Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  “We don’t know that,” Waggoner objected.

  Boxer shook his head. “No, we don’t. But at least one of my contacts in the Philippines thinks it more than merely possible. As does Ayala’s wife, who actually arranged for us to be contacted, on my contact’s advice.”

  “Who’s your contact?” Stauer asked, then amended, “You don’t have to give me a name, of course.”

  Boxer shrugged. “In her case she’s a pretty well-known name, at least locally. Aida Farallon, Police Inspector. Joined the Manila police at age thirty-seven, seeking revenge for a policeman husband who’d been killed. Hurt al Qaeda badly, all on her own, and probably saved the pope’s life. The old pope, I mean.” Boxer looked around the room at gray heads and weathered faces and smiled. “You know, now that I think about it, Aida would fit in here to a T.”

  “She might at that,” Stauer said. “I’ve no objection to you making an offer, if you think we could use her.”

  Boxer went silent, thinking about that for a moment. “Maybe,” he finally half agreed. “For her family’s sake, she might, if you were willing to take a package deal.”

  “We’ve done these sorts of things before, three times,” Stauer explained for the newcomer’s benefit. “And we’ve established something of an SOP for dealing with kidnapping cases where we can’t find the victim for a rescue, but can identify the kidnappers and, more importantly, their families.”

  “You take counterhostages?” von Ahlenfeld asked.

  “Yes. Precisely. But for a couple of reasons, that’s not likely to work here.” Stauer indicated with a chin point that Boxer was to continue.

  “Al Harrikat,” Boxer said, “doesn’t appear to have families, or at least none that can be identified. They’re a splinter group, so it is believed, because the rest of Abu Sayyaf got so disgusted with them they were cast out. If you know anything about the Abus, you know the al Harrikats must be singularly vile.

  “We can pin Ayala down, or at least we think we can, to Mindanao”—the map flashed to the Philippine Republic’s large, southern island—“which is too big to help much. That said, by now, he may have been moved to Basilan, which is smaller, but even more densely populated and more of an al Harrikat stronghold than Mindanao is.”

  Having a sudden thought, Boxer looked at Lox. “Don’t you speak Tagalog, Peter?” he asked.

  “I do,” Lox agreed, “but it wouldn’t necessarily be all that much help. Down Mindanao-way most people speak Cebuano. There are some points of congruency but they’re not all that many or close. They’re not mutually intelligible, anyway.”

  “May still be useful,” Stauer said. “Keep going, Ralph.”

  Boxer nodded. “Roger. The Harrikats have demanded one hundred and twenty-five million United States dollars for the old man’s return. That represents about a fifteenth of his total net worth, but probably everything the family could come up with on short notice without a distress sale.

  “They’ve forced the old man to produce a video ordering his family to pay. The children are hiding behind Philippine law, which is one reason my contacts there think one or more of them is in on it, and refusing. The Harrikats have threatened to send them one of Ayala’s fingers as a gesture of sincerity.”

  “Nasty fuckers,” von Ahlenfeld said, without emotion. After all, it wasn’t as if sending dismembered body parts wasn’t a fairly normal procedure for this sort of thing. “How do we do this?”

  “We don’t,” Boxer insisted. “If we did hire ourselves out to the family, the one or more of them behind the kidnapping would let al Harrikat know we’re coming. And how we’re coming. Exercise in futility and we have more important things to worry about.”

  “Maybe we don’t but maybe we do,” Stauer replied. “Certainly, we don’t let ourselves get hired by the whole family to mount a rescue. Is there anyone in the family we can trust?”

  “There is,” Boxer conceded. “Philippine Intelligence says the matriarch of the clan, Paloma Ayala, is extremely unlikely to be part of any plot on the part of any of her children to do away with her husband.”

  “Would she be willing to let us keep a bit over half the ransom, provided we get her husband back for her?” Stauer asked.

  “What do you mean?” Waggoner asked.

  “Well, what did they offer us to get the old man back? Thirty-five million, right? So we make it a double or nothing deal; we get him back and keep seventy, returning the rest, or we fail to get him back and get nothing.”

  “In that case,” asked Boxer, “why should they make a deal with us. They can get him back …ohhh …right, forget what I just said.”

  “Exactly,” said Stauer. “If they pay the ransom they’ll never get him back. And, to tell the truth, I would undertake this—assuming it can be done—on our own ticket just to keep the fucking lunatics from having that much money to hand.”

  “You’re fucking up, Wes,” Boxer growled. “We have a growing problem to the west of us. I can feel it, in my bones. And this is a losing proposition.”

  “It’s a losing proposition to let al Harrikat get their hands on that much money, too,” Stauer countered. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. Then he began to pace.

  “Gentleman,” Stauer asked, “why does this regiment and corporation exist?”

  Boxer snorted. “We exist because a whole bunch of us hated civilian life and didn’t want to just fade away, or to go gently into that good night. That, and that the money’s decent.”

  Stauer shook his head. “No, Ralph, that’s why we came to exist. It isn’t why we still do exist. Nor even the money. Or, at least, it isn’t all of it.”

  Sighing, Stauer said, “We exist because civilization is on the ropes. The consensus for it, among those who ought most to be defending it, is breaking down. It wasn’t perfect, so the elites have lost interest in it. Gangs rule. Borders are either superfluous or are fast becoming so. Citizenship means less and less with each passing day and with each passing day, and each further breakdown in civilization, people look out for what matters, their families. Power is devolving to an unelected and unutterably corrupt elite who wrap themselves in some pretty damned thin shrouds of cosmopolitan holiness but who really watch out for their own gene pools.

  “This used to be true only in the Third World. Increasingly, it’s everywhere.”

  Victor Inning and Ralph Boxer exchanged glances. Victor’s late father in law had once said something very similar to that, in a café not far from the Lubyanka.

  “States can no longer summon the will to do what must be done to preserve civilization,” Stauer continued. “Simple as that. And the very transnational progressives who are undermining the rule of states stand with gaping jaws because groups like ours have arisen to fill the gap.

  “Well, who else is to do it?” Stauer scoffed. “The UN, competent only in corruption? The International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent? Puhleeze! OXFAM? MerciCorps? Amnesty International? No, they’re too busy making sure states crumble, and keeping wars going by making sure all combatants on all sides are fed, to do much about maintaining civilization.”

  “What would it mean if a group like al Harrikat got its hands on a hundred and twenty million dollars?”

  “Two nuclear weapons,” Victor Inning muttered. “Maybe three.”

  “What was that?” Stauer asked. “Loud enough for everyone to hear, please.”

  “I said,” Victor repeated, louder, “that that much money could buy two nuclear weapons, or maybe three.” He looked shamefaced as he added, “Look, I sold guns. Retail death, and not always for a bad purpose or to a bad result. But I know—I’m not guessing—that any of the ninety-seven nuclear weapons still unaccounted for from old Soviet stockpiles are for sale for between thirty and fifty million dollars apiece.”

  “Ninety-seven?” Boxer asked. “I thought it was one hundred and four.”

  Inning sighed. “Al Qaeda has seven of them already. But they bought cheap and so have
n’t been able to get one to work.”

  Boxer had good reason to believe that Victor’s sources were, or at least had been, impeccable. “Fuck.”

  “Indeed,” Victor agreed.

  “Fine,” Boxer conceded to Stauer. “Maybe we do have an obligation to take care of this. But that doesn’t mean we can.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t. Who or what should we send to give us the best possible chance?”

  Welch, who appeared to have been doodling, looked over at his new battalion commander. Von Ahlenfeld gave an I am too new to have any freaking idea shrug. Terry piped up, “My company plus one infantry company from Third or Fourth Battalion, three HIPs, both the MI-28 gunships, three CH-750’s, three or four RPV’s, whatever can be spared, one of the two assault transport capable freighters, one patrol boat and two LCM’s—that’s all we’ve got covered space for in Georgetown, anyway, right?—and proportional combat and service support packages from all the above.” Welch cast a wary glance at the naval commander, asking, “Sir, any chance I could get one of the midget subs?”

  Kosciusko answered, “I can let you have Namu and a two man crew. Naughtius, as usual, needs some servicing.”

  “That’ll work, sir.” Terry tallied some numbers, announcing, “I make it just about three hundred and eighty personnel, pending some finessing.”

  Boxer, however, stood firm. “No, Terry, you can’t have the Namu. We can shit you a couple of SeaBobs, but the sub’s going to be needed elsewhere. And we’re likely to need the helicopters. And you can’t have a whole infantry company.”

  Stauer considered this and, ultimately, agreed with Boxer about the sub. “No minisub, Terry. No Hips. You can have both of the MI-28’s, since they wouldn’t survive long against serious fighter cover. You can also have one LCM, and no patrol boats.” He considered that request for an infantry company. “Delta Company, Third Battalion, is coming off contract within the next three weeks. You can take Charlie, Third Battalion, and Delta will fall back in on Cazz to replace Charlie.”

  “Not replacing them on the contract mission?” von Ahlenfeld asked.

  “We don’t have that mission anymore,” Boxer said. He gave Lava a dirty look. “We were underbid.”

  “Not my doing,” von Ahlenfeld insisted.

  Stauer looked at Lava and considered, Send Cazz to be in charge on the ground or let Terry spread his wings? Terry’s good, but young. Not Cazz, since most of Cazz’s troops stay here …and …mmm …Waggoner to be in overall charge? No, I need him here. Hate to send von Ahlenfeld out, given that he’s still getting his feet on the ground. But I think it will have to be him. On the other hand, I can give Lee a month or five weeks here, then he can fly to meet the ship somewhere. Maybe even in the Philippines.

  Stauer turned to Kosciusko. “How long to get them there?”

  “Be a week to switch around the crews and have an assault-capable ship at Georgetown. Another four days to load, surreptitiously. Assuming we want to avoid going through the Panama Canal—”

  “We do,” Stauer said.

  “—then thirty-six to thirty-eight days sailing. On site in about seven weeks from when you say ‘go.’ I could cut that by five days or so but only at the cost of a prodigious amount of fuel.”

  “We’ll discuss time on target later,” Stauer replied. “At this point, it’s too early to say. Lee, you’ll be going as OIC, though you don’t have to leave when the ship sails. Terry, that schedule work for you?”

  “Not exactly,” Welch said. “As soon as the boat departs, I’ll leave by air with a small party, one team and half the headquarters plus …if you don’t mind, sir,”—that last was directed as Boxer—“Mr. Lox. He may not speak Cebuano, but he knows the Philippines.”

  “Since the boss is not going to listen to me about the big thing,” Boxer said, with poor grace, “I’ve no objection to the trivia. Except you should not match your departure to the ship. Leave soon, as soon as possible.”

  “Be smarter,” said Lox, “if you send me first, with Terry, as in tomorrow or the day after, to contact and coordinate with Mrs. Ayala and Philippine Intel.”

  Stauer thought about that for all of two seconds before saying, “Agreed. Except …”

  “How do we buy time,” Lox interrupted, “while we’re waiting for the ship to get there? A lot can happen in seven weeks.”

  Boxer shook his head. “As much as I don’t like this idea, in general, Filipino kidnappers rarely have any issues with hanging on to their captives for years at a time. Worse than FARC that way. God save us from patient terrorists.”

  “Advise the family,” Stauer told Lox, “rather, advise the matriarch, to buy time with token payments, a few hundred thousand here and there. If there’s a chance, use that time to get as much information on the Harrikats as possible.”

  “What if we can grab a few?” Welch asked. “Grab them in some way that doesn’t point to a rescue.”

  “Break out the pincers, the charcoal, the pliers, and the field telephones,” Stauer answered soberly. “These people have no rights. Moreover, they must not get and keep that money, because there is no difference in practice between the money and what it can buy.”

  “Now go.”

  “Okay,” Stauer told Boxer, once the meeting had broken up in haste on his utterance, “Go.” “What did you need to talk about? I know you’ve got a bee in your bonnet over Venezuela. What I don’t fully understand is why.”

  In four short sentences, Boxer explained why. “Venezuela’s economy is crumbling. Chavez needs a foreign adventure to distract the people. Colombia and Brazil are too tough. That leaves us, here.”

  Stauer considered that. It was a persuasive case, for all that it was a brief one. “So what do you think we should do about it? I’m not going to start a war with a sovereign country—especially one that much bigger than us—preemptively.”

  “No, not that,” Boxer said, shaking his head. “But warning could be critical, as could a fast reaction. I want to rent an apartment—or, minimally, a hotel room—in Puerto Cabello and move a couple of our people in, maybe Morales and Lada, to keep an eye on their navy. At least I want them to stay until I can make contact with Colombian Intelligence and get them to watch the things for us.

  “I want to recon the Lake Maracaibo area. And I want to insert some ground recon to keep an eye on their military establishment in the area nearest to us, Bolivar State. Also, I want to do some overflights of some of the eastern parts of their Bolivar State. Lastly, since we can’t take out their navy preemptively, I want to make sure it’s not capable of doing a second sortie against us, once they launch the first. Also to cripple them economically.”

  “How?”

  “Mine their major harbors and the entrance to Lake Maracaibo. There are only three ports and a river that need to be blocked to effectively shut off their imports and exports. Two ports to cripple their navy, which go along with two of the other three …more or less. And, really, we can skip el Palito.

  “Also we need to be able to mine Georgetown, here. And we need a good way to shut down the airports.”

  “They’ll clear the mines,” Stauer said, “even if we had the mines and the means to emplace them, which we don’t.”

  “No, ‘they’ won’t,” Boxer countered. “Venezuela owns not a single minesweeper. Fairly typically, for a Third World force, they’ve bought the flashy and showy, and neglected the less flashy but critical.

  “They could get some from Cuba, I imagine, but I doubt it would be quick. For that matter, it’s not clear how much, if any, of Cuba’s once impressive minesweeping force even floats anymore. And we can get mines, says Victor, though we might have to steal them.”

  “The United States’ reaction?”

  Boxer shook his head. “Not much, I think. Oil’s a glut on the market and America’s stockages are more than adequate for the first time in maybe forty years, since with a nine dollar a gallon tax on gas for anything except public conveyances nobody, hardly, can afford
to run a car much. They might condemn, but I doubt they’d do anything about it.”

  Stauer consider that. “Still …be damned uncomfortable having a battalion or two here, on our base, if we defended ourselves …mmm …actively and they got the order to prevent us from doing so.”

  Boxer sighed. “Yeah, I know. I wonder if they’d obey those orders though.”

  “I wouldn’t count on them not obeying. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Would you?”

  “Maybe not. We still need to dig into Venezuela’s shit and find out what they’re up to.”

  “Will you be happy if I order the recons?” Stauer asked.

  “No, but I’ll be happier.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Memories, light the corners of my mind …”

  —Alan and Marilyn Bergman, The Way We Were

  Camp Fulton, Guyana

  By night, the hospital was quiet, with only the chirping of the insects and the occasional howls of the monkeys lurking in the trees of the camp to interrupt the steady hum of medical machinery. One of those humming machines—the “pain machine” they perversely called it—fed a steady if not quite frequent enough dollop of some opiate or other. Kemp didn’t know the name except that it wasn’t Demerol.

  Opiate or not, Kemp would have been a lot happier if only he could have figured out what to do. Those choices were broken down: Houston and severance pay, Houston and return here, stay here and get back to work, as soon as I’m able, risking worse damage …Assuming, of course …

  Some of the differences were subtle and personal. Going to Baylor, in Houston, didn’t frighten him, exactly. What did frighten him was the prospect of being alone, with not a fellow soldier for miles, and no friends at hand. Maybe worse was the prospect of unutterable boredom.