a clue what they were about. None of the newly captured tanks, given that their crews were nothing but a driver and a black or black-faced soldier standing in the turret to look intimidating, were truly combat capable.
But, Reilly thought, when we show up at a town with better than two dozen combat vehicles I don't think we'll actually have to fight.
Hope not, anyway. It would not only be bad for the town, we'd certainly end up killing a number of the people we intend to capture.
Reilly checked his map against his GPS. Then he glanced half to the right and said over the radio, 'Scouts and antitank: That's the tank lager over there to your right. Go shoot it up . . . and have fun storming the castle, boys.'
D-Day, East of Buro, Ophir
It had been said that a stern chase was a long chase. This chase must have seemed very long indeed to the pirates pursuing Eeyore and Morales.
Not long enough, though, thought Antoniewicz. Not nearly long enough.
Antoniewicz was crouched down almost under the ship's wheel. This didn't give a lot of cover, though it gave some. He steered by feel, mostly, supplemented with occasional risky glimpses forward.
Morales was crouched as well, though he was in the stern, holding one of the team's utterly inadequate underwater assault rifles. He was bleeding, the result of a side hit, not terribly serious in itself, from one of the bullets the pirates had been throwing their way infrequently and at random. The hit hurt, but, thought Morales, probably not as much as a full day at BUDS.
The pirates surprised the team, at first, by not firing continuously until the boat was a sinking colander. It took a while for Eeyore to guess the reason. Fuckers don't want to damage the boat too badly. They're probably only shooting at all to try to entice us to surrender-like that's gonna happen-followed by a few deft throat slices and then over the side with our corpses. I'll turn and ram the bastards first. Try to, anyway. I'll be damned if . . .
Eeyore's thought was cut off by a . . . well . . . if not an 'Earth-shattering kaboom,' at least a sea-shaking one.
'What the fuck?' he asked, risking a look up and a glance backwards.
What he saw when he looked to the stern was the boat that had been pursuing, on its side, taking in water, while pieces of the hull-crew, too, most likely-sailed up and up.
Morales started to laugh, the laughter bordering on hysteria. Eventually, he managed to get out, 'I guess we mined that one, too, Eeyore.'
Antoniewicz scratched his head, then rocked it side to side for a moment. 'Five second fuses always last three,' he said. 'Maybe, on the other hand, twelve mile limpets always last for seventy-five. Or maybe it was a Friday afternoon limpet. Or-'
'Should we pick 'em up?' Morales interrupted.
Now it was Eeyore's turn to laugh. 'Those bastards? Fuck 'em. The sharks can have 'em.'
D-Day, Bandar Qassim, Ophir
Biggus had made sure Wahab and Fletcher boarded the other armed CH-801, before he got on the last one. By the time that was done, and everyone was airborne and approximately safe, the long night was pretty much over and Rosy-fingered Dawn, the child of Morning, was doing her thing.
She was doing it pretty well, in fact. The harbor was lit up brightly and was amazingly-
'Empty,' Biggus announced. 'The bitch is practically empty. They sortied every small and medium boat they had.'
He used the radio to inform the Merciful just how much trouble he thought it, and everyone, was in.
'What have you got left?' asked the disembodied voice he thought he recognized as belonging to Waggoner.
'Just the machine guns,' Thornton answered.
'Mmmm . . . that's not a lot,' Waggoner observed. 'And if they shipped shoulder-fired SAMs aboard any of the boats, they'll outrange you.'
'Yeah, tell me something I don't know,' Biggus answered.
'No,' Waggoner said, 'you tell me something I don't know, like what's your fuel status?'
The pilot answered that one. 'We've got enough to get back. If you haven't moved too far south.'
'Roger . . . hold a sec.'
Biggus was pretty sure Waggoner was bent over a map, protractor in hand, trying to figure out a way and a place to get all four armed birds onto the so-far-unseen pirate flotilla. Or extract everyone and head south before that flotilla showed up on the Merciful's doorstep. Biggus was pretty sure that with two companies still on the ground, and probably two special operations teams, including the Russkis, none of that fancy shit was likely to work out.
'What's to work out?' he asked of Waggoner. 'I know the map as well as you do. Most we can do is make a single pass and fuck with them a little. Assuming they don't fuck back worse.'
'Mass is nice,' Waggoner answered.
'Mass is nice when it's possible,' Biggus countered. 'Here and now, it ain't. Maybe later today it might be.'
The voice on the other end changed from Waggoner to Stauer. 'Biggus, forget fucking with them. I'd rather know how many they are, and their general layout, than have you bust caps on them to no good end and maybe lose two planes in the bargain. Stay out of potential SAM range. Swing by. Observe and report. Then come home.'
With Stauer there was no arguing, not about operational matters, at least, and at least unless you could pin him between running a mission and his personal feelings.
'Roger, sir,' Thornton answered.
'Won't argue with those orders,' added the pilot.
D-Day, MV
'Options, ops?' Stauer asked of Waggoner.
'We've got a few,' the latter said. 'One is, have the Marine company assault Bandar Cisman, now, before Reilly and A Company can reinforce. Having the Ophiri chief's brother and his family on board might be enough to dissuade the flotilla from attacking.'
Stauer made a quick mental calculation of the cost of that option, both in terms of his Marines and in terms of the likelihood of losing some of the captives he needed to the assault.
'No,' he said. 'Bad option.'
Waggoner shrugged. 'Didn't like that one, anyway. Second choice: Send Chin and The Drunken Bastard north.'
'Death ride? Oooo . . . that's hard.'
'Third choice: Kill the air support we've got going now, retrieve whatever we've got out there, refuel and rearm, convert the dustoff planes back to strikers, and hit them'-his finger traced a section of the eastern coast- 'somewhere about here. But that's going to take a while to prep.'
'Send Chin.'
'Remind him that his crew's families are aboard?' Waggoner asked.
'He won't need the reminder.'
