Countdown: The Liberators-ARC

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Take pity of your town, and of your people,

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of deadly murder, spoil, and villainy.

-Shakespeare, "Henry V"

D-Day, Rako, Ophir

The sun was a bare hint, not yet crept over the horizon but reflected still from scattered clouds. The reflection shone down on a column that appeared mostly made of dust, but was, in fact, four tanks, six gunned Elands, three Ferrets, and rather more than a dozen Elands without turrets-headquarters, infantry carriers of which there was now one fewer than there'd been, mortar and ammunition carriers, and an ambulance.

The company had begun the march west with six tanks. Two of those had fallen by the wayside-victims of poor maintenance or victims of drivers who, with the exception of swollen- and bent-nosed Lana, hadn't more than a clue what they were about. None of the newly captured tanks, given that their crews were nothing but a driver and a black or black-faced soldier standing in the turret to look intimidating, were truly combat capable.

But, Reilly thought, when we show up at a town with better than two dozen combat vehicles I don't think we'll actually have to fight.

Hope not, anyway. It would not only be bad for the town, we'd certainly end up killing a number of the people we intend to capture.

Reilly checked his map against his GPS. Then he glanced half to the right and said over the radio, "Scouts and antitank: That's the tank lager over there to your right. Go shoot it up . . . and have fun storming the castle, boys."

D-Day, East of Buro, Ophir

It had been said that a stern chase was a long chase. This chase must have seemed very long indeed to the pirates pursuing Eeyore and Morales.

Not long enough, though, thought Antoniewicz. Not nearly long enough.

Antoniewicz was crouched down almost under the ship's wheel. This didn't give a lot of cover, though it gave some. He steered by feel, mostly, supplemented with occasional risky glimpses forward.

Morales was crouched as well, though he was in the stern, holding one of the team's utterly inadequate underwater assault rifles. He was bleeding, the result of a side hit, not terribly serious in itself, from one of the bullets the pirates had been throwing their way infrequently and at random. The hit hurt, but, thought Morales, probably not as much as a full day at BUDS.

The pirates surprised the team, at first, by not firing continuously until the boat was a sinking colander. It took a while for Eeyore to guess the reason. Fuckers don't want to damage the boat too badly. They're probably only shooting at all to try to entice us to surrender-like that's gonna happen-followed by a few deft throat slices and then over the side with our corpses. I'll turn and ram the bastards first. Try to, anyway. I'll be damned if . . .

Eeyore's thought was cut off by a . . . well . . . if not an "Earth-shattering kaboom," at least a sea-shaking one.

"What the fuck?" he asked, risking a look up and a glance backwards.

What he saw when he looked to the stern was the boat that had been pursuing, on its side, taking in water, while pieces of the hull-crew, too, most likely-sailed up and up.

Morales started to laugh, the laughter bordering on hysteria. Eventually, he managed to get out, "I guess we mined that one, too, Eeyore."

Antoniewicz scratched his head, then rocked it side to side for a moment. "Five second fuses always last three," he said. "Maybe, on the other hand, twelve mile limpets always last for seventy-five. Or maybe it was a Friday afternoon limpet. Or-"

"Should we pick 'em up?" Morales interrupted.

Now it was Eeyore's turn to laugh. "Those bastards? Fuck 'em. The sharks can have 'em."

D-Day, Bandar Qassim, Ophir

Biggus had made sure Wahab and Fletcher boarded the other armed CH-801, before he got on the last one. By the time that was done, and everyone was airborne and approximately safe, the long night was pretty much over and Rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of Morning, was doing her thing.

She was doing it pretty well, in fact. The harbor was lit up brightly and was amazingly-

"Empty," Biggus announced. "The bitch is practically empty. They sortied every small and medium boat they had."

He used the radio to inform the Merciful just how much trouble he thought it, and everyone, was in.

"What have you got left?" asked the disembodied voice he thought he recognized as belonging to Waggoner.

"Just the machine guns," Thornton answered.

"Mmmm . . . that's not a lot," Waggoner observed. "And if they shipped shoulder-fired SAMs aboard any of the boats, they'll outrange you."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Biggus answered.

"No," Waggoner said, "you tell me something I don't know, like what's your fuel status?"

The pilot answered that one. "We've got enough to get back. If you haven't moved too far south."

"Roger . . . hold a sec."

Biggus was pretty sure Waggoner was bent over a map, protractor in hand, trying to figure out a way and a place to get all four armed birds onto the so-far-unseen pirate flotilla. Or extract everyone and head south before that flotilla showed up on the Merciful's doorstep. Biggus was pretty sure that with two companies still on the ground, and probably two special operations teams, including the Russkis, none of that fancy shit was likely to work out.

"What's to work out?" he asked of Waggoner. "I know the map as well as you do. Most we can do is make a single pass and fuck with them a little. Assuming they don't fuck back worse."

"Mass is nice," Waggoner answered.

"Mass is nice when it's possible," Biggus countered. "Here and now, it ain't. Maybe later today it might be."

The voice on the other end changed from Waggoner to Stauer. "Biggus, forget fucking with them. I'd rather know how many they are, and their general layout, than have you bust caps on them to no good end and maybe lose two planes in the bargain. Stay out of potential SAM range. Swing by. Observe and report. Then come home."

With Stauer there was no arguing, not about operational matters, at least, and at least unless you could pin him between running a mission and his personal feelings.

"Roger, sir," Thornton answered.

"Won't argue with those orders," added the pilot.

D-Day, MV Merciful, off Bandar Cisman, Ophir

"Options, ops?" Stauer asked of Waggoner.

"We've got a few," the latter said. "One is, have the Marine company assault Bandar Cisman, now, before Reilly and A Company can reinforce. Having the Ophiri chief's brother and his family on board might be enough to dissuade the flotilla from attacking."

Stauer made a quick mental calculation of the cost of that option, both in terms of his Marines and in terms of the likelihood of losing some of the captives he needed to the assault.

"No," he said. "Bad option."

Waggoner shrugged. "Didn't like that one, anyway. Second choice: Send Chin and The Drunken Bastard north."

"Death ride? Oooo . . . that's hard."

"Third choice: Kill the air support we've got going now, retrieve whatever we've got out there, refuel and rearm, convert the dustoff planes back to strikers, and hit them"-his finger traced a section of the eastern coast- "somewhere about here. But that's going to take a while to prep."

"Send Chin."

"Remind him that his crew's families are aboard?" Waggoner asked.

"He won't need the reminder."

D-Day, The Drunken Bastard

"Captain, call for you," said Chief Petty Officer Liu, he of the wife with the amazing skill with the gantry.

Chin stepped up from the charthouse to the bridge and took the radio's microphone.

"Chin here," he said.

"Captain, this is operations. We've got thirty-odd boats coming, we think, most smaller than yours and probably none as fast or as well-armed. Still, it's thirty or more. We need you to move north and stop them."

"One against thirty, eh? I like that," the Chinese skipper said. "Wilco." He handed the microphone back to Liu.

Liu took it, smiling, then said. "You style yourself a communist. Harrumph. You fool no one. You're no communist, Skipper; you're a romantic."

Chin didn't refute the charge. Instead, also smiling, he said, "Assemble the men, Chief." To himself, after Liu had begun shouting for the assembly, he whispered, "This is going to be glorious."

D-Day, fifty-four miles east of Bandar Qassim, Ophir

With having to concentrate on his flying, the pilot saw nothing. With the drone of his plane's motor, the pilot heard nothing. That is to say, he heard nothing until he heard Biggus Dickus Thornton begin to snicker in his headphones. The snicker became a laugh. The laugh a bellowing cacophony of sheer joy.

"They're alive!" Thornton shouted, lowering the binoculars he'd had pressed to his face. "They're alive!"

"Who? What?" the pilot asked.

"My team: Eeyore, Morales, Simmons. They're alive!"

"How do you know?"

"Look left," Thornton said, handing the binos forward before resuming his boisterous laugh.

The pilot took the field glasses, held them to his eyes, and did look. "What the fu . . . "

In his view, a large plume of wood and metal and bodies flew into the air, some distance out to sea. That was the first and obvious thing he saw. Rotating his head a few degrees to the left, he saw twenty or thirty boats. All of them stood stock still, no wakes, no bow waves, no white-churned water behind.

Even as he watched another boat disappeared in a flash of light, a cloud of smoke, and a deluge of spray.

"They did mine the fucking boats," Biggus said. "And if they mined them, and the boats went out anyway, it means the boats' crews hadn't a clue. If they hadn't a clue, it means my boys got away."

"Sounds reasonable," the pilot agreed. "But why are the boats still blowing up?"

"Fuck, I dunno," Biggus said. "Quality control at the factory, I imagine. Who cares, anyway? My boys are alive.

"Now let's go find 'em."

"As long as the fuel lasts, I'll try," the pilot concurred. "Don't expect a lot of circling."

Thornton took the radio, and sent his report to the Merciful. About halfway through, another voice, speaking English but with a Chinese accent, interrupted, saying, "You have no idea how this news distresses me."

D-Day, Rako, Ophir

In his hands, Reilly had the photos taken by Buckwheat Fulton and Wahab, weeks prior, showing who was to be taken from the town, once the people surrendered, or were crushed. He turned one over and muttered, "Circles and arrows, and paragraphs on the back of each one, telling what it's about."

The company surrounded the town, with a brace of tanks each to the northeast and southwest, infantry platoons northwest and southeast, and the gunned Elands interspersed by sections of two to the north, the east-southeast, and the west-southwest. Reilly's own personnel carrier stood on a small copse overlooking the town from the south. He spoke through his translator as his translator spoke through a set of loudspeakers attached to the Eland's sides.

"I'm not here to negotiate," Reilly said, the microphone picking up and echoing both his words and the translator's from the hills around the towns. Machine gun fire from the tank lager echoed, adding its own bit of punctuation.

"Whether you live or die matters not a bit to me.

"It should, however, matter to you. Surrender, then, all the people of this town, before I release my soldiers onto you.

"Or don't. And in the failing, watch your town burn. See your screaming daughters dragged out and raped before your eyes. Watch dishonor be heaped taller than a mountain upon your family names, forever. See your last little suckling baby tossed on the bayonets of my killers. Witness your stumbling old men and half blinded old women run down and pressed out like grapes to make a red wine of your dusty streets.

"You will not even be a memory, so completely will you and yours be erased.

"Come out now, all of you, toward me, and unarmed, or commend your souls to your god."

Never underestimate the benefits of a classical education, Reilly thought.

In one of the two T-55's to the northeast of the town of Rako, Lana Mendes sat in the driver's compartment. Behind her, in the turret, hands on a Russian .51 caliber machine gun, Schiebel-face painted black still, though the black was dusty and streaked now-watched the scene. He had a much better view than she did, though she could hear as well as he could.

"He dudn't mean id," she asked, through her smashed nose, "dud he?"

"No," the little grunt said, biting back a laugh. The poor girl sounded so funny, and her nose was such a mess, that not laughing was hard. "He's just saying it to frighten them into surrender. He wouldn't let any of those things happen. We wouldn't do any of them, even if he wanted us to." Schiebel hesitated, then added, "Well . . . except for destroying the town. We'd do that."

Even as he said it, hundreds of people, big and little, young and old, male and female, began to emerge from their shacks to trod, fearfully, to the south and Reilly.