Without Warning Part 43

PACOM HQ, Hawaii

Admiral Ritchie watched the four fifty-two-inch HDTV screens of the ad hoc war room of the re-formed Joint Chiefs of Staff at Fort Shafter. Center left displayed a real-time Keyhole satellite feed of the running battle at Guan-tanamo Bay. Center right displayed a live feed from some reporter on the scene, an embed from the government-run TVes network. He was covering Venezuelan marines as they tried to fight their way toward base headquarters and at that moment was speaking to camera, framed by the burning light of an amtrac. The satellite feed was choppy and slow, breaking into bursts of static, but Ritchie could see that he looked terrified. He was also providing a constant stream of very useful information that a small team of marines were feeding right back to their colleagues at Gitmo.

On the last screen, on the far left screen, President Hugo Chavez pumped his fist in the air as he shouted cadenced beats of Spanish at the microphone. A running subt.i.tle of translation tried to keep up, but Ritchie had long since given up on reading it. Most of his attention was focused on a real-time videoconference with the surviving senior officer of the Nimitz Battle Group, Captain Don Taylor. Lights flickered behind the master and commander of the wounded USS Nimitz as he gave his report to General Tommy Franks.

"I've got two cats up, and two-thirds of my air wing operational. However, we're still at half power and running on one screw. Additionally, the USS Princeton is trailing behind. We may have to scuttle her if we can't get flooding stabilized," Captain Taylor said.

"Captain"-Admiral Ritchie leaned forward-"you'll transition into the Atlantic later this afternoon your time, correct?"

"Yes, sir. Barring any trouble at Gibraltar. The Royal Navy tell me they still have things under control, but Morocco is a little too close for comfort. I estimate that we can be in Cuban waters, earliest, ten days," Taylor said.

General Franks shook his head. "This will be over long before then, Don."

Captain Taylor nodded. The thin man didn't appear to have an ounce of body fat on him. Most in the navy were, well, a little heavier than they ought to be, himself included.

"Don, do you think you can spare any elements of your battle group?" Ritchie asked. "Who can sprint away and arrive sooner?"

Captain Taylor rubbed the bridge of his nose, probably trying to clear his head or suppress a burning migraine, perhaps both. "Sir, if you think it will do some good, I'm sure the battle group is willing to make the sacrifice. However, I do not think we can suffer the loss of our remaining combat power without endangering either the Nimitz or the Princeton. Furthermore, I do have a convoy of my own refugee vessels trailing my battle group. Some of them have been vetted by our marine and navy boarding teams, some have not. There is no way to know whether or not one of them is a jack-in-the-box waiting to pop on us."

Franks looked at Ritchie. "Do you think it's worth it?"

Ritchie looked up at the paper map of the Atlantic area of operations. They were already falling back to paper, acetate, and colored markers to indicate their force dispositions. It wasn't for lack of computing power. It was lack of secure communications and data sources that forced the fallback to more primitive methods.

"No, sir," Ritchie concluded. "Nimitz should continue as planned. We'll have to try something else."

Franks turned to the commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, who had sat silently during the exchange. "Francis, what is your take on Guantanamo?"

General Murphy snorted. "They're well and truly f.u.c.ked, sir. Civilians mixed into it and us with our c.o.c.ks in our hands ... Musso is a smart man. He'll see it pretty clear as well."

"You mean surrender," Franks said. "Right?"

Murphy couldn't bring himself to say it. He folded his arms and nodded.

"Sir." An army specialist approached the officers. "Gitmo on the line."

Guantanamo Bay naval base, Cuba

Susan Pileggi exhaled, and with the hot, stale breath went some of the tension cramping her arms and shoulders. Not that she relaxed. That would have been impossible. But as she saw the end coming, with no chance of escape or redemption, she accepted it for the first time, and some of the fear and the strain of the last few weeks ebbed away.

She waited in the gun pit. The muzzle of her M1, retrieved from the body of the marine she'd lent it to a few hours ago, tracked the small group of Venezuelan paratroopers as they cautiously rounded the huge mound of burning rubble a hundred yards away. It had been a chemical storehouse; for what she had no idea. But the stench was vile enough to blot out the smells of the base as it died around her. Burned meat, corpses crawling with carpets of black flies, the unwashed bodies of the men around her, napalm smoke and festering wounds-the evil stink of the warehouse blotted them all out.

"Sergeant Carlyon. A head count."

"Twenty-three friendly, ma'am. As of five minutes ago."

Pileggi nodded. They were spread out over a hundred-yard front, some f.u.c.king the earth in a drainage ditch, others taking cover behind broken machinery or piles of concrete barriers. They held on.

The enemy numbered in the hundreds now, but they still hadn't forced the issue, and in this failure had probably died in greater numbers than was necessary. They could have plowed us under an hour back, she thought. Carlyon popped up and squeezed off a three-round burst, and the rea.s.suring boom of Lundquist's shotgun followed almost immediately. The volume of return fire was heavy, but poorly directed.

She followed the advance of the small party attempting to flank them to the north. Carlyon was aware of them, too.

Gitmo was dying. The little base had done so well to hold off against the sneak attack, but the colonel knew it would be overrun, probably in the next few hours, and her small band of brothers was sure to die with her. She was aware, without turning to look at them, of the men in the firing pit next to her. Lundquist was hunkered down reloading his shotgun next to Jimbo Jamieson, a civilian who'd joined them in the middle of some of the worst fighting, pulling up in a Humvee full of sailors, carrying two boxes of ammo and, most precious of all, spare barrels for a squad automatic weapon. Jamieson was watching the enemy creeping through the dark, too, never taking his eyes off them as they crept closer.

Even while concentrating so fiercely on the flankers, Pileggi remained unnaturally aware of other details.

A patch of red hair peeking out beneath the curve of a helmet. The straight line of a bayonet. A muted cough in the next foxhole, barely audible under the freight-train scream of battle all around.

Their lives had only one meaning now: to delay a catastrophe that was otherwise inevitable. Attackers were pouring onto the headland from three sides, and they were going to take the strip. When they did, more would doubtless fly in, falling upon Guantanamo's defenders and the unarmed refugees with equal ferocity.

G.o.d only knew what sort of a bloodswarm that'd unleash, and Pileggi wasn't sorry to miss it. She'd already seen civilian boats targeted out on the bay, for no apparent reason other than that they made easier, more pleasing prey than armed marines and soldiers.

The atrocities, witnessed by everyone she'd managed to gather for the airfield defense, had doubtlessly hardened their resolve. Dozens of dead paratroopers lay on the tarmac as testimony to that.

She laid the cold iron sight of her weapon on the center of the group of men, who were now coming at them with much greater confidence and speed. They hadn't seen Carlyon's ambush yet. Good. Half a second telescoped out toward infinity. Susan Pileggi had plenty of time to examine the poor standard of their uniforms and the torn rubber shoes of the man in the lead. It spoke of a badly planned, hastily thrown-together attack. A three-legged dog suddenly bounded in front of the advancing Venezuelans, spinning in circles, howling as though possessed by a demon. It was probably mad.

"Fire."

The dog exploded into a ball of hair and gore as the SAW opened up a short distance away. She heard cursing and saw Lundquist adjust his aim up a little. The attackers dispersed like startled rabbits, those who could anyway. An invisible wave swept over at least half of them, cutting some down, throwing others into the air, completely disa.s.sembling one from the groin up.

"Pour it on, boys!" Carlyon yelled over the uproar.

The dense crump of exploding hand grenades momentarily smothered the rattle and snarl of gunfire. The battle for Gitmo, a vast conflagration, fell away from the minds of the men around her. The whole world was now contained on the small stage of this burning, rubble-strewn airstrip. They started to take return fire from the enemy dug in all around them, and someone screamed as a round took him in the face. Pileggi squeezed off discrete shots from the rifle, picking her targets, waiting until she had a clear line, and sending two or three rounds downrange. The bullets. .h.i.t hard, punching out chunks of meat and bone when they struck. Pileggi dropped three men in just a few seconds before having to duck behind the shattered masonry she'd built up in front of her firing position.

Lundquist cried out and flew backward. Gouts of dark red blood looped gracefully into the sky. The ground shook and heaved violently as mortar bombs began dropping on their position. None of them had any overhead protection.

"They're coming!" screamed Carlyon. "Get ready!" He emptied a whole magazine to give himself and his men some cover. The Venezuelans had gathered themselves at last and were charging at them en ma.s.se, running into their own mortar barrage with bayonets drawn. She was almost certain she heard a bugle faintly beneath the din of battle.

Pileggi changed magazines, rapidly, mechanically, firing again as quickly as possible. Four of the attackers fell in front of their pit. Two more leaped, sailed over the edge, and threw themselves onto Jimbo Jamieson, who swung wildly at the closest with a lump of wood. It connected with a hollow thunk that Pileggi heard quite clearly despite all the noise. She swung her own gun like a club, too, driving the heavy stock into the face of the other attacker. The man's nose collapsed with sickening ease as blood erupted from torn flesh.

Carlyon fell on her, driving her down.

She felt his dead weight, the terrible slackness of his limbs, and knew he was gone.

She tried to lift him clear so she could get back to her firing position, but he was too heavy. It was worse, much worse than having a drunken lover fall asleep on top of you. It was crushing, painful.

And then he was gone, the weight suddenly flying away, and she was looking up into the muzzle of a gun, wondering what it was, and realizing just before it flashed white.

"Pearl is up, sir," a marine private said, holding up a phone. "A lot of static."

Musso thanked the private and took the phone. "General Musso."

"Franks, this line secure?"

Musso shook his head. "I sorely doubt it. It's probably trailing across one of the sat news channels as we speak, sir."

He looked around the command bunker. Some of the screens were running live feeds from Venezuelan TV. The static on the phone connection grew in intensity. Musso shook the phone, even though he knew it didn't do any good. It made him feel better. "Say again, sir?"

"As a matter of fact, TVes is running us live, Musso. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. What is your status?"

Musso rubbed his forehead and thought for a moment. If they were live on TVes, this conversation was going out to the world. He might be able to use this to his advantage. He couched his next words very carefully, trying to remember the lessons he was taught at Charm School when he received his first star.

"Enemy forces are aggressively targeting civilian refugees at my position, sir," Musso said. "I've got multiple civilian vessels burning in the bay or sinking. We lost a C-5 Galaxy as it tried it take off. My air liaison officer tells me more than two hundred U.S. civilians were on board. We're probably looking at upward of a thousand civilian casualties minimum, perhaps more. My own casualties are climbing as well."

"Any attempt to offer a cease-fire?" Franks asked. "To mitigate civilian casualties."

Mus...o...b..inked. Every fiber in his soul screamed at him to fight it out, resist to the last, make the enemy pay, but the civilians were his priority. They were his boss, his reason for being in the first place.

"By us or by them, sir?"

"Either."

"Negative, sir. I've not even had a chance to think about it," Musso said.

"The civilians need to be your top priority, General Musso," said Franks. "I'm ordering you to attempt to contact the enemy commander to seek terms of a cease-fire. We will try to do the same on our end. In the meantime, until you receive such a cease-fire, should it be forthcoming, resist with maximum effort. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Musso said. What other choice did he have if the Venezuelans weren't willing to accept terms? Even though he'd moved underground, he could still hear a savage battle chewing up the base above him.

"Also know this." Frank paused for a moment. "If you go under, we will extract retribution from the Venezuelans at a time and place of our own choosing. We will make this night very expensive for them. Do you understand, General Musso?"

I'm not the only one playing to the media, then, Musso realized. "I do, sir."

"Carry on. Franks out."

Musso hung up the phone and found Lieutenant McCurry in front of him.

"We've lost the airfield, General," he said.

That meant Pileggi was probably dead. He nodded and hurried over to a display carrying security-cam vision of the area. He could see that the tracer fire at the field across the bay had flickered out. The burning hulks of civilian and military aircraft littered the runway.

On a separate display, the armored column was stalled out, hara.s.sed by ambushes set up by Gunny Sergeant Price's security teams. Musso felt like he was falling into a deep well, an abyss of despair that seemed to know no end. From the depths of this descent, he heard himself speak the words. They sounded faint and weak to his ears.

"We need to find a white sheet."

MV Aussie Rules, southern ocean

Mr. Lee heaved on the wheel and took the Aussie Rules up the face of the giant wave at about forty degrees. Jules held on, wedging herself into a corner of the bridge, unaware that she was clenching her teeth, willing the superyacht over the moving ridge of black, storm-tossed seawater. A force-eleven storm raged outside, reducing visibility to near zero as it hurled sheets of rain and ocean spume at the thick gla.s.s windows of the wheelhouse. Lightning strobed, followed almost immediately by the crash of thunder as Lee took them over the crest and down the other side, dropping so precipitously that Julianne had to hold on to the grab bars even more tightly to avoid having her head smashed into the ceiling.

"Nice work, Mr. Lee," she called out over the uproar.

The old Chinese helmsman did not reply, remaining steadfastly focused on trying to feel the heaving ocean beneath their keel.

"Radar, how we doing? Have we lost those cheeky f.u.c.kers yet?" she called out. The Rhino, who had strapped himself into his chair, gave her a ready thumbs-up and raised his voice over the shrieking of the storm, speaking around the newly lit cigar that was fugging up the air in the bridge.

"Hard to tell, Skipper, but I'd bet two inches of horn that they're losing contact. Slow but sure. Last time I had a good fix it looked like they're having real f.u.c.king problems with the storm. We had about eighteen nautical miles on them."

"But they weren't breaking off pursuit?"

"Afraid not, no, ma'am. Oh, and Boss Jules, is this a good time to ask about the location of the humidor? It's just that I couldn't find it in the library like you said and ..."

Julianne silenced him with a warning look.

"Alrighty then," he hurried on. "We'll sort that out later."

The ship suddenly tilted precipitously, as a rogue wave took them abeam and tried to roll the vessel over. Lee cursed in Mandarin and spun the wheel again, calling for more power. Jules would not admit it, but her heart felt as though it might burst out of her rib cage. She took a deep, difficult breath and announced as calmly as she could, "I'm going to go check on everyone down below. Shout out if there's any change at all, for better or worse. Good work, everyone. We'll outrun these blaggers yet."

Lee didn't reply or even turn his head, so fiercely was he concentrating. He stood on the b.a.l.l.s of his bare feet, knees flexing to meet the rise and fall of the deck, eyes seemingly unfocused, simply lost somewhere out in the dark and violence of the storm. The Rhino, by way of contrast, looked quietly pleased with himself. The bridge crew, Dietmar the navigator and Lars, the Norwegian backpacker turned first mate of the Aussie Rules, both grinned like stupid dogs given a pat on the head. They were among the younger members of her pickup crew, and even though they'd been shot at half a dozen times so far, they still seemed to think it was all just insane fun, a great story they couldn't wait to tell all the Helgas and Anyas at their next travelers' lodge. n.o.body but Lee and herself seemed to be much bothered by any of it. Jules wondered how they'd be feeling if things turned b.l.o.o.d.y and personal in a few days, should the Peruvians get close enough to board. The Rules enjoyed a speed advantage of a few knots and had put some good distance between them, but they were hanging on doggedly.

She clawed her way out of the corner into which she'd been jammed and tried to roll out of the bridge and into the companionway, all in sync with the movements of the yacht. With seas running at ten meters, whipped up into a frenzy by sixty-knot winds, her progress was slow and extremely hazardous. She found the conventional stairwells and wide corridors of the Aussie Rules more difficult in extreme weather than the cramped conditions she'd grown used to on Pete's little yacht. It was so much bigger that the chances of being thrown clear across a room or hallway by a particularly bad wave were significantly higher. As she proceeded toward the media center, she climbed up a steep, pitching rise, levitated into the air, and crashed back onto a plunging deck as Lee took them through another boiling ravine on the surface of the southern ocean.

Finally reaching her destination after a trek that took five minutes instead of the usual one, Jules launched herself through the door into the plush confines of the media room with a real sense of deliverance. She found Shah, Fifi, and Miguel there, all of them wedged deeply into the soft blue armchairs, talking among themselves, if somewhat volubly over the sound of the storm. The big screen was lit up with a feed from the Rhino's radar, showing a highly degraded image on which one sole vessel occasionally popped out, the giant trawler Viarsa 1, a toothfish poacher turned pirate raider.

"How's it goin'?" asked Fifi.

"Spiffing," said Jules. "They're holding on. I was really hoping we'd lose them in the storm, but Rhino says not. They're used to these conditions and worse. We're not."

"No," Fifi agreed. They really weren't. On the Diamantina they'd always run from big storms, or harbored up or anch.o.r.ed on the lee side of an island wherever they could, and ridden them out. Only once or twice had Pete been caught out in open seas when a big blow started up, and that had been nothing like this.

"Miguel. How're your guys hanging on?" she asked. "They wouldn't see a lot of ocean storms back in the village, I'd imagine."

The vaquero, whose face was a study in granite stoicism, shook his head almost imperceptibly.

"Very sick, Miss Julianne. The children are frightened. They are all frightened, but only the children admit so."

Jules saw the Viarsa appear as an indistinct, faraway blip on the big screen. It must have climbed a crest at the same time as the Rules, and been painted by the radar. She wondered if there was somebody on the other vessel, hunched over a screen, hanging on for a fleeting glimpse of them through the fury of the storm. There had to be. Otherwise they'd have lost them already.

"As soon as the weather calms down enough to get them out of their bunks I want you and Shah to start training everyone again. And the Yanks, too. Just the basics, as we discussed. Aiming, firing, reloading, clearing jams. Over and over and over with every minute we have. These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds may never get within a bee's w.i.l.l.y of us, but if they do, I want to kick them so hard that their goolies pop out of their eye sockets."

"They will be fine, Miss Julianne," Shah a.s.sured her. "They did very well in their lessons before the storm. They understand what is required. And what will happen to them if the pirates get control. They will fight. All of them. Even the children if you let them."