CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

—Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August

Awartun Island, Guyana

“Pull off to the right,” Snyder ordered through his intercom. The APC’s wheels duly turned, causing the vehicle to crunch through the cheap, flimsy barrier and move on onto the island that was much of the bridge’s support.

Snyder flicked the switch on the side of his helmet to radio. “Half perimeter on the far side, left to right, second, scouts, third. First platoon, you’ll be staying here to guard the bridge. First Platoon and the Duckhunters”—Air Defense Artillery—“report to me.” He waited then until one of the Russian-built air defense guns, a ZSU-23/4, pulled up in front of him. An elderly sergeant popped out of the hatch and dismounted with more agility than one would have expected.

“Yes, sir?” the sergeant, Master Sergeant Maldonado, asked. He sketched the flimsiest of salutes as he did.

“How do you defend this from an air attack?” Snyder asked.

Maldonado shrugged. “Mostly I spoil their aim. Defense is …difficult and improbable.”

“Okay, fine; how do you set up to spoil their aim?”

The sergeant pointed to some very high ground to the northeast, Makeri Mountain, a good portion of which had recently been forested. “All the MANPADS”—MAN Portable Air Defense Systems, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles—“up there, along with one gun. The other gun right here, in case they try slipping in at just above water level.”

“Do it.” Snyder’s first platoon leader trotted over. His salute was considerable more formal than Maldonado’s had been. “You,” the company commander said, pointing at First’s platoon leader, “are working for him,” the finger shifted to Maldonado. “Neither of you let this fucking bridge go down, whatever it takes.”

“I can only promise to try,” Maldonado replied.

“I’ll put it this way,” Snyder said, “if Reilly gets here and the bridge is down he’ll probably shoot both of us.”

“Okay, sir, I’ll try really hard.”

Mahdia Airport, Guyana

No matter how hard you try, Reilly mentally cursed, in war everything’s twice as hard and takes twice as long as it should. Course, that’s understandable when someone is trying to bomb the living shit out of you.

The planes hadn’t been over in a while, maybe half an hour. Half his command wasn’t here anymore, either. He’d begun slipping them out by ones and twos from under the aerially induced inferno a couple of hours previously. They’d reform en route. Some of them weren’t here, though, because they were dead or badly wounded.

About time for me to leave, too, he thought, but five or ten minutes to see to my hurt men won’t be the end of the world.

Five minutes he could spare for his wounded, but there was no sense in wasting time. He trotted in the direction of the field aid station, the cast on his arm making the trot exceedingly awkward. It was open air, of course: there hadn’t been time to set up tents. McCaverty rushed from litter to litter, doing a bit here and a little there to keep the men alive until they could be evacuated to the better facilities back at Camp Fulton. Some of the litters the doctor bypassed. These were the ones bearing men he couldn’t save, or had already lost.

Corporal Tatiana Manduleanu was there, too, and while her medical skills were no more than those any field medic could boast of, her presence among all those wounded and, some of them, dying men was nearly as effective as the doctor’s and in some cases, perhaps, more so. An image in profile—magnificent profile, Reilly thought—a soft hand stroking a bloody cheek, a squeeze of a shoulder, a deliberate low bend to give a one-eyed man a vision of heavenly cleavage: She knows what she’s doing, giving the boys a reminder that there’s a reason to fight to stay alive.

Not that she was just there for moral support. No, she gave that almost unconsciously, even as she busied herself and Brewer with preparing the wounded for evacuation.

“Incredible, isn’t she?” asked a familiar voice from behind Reilly didn’t turn. Not only did he recognize Joshua’s voice, but he’d already more than half expected him to be here among the lame.

“Yeah, she is, Sergeant Major,” Reilly agreed. “Maybe she’s good at her regular job, I wouldn’t know. But hookers are a dime a dozen; a field medic who can give the boys reason to live? That’s a lot more rare and a lot more valuable.”

And I know you would never argue that point, old man.

Reilly turned then, to see Joshua lofting and catching a blackish rock, one handed. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Just something I picked up where the engineers did some insubordinate blasting to clear a way for the hovercraft.”

“Interesting looking rock,” Reilly observed. “You might want to have someone look at it. My man, Schiebel, collects rocks.”

“Maybe,” Joshua shrugged. “One of these days. For now, let’s go check on the men.”

Nodding, Reilly replied, “Just enough for an appearance, Sergeant Major. I’ve got to be on the road to Awartun Island Bridge in five minutes.”

Even as Reilly spoke the words, another brace of Sukhois roared by overhead. No one doubted, at this point, where they were going.

Awartun Island, Guyana

“Six, this is One, over.” One was the ZSU-23/4 sitting higher up on Makari Mountain.

“Six,” Master Sergeant Maldonado replied. His track was about a hundred and fifty meters southeast of the bridge.

“I was tracking one on radar—slow mover; Tucano I think. It ducked down into the Essequibo before it came in range. Bet they’re going to try to sneak up the river course.”

“Roger, out,” the platoon leader replied. He immediately ordered his gunner to orient the turret to the northwest, then put his field glasses to his eyes to scan in that direction himself.

The gun’s turret spun then stopped. Banking left, a Tucano swept around the bend in the Essequibo, then leveled out.

“I’ve got him,” announced the gunner.

“Fire!” All four barrels began to spit out 23mm shells at a combined rate of nearly three thousand, five hundred shells per minute. The forty rounds were gone in just over a second.

Maldonado roared with laughter as the camouflage-painted Tucano, caught in the fire of the four automatic cannon, simply disintegrated in a great flash. Bits and pieces of it fell into the river and splashed like a hailstorm of the gods.

“Teach you to fuck with the Duckhunters, motherfucker,” the sergeant muttered.

A missile streaked off from the western slope of Makari Mountain. Maldonado heard the warhead, itself, explode, but if it did any damage to the next attacking plane—Sukhoi, I think. Jet anyway, he thought—it was tolerably hard to see.

The ZSU up on Makari opened up—one ear-splitting burst, then a second and a third—even as Maldonado had his own spun over to let the radar track. In a second, the four guns in front of him began belching long tongues of flame. The results were unspectacular, but the Sukhoi did abort its run. Maldonado thought he saw a thin stream of smoke trailing behind it as it veered off, climbing.

Neither he nor number one saw the next attacking aircraft. From somewhere northeast of Makari Mountain, a Sukhoi, which must have been going very low and then suddenly pulled up, released its bombs and lobbed them over the crest. Maldonado caught an uncertain glimpse of a couple of ovoids flying through the air and thought, Shit.

The bombs hit with a couple of seconds of each other. One landed in the river, several hundred meters away. The other?

“Oh, fuck!” Maldonado ducked down, pulling the hatch behind him. Even through the armor of the ZSU, the concussion was felt, internal organs rippling and the entire twenty-one ton assembly shuddering with the blast.

After giving debris and shrapnel time to fall to Earth, the master sergeant popped the hatch again and tentatively raised his head. With a sinking heart he ordered his driver to pull the vehicle closer to the bridge. Water and dirt, mixed in with chunks of steel and concrete, were still falling as they crested the low summit of Awartun Island.

“Well, shit,” Maldonado cursed, looking at the massive gap recently torn in the bridge, “we did our best.”

With a seriously sinking heart, the air defense platoon leader switched his radio to battalion command to give Reilly the bad news.

Intersection, Lethem Highway and Mahdia Road, Guyana

“He’s taking the news rather well, don’t you think?” asked Reilly’s driver, Sergeant Schiebel, of the track commander, Sergeant Duke.

Duke looked at the remains of the battalion commander’s helmet, clutched tightly in his left hand, as Reilly continued to beat the thing to scrap against the side of the APC. “Only because he’s stuck using his left hand,” Duke commented. “Otherwise, hehave destroyed the helmet entirely by now and be working on something bigger and tougher.”

“Possibly,” Schiebel half-conceded, “but you must admit he’s matured over the years. He didn’t tell the air defense people he was going to line them up and shoot every tenth man personally. In the old days …”

“True,” Duke agreed. “The question is, now what?”

Scowling, Reilly tossed away the remains of his helmet. From one pocket he pulled out a floppy jungle hat, which he placed on his head. “Order me another helmet,” he said. “And get the commander of the engineers here. Ten minutes ago.”

“I’ve got serious reservations we can rebuild that bridge in anything like good time, sir,” Trim said. “That’s code for no fucking way, not this year. They tell me there’s a fifty meter gap now, and what’s standing is none too solid. And if I mass my engineers there the Venezuelan Air Force is going to make short work of them.”

Reilly shook his head. “No, I know that,” he agreed. “I don’t want you to actually rebuild it. I want you to make it look like you’re trying to actually rebuild it. Cut logs in the jungle and pile them up neatly as if they’re going to be pilings. Start looting every boat for twenty miles in either direction and assemble them there as if you’re trying to set up a pontoon bridge. Give the Venezuelans interesting things to think about and shoot at.”

Pulling out his map, Reilly laid it on the ground and squatted down over it. Trim did likewise. “What can you tell me about this?” Reilly asked, a twig in his fingers pointing at Paku Rapids.

Trim considered. “If there’s a river with no rapids to the other side of it, sir, it’s likely that the rapids themselves are fairly shallow.”

With a nod of his head, Reilly said, “That’s what I thought.

“Okay, in the interim, while you’re using maybe one platoon to look like they’re repairing the bridge at Awartun Island, that, I want you to send the other to Kurupukari and improve that well enough to get trucks across at some point in the near future. Then I want you to send your bridge platoon—you have enough pontoons —”

“Three sets, sir, M4T6s,” Trim replied. Apologetically, he added, “They’re obsolete so Gordon got them cheap. Still, they’re not that obsolete and that’s enough for about four hundred and twenty-five feet of bridge.”

“That should be fine. You have enough to build me a bridge to the east side of Paku Rapids, where there are no rapids.”

“Suggestion, sir?” Trim offered.

“Shoot.”

“I can build the bridge on the west bank, under the cover of the trees. We can build it completely, then swing it out and anchor it down.”

“How long?” Reilly asked.

Trim looked over the map, scowling. “Better than a day. If I had ribbon bridge, it would take something like twenty minutes to an hour to build it. Pontoons are a lot slower. And, sir, it could be days or even weeks to get the vehicles carrying the pieces in.” He looked down at the map again and clucked, disapprovingly, “Yes, if I can’t get them close to Paku Rapids, then it could be a week, even two weeks.

“I’m also going to have to build some kind of abutments and corduroy on both sides or your tanks will turn them into bottomless morasses in nothing flat. That will take a little more time.”

“Fine. Go. Get to work. If you need a few hundred people to fetch and carry, let me know.”

Holding Base Snake (2nd Bn, and MI-17’s),

Twenty-two Miles South of Jonestown, Guyana

“Stand down!” Hampson called out. “Stand down; we’re on hold again.”

With curses, the men—special forces types, aviators, ground crew, and service support—began draping the nets over the helicopters and propping them up with poles and spreaders.

“Now what?” von Ahlenfeld asked.

Hampson shrugged. “Orders from regiment. Seems First Battalion is mostly held up south and west of the Essequibo. They don’t know when they’ll be able to cross in full force and attack toward Georgetown. Hence—”

“Hence we don’t have an event that will more likely than not pin Chavez to his palace?”

“Correct, sir.”

Lava shook his head with disgust, then sighed. “These things happen. Got to take ’em philosophically.” He considered for a moment, then added, “Backbrief rehearsals, repetition twenty-nine, main tent, fourteen hundred hours.”

Hampson nodded, sharply. “I’ll see to it, sir.”

The Drunken Bastard,

Eighty Miles Northwest of Aruba, Caribbean Sea

Only red light lit the Bastard’s interior. Outside, all was darkness barring only the thinnest sliver of the moon. The weather was calm enough, with just enough wave to the sea to give the patrol boat a gentle rocking motion.

Chin was leaning over his radar operator’s shoulder, watching the screen intently, as was the radar man.

“Are you certain it’s them?” the captain asked.

The operator shook his head, tapping lightly on a blip on the screen with one finger. “No way to be certain, Skipper. But they match the distance the Cubans were likely to have been able to travel. Their course is almost right, though why they’re heading for Aruba rather than Maracaibo, I can’t guess at.”

“What’s their range?”

“Twelve miles, sir. We can be on their asses in fifteen minutes.”

Chin called for his executive officer. “All hands,” he said, “assume battle stations quietly. Loosen up the camouflage up front, over the 40mm, and in the rear, covering the Oerlikon, but don’t jettison it.”

“Sir?”

“We’re going to intercept and pass by them close enough to positively identify them as the Cuban minesweepers. If they are, we pass them a few miles, then cut the camo loose and come up from behind. If not, we secure everything again and resume hunting. But—and this is important, XO—we can only blow our cover once, so it better be when we’re damned sure of our target.”

“Roger, skipper. I’ll see to it.”

“Oh, and XO?”

“Sir?”

“See to it that the 40mm loads mixed HE and armor piercing. There’s a citadel in the Sonya Class that’s proof against explosion. Let’s see how it keeps out the water when we turn it into a colander.”