Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  Lahela flipped a sheet of butcher paper. This one showed ground equipment and ammunition lost or expended. Stauer’s face showed no emotion. Even so, he shuddered inwardly at every item’s cost, from a 105mm shell to a new-minted Jaguar tank.

  “Lahela,” Meredith said, sending a finger signal to flip to the next sheet. When she had, he added, “Some of our worst costs are real property. We’ve got a quarter of a million square feet of building space ruined, mostly burned, and a like amount seriously damaged. Along with a shitpot of furniture, installation property, electronics. And we’ve already cut down the timber locally, that we could. Getting more, here, in the middle of nowhere, is going to hurt.”

  “Are you suggesting we make peace?” Boxer asked.

  “It would save some money,” Bridges said. To say nothing of lives.

  “We haven’t had word one from Chavez suggesting he’s remotely interested in peace,” Stauer said.

  Boxer, sighing, added, “And we won’t have. Killing however many thousands of civilians in and around Punto Fijo has made it impossible for him to even think about it. He’d never survive the domestic backlash. Even if he somehow manages to pull it off, win here, and parade us or, more likely, our heads through the streets of Caracas, he still might not survive. It’s a certainty he won’t survive a free election if he doesn’t.”

  “And that’s the crux of the problem,” Stauer finished. “Chavez can’t make peace. His successor or successors can. They might not, but at least they can. So he has to die. We can’t even capture him or his successor will probably be forced to continue the war to free him. Lava and Second Battalion go forward.” Quite despite that many or most of them won’t be coming back.

  “And pass to Baluyev to get his boat in between Caracas and the Netherlands Antilles for potential air-sea rescue.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  The seventh rule of the ethics of means

  and ends is that generally success or failure is a

  mighty determinant of ethics.

  —Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

  Holding Base Snake (SF and MI-17’s),

  Twenty-two Miles South of Jonestown, Guyana

  Von Ahlenfeld boarded last. Surmounting the ridged ramp, shuffling forward between the knees of sardine-packed strikers, he came to his seat, on the starboard front of the aircraft. In the dim red light, he saw Hampson seated opposite and slightly aftward. The sergeant major raised one thumb in Lava’s direction, then gave a true shit-eating grin, the red light reflecting off of white teeth.

  Sergeant major’s job, von Ahlenfeld thought. Buck up the old man when everything’s about ready to go to shit.

  Glancing forward at the chief pilot and air mission commander, Mike Cruz, Lava shot him a visual question. Have they called this off yet? Cruz shook his head, slowly. We’re still a go.

  The Hip’s engineer then handed von Ahlenfeld a helmet so that he could communicate directly with the pilots, via intercom, as well as with the other helicopters once the time came for that.

  “I sent a query, Lee,” Cruz said. “Stauer says we go.”

  Nodding, the battalion commander said, “Your mission is to fly us there, Mike. Let’s do it before I get cold feet.”

  “History in the making,” Cruz replied, flipping his NOD’s down and turning back to his controls. His tone was pure, albeit feigned, cynicism. Like the rest, he was scared. Like the rest, he wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

  The helicopter, which had been vibrating, anyway, as it idled, began to thrum and shake as the pilot applied power and finessed his pedals and collective. The passengers felt themselves pushed down into the nylon troop seats as it lifted, nosed down, and began the long journey to the north and east. Behind it, the other four Hips likewise lifted, turned, and began beating the air. Once they’d gained a little altitude, the last four shifted positions from the rough circle in which they’d begun to a staggered trail left, behind Cruz and von Ahlenfeld.

  A long nap of the earth flight may have been too much for a bunch of Venezuelan kids, recently plucked from the street and most of them never having flown before, especially when the aircraft, a C-130, wasn’t really intended for NOE flight. For long-service, elite regulars, in good helicopters, in the hands of expert pilots, even the greater jinking as the birds did their very nonlevel best to skim tree tops wasn’t enough to discomfort them. Indeed, between the sound, the heat, the cocoonlike frame embracing them, and the continuous vibration, most of the troops fell fast asleep, only awakening—or half awakening, rather—when the Hips took profound nosedives to keep with the roll of the ground.

  Von Ahlenfeld didn’t sleep. Instead, under the red lights overhead and from a handheld flashlight, he studied the diagram of the target area, looking for flaws in the plan. He closed his eyes for a moment and rested his head back against the fuselage of the Hip, running through the sequence of events in his mind.

  Not that I can change anything at the moment, he thought. But at least I can mentally prepare to give the orders to change things, if necessary. If I find anything. Which I probably won’t …after sitting on my ass worrying about it for over a month.

  But I’d best keep looking. He opened his eyes again and stared down at the diagram. It was a struggle to keep them open, not because he was short sleep, but simply because the helicopter, in the hands of an expert, was a self-propelled lullaby.

  Von Ahlenfeld felt someone tapping his arm. He looked up to see the Hip’s engineer holding out a cup of coffee, the Styrofoam glowing faintly reddish under the lights. He took it, nodded gratefully, and then went back to his diagram and his mental rehearsals.

  Cruz turned the control over to his copilot and rested his arms and legs. Capable, these Russki jobs are. Easy to fly, they are not.

  Resting his body or not, Cruz’s head and eyes swiveled almost frantically, looking through his NOD’s for the Venezuelan fighter that was surely going to make a complete hash of his evening.

  Yeah, yeah; I know it’s not likely one will be anywhere near here. Wrong line between their major bases and where the action is in Guyana. Maintenance load at those bases is probably getting overwhelming, too. And we’re low enough that the monkeys could hitch a ride. Though they’d overload us if they did.

  Cruz did see an airborne light, through a patch in the cloud cover. With the NOD’s on, though, registering distance was impossible. He watched for a moment and then tried some calculations in his head. That was useless, as he’d really known it would be.

  Probably not a fighter, though, not with nav lights lit up. Then again, we haven’t shown any air to air capability so why shouldn’t they fly with lights? Still …it feels like some civvie airliner.

  Sucks having to rely on feelings.

  Cruz spent a few more minutes stretching and curling his fingers, then took the stick, saying, “Pilot’s bird.”

  At the slight shudder as control slipped from one pilot to the other, Hampson jolted from his half sleeping state to full alert. His fingers immediately sought his eyes, sweeping away the residue of sleep, even as his temporarily confused mind raced to place himself.

  Okay …haven’t disembarked once yet …so haven’t reached the refueling point. Okay …still have that and another long flight before I get killed. Not burning …this is good; we haven’t crashed yet. Okay …old soldier’s best advice; sleep when you can.

  He closed his eyes once again and did his best to follow that advice.

  Interim Objective Anaconda,

  Aguaro-Guariquito National Park, Venezuela

  They’d picked this spot to land, refuel, and shuffle the loads for a number of reasons, no single one of them dispositive. In the first place, the park was huge. In the second, it was in the middle of nowhere and drew few tourists. Third, and a side benefit of that, was that it was also far, far from the nearest cell phone tower, just in case there were some civilian tourist there. Moreover, fourth, there wasn’t a single power line anywhere that mattered; power
lines terrified helicopter crews. Fifth, there was only one good road in. Sixth, the ground was varied, and included jungle, mountain, flats, sand dunes, and damned near every other kind of terrain but arctic. Of those, the open flats were the points of greatest interest.

  Cruz, in the lead, lifted his NOD’s, then spent a few moments blinking away the purple haze those left on his eyes. He consulted the GPS/map display mounted in front of him. The display showed his current location, a short portion of the route, and the landing spot, just a few kilometers ahead.

  “V formation,” he ordered, in a very low power transmission. The staggered trail left formation shifted, with the two “gas trucks” swinging up to roughly equidistant positions from the lead bird, forming a triangle. The other two troop carriers likewise shifted, but to spots farther outside of the fuel carriers. “Short final,” he sent to von Ahlenfeld over the intercom. The latter began to pass the word.

  The NODs came down, Cruz scanning for the chosen interim landing zone. He found it and shifted heading very slightly. If he felt any fear at coming in to a near postage stamp surrounded by jungle, which postage stamp he’d never before set foot on or seen in person, he suppressed that fear ruthlessly.

  The landing was tricky in more ways than one. Most helicopters hovered nicely and could do a true vertical takeoff. A heavily loaded Hip really needed a certain amount of run to lift over substantial vertical obstacles.

  Like those fucking trees to the north.

  He measured the trees by eye and chose a spot on the ground certain to allow him to lift over them.

  The interim LZ was large enough, at roughly three hundred by five hundred meters, that getting all five helicopters in, in V formation, wasn’t too tight a squeeze. There was enough grass on the ground to prevent the choppers from raising great clouds of dust. And it was flat enough, and smooth enough. Even so, Cruz let the engineer, half hanging out of the door, talk him down, a fraction of a meter at a time.

  Engineer guidance or no, the landing was rough, with the helicopter bouncing fiercely on its landing struts. As soon as the bouncing stopped, Hampson and von Ahlenfeld were on their feet, shouting over the helicopter’s roar, “Interim LZ! Interim LZ!”

  It was a fair bet that, had they not reminded the troops, one of them—just awakened—would have either debarked firing, or run off into the jungle in search of a palace that wasn’t there. As it was, with the reminder, and under tight control from the team leaders and team sergeant, the strikers unloaded smoothly, and smoothly moved to take up a perimeter. Still others, carefully crossed-trained during the long wait at Holding Position Snake, moved to the fuel helicopters and began unreeling the hoses and leading them to the gas-hungry troop carriers.

  While they were doing that, the five copilots and five engineers began stripping off the extended range fuel tanks. These, the helicopters had emptied first. Once those were out of the way, they began to bolt on rocket and machine gun pods, connecting the control wires, pulling safety pins from fuses, and ensuring each was armed and ready. One chopper, Cruz’s, got precisely nothing in the way of armament. It was also refueled with considerable care, such that it had very little more than the bare minimum to get to the target.

  The configuration in which they’d flown was not the one in which they were going to land. To ensure the men loaded in that latter configuration, Hampson located himself centrally, at the open base of the triangle formed by the five Hips. Though it would slow the reload considerably, all of the men would have to pass by him on their way to reembark. The actual reorganization was taking place on the perimeter. And, though it had been rehearsed dozens of times, it was typically less than ideal:

  “Where the fuck is Johansson? Goddammit; he’s supposed to be with Sicher’s team … . Hey …Sarge? I thought Sicher’s team was supposed to be at three o’clock. Get a Delta over here; Garcia stepped in a hole and broke his ankle …Remember? We don’t have a Delta …Crap. Right; go borrow Detachment Four’s …Hey, anybody got a set of spare batteries for my NODs?. . . Tell me; please just tell me, you didn’t leave the RPG rounds back on Bird Four. Oh, no! You shithead; we’re not going back aboard Bird Four.”

  Situation normal, thought Hampson, listening from the center and watching the shade of one trooper legging it for the right rear helicopter. Ah, what the hell? I’d be worried if things went more smoothly, anyway.

  Helicopters Two through Five were loaded, each with either ten or fourteen men. Von Ahlenfeld personally led twenty-two to Hampson, who reported and then joined the rear of the line. Single file that last load moved, snaking around the end of the tail boom to avoid the invisibly spinning tail rotor. For the second time since lifting off, von Ahlenfeld clumped across the raised ridges of the ramp. Briefly, he turned and took a look around. It was too dark to see much of anything, but dark enough to see that there were no flying tracers, no burning buildings, no muzzle flashed.

  This may be the last peaceful scene I ever witness in this life. Oh, well.

  * * *

  It had made a certain amount of sense to fly in formation from Snake to Anaconda. At the very least, it had given all five helicopters some of the benefit of Cruz’s massive piloting experience. It had made the landing, cross-loading, refueling and arming run more smoothly. And it had held out the possibility that, were one bird to go down, von Ahlenfeld would know about it, because he or someone else could see it, in time to adjust his plans accordingly.

  Now, however, they were about to enter the more densely populated parts of Venezuela. Five helicopters, heading to Caracas, looked altogether too much like an attack in progress. They made more noise and attracted more attention. And, worst of all, while one helicopter’s IFF, Identification Friend or Foe, might fail, the statistical probability of all five, flying together, failing approached the impossible. Given the increased probability of running across a Venezuelan fighter, once they entered that built-up zone, that was a recipe for trooper flambé.

  Thus, while all five took off approximately together from Anaconda, as soon as they could they split off in five different directions, each to fly a predetermined course, to a series of preplanned checkpoints, at a given speed in order to arrive in the target area at a particular time.

  All flew on radio silence now, which silence they would maintain until they reached their penultimate checkpoint.

  Caracas, Venezuela

  The holding positions formed an almost perfect semicircle around the southern side of the city. To the west, or slightly northwest, of Nueva Esparta, Bird Two, fourteen troops, one rocket pod, one machine gun pod, kept position in a small valley, west of the highway. Counterclockwise from there, Bird Four, an ex “gas truck, with ten soldiers, two rocket pods and two machine gun pods, slowly circled Ruiz Pineda. Centered south of the town, Cruz’s Helicopter One, twenty-four soldiers, no pods, circled over a bend in the road a couple of miles south of Fort Tiuna. Northeast of that was Number Three, fourteen men, one of each kind of pod, moved in an oval between Cerro Verde and El Pauji. Hip Five, ten troops, four pods, hugged the mountains northeast of Los Chorros.

  The positions, at seven miles from the target, were carefully calculated to ensure that nobody was likely to hear more than one helicopter over the sounds of the city, nor would anyone in the city see more than one, hence nobody was likely to suspect an attack or report on those suspicions. Someone on the mountains to the north could see, were they looking, as could someone in one of the skyscrapers that towered above the muck.

  But how likely is it, Cruz mused, that someone on the mountains will scan one hundred and eighty degrees and know what he’s seeing? And how likely that any given one of those high rise offices will be occupied at this hour of the morning? Hell, if they’re up and in those places at all it’s probably because they’re fucking somebody they shouldn’t be fucking And besides, if they haven’t reported us yet, or don’t in the next thirty seconds, they’re too late.

  Von Ahlenfeld consulted his watch. About time. He signaled fo
r the radio to be set to high power. Then, switching from intercom to radio, he ordered, “Report.”

  “Two in position …Three; ready …Four, up …Five, let’s do it.”

  “Gentlemen …good luck and godspeed. Now fucking CHARGE!”

  Cruz half-dropped the ramp and gunned his engines. Hip Number One went from a couple of miles an hour to one hundred and fifty-six miles an hour in just a few seconds. Back in the cargo hold, the entire load of soldiers was forcibly bent at the waist, held in position only by their tightly cinched seatbelts. Once their inertia matched the speed of the helicopter, they straightened up again. Then they unbuckled as quickly as possible and lay down on the deck. Better to risk a broken bone or two than what was about to come through the cabin.

  This is sooo going to suck, thought Rattus Hampson.

  A veritable Charybdis of suckage, mused Lava, tugging off the headphones connected to the helicopter and pulling over his ears a different set with a boom mike to communicate with his ground troops by radio.

  “You guys can’t even begin to imagine how much this is going to suck!” shouted Cruz. Then he laughed, maniacally.

  Fort Tiuna passed below in a blur. Over and past highways, cemeteries, monuments, and hospitals they flew. Cruz paid no attention to the folds of the ground now, except to stay enough above them not to crash. Speed was everything.

  The Francisco Fajardo Highway passed below, then the marquee lights of the theater district. And then they were above Miraflores Palace. Cruz put on the figurative brakes, causing the cargo to scrunch forward, cursing.

  A quick glance left told the pilot, Good, no more than a few hundred people milling around Miraflores Park.

  Cruz looked down, confirming he was hovering directly over the palace’s central, partially palm treed courtyard. Then he almost completely cut power to the rotor before unbuckling himself and crouching as low as the cramped space of the cockpit would allow. Strobe flashes—rockets being launched by some of the other Hips—lit the cockpit from the outside.