ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (12 page)

The last item out of the waterproof bag was his map
case. A French military map of the area and a wildlife reference book were
squeezed inside. Expertly forged orders authorising their presence within the
security compound were tucked inside the pages of the book, fastidiously clean
and uncrumpled. A legionnaire may drag
himself
out of
the jungle in rags with six months’ worth of beard, too weak to salute and no
one will think the less of him, but to produce an illegible
Ordres écrits
? Unforgiveable! It was part of what made the legion different.
Romantics continue to seek out the recruiters, and grizzled recruiters continue
to sort out the romantics.

“Fools fight for idéaux, professionals fight for
Orders!”

P.C Wren has a lot to answer for.

The
orders
are everything to the legionnaire, the romantic
ideals, simply nothing.

In the wet and dripping jungle near the ocean the
professionals of another country’s army adopt a veneer of that which defines a
legionnaire for the purposes of subterfuge.

“Remember, any civilians we meet we treat with polite
disdain and any army, navy, air force or marines encountered will be ignored as
if they are a sub species, comprendre?” It would be completely out of character
for a legionnaire to so much as greet a member of any countries military with
any level of civility.
“
Oui, mon Chef!”

He paused for a moment to hold the PNG’s to his eyes,
looking them over and checking the prized
Béret
vert
on their heads was sat correctly
as any true legionnaires would be.

It was not unusual of course for Orientals to be
serving in the Legion, but possibly a whole squad could raise a curious
comment. However there was nothing else for it but to trust in luck and a
little bluff to get onto the site.

Tucking away the PNG’s he nodded approvingly and then
lifted a heavy
bergen
onto his shoulders.

“Bonne.”

Their communications were a problem in a country this
size with only ESA, the military and the gendarmeries having access to anything
above cell phones. Any transmission made could come from a relatively small
number of known sources, so secure encrypted transmissions were out. They would
stand out like a sore thumb. Likewise plain speech, that would also register as
being ‘off’ so no
“Broadsword calling
Danny Boy?”
on the air waves and
microwaves tonight.

Using the cellular system was too easily spiked by its
being simply turned off once the French woke up to the fact they were under
attack.

The solution was pre-arranged text in apparently
accidental transmissions of seemingly innocuous material, the greatly annoying
‘open carrier’, ‘open channel’, or ‘Permanent Send’ momentarily, if you prefer.
Jie’s chosen offering was a classic, of the musical variety, as he informed
Senior Sergeant Yen, the unit’s warrant officer and the senior amongst the
eight troops remaining with the
Dai
that they were ashore without incident and proceeding.

Jie sang softly to himself apparently
absent minded and depressed the transmit button on his
Thales tactical radio.

“…La mer…Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes
clairs
A des reflets d'argent…La mer…Des reflets
changeants
Sous la pluie…”
He certainly did not do Charles Trénet full
justice but following
a calculated pause
a single flick of Senior Sergeant Yen’s radio transmit button acknowledged
receipt of the message.

Jie turned directly away from the sea, heading towards
the highway known as Route de l’Espace.

“Allons-y!”
 

The Kourou estuary: French Guiana.

It would be with extreme caution that Li approached
Paracaibo Wharf, the European Space Agency dock sitting three and a half miles
downriver from the coastal town of Kourou at the river’s northern lip.

No intelligence updates had been received for over a
month. The last they had received merely stated that pair of Atlantiques was at
that time believed to have been attached to the colony defences along with a
pair of corvettes. There was nothing to indicate where the French naval
flotilla was basing out of, either Kourou or the capital? The colony’s main
port of Dégrad des Cannes, which had grown to become the southern suburb of
Cayenne, housed a permanent detachment of marines in a barracks beside a jetty
extending into the Mahury River estuary. It was easily deep enough for even a
destroyer to dock there and the river was wide enough for it to turn even
without the aid of tugs. 

Their intelligence briefing included only that of an
armed civilian security guard was present at the ESA dock in Kourou except when
freighters carrying the rocket sections or satellites were due, or had docked
and were still unloading. There was nothing in the way of warehousing at the
ESA dock to interest a thief, that all took place at the colony’s main port.
All the ESA dock boasted was a solid, modern jetty and a crane on the river.
The quayside was little more than a car park, half covered to provide relief
from the sun for waiting heavy duty transporter vehicles and their crews.

A small tank farm sat to one side in a jungle
clearing, it was connected to the jetty by all the plumbing necessary to accept
deliveries of petrol, Avgas and diesel fuel.

Tall security fences topped by razor wire surrounded the
dock and tank farm. Motion sensors and CCTV provided a second layer of
security, monitored from a guardhouse at the main gate.

Unlike the port at the capital, Kourou required the
regular services of a dredger to keep the main channel deep enough for the
freighters to navigate their way safely. When completely unloaded the
freighters had to be towed stern first back to the sea by tugs.

As such neither
Dai
nor
Bao
could remain completely submerged for their eventual
jaunt downriver.

Li did not imagine that storming the dockside
facilities would be anything but counterproductive, and so the low key tactics
Captain Huaiqing had suggested were being employed.

Having dropped off the submersible,
Dai
flooded two forward torpedo tubes and two rear tubes. He also opened the outer
doors so as to be fully prepared for a surprise encounter with one of the
warships, if in fact they were indeed operating out of the ESA dock.

Half of their YU-6 21” torpedoes were  armed with
the new sodium hydride warheads which released the sodium on impact, producing
2000
°C of heat as the compound reacted
with the hydrogen in the seawater, or at least that is what it said on the tin.

Li had four
forward
tubes loaded with conventional warhead torpedoes because everything new has
unforeseen bugs somewhere in the system. If he was going to be at knife
fighting distance with the French flotilla then he wanted proven technology to
hand. The last two forward tubes contained YJ-12 anti-ship missiles. Useless
within the confines of the river but they would be ready for immediate use when
they returned to the ocean. No time costly unloading and reloading of tubes to
delay their immediate use.

The rear tubes were also loaded with conventionally
tipped weapons but he only had four of the smaller, and aging, 16” torpedoes.
There were four rear tubes in a torpedo room a third
the size of the one forward as there was no storage for reloads, the
stings-in-the-tail sat in their tubes ready for use during the entire duration
of deployments.

   All the torpedoes were set to run
shallow. 
Thus, suitably prepared for the worst,
Dai
moved
along the coast to within five hundred metres of the town itself without
encountering any further mines.

This part of the operation was lacking several
ingredients from the rehearsed plan they had trained for in China. The loss of
Tuan
, her
submersible, the
special forces
detachment and their
explosives would mean some ingenuity and adaptability on the part of the much
smaller force that was taking on their tasks.

Captain Li was reassured by the quality and enthusiasm
of the men.

No cannon fodder, these.

He watched them prepare themselves and their equipment
to knock off the Kourou police station and night duty personnel, to render
useless any air assets on the small airstrip outside the town, blow a bridge
and lock horns with a fearsome regiment of jungle fighters.

Each man would be carrying a FAMAS F1 5.56mm assault
rifle, bayonet, three APAV40 rifle grenades, a bespoke detachable sound
suppressor,   smoke grenades, CS gas grenades, plastic explosives,
detonators, an anti-armour mine they could adapt with electrical detonators or
simple use as a mine, various ‘switches’ for booby traps, cheese wire
garrottes, ropes and a host of other items that made the submariner feel
fatigued just imagining having to carry it all.

Half a kilometre off Les Roche Point the eight
remaining
special forces
troopers exited through the
rear escape hatch and swam ashore.

Kourou was a very modern place given its moderate
size. Thanks to the commerce and cash associated with the space centre it had
good roads, street lighting and orderly housing. Microwave masts for the local
cellular telephone system were visible, as were the satellite dishes that
linked the residents to the motherland via the internet and satellite TV. Had
it not been for the war the street lights would be lit, the bars neon signs
ablaze and the populace would be enjoying themselves, but blackouts did not
engender good nights out so most stayed home and only a lone police car had
been visible on the streets through the search periscope’s lo-lite TV.

Li felt a little self-conscious as he had strode from
his cabin with a webbing cartridge belt, holster on his hip and camouflage cream
on his face. His men nodded respectfully but one unseen wag mimicked the sound
of clinking spurs.

“Laugh it up boys.” He’d responded. “If it gets so
that me and this gun are the only thing between success and swimming home,
you’d better be wearing your water wings.” His expertise with small arms was
limited to one day a year when he was required to demonstrate safe handling
drills on a range. The ten rounds he fired during that process did not in any
way count towards his annual requalification, which was fortunate for him.

Bao
remained submerged beyond the river mouth with her Lo-Lite TV equipped search
periscope raised along with the ECM and communications masts.

Dai
entered
the estuary at periscope depth; a bare twenty feet of water beneath her keel.

The control room was now illuminated with red lighting
in order that the bridge crew and landing parties eyes would already be
acclimatised to the dark.

Li was glued to the periscope until he saw a broad
slipway off to their left. The road that served it was the remains of the
original main highway to Cayenne.

“All stop.”

The slipway belonged to the old ferry service that had
existed for centuries in progressively modern form, and profited at that spot
since the Portuguese had first claimed the land. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards
and Englishmen had also fought over ownership of this country but the Kourou
river ferry had survived and prospered despite them all. Only when a Swiss
built a bridge downriver did the fat lady finally sing for the ferry. It sat abandoned
now, a mere marker for a Chinaman at the point where the river started and the
deeper estuary ended.

Dai
slowly arose, her masts emerging from the waters like a clutch of Excaliburs.

Brown, silt laden, water flowed off the Juliett’s
bridge and down the grey steel sides of the conning tower, but her bulk stayed
hidden beneath the surface, giving them the radar profile of a small boat.

Li undogged the top lid and locked it in place as he
emerged into the rain. Lookouts took post and four ratings strained to haul a
23mm cannon up the ladder from the control room and mounted it as quietly as
possible, loading a belt of ammunition but not cocking the weapon as the harsh
metallic sound would travel far across the water despite the rain.

It was a snug fit now in the conning tower with
look-outs, the Strela air sentry, 23mm and Captain Li.

The Strela had a back blast area which limited its
arcs of fire. The ideal was for two sentries on the casing, one forward and one
aft of the conning tower. In heavy weather though, the best-of-a-bad-job
position was aft of everyone on the conning tower, perched above them all and
attached to the ECM mast by a safety harness. This position was of course not
conducive to engaging targets approaching from the rear. Nevertheless, Li had
his air sentry assisted up there to allow more freedom of movement on the
bridge.