Countdown_ The Liberators Part 31

"I am . . . sixteen," said Elena, the senior. "We are all sixteen or seventeen except for Adriana, Irina, and Tatiana." On the last name Elena once again struck the girl-apparently Tatiana-she'd slapped before. "They is . . . umm . . . are fifteen."

"Aha," Phillie half smiled. "Very different set of rules then. Very different. Rule Number One is NO. Rule Number Two is, in case of doubt, refer back to Rule Number One. Rule Number Three, on the other hand, says Rule Number One, NO, is continuously in force. Rule Number Four . . . "

Coffee heard Phillie's voice coming from inside the tent set aside for training the foreign girls, " . . . is known as the 'two girl' rule. That means that I better never find one of you alone. You will always be at least in pairs. This includes, most especially, going to the latrines, the toilets, in the middle of the night. Rule Number Six . . . "

Coffee smiled-quick study, our girl-and then coughed. "Phillie, you sent for me?"

The girl called "Tatiana" began turning her head very quickly to where the voice had come from. This movement ceased and her eyes returned to straight ahead in a flurry of Romanian and a loud crack.

Phillie ignored the slap. She said to the sergeant, "Despite what we thought, these girls all speak English to some extent. I think that means we can get a lot more use out of them than planned. So I suggest that instead of me teaching them how to clean floors and instruments to standard, or to empty bedpans, you ought to be teaching them how to be real medics."

"Makes sense," Coffee agreed. "Let me clear it with Doc Joseph."

"Fine," Phillie said. "In the interim, girls, Rule Six is . . . "

D-70, a.s.sembly Area Alpha, Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil

"And that makes eight," Waggoner said, as the last of the CH-801's touched down on the strip. "Amazing d.a.m.ned things," he muttered, as the plane came to a stop in what looked to be about twenty-five meters. "Just amazing."

"It's just a somewhat redesigned Storch," Cruz said. He'd come upriver to camp from the Merciful on the supply ferry. "Arguably not quite as good as those birds were. Considerably smaller wingspan, though, and that-" he glanced around at the trees towering over the strip "- counts. It'll count aboard s.h.i.+p, too."

Under a tree, not five meters away, Cree, who'd come in first then taken over directing the landings, breathed a sigh of relief as he placed a radio microphone down atop the radio he'd propped up against the tree. The radio, as well as those aboard the CH-801's, was in the clear. There were encrypted radios available, but they'd been either in Brazil or in transit. The planes had had to make do with commercial jobs, all unencrypted. Everybody else on the base already had encrypted radios, Russian-made frequency hoppers; a bit heavy, but effective enough for all that.

In the dark, Cree's Mexican ground crew was already pus.h.i.+ng the last of the light planes under the trees. More specifically, they pushed it under a camouflage screen they'd erected under Sergeant Major Joshua's tutelage earlier in the day. Mac was one of the denizens of the camp who spoke rather excellent Spanish, the result of spending many years as an instructor at the jungle school at Fort Sherman in the old Panama Ca.n.a.l Zone; that, and having married a girl from Colon, Panama. Sure, the accent was substantially different, as was much of the slang. Even so, he'd spent enough time around Mexican Spanish speakers to more than get by.

"So what's left?" Joshua asked Waggoner. The latter started; he hadn't even been aware the former was still in the area . . . and Mac had never learned to smile in the dark to let people know he was around.

"Bring in the half dozen or so translators Wahab is rounding up," Waggoner answered. "That's it . . . well, that and finish training here and then load the Merciful. Not a bad job, all things considered," he added. "From a standing start to a joint-combined battalion size task force in fifty-six odd days."

"Nope," Mac agreed. "Not bad at all. Course, all of our own people are already basically pretty well trained. And even some of the foreigners."

"That was a help," Waggoner said. "I wonder if it's ever been done before."

"It has," Joshua replied. "Many times, if not in exactly the same way or for exactly the same reasons."

"Really?" Waggoner asked. "Where? When?"

"Depends on what aspect you mean. The minutemen of 1775 mustered from unmobilized and fairly untrained militia in a matter of literally minutes to hours. The Ma.s.sachusetts militia then began a siege of the British in Boston within days. The Continental Army a.s.sembled in mere weeks. None of them had nearly the level of training most of our people came to us with.

"From Hitler's order to begin planning the invasion of Norway to the first German troops setting foot on the ground was about ten days less time than we've planned on and if the Germans already had a force in existence, the scale of the thing was much greater and the antic.i.p.ated opposition much more ferocious. Eben Emael and the a.s.sociated bridges were more on our scale, and if those took a little longer to prepare, from Hitler's order to Student to the actual a.s.sault, the Germans were also doing something rather new and, again, against worse opposition.

"Then there were the filibusteros, or the Texian Army under Sam Houston . . . Go back to how quickly the Romans not only trained a fleet to face Carthage, but actually built one from scratch. And let's not forget-"

"I'm talking about creating a mercenary force of roughly battalion size, very quickly, from scratch," Waggoner interrupted. Sometimes I wonder if the colonel isn't exactly right about the sergeant major, his ancient ancestor, and legions of Rome.

"Fifth Commando, Congo, 1964."

"Oh."

D-69, Kamarang, Guyana

"Ohhh, my f.u.c.king head," moaned Montgomerie, seated against a brick wall with his rear end on a filthy floor. He'd been out of it for over a day and was just now coming to his senses. When he wasn't puking from concussion. When Corporal Schiebel decided to knock someone silly, that someone would stay silly for a while. "Where are we?"

"I don't know," said Adkinson, standing and staring out the open, unscreened bars of their common cell. It was dark outside, with just a hint of morning's light in the east. Adkinson's forearms were through the bars, with his hands grasping them. "Guyana, somewhere."

"You don't know?" Slade asked, voice dripping with contempt. Slade sat on the one, narrow, mattressless bunk in the cell. "But you know everything, I thought. You sure f.u.c.king acted like it and talked like it."

"f.u.c.k you, Slade," Adkinson said. "You didn't have to listen to me."

"And I wish to h.e.l.l I never had, a.s.shole. I needed that money."

A jailer came in. At least they thought he was probably a jailer. He looked old, if not exactly feeble, and either entirely or at least mostly Amerindian. He wore no s.h.i.+rt and only cut-off trousers, remnants of what might once have been a police uniform. A canvas belt and rusty pistol hung at his ample waist. The jailer set a tray of something down on the floor and then, using a pole, pushed it through a small opening at the base of the cells bars.

"Let us the f.u.c.k out!" Adkinson said, turning from the barred window. The jailer answered with some language that didn't seem to have any Indo-European roots whatsoever. Naturally, innately sure that he'd be listened to if he just spoke loudly enough, Adkinson raised his voice. The jailer just shrugged and turned away.

Slade stood up and walked over to the tray, bending and picking it up. He sniffed at it. "Food," he announced. "But I'm not sure what kind."

Adkinson was about to give a smart answer when he felt a sharp p.r.i.c.k in his neck. He slapped at it. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"Ohhh, my head," Montgomerie repeated.

"Hey, does it seem to be getting hotter in here?" Slade asked.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Once a Chekist always a Chekist; Chekists cannot be former or corrupt.

- General Vladimir Smirnov, FSB

D-69, near Lubyanka Square, Moscow

Russia, at least, had gasoline freely available. The thick and fearsome traffic outside the old headquarters of the Cheka and its progeny said as much. The noise, of horns, of badly tuned engines, and of cursing drivers and pedestrians, was equally fearsome.

"I like it," said Yuri Vasilyevich Chebrikov, to Ralph Boxer, in a little cafe down a side street off the square, not too very far for an old man to walk from his daily travails. As tired as he looked, indeed the skin around his neck and eyes, and along both sides of Chebrikov's face sagged, he still managed to make his daily walk, rain, s.h.i.+ne, or-commonly enough-deep slush.

Both Ralph and Victor visibly relaxed, now that Victor's father-in-law, who was also a deputy director for Russia's Federal Security Service, had given at least this much of a verbal blessing to the project. Victor had given the old man the bare bones of the thing before Boxer arrived.

"There are, however," Yuri continued, "a few conditions to my acquiescence." He turned his eyes, which were much warmer than his profession would suggest, to his son-in-law. "How long have you known the plan?" Yuri asked.

"In this detail, Yuri Vasilyevich, about thirty-six hours," Victor answered. Boxer didn't, of course, volunteer that he had not given over the entire plan.

"You understand," Ralph explained, "that we wanted to bring this to the highest authorities, which Victor, sadly, was not."

"What would you have done had I said 'no'?" Yuri asked.

"Gone ahead anyway," Ralph answered. "It's too far along to stop now."

"And if the United States had said you could not?"

"Gone ahead anyway," Boxer answered confidently, though he was not really as certain that Stauer would have balked his own country.

"Have you asked them?"

"No, nor will we."

Chebrikov smiled. "Then let me suggest to you that if they had said 'no' you would not have gone against them."

"Possibly," Boxer admitted. Changing the subject, he asked, "You said you had conditions?"

"Yes. Two big ones and several smaller ones. The big ones first?"

"Please," Ralph agreed.

Yuri patted Victor's shoulder affectionately. "My son-in-law is to go with you, to have full access to your facilities and everything you do, and free ability to report back to me." Yuri waited to see if the American balked on that issue. If he had objections, they hadn't reached his face yet. Yuri continued, "Secondly, I want your people to add a mission." He turned back to Victor and asked, "Is Konstantin's team still mission capable?"

Victor had a sudden image of mopeds racing through the jammed streets of Yangon. "Yes."

"Very good." He turned back to Boxer. "There is an Arab, a Yemeni, from Sana'a, who was instrumental in the hijacking of one of our s.h.i.+ps. He is to be punished, seriously and severely punished. We want you to attach Konstantin and his people to your organization, and get them in a position to destroy this man, this Yusuf ibn Muhammad al Ha.s.san. Information on his location and target status will be forthcoming, a.s.suming you agree."

There Boxer balked. "We can't. We're shoestring as it is. We've no way to get Konstantin to him, and no way to extract him and his men afterwards. And, in any case, why us? You represent the Russian Empire, reborn. Surely, you can get this one Arab."

It was Yuri Vasilyevich's turn to sigh. "We can't get him because he is . . . Ralph, do you mind if I call you Ralph?"

"Not at all, sir." And why not the honorific? The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's been in the intelligence business since I was child.

"Civilization is dying, Ralph. All over the world. Everyone in a position to know knows that much."

Boxer rocked his head back and forth. Yes, he knew civilization was, broadly speaking, on the ropes. He wasn't convinced it was hopeless, yet, but, yes, on the ropes.

"States," Yuri continued, "once powerful states, are falling to gangs. Borders cannot be controlled. 'Idealists' fight amongst themselves for control of the drug trade. Piracy is as rife as the reduced sea traffic nowadays can support. Economies are collapsing; even your own Dow Jones Industrial Average is below three thousand, less than a quarter of what it once was. Unemployment, underemployment, and misemployment approaches twenty-five to thirty-five percent in the nations that are doing well. Fifty percent in some others. Your own president is a would-be Stalin in Birkenstocks, a doctrinaire-what's that wonderful Yankee term?-ah, yes, a doctrinaire watermelon determined to see you into the industrial stone age.

"National consensus, which some deride as consensus to wage war together, but is also consensus to live together, at least locally, in peace and mutual aid, is dying everywhere. And adolescent-or, at least, soph.o.m.oric-Kantian pipe dreams will not take its place. Civilization is dying, Ralph," the old Chekist repeated. ""Or, at least, it's very, very ill."

"One of the things that happen when that happens is that people start looking out for themselves and their own. We can't take on the Yemeni because he is backed by Saudis and because we are fractured and that wog banker has his support, all bought and paid for, right here." Yuri's old, gnarled finger pointed towards the square. "Right over there in the Lubyanka."

The old man's hand shook. Whether it was with the palsy of age or simple human rage, Boxer couldn't tell. Yuri half-whispered, "And no one knows who they can trust anymore."

His voice rose again to a normal volume, "That's why I want the Arab punished, and severely, not only to teach a lesson to those who would grab our s.h.i.+ps but to cut off from financing the people right here inside Russia who are simply members of foreign criminal gangs."

"We still don't have a way to get Konstantin from where we must be to strike to where he must be to strike," Ralph objected.

"Oh, yes, you do," Yuri said. He turned his attention back to his son-in-law and asked, "Victor, do you still have the capability to move, say, two MI-28 helicopters?"

"They'll fit in the largest s.h.i.+pping containers?" Victor asked.

"Barely, but yes, if you take off everything extraneous, the nose, the tail rotor, the main rotor and its mast, the landing wheels, and the side weapons pylons." Yuri didn't bother to explain how he had that information at his fingertips. In his line of endeavor, such things were a given.

"Then, depending on from and to where, Yuri Vasilyevich, yes."

He asked of Boxer, "Can you fit another two helicopters on your ad hoc a.s.sault transport? Can you house and feed four aircrew and nine or ten ground crew, plus Konstantin and his people?"

Boxer hesitated, fractionally, pulled up the image of the s.h.i.+p in his mind, along with the three helicopters it carried. "I . . . think so. They'd have to speak English, to fit."

Yuri smiled. "You're an American. If you think you can; you can. And, yes, they'll speak English. I am going to get Victor two brand new MI-28 helicopters, plus ordnance for them. He is going to get them to your s.h.i.+p. They can carry three pa.s.sengers each and can take Konstantin's team to where it can do the most good.

"Oh, and as a special favor, and since we have owned a goodly chunk of your State Department since at least the 1930's, I am going to tell one of our people there to ignore anything having to do with you and your operation, and to make sure no one else pays it the slightest attention, either. And you can keep the helicopters when they're done; they'll be far too 'hot' to bring back here. Besides, I owe you for springing my son-in-law from the jail. Consider them to be my thank you note."

"We . . . appreciate this, sir," Boxer answered, even while thinking, I'd like to have the names of your people at State. Not that you would give them up. Hmmm . . . did Stauer know this would happen? If so, how? Note to self: Long chat with Wes, soonest.

"By the way, sir," Boxer asked, "what was on the s.h.i.+p this Yemeni arranged to be grabbed?"

"Tanks," Yuri replied, his face darkening.

"I will," he added, "be sending Major Konstantin a target folder. May I trust your discretion and good judgment in not looking at it?"