Countdown_ The Liberators Part 43

D Day, MV Merciful, Merciful, North of Bandar Cisman, Ophir North of Bandar Cisman, Ophir

A hot wind, carrying its share of dust, blew from the stern to the bow. On the port side, four of the six Elands the LCM's could carry were loaded, while Mrs. Liu gently lowered a fifth down. Infantry and crew either crawled down nets or, in the case of the middle LCM, used the same loading ramp they'd come aboard on. Starboard, the former Marines, much as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had before them, climbed down stout netting to boats rising and falling with the waters. They had it both better and worse than their progenitors, however. It was better in that there was precisely no reason to expect a hostile reception right at the sh.o.r.e. It was worse in that the boats that were to carry them to land were simple inflated rubber craft, with small, quiet engines. It was also somewhat better in that Chin's people had built from scratch a number of floating platforms that b.u.mped and ground against the hull but that also provided something of a safety backup should a man lose his grip on the netting and fall. The floats had the additional advantage of allowing an easier boarding of small boats that were not normally terribly easy to board.

Chin's patrol boat, The Drunken b.a.s.t.a.r.d, sat with its engines more or less quietly idling between the s.h.i.+p and the sh.o.r.e.

While some of the amphibians loaded the boats, and others climbed down the netting, the remainder stood in lines topside for their turn to debark. A few of them coughed, from time to time, whether from diesel fumes, or from the dust, or from a combination of those.

Behind those, near to the s.h.i.+p's superstructure, waited the light STOL aircraft. There were six of these, as the Mexicans had managed to patch one together from the sc.r.a.ps of two. Those same Mexicans now saw to arming four of those with a mix of unguided rockets and machine guns. The other two would fly almost unarmed, and solely to retrieve any wounded from the impending action. These weren't marked for medevac, but at least they weren't plainly armed to the teeth. (Though they did carry a side mounted machine gun, just in case.) The medevac birds had floats that were also wheeled, to allow landing on water or on the flight deck.

Behind the aircraft, though forward of where the helicopters waited, Stauer watched the proceedings from the gla.s.sed-in bridge. Being there, remaining on the s.h.i.+p, was a tough call. Yet it was the critical node, the locus of the most critical events, and the site with the greatest probability of cascading failure.

So here I'm stuck, he fumed. Doing my job . . . worrying.

Down in the Tactical Operations Center, just off the central meeting, planning, and dining area, Biggus d.i.c.kus, worried sick about his missing team, would have sympathized. Under the circ.u.mstances, however, he didn't have a lot of sympathy for someone as stuck on the s.h.i.+p and away from the action as he was . . . especially when he had three men missing.

And still worse, Biggus d.i.c.kus Thornton fumed, I'm totally unnecessary here. Hmmm . . . I wonder.

D-Day, Bandar Qa.s.sim, Ophir

While he hadn't seemed to suffer any permanent damage as a result of oxygen deprivation, Simmons was certainly the worse for wear, weak and still disoriented. He tended to fade in and out quite a lot, too. This hadn't been helped any by spending a long day in a small boat in a harbor altogether too close to the equator . . . without potable water.

He lay in the boat now, conscious if not a lot more than that, while Antoniewicz and Morales paddled the little craft toward the outer jetty where the pirate vessel of the night before had docked. They didn't know why it had docked where it had-perhaps the captain had simply taken the first available berth for fear of engine failure if he'd gone another yard. Or maybe it was the boat's normal docking station. Insects swarmed a light that hung well above the boat, illuminating it, a portion of the jetty and the surrounding water.

"Or maybe they were lazy," said Eeyore to himself, his voice barely above a whisper. "Or wanted to get out to sea again quickly. Or it's just dumb luck."

"What's that?" Morales asked. He shook his head a little to clear it, wondering if the long unprotected day in the sun had affected his mind.

"I was wondering if it was just dumb luck that the boat we want is where we can get at it without having to risk the inner harbor."

"Dunno," Morales said. "You b.i.t.c.hing about it?"

"Not really. We deserve some luck, after all."

"Maybe the harbor was just too full," Morales offered. "It's not like there was a lot of s.p.a.ce between hulls when we were mining them."

"Yeah," Eeyore half agreed, "that could be it, too."

"You still want to go with the direct approach?" Morales asked.

"I think that after a night of swimming and a day in the sun without water we're not really up to anything too clever. So shut up and paddle. And aim toward the harbor mouth; we'll let the incoming tide bring us in to the boat quietly."

The oars were put up and both Eeyore and Morales had their APS underwater a.s.sault rifles gripped in their hands. These were sub-optimal outside of the water, but could be expected to work for at least a few shots, if it came to that.

Ahead, the pirate boat was quiet enough. The semi-frantic activity of earlier in the day, as someone apparently worked on the engines, was over for the night. There were some men who could be heard speaking and joking near the bow. Their jocular voices carried well across the water.

The slow tide carrying them to the boat also pa.s.sed them by the long concrete jetty that protected the outer harbor. It was unguarded or, if it were guarded, the guard was looking outward to sea.

Guards in evidence along the jetty or not, Antoniewicz worried. If it was the engines, and the sound it made before hitting the Namu suggests they had their problems, I sure as f.u.c.k hope they got whatever was wrong with them fixed.

The small boat in which they'd hidden for the day thumped gently against the stern of the pirate craft. There was a name painted there, but Eeyore couldn't read it. The thump was gentle, and made little noise. Morales grabbed the stern of the pirate boat while Antoniewicz scrambled aboard, his firearm held in one hand.

Whether it was the gentle thump or some faint sound he'd made in climbing over the gunwale, somebody on the boat noticed. Or maybe he just needed to relieve himself over the stern. Eeyore didn't know and didn't much care. Someone was coming and that someone had to die. He took an automatic kneeling firing position at the starboard corner of the boat.

Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d did just want to take a p.i.s.s, Eeyore thought, as the dark, skinny man standing next to the boat's c.o.c.kpit proceeded to do just that, his urine splas.h.i.+ng noisily in the outer harbor's water. He'd have lived a few minutes longer, and maybe longer still, if he hadn't then turned as if to walk to the stern.

It wasn't that big a boat. Antoniewicz couldn't wait. He lightly stroked his weapon's crude trigger, twice. There was a slight recoil, but no sound. Even though the APS had no suppressor, the cartridges themselves were piston driven, the explosion of the charge never leaving the cartridge casing and thus never causing harm to a diver underwater who fired one or, in this case, two.

He wasn't even a pirate, actually, but just one of the few people in the port capable of maintaining a marine engine. He needed to take a p.i.s.s, and then decided to get something more or less cool from the boat's ice chest, below. Not that he didn't make his living from piracy, he did, at least in part and indirectly. Still, the mechanic could say with a reasonably straight face that he was an honest man, who'd never harmed another human being in his life.

He didn't understand, therefore, why he suddenly felt a shock in his upper chest, just below his neck, nor the pain that followed it. It hurt so badly he didn't cry out. His hand went automatically to the source of the pain. He didn't understand why his chest was wet with the thick fluid, nor why his fingers touched on a small-no more than a quarter of an inch thick-metal dart that seemed to be growing from his chest. No more did he understand the iron-coppery stink of blood that a.s.sailed his nostrils.

He might have figured it out, eventually, but the second shot went into his brain, right through his left eye. After that, he wasn't in a condition to figure out anything.

"Get Simmons in the boat and then get it started," Antoniewicz ordered, softly, head turned over his left shoulder. "I'll take care of the rest of them."

Gingerly, Eeyore stepped over the still quivering body sprawled on the deck.

The men on the foredeck were simply chatting, laughing sometimes, as Antoniewicz crouched by the side of the c.o.c.kpit and drew bead on them. He was about to fire when he heard the engine start to life with a shuddering cough. All the men looked up and toward the stern in surprise. Then they noticed him. They didn't go for weapons. Indeed, there weren't any to hand so far as Eeyore could see. Instead, they raised their hands.

f.u.c.k; I can't just kill 'em, now. Not after they surrendered.

Eeyore motioned with a jerk of his head and another with the muzzle of his APS for the men to get into the water. No arguments; they stood and jumped. Once they were in the water and no danger, Antoniewicz walked, bent at the waist, placed his APS on the deck, and then picked up and rolled the body of the man he'd killed over the side.

"Eeyore, cast us off," called Morales.

D-Day, MV Merciful Merciful, North of Bandar Cisman, Ophir

Soundlessly, barring only the slight soft whine of their electric motors, the rubber boats carrying the Marine company pulled away from the temporary floating docks along the s.h.i.+p's hull. The Marines sat on the gunwales of the inflatables, with their rifles and machine guns in their hands and their personal equipment D-ringed to lines that ran down each boat's center, bow to stern. Cazz's boat took the lead, moving forward initially before veering to port and the sh.o.r.e. The other boats followed in trail before cutting right or left to make a deep V.

The electric motors had been selected for silence more than speed. The boats didn't move especially fast, no more than four and a half knots or so. This would see them to sh.o.r.e in an hour.

While the Marines cast off and headed to sh.o.r.e, the Mexican ground crews for the remaining fixed wing aircraft continued the laborious process of fitting their planes, four of them, anyway, with the machine guns and rockets they would carry on their missions.

McCaverty, after the briefest of naps, watched Luis' boys work. As he watched, he fumed, I didn't sign up for this to be a doctor. And it's not right that they're making me. I signed up to fly and to fight.

I wonder if that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Stauer planned this all along.

"I'd accuse you of planning this," Stauer said, to Phillie, as she stood next to Biggus d.i.c.kus, "except . . . I can't quite imagine how. Let me make sure I understand." He pointed a finger at Phillie. "You want to get closer to the action?" The finger s.h.i.+fted to Thornton. "And you . . . you? Trained pinniped par excellence? You want to go on the standby medevac flight heading north?"

"Why not, sir?" Thornton asked. "I started life as a corpsman. You don't have enough doctors to put them on the medevac birds. I'm a better medic than anyone else here, except"-Thornton's head s.h.i.+fted Phillie-ward- "maybe Miss Potter. Might be a matter of life and death for somebody."

Thornton smiled benignly at Phillie. She'd been a much easier sell, when he'd approached her, than he'd expected.

Stauer glared at his lover. "Did you clear this with Doc Joseph?"

Phillie nodded. "He said with McCaverty in OR, and the Chinese women having proven pretty competent, and the Romanian girls to help, that he's more likely to save people if they don't get back to the s.h.i.+p exsanguinated, in shock, and probably infected."

Stauer was not fooled. Pointing at Biggus d.i.c.kus, he said, "Him, I understand. He's got people out there lost and he's worried sick over them. But you? I thought I had a sensible girl."

"Didn't you tell me once, Wes," she asked, softly "that a rational army would run away?"

He glared at her. Not fair to bring up old discussion points, sweetie.

"I knew what you meant," she continued, "which is almost certainly not what Voltaire intended; that it took something beyond pure reason and rational selfishness to make an armed force work.

"I'm not asking you for this for the excitement," she said, "though I won't deny that the self-satisfaction from doing everything I can to help is in there somewhere. But the fact is, I'm either a part of this or I'm not. If I'm not, I don't belong here at all. If I am, then I need to be where I'll do the most good, for everybody."

Stauer turned away from the two, walking to the pot of invariably vile coffee always brewing on the bridge. He filled a Styrofoam cup with the nasty stuff, then sipped it, thinking, It might be the right thing to do. It might be the only right thing to do. But, dammit, she's my girl.

Which gives me zero excuse.

"Fine, then. Do it," Stauer said, with something less than good grace.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.

The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.

-Richard Harding Davis

D-Day, Beach Red, north of Bandar Cisman, Ophir

The dust became a little more noticeable the closer they came to sh.o.r.e. Behind him, Cazz could feel his radio-telephone operator, or RTO, hmph-hmphing, trying to suppress a cough.

The beach was a grainy-green image of sloping sand and light surf in Cazz's night vision goggles. Twenty meters out from it the man on the motor cut power and rotated it out of the water. Thereafter, the rubber boat drifted in under its own inertia. With each meter closer to the beach, Cazz could feel the tension rising in the boat.

I guess it's all pretty academic until you actually get near the beach, he thought.

The boat sc.r.a.ped along the sand and gravel below it, then shuddered to a stop. The company commander was out of the boat and churning through surf to sh.o.r.e in an instant. His RTO followed a few steps behind. The other members likewise slid over the sides and raced forward, except for one, the one who had been manning the motor, who more deliberately picked up a metal stake attached to the bow by a rope. This one walked until the slack was taken up, then dragged the boat farther up until its bow was out of the water. Then he drove the stake into the sand.

About fifty meters up the gently sloping beach, Cazz took one knee. His RTO dropped likewise behind him. Seconds later, the rest of the first boatload ran past him, continuing on maybe another three hundred meters.

Yeah, maybe they're all old codgers like me, Cazz thought, chest swelling with pride, but we had a lot of time in Brazil to work the kinks out. And, still, "once a Marine, always a Marine."

Inland, the old men then began to spread out to form what would become a perimeter. These men went p.r.o.ne as soon as they'd reached their immediate objective. Their rucksacks were still behind them, in the rubber boat. They'd send a party of two back to retrieve those after the perimeter was set up and secured.

Cazz looked around behind him to where the rest of the rubber flotilla was coming to sh.o.r.e. As boats touched in, more short lines of men streamed, forming themselves on the first group to go to ground. Almost directly behind him the mortar crews struggled to get their guns and a few rounds each across the surf, two men stumbling and falling once as the uneven ground, the pulse of the water, and the ma.s.sive baseplate they were trying to hump proved too much.

They'll be a while.

More mortar ammunition, twenty-two rounds of 120mm per gun, would come in by helicopter, later.

D-Day, MV Merciful Merciful, four miles off the coast