ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (15 page)

The roar muted that of the thirty calibre
machine guns and its tail flames light even invaded the guardrooms interior
noted Jie, but at its height, darkness came.

ESA Jetty, Kourou River: French Guiana.

Locating the valve for the diesel storage
tank took but a moment but getting power to the pump in order fuel the
Dai
took
long minutes before the switches were found in an electrical cabinet in the
gatehouse but before that happy event a more worrying one occurred.

Snatches of gunfire were heard on the wind
just before a column of fire rose into the heavens with a rocket and satellite
riding upon it.

Captain Li queried the SF detachments
warrant officer, Senior Sergeant Yen who tried without success to raise the two
other teams on their tactical radio, looking a little comical, armed to the
teeth yet in a singing voice that would strip paint from the walls he canted
his head to one side, over the Thales radio microphone on his left shoulder and
gave voice to a lullaby.

“Frere Jacques, frere Jacques, dormez
vous?
Dormez vous?”

There was no response from
Dai’s
or
Bao’s
teams, no indication that they had entered the site or not though either.

Unbeknownst to the captain, the
Soyuz
team had been approaching the northern entrance to the site. There was no issue
with new procedures as signposts directed anyone with business with ESA or
Soyuz
to
follow the detour to Kourou and use the southern gate.

They had not heard gunfire as the wind
was at their backs. The launching
Vega
had of course been a very spectacular last view.

A bare fifty metres lay between
themselves and the guardroom when the
Vega
launch took place. Ten faces could not help but
follow its fiery splendour upwards, its tail flame illuminating them rather
conveniently for the thirty calibre crew at the north gate who were now
stood-to and on the lookout for bogus legionnaires.

“Night ranges, sir? Local gun club
perhaps?” the warrant officer suggested to Captain Li.

“At this time, when
rockets are launching?”
Li responded. “No, that is not very likely. The
‘big sky’ theory is frequently disproved by stray rounds and ricochets.” He
shook his head. “It would be prudent to work on the assumption they are blown,
and the brown stuff is about to hit, I think.”

The two troopers tasked with ensuring
there was nothing on the small Kourou airstrip that could be used against them
arrived back at a fast jog.

“Something is stirring in town, sir.” One
reported.

“Quiet as the grave when we went through
it the first time, but there’s people moving about and cars starting up now.
Some fat bastard in pyjama bottoms and combat
jacket nearly trod on me on the way to his car.” The troopers had been
moving quickly and quietly along silent streets when they had been surprised by
house lights coming on and the sound of car engines starting up. Dropping prone
in someone’s flower bed and remaining motionless had been instinctive.

“Seven bellies he had.” Put in his mate.
“Like a stack of jellies jogging, they were, and he farted at every other step!”

“What is it with you guys?” asked Captain
Li, his face screwing up in distaste at the description.

“Is there some ‘Instilling graphic and
unpleasant mental images, course’ you all attend or something?” 

He gave consideration to what he had just
been told. The out of shape resident in combat jacket hurrying out to his car
was more than likely a member of the reserve platoon formed from retirees.

“Where were they headed?”

“North, sir.”
The first trooper replied.

“So, good news for us here but not so
good for the launch pad teams.” muttered Li. Not good news for the town either,
he thought, knowing that the orders in his safe would have to be carried out
regardless of his personal feelings.

The captain of
Bao
would
have a sealed copy in his safe, to be opened on the death or incapacity of Li,
the next senior officer in the flotillas chain of command.

His executive officer also knew, Li had
briefed him of course. The only other member of the crew to be intimate with
that part of the mission would of course be his own ‘steward’, who may even
have received a briefing by the admiral himself before the orders had even been
written.

However, there was still time, they did
not know for certain that the launch pad teams had been compromised, and even
if they had it did not automatically follow that they were prevented from
completing their missions?

He had his fingers crossed for Jie and
those nineteen men to show before the refuelling was done and the bridge
dropped into the muddy Kourou.

Across at the bridge the demolition
preparations were well under way. Two troopers stood watch, one for trouble
approaching from Cayenne and one keeping an eye on the quartet of caiman in the
river. The biggest and strongest had claimed the sentry’s corpse so the others
were watching another pair of troopers hanging by ropes below the bridges
roadbed, wiring it up.

An adult caiman’s tail can lift 80% of
its body vertically upwards, clear of the water for just long enough to snatch
unwary birds and monkeys from the lower limbs of overhanging trees, and Li
could imagine what was going through the minds of the hungry trio as they
watched the troopers suspended below the bridge, working swiftly and
methodically like temptingly dangling Piñatas.

The trooper watching the trio of reptiles
obviously thought they were thinking the same thing as he suddenly fired a long
burst, the spent cases hitting the tarmac road surface and making more noise
than the fired rounds had. One of the beasts reared up, threshing and
twisting…the other two immediately turned on it, sinking their teeth in and
instinctively rolling their wounded brother, seeking to subdue it by drowning
before tearing off chunks and devouring it.

“That’ll keep them busy until we’re
done.” Senior Sergeant Yen observed aloud but broke off as an armed rating
relayed a message from the front gate, shouting across that the telephone was
ringing non-stop at the gatehouse.

“Well.” Said Captain Li. “If they answer
it then whoever is on the other end will know something is wrong and they will come
in force, or they can leave it and maybe just a few will come to see if
anything’s wrong in which case you can thin out the opposition a bit…but it’s
your call Senior Sergeant, you are the on-site authority on dry land combat.”

Twelve armed sailors and the four
troopers who were not engaged at the bridge was hardly a substantial force.

Senior Sergeant Yen departed to arrange
what he had called a greeting for the unwelcome with some of the Type 72 light
anti-tank mines they had brought. Not as effective as bar mines they were good
for wrecking a tanks tracks and a road wheel perhaps. They
could temporarily incapacitate any current main battle
tank and devastate soft skin vehicles. As the French in Guiana had none of the
former and plenty of the latter the relatively small but powerful AT mines
could prove useful.

  As
Dai
’s fuel tanks reached
absolute capacity the
Bao
arrived, holding station in midstream as
Dai
cast
off, and again moved beyond the dark and silent
Fliterland
, still
operating on battery power in the hope of keeping their presence a secret as
long as possible. 

The maw-like air intakes and even larger
exhausts’ covers remained closed and hopefully would remain so until they were
again back out to sea.

Perhaps the telephone call was the guard’s
wife? Perhaps it was a wrong number or even his bookie…?

It arrived with a thunderous roar, its
undercarriage just clearing the white painted roof of the covered parking area,
overflying the
Fliterland
and the two Chinese submarines to disappear in a
shock of noise and downwash beyond the jungle canopy of the southern bank.

Neither
Dai
’s or
Bao
’s air
sentries fired, so suddenly had the big Chinook appeared and departed that only
Bao
’s 23mm and a trooper on the road bridge fired a shot. The 23mm cannons
gunner failed to aim ahead of the aircraft before letting rip so naturally he
missed by as much as four aircraft lengths, the tracer curving harmlessly
behind it. The troopers lighter and sound suppressed rounds ‘lacked the legs’
as they say, falling short.

“I thought they booby trapped that bloody
thing?” Li shouted across the warrant officer on the dock who had paused to
duck and watch the big shape cross the river.

The sound of the big rotor blades drowned
out the reply as the machine cleared the trees downriver, flaring as it crossed
back over to the north side and obviously aiming for some open space four
hundred or so yards away around the bend. Li could barely make it out in the
dark.

It was impressive flying by a military or
ex-military pilot with plenty of experience in heliborne assaults. Flying so
low as to minimise the opportunity of effective ground fire.

Li realised that his own air sentry was
unable to engage it with the Strela as the submarines bridge was in the back
blast area of the weapon. It was his own fault for not repositioning the sentry
on the casing when the opportunity arose and he cursed himself for a fool now.

Don Caldew had been flying for the ‘My T
Oak’ logging and lumber company for over two years, since right after getting out
of the service in fact, flying the companies surplus Boeing CH47 Chinook.

The pay cheques were fatter than the ones
Uncle Sam had given him but the work was as dull as ditch water. He missed the
excitement, the adrenalin rush of flying into a hot LZ, he missed the guys and
he missed something else too, the mission purpose, the sense you were doing
something important. He recognised that that was what had made him sign on the
dotted line in the first place.

Don came from a little town in the
American Midwest where he was born in the same hospital his folks had been
born, went to the same High School his folks and their folks before them had
attended, and was expected to get a job at the local plant, just as his parents
and their parents had. They hadn’t even considered setting up a college fund
for him. Why should he want or expect anything more? Don did want more, but he
didn’t know quite what it was that was missing from the life plan his parents
had presented him with. The answer, when he found it, had changed his life
forever.

The army recruiter at the local county
fair had seen a light appear in young Don’s eyes as he looked at the glossy
photographs in the pamphlets and the poster with the ‘Be All You Can Be’ title.
Most of the first questions the recruiter got from visitors to his stand were
“What’s the pay like?” or “Did you ever shoot anyone, mister?” The first
category, if they signed on, would wash out in 70% of cases, the second would
come back in ten years when they were old enough and ask the same question as
the first category. But Don’s had been “Do you make a difference?”

With his level of education, Don joined
the infantry as a rifleman and he loved the life, the camaraderie and the sense
of doing something with a purpose.

Another life altering experience was his
first flight in a helicopter, a Blackhawk. While his buddies were staring out
at the ground Don had been craning his neck to watch the AC, the Aircraft
Commander, and his co-pilot.

It had just been an air experience
flight, an introduction to the drills required to get on and off without
walking into a rotor blade or grabbing hold of something you shouldn’t in order
to climb aboard when fully loaded down with weapons and equipment. They had a
short cross country hop to a wide green meadow where the aircraft had landed
and shut down while they all had lunch, army style of course, but Don had
sought out the AC, asking him about what it took to be an army helicopter
pilot. The answers had been a little sobering but Don was not one to be easily
put off.

Back home at that time his friends were
marrying high school sweethearts and making babies, although not always in that
order, and buying houses on the same street where their parents and
grandparents lived. Don went home on leave after passing basic, but apart from
attending his sister’s wedding the following year that was it, he never went
back again.

The army ran further education courses
and Don applied himself with a will. His first tour in Iraq was as a rifleman,
but his second was in the left hand seat of a CH47 Chinook.