CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The human factor will decide the fate of war,

of all wars. Not the Mirage, nor any other plane,

and not the screwdriver, or the wrench or radar

or missiles or all the newest technology and electronic

innovations. Men—and not just men of action,

but men of thought. Men for whom the expression

‘By ruses shall ye make war’ is a philosophy of life,

not just the object of lip service.

—Ezer Weizman, On Eagles’ Wings

Lawyers, Guns, and Money (SCIF), Camp Fulton, Guyana

“You’re late,” Stauer said.

Morales nodded, without any appearance of remorse. “We had to duck some of those nimble little fucking attack aircraft they use, about a half a dozen times between here and Wineperu.”

“Fair enough,” the colonel agreed, then explained why he’d wanted them to risk coming, what he wanted them to do, and with what.

“What’s the wind pattern like at the airport?” Che Morales asked of Stauer. With them were Boxer and, because of his legal background, Bridges. Between Morales and Simmons, and the three regimental officers, on a table sat something that looked like a cross between a tripoded, short barreled heavy machine gun and a refugee from a science fiction movie set. The something was a Chinese-made ZM-87, a laser blinder.

“Easterly,” Boxer replied. “You two are going to have to work your way around to the east, to catch the transports as they come in.” His mouth twisted up on one side. “You may have to work your way back around to the west, again, once they decide to screw ease of landing and come in from a direction where they don’t know there’s a laser waiting. For that matter, the shorter cross strip may require some attention. You’re going to have to give the impression of being four or five laser projector teams, rather than one diligent one.”

“I dunno,” Simmons muttered. “Seems …dirty to me.”

“It would be illegal,” Bridges said, nodding, “if you were to use it to try to permanently blind someone. But, since you’re going to use it at a range that will only temporarily blind them, so that they crash and become permanently dead, I think it’s fine.”

To Morales, no less than Simmons, the whole idea of attacking a man’s eyes made him literally queasy; this, from two men who had no real objection to taking human life for a good purpose. But eyes? The idea of being blinded was so much more objectionable than the thought of being killed to them that that objection extended even to the enemy.

“You can’t just give us some missiles to backpack?”

Stauer shook his head. “We could, but you couldn’t carry enough to matter and no shoulder-launched missile has the range this does, or is as hard to spot the launch of as this thing is. The Venezuelans aren’t going to see much, if anything.”

Morales’ lip curled with distaste. “Where did you come up with it?”

Boxer replied, “There were, supposedly, twenty-two of these made by NORINCO, back in the Nineties. So far as I know, that was, in fact, how many were made. But they made more parts than that, before shutting down production.

“I went to Wicked Lasers—those are the guys who make the really dangerous laser ‘pointers,’ some of them by disassembling laser projectors—and asked them to get hold of enough of those parts to build us anywhere up to fifty of the things. They got one thrown together, tested, and sent to us, along with some extra power packs, before the invasion started.”

“They’ll start wearing shades,” Morales objected.

Boxer shook his head, no. “This thing fires pulses on two different frequencies. A set of glasses that protect the eyes from both …you couldn’t see through them anyway.”

“Oh.” No salvation there, I suppose. “What about civilian chartered flights?”

“It’s a war zone,” said Bridges, “and a blockade has been declared. If they fly, they die, and it’s all on them.”

Stauer harrumphed. “Your objections are noted, Che. If you have no more questions …?”

“No, sir.”

“Fine. You and Simmons are to take this thing, along with your usual gear and anything else you deem necessary and can port. You will be transported by surface to the Essequibo River, west of Mount Arisaru. Your transportation will have a rubber boat to take you across to the east bank. If you think it might be useful, we’ve got a couple of bicycles you can have. From there you will hump or cycle—avoiding all contact with anyone, friend or foe, and moving only by night, until you link up with a Captain—you guys might know him as Sergeant—Byng, at Dalgin on the Demerara River. From there, Byng will lead you to a point approximately four miles east of Cheddi Jagan Airport. There, you are take whatever actions are required to shut down the airport to all cargo traffic, displacing as appropriate. Byng does not know what you will be carrying and is not to be allowed to find out before you have used it.

“Good luck and Godspeed.”

Simmons, still disgusted, answered, “God’s not gonna smile on us for doing this.”

Intersection Issaro Road and Bartica-Potaro Road, Guyana

Because Reilly’s location was as secret as they could make it, they really couldn’t broadcast via radio. For the troops, this meant landline communications from regiment, to battalion, and then on down to company, platoon and squad. To Reilly, it was highly suboptimal from a command and control point of view, but …

“It beats the shit out of the Venezuelan Air Force pounding the shit out of us night and day. And we’re physically close enough to intervene if they ever do try an airmobile assault on what’s left of base.”

Reilly’s First Battalion had been reinforced with Cazz’s battalion’s armored car section, two platoons of engineers plus the engineer company’s headquarters and bridging troops, the entire twelve-gun artillery battery, a platoon of air defense troops with a mix of missiles, towed light ADA guns, and all four of the self propelled guns, plus their normal attachments from the service support battalion, and a remotely piloted vehicle section flown by the intelligence types. Those last were attached to Reilly, but not co-located. Rather, they were back at a bunker by the Camp Fulton airfield.

For that matter, most of his trains, plus the headquarters and support troops, were back at Camp Fulton and its environs, doing their damndest to look like an entire combat regiment for the Venezuelan Air Force. The VAF still evidenced an interest, daily, in what was going on there. They also took a certain interest in killing whatever could be seen amidst the ruins. The job of being bait had never been an easy one.

The RPVs provided much less of a clear picture than one would have hoped for. Initially, they’d been just fine, providing real time intelligence on the build up at Kaieteur Airport and the area around the falls. But after losing two—and the supply was quite limited—to no discernable reason, the MI commander had suggested that the Venezuelans were interfering with electronic controls. It might or might not have been true, but, since the supply was so limited, they’d adopted a different approach. Now, instead of flying the things around, they sent them out preprogrammed to fly a particular route, and record what they saw, then return to base. At base, control for the landings was resumed, but with very low power settings on the control stations. This meant more or less lengthy delays.

Not a problem though, Reilly thought, studying his maps and comparing them to the images brought back by the RPVs and hand carried to him by one of the intelligence rats Not a problem because nothing moves really fast in the jungle. We know there are two understrength battalions, plus support, at the Falls, and another one strung out in little penny packets all the way back to Venezuela. I can’t get at them; no frigging roads and the terrain and vegetation are impossible for my vehicles. And they don’t have the transportation to support any more than a company near the road to Lethem.

“I’ll start to worry when I see one of those planes unload a few hundred mules,” he muttered.

“What was that, sir?” Sergeant Major George asked.

“Huh? Was I thinking out loud?”

George smiled. “You might say that. But what was it you said?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that they can’t support any force big enough to worry about at any distance from Kaieteur Falls unless they get animal transportation.”

“That’s not exactly true,” George disagreed.

“How’s that?” Reilly asked.

“Well …Brazil’s taking a pretty neutral, hands off approach, no?”

Reilly shrugged. “Sure. So?”

“What’s to prevent Venezuela from renting every private Brazilian truck that’s for rent within five hundred miles of Lethem, then taking them across the border, full of food and Class IV?” Class IV was milspeak for construction and barrier materials.

“Now there’s a scary thought,” Reilly said. “But I haven’t read anything in the intelligence summaries to suggest it’s happening.”

George shook his head. “Neither have I. And it may not be—operative word—yet. But eventually?”

“Yeah. Crap. What do we do about it?”

“Not a lot we can do,” George said. “But were I you, I’d go see Stauer and have him try to get a team from Second Battalion somewhere along that road, with a shitpot of mines. That, or enough explosive to drop the Lethem Bridge. Or, better, both.”

“Mines, maybe,” Reilly replied. “If things work out, we’ll need the Lethem bridge.”

He shook his head over a lost opportunity. “You know, if we’d thought of it in time, we could have had Gordo stockpile that shit somewhere convenient, just like he stockpiled food for the dependents. Ah, well, can’t think of everything.” Reilly shuffled through his stack of maps until he found a large-scale one of the Lethem area. “Tell me again why you decided to stay in the NCO ranks?”

“Couldn’t deal with being numbered among the idjits, sir,” George replied, straight faced. “Besides, even the Marine officer corps didn’t want me, as my parents were married …to each other.”

“A terrible handicap,” Reilly agreed, trying very hard to keep a straight face as he did. “You really do have to be born a bastard to make a first class officer.”

“Exactly, sir,” George agreed, mock solemnly.

Reilly grunted, rather than formulating a reply. I don’t really know what I’d do without this guy to keep me entertained. And humble.

Growing serious again, Reilly said, “Okay, fun’s fun, but tell me about the patrols to Mahdia Eagle Mountain and Twasinki Mountain.”

“Left this morning, sir, uniformed, armed, and on bicycles. Michaels’ recon team is going to Mahdia; Martinez’s to Twasinki. Their vehicles are unmanned now. I was going to suggest turning them over to the Gay Avengers …”

“Nah,” Reilly cut off his sergeant major. “We’ve got plenty of light recon from having most of Third Battalion’s gun section Viljoen and Dumisani are a lot more important keeping the vehicles up than pulling recon, even if they’d be good at it.”

Chaguaramas, Trinidad

The base had been constructed by the United States, back in 1940, under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement with Great Britain. This was the same agreement that had seen to the construction of the airfield at Timehri, now called “Cheddi Jagan.” America had abandoned most of these in 1949, though Chaguaramas had lasted longer. With the dissolution of the British Empire, the bases had, for the most part, been taken over by local defense forces.

Kosciusko, Liu, Collins, and crew had nothing really to complain of about their treatment at the hands of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force. After turning themselves in at Port of Spain, and informing the authorities of what they’d done to Venezuela’s northern ports, they’d been duly put under guard and incarcerated in one of the unused buildings of the base. Captain and Mrs. Liu, naturally, had their own suite.

But when the guard, mused Kosciusko, the sergeant of the guard, their commanding officer, and his commanding officer all insist on shaking your hands when they arrest you, you know life isn’t going to be bad. That their Chief of Defense Staff showed up to make sure we were being well cared for, and brought us a case of—gotta admit it—some of the finest rum I’ve ever had …well …life is good. And why shouldn’t they like us? It’s not like these people aren’t a lot closer culturally, linguistically, and historically, to Guyana than they ever could be to Venezuela. Or that any sympathy they have isn’t for their brothers across the waters.

Seated under an awning, with Liu and his wife, the latter waving a fan to keep off the flies, Kosciusko sipped at a little of the rum—straight up, it was too good to ruin with coke—when one of the guards came up and saluted.

“Sir,” said Corporal McLean, “there’s someone who wishes to speak with you. He says you’ll know him, sir, a Mister Baluyev.”

Kosciusko sputtered out a little of the rum. Baluyev? Here? He was supposed to have …well, apparently he didn’t or couldn’t. Therefore, hell, yes, I want to see him.

“Please, Corporal, if you could pass him through the gate.”

“Surely, sir,” said McLean, like most of his people very polite and, frankly, veddy British. “Shall I send one of the cook lads over with some more ice?”

“If you would be so kind, Corporal.”

“I’ll leave you a little privacy, sir,” McLean said, saluting and stomping off to resume his guard post.

Baluyev watched the stout black corporal stride away, then said, “I don’t get it.”

“They like us, Mr. Baluyev,” Kosciusko explained. “Now, why are you here, and why is the bridge at Ciudad Guayana still standing?”

“It’s still standing because we’re here, sir,” Baluyev replied, “and we’re here because we couldn’t get the boat up the river. They were searching everything. So I came, once we heard you had all been”—Baluyev looked around at the very decent surroundings—“put into durance vile. And I must say, sir, it sure seems vile to me. Ahem.

“Sir, you know the big plan, whatever’s left of it. I only knew the little one. Sir, I need orders. Or guidance, anyway.”

“Regiment isn’t communicating via the e-mail drop?”

“No …I mean, yes, they are. But they’ve got no orders except ‘hang loose.’ What kind of orders are those, sir?”

Kosciusko, who was much more in-briefed than Baluyev, thought about the sea between the Netherlands Antilles and Venezuela, and said, “Well …why don’t you and your people just hang loose. Get in a little fishing, maybe. Something useful for you to do will come up; I’m certain of it.”

Ferry, San Martin de Turumban

(on some maps marked as “Anton”), Venezuela

Cazz’s boys had grown thin, no doubt about it. Oh, rations hadn’t been all that short, not yet—though they’d had to stretch them out a bit toward the end—but a man lost weight in the jungle, no matter what. A lot of that came from serving as a grazing ground for swarms of mosquitoes. Some of it was water loss. Some of it was burning off fat as they worked like the mules that supported them. Indeed, they’d worked harder; men weren’t really built to carry the kind of loads they did, not the way mules were. And a mule would quit, eventually. A man?

Cazz grinned. Mules wouldn’t put up with it. Men will hump until they die.

Since leaving their temporary log base, inside the Werushima Mountains, they’d moved at night and slept in the day, if “sleep” it could be called. Two men from A Company and half a dozen mules had drowned crossing the Cuyuni River, northeast of the Maugaru Mountains. All Cazz could hope for was that, if the bodies were found, they were found someplace where there was no phone or radio to report it.

At least, Cazz thought, looking up at the light beginning to filter through the interwoven trees, at least for the next ten minutes.

Last night the troops had moved painstakingly to their final positions before the attack. Two days prior Cazz had sent two companies across the Cuyuni, one to set up an ambush position on the road between Carrizal and San Martin, one to wait in an assault position to the west of the ferry. He hardly needed that level of force for the short platoon the Venezuelans had posted there. What he needed it for was to take the ferry quickly, once he committed to the attack, to set up a defense on the far side, should the ambush fail. And he needed the ferry taken intact, so that he could get his bloody mules and mortars across without losing any more. If they could strike so hard and so fast that they managed to grab a couple of the trucks waiting with the Venezuelan troops, so much the better.

They wouldn’t even have the ferry manned, if they weren’t using the two airfields as supplementary positions to resupply forward. Me, I wouldn’t have bothered with the airstrips.

More trucks he expected to grab from the ambush, a couple anyway. Still more were waiting at the Venezuelan forward base at Tumeremo. Austin and one scout team had made it that far and reported it as a potential paradise—pandemonium, anyway—of destruction and loot. There were trucks by the score, fuel by the bladder, food in mountains, ammunition by the crate, and—best of all—about two thirds of Venezuela’s helicopter fleet being serviced at any given time. To say nothing of a small fleet of light, fixed wing aircraft. For defense, the scouts had seen one company of light armor, maybe a company of fairly lackadaisical infantry and—based on the number of tents and latrines the scouts had counted—“about eight hundred REMFs.”

“And, sir,” Austin had said, via a directional antenna, “them light strike craft the Venezuelans use. I saw the last of ’em fly out heading east a couple of days ago and they never came back. Figure they’re in Guyana, sir.”

Which makes sense to me, Cazz thought.

“I can’t fly the choppers,” Cazz muttered, in the gloom south of the river, “but I can sure as shit burn them so no one else can either …them, and any fixed wing birds we find on the field. Gonna be fun.”

For the battalion’s main force it had been radio listening silence all the way, with only a few exceptions permitted, and those only after midnight, this morning In very short bursts of electromagnetic traffic the mortars had reported up and ready to fire, A Company, Captain Lott, commanding, had said they were occupying the ambush position. B Company, Captain Newman, commanding, reported that it was ready to assault the ferry from the east and D Company, Captain Jarrett, commanding, confirmed that it was ready to charge the southern end. The engineers hadn’t had to report; they were with Cazz. The bulk of the scout platoon—Master Sergeant Austin and one team still keeping their eyes on Tumeremo and its airfield—was overlooking the airfield on the friendly side and radioed, “Ready to attack.” Assault wasn’t really their job, of course, but, Needs must when the devil drives.

Cazz made a gimme gesture to Singh, carrying the battalion radio for the festivities. Singh passed over the microphone.

With his heart beginning to race, not with fear but with excitement and anticipation, Cazz pushed the microphone’s button and ordered, “All companies, this is Six, actual. Attack.”