Countdown_ The Liberators Part 38

"Chin says the boat that was heading toward him and the landing craft never showed. And he can't hear a trace of it on sonar either. Course, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's sonar is not, shall we say, of the best. Still . . . " Boxer looked mildly puzzled for only a moment before announcing, "We intercepted some radio traffic. The other one told him they had a firm fix on us. I think that they're going to try to get together to double team us."

"'Think?' Is that a guess?" Stauer asked.

"An educated guess. Still, yes, I could be wrong."

Stauer turned his attention to the s.h.i.+p's skipper. "Recommendations, Ed?"

"Start to take 'em out now, one at a time."

"That will cost time," Boxer observed. "One, we had time for, within the schedule. I don't know about two, though."

"Yeah," Kosciusko agreed, "It'll cost us time. But having one of them show up when we've got seven or eight armored vehicles and a hundred men in the LCM's could cost us the landing and the mission. Then, too, some of what we lose we'll pick up by shaving off the time Chin and the LCM will need to get to us."

Stauer was nothing if not decisive. "f.u.c.k it; do it. If we have to burn out the engines racing to the landing site then . . . well . . . that's our employer's problem."

"Not even his, really," Boxer said. "We could always scuttle the s.h.i.+p and let the insurance company worry about it."

Stauer thought about that for maybe two seconds before agreeing, "True. What do we owe those a.s.sholes, after all?"

"Bring her about," Kosciusko ordered. A stream of orders followed. "Spotters forward. Mrs. Liu"-the chief gantry operator- "to the gantry control. Deck crew hook up an empty container, a forty footer if one's available. Set speed for eighteen knots and I'll buy a case of beer for the engine crew if they can squeeze out twenty." The constant slight vibration one could feel through the deck suddenly became less slight as the engines below strained to put on maximum speed.

CHAPTER FORTY.

Corsairs against corsairs; there is nothing to win but empty casks.

-Italian Proverb

D-1, Yacht One Born Every Minute One Born Every Minute, off the coast of Ophir

The pirates had kept the yacht's original name because it just seemed to fit so well, once it had been explained to them.

Times have been better, mused the captain of the yacht and leader of its seventeen man crew. Not that the yacht itself needed seventeen men to run it, of course, but somebody had to man the machine guns, do the boarding, secure the captives, and inventory the haul.

The captain, Nadif, as with almost all of his crew and most of his people, was tall, slender, and fairly light skinned, with features a mix of Arab and African. Gray at the temples, he was just beginning to sprout gray, by single, curly hairs, all over his head. He thought he was probably about forty-five, but couldn't be quite sure. As a young man, he'd been a fisherman, and a good one. It was that, that knowledge of the sea, that had brought him to the pirates who were, by and large, landlubbers or, in any case, young men with very little knowledge of seamans.h.i.+p.

Rather, the knowledge of the sea had made him an a.s.set to the local pirate group, made them seek him out. He'd have had nothing to do with them, ordinarily. But as a fisherman, years before, he'd found he just couldn't compete with the western, Chinese, and j.a.panese commercial fishers who had taken so much of the local stock that it had become hardly worth the expenditure of gas for the few fish he could catch. Necessity is a harsh mistress, and with a family to support, pirates flas.h.i.+ng altogether too much money, that money driving up prices . . . Well, what was I supposed to do?

Victims of our own success, though, Nadif mused. Oh, for a while we were raking it in. And the whites' and squint-eyes' navies were by and large helpless. Yes, they had their successes, as did we. But they never really understood, or would admit to understanding, how to stop us. Until, in the face of their failure, the fat merchant s.h.i.+ps simply started avoiding us, avoiding our coastline, at least, unless the cost of fuel was greater than the likely ransom they'd have to pay.

I suppose we were "overfis.h.i.+ng," too. Nadif patted the console of his little command. Of course we still manage to take the occasional idiot yachtsman.

Fortunately, we never became political, or not too political. I can just imagine what kind of reaction we'd have caused if those Arab lunatics on the other side of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden had had their way. Sure, chop off somebody's head for the televisions? Then watch the westerners get serious.

Thank Allah we managed to avoid that.

Beneath the deck the engine shuddered and coughed before catching its timing again. A fine fisherman Nadif may have been. He was not, however, a marine engine mechanic. And Allah? If You could see fit to make the motor run for just a couple more days? Just a couple? Yes, yes, I know: The camel limps from its split lip. But what can one do?

Oh, and thank You for sending that fat prize our way. We appreciate it.

D-1, four miles northeast of Nugaal, Ophir, and about eight hundred feet over ground

On McCaverty's command, the flight had s.h.i.+fted formation from a staggered trail to a broad V. This took very little time. It had also increased its height over ground, which hadn't taken much more.

The image in his NVGs was so grainy that Welch almost missed the final landmark before jumping, a thin dirt airstrip with perhaps four thousand feet of useable runway. The team had considered simply airlanding at that runway.

Which probably would have worked, he thought, for a part of one night. Since we had to go in a day early, we couldn't leave the planes parked there in the intervening day. Sooo . . .

We jump.

The seat next to the pilot was missing, in order to allow two jumpers to get to the door in turn. In the open s.p.a.ce crouched Little Joe. Terry's b.u.t.t was still half inside, but he had his legs out of the plane with his feet resting on the strut that supported the wing.

"Go!" McCaverty shouted over the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind.

Everybody with normal human emotions had a different point at which the reality of impending danger tended to set their heart to racing and their stomach to fluttering. For underwater demolitions people, that might be when they actually entered the water. For regular infantry it might be when they crossed the line of departure, or LD. For paratroopers, it was often at some point in the jump sequence: "Hook up!" for example. Terry had jumped a lot. His heart didn't start really pounding until he got the command to "Go."

Ignoring that pounding, and the fluttering in his stomach, Terry stood and swung his rear end so that he faced forward, wind against his face. Then he scrunched down and . . .

It wasn't a jump so much as a letting go. The plane was moving slowly, which had advantages and disadvantages. Chief among the disadvantages was that the forward speed of a plane, in effect, helped the parachute to deploy. Chief among the advantages was that at the current speed, the tail of the plane wouldn't take his head off before he cleared it.

That, and one got a relatively soft opening of the chute.

Falling face toward the ground, Terry felt a slight tug at his back. As he typically did, he counted off aloud: One thousand . . . two thousand . . . three . . . "

When he got to "four thousand" and still hadn't felt the opening shock, his right hand began automatically questing for the ripcord. He forced it to stop.

And then there was an opening shock. Not bad. Not bad at all. Terry's hands went to grasp the risers. His stomach settled and his heart rate dropped.

D-1, Yemen

"Not bad; not bad at all," Konstantin whispered as he finished his circuit of the sand-colored camouflage nets he, his men, and the four air crew had put up over the helicopters. The image in his goggles, at this range, was good enough to tell that the nets were properly staked down, that their edges blended smoothly into the dunes, changing the shape of the dunes but not their essential quality.

He walked forward now, coming in the same way he'd left. Behind him he trailed a short length of netting to distort and disguise his footprints. At the end of the net he went to his belly and slithered forward. Sergeant Musin lifted the net for him, making his entrance easier.

"Everyone here?" Konstantin asked of Baluyev.

"All present, Comrade Major," the praporschik answered. The warrant officer now wore a long flowing dishdasha and had an Arab headdress, a keffiyeh, in one hand. "The bikes, arms, and clothing from the other helicopter are here, tested-except for the motorcycles-and functioning."

"Radio check with the s.h.i.+p?" Konstantin asked.

"Yes, Comrade Major," Baluyev answered. "And with the old man, back in the Lubyanka. That last was via the helicopter's radio."

Konstantin nodded, satisfied. He pointed and said, "Galkin, set up shop inside this helicopter. Check everyone's makeup. Then everyone, sleep, except for the guard. One in six on alert. Pilots just sleep. We've got a big day tomorrow."

D-1, MV Merciful Merciful

While Kosciusko and the bridge crew were restricted to small, hand-held or face-worn night vision devices, the two observers on either side of the bow had much more powerful, tripod-mounted scopes. Thus, it was no surprise when the speaker on the bridge sang out with, "Captain, this is Wilc.o.x on the starboard side. I've got 'em at about one o'clock. Two and a half to three klicks away. Looks like a fis.h.i.+ng yacht, maybe fifty or sixty feet, hard to say. About twenty in beam or a bit less. Armed men-I think-at the bow. She's making good speed."

"Drop speed to eight knots," Kosciusko ordered. "Bearing: zero-two-zero."

"Aye, sir . . . Aye, sir." The engines' throbbing reduced as every man aboard was slightly but forcibly leaned toward the bow and to port.

Stauer shot the captain a questioning look.

"He's-whoever he is-not going to know we're the same boat he's been after. Too dark to pick out colors and we're almost head on to him. I don't want them to have a clue about how fast we can go if we want to," Kosciusko explained. "Not until it's too late, anyway."

"Fair enough."

"Wish we had a couple of barrels of fish guts and blood," the captain said.

"Why's that?" Stauer asked.

"Chum the water."

"Huh?" Kosciusko didn't normally give Stauer the impression of bloodthirstiness.

Kosciusko shrugged. "I'm a sailor. I don't like pirates."

D-1, Yacht One Born Every Minute One Born Every Minute, off the coast of Ophir

Life's so unfair, Nadif thought. Ordinarily, we're lucky to get a good haul once in two months. But tonight, we've got two s.h.i.+ps and only my little command to take them. And the other boat reported engine trouble and that they were heading back to port. No help there. d.a.m.n. Decisions, decisions.

"No matter," he said. "Better a bird in the hand than ten in a tree."

"What's that?" Nadif's helmsman asked.

"What? Oh. We'll take this beneficence and forget about the other. Steer for the target." Nadif listened to the engines for a few seconds, then shook his head with mild disgust. "They're too noisy," he tsked. "Drop speed to one third. After all, it's not like they're not heading our way anyway."

D-1, MV Merciful Merciful

"Mrs. Liu?" Kosciusko queried over the intercom.

"Here, Skippah," came a lilting voice back.

"You understand the mission?"

"Sho' t'ing, Skippah. You say which side. I swing containah ovah. I wait. You tly ram mothaf.u.c.kahs. You say drop. I drop."

"By George, I think she's got it," said Boxer. "I also think she's been listening too closely to the deck crew's invective."

"She's loaded every container and piece of heavy equipment we have aboard," the captain answered. "Flawlessly. She's always had it." He heaved a sigh, "And, yes, she picked up the slang pretty quickly. I think she thinks 'mothaf.u.c.kahs' is a term of endearment . . . "