ‘Dvora,’ a ‘fishing’ boat, and the midget subs. The Essequibo’s navigable from there to the sea. We’ve also got some leased covered space by the docks at Georgetown. Comes in handy, from time to time.”

  Tapping the pilot, Stauer ordered him, “Doc, skirt the river to Honey Camp, then follow the road east …”

  “What’s ‘Honey Camp’?” von Ahlenfeld shouted. “You’ve told me about Camp Jaguar, Camp Puma, Camp Mule, Camp Python, and Camp Tecumseh. And I’ve been to Camp Fulton. But Honey Camp?”

  “Well …it’s not really a camp. And the name predates us. I don’t know what it started as, but now it’s more or less the regimental party town. See, there were these Romanian girls …”

  Honey Camp, Guyana

  “I like to think of this place,” said Stauer, “as the chaos on the other side of the orderly whirlpool after you flush the toilet.”

  Von Ahlenfeld, standing like Stauer atop a road seemingly composed entirely of discarded, mostly sunken liquor bottles, said, “Reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Colon, Panama, when they were first building the Canal.”

  Stauer nodded, slowly and seriously. “That thought has occurred. Anyway, you wanted to see it, so come on.�
��

  The glass-surfaced road led into a town of sorts, laid out irregularly to either side, with the occasional alley winding drunkenly off between the buildings to end who knew where. The buildings ranged from the presentable to the ramshackle, with signs out front advertising in words and silhouettes the goods and services to be obtained within. Some of the goods, scantily clad goods at that, advertised themselves and their wares from porches and balconies fronting the street.

  As squalid as the place was, there were signs, here and there, of better construction ongoing, particularly as the two progressed up the street toward the river.

  Undistracted by the building, Von Ahlenfeld stepped carefully over a plainly comatose body, lying across some of the bottles, a bottle clutched in each hand. He asked, “Why do you—”

  “The regiment doesn’t own this,” Stauer cut him off. “Two hundred meters thataway”—he jerked his thumb backwards toward the dirt strip where McCaverty waited with the CH801—“we own. This we don’t. And if we did own it, and made it different and decent”pointed south—“two hundred meters that way, its twin would spring up as if by magic. The most we can do—and we do—is to medically inspect and license the whores to service the regiment. And even if we don’t own it, we provide electricity. Free. If we charged, Tatiana and the rest of the girls would just raise their prices to cover the difference. And that would just lead to a demand for a pay hike. So …”