droppable, depending on the equipment carried, in four to six of the light airplanes.
The five men remaining to Biggus Dickus Thornton's team were two too many to fit in Namu, the Killer Sub. That's how Mary-Sue had ended up with the 'Army.' Biggus Dickus himself, redundant and not remotely happy about it, filled his time with drilling the shit out of Simmons, who would drive Namu, and, Morales and Eeyore, who were going to get to risk their lives to some Russian rebreathers.
The mechanized and amphibious infantry companies, under Reilly and Cazz, had stayed fairly solid, as had the air and naval components. They were both too big, however, to get everyone around a sand table all at the same time. Thus, they rehearsed only with platoon leaders and sergeant, and section leaders and their assistants. Those people had scheduled time when they'd be able to bring up their subordinates and go through the entire thing, at least on a small scale.
D-18, St. Helena, South Atlantic
With GPS and radio, it was the easiest thing imaginable for two ships to meet in an otherwise unoccupied stretch of ocean. It was not, however, all that easy for two ships to transfer cargo in an open stretch of ocean. This depended on all kinds of powerful and unpredictable factors. Oh, certainly, warships of most of the major naval powers could conduct UNREP, UNderway REPlenishment, in some fairly heavy seas. They were built for it, had crews trained for it, had a lot of experience in it, and were, broadly speaking, equipped for such transfers.
The Merciful was not a naval vessel; it was a merchant ship. Moreover, while some modifications, even some substantial modifications, had been made, they'd not been made with the intent of transferring cargo on the high seas. Neither had there been any substantial changes to the ship Victor used to bring the two MI-28's donated by his father-in-law, nor the flight and ground crews.
In all, then, the operation was pretty damned early nineteenth century. This is to say, the two ships needed a sheltering bay, both to operate the gantry and to run the small boats that would bring over Victor, the flight crews, and the ground crews.
'Which is, you know, oddly appropriate,' Reilly said to Lana, as they watched the transfer while sharing a drink on the deck forward of the superstructure. George, Fitz, and the platoon and section leaders were there, too. Some, like Reilly and Lana, had their backs to the superstructure. Others, like the first sergeant and exec, formed a circle farther out. A couple of bottles of scotch were passed around the circle. Reilly considered war to be largely a social activity, thus social events, too, had their place in preparing for it.
'Why's that?' she asked. She sat straight, head resting against white painted steel. She was near but not next to him. Really, she ached to slide over and lay her head on his shoulder. With all the others present, though, that just wouldn't do. And it wasn't that anybody didn't know, at this point, that they were sleeping together. It was that the others could comfort themselves with the illusion that it was just recreational sex, and that Reilly wouldn't care for her any more than he did for them, and wouldn't disadvantage them on her behalf. That required that they still be businesslike in public, with no obvious affection between them.
You've never heard of this place?'
'Don't think so, no. Should I have?'
Reilly smiled. 'Maybe.' He lifted his right index finger and twirled it around at the surrounding cliffs. 'This bay is called, ‘Prosperous Bay.'' I'm pretty sure nobody knows why. God knows, I don't.'
'And so?'
He stuck the previously twirling finger in one ear, scratching more for effect than to relieve an itch. 'Well, if you were foolish enough to climb those cliffs-and, yes, by the way, it's been done-and walk west-southwest for about, oh, maybe four kilometers as the crow flies, you will come to a house. Its name is Longwood.'
The expression on Lana's face changed. She had heard that name before . . . but wasn't sure exactly where or what it meant.
Reilly wasn't about to give her any easy hints yet. 'Maybe two and half kilometers past that, edging more southwest than west-southwest, is a grave. There's no one in the grave, but there used to be. Some Corsican guy . . . you probably never heard of him . . . '
'Napoleon?' Lana asked, wonder in her voice. 'Of course! Napoleon! Oh, we have to visit,' she said. 'We have to. Please? Pretty please?'
'Wish we could, Lana, but we can't. No time. See, they've almost finished swinging over the last container.'
She looked at the gantry. Mrs. Liu, the Chinese adept on all things crane and gantry related, was easing the third of three containers over the Merciful's side; a small crew waited on the deck to help guide it into position.
'Maybe on the return trip,' George suggested. 'Assuming, of course . . . ' Assuming there even is a return trip.
'Maybe, Top,' Reilly said. 'I'll bring it up to Stauer. ‘Assuming, of course'.'
D-15, MV
Overhead and at a considerably distance, two unmanned aerial vehicles, which needed virtually nothing special to land on or take off from, circled at a distance of twenty-five to thirty miles, ensuring there were no ships that close to the Merciful.
Among the other items brought from Base Alpha had been several tons of dirt in sandbags and a fair number of logs. The logs were laid out in two layers, crosswise, on top of five pairs of containers, thoroughly lashed and chained together. Above the logs were sandbags, layered five deep. Atop the sandbags were erected five Russian 120mm mortars, all set at very high elevation and aimed, generally, over the starboard side. The mortars, themselves, were along the port side. Aiming stakes, painted green but with a red and white strip bared once some tape put on during the painting had been peeled off, were laid out to the left front of each mortar, at twenty-five meter intervals. Getting the stakes stuck in had been a major pain in the ass, involving the use of both more sandbags and considerable finesse.
Next to the mortars were three high-explosive shells each, plus a couple each of illuminating and smoke. Around each were five crewman, three crews of Marines and two of Soldiers. A joint fire direction center sat behind them.
The mortars and FDC took up a good chunk of the main deck, which would become the flight deck. Behind that, the forward observers stood on the bridge, connected to the mortar FDC by land lines and field phones.
Between the superstructure and the mortars, Mrs. Liu busied herself with dropping half a dozen sealed containers over the side. The containers would sink on their own, eventually. The mortars hoped to hurry the process.
'Buuut,' Peters said to his jarhead opposite number, 'the odds of our hitting anything, even by direct lay, from a corkscrewing ship, are, at best, shitty.'
'Yeah,' agreed the Marine, Sergeant Benevides, a stubby, stocky Ecuadorian immigrant to the United States. 'But it'll be fun.'
As soon as Mrs. Liu dumped the last of the target containers over the side, Kosciusko ordered a long, wide and slow, one hundred and eighty degree turn. As soon as he was about two miles opposite the line of bobbing containers, he ordered the ship to come to a full stop in place and then turned to the senior of the forward observers, saying, 'You may fire when ready.'
Flukes, much like shit, sometimes just happen. After missing by as much as five hundred meters, the eleventh round managed to actually hit one of the container targets. Better, it passed through the side above the water, through the side below the water, and then detonated a very short distance into the water. The container was blown skyward, spinning end over end before reaching apogee and beginning to plummet back to the sea.
'You couldn't do that again if your life depended on it,' Peters said.
