Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  “Doc Joseph checked on that, too, and there is a first rate OB-GYN in Georgetown, a graduate of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, in Delhi. That, Joseph says, is the best in India, as good as any in the world and better than most.”

  “All right,” Reilly conceded, though not necessarily with any good grace. “You can go to see this Doctor …what did you say his name was?”

  Lana sighed. “You really are getting old, short term memory loss and everything. I didn’t say. But it’s Singh and Joseph already made me an appointment for next week. The hospital’s paying Singh enough for him to come here rather than me going there, too.”

  “Good,” Reilly said, “because neither of my babies are getting on a plane any time soon. And forget about going by what passes for roads here.

  “Singh, eh? Good. Probably means he’s a Sikh. I approve of Sikhs.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There never was a new prince who has disarmed

  his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he

  has always armed them, because, by arming them, those

  arms become yours, those men who were distrusted

  become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so,

  and your subjects become your adherents.

  —Machiavelli, The Prince

  Caracas, Venezuela

  It was easy to understand how someone like Chavez could end up as effective dictator of the country. What was hard was to understand what had taken so long. Most countries in Latin America had vast inequalities of wealth and little in the way of a social safety net. For most of the previous century, Venezuela’s oil had made these inequalities even vaster than the Latin norm. Worse, nowhere was the difference between the have-everythings and the have-nothings quite so glaring, and quite so galling, as they were here.

  In most places, the rich were out of sight and away from the view of the poor. Here, the poor huddled in unsanitary and unsafe—mudslides might without warning kill thirty-thousand and render a million more homeless overnight—barrios up on the hills surrounded the city, with the sight of gleaming skyscrapers and the mansions of the rich an ever-present and continuously insulting reality. Safe behind their guarded gates, what did the rich know or care of the city’s murder rate, five times greater than that of New Orleans at its pre-Katrina worst? And the middle class had begun to emulate the rich, with their own walls and private guards.

  Of the rest, the great masses of unwashed and miserably poor, more than half saw some member of the family the victim of a crime every few months.

  And the police? Of Caracas’ respectably proportioned, indeed bloated, police force of thirteen thousand, most—as much as eighty percent in some areas—were in administrative jobs rather than walking a beat. That meant a mere six or seven percent of the police forces available were at any given time actually doing something active and visible to combat crime. Outnumbered, often outgunned, and demoralized, of those who were walking a beat, that tiny, tiny percent, most simply didn’t care anymore …if they ever had.

  The sun was beginning to set behind the hills and shanties to the west. Moving from bright, tropical light to darkened shadows, cutting across broken sidewalks and potholed street, walked Carlos Villareal, aged nineteen. Carlos wore a red T-shirt and a rifle slung from one shoulder. Walking past the gutted ruins of the la Dolorita police station on his way to the meeting, he spared the ruin barely a glance. So much had it become a mere and accepted part of the landscape. He’d been little more than a boy the first time the residents of the barrio had attacked the thing with sledgehammers, axes, and homemade Molotov cocktails. It had been wrecked at least twice over again since that day. Now, windowless and with the scorching of gasoline-fed flames marking the walls over the holes that had been windows, it was abandoned and ignored by residents and police alike.

  Most places in what passed for the civilized world, mobs attacked police stations in protest over police brutality, often enough with racial undertones. Here, the station had been ruined not over brutality, but over sheer indifference and incompetence. Nor had it made the slightest negative difference. Once the police gave up and moved away, the citizens of la Dolorita had taken matters into their own hands. They’d also taken into their own hands the rifles passed out with free abandon by the Chavez government in aid of developing a force of citizen militia. These arms had been given notionally to deter or combat a gringo invasion. In intent they were to raise the threat of civil war should the right ever return to power. In practice they had served, at least here in la Dolorita, to arm the death squads that sprang up to preserve security when civilization began to fail.

  Not that Carlos thought of himself as belonging to a death squad. Militia, yes. Vigilante, yes. Death squad? No.

  And, hell, thought Carlos, not without some satisfaction, we haven’t had to actually kill anybody in …oh, must be over a year now; those three boys who beat up and raped the Vargas girl, Lily. For that matter, we didn’t do that. We just rounded the filth up and presented them, bound and gagged, to Lily Vargas, along with a rifle. She actually pulled the trigger on the filth …then signed up with us.

  Like the group leader says, “Justice is a result, not a process.”

  The Revolution had taken over more than a few businesses. Sometimes the businesses concerned survived the experience; sometimes they did not. In this particular case, a former supermarket that had ultimately proved gringo-owned, hence eminently seizable, the business had not survived but the building still provided a place for the weekly party meetings and the smaller, nightly gathering of the barrio’s vigilantes.

  Early, as she usually was, Lily—short, dark, pretty, and hourglassy—stood off to one side of the gathering. She chain smoked, something she hadn’t done before being assaulted. And, sure, the Leader didn’t officially approve of tobacco, but, under the circumstances, nobody was going to yell at Lily over it.

  Carlos, standing in the door, looked around the crowded room of standing, red-shirted vigilantes for the telltale column of smoke. His eyes passed quickly over the group leader, Rojas, and the uniformed man standing beside him on the slightly raised dais at one end of the large room.

  Ah, there she is. He walked over, or at least threaded his way carefully through the crowd, making sure the magazine on his Kalashnikov didn’t poke anyone, to stand at her side.

  Lily gave him a quick and furtive smile, albeit without even the tiniest flash of white. Politeness demanded as much. Still though, she couldn’t help remembering that it was a simple smile that had led …

  She tossed her cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. The group leader was about to speak.

  Normally, the group leader, a balding light-skinned man of medium height and weight, began the meetings with a review of the previous day’s events. This time he didn’t bother. He cleared his throat, but only to catch the attention of the hubbubbing mass below where he stood on the short dais.

  “Your patrolling assignments are on the map on the wall behind me,” he said, once they’d quieted down a bit. “Read them when I’ve finished. You know what to do from there. We’ve got a more serious matter.”

  That shut everybody up, where a simple throat clearing hadn’t, quite.

  “Hugo,” the group leader said, “needs volunteers …for the Army. About twenty-five thousand of them. We’re supposed to come up with twenty, from all six shifts. I can take more.” Rojas’ head inclined slightly, indicating the uniformed man standing beside him, an army officer, the attendees guessed, from the quality and cut of his uniform. The officer looked stout, fairly young, and quite fit. He wore a red beret, which didn’t necessarily imply any revolutionary leanings. “Captain Larralde, here, is from the Army. Fifth Division, was it, Captain?”

  Miguel Larralde shook his head, answering, “Parachute Brigade, only attached to Fifth Division, and that only since about last week. I’m here on behalf of both, though I can only take a relative few of the most fit and capable, from th
is group and about nine others, into the Parachute Brigade. I’ve got room for both men and women, though I need more of the former.

  “The pay’s not bad,” Larralde continued, “a lot better than the stipend you get for what you’re doing now. But if you volunteer, you can forget all this revolutionary, egalitarian bullshit. The Army’s a hierarchy and that is not going to change. It’s harsh, and it’s hard, and that’s not going to change, either.

  “That said, you’ll eat pretty well. Moreover, you’ll live clean except when in the field, and you’ll stay as clean as possible even there.

  “And you’ll work like mules …no, that’s not right. A mule or a horse will give up and die when a good man or woman is still trying. You’ll work harder than slaves.

  “If you’re willing, I’ll be here still when you finish your nightly patrols. Come see me.”

  Walking the broken pavement, under a set of streetlights of which perhaps one in seven worked, Lily was even more subdued than usual.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Carlos asked. “Joining, I mean.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Aren’t you?”

  He hadn’t been. Even so, he answered, “Yes, of course.” Never do to be behind a woman in defense of the country, he thought, particularly one so cute.

  “My question, though,” Carlos continued, “is, ‘why now?’ What’s different that Hugo wants to bring the Army up to strength again after cutting it by fifty percent? I read the papers, Lily, and we are in trouble as a country. And we’re going to stay in trouble until and unless the world economy turns around and the price of oil goes up again. So why start spending money on the military?”

  “Maybe Hugo thinks the gringos will attack us while we’re weak and their own need for oil is low,” she replied.

  That made him shrug. “It’s possible,” he agreed. “But I’ve got a cousin in the Gringo Marine Corps, and he tells his mother that they’re in bad shape, too. Nothing like when they knocked over some of the Arabs. No money, either, and old equipment, too.”

  “You mean you don’t think they could pull off an invasion?” she asked, stopping for the moment.

  “Way above my skill set,” he said, though he continued his walk. She joined him after he’d gone no more than a few paces.

  “But I’d suppose they could. If they were going to, though, they’d be bringing their own armed forces up to par. And that, they’re not doing.”

  “If not the gringos, maybe Hugo’s worried about Colombia or Brazil,” she offered, not unreasonably. “Or, more likely, about the residue of the oligarchs right here at home.”

  “That’s all possible,” Carlos conceded. Contemplatively, he added, “The Colombians are our brothers in everything but name; I’d rather not fight them if I didn’t have to. The Brazilians? Eh,” he shrugged, “why not? As for the oligarchs; I’d pay for my own ammunition, if I could afford it.”

  “I feel about the same way,” Lily agreed. “But if we sign up, I somehow doubt we’ll get much choice.”

  “We,” Carlos wondered. I didn’t realize we were a package deal. Still, she is awfully cute and …so …maybe …“we.”

  “Then we’ll talk to Captain Larralde when we finish our patrol?”

  Miraflores Palace, Caracas, Venezuela

  In a continuously guarded private office, small and cramped, one which few advisors—and those only the closest—were allowed into, Chavez studied the antique map on his wall. In a way, the map was the reason none but his closest followers were allowed into the office and cameras never, and most especially not the cameras of the media, left or right. For them, there were other rooms, other offices.

  The internationalist left always sees what it wants to see, Hugo thought disparagingly, looking at the map’s grand scheme. And refuses to see what doesn’t fit what it wants to see. I take control of some industry, nationalize a few assets owned by foreigners, clamp down a bit on the press, mouth the words of socialism, shunt a very little support to various left wing guerilla movements, and even follow through on a couple of socialism’s tenets, and they see in me another Fidel, only with more money to spread the Revolution. Admittedly, I do my not inconsiderable best to foster all that, be it playing baseball with Fidel back in ’99, slipping him a little oil, or providing a safe haven for FARC.

  Still, you would think that the absence of show trials, Gulags, reeducation camps and mass graves would tip them off. But nooo …

  The president shook his head with wonder, saying aloud, “They always miss that, while Bolivar is my hero, and his dreams are my dreams, his dreams—and mine—are not theirs.”

  Chavez mentally sneered. Like that idiotic Englishman who wrote that book. Couldn’t bring himself to realize the truth of the matter here. Had to write “socialistic nationalism,” instead of facing the truth. As if switching a couple of words around changes reality on the ground. And how the morons missed the parallels between my “failed” coup in ’92 and certain events in Munich, sixty-nine years before that …

  The sneer reached the president’s face, briefly.

  I am a firm believer that, while history may not repeat itself, it does rhyme and should rhyme, and only a fool fails to catch the meter of the piece.

  Never mind; first things first. And first I’ve got to ride out the currently crappy economy. Only then can I advance Bolivar’s dream, and my own. And to ride out the crappy economy, I still need to distract the people for a while.

  He sighed, and again speaking aloud, said, “And to that end, let’s see what the military has come up with …”

  Chavez unsealed and opened a brown folder—leather; only the best for the president, after all—and began to shuffle through the papers therein. These he sorted into stacks on his desk, mentally and physically classifying them: Operations Order—labeled “Renania,” Logistical Annex, Recruiting and Training, Air Movement Annex, Air Support Annex, Sea Movement Annex, all three of those last with their appendices, Naval Maintenance Upgrades and Aviation Maintenance Upgrades, plus the Intelligence Annex.

  It was to some extent a matter of personal taste, but Chavez, being a methodical sort, began with the Intelligence Annex. Only with that clear in his mind would operations or logistics make sense to him, or anyone, even as neither the air nor the sea scheme would make the slightest sense without logistic requirements being understood.

  Stacks of paper all properly ordered, he pulled out a writing pad and pen. Then he twisted his chair to place one arm close to the desk and cross the opposite leg over the thigh nearest the desk. With the Intelligence Annex in one hand, and pen in the other, he began jotting down notes and questions: “Enemy force, definite: One regular infantry battalion, poorly trained. Four reserve infantry companies, probably even less well trained. One artillery battery, which has not fired its guns in years. An engineer company. No real air force. No navy, to speak of. Probable: One brigade of mixed gringos and Guyanans, and a few others, elderly, well trained and equipped, with some air and some naval capability, but see terrain analysis. Possible: normally one regular gringo battalion, Army or Marines, undergoing jungle training.

  Hmmm, Chavez thought, let’s see whether our supporters and allies in Washington can be induced to not have that battalion in Guyana on the pertinent dates.

  He read some more, then wrote: United States: unlikely to interfere. Brazil: Unlikely to be concerned. Colombia … Chavez stopped writing a moment just to think.

  How do I take Colombia out of the equation for at least long enough? They’re also Latin and so unlikely to care too much about an English-speaking colony. But they know I’m an enemy and might use this as an excuse. Bribe FARC to do something really major to tie their army down? Bribe the Colombia government directly? If so, how? Money? I hardly enough to spare. Maybe an agreement to provide oil that I do have and that they can already barely afford, even at depressed prices. Clamp down on FARC, here? Take away their safe haven and arrest or disband the battalion they keep on our soil? C
rack down on FARC’s “revolutionary” drug trade, on which some of them live very well indeed? Or maybe the better answer is to appear to do all those things, while doing none of them.

  Consider this carefully. We cannot face an attack by Colombia while we are engaged in Guyana.

  But, then again, can they even think about paying for a war? Maybe not. Maybe I’m worrying over nothing. Best have a chat with Nicholas.

  After reading the Intelligence Annex, and filling four pages with hand-scrawled notes, Chavez turned to Operations. There he found nothing unexceptionable, except perhaps for a certain overoptimism. Certainly the plan for preparation of the target was good. Of course, the fucking generals had nothing much to do with that. And, The seizure of the airfields at Kaieteur and Cheddi Jagan International to serve as bases for expansion …no choice there; there’s no other way to supply our troops initially, while landing the Marines at Georgetown, even while little penny packets of second stringers take helicopters and light planes in to the …um …one …two …fifteen …call it “thirty” odd little airstrips west of the Essequibo. Okay, as those are occupied a little further in with each lift, it looks more and more to the ignorant press like an inexorable advance in overwhelming force. And, of course, we’ll play to their incarnate, insuperable ignorance and brief it exactly that way.

  And I’ll look so very reasonable, to the international community, when I give Georgetown and the area east of the Essequibo back again, since that’s not part of our legitimate claim.

  Hugo mentally shrugged. On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t give it back. If Guyana isn’t extinguished, there’s always the possibility—small, to be sure—of revenge.

  Reading on, Chavez came to the section on amphibious movement. Idiots. Just idiots. Why, oh why, do we stage the Marines out of the northern coast when we can move at least some of them by land to a port closer and cut the time to fully deploy them in half? He scrawled furiously, the anger expressing itself in letters rough and crude on the pad of paper.