Countdown: H Hour (24 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance

enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

—Dr. Samuel Johnson

MV
Richard Bland
, Laccadive Sea, southeast of the Maldives

Even from the top of the superstructure, no land was in sight. Neither were there any ships of any size. There were a couple of fishing boats, small things, probably family owned and operated. But those were far away and hard to see.

There might have been satellites overhead, thus the aviation mechanics worked their birds—all of which had seen some pretty hard use at Bajuni—under double tarps, stretched out between the containers that formed walls on a lower, open area. Even without the chance of a satellite overhead, the tarps would still have been doubled. If they hadn’t, the maintenance area would have been an absolute oven. As was, with the breeze from the forward motion of the ship, it really wasn’t bad. The tarps wouldn’t necessarily protect the gunships and CH-750’s from observation, but it would probably take a human being to dial up the requisite filters to spot them, not a mere computer program.

Bland
was a much happier ship—
much
—than it had been not so very long ago. Despite their losses, success had proven a sovereign remedy for most of their ills. Better still, with the women of Adam’s followers aboard, a new line of cooking had been added to the galley’s repertoire. They were grateful to have been saved, even if their current accommodations were a little suboptimal, and had kicked in to help where and when they could.

Besides, though the men were under tight enough discipline that there had been no incidents between Adam’s people’s women and them, it was just
pleasant
, very pleasant, to have the tall, generally attractive, and gracefully swaying women aboard.

“Okay,” said Captain Pearson, “so you were fucking right. No need to gloat.”

“
Not
gloating,” insisted Warrington, with a wag of a finger. “Just happy.”

“Bullshit,” the skipper said. “I know a gloat when I see one.”

Warrington shrugged, then held up thumb and forefinger, spaced closely. “Okay, maybe a
leettle
bit of gloating. But really, mostly I’m just pleased.”

“We’ve still got problems, you know,” Pearson said, with bad grace.

“Oh, many, many,” Warrington agreed, cheerfully. “My sergeant major is still concussed, puking his guts out at random intervals. We’ve got a hold full of some very unhappy humanitarians. Eventually some dipshit is going to try to get at the Marehan girls. Balbahadur’s pipes still assault the air, with frightful regularity. And I have it from Welch that there are a couple of problems—and not small ones—on the other end. And then there’s the question of Labaan, Adam, and the other men from Bajuni. They’re all guilty of piracy and slave taking.

“Lots of problems, as you said.”

“Yeah, and what are you going to do about them?”

“Easy. In the case of the Marehan I’m going to take the Foreign Legion approach: Who fucking cares what they did before? Kiertzner’s being relieved of duty as first sergeant of C company and taking over as detachment sergeant major. I’ve got a double armed guard on the Marehans’ section of the ship, on our side, and a quadruple guard on their side, of their own men. Welch’s problems are not ours until we get there . . . three days?”

“About that,” Pearson agreed.

“I confess, I don’t have a solution to the problem of bagpipes in the middle of the night. And I’m not quite sure what to do about the tranzis, though I am leaning toward Stocker’s suggestion of having them walk the plank. Well, except for some of the genuine medicos. Those, we can use.”

“What the hell do they want, anyway?” the captain asked.

“Nothing unreasonable, really. They want to be let off at the nearest port.”

Shaking his head violently, Pearson said, “We can’t do that.”

“Nope. Any idea what the law of the sea says?”

Laughing, Pearson said, “It says ‘fuck ’em.’ I’m not a lawyer, mind you, but as far as I can tell, none of these people fall precisely under any of the pertinent conventions and neither, exactly, do we.”

“Wonderful thing,” Warrington said, “the law. I wonder—”

The interrupting knock on the hatch stopped whatever Warrington had been about to say. Pearson demanded, “What is it?”

“Sir,” said the rating at the hatch, “it’s the civilians, down below. They’re all up in arms.”

“Oh,” said Pearson, “the tranzis are revolting, are they?”

Warrington and Pearson trudged down the ladders to the mess level, then entered the mess deck. Lunch was due, in about an hour, its aroma permeating the air. The smell was unfamiliar, so it was probably the women from Bajuni taking their willing turn at mess duty.

Kiertzner sat by the port side of the mess deck, watching some instruction going on. Warrington didn’t know what the subject was, and didn’t think he had the time to find out. He did a double take, though, at the instructor. It was Sergeant Feeney, who seemed, at second look, to be very kindly and gently leading a platoon from C Company through assembly and disassembly of some of the off the wall weapons 2nd Battalion used.

“Wait a sec, Skipper,” Warrington requested of Pearson, before walking over to take a seat beside Kiertzner. “Ummm . . . Top . . . what’s with Feeney?”

“You mean his suddenly taking a professional interest in the development of the Guyanans, sir?” Kiertzner asked.

“Well . . . umm . . . that, and that he’s not trying to kill one of them. Or more than one.”

“It’s really very simple, sir,” Kiertzner began to explain, in a received pronunciation accent that just about all the Americans found highly amusing. “Feeney is a borderline sociopath, a ‘useful sociopath,’ we sometimes say. But a useful sociopath isn’t a sociopath at all. He’s perfectly capable of relating to other human beings as morally important creatures in their own right. He simply defines ‘human being’ differently than do most. Indeed, at some level, the ‘useful sociopath’ is perhaps the sanest among us. He doesn’t feel he should hate someone for looking a little different, and therefore, quite logically, sir, feels no need to love someone for looking a little bit the same.

“In any case, once the humanitarians showed up, they provided a sufficient ‘other’ for Feeney to elevate—and I’m sure he hasn’t a clue that that’s what’s going on in his head—well . . . to elevate the Guyanans to provisional human beings, in his particular universe. Thus, as full human beings, albeit provisional, they’re entitled to all the consideration, kindness, and care that he would normally give to any other full human beings, few as those may be.

“Do you see, sir?”

Warrington shook his head. “I’m honestly not sure, Top.”

“Well . . . then just trust me, sir.”

“Oh, I do. Still, it’s odd. Tell you what, though, I think I’m going to need Feeney in about half an hour to impress some people with their position in life.”

“The tranzis, sir?”

“Precisely.”

Kiertzner smiled broadly and wickedly. “I’ll make sure he’s available, sir.”

Oh, goody
, thought Warrington,
at least they’re not chanting, “Give Peace a Chance.”

What the humanitarians
were
doing, however, was throwing things—rations, furniture, garbage, the buckets they’d been given until the crane crew could dig down to the extra porta-potties—at the guards. And, though they’d been assigned six containers to sleep in, all had crowded into just one.

And then, of course, they sat down in that one, started rocking side to side, clapping, and singing, “All we are sayyyiiinnnggg . . .”

Warrington and Pearson stopped, the rating behind them and centered. Pearson crossed his arms while Warrington put hands on hips. Both smiled, evilly.

Evil smiles or not, the singing went on, “. . . is give peace a chance . . .”

Turning to the Captain, Warrington observed, “They seem ungrateful for their rescue.”

“Dreadfully so,” the
Bland
’s master agreed. “However, they’re
your
charges. You rescued them. You figure out what to do about them.”

Turning his head over one shoulder, Warrington told the rating, “Please get me the acting sergeant major and Sergeant Feeney.”

The rating shot a quizzical glance at his captain, who gave a couple of curt nods.
Do as the man says.

The aid workers shut up when Warrington and the skipper walked right up to the opening, with the former banging on the corrugated metal sides of the thing for attention.

“What do you want?”
As if I didn’t know already. I
really
hope they don’t force me to make an object lesson of somebody. Yeah, morally I think they’re crawling shits, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t technically useful. And they’re more useful if I can trust at least some of them with the run of at least some of the ship.

“We want to be released,” said several of them, in unison. The other joined in, in a cacophony. “Wewewewawanttooobebererelealeasedeasedeased.”

“You don’t care for our hospitality?” Warrington asked.

“We want to go home! We don’t want to have anything to do with your fucking evil corporation. You can’t keep us here while you go make war on somebody, probably innocent Third World victims of corporate America.”

“I see.” He held up one finger and said, “Hold on a second.”

At that time Acting Sergeant Major Kiertzner and Sergeant Feeney showed up. The aid workers all knew about Sergeant Feeney, the man who had pushed poor Doctor Saffron off the rubber boat, probably to drown. But seeing him in the dark, seated low, and seeing him in the light, standing, were two remarkably different things.

At about five foot ten, Feeney wasn’t really that tall. Indeed, many of the aid workers had height on him. Where no two of them could match him, however, was in the shoulders, which seemed to be nearly as broad as he was tall. The sergeant had his sleeves rolled up. His arms would have done nicely for an illustration on the cover of a Conan the Barbarian novel. All of this was made worse, more intimidating anyway, by the sergeant’s having about a twenty-nine inch waist. But the really horrifying thing was the face, and that wasn’t even scarred. What it was, however, was the very platonic essence of
mean looking.

The complaints dropped to a low rumble, and that with an undertone of terror, as soon as the tranzis got a good look, in the light, at Feeney.

“You wanted us, sir?” Kiertzner asked, conversationally, if artificially loudly.

Warrington matched volume. “Uh, yes, Sergeant Major.” Officially, of course, Kiertzner was not, or not yet. But he had the job; he could have the title, too.

“What I would like is for you to supervise Sergeant Feeney in taking these people who don’t appreciate our hospitality topside and having them walk the plank.”

“Well, sir,” Kiertzner said, “I’m not a sailor, really. Neither is Sergeant Feeney. We barely know our way from one end of a ship to the other. It would be a big help if the naval crew could set up the plank for us.”

“Good point,” Warrington agreed. “Uh, Skipper?”

Pearson had a hard time of it keeping a straight face. Raising his own voice helped a bit. “Yes, Major?”

“We do have a plank somewhere aboard ship, don’t we?”

“We may have to look a bit,” Pearson replied. “Why . . . it’s been six months,”—he thought about that for a moment, as if puzzled—“yes, at least six, since we had anyone walk the plank. You wouldn’t mind if I assemble the crew on deck to witness punishment, would you? You know how the men like a good show. They’ll be happy to set it up for you.”

“Your ship, sir. Your rules. And thank you, sir.”

Warrington turned his attention back to his unwilling passengers and asked, “Are there any Olympic class swimmers here? Someone who could help the rest swim the roughly seventy-five miles to shore?” Seeing there were not, and seeing the suddenly blanched faces, he added, “Pity. Some of you might have made it that way. Oh, well, you insist on being released right away. It’s a free world . . . sort of. So we’ll make this one little accommodation.

“Oh,” Warrington finished, before turning to leave, “if any of you believe in God, I suggest this would be a good time to make your peace with Him.”

“They can’t be serious,” announced the woman whose rear end had once been used for a stop signal. Her name, not that anyone in M Day really cared, had turned out to be Jennifer Duke. “People don’t do this sort of thing.”

“
Our
kind of people don’t,” said a man seated next to her, one Sean Zink, rather more softly. “Who knows what their kind of people would do? Maybe we should have just shut up and been happy we weren’t going to be sold as slaves in the Bajuni market.”

“I still can’t believe—”

Kiertzner harrumphed. “Sergeant Feeney, make a believer of that woman.”

“Women and children first?”

“Something like that.”

When Feeney walked into the container, his broad bulk seeming to fill the thing, all the others backed away as far as the close confines and the press of their own bodies would permit. The woman, too, attempted to scoot back. But there really wasn’t any room. Feeney grabbed her by the hair and hoisted her to her feet.

That
hurt.
At about that time she decided that, yes, maybe these animals were serious and, yes, maybe she and the rest should have just shut up.
Did I assume that because some of them were white they were more civilized than the Africans who held us before? Oh, dear.

“C’mon, sweetie,” Feeney said, “this won’t take long.”

He stopped for a half second, then asked, “Sergeant Major, can I fuck her first?”

Kiertzner shook his head with disappointment (to say nothing of distaste, the woman was
most
unattractive). “Definitely
not
, Sergeant Feeney. Our mission is to toss them over the side, not to dally with them. And there’s no
time
, Sergeant. You should
know
that. Where’s your sense of
mission
, son?”

Feeney looked down at the deck, shamefaced. “Yes, Sergeant Major. Sorry, Sergeant Major. It just seemed like a waste. Oh, well. C’mon bitch.”