Countdown_ The Liberators Part 18

Biggus d.i.c.kus liked the Russki grenades, in principle. It's quality control at the factory that gives me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. Thus, he didn't even contemplate trying to cook one off. With two of his men, Rogers-known as "Mary-Sue"-holding the bent ladder and Bland-called "Jalapeno," though he had not a trace of Mexican in his background-overwatching with his Russian SMG, the chief pulled the pin, kissed the grenade, released the spoon and tossed the thing onto Galloway's rear deck.

The explosion came so soon after Biggus had tossed the grenade that, Yeah, quality control at the factory left something to be desired. No f.u.c.king way I should have held that thing long enough for the impact feature to arm. I could have been holding it, cooking it off and Kaboom.

Mary-Sue, scrunched low, wasn't fazed by the blast. Besides, he a.s.sumed his chief knew what he was doing. As soon as the thing went off, he was on his feet, hooking the ladder over the gunwales, p.r.o.nounced "gunnels," like "tunnels," which were the hull's uppers.

The chief had been supposed to lead, as a matter of principle. When he delayed for a moment, caught up in the conflicting emotions of very nearly having his arm blown off and relief that this had not happened, Jalapeno charged up, balancing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. He jumped over the gunwales and onto the deck. He was then caught in a moment of indecision. He'd been supposed to turn left, after Biggus d.i.c.kus had turned right. Since Biggus hadn't turned right, his back would be uncovered if he turned left, per the plan. While he was caught in this moment of indecision, one of the s.h.i.+p's company or their terrorist pa.s.sengers-probably having come rearward to look for more grenades and just having missed being caught in Biggus d.i.c.kus' explosion-saw Bland and fired a long burst. Two bullets impacted on the protective plates in his Russian body armor. Twenty-seven went high to very high. One impacted onto Jalapeno's face, killing him instantly and knocking his body against the gunwales, from whence it slid to the deck.

That brought the chief from his reveries. In fact, it brought him to a killing rage. Swearing aloud, Thornton ascended two steps, lined up his laser aiming device on the firer, and fired his own short burst, three rounds, directly into the man's chest.

"Come on, Mary-Sue," the chief shouted as he scrambled up the ladder. The chief did turn right once he'd reached the deck, but there was nothing there to see. He took a step forward to make room for Rogers. Once he felt the SEAL touch down on the deck behind him, and satisfied that there was nothing of danger forward, he ordered, "Take point. Around the superstructure. Go! Go! Go!"

The two SEALs ran toward the bow and cut right, then right again. The terrorists Morales had missed were still lined up on the ladders. As soon as he rounded the superstructure, Mary-Sue opened fire, letting his muzzle climb up the row of enemies. His hose stream of frangible alloy bullets sent first one, then another, then a third and fourth into a Spandau Ballet, their bodies twitching and dancing under the impacts, some of them being hurled right over the railing to crash upon the deck.

It was at that point, caught between two fires, that s.h.i.+p's crew and pa.s.sengers began dropping their weapons and raising their hands, crying out things in Arabic and Urdu that sounded submissive and plaintive.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was properly tied off, in tow behind the Galloway. All of the enemy bodies had been weighted and dumped over the side. Only Bland's corpse had been salvaged, and his remains, scrunched up like a fetus, were freezing in the big meat locker on the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The prisoners, all nineteen of them, excepting only the s.h.i.+p's captain and first officer, were stripped and secured inside the container that had formerly served as Antoniewicz's hide, the televisions still remaining having been dropped over the side. Eeyore had been left to guard, about all he was good for at the moment, while Morales wired the s.h.i.+p for demolition. Simmons had even managed to tap Galloway's bunkers for fuel to top off his own boat. This was critical as the stop after next, St. John's, in Newfoundland, was quite close to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's maximum range anyway. That would be important if Narssarssuaq, Greenland, couldn't or wouldn't refuel them.

A search of the containers, such as could be accessed-and most couldn't be-revealed little of obvious consequence to the larger mission. In one they'd found a baker's dozen of teary-eyed, teenaged Romanian girls, living in rags and filth, and grateful to be freed. It had probably been intended to sell the girls somewhere as wh.o.r.es, and quite possibly somewhere in Europe, Canada, or even the United States. It was unlikely that s.e.xual slavery was ever really going to go completely out of fas.h.i.+on, anywhere.

Another had a great deal of explosives, which set Morales to chortling, as he began carrying the crates to the main deck.

A search of the crew quarters turned up more al Qaeda propaganda than any of them had seen in one place, at one time, in a long time. This fit Thornton's rules of engagement for eliminating the entire crew.

They did find one other interesting container, down on the lowest level, that had a chain and a leg iron welded to the container frame. They brought the captain and the executive officer down to it, stood them on chairs taken from the galley, put noosed ropes around their necks and secured the ropes high to a cross piece set up on the top levels of the containers.

"Don't try to bulls.h.i.+t me," Biggus d.i.c.kus said, mostly to the wog with more braid on his uniform. "If you're senior merchant fleet people, and you are, you will speak perfectly good English, and you do. I will ask this once of each of you. Who was in here?"

The captain of the boat barely got out, "f.u.c.k you, you inf-" before Thornton had kicked the chair out from underneath him. The noose had been tied very tightly and the captain was a smallish man, and slight of build. The drop was no more than the rope would stretch. Thus the noose barely tightened, at first, not even enough to cut off blood to the brain and certainly not enough to seriously impede the flow of air. It did make talking difficult, what with the forced gagging the captain endured.

"Tsk," Biggus d.i.c.kus said, "such bad manners toward your guests."

The captain, naturally enough, panicked as soon as he felt the rope biting into his neck. Mindlessly, like an animal, his feet flailed about for purchase. He set himself to swinging, quite by accident, and three times managed to get his feet against the vertical walls of the containers. This, of course, was not something he could stand on. With each kick the rope tightened by a millimeter or two.

The s.h.i.+p's exec, captivated, watched his captain die slowly. He began to moan with fear and then to pray aloud. As the captain's struggles grew less frenzied, the front of the exec's trousers suddenly grew wet with urine as he lost control of his bladder.

Thornton also watched the captain slowly strangle, but with complete impa.s.sivity. He hadn't started out hating "wogs," but after seeing the crisped bodies of his people in Afghanistan, two years prior, he'd learned to. Once or twice he thought he heard the captain trying to speak through his gag reflex.

"f.u.c.k you," he said. "I gave you your chance."

The captain's kicking, twisting, and twitching gradually subsided, though there were occasional interruptions as he somehow found the strength to give another major effort at getting his feet on something. In time, though, only the feet twitched, and the only sounds beyond those of the machinery of the s.h.i.+p and sea were the steady drip-drip-drip of p.i.s.s and liquefied s.h.i.+t sliding off the late captain's toes.

Biggus turned toward the first officer. "As I told the captain, you get one chance. Who-"

"I never knew his name," the Galloway's exec blurted out. He could already feel his bowels loosening, too. "Only saw him twice, il hamdu l'illah. Some black we picked up in Boston Harbor. We dropped him off at Port Harcourt, in Nigeria, safe and sound. Yes, yes: Safe and sound."

"Do you know where they were taking him?"

"To the airport; that's all I know. All I know . . . all I know."

"You're sure now?" Thornton asked.

"Yes, yes. Sir, I am sure."

"Good. This is for Petty Officer Bland." Thornton then kicked the chair out from under the exec, and left to check on Morales' progress with the demolition preparation. Before he left the area completely he turned around to where the exec was kicking his life away, as the captain had. "So I lied," the chief said. "So sue me. Doesn't the Koran permit one to lie to an unbeliever? Well, you and I don't share a belief system. Infidel."

Thornton found Morales standing by the gunwales, amids.h.i.+ps, connecting one of the radio detonators to a piece of wire. Morales was wearing a wet suit of a very odd design, with the letters CCCP emblazoned.

"You didn't wear that s.h.i.+t, did you, Morales?"

"Why not? You said you wouldn't risk your life but ours might be acceptable."

"You know I wasn't serious."

"Yeah, but I needed to use their s.h.i.+t to get down under the hull. I've got five hundred pounds of . . . well, I suppose it must be SEMTEX, or something just like it, based on the color. It was in one of the containers. Anyway, it's down there under the s.h.i.+p. When we set it off it's going to seem like a torpedo hit it, or maybe a drift mine . . . if anyone tries to reconstruct it, that is."

"How'd you get it under the hull?"

Morales pointed to either side. "Two floats connected by a line, with another line in the center of the first one connected to a stanchion at the bow, and a line from each float to the hull. I walked the floats down to where I wanted then, connected the lines, and then sort of keel hauled the stuff under. Course, once I had it roughly in position I had to go down myself-and let me tell you, that center line was mighty useful for that-to prep it all nice and proper." Morales laughed. "This is gonna be beautiful, Chief."

Taking occasional time-outs to vomit, Eeyore took the trouble to drill about ninety more air holes in the container into which the prisoners were locked. The men inside the locked container were a tough lot. They didn't panic, not even for a moment, when the door was opened and the strangled, black-faced bodies of the captain and his exec tossed in. They were tough, yet each man there had to wonder, after the door was secured again and the smell of the bodies' loosed bowels a.s.sailed their noses, "Who's next?"

As it turned out, they all were. They couldn't see it. For that matter, they never really knew what happened to them in any detail, though given more time one of them might have figured it out.

They felt a sudden shock. The rearward portion of their container arose slightly, but only that. Then they heard the blast, and the sounds of tearing metal as the s.h.i.+p's back almost broke. Of course, that was a surprise and, of course, they panicked then. The men began clawing at the locked door and at each other. Thus, they never noticed when the previous motion reversed itself and the s.h.i.+p's center sank into the gaseous hole left by the explosion; they were far too busy fighting like rats amongst themselves. And then when the gas cooled and condensed, and the water came rus.h.i.+ng in to meet the collapsing hull, they were mostly tossed from their feet as the s.h.i.+p's center raised up high out of the water, completing the sundering into two parts.

The bow section almost immediately began to capsize, spilling that container, along with many another, into the sea. The men who had been on their feet suddenly found themselves tossed to the side and then rolled over as their prison rolled over. Above their own screaming they heard a high pitched whistling sound as water rushed into the air holes drilled by Eeyore a couple of days prior, and supplemented more recently, forcing the air out. At that point, even drowning rats wouldn't have bit and clawed their mates quite so much for a mere few more minutes of breathing time.

"Set course two-seven-two for Narssarssuaq, Greenland," ordered the chief with warm smile. "And, since this isn't the US Navy, break out a bottle of the vodka Victor so thoughtfully put in the cache."

"Hey, Chief?"

"Yes, Mary-Sue?"

"How long to the base?"

"About three weeks."

"We have to stop for fuel, right?"

"Sure."

"Well . . . since we're not dry, can we get something besides vodka when we do stop? And what about the girls?" These latter were below, wrapped in blankets and badly needing new clothes. Only Antoniewicz's and Morales' uniforms came close to fitting, and they needed those.

"The booze we'll see about. I don't know about the girls, except to go shopping when we get the chance. We can't release them anywhere we're going and can't release them, period, until the operation's over."

"Can we-?"

"Lay a finger on them, Mary-Sue, and I'll cut your b.a.l.l.s off."

PART II.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

-Tennyson, "Ulysses"

D-106, a.s.sembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil,

The sergeant major hadn't put in fossa and agger, of course. He hadn't even set up the camp like a Roman legionary camp. "No straight lines in nature, sir." Instead, he'd established a central camp, for most of the headquarters, containing tents for Stauer and staff, plus the rest of the headquarters company, except for the mechanics who would be closer to the river, and a few guest tents for the naval company, should it have to send some people in. The rest of the groups were to be in cl.u.s.ters from there, A Company (Armored) to the northeast and B Company (Marine) to the southwest. The aviation company, such as would billet here, was about a kilometer to the northwest, near where about half of Nagy's engineers were clearing out jungle and rubber trees and putting in the airstrip. Eventually, once the rest of the detachment of engineers showed up, they'd be putting in a dock and linking the camps with corduroy roads.

They'd need the corduroy roads. Already, under the frequent heavy downpour, the trails linking camps and tents within camps were approaching the state of mora.s.s, and that was under very light foot and vehicle traffic, all of that having been generated by the original advanced party of twenty-two, plus the twenty-five later arrivals.

With a light rain that foretold of a soon-coming downpour tapping gently on the canvas roof, Stauer looked out into the jungle from the operations tent. It was already quite dark, and the netting that ran from the edge of the tent's roof to the dark soil below further reduced vision. Add in that the trees kept even most sunlight out and- "Darker than three feet up a well-digger's a.s.s at midnight."

"Except for the few tents we allow to be fully lit, of course," Boxer said. "Did you expect different, Wes?"

"No. I'm still not certain about letting some tents be lit while others have to stay pitch black."

Boxer shook his head. "The Brazilians know we're here, at least in the abstract and even if they don't know what we are, how many we are, or how many we'll be. If we light everything up they'll get suspicious; a small battalion is way out of line for what we're allegedly doing here. By the same token, though, no lights would also be suspicious."

Stauer shrugged. "I suppose."

"You don't seem very upset that the boy wasn't on the Galloway."

Stauer shook his head. "If I'd thought he had been, I wouldn't have launched such an ad hoc 'rescue' mission. We'd have hit with more force and a lot more prep. And then our little holiday in paradise"-he sneered at the surrounding jungle-"would have been prematurely terminated. So, no, I'm not sorry. We had to try, as an ethical matter, given the information we had. That it didn't work out is all to the good."

Stauer scowled. "What do you make of those thirteen girls Biggus d.i.c.kus found?"

Boxer shook his head. "I'm not sure what to make of it. There were too many for just the crew and the 'pa.s.sengers' to need. Four girls would have been enough for forty or fifty men. Biggus d.i.c.kus says the girls, themselves, don't seem to know where they were going or why. I suspect they were going to be sold to help fund an operation."

"What's the going rate on a young and pretty female slave these days?" Stauer asked.

"Varies," Boxer shrugged. "A few hundred dollars a head-no pun intended-in some parts of Africa. Maybe seven thousand in Bosnia. More, maybe twelve to twenty thousand, in the European Union or the US. What the f.u.c.k are you going to do with them?"

"I dunno," Stauer replied. "Can't let them go. Feel bad holding them against their will, if it is against their will."

"Biggus says they seem happy enough to be free of the Galloway. Most of them are only fifteen or sixteen, he thinks." Boxer shook his head with disgust at the innate depravity of Man. "Enlist them, maybe?"

"I can train a decent nurse's a.s.sistant in the time we have," Doc Joseph offered. "Maybe even make them full LPNs. Or," he looked pointedly at Master Sergeant Island.

The stout, black mess sergeant shrugged. "Yeah . . . maybe some of them can cook, or be taught to. But, you know, sir, you're already sticking me with some Chinese women. I don't speak Chinese, either version. And I sure as h.e.l.l don't speak Romanian."

"I speak Italian, four-four Italian, as a matter of fact," Lox offered, with a smug grin. "They're pretty close, closer than Italian and Spanish or Portuguese."

Stauer nodded. "Tomorrow, Lox, try to get a radio link with The Drunken b.a.s.t.a.r.d. See what the girls want or are willing to do. Make clear to them that we can't release them for a few months. Tell 'em they'll be paid at . . . s.h.i.+t . . . what rate should we pay them?"

"What the market will bear, sir," the sergeant major replied. "Not a penny more than the market will bear."

"All right, Top," Stauer replied, turning from the screen and jungle to the well lit interior of the tent. "But what's the market price for silence?"

To that, the sergeant major had no direct answer. Instead, he asked, "What's the market price for freedom?"

Stauer considered that for a moment, then called for his operations officer. "Waggoner?"

"Here, boss," Ken Waggoner answered, entering the main ops tent from his little side office tent, the two connected by saplings and tarps.

Stauer pointed at a set of three really large chartboards on one wall of the tent. One had a map of the world. Another showed a coastal area of Africa. Between the two was a operational matrix with one hundred and twenty half inch lines running side to side, and a score of lines about four inches apart running top to bottom.

"I see that the Merciful has picked up the PSP at Manila, and is supposed to receive the helicopters this evening. Is Welch going to be aboard the choppers?"

Waggoner shook his head. "No. Welch, his team, and the Russkis that are part of Victor's business operation are going by air through Port of Spain. Victor says he needs his people in Guyana to help sort and forward what he's going to be sending us there. And I wanted ours here soonest to begin prep for the next stage."

"Any word on the Elands?"

"We haven't updated that part of the board yet, but Victor's charter s.h.i.+p will finish loading them in a few days. They'll be containerized. The Israeli mechanics posing as sailors are already aboard, along with the parts required. Those were loaded in containers, too."

Stauer looked worriedly at the charts. "What's bothering you, boss?" Waggoner asked.

"Just not a lot of slack in the plan, is all."