A Fortnight of Fury

by David Culberson

  “You’ll see.”

  Ten minutes later the trawler was lit up by a powerful spotlight. Arlan peeked through a porthole to find the light’s source and was momentarily blinded. A loudspeaker called out, “Mr. Kline?”

  Charlie pulled the throttles back, and the boat rocked in the heavy seas. He then opened the door of the pilot house and stepped onto the narrow deck that surrounded it on three sides. Holding onto the rail, he held a megaphone to his mouth and shouted, “Tell that son-of-bitch commander of yours to turn that damn light off and offer an old man some hospitality.”

  The light dimmed, and Arlan could see the outline of a very large naval vessel towering over their trawler.

  “Charlie is picking a fight with the navy,” Arlan said.

  “Shit, Rookie, the fun’s just startin’.”

  A new voice came over the loud speaker and said, “Charlie, what the hell you doing out here twiddling your dick in the middle of nowhere on that godforsaken ugly boat?”

  Charlie laughed and answered, “You going to let us board? Or are you going to leave me out here to twiddle my dick all night?”

  “I don’t know. Are you housebroken yet?” the voice replied.

  Tommy asked, “D-do you know th-this guy?”

  Charlie shouted down to Tommy, “Yeah. I know him. We got shot up on a beach in the Pacific together as seventeen-year-old marines.”

  “Isn’t th-at too y-young to be in th-the marines?”

  “Yep.”

  Twenty minutes later they were aboard the “USS Trenton, a transport ship and part of the Twenty-Second Marine Amphibious Unit, or “our floating hotel,” as Colonel Faulkner described it when he welcomed his old friend Charlie and the others to his command center. Charlie and the colonel embraced, and Charlie introduced Arlan, Tommy and Captain Jay.

  “Maybe Charlie told you, but we go back a long time. We met as young leathernecks in the Big War. We were dumb enough to storm a beach that was being peppered by Japanese snipers. We both got shot, and the damn medics threw us back on the steel landing crafts. The snipers loved that. They’d shoot into the landing craft, and their bullets would ricochet around for a while. Hell, I got hit two more times from one of those bouncing bullets,” the colonel said and smiled at Charlie, who said nothing.

  “Charlie and I took different paths after the war. I stayed in to fight the good war overtly. Charlie took a more covert turn, chasing spooks around,” the colonel said and slapped Charlie’s shoulder.

  Charlie smiled but didn’t respond. Arlan could tell he wasn’t happy about having his history discussed. Most who knew Charlie well, if that was possible, had surmised that he worked for the CIA or some other covert group. He tried to hide. The events of the past couple of days were good proof, but the colonel had just confirmed it.

  “It’s too rough to tether your bathtub of a boat to our ship, so I put a crew on her until you’re ready to leave,” the colonel said and then added, “But I suggest you stay the night if your destination is Grenada.”

  Charlie didn’t commit. Instead, he asked, “How’d you find us?”

  “I got a message from a mutual friend last night to look out for you. He gave me a description of your boat. We’ve been tracking you for a few hours. What’s this about a stolen boat and a kidnapped woman?”

  Charlie took five minutes to explain their situation. When he was finished, he handed the photo Forrest had found of Boiled Bob, Long Bill and Maynard to his friend and said, “The short one is no longer a problem.”

  The colonel raised his eyebrows and looked at Charlie but didn’t question him. He said, “And you think these two are on Grenada with a stolen sailboat and a kidnapped woman?”

  It was more a statement than a question.

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll copy this and pass it along to some of the other commanders. I’ll send it to Bragg and have them give copies to some Rangers who’ll be going in the same time we do.”

  He passed the photo to a subordinate with his instructions. He turned back to Charlie and said, “I wouldn’t put too much faith in our ability to find these people, or the boat you’re looking for. We’ve got higher priorities at the moment.”

  Charlie smiled and said, “I understand. But we’re going to shore, and I’d appreciate what you can tell us about your plan. We’d like to stay away from any hotspot, if possible.”

  “Bull. I’ve never known you to shy away from hotspots, Charlie. If your friends are anything like you, you’ll all be in it up to your elbows before it’s over,” the colonel said and laughed.

  Arlan wanted to raise his hand and volunteer to the colonel that he wasn’t at all like Charlie.

  The colonel said, “I’ll tell you what I know because, frankly, we could use some help.”

  Arlan looked around at all of the high-tech equipment and the no-nonsense uniformed professionals going about their business and wanted to laugh at the colonel’s statement.

  “How well do you know the island of Grenada?” the colonel asked.

  Charlie glanced at the others and said, “Pretty well. We’ve all spent time there, and some of us have been diving around the island.”

  The colonel looked at everybody in the group, seemingly measuring what he’d say next. He then said, “Here’s the deal, Charlie. You know the history of this thing, right?”

  “Mostly, but my friends don’t know as much. You might as well bring them up to speed, as long as you’re in a talkative mood, that is,” Charlie said with a smile.

  “Prime Minister Maurice Bishop shopped his new airport at Pont Salines to the US a few years ago, telling them that a bigger airport was needed on the island to compete for tourism with other Caribbean islands. The US refused to fund it, so Great Britain did. But Castro provided the labor and equipment, and, with Cuba’s involvement, the US figured that the nine-thousand-foot runway would be used to land Soviet planes and that Castro would have another foothold in the Caribbean.”

  The colonel paused while one of his officers approached and whispered something to him. The colonel nodded, and the officer walked away.

  “Anyway, Bishop was executed by members of something called the People’s Revolutionary Army, which, evidently, has the support of Grenada’s official military.”

  “Are they a threat?” Arlan asked.

  The colonel shrugged and said, “Who knows. It’s politics. We don’t get involved with politics, right, Charlie?”

  Charlie barely stifled a laugh.

  “It doesn’t matter. The neighboring islands, headed up by Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, have called for our help. They don’t want Castro or the Soviets in their neighborhood. And, besides killing Bishop and scores of island residents, the new government on Grenada has imposed a twenty-four-hour curfew—shoot to kill any violators.”

  Captain Jay asked, “What’s that have to do with squat?”

  The colonel smiled and asked Charlie, “Where’d you find this guy? He cuts to the chase quickly, doesn’t he?”

  Charlie shook his head and said, “You don’t know the half of it, my friend.”

  The colonel continued and said, “There is a medical school on that island, and about six hundred of its students are American. That’s the president’s angle for going in. This is a rescue mission first and a mission to restore democracy and keep Grenada out of Castro’s hands second.” The colonel looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “Or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  The colonel paused and read a note handed to him by one of the dozen or so people running around the room. After reading it he stuffed it into his pocket and said to nobody, “This thing is at risk of going south.”

  Nobody said anything and waited for the colonel to continue.

  The colonel turned his attention back to his guests and said, “We’ve
had two days to plan this thing. You heard about that bombing of the military barracks in Beirut a couple of days ago? Killed more than three hundred people? Two hundred forty were US Marines.” The colonel paused and said, “Well, that’s pissed everybody off, and the president is loaded for bear. Our carrier group, the Guam, was on its way to the Mediterranean when we got the call to divert to an area near Dominica to await orders. Another carrier group, the Independence, is on its way as well.”

  “That’s a lot of firepower,” Charlie said.

  “Hell, once the word got out that we’re going to pick a fight with a little island, everybody wanted in—the navy, the army, air force and us. It’s a big cluster fuck with a lot of talk but precious little island knowledge.”

  The colonel reached for a pamphlet on a nearby desk and handed it to Charlie. He then said, “This is our reconnaissance—a tourist map. Oh, and we have a nautical chart based on a 1936 British reference chart, and it has no grid lines. We have no eyes on the ground, no topography maps and no idea what beaches we can land on and which ones are blocked by coral reefs.”

  Charlie grabbed the tourist map, glanced at it and passed it to Captain Jay, who snorted and handed it to Tommy, who then handed it to Arlan. Arlan smiled. All four of them knew more about Grenada than what was on the tourist map.

  Charlie said, “This is all you have?”

  “Yes, sir,” the colonel said with a laugh. He then asked, “You plan to go in tonight?”

  “We were planning to be there tonight, but…” Charlie glanced at the tourist map, “…I guess it wouldn’t hurt to start our search in the daylight.”

  “Good. If you’re all hell bound for glory to find your sailboat and the kidnapped woman you’ll need to know a few things. We can help you with that. You can help us with intel. We’ll set up some bunks for you and secure your boat until the morning. But I’m going to give you a warning,” the colonel said. “If you don’t find the people you’re looking for by nightfall, you’d better hunker down the next morning for a while and let the dust settle.”

  The colonel moved them to another room that was just as busy as the one they were just in. In the center of the new room was a vertical glass panel about eight feet tall and five feet wide and accessible from both sides. A fairly detailed depiction of Grenada had been drawn on it, and cutouts of small boats, planes and flags grouped in varying colors were stuck to the glass with some kind of sticky substance. They were placed around the island as though they were ready to pounce. St. George’s, on the southwest side of the island, was depicted with labels and arrows that pointed to Fort Rupert, the Government House, a prison, Grand Anse Beach just to the south of the city and a few other landmarks that Arlan wasn’t familiar with. Most of the toy cutouts were bunched off the shore of St. George’s. A flag with the name “Independence Group” stuck out from one of the toy ships.

  The new runway being built at Point Salines was drawn on the map with an arrow pointing to the medical school campus at the east end of the runway. Other villages around the island had been noted, along with the old Pearls Airport and the village of Grenville on the northeast part of the island. Three battleships had been placed off the coast of Grenville, and a flag with the name “Guam Group” had been placed on the largest ship. Rows of marker-scribbled humps, depicting mountains, had been drawn on the glass in the center of the island, with no real relevance to their actual locations or elevations.

  “This is what the island should look like about zero five hundred hours on Tuesday, about thirty-four hours from now. You see anything out of place?”

  Charlie asked, “You planning a beach assault?”

  “Up here at Pearls Airport and…” the colonel pointed to the south of St. George’s, “…down here on Grand Anse Bay. My marines are going into Pearls Airport. The Rangers are going in down here at Point Salines. We’ve got SEALs and Delta doing some of the dirtier work like taking over the radio station for PSYOP people.”

  The colonel saw the confused looks and explained, “That’s the psychological warfare part. They want to secure the airwaves to make sure they can send messages out that we’re coming with good intentions and all that bull. We plan to bring in a battalion of Rangers first. They’ll leave from Hunter Army Airfield in Florida during the night and land on the new airstrip at Pont Salines before dawn. It’s protected by about seven hundred Cuban construction workers and a couple of hundred Grenadian troops. Our info is that they have Cuban-supplied anti-aircraft weapons and some mortars. Nothing big.”

  Charlie grunted and said, “I’m more worried about your amphibious assaults. There are significant reef formations off the coast in both locations. Depending on sea conditions you may not get to shore by boat. You should be ready for an assault by air. The weather around here hasn’t been very cooperative lately. After all, it’s still hurricane season.”

  “I’ll recommend we send in a SEAL recon tomorrow night to check that out.”

  Charlie then said, “Be prepared for a fight with the Cubans. I’ll guarantee you that those Cuban construction workers are all trained military.”

  Arlan looked around the room at the technical equipment that was unlike anything he’d ever seen. He smiled as he thought that, if there was some dramatic background music, he’d be convinced he was playing a part in a war drama.

  The colonel paused while they were offered beverages by a very good-looking woman in a navy uniform. Captain Jay smiled when she approached him, followed by a whispered comment that Arlan couldn’t hear. Arlan kicked Tommy’s toe and nodded toward Jay.

  Tommy smiled, leaned toward Arlan and said, “And I th-thought he was in a h-hurry to find Lisa.”

  “Right now he’s in a hurry to get laid.”

  The colonel and Charlie continued their discussion with the colonel saying, “Once we’ve secured both airports we’ll fan out to rescue the students at the True Blue Campus near Point Salines, then to St. George’s to rescue the governor-general, Sir Paul Scoon and his family, then off to round up the bad guys—those that are left alive.”

  “Are there any friendly troops on the island?” Charlie asked.

  “Not that we’re aware of. This isn’t a civil war. The police, a local militia, the People’s Army and the Cubans all support what’s called the Revolutionary Military Council. It’s the men at the top who have been having a turf war. With Bishop dead and his main opponent, Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, either gone or dead, a general in charge of the military, named Austin Hudson, seems to have come out on top.”

  “Where do the people of the island stand?”

  “We don’t know whose side they’re on. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Arlan, still trying to digest that they were in the middle of what was probably classified information said, “Excuse me… sir. But are we supposed to be listening to this? I mean, isn’t this for military people only?”

  The colonel smiled, put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder and said, “Charlie’s family. And he’s got clearance. You wouldn’t be with him if you weren’t worth your weight in salt. So I have no problem sharing this info with all of you. Like I said, you’ll likely be in this up to your ass, and you’ll either help us with recon or you’ll run. My guess is that none of you run from much anything.”

  Maybe not, but I can swim pretty fast, Arlan thought.

  The colonel said, “I don’t know if there still is a curfew, and I don’t know how you plan to get around the island, but I’m going to leave some equipment on your boat so you can do some reconnoitering for us, if you don’t mind.”

  Charlie said, “No problem. And we’ll have no problem getting around the island—or the curfew. I have contacts.”

  “Again, I suggest you find what you’re looking for tomorrow and get the hell out. But if you get stuck, contact Lieutenant Colonel Hagler with the Ranger’s 75th Infantry. He’ll be first in at Point Sa
lines and will let you know when it’s secure. His name is on one of the radios I left in your boat. My group will be up north securing Pearls Airport and the surrounding area. But I want you to keep in touch with me so I can relay info, especially tomorrow as you run around the island looking for the woman. Tell me what you see.”

  “Anything else you can say we should watch out for?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes. The Grenada Police have three British-built patrol boats. My men on your boat tell me that you’re equipped to see them before they see you. Stay clear of them. I don’t think they have much firepower, but you have none—that I’m aware of.”

  Charlie smiled and said nothing.

  The colonel nodded to the pretty officer who’d served them beverages, who’d been waiting nearby, and said, “Lieutenant, see these men to our guest quarters.” He then looked around at his guests and said, “I assume you haven’t changed your mind and will be staying on board tonight?”

  Arlan looked at Captain Jay, who was swooning over the lieutenant. Charlie and Tommy noticed, and Charlie rolled his eyes. He said, “I guess we’re staying.”

  “Good,” the colonel said. “We have a commander on board. His name is Butler. He sailed recreationally around Grenada a few years ago and went to shore a few times. I’d like for him to meet us for dinner so we can further discuss the terrain we’ll be up against.” He picked up the tourist map and said, “We need something a lot better than what the government handed us.”

  The colonel turned to talk to another officer, then turned back to Charlie and asked, “By the way, are the Cubans sending weapons up to Dominica?”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got a handle on that. And, if you do your job, it’s unlikely that any more will make it up there,” Charlie said. He then looked around the busy room and seemed to notice all of the activity for the first time. “Does this operation have a name yet?” he asked.

  The colonel smiled and said, “It’s called Operation Urgent Fury.”

  “Sounds appropriate,” Arlan said under his breath.