by Rick Partlow
I think he would have sat down had there been any chairs in the office, but there weren’t and instead, he leaned against the wall.
“I spread money and food and gasoline and threats everywhere I could reach in the city, and I finally found them. She had been intercepted on her journey by the EPV and her and Paulo had been taken to the Catia barrio, the poorest section of the city and a hotbed of support for the Communists.” His hands clenched into fists and he closed his eyes, as if gathering his resolve. “I want her back safely, of course, but above all else, gentlemen, I must have Paulo back. My cooperation and above all, my discretion in not spreading the word that the US is working with me under the table depend on this. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Jambo assured him, taking a swig of Pabst Blue Ribbon. And God alone knew how Martijena had gotten ahold of PBR down here. “We’ll get it done.”
And how the hell, I wondered, were we going to do that?
Chapter Eight
“How the hell are we going to do this?” Rodent asked, arms folded across the small table as a rest for his chin. “I mean, do we have a plan yet?”
Rodent had shaved his beard. The whole team had shaved them off and it was still throwing me. What threw me for even more of a loop was that I hadn’t realized it until a full day after the Jambo hadn’t gotten underway. Well, some, like Pops, had never had a beard. The beards were affectations from a time when most of their warfighting was done in the Middle East, where the locals wouldn’t respect a man who lacked a beard, and thank God I hadn’t been around for that, because I couldn’t grow one for shit. But Jambo had reveled in his facial hair and the freedom to grow it in defiance of all military regulation, and the attitude had spread through the team. It sort of felt as if the mass shaving was a break from the past, but I didn’t ask. It felt like an intrusion on their private grieving to ask.
Honestly, though, some of them should have kept the beards, because Rodent and Ginger and especially Dog looked goofy as hell without them. Standing at the center of the team in the small conference room we’d commandeered aboard the Jambo, I felt like I was talking to a bunch of fresh-faced privates. And I didn’t need that, because I was already as nervous as a whore in church. I had never briefed the team alone before. Hell, I hadn’t briefed anyone in years and now I was about to lead a bunch of hardened Delta operators into combat.
“What we have right now,” I tried to answer his question, “is that we’re going to jump into the system pretty far out, hopefully far enough that they won’t detect us, and get a feel for the current disposition of enemy forces. The Helta left some inactive spy drones behind, so we’re hoping the Tevynians didn’t find and eliminate them already. If they’re still around, we’ll transmit the activation codes and get a SIGINT report before we make the final translation into the battlespace.”
“The battlespace?” Ginger repeated, looking at me askance.
“We’ll come out of the jump as close to the planet as we can, then launch shuttles immediately to try to get inside their OODA loop before they can respond. The known unknowns here are where they’re containing the civilians and how secure their holding facilities are….” I was blathering and I knew it, and I wondered if they’d say anything or just let me try to swim out of it. Being Delta, they threw me an anchor.
“Question, sir,” Ginger said, raising his hand as if he was in a classroom, a shit-eating grin on his ruddy face. “I’m not sure I’m tracking you. How does the timing of our entry into the battlespace interoperate with their C-Cubed-I?”
“Yeah,” Rodent added, scratching where his beard used to be. “And does the Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence have an upward trending glidepath showing synergistic nesting effort towards partnered interoperability?”
And that was it, of course. They tried to keep straight faces, but Bubba cracked first, his babyface unable to keep a serious expression for more than a few seconds, and once he started sniggering, the rest couldn’t stop themselves and neither could I. The little compartment filled with raucous laughter.
“Sorry, guys,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “I know, I know. I guess I’m a little intimidated since you all know more about small unit tactics than I ever will.”
“It’s just us, boss,” Pops said, sitting on the edge of the table beside me. “Tell us what we need to know.”
“What you need to know is how much we don’t know,” I said, relaxing from the parade rest I’d automatically fallen into when I began the briefing. “We don’t know how much they’ve built the place up since we’ve been gone, we don’t know if they’ve brought back any of the cruisers they stripped away from the system, we don’t know how many troops they have on the ground.” I sighed, leaning against the table. “Hell, we don’t even know how many Helta civilians are left on the damned planet after the evacuations. We’re hoping we can get some of that from the sleeper drones, but you know the old saying. Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.”
An idea struck me, something that would acknowledge their superior experience and still make it clear who was in charge without being a dick about it.
“I tell you what. We have a lot of possibilities here. Ginger, give me an example of a scenario we might be facing when we drop.”
“The Tevynians might be mixed with the Helta population,” he said without hesitation. “They might be doing it to better defend against any attempt to take back the colony or just because it’d be easier to control them that way.”
“Good. What I want you to do is come up with a deployment plan for us and the Rangers based on that scenario. Include a plan for air and orbital support and contingencies for if either or both are unavailable. Throw anything else in that you think is important, don’t feel constrained by op order format, what’s important is that we don’t leave anything out. Copy?”
“Good copy, sir,” he said, nodding. He grinned at the others as he pulled out his tablet and began tapping notes into it. “I guess that’s what I get for being the first to answer, huh?”
“Not at all, Ginger,” I assured him. “Bubba, give me another likely scenario. Not just what you think will happen, but what’s within the realm of reasonable expectation.”
I could see the looks of realization in their eyes, and, more importantly, expressions of approval. This was what I should have been doing instead of parroting the lecturing style of the officers I’d hated when I’d been a platoon leader.
“All right,” Bubba said, his Texas accent turning the words into “aw raht.” You’d think the guy from Texas would be “Cowboy,” but he was “Bubba” and “Cowboy,” Staff Sergeant Andrew Foster, was from Oklahoma. “I getcha. We know these Tevynians ain’t the brightest fuckers when it comes to the technology they steal. From what I understand, they never went through a gunpowder period, so they got no concept of mines even using explosives at all, so I wouldn’t be expecting anything like that, but they been pretty good at finding new uses for the shit the Helta let them get ahold of. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take those plasma guns and put them in vehicles down there on the surface. They might not have had to use them much tactically against the Helta, because the fur-faces ain’t shit for tactics, but they’ll do it just because grunts are lazy and ain’t nobody gonna be wanting to haul those things around on a hand-pulled cart.”
“A high tech technical,” Pops murmured and I snorted a not-entirely-pleasant laugh. I had too many bad memories of technicals to feel any real humor.
“Bubba,” I said, pointing at him with a knife hand, “I need you to write up possible mounts and uses for the Helta weapons systems, what you think we might run into and hell, just whatever you think some dumbass Tevynian redneck with too much time on his hands, stuck on some dead-end outpost like this might come up with in a ‘hold-my-beer’ moment.”
“Sounds like the perfect assignment for you, Bubba,” Dog told him, braying a laugh.
“Your turn, Dog,” I s
aid, and the rest of the team chuckled at his discomfort. “You’re the Tevynians. What are you going to do with this world?”
“They know we’re around,” Dog mused, tilting his head to the side, deep in thought. “I mean, they don’t know we’re from Earth, and they don’t know we’re allied with the Helta yet, but they know someone else is around, right?” He grinned crookedly at me. “Your United Stars Empire, maybe. So, they might be digging in harder than usual, maybe expecting some trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised if that military base has some serious fortifications. That might work to our advantage, though. Maybe when they see us jump into the system, they’ll pull everything back inside the walls and count on their air defenses to keep us from just strafing the shit out of them. If that happens and assuming we can’t just strafe the shit out of them, our best bet would be to set the Rangers on them and pin them in there while we go extract the assets.”
“That sounds like a plan,” I admitted. “Write it up.” I gestured around to the others. “All of you come up with a different scenario and write up your recommendations. We’re meeting back here in twenty-four hours and we’ll go over all of it.” I chuckled. “I’d expect that session to last a lot longer than this one.”
“But it won’t seem as long,” Rodent murmured.
“Take off,” I told them, nodding at the door.
They filed out, except for Pops, who hung back, waiting for the last of them to head out into the passage before pushing the hatch shut.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he said. “Told you it would be okay.”
“I acted like an idiot,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face, my stomach roiling with the memory of it. “I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, so I just spouted buzzwords.”
“No one expects you to be perfect from minute one,” he insisted, waving my embarrassment away. “You pulled out of the dive and did something useful.” He arched an eyebrow. “You know what you have to do now, though, right?”
I racked my brain for possibilities and came up lemons.
“What?” I asked, surrendering to the inevitability of revealing my ignorance.
“Now you have to go back to your room.”
“Compartment,” I corrected him absently, earning a grin.
“Crayon-eater,” he murmured. “You have to go back to your compartment and be one step ahead of those boys. You’ll need to come up with all the possibilities they’ll come up with and more, and what you’d do in all those scenarios, so you know what to say when they come up with theirs.”
“Oh.” I moaned and closed my eyes. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling open the hatch and grinning as he left. “Have fun with that.”
***
Sleep dragged at my eyelids, grabbing on and jumping with its full weight, trying to pull them down. I blinked and rubbed at them, wondering if I should turn on the light. I didn’t need it for the notes I was taking. The Space Force had finally achieved what the military had always bragged was its ultimate goal, the paperless workplace. Helta tech shuttles might be a hell of a lot cheaper to launch than chemical rockets, but space was limited and we weren’t devoting any of it to fucking paper.
The tablets were everywhere and, amazingly enough for a piece of military hardware, easy to use. But the screen was giving me eyestrain and after four straight hours of typing in one scenario after another and giving my assessment of our plan of attack for each of them. I was about ready to call it a night.
There was a knock on the hatch. I looked up, surprised. The ship ran round the clock, of course, this being space, but the Rangers and the Security Team were all on the same work schedule and I didn’t know who the hell would be coming around my compartment this time of my personal night. I switched the light on and pushed myself to my feet, stumbling a little, perhaps because I was groggy or perhaps because I’d been sitting in the same position for hours now.
I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, my typical shipboard sleepwear, and I thought about throwing on my utilities before opening the hatch, but I shrugged, figuring whoever it was would know what my schedule was and what to expect. I opened the hatch and discovered it was me who didn’t know what to expect.
Julie Nieves leaned against the hatchway, one fist against her hip, the corner of her mouth turned up.
“Umm, hi,” I said, unable to come up with anything more intelligent.
“Hey, Andy.” She looked me up and down in frank assessment. “I guess I got you out of bed?”
“No, not exactly,” I admitted. “I was working on some stuff for tomorrow.” I waved at the tablet on my desk top. If you can call a tiny ledge that folded down out of the bulkhead a “desk.”
She nodded, not seeming that interested in what I’d been doing.
“I just got off shift,” she said. “I thought I might go down to the mess and get something to eat. You hungry?”
I blinked. My only excuse was that I was exhausted and fuzzy in the head, and even then, I had a feeling I was missing something. But I was forty-something now and pretty far from the age when I would have followed a girl around all night just on the off-chance she might let me kiss her. Plus, to be honest, I was scared shitless what would happen if I was reading the signals wrong.
“I ate a few hours ago,” I said. “And I really have to finish this work up before I go to sleep, but maybe tomorrow I could meet you in the mess….”
She rolled her eyes, regarding me the same way a teacher might look at a student who kept asking the same, stupid question.
‘Goddamn, Andy,” she sighed. “Have you always been this clueless around women?”
She closed the distance between us in a step, her heel shoving the hatch shut behind her, and then she was kissing me before I understood what was happening. Her lips were softer than I’d imagined, and to quote my favorite smuggler, I can imagine quite a bit. Her arms went around my neck and my hands went to her waist, and then lower.
“The answer’s yes,” I said breathlessly as we undressed each other. “I have always been this clueless about women.”
“Jesus, Andy,” she hissed into my ear, following it with her tongue. “You’re lucky you aren’t still a virgin.”
“I’m very lucky,” I told her, “that it didn’t get me killed.”
Because it almost had.
Chapter Nine
“This feels wrong, sir,” Chamberlain said, speaking up so I could hear him above the rattle of the ancient box truck. I’d never imagined how loud one of the things could be from the inside of the cargo compartment, and I wished to hell I hadn’t picked tonight to find out the hard way.
“We’ll be all right, lance corporal,” I assured him.
As if God had been listening, we hit a bump and a suspension that had needed repairing since I was in high school nearly sent me pitching off to the side into Chamberlain’s lap. The stack of boxes blocking us off from the rear doors to the truck didn’t move, though. They were held in place by cargo straps, a visual barrier for anyone who might stop the truck and check the load. They weren’t much a barrier against gunfire, though, if someone didn’t buy the maskirovka.
First and Second squad were cheek by jowl, sitting on the bare metal and wood of the floor, weapons propped between their knees.
“I didn’t mean that, sir,” Chamberlain insisted, scowling. I could barely see his expression behind his night vision goggles. “I mean, these are Red Cross trucks.”
I searched for Gunny Moore and remembered, to my chagrin, that he was in the other truck, and I’d have to deal with Chamberlain myself.
“It’s technically against the rules,” I acknowledged. “But this is a covert operation, and the less said about this, the better.” The less he said, the better, period, as far as I was concerned.
“It’s against the laws of war, sir. We could get charged with a war crime for doing this.”
He didn’t, I noted, sound righteously indignant, a tone that would have gone well alongsid
e his words. Instead, his voice was sullen, stubborn, more as if he was annoyed at the added risk than offended by the moral breach.
“It’s a war crime if you’re fighting an actual nation,” I told him. “The EPV is a terrorist organization. They don’t represent the people of Venezuela. They’re the war criminals.”
Which they were, but I honestly had no idea if that made what we were doing all right. The Blackhawks had dropped us off further down the mountain and the trucks had been waiting with their big, red crosses on the side and Jambo told us to get in, so we got in, and I tried not to think about it. And it was way too late to back out now.
“If we get charged,” I assured Chamberlain, “I’ll tell the JAG that I ordered you in. It’ll all come down on me.”
That seemed to cheer him up. It didn’t do much for me except give me something else to worry about. Not that I expected to be scooped up by UN peacekeepers and taken to the Hague upon completion of the operation. Hell, the UN couldn’t find two rocks to rub together these days, much less a military force that could counter the US in Venezuela. They were like one of the ubiquitous monkeys in the forests here, chattering loudly and angrily and occasionally throwing their own feces around, but unable to accomplish anything other than making a mess. No one had paid them serious attention since the Gulf War way back in 1991.
But that was today. There were politics behind the scenes of all this, politics I tried not to think about because there was nothing I could do to change them. One US president had gotten us involved in this war, and then the next had wanted badly to end it but couldn’t and had, instead, committed more ground forces while cutting ties with the Citizens’ Militia and other right-wing groups opposed to the EPV. Except we hadn’t actually done that, and everyone knew it, despite the official denials. The CIA still worked with them, Delta still worked with them, obviously, and now I was working with them.
