Countdown: M Day (49 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

—Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan

Paku Rapids, Essequibo River, Guyana

Like everything else in war, building the bridge, smoothing a path from the west bank of the Essequibo, through the rapids, prepping to drop some hundreds of trees to make a way suitable for heavy vehicles between the bridge and the highway, and corduroying the bridge’s entrance and exit, had taken twice as long as it should have, and been twice as hard. It had also cost the lives of three men, two drowned while working in the jungle’s pitch black nights, and a third crushed by a falling tree. Considerably more had fallen by the ruined bridge to the north, as they strove to make the appearance of repairs.

Two men stood in the early evening gloom, by the east bank of the island that split the river, overlooking the gently undulating pontoon bridge that lay parallel to the bank. One of these was in full combat gear, with helmet. The other wore the same, except that his helmet was missing, replaced by a floppy jungle hat. Both were soaked to about chest level.

Reilly took the floppy hat from his head, clutching it tightly in one hand. “I’d feel better about this if you were a good Catholic,” he said. “But, still, you’re a man of God. Do your thing, Chaplain.”

Chaplain Wilson removed his helmet, passing it to Reilly. From his left cargo pocket he pulled a sodden tippet, a thin scarf, which he draped across the back of his neck, letting the long ends hang toward the ground at about knee level. Then, raising both arms Heavenward, he began to pray, “Lord, God of Hosts, Heavenly Father, bless this bridge …”

And the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch,
Reilly mentally, and irreverently, added.

To the west, as if to punctuate, began a series of explosions, joined by the sound of falling trees. The engineers were clearing the way.

A placid jaguar, high in a tree overlooking the river, watched the proceedings without any real comprehension. Even the explosion far off to the west didn’t unsettle the beast. After all, it had been hearing similar sounds from the same direction for quite some time without any ill effects.

The gasoline motors of two small engineer boats sputtered to life. Under their coxswains’ control, they pushed the boats away from the bank, taking the slack from the connecting coils that linked boats and bridge. On the opposite bank, a grunting crew of engineers, sweating in the sodden jungle’s heat, likewise strained, pulling taut the ropes that led to the bridge’s exit end.

Once the pontooned span was into the current, the river took over. Now it was the boats’ task to control the rate at which the bridge swung outward. Their motors roared furiously with the strain, trying but not quite succeeding at their current power in holding the thing steady against the current. The bridge’s swing picked up speed.

Now the crews on the ropes leading to the far side came into their own. Under the lashing tongues of their sergeants, they first pulled the ropes tight, then bent their own lines to bring the stout cables first against and then halfway around still stouter trees. Tree trunks smoked, as did thick leather gloves, but slowly the rate of swing dropped.

Then, inch by inch, with the engineer boats pulling steadily, the bridge was allowed to rotate down to where the prepared embankments awaited it. There, too, awaited still another crew of engineers, this one with strong steel cables to bind it fast to the trees to either side. Even as these leapt to, a further crew made the bridge fast to the near bank.

Sergeant John Wagner, tank commander of Charlie Three-three, kept his left hand on the pintle-mounted machine gun to his front. With the other he absent-mindedly stroked the ears of a placid basset hound, Three-three’s mascot, that rode between the loader’s hatch and Wagner’s own. In action, the hound was trained to get down into the turret’s bustle. For now though, riding atop the thing, having its luxurious ears stroked, was very nearly the basset’s idea of short-legged, long-eared, doggie Heaven.

Wagner’s tank emerged from the jungle and pivoted onto the rapidly crumbling black-surfaced road. An MP with flashlights directed the tank to follow the road to the north. This, Three-three did, until it met upon yet another flashlight equipped MP, whose signals directed it back into the jungle, but to the opposite side. Another tank, Charlie Three-one, Wagner was sure, preceded his own into the jungle.

Just before the hard right turn, Wagner flipped his night vision goggles down over his eyes. He almost didn’t need them; the smell of recently detonated explosives was strong enough practically to mark the trail on its own. And the exhaust from Three-one filled in for whatever the explosive’s fumes didn’t cover.

Once off the road, the tank plunged down into a depression—it was too broad to call it a ditch—that lined the side. Wagner braced for the impact, and absorbed it. The basset ignored it.

With a roar of the engine and a shuddering lurch, Three-three then climbed up again out of that depression. Once past it, Wagner saw a trail marked on both sides with chemlights.
They must be infrared,
Wagner thought,
or I’d have seen them without the goggles.
Lightsticks, mounted higher up, marked trees that had to be avoided.

The way was twisted, winding, and jolting. That the engineers had, arguably, traced out the best path for the battalion and cleared it to the best of their abilities didn’t mean that it was a
good
path.

After a kidney-jarring drive that took well over an hour, Wagner halted his tank a couple of hundred meters from the rapids. He had to; Charlie Three-one was stopped, blocking the way. After a wait of perhaps ten minutes, Three-one rattled off. Wagner ordered his own forward to take the same holding position. There the tank waited, stationary but with its motor running, awaiting its ground guide. Even stationary, the churning engine caused it to vibrate like some live thing. To the dog, that was all gravy.

Wagner became aware of a shadow, a short-seeming shape, just to one side of the tank. “Charlie Three-three?” the shape shouted over the engine’s roar.

“That’s us,” Wagner shouted back, both hands cupping his mouth.

Hey, where’s my petting?
the basset fumed.
I’ve got my rights, you know. Who do you think brings the luck to keep this monster moving, huh?

Two cone-topped flashlights lit up in red. “Sergeant Sayer here; Bridge Platoon. Follow me!”

At the riverbank Sayer crossed his flashlights, bringing the tank to a stop. A good distance away a line of lights—white, red, white; one rising above the other—shone. The guide climbed aboard and shuffled across the steel deck to stand beside Wagner, who removed his helmet.

Pointing to the far bank—at least Wagner thought it was the far bank—the ground guide asked, “See those lights?”

“Roger.”

“You’re on your own from here to the island. Keep those lights lined up and you’ll be fine. It’s an island. Another guide will meet you there and guide you to and across the bridge. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, lemme unass and then go. Oh, and have your driver button up or he’ll drown and flood your tank. This will piss off everyone who’s supposed to be coming behind you. And then Colonel Reilly will shoot you.”

The path down, Wagner was surprised to discover, was also corduroyed. Nothing else would feel quite the same as the tank lumbered—
pun not intended
—down it. The gun was hyper-elevated, to keep it out of the water. Indeed, once the tank reached its tipping point and bounced down, the 105mm barrel remained parallel to the river’s surface, until the tank leveled out on the rocks. After that point it aimed mostly at the sky. It served, as it turned out, as a pretty fair aiming marker for the three lights rising from the island ahead.

“I hate this fucking shit, Sergeant,” the driver grumbled. No tank driver enjoyed driving blind.

“Would you rather be breathing water, Corporal Glass?” Wagner asked conversationally.

The water, though the river here was not deep, surged over the tank’s hull and around the turret. The dog eyed the flood nervously. Sure, it knew it could swim the river, but it wasn’t nearly as confident of the ability of the humans to do so.
And without them, who the hell feeds me and scratches my ears?

“Tell your driver to unbutton,” Babcock-Moore told Wagner, at the western edge of the island. “From here on, he has to watch and listen to
me;
there’s no space or time to risk delayed commands.”

“Roger, Top,” Wagner replied, then intercommed Glass to tell him.

“Thank
God,
” Glass said, as he hoisted the heavy hatch from over his head, letting in blessedly fresh air for a change and, for a change, able to see for himself. “If I’d wanted to be on a sub I’d have signed up for the
Naughtius.
”

The first set of pontoons, already bobbing from previous crossings, sank down better than a foot and then buoyed right back up.
This
was the first event of the evening to upset the pooch.
You guys can’t be fucking serious,
it howled, “Ahhwhoooh …rooo.”
This is a tank, a metal monster. It doesn’t
belong
on a float bridge. I shoulda listened to the frigging mules and deserted when I had the chance.
“Ahhwhoooh.”

They crossed at Babcock-Moore’s speed, and he was walking slowly. Even so, each pontoon sank perilously as the leading edge of the treads pressed upon it. The passage took two minutes, or slightly less. It only
seemed
like hours.

Moore patted the tank’s rump as it rumbled off, down the infrared-marked trail, to its company’s assembly area.

Gonna be a looongngng night. Nah, be realistic. It’s going to be
two
long nights, because at this rate, we won’t get the entire battalion, with its attachments, across before daylight.

Linden, Guyana

Speed of passage, however, picked up once the tanks were across. Everything else was in a much lower weight class, with no chance of upsetting the bridge. By an hour before dawn, the bulk of First Battalion had closed on the small city of Lethem, with only a few stragglers still to show up.

“Snyder? Six,” Reilly radioed, with the power turned all the way up. “Are your people in contact anywhere?” His turretless Eland was parked on the Mackenzie side of town, along Republic Avenue, a couple of hundred meters from the Demerara’s east bank. Snyder’s heavily reinforced command was strung out in an east-west line, about forty miles to the north.

“No, sir,” the Bravo commander replied, “but I’ve got both roads under observation, north and northeast of Vryheid.”

“Any change to their status?”

“They seem dug in pretty well, with overhead cover. Some obstacles. No mines to speak of. For recon, they don’t seem to be pushing anyone out much more than a klick from their front line. Also, we got two deserters during the night, a man and a woman. I don’t know how much of what they say to believe, but the sheer fact that they deserted says morale’s probably not good up there.”

“Yeah,” Reilly said. “Or they could be fuck buddies who couldn’t stand the idea of one or the other getting killed.”

“That’s possible, too, Six.”

“So what do you think, the main road”—the Soesdyke-Linden Highway—“or the one that parallels it to the east?”

Snyder hesitated for a half a minute before replying, “That’s a pretty big call for you to dump on me, boss.”

“Yeah, but you can see what’s there and I can’t, at least until we get the UAVs in range and ready to go. So which road?”

“East,” Snyder answered. “The defense status is about the same, but the river really constricts your space to maneuver to the west. The east’s more open, mostly farmland and pasture.”

“East it is,” Reilly agreed. “Leave one platoon in the east to screen my advance. Make it the scouts …”

“It is the scouts,” Snyder interrupted.

“Good. The rest of your company, plus Third Battalion’s Elands, I want you to take into an attack to threaten the Linden Highway, Low Wood, and Lana. I’ll tell you when to begin, but assemble your boys starting now. If you make progress, good, but mostly I want you to attract their attention, pin them in place, and raise enough noise that they don’t hear the rest of us coming until we’re nearly upon them. Or until we put on the music, whichever comes first.”

“Wilco.”

“They don’t know we’re across,” George said, confidently, his eyes scanning the surrounding skies. “If they did, they’d be on us like flies on shit. Instead, they’re still going after the wrecked bridge.”

Reilly nodded. That was his estimation, as well. “They’re going to know soon enough,” he said. Then he asked, “Did the sappers tuck the bridge back in under the trees?”

“Yes,” the battalion’s top NCO answered, “just as soon at the last vehicle was across.”

“All right, then …time to start to roll. Or rock and roll, if you prefer.”

George took a look at the floppy hat on Reilly head and started to take off his own helmet. “You really need to take—”

Holding up a restraining hand, Reilly stopped him cold. “No, Top; it’s my own goddamned temper that cost me the old one. My fault, my problem, and until a new one shows up …”

George dropped the hands that had begun tugging at his helmet straps. “You’re pig headed, sir; anyone ever tell you that?”

“Vices of my virtues, Top; I’ve always been that way.”

Even heavily upgraded into Jaguars, the T-55 was not remotely as quiet as an American Abrams. Still, there were degrees of noisy. The sound a T-55, or a load of them, produced at five miles an hour, with the engine practically idling, was a lot less than the cacophony they put out rolling at thirty. It also cut down substantially on the dust raised, though Reilly had three water trucks at the point of the column to spread enough moisture to keep the dust to a minimum, anyway.

“Battalion,” Reilly ordered over the radio, “speed of march is slow …Roll.”

As he gave the command, already the sound of firing—Snyder’s merry pirates in action—came from the northwest.