The Shark Boats, page 16
Bosco took a photograph from a folder and passed it to the officers, who began passing it around.
“Quintillian was a puppet of the imperialist United Southern Colonies. We thought he was no more than a capitalist stooge, but he may have seen some light. Sometime yesterday, he decamped from Karna. We learned this” – he checked his watch – “about four and a half hours ago, from a high-level intelligence source.”
There were various nods and murmurs.
“The President did not leave with Macquarie’s permission. He may now be looking to negotiate with us. That’s one of the relevant pieces of information. Two, a squadron of the USC’s motor torpedo boats has arrived at Karna. They’ve been dispatched to bring Quintillian back to Karna.”
“Another source,” he said, “has confirmed this. And added one relevant detail: Quintillian may be interested in negotiating with us.”
Velasquez gestured at the officers in the room. Chavez recognized a few of them and could identify the rest by their insignia. Two Army battalion commanders, two Army majors – presumably their deputies – and a Brotherhood major whose gold-tinged black epaulettes identified him as commander of one of the elite Brotherhood Strike armored units. The captains and XOs of the corvette and the two destroyers.
Plus the light cruiser Mananda, when she arrived. Ten ships, about fifteen hundred soldiers, and a company of armor.
“We’re the emissaries,” Velasquez said. “Take him alive.”
*
On Reiner’s map, the Angan Peninsula was a stubby blob about thirty miles by forty-five, protruding from the eastern side of the much larger island of Minao. Undeveloped jungle, most of it. Like Rienfuegos, it had only been in the last fifty years or so that Southern businessmen had begun exploiting the place’s resources. The map showed only a handful of roads, and a single airstrip a few miles in from the coast.
“We’re going to have to go in on foot,” said Reiner. No big deal; he’d done it before, with less men and less equipment.
“Are we?” asked Eddie Kaye nervously.
“Oh, not all of us,” said Reiner. “Here’s the plan: we dock here” – with his pencil, he marked a small inlet with a small X – “and go inland. Skeleton crews on the Isabella and the Ragnar, just enough to move `em if we have to. The Chang and the Franco stand guard and as reserve. The crews of the other two boats come in with me. We bring small arms, we bluff our way through whatever troops El Presidente’s surrounded himself with, and then we get the hell out before the Norks hear he’s gone.”
“You think they will hear he’s gone, sir?” asked Grey.
Cromwell nodded agreement with the question.
“If he makes peace overtures to `em, they’ll sure as hell realize he’s gone,” said Reiner. “Besides, we’re not taking any chances.”
“What if something does go wrong, sir?” asked Eddie.
Reiner fixed the kid – twenty-four years old, but a kid – with a glare that wasn’t quite contempt but wasn’t far from it.
“Then we deal with it.”
*
Reiner chambered a round in his Jimmy-gun, a long-barrelled .425-caliber submachinegun with a forty-round drum magazine. About half of his eighteen-man shore party was armed with them. The rest had an assortment of rifles and other weapons. Pieter carried a light machine-gun; he was big enough to fire it from the hip, as he’d demonstrated yesterday. Johnny Harris toted a black twelve-gauge shotgun. Tex had a sniper rifle and several belts of ammo for Pieter’s MG.
“You all ready?” he asked. Water lapped around his boots. The two boats were parked ten or fifteen yards inland, in the mouth of a shallow stream. As far under the jungle’s natural cover as possible. It had required pushing to get them there, and getting them out in a hurry would be unpleasant.
There was a chorus of murmured yesses and yessirs.
“Indigio, you ready? You know the way from here?”
“Yeah, uh, we’re ready to go, boss.”
Julio Indigio was the only unarmed man in the party. Reiner had confiscated his pistol as soon as the man had boarded the Isaballa.
“By the way,” Reiner muttered under his breath to the man now, “any funny business and you’re the first to get it. Clear?”
“Clear as, uh, water, boss.”
“Let’s go. Six miles to the airstrip, and at least it’s flat here. It’s four a.m. now; if we’re lucky we’ll be out of here by sunset.”
*
Better him than me, thought deKuyper, as he watched the dark shapes of Reiner and his men disappear into the jungle.
There were four kinds of men, deKuyper had once read. Those who felt no fear. Those who felt fear but didn’t show it. Those who felt fear, showed it, but carried on. And those who shirked.
Eddie Kaye, his exec on the Chang, was probably the type who shirked. He was clearly terrified; just as clearly, he didn’t want to be where he was. deKuyper pitied that – at least he’d been able to keep his wild terror under control. It probably didn’t show too much, although maintaining that veer of calmness was hell.
At the same time, I can do it; why can’t Kaye be bothered?
Maybe it was because, fear of all the very real horrors out there notwithstanding, he believed in this war. The communists had to be stopped and someone had to do the job. Eddie Kaye’s father had voted for peace after Misan Field and Rimshaw Dock, and from the couple of conversations deKuyper had had with his exec on the subject, the son was even further to the left than the father. He certainly didn’t believe in this war.
deKuyper wondered why he’d been sent out to a combat unit, rather than to the safe Schuylerville staff assignment Senator Kaye could easily have arranged. Paternal pressure for glory, maybe.
And maybe he was spending too much time thinking about fears and not enough time doing his job. They were sitting ducks out here. Personal survival required him to do his job properly. Otherwise his worst nightmares – gutted by bullets, knocked overboard and eaten by sharks, eviscerated by bombs – probably would come true.
“Begin patrolling,” he said over the radio to Fordham, commander of the Franco. “We’re sitting ducks where we are.”
*
The jungle here was hell to Reiner, but not as bad as Rienfuegos had been. Here, he had a submachinegun and men behind him he could trust. Well-armed men behind him; what amounted to a pair of infantry squads. They weren’t equipped for sustained operations as D Company had been, of course, but unless things went badly wrong they wouldn’t need to be.
A ripple of hate went through him as he remembered his old unit. The horror as Chavez and his men had massacred them in the water. Pleas for surrender in the lulls between the gunshots.
I’ll get you for that, Chavez. Someday.
*
They reached the airstrip at about nine thirty, three hours or so after dawn. A single dirt runway in a natural clearing, surrounded by a much wider expanse of cleared area. Nobody had bothered to keep it clear since, probably, the start of the war. The jungle was slowly growing back amidst the hacked-off stumps.
The strip itself was primitive. A control tower stood on stilts about twenty feet high, on the other side of the field to Reiner amidst a number of one-storey prefabricated buildings. A single hangar was next to them. No planes were in sight.
Reiner gestured for his men to stop moving, and cautiously advanced to the tree line. Squatting, he raised his binoculars and studied the control tower and the area around it. Two men – no, three – in the controller. Half a dozen others stood or paced amidst the buildings, wearing brown uniforms. It looked like they were on sentry duty.
Assume three guard shifts. That’s about a platoon of them.
With surprise, we could take them easily.
Reiner cut that line of thought off. Hard. Starting a fight with President Quintillian’s personal guard was about the worst thing he could possibly do. His job was to get Quintillian back alive.
Macquarie didn’t specify `alive’, the ganger in Reiner’s mind said.
You are not going to kill a head of state! retorted the sane part.
Just one problem.
He turned to Indigio, who was next to him. Looking through a short telescope.
“Indigio, how many men did the President have when he left Karna?”
“Uh, about a dozen, maybe. His personal, uh-huh, staff. But he knew where he could, uh, find a battalion.”
“Does that look like a battalion to you? Even after battle casualties?”
Indigio shook his head. “No. Uh. It doesn’t.”
“Those are Five-Ports uniforms, though? Right?” Half-afraid that the man would lie to him. Still, better to check.
“Yeah. You want I should talk to `em?”
“You and I and a few others,” Reiner said.
*
Leaving Grey in command of the party, Reiner led a five-man group out of the jungle. Himself, Indigio, Harris, Calina and Pulli. Reiner and Calina, the only ones with white handkerchiefs, held them high. The others simply had their hands raised, weapons slung over their shoulders.
They walked slowly across the slash-and-burned jungle, onto the grass surrounding the bitumen landing strip. From their movements, nobody at the strip seemed to be paying much attention. They were on the strip itself, more than halfway to the tower compound, when one of the men there noticed them.
There was a bustle of running and activity. The three men at the tower were joined by a couple of others, who began to set up a machine-gun.
Reiner waved his handkerchief frantically.
“Come slowly and with your hands up,” came a megaphoned order. “Come to the front of the tower. If you touch your weapons we will shoot.”
“You heard him,” Reiner ordered, and continued with exactly what he’d been doing before.
When they reached the front of the building, they were met by a middle-aged officer whose shoulderboards had two battered crowns on them. His pistol was holstered, but he was flanked by a lower-ranking officer – one crown on each shoulderboard – and a pair of soldiers with bolt-action rifles.
“Who the hell are you?” the two-crowner asked in Spanish.
“Major Jack Reiner, United Southern Colonies Army,” said Reiner, and extended a hand to shake.
The two-crown officer spat on the concrete.
“You’re doing a pathetic job at living up to your promises to defend us,” he said, continuing in Spanish. “I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Montoya. What do you want?”
“I’m the personal emissary of General Macquarie,” Reiner said. Wondered a moment later if that was a valid claim or not. Well, he did grant me discretion.
“And you’re looking for El Presidente, no? He’s not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“He was here,” said Montoya. “He left. We’re getting ready to leave ourselves. We haven’t been able to find an airplane. Anywhere. And the PNA will be coming to retake this place soon.”
“Do you know where the President is now?” Reiner asked.
Montoya shook his head. “No idea. Somewhere in Five-Ports. Maybe on his way to Centralia by now.”
God. Damn. It.
“My men will escort you off the field, now. Major Camerone?”
“Yessir,” said the one-crowner. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, although that was allowing for the rings of exhaustion under his eyes. He was relatively pale-skinned and wore brown riding boots, as opposed to the black combat boots that the other Five-Porters had.
“Take Second Squad and make sure the USC officer gets safely back to his boat.”
“Yessir.”
*
“Do you know where El Presidente is?” Reiner desperately asked Major Camerone as they walked back across the field. The eight men of his attached squad carried expensive semi-automatic rifles.
Camerone shook his head.
“It’s important.”
Camerone shook his head again, nervously glancing back at the tower.
“I said I didn’t know where he was, Major. Ah, I see you have friends who didn’t come out. We’ll walk behind you, if you don’t mind.”
Reiner considered resisting, but no. The Puerto Quintans were armed and positioned well enough to make that an expensive proposition.
God damn it. I’m going to have to go back to Macquarie and tell him I’ve failed.
No; that wasn’t on the table. Haag Star winners simply didn’t give up and go home. The thing to do would be to take the boats, land near the neighboring towns, ask around there. That would be dangerous, because the PNA had garrisons in some of those towns.
So it’ll be dangerous. Deal with it.
They reached the edge of the cleared area.
“In double lines. We’ll stay behind you to make sure none of you wanders off the track,” Camerone instructed the other men in passable English. “Major, you stay with me.”
About half a mile into the jungle, Camerone gave the order to stop. He took his sergeant aside and murmured something to him. The sergeant nodded eagerly.
“Major, what is it you want President Quintillian for?” he asked Reiner.
“General Macquarie sent me to bring him a message. It’s for his ears only, but it’s extremely important.”
“General Macquarie sent you. Personally?”
“Yes.”
“Do you swear this on Jesus and Mary?”
Now probably wouldn’t be a good time to tell him I’m not Catholic.
“Yes,” Reiner said. Placed a hand over his heart. “This I swear.”
“I can tell you where he is. The General has always cared about Puerto Quinto. It’s an honor to meet a man who has met him personally.”
“Help us out and I’ll introduce you to him personally,” said Reiner. Yes!
“OK. We’re going to double around and get onto the western road from the airstrip. Quintillian and his battalion were at the airstrip on Tuesday.” Three days ago. “He was trying to find a plane to leave from. No luck. He’s been gathering men and volunteers from all around. I think he has about a thousand men now.”
No big deal. A hundred or a thousand would be equally impossible to fight through. Anything over a few dozen men would require other methods, and Reiner’d resigned himself to that on Karna.
“How far away is he?”
“I don’t know exactly where he is now. I know where he’s going. I also know where we can find a truck. You said you came from boats?”
“Yes,” said Reiner.
“You may want to move them, if you’re going to get the President out by boat. There are ports closer.”
“Where?”
“I don’t have a map, but you want them on the main island, not the peninsula. Even if we can have transport, the shorter a ride we have, the better. You’re really able to introduce me to General Macquarie?”
“Absolutely,” Reiner said. For what this man was doing, the General should be able to spare five minutes.
“And now let’s get moving. We don’t have much time before the President finds some way off Minao,” said Camerone.
*
On the north side of the Angan Peninsula, the task force was landing. Chavez had spent the last half-hour ferrying men from the transports to where they could jump off within wading distance of the beach. The tank transport had been run aground and was slowly offloading its heavy tanks, one at a time.
“Hey, bossman,” said Albertino as the Rubina headed back to the transport to pick up another platoon. “Got an urgent radio message. Velasquez wants you personally.”
Well, of course Commodore Velasquez wants me personally, thought Chavez. He was getting sick of the pilot’s irreverent attitude towards absolutely everything. Competence only went so far, and he’d already reported Albertino to the Brotherhoods. So far nothing had come of it.
He went up into the cockpit.
“Chavez here, sir.”
“Chavez, urgent new intelligence. The President isn’t at the airfield. He’s moved on.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know exactly where, yet. Somewhere on the main island.”
“Where on the main island?”
“Not at present known. The source will try to update us if he finds out. Should be within a day’s land travel of his past location, though. That much we do know.”
“So you want us to turn around?” asked Chavez.
“Yes. Immediately. Start ferrying troops back. We’ve already landed enough that it’ll take us some time.”
“Sir, give me a platoon. My boats together could carry a company. Take the best company and get there faster. The rest of the task force can back me up. We could be moving inside five minutes.”
Commodore Velasquez seemed to think for a moment.
“We know that Quintillian has an augmented battalion, possibly more,” he said. “If we surround him with overwhelming force, he might give in without a fight. A company against a battalion isn’t overwhelming force.”
Conservative man, thought Chavez. But the Commodore was right. By definition of being a Commodore, he was right.
“Yessir,” Chavez said.
“We should be under way within the hour. The tanks might have to wait. Oh, and there may be work for you. Our intelligence source has confirmed that there’s an enemy shark boat squadron looking for the President.”
“Do you know which squadron, sir?”
“Their Tenth.”
Squadron Ten? The one commanded by the class-traitor who murdered Jorge?
Chavez’s teeth bared.
“It would be a pleasure to get rid of them for you, sir.”
*
Engines revving, the PNA shark boats tore through the night, unleashing a blaze of cannon-fire and tracers at deKuyper’s two boats. Torpedoes ripped into the Franco, blasting Fordham’s boat into scrap and flinders. Fifty-caliber machine-gun fire raked the deck of the Chang Kai-Shek, killing men. Eddie Kaye caught a bullet in the gut, collapsed screaming with half of his insides splattered vividly across the deck. deKuyper stood in the cockpit, unable to move, frozen with terror as his men died. A shell blew apart his fore cannon and eviscerated its crew. He tried to move, to run, but it was impossible. A line of red tracers made its way with eerie slowness towards the cockpit…
