Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (59 page)

Already one of the gunships, covered by the other circling overhead, was landing to continue the pickup. It would follow the coast, to continue its original mission, while the dustoff risked its wings heading directly back to the ship at a speed that, strictly speaking, was not good for the plane.

About halfway back, with the coast visible in the distance, Buckwheat's body began to thrash uncontrollably. It went limp again as Rattus began applying CPR, though this was difficult in the closed and awkward confines of the plane. When Hampson finally gave up, and it was the radical drop in body temperature more than any other factor that made him decide it was hopeless, he said, with tears in his eyes, "We're all glad your multi-great granddaddy got dragged onto that boat, too, Master Sergeant Fulton."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Mama, just killed a man.

Put my gun against his head

Pulled my trigger; now he's dead

-Freddy Mercury, Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody"

D-Day, Yemen

Lada knew the way. More than that, she knew the best way to get from the wall into the house without being seen. That way led a short distance along the wall, to a set of concrete stairs leading to the ground. At the base of the stairs all was shadow, under the parapet. This they followed, Musin lugging one leaking corpse and Kravchenko the other, to a noisy heat pump under the wall. There they dropped the bodies. Galkin and Litvinov, holding the dead guards' rifles, were left behind, manning the wall to cover the eventual retreat.

Covered by the heat pump's thrumm, Lada explained the next step. "There, through that door," she pointed across a shadowy way, "is a long corridor that runs all the way through the house. Halfway there's a side branch to the right-"

"What's down there?" Konstantin asked.

"Servants' quarters," she said, then amended that to, "Slaves quarters. Storage. And some machinery. Two flights of stairs and an elevator. That's on the side branch. I don't have a key to the elevator."

"No guards?"

"Only if they're fucking one of the slaves. Yusuf is generous with his property that way."

"Right," Konstantin said. He considered, Do we go slow up the corridor, listening at each door? No. what would be the point? If we don't hear anything it doesn't prove shit. And if we do, what do we do? Go in and kill the room's occupants? Too noisy. "Go on," he told Lada.

"The far staircase," she continued, "goes all the way to the third floor. The nearer only goes directly to the second. We have to go to the far one, go up to the third floor, then come back and use the branch to get to the door to Yusuf's private quarters."

"Guard on the door?" Konstantin asked.

"Always. Two of them, sometimes three. And the door will be locked."

"How thick is this door?"

"Stout," she answered. "Very stout. Unless you use explosives the occupants of the room are unlikely to hear what's going on in the corridor."

"Occupants?" the major asked, emphasizing the plural.

She nodded her head. "Almost always. Sometimes one girl, sometimes two. Sometimes a little boy. Sometimes one of each. Sometimes all three. Or more."

"How did you-" He stopped his question. For the purposes of the mission it hardly mattered.

Lada shook her head and answered anyway. "I volunteered. For the Service if not for the mission. Through an intermediary, the old man arranged to have me sold directly to Yusuf." She shrugged. "I'm really twenty-four but I look fourteen. I claimed here to be sixteen. Yusuf figured I was a mature looking thirteen and enjoyed fucking me all the more for that."

"And once you volunteer for the service," Konstantin added, "you don't get a lot of choice about the missions. Where ‘not a lot of' is defined as ‘none.'"

"No, ‘not a lot,'" she agreed. "Though I never imagined myself becoming a whore when I volunteered."

"You're not a whore," the major said. "You're just a soldier who uses a different set of weapons. Hang on to that; because it's true."

"Thank you, Major," she answered. She didn't sound convinced. "Questions?"

"How do we get through the door to Yusuf's quarters if it's so stout? I mean, we have explosives but . . . "

"There's a pad with a number control and a facial scan device." She smiled for the first time this night. "It knows me and I know the code."

"Works. Let's go."

People who had no business being there would have dashed across the open space between the wall and the ground floor door. People who belonged would have walked. Konstantin and his people walked. For added disguise, he pushed Lada's shoulder as she neared the door, causing her to stumble. It looked just as if she were going to be the main attraction at a gang bang somewhere inside.

So well did her discipline hold that she didn't even whisper, "Asshole!"

She thought it, though, even as she knew the major had done it only for effect.

The door squeaked, causing all of them but Lada to wince. "Relax," she said. "When something becomes routine, and I assure you that squeaking doors around here are the essence of normal and routine, people simply don't hear them anymore."

Konstantin knew that was true. Even so, he prodded everyone inside as quickly as possible without risking someone's tripping.

"It stinks down here," Musin observed, wrinkling his Tatar nose. "Stinks" was something of an understatement. "Reeks" would have been an understatement.

"What do you expect?" Lada answered. "Sixty-seven slaves, give or take, two toilets-Turkish type, and two showers that sometimes work and sometimes don't. And no laundry facilities except a utility sink. And the master wouldn't waste air conditioning on the slaves. His favorite camel? Sure. The slaves? Never. Of course it stinks."

"And you've put up with this for . . .?"

"About four months," she answered.

Musin nodded and said, respectfully, "Honey, you do serve the motherland."

Lada smiled for the second time that night.

The woman walked on bare feet. The footgear for the men were boots, but soft ones more akin to very high topped sneakers. They made hardly a sound in the long corridor. Neither did they hear anything coming from the rooms, barring only some snoring.

Konstantin shot a questioning look at Lada.

"It's late," she replied, bitterly adding, "They're probably all done with their little boy bunging and little girl raping. Now hurry."

The stench of the slaves' quarters ended as soon as they'd shut the door behind them. Konstantin formed them in a Y, with Musin and Kravchenko up front, himself behind them, and Lada behind himself.

"You are the only way of getting into Yusuf's quarters quietly," he explained. "That won't matter if we run into somebody on the way, in a place we're not supposed to be, since massive shooting with unsuppressed firearms and quiet are pretty much mutually exclusive. But you may also be the only way of getting into the bastard's quarters at all, if the door is as stout as you've described."

"Fine," she agreed. "Two full flights up then. Pay no attention to the last flight; it only goes to the roof."

"Are there guards on the roof?" the major asked.

Lada chewed her lower lip for a moment, then answered, hesitatingly, "Routinely? I don't know. I've never been permitted up there. Helicopters sometimes land up there. I've seen guards go up there then."

The woman went first through the door that led from the staircase to the third floor. She walked down the corridor, with considerably more confidence than she, in fact, felt. Indeed, her heart was thumping against her chest enough for her to worry that the guards she knew she would meet when she entered the branch corridor would hear it or, at least, sense it.

For a second, she had to stop and force herself to calm. Konstantin's team, following close, barely stopped in time to prevent ramming her from behind.

A few deep breaths, a little act of will, and she nodded to herself, ready to proceed. A few feet ahead of the men, she turned the corner and uttered greetings to the guard, "Rashid, Abdul Rahman, sabah inuur." Then she stood in front of a small numeric pad and began to enter a code.

"The master sent for me," she told them, by way of explanation.

Konstantin heard the greetings to two men. Fine, he thought. Just right. He tapped Musin for attention, temporarily stuck his false beard back into place, then signaled for the Tatar to go first. In unconscious imitation of the girl, Musin forced himself to utter calm, then proceeded to walk down the corridor as if something on the very far end was his business, and nothing too close to where it branched off. His submachine gun was held with easy, practiced grace in both hands. True, if the inner guard looked they might well see that it was an unusual model. And the suppressor would surely seem strange, if they noticed the gun at all.

"As-salama alaykum." Tim said, waving casually with one hand as he crossed the open area. The other hand remained curled around the pistol grip. The guards waved back, giving in return, "Wa alaykum essalamu."

So the trick is don't give them a lot of time to think about it. As soon as he reached the far edge of the branch corridor, and thus could be reasonably sure Krav and the major were waiting to pounce, Tim spun counterclockwise, firing instantly at the guard farthest to the left as he faced the door. Simultaneously, or near enough as made no difference, Kravchenko presented and fired at the guard to the right of the door as he faced.

Lada never heard a shot, so she never flinched from the keypad. While the bodies flopped to the floor, she hit "enter" and then stepped in front of a facial scanner.

"NVGs, on," Major Konstantin ordered.

At that moment, they heard a volley of fire coming from the yard, in the direction in which they'd left Galkin and Litvinov on guard. There came, too, the sound of a large and heavy door bolt being automatically thrown open.

"Ignore it," the major ordered. "Through the door. NOW!"

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of

All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into

politics and finance, and the place is now used as a

lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed

by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate

responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction.

-Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

D-Day, MV
Merciful

Unlike Stauer, whose most useful post was on the ship, Sergeant Major Joshua didn't really have a most useful post. Stauer didn't need him for what he was doing. The operations staff was perfectly competent for their jobs and would resent his butting in. Intel? Shit, all I know about intel is what I get asked to find out and how to read a summary. And log? Forget log; Gordon's people have that well in hand.

He'd stood at a distance, ready to pounce if necessary, for the boat load outward. He'd stood at a much farther distance for the flight deck operations, since I haven't clue one about that. He'd wandered the troop billets, mostly out of force of habit, to see if anyone was fucking off.

He'd completely skipped the mess since, other than Sergeant Island and a couple of Chinese women, the cooks were all off humping mortars with the grunts.

Admin? Hmmm . . . if we decide to issue our own Combat Infantry Badges, note to self: CIBs for the cooks with the mortars and all the jarheads. But that's for later.

Ultimately, the sergeant major had ended up down by sick bay. Fortuitously, he'd ended up there just before the order came down: "Incoming wounded."

He really hadn't a clue about the language that sounded vaguely Spanish, or the several slaps he heard after passing through the evac station.

"You stupid cunt, Tatiana," Elena said, delivering a series of slaps. "Not only is that the sergeant major, the next thing to God, but he's old enough to be your grandfather."

"If my grandfather had been half that much of a man," Tatiana answered, ducking the slaps as best she could, "I'd have fucked him, too."

"Bah!" Elena exclaimed in disgust. "You are a hopeless, useless, silly little tramp. You should have been left behind . . . "

"Incoming wounded," came over the loudspeakers, interrupting the senior Romanian girl's tirade. "Three stretcher cases inbound on a CH-801. Two minutes out."

"I'll beat you later, bitch," Elena said. "For now, get on a corner of a stretcher."

***

Sergeant Major Joshua was impressed. Whatever indiscipline had been behind the slapping and shouting he'd heard, it seemed to have disappeared as soon as the call came. He followed three amazingly young female stretcher teams out the hatch and onto the flight deck in time to see a light airplane touch down about midway from bow to superstructure. Under positive control from one of the flight deck crew, wearing a yellow jersey, the plane stopped. More yellow jerseyed men came out of the woodwork and turned it around by main strength. From somewhere a crewman in purple ran out a fuel line and began pumping fuel in.

All in all, considering it's nighttime, I'm kinda impressed, the sergeant major thought. Not that I'd ever let that on to a bunch of squids.

The Romanian girls and their gurneys, wheeled stretchers, in other words, lined up neatly beside and behind the plane, one after the other. One of them, Joshua didn't know her name, seemed to be in charge and, so far as he or anyone could tell, really was in charge.

The first man out was the one who'd come in sitting beside the pilot. He stepped off, took two steps, and promptly collapsed to the deck. One of the girls bent to the collapsed man. It was really too dark to make out her face. Which is a pity, the sergeant major thought, as anytime somebody five-two and female tries to do a fireman's carry on someone six foot and male, she ought be commended for at least trying. He went over to help, but did no more than required to get the man across the little female's shoulders. Be a shame to take the glory away from her, Joshua thought.

They also had trouble with two of the wounded, the two who'd had to sit up in the plane for lack of space. The other, the one lying down on the back ramp, took eight of them get onto the stretcher, which they'd collapsed, and still eight to lift the collapsed stretcher straight up. These were all big men and the girls were . . .