Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  The Drunken Bastard,

  Eighty Miles Northwest of Aruba, Caribbean Sea

  Only red light lit the Bastard’s interior. Outside, all was darkness barring only the thinnest sliver of the moon. The weather was calm enough, with just enough wave to the sea to give the patrol boat a gentle rocking motion.

  Chin was leaning over his radar operator’s shoulder, watching the screen intently, as was the radar man.

  “Are you certain it’s them?” the captain asked.

  The operator shook his head, tapping lightly on a blip on the screen with one finger. “No way to be certain, Skipper. But they match the distance the Cubans were likely to have been able to travel. Their course is almost right, though why they’re heading for Aruba rather than Maracaibo, I can’t guess at.”

  “What’s their range?”

  “Twelve miles, sir. We can be on their asses in fifteen minutes.”

  Chin called for his executive officer. “All hands,” he said, “assume battle stations quietly. Loosen up the camouflage up front, over the 40mm, and in the rear, covering the Oerlikon, but don’t jettison it.”

  “Sir?”

  “We’re going to intercept and pass by them close enough to positively identify them as the Cuban minesweepers. If they are, we pass them a few miles, then cut the camo loose and come up from behind. If not, we secure everything again and resume hunting. But—and this is important, XO—we can only blow our cover once, so it better be when we’re damned sure of our target.”

  “Roger, skipper. I’ll see to it.”

  “Oh, and XO?”

  “Sir?”

  “See to it that the 40mm loads mixed HE and armor piercing. There’s a citadel in the Sonya Class that’s proof against explosion. Let’s see how it keeps out the water when we turn it into a colander.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The water is deep, I cannot swim over,

  And neither have I wings to fly.

  Build me a …

  —Traditional, The Water is Wide

  The Drunken Bastard,

  Eighty-nine Miles Northwest of Aruba, Caribbean Sea

  A heavy duty, long-range, night vision scope was mounted to the port side of the bridge. Chin looked through it long enough to get a really good mental image of the boats passing him, heading generally south. Then he turned away from the scope, blinked several times, and turned his attention to the opened up copy of Janes laid out on a flat surface in front of him.

  “That’s them,” he whispered to his exec, tapping the heavy volume. “Ahead steady. Pass the word. Cut away the camouflage in eight minutes.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the XO agreed, then climbed up on the starboard side and began to walk carefully forward.

  Absently, Chin’s hand began to caress the throttle. Soon, my precious, soon.

  Buz, the crocodile, missed his adoring crowds of flies, singing his praises. This far out at sea, though, the only place they’d had to rest had been his scaly back, and when he’d had to dive to find a meal, they hadn’t been able to stay with him. Now they were all gone and he was quite lonely.

  For that matter, finding a meal had not been easy for most of the journey and he was also quite hungry, hungry enough to risk going near the big stinking thing he saw chugging through the water at a speed even he found contemptible.

  Sonya-Class Minesweeper,

  Eighty-seven Miles Northwest of Aruba

  Captain Castro paid little mind to the luxury yacht heading north and passing to his port side. He couldn’t even hear its engines over the nagging cough that was all to indicate his own were even working.

  What the yacht represented, however, was prominent in his mind. Big boat …probably some rich man’s toy. Good food. First class booze, rather than rotgut. Probably a few girls for company. And engines that can be relied on. Maybe even a TV to keep up with the news. Oh, God in Whom I am not supposed to believe, why could I not have been born in Miami?

  No matter; soon we’ll dock in Aruba and I’ll claim sanctuary. The Dutch won’t want me, of course, but the gringos will let me and my men in. Funny, that; that the country whose leaders most love the Castros—barring only Venezuela—is still the country with policies in place to damage them. Funny world, and evidence that not only is there a God, but He has a warped sense of humor.

  Well, let me get to America and grow rich, and You and I can have a good laugh together and …what the …

  The Drunken Bastard, Eighty-eight Miles Northwest of Aruba

  Chin wore a headset that connected him with both guns, plus the engine room. With his own hands at the wheel, the boat made a leisurely one hundred-and-eighty degree turn. As it turned, sections and pieces of Styrofoam, canvas, and lumber were cast over the side and stern. Now was she revealed in all her warlike glory, with a 40mm gun fully manned and trained ahead on her foredeck, and another 20mm gun with a crewman firmly ensconced in the half moon shoulder mounts, with another two ready to feed the gun’s ravenous appetite.

  “I love this shit,” Chin said aloud, in English rather than his native Mandarin. Gently his hand pushed the throttle forward, causing the Bastard’s nose to rise, even as the acceleration pushed her crew skipper to sternward.

  When he judged the distance to be right, Chin queried, “40mm?”

  “Manned and ready, skipper.”

  “Oerlikon?”

  “Same, skipper.”

  “Forward gun, your target is the larger vessel. Oerlikon, I want you to do for the smaller, the one in tow.”

  “Aye, skipper …Aye, aye.”

  Chin shifted the wheel slightly to clockwise. The Bastard, like the dainty, graceful lady she was veered slightly to starboard. Chin moved the throttle forward, though not enough to cause his boat to begin to plane to any unsettling degree.

  You know, Chin thought, I don’t think they know we’re here. Tough shit on them.

  “Fire!”

  Sonya-Class Minesweeper,

  Eighty-six Miles Northwest of Aruba

  “. . . fuck!?” Castro shouted aloud, as the first round passed through his ship with the snap of breaking the sound barrier and the punch of shredding metal. That shell was followed by another, which exploded on his wooden hull, sending pieces of old, half rotten wood flying upward and outward. Another shell hit without exploding. He felt it through his feet as it smashed its way through armor and hull. Only then did he hear the first report of the gun that had launched it, in time with a fourth shell that sent still more of his hull into air and sea.

  Castro’s finger sought the button for the battle stations alarm. Overhead a speaker squawked and died with an electronic hiss. Hearing that death-hiss, he had the perfectly understandable, if pointless, thought, God, I hate communism.

  No matter about the alarm, the blasts of the shells and the screams of crewmen caught by the smashing AP bolts and the fragments thrown by those were as good as any alarm. Men, some of them screaming and all frightened nearly out of their wits, most of them in their underwear, began emerging onto the deck and trying to sort themselves out.

  The next set of shells came in, still striking amidships. God knows what’s keeping the engines running.

  “Get on the fucking 30mm!” Castro shouted from the bridge. There was a sudden strobe, which caused him to turn to the stern. There, he saw, a steady stream of tracers was making a colander out of the Yevgenya Class his own boat was towing. In the flickering of the tracers, he thought he saw some of the smaller boat’s still smaller crew abandoning ship over the sides.

  “Cut loose the tow!” Castro ordered. He saw his engineer take a couple of men in tow himself and head to the stern. We’ve got to get rid of that thing or it will act like an anchor. And we’re slow enough as it is.

  Forward, several of the crew began climbing into the small turret that housed the twin thirties. Unfortunately, just as the turret began to traverse in the direction of their assailant, the next volley from the enemy—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; who knew we even
had enemies in this?—struck on and around it. A ghastly scream, as from several throats, arose from the turret’s open hatch. Then a sharp glow emerged from that hatch, followed by a blinding flash as one or more rounds of the boat’s own ammunition went off. The screaming became considerably louder and, given that it was from burns now, worse.

  Defenseless, Castro thought. We’re defenseless. The thought was punctuated by another four rounds, striking mostly around the water line. The engines ceased their cough and simply died.

  “Shit …Abandon ship,” Captain Castro called. How the hell do I let them know they can stop shooting now? I don’t have a clue about their radio frequency. Maybe …

  “Abandon ship!”

  The lights on the bridge were dimming now, fast, what with the engine no longer even pretending to feed power to the weak and old batteries. In the last few moments of light, Castro reached for a small case that held a flare pistol and a few rounds. As he was trying to load one, another several hits were scored on his command. He fumbled the shell and, cursing, reached for another. He slammed it in and stepped outside the bridge, aiming the flare pistol straight up. Maybe if I let them see …

  Oh, please, work …unlike every other goddamned thing in the Cuban workers’ paradise. PLEASE?

  He pulled the trigger. The recoil very nearly broke his hand. But, thank God, the flare emerged and sailed upward, then broke into a bright, hanging light. Two more rounds struck the minesweeper, which began to take on a noticeable list to starboard. In a way, this was to the good, as the angle of the deck helped the crew get a lifeboat over the side, and then another.

  Buz, perhaps no genius in objective terms but pretty damned bright for a crocodile, took one look at the flare, remembered a previous encounter—no pleasant memory, that—and decided that he wasn’t hungry enough, after all, to hope to scrounge a meal from the big thing on top of the water.

  Nor even to get close to it. My mom didn’t raise no fools. For that matter, mostly she didn’t raise us at all. In any case, I’m outa here, folks.

  The Drunken Bastard

  “Cease fire,” Chin ordered, once he’d seen through the Very light that his opponent—not much of one, maybe, but maybe not his fault, either—had given up the unequal fight even before it began.

  “Gunners and assistants, keep your guns trained on the major targets until they sink. The rest of you, small arms and prepare to receive visitors.”

  Paku Rapids, Essequibo River, Guyana

  Trim recognized the voice of one of his platoon leaders over the roar of jets, above, the more distant explosions coming from Awartun Island, and the almost continuous buzz of chainsaws, half prepping trees to be felled to clear a path from the road to the new bridge. From somewhere to the east a heavy-duty compressor added to the din. Still farther away, the rapids, themselves, added their own note to the symphony.

  “Hump it, you motherfuckers!” cursed Master Sergeant Mike Sayer.

  As he watched, a gang of Reilly’s sweating grunts—or they might be tankers—manhandled a deflated, but damnably heavy, pontoon from the back of a truck onto half a dozen stout poles laid on the ground. The baker’s dozen men then took positions, five on each of two ropes attached to the float and another two at the rear with the sergent in charge calling cadence from out front. On command, the ten began to haul on the ropes, slowly nudging the thing forward. As soon as the rearmost pole—or perhaps log would be a better description, emerged from the rear, the two men left there picked it up, straining and grunting, and trotted it to the front, laying it down again across the direction of travel.

  “Good as any of Her Majesty’s Sappers,” commented Babcock-Moore, from behind. Trim flinched, startled. He hadn’t, what with the jets and the bombing, heard his top NCO’s approach.

  “The bridge?” the engineer company commander asked.

  “About as well as can be expected,” Vic answered, with a shrug. He elaborated, “We’ve got about half the required span built under the overhang of the trees, other side of the island. “And the false bridge?” Moore asked, in his superior Received Pronounciation.

  Since it didn’t matter in the slightest if that bridge ever got repaired, assuming this one worked, Trim answered the question Moore was reluctant to ask. “Ten dead or wounded, of ours. Another half dozen of Reilly’s. Those aircraft are murder.”

  “Another ten? Shit! Much more of this and we won’t have a company, sir.”

  “The sooner this bridge is done and Reilly out of our hair, the sooner we can abandon that demonstration,” Trim replied.

  Moore nodded, fatalistically. “Yes, sir. I know, sir. The men know, too, sir. But there’s only so much a body can stand. Sir.”

  Awartun Island, Guyana

  An ambulance siren picked up where the scream of the jets had left off. Corporal Manduleanu rode in back, comforting the wounded, as her driver screeched and swayed up the shattered remnants of the road.

  If I can order men to stand this, Reilly thought, rising from out of a slit trench as the latest Venezuelan air raid roared off into the distance, I can bloody well stand it with them. Be better if I thought this was going to work, but I’m beginning to doubt.

  He saw Tatiana in the back of the cross-marked Rover, holding a clear bag over her head with one hand while hanging on for dear life with the other.

  You know, he thought, if I were not married and she not a hooker …well, a man could do worse. Note to self: word with the sergeant major; consider concubinage or something.

  Even as Reilly watched, a crew of mixed infantry and sappers crept out of several holes and assembled at the log they’d been forced to abandon when the Sukhois had shown up. They’d been working together for several days by now; they didn’t even need a command to bend as one, grasp as one, and lift the log onto their shoulders as one. As one, too, they trotted off in the direction of the ruined bridge where this useless log would join a hundred of its mates, in a pile that grew faster than the engineers could make a show of bracing one to another. That was why the engineers’ casualties were so much worse than his own; they had a much longer run to shelter from the shards of the old bridge.

  A different Land Rover rumbled up from out of the smoke from the last attack. Stauer emerged, pointing to show his driver, Hosein, where he wanted the vehicle hidden. Then, as the Rover rolled off, he began a quick trot to Reilly.

  “I don’t think you can do this,” Stauer said, as he plopped down beside his subordinate commander.

  Reilly bit back the usual, automatic retort when someone told him he couldn’t do something: My ass! Instead, he said, “I’m beginning to grow up, you know, boss, and this reverse child psychology bullshit works less and less well all the time.”

  Stauer laughed aloud, despite the circumstances. “Okay, so you’re finally growing up. Let me try a different tack. Can you do this?”

  Reilly sighed. Life was easier when “My ass!” was an acceptable answer. Truth be told …he decided to tell the truth. “I don’t know. What happens if I can’t?”

  “We lose,” Stauer answered, simply enough. “Eventually they figure out that Georgetown’s not mined, figure out how to clear the mines in their own waters, and send enough here to crush us.”

  “Yeah. Thought so.” One armed—the other still in cast and sling—Reilly crawled fully out of the slit trench and began to walk southward.

  “Where are you going?” Stauer asked.

  “To the real bridge,” Reilly shouted back, over one shoulder, “to put a little fire under some engineers’ butts.”

  “Go then …and Lana sends her love, says not to worry about her or the baby, and don’t get your ass killed.”

  I’ll try.

  “And where’s your fucking helmet?” Stauer called.

  “Lost it,” Reilly answered, stomping off in search of his vehicle. It was true, too, in a way, but not in the way he intended Stauer to take it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The essential act of war is dest
ruction, not necessarily

  of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

  —George Orwell, 1984

  The Drunken Bastard, Oranjestad, Aruba

  The patrol boat rocked in the harbor, waiting for the authorities to come take them into internment. The authorities seemed in no particular hurry to do that.

  Of the fifty-three men in the combined crews of the Sonya and Yevgenya-Class minesweepers. Chin had been able to recover thirty-seven, including Captain Castro. Of the rest, who knew? Maybe they’d been killed by fire, or succumbed to wounds after abandoning ship. Maybe they were still floating out on the Caribbean somewhere. But thirty-seven he’d found—no mean achievement, given the light conditions—and thirty-six lay or sat on the forward deck under armed guard. The thirty-seventh, the Cuban captain, sat in the charthouse being interrogated. It wasn’t much of an interrogation; Castro was willing to spill everything he knew. Among other things he knew were that, no, there’d be no more minesweepers from Cuba to help Hugo Chavez, no, he hadn’t managed to get a radio signal out so there was little likelihood of the Venezuelan Navy or Air Force coming to look for them, and no, he didn’t want to go back to Cuba. Both men conversed in English.

  “I can understand that,” Chin said, “neither I nor my crew want to go back to China, either.”

  “Fled the communists, did you, then?” the Cuban skipper had asked.

  Chin laughed. “Oh, Captain Castro, we didn’t flee the communists; we were the communists. But communism fled us. China’s nothing more than industrial feudalism now, with all the best positions held by the children of high party cadres. I’m still a communist. I always will be. But, whatever the revolution brought to China, communism was not it.”