Islands of Rage and Hope

CHAPTER 13

When the Marines fell in on the quarterdeck, in this case an open area on the fantail of the forward-stack vessel, Faith was leaned up against one of the cargo containers, buffing her nails. She was, however, in full ground combat gear with her own addition of spare knives.

She let Staff Sergeant Barnard fall the Marines in and do a preinspection. When the staff sergeant was done she strode to her assigned spot at the front of the formation and saluted.

“The unit is prepared for inspection, ma’am,” Barnard said.

Faith looked at her watch and nodded.

“You have one minute and thirty seconds left, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said, without barking, returning the salute or straightening up. “You sure you want me to take it?”

“The unit is prepared for inspection, ma’am,” Barnard repeated.

Faith straightened up, returned the salute, then marched over.

“Follow me,” Faith barked.

She marched to the first Marine, Staff Sergeant Decker, and held out her hands.

“Inspection, arms!”

Decker unclipped his M4 then threw it at her, which she caught and inspected. She tossed it back and then began a meticulous inspection of his gear. Starting at the top she inspected his helmet, pulling on all the straps, looking under it, yanked at every loose bit of equipment, checked every button. She pulled out his magazines and inspected them. She handed one to Barnard.

“Spring is weak, get that DXed,” she snapped.

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“A weak spring can cause jamming in combat, Staff Sergeant,” Faith stated. “My Marines do not go into combat with bad mags. Other than that, good turn-out, Decker.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Decker snapped.

She pivoted right, stepped to the next Marine, Corporal Douglas, and pivoted left to face him.

“Inspection… arms!”

“This Ka-Bar is not sharpened.” A fast-clip on an M4 sling snapped when she yanked on it. “Dirty gas tube.” A helmet strap weakened from wear. Faith didn’t appear to check a single item that was cosmetic. All she checked was what they were going to need in combat.

It took nearly two hours while the Marines stood at parade rest or attention sweating in the sun. They were sweating not so much from the heat as from the reality that a thirteen-year-old was making some of them look like dumb recruits. And Barnard was slowly acquiring a pile of equipment that did not meet her lieutenant’s satisfaction.

Finally it was done and Faith marched back to the front of the formation followed by Barnard. Faith paused for a moment looking at the Marines balefully.

“Sergeant Smith, front and center!” Faith barked.

When Smitty was in place, at attention, Faith gestured from the staff sergeant to the sergeant.

“Staff Sergeant, transfer that pile to Sergeant Smith.” Once the transfer was complete she gestured back to the formation with her chin. “Resume your position, Marine.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Smitty snapped, double timing back to his place.

“When I say ‘fall out,’ fall in on the gear locker and carry on with your previous mission,” Faith boomed. “Fall OUT. Staff Sergeant, a moment of your time,” she finished. It was very nearly a whisper.

When the Marines were gone, Faith gestured to the rail.

“Staff Sergeant, the colonel gave me an order,” Faith said mildly. “That order was to ‘command voice’ every word that came out of my mouth. I think he’ll forgive me for not command voicing this. If I start in on command voice, by the time I’m done they’ll hear me belowdecks and I think this should be between us, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Staff Sergeant, how many tours did you do in combat zones, pre-Plague?” Faith asked. “I assume you were in the Sandbox.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said. “Six, ma’am.”

“Your MOS is… administrative, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said. “Oh, One-Eleven.”

“Was the Fall your first taste of combat?” Faith asked.

“I was in a couple of ambushes in Afghanistan, ma’am,” Barnard said. “I wasn’t just a fobbit on my last tour. I had to go outside the wire as part of my duties. Outside the wire there wasn’t much that was safe, ma’am. And we took a good bit of mortar and rocket fire.”

“So, total, maybe, what, ten hours?” Faith asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“And in the Fall, when did you go to free-fire?” Faith asked. “I get that it was pretty much the last day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“So maybe ten more there?” Faith asked. “Because, sorry, standing on a rooftop does not count.”

“About that, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“When people ask me ‘how many times have you done this’ I generally say ‘I’d have to check the log,’” Faith said. She pulled out her H&K, slid back the slide with her thumb, checked for a round, dropped the mag and pressed down to make sure it was full all without looking and without a break in speaking. “So after I got done talking with the colonel and the preplanning meeting, I decided to actually check the log. I am technically credited with seven thousand hours of direct infantry combat against infected.” She reinserted the mag and holstered the weapon, again without looking, and just kept staring out to sea.

“Thousand, ma’am?” Barnard said, her mouth dropping open.

“Thousand, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “Kind of surprised me. And that is in the last six God-damn months. The point to that is not that I’m a billy bad-ass. It’s that every single item I checked was something that fucked up on me, Sergeant. In combat. Because, yeah, I’ve seen that much combat. I’ve got that much experience of fighting for my life, generally at short ranges when seconds count. I’ve had guns jam, straps break, knives not be sharp enough to cut a throat. And, Staff Sergeant, don’t ask me how many throats I’ve cut because there’s no log for that. My point is that thing about assumptions. I assumed that a Marine staff sergeant would understand what her boss meant by ‘make sure all the gear is straight and get anything that needs it DXed.’ That’s on me. I should have made sure you understood what I was saying. And now we got to get it fixed on the float instead of back at Gitmo where there was a bunch of spare shit. Oorah?”

“No excuse, ma’am,” Barnard said, stone-faced.

“The point to this stuff we just did was not to make you look or feel like a fool, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said, still not looking at her. “I know I don’t work real good when people make me feel stupid. I figure most people are like that. I just realized a couple of things after the colonel was done ‘counseling’ me. Since you didn’t trust me you didn’t trust that I knew what I was talking about. You didn’t trust my experience ’cause I was a kid and a second lieutenant. You were, Staff Sergeant, assuming. And you didn’t understand what I meant. Not with this. I don’t mean to cut you down in any way, Staff Sergeant. But you’re a clerk. You’re not infantry. I don’t know if you wanted to be infantry but you couldn’t ’cause you were a girl. But you’re not, and you’re not real experienced at it.

“You don’t know how shit fucks up at the best of times in combat. Forget that ‘fog of war’ crap. I’m talking about an M4 jams with a bunch of infected running at us and the guy has to remember how to clear it and ends up ADing his buddy in the ass. And our M4s are gonna jam. ’Cause we have to cover them in oil to keep the salt from fucking them up but as soon as we hit the fucking beach that fine sand is gonna stick to them and jam them like a son of a bitch. That kind of ‘shit fucks up in combat.’

“Now, I realize that you probably didn’t understand that and you so you didn’t understand the order. Again, my bad. That doesn’t mean I think I know everything, Staff Sergeant. I’m not…what’s that word? I’m not salty. I don’t know shit about the Marine Corps. You’ve got me in spades on that. I can find Parris Island on a map, now, but all I know is that Quantico is in Virginia someplace. And what the fuck is that thing about a Tavern?

“And you can probably score high expert on a rifle range and I’d maybe score marksman. Hell, if you hadn’t been getting the platoon in tune, I’d have brought you in to explain all the paperwork crap the colonel’s been throwing at me ’cause I spend most of my time trying not to cry I’m so fucking clueless. And I hate feeling stupid. I’m getting so fucking frustrated with all this paperwork and planning crap…

“But day after tomorrow we’re going ashore on what is sure to be a really great little island, the overheads are awesome, to go do the only thing I do know, which is killing the fuck out of infected. And Staff Sergeant, for God’s sake, if you don’t understand one of my orders, please, Cindy, ask. Because if you don’t, you’re going to get some of my Marines killed. And that will really piss me off. And, Cindy, you don’t want somebody like me pissed off.”

She turned and looked the staff sergeant in the eye.

“Because I don’t do words real good, Staff Sergeant, and I don’t know how to do that crap where you write an evaluation report that sounds good but makes people look like shit. I can’t do that stuff good. When I say I’m gonna kill somebody, Staff Sergeant, I ain’t talkin’ about their career. Oorah?”

“So this is Anguilla,” Ensign Joseph Buckley said, conning his way into Road Salt Pond Bay. “Not much to look at.”

The island was low and sandy with a few small hills. The shore of the bay was a nearly perfect crescent-moon-shaped beach with bright white coral sand and waving palm trees while the waters of the bay were a gorgeous mixture of turquoise and cerulean. There were low, one-and two-story, block buildings scattered among the trees. There were two piers, one to the east and one to the west, located at about the one third position on the beach. The westerly pier was their primary target, a medium sized “cargo” pier which, unfortunately, did not have cargo cranes but appeared to be intact and unblocked. The easterly pier was a small pier for small boats. A large “deep water” outboard was still attached by one line but it was sunk to the gunnels.

The picturesque beach was littered with the debris of a destroyed civilization—trash, bits and pieces of clothing, grounded boats and picked clean skeletons, their bones as white as the sands. Many of the buildings had been scorched by fire as had many of the trees. In fact, it looked as if a fire had swept across the entire island. There was a small ship, an island support ship like the Erik Shivak, grounded at the tip of the eastern cape.

“Christ,” Ray Hoover said, shaking his head. “This place is a mess.”

The first mate of the Bad Juju was in his thirties and covered up male pattern baldness by shaving his head. A former “renta-slave” in the IT business, he’d volunteered for small boats after being stuck in a liner compartment for months. However, he’d long before regretted his actual posting. The name was bad enough but the captain…

“Yeah,” Buckley said, trying to figure out where to anchor. “Even the Canaries weren’t this…”

What, exactly, they weren’t would have to wait as the, fortunately slowly moving, boat ground to a halt with a rather nasty crunching sound from below.

“Aw, crap,” Buckley said, tossing his captain’s cap over the side.

“Hey, Skipper?” Kevin Schlossberg yelled from below. “We’re taking on water?”

“Not again!”

“All divisions,” Lieutenant Commander Chen radioed, shaking his head. “All divisions. Be on the lookout for submerged wrecks…” He set the microphone down and shook his head again. “Including the Bad Juju…In retrospect…”

“No gunboats on Forest Bay?” Colonel Hamilton asked, looking at the operations map. “It would seem closer to the anticipated high infected density around the Quarter than Sandy Hill.”

The final touches were being placed on the landing operation. The island was the first assault designated for “Operation Leeward Sweep” so they were trying to get each item as set as possible to develop SOPs. The entire command team was present but most of them were keeping their mouths shut.

“Overheads and charts indicate that Forest Bay has some significant reefs, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen replied. He was the senior Navy officer for the operation. “Sandy Hill is more safely approachable and the cape provides wind and wave protection, making for a more stable gun platform. We have no detailed information on how far our nightly…activities will bring the infected but indicators in the Canaries were from as much as five miles away. We believe that this lay-out will draw something like ninety percent of the infected. The question, of course, is if they can all make it to the target beaches before dawn.”

“Out of pure curiosity,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Who came up with this technique?”

“Captain Wol—Smith, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said.

“Simple, brutal and effective seems to be his call sign,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Lieutenant, the scuttlebutt is that there tends to be a bit of a party when you’re drawing in the infected.”

“That has, occasionally, been an aspect of this procedure, sir,” Chen said carefully. “It is necessary to make noise and rather than, say, continuous air-horn blasts we generally play music. And…there is some drinking. And I will admit, sir, that that has occasionally, notably at Las Galletas, gotten out of hand. I’ve been dialing down on it, sir.”

“Pass the word,” Hamilton said. “Not this time. With a reason. In this case, we’re dealing with a very small island and we’re more or less surrounding it. Fifty-caliber rounds go quite a ways. To be exact, they are lethal at up to seven miles. If we get too free with fire, we’re going to end up shooting one of the other boats that’s not even in sight. We need to ensure that the gunners stay strictly within their fire limits. Alcohol and such assurances simply do not match. I’m aware that you should not give an order that won’t be obeyed and that keeping liquor off the boats is impossible. So pass the word the party is after we clear the damn island and all the guns are put away. Roger?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Chen said, making a note.

“Senior and experienced personnel, such as we have, are to ensure that each gun has traverse limiters in place,” Hamilton said. “And ensure that the gunners understand those fire limits and why we have them. I do not want to have fifty-cal rounds dropping around my ears. Are we clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Chen said. “With your approval, I’ll distribute my senior people to the outlying forces to ensure that. I’d appreciate some assistance from Ma Deuce-experienced Marines for the main landing force. That way I can distribute out the chief and the sergeant major.”

“Agreed,” Hamilton said. “And the plan is approved with one slight modification.”

“Sir?” Chen said.

“I’m picking the playlist,” Hamilton said.

“Staff Sergeant,” Faith stated, as they were leaving the final planning meeting. “Moment of your time in my office.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

Faith marched to her office, entered and sat down.

“The general plan, as briefed, is that the Marines, oorah, are to quarter here on the Grace Tan, oorah, until first call at 0400,” Faith said, her jaw clenched. “Thereafter we chow, assemble, final brief and perform landing after clearance by Navy heavy fire at dawn, oorah?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said, standing at parade rest.

“As you may have noticed there is a four-hour preinspection this afternoon on the prep schedule, oorah,” Faith said. “I inserted that preinspection in the op-plan. During that preinspection I will instruct you on my task, conditions and standards for combat preinspection. After that you and I will perform an after-inspection review and determine if this is a procedure, oorah, you find conforms to your views, oorah? Do you have any questions?”

“No, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Inspection begins at fifteen hundred,” Faith said. “We will not form the personnel. We shall, oorah, take each Marine one by one into the gear locker. This technique, oorah, is currently…” Faith paused and frowned. “There is no SOP, oorah. There should be an SOP. We will establish that SOP, oorah?”

“Roger, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Dismissed.”

“I’ve got a target,” Seaman Apprentice Rusty Bennett said nervously.

Rusty was used to shooting up zombies with the .50 caliber BMG affectionately referred to as the Ma Deuce. He’d even gotten pretty damned good, in his opinion, with the monstrous machine gun. He wasn’t worried about whether he could hit anything. What was making him nervous was all the Mickey Mouse. The new Marine colonel who was in charge was being a prick. He’d never even heard of a range limiter before and had to dig through all the parts and crap that had come with the gun to find it. And then he’d had to get the sergeant major, before he left, to show him how to hook it up.

“Sorry,” Rusty added. “I’ve got a target, sirs.”

“So I see,” Colonel Hamilton said as an infected trotted down the beach. It was hunched over as if it was sniffing for something. It was a young black male, nude as all the infected were, his lanky, twisted hair dangling down into his face so Hamilton wondered how he could even see. “Is the SOP to engage any target at will, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Commander Chen was nearly as nervous as Rusty. But he was better at hiding it.

“Infected are drawn to any sign of carrion, such as flocks of seagulls, sir,” Chen said. “Our SOP is to engage any infected that are in the target zone early and often. That begins the attraction process. And infected don’t seem to avoid the target zones. They cannot make the connection between loud gun noises and other infected dying. So, yes, sir, we engage if they are in the target basket, sir.”

“One last check,” Hamilton said.

“Uh, sir,” Rusty said, swinging his barrel towards the target. Just past it the barrel bumped up against the limiter. “It’s about to get off to the side.”

The infected was heading north on the beach and approaching the edge of the fire-limit zone.

“Then we shall wait for a better target,” Hamilton said. “For that matter…Do we know the current location of Division Five?”

The other four gunboat divisions had already left the rendezvous for their respective fire points. Division Five was going to be crossing the fire zone of Division One at some point. Admittedly, it was going to be nearly four miles away and on the other side of the island. OTOH, .50 BMG had a “general area of effect” range of…about four miles. Meaning if you had, say, a dozen .50 calibers firing at the right angle to drop their rounds into an area, they could, in fact, hole a boat at four miles. And probably sink it.

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “I can find out pretty quick.”

“Let’s hold off firing until everyone is in their proper place,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Something to add to the SOP for this. In fact, in the future, we probably just need to have all the boats on one side of the island.”

“Some of the islands I wonder if it would be an issue, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “Islands like Saba, the interior topography is going to make it nearly impossible for us to have rounds go over.”

“Point,” Hamilton said, looking at the lowlying atoll. “Anguilla, however, is not such a case. Wait until all the divisions are in place, do a final check on the guns for their angles, then we can go to free-fire. In the meantime, have your gun crews unload and stand down. I can see that Rusty here, at least, is itching to kill him some infected. Right, Seaman Apprentice?”

“Yes, sir,” Rusty said.

“Call that in to all the divisions. They are not free-fire until all boats are in place, all limits are set and all guns have been checked by senior personnel for limits.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Bloody hell,” Sergeant Major Raymond Barney said, looking through the binoculars.

They were cruising east in the Anguilla Channel—which runs between the relatively low and small island of Anguilla and the much larger and more prominent St. Martin. The two islands more or less defined the juncture between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic in the area and the boat was rolling on waves coming in from the open Atlantic. Which was what had caused the oath on the part of the sergeant major. Not the waves, the mass of wrecked ships, carried in by the Great Southern Current and piled up on the jagged rocks of St. Martin. It looked like some sort of twisted regatta from Dante’s Inferno. There were freighters, tankers, yachts, sailboats, megayachts, lifeboats and life rafts, ships that didn’t quite meet any description he could come up with. There was even what looked to be a section of an oil platform.

“We came through this sort of stuff at night on the way in,” Lieutenant Matthew Bowman said. The skipper of the Golden Guppy and commander of Division Five was a thirty-five-year-old who had made his money early in tech and set out to sail around the world just in time for a zombie apocalypse. “But you could still see the outlines.”

“I mean, there’s usually wrecks,” Barney said, lowering the binos and shaking his head. “They were all over the Canaries. But that is bloody insane.”

The sergeant major was sixty-two, a retired British Army light scouts NCO and NCOIC of the Naval Landing Parties. His position was technically slightly ambiguous. As a British citizen and former soldier he could not, actually, “command” American forces. On the other hand, nobody really questioned who was in charge when Navy parties hit the beach. He’d been detailed to “accompany” Division Five, which was not hitting the beach, to “ensure safe practices” of the Navy gunners. After which he was going to have to take a fucking Zodiac all the way back around the island to link up with Division One. He’d flipped a coin with his nemesis, Chief Petty Officer Kent Schmidt, USN, as to who got the furthest out division and lost.

“Div Five, Flotilla.”

“Division Five, over,” Bowman replied.

“Status check.”

“Passing Forest Harbor at this time, Flotilla,” Bowman replied.

“Roger. Supplementary orders. Do not load weapons until all vessels report in position and ready to fire, over.”

“Do not load weapons until all boats in position, aye,” Bowman replied.

“Flotilla out.”

“Wonder what that was about?” Bowman said.

“Fifty-caliber Singer has a maximum range of seven miles, sir,” Barney said. “This island is three miles wide at its widest. Those bloody Singer rounds are going to be bouncing off these block houses and going all the way across the bloody island, sir. Our path takes us through three possible impact zones. And one of those rounds will go all the way through these cockleshells, sir. I’d rather wondered about whether we’d get shot up heading to the anchorage, sir.”

“You didn’t bring that up in the meeting,” Bowman said.

“I was leaving it up to the Yank colonel, Lieutenant,” Barney said. “But I’ll tell you I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye out for bits of ocean churned up by descending Singer rounds, sir. You might want to do the same in case others haven’t gotten the word, sir.”

“And what would that look like, exactly?” Bowman said nervously. He was now scanning the surface of the water intently.

“Bit like flying fish jumping, sir,” Barney said.

“Those are all over the place!” Bowman snapped.

“Really, sir?” the sergeant major said, smiling slightly and still looking through the binoculars.

“Oh, now you’re just yanking my chain!”

“Am I, sir?” Barney said, grinning. “What gave you that impression? In seriousness, the answer was honest and, of course, useless. The rounds can and will cross the island, spotting them incoming is hard to impossible since the tracers will have burned out and even then only one in five is a tracer. If it happens, by the time we know we’ll have a half-inch hole through ourselves, and that is not what you call a survivable wound. So we’d better bloody well hope that everyone’s got the word, sir.”

“How screwed up can one sailing cruise get?” Bowman said, shaking his head.