Admiral Ritchie watched the four 52-inch HDTV screens in the ad-hoc war room of the re-formed Joint Chiefs of Staff at Fort Shafter. Centre left displayed a real-time Keyhole satellite feed of the running battle at Guantanamo Bay; centre right, a live feed from some Venezuelan reporter on the scene, an embed from the government-run TVes network. The reporter was covering his country’s Marines as they tried to fight their way towards base headquarters, and at that moment was speaking to camera, framed by the burning light of an amtrac. The satellite feed was choppy and slow, breaking into bursts of static, but Ritchie could see that the man looked terrified. He was also providing a constant stream of very useful information, which a small team of Marines here in Pearl were feeding right back to their colleagues at Gitmo.
On the screen to the far left, President Hugo Chavez pumped his fist in the air as he shouted cadenced beats of Spanish at the microphone. A running subtitle of translation tried to keep up, but Ritchie had long since given up reading it. Most of his attention was focused on the fourth screen, the videoconference taking place with the surviving senior officer of the Nimitz battle group, Captain Ted Branch. Lights flickered behind the master and commander of the wounded USS Nimitz as he gave his report to General Tommy Franks.
‘I’ve got two cats up, and two-thirds of my air wing operational. However, we’re still at half power and running on one screw. Additionally, the USS Princeton is trailing behind. We may have to scuttle her if we can’t get flooding stabilised,’ Captain Branch said.
Admiral Ritchie leaned forward. ‘Captain, you’ll transition into the Atlantic later this afternoon your time, correct?’
‘Yes, sir. Barring any trouble at Gibraltar,’ Branch replied. ‘The Royal Navy tell me they still have things under control, but Morocco is a little too close for comfort. I estimate we can be in Cuban waters, earliest, in ten days.’
General Franks shook his head. ‘This will be over long before then, Ted.’
Captain Branch nodded. The thin man didn’t appear to have an ounce of body fat on him. Ritchie always thought the carrier commander looked more like an Army Ranger than a naval officer. Most in the navy were, well, a little heavier than they ought to be. Himself included.
‘Ted, do you think you can spare any elements of your battle group?’ Ritchie asked. ‘Who can sprint away and arrive sooner?’
Branch rubbed the bridge of his nose, probably trying to clear his head or suppress a burning migraine, perhaps both. ‘Sir, if you think it will do some good, I’m sure the battle group is willing to make the sacrifice. However, I do not think we can suffer the loss of our remaining combat power without endangering either the Nimitz or the Princeton. Furthermore, I do have a convoy of my own refugee vessels trailing my battle group. Some of them have been vetted by our Marine and navy boarding teams, some have not. There’s no way of knowing whether or not one of them is a jack-in-the-box waiting to pop on us.’
Franks glanced over at Ritchie. ‘Do you think it’s worth it, Jim?’
Ritchie looked up at the paper map of the Atlantic area of operations. Here in the war room, they were already falling back to paper, acetate and coloured markers to indicate their force dispositions. It wasn’t for a lack of computing power. It was the lack of secure communications and data sources that forced the fallback to more primitive methods.
‘No, sir,’ Ritchie concluded. ‘Nimitz should continue as planned. We’ll have to try something else.’
Franks turned to the commander of the 25th Infantry Division, who had remained silent during the exchange. ‘Francis, what’s your take on Guantanamo?’
General Murphy snorted. ‘They’re well and truly fucked, sir. Civilians mixed into it, and us with our cocks in our hands… Musso is a smart man. He’ll see it pretty clear as well.’
‘You mean surrender,’ Franks said. ‘Right?’
Murphy couldn’t bring himself to say it. He folded his arms and nodded.
‘Sir?’ An army specialist approached the officers. ‘Gitmo on the line.’
Susan Pileggi exhaled, and with the hot, stale breath went some of the tension cramping her arms and shoulders. Not that she relaxed – that would have been impossible. But as she saw the end coming, with no chance of escape or redemption, she accepted it for the first time, and part of the fear and the strain of the last few weeks ebbed away.
She waited in the gun pit. The muzzle of her M-1, retrieved from the body of the Marine she’d lent it to a few hours ago, tracked the small group of Venezuelan paratroopers as they cautiously rounded the huge mound of burning rubble a hundred yards away. It had been a chemical storehouse; for what, she had no idea. But the stench was vile enough to blot out the smells of the base as it died around her. Burnt meat, corpses crawling with carpets of black flies, the unwashed bodies of the men around her, napalm smoke and festering wounds – the evil stink of the warehouse blotted them all out.
‘Sergeant Carlyon. A head count, please.’
‘Twenty-three friendly, ma’am. As of five minutes ago.’
Pileggi nodded. They were spread out over a hundred-yard front, some fucking the earth in a drainage ditch, others taking cover behind broken machinery or piles of concrete barriers. They held on. The enemy numbered in the hundreds now, but they still hadn’t forced the issue, and in this failure had probably died in greater numbers than was necessary. They could’ve ploughed us under an hour back, she thought.
Carlyon popped up and squeezed off a three-round burst, and the reassuring boom of Lundquist’s shotgun followed almost immediately. The volume of return fire was heavy, but poorly directed.
She followed the advance of the small party attempting to flank them to the north. Carlyon was aware of them too.
Gitmo was dying. The base had done so well to hold off against the sneak attack, but Lieutenant Colonel Pileggi knew it would be overrun, probably in the next few hours, and her small band of brothers were sure to die with her. She was aware, without turning to look at them, of the men in the firing pit next to her. Chief Lundquist was hunkered down, reloading his shotgun next to Jimbo Jamieson, a civilian who had joined them in the middle of some of the worst fighting; he’d pulled up in a Humvee full of sailors, carrying two boxes of ammo and, most precious of all, spare barrels for an M249 squad automatic weapon. Jamieson was watching the enemy creeping through the dark too. Never taking his eyes off them as they crept closer.
Even while concentrating so fiercely on the flankers, Pileggi remained unnaturally aware of other details. A patch of red hair peeking out beneath the curve of a helmet… The unnaturally straight line of a bayonet… A muted cough in the next foxhole, barely audible under the freight-train scream of battle all around.
Their lives had only one meaning now: to delay a catastrophe that was otherwise inevitable. Attackers were pouring onto the headland from three sides and they were going to take the strip. When they did, more would doubtless fly in, falling upon Guantanamo’s remaining defenders and the unarmed refugees with equal ferocity.
God only knew what sort of shit rain and hellfire that would unleash, and Pileggi wasn’t sorry she’d be missing it. She had already seen civilian boats targeted out on the bay, for no apparent reason other than that they made easier, more pleasing prey than armed Marines and soldiers. The atrocities, witnessed by everyone she’d managed to gather for the airfield defence, had doubtless hardened the Americans’ resolve. Dozens of dead paratroopers lay on the tarmac as testimony to that.
She laid the cold iron sight of her weapon on the centre of the group of men, who were now coming at her with much greater confidence and speed. They hadn’t seen Carlyon’s ambush yet. Good. Half a second telescoped out towards infinity. Susie Pileggi had plenty of time to examine the poor standard of their uniforms and the torn rubber shoes of the man in the lead. It spoke of a badly planned, hastily thrown-together plan of attack. A three-legged dog suddenly bounded in front of the advancing Venezuelans, spinning in circles, howling as though possessed by a demon. It was probably mad.
‘Fire,’ yelled Carlyon.
The dog exploded into a ball of hair and gore as the SAW opened up a short distance away. She heard cursing and saw Lundquist adjust his aim up a little. The attackers dispersed like startled rabbits, those who could anyway. An invisible wave swept over at least half them, cutting some down, throwing others into the air, completely disassembling one from the groin up.
‘Pour it on, boys!’ Carlyon yelled over the uproar.
The dense crump of exploding hand grenades momentarily smothered the rattle and snarl of gunfire. The battle for Gitmo, a vast conflagration, fell away from the minds of the men around her; the whole world was now contained on the small stage of this burning, rubble-strewn airstrip. They started to take return fire from the enemy, dug in all around them, and someone screamed as a round took him in the face.
Pileggi squeezed off discrete bursts from the rifle – picking her targets, waiting until she had a clear line, and sending two or three rounds down-range. The bullets hit hard, punching out chunks of meat and bone when they struck. Pileggi dropped three men in just a few seconds before having to duck behind the shattered masonry she’d built up in front of her firing position.
Lundquist cried out and flew backwards. Gouts of dark red blood looped gracefully into the overcast sky. The ground shook and heaved violently as mortar bombs began dropping on their position. None of them had any overhead protection.
‘They’re coming!’ screamed Carlyon. ‘Get ready!’ He emptied a whole magazine to give himself and his men some cover.
The Venezuelans had gathered themselves at last and were charging at them en masse, running into their own mortar barrage with bayonets drawn. Pileggi was almost certain she heard a bugle faintly beneath the din.
Pileggi changed magazines, rapidly, mechanically. Firing again as quickly as possible. Four of the attackers fell in front of their pit. Two more leapt forward and sailed over the edge, throwing themselves onto Jimbo Jamieson, who swung wildly at the closest intruder with a lump of wood. It connected with a hollow clunk that Pileggi heard quite clearly, despite all the noise. She swung her M-1 like a club too, driving the heavy wooden stock into the face of the second attacker. The man’s nose collapsed with sickening ease as blood erupted from his torn flesh.
Carlyon fell on her, driving her down. She felt his dead weight, the terrible slackness of his limbs, and knew he was gone. Pileggi tried to lift him clear, to get back to her firing position, but he was so heavy. It was worse, much worse, than having a drunken lover fall asleep on top of you. It was crushing, painful.
And then he was gone. The weight suddenly flying away, and she was looking up into the muzzle of a gun, wondering what it was, and realising just before it flashed white.
‘Pearl is up, sir,’ a Marine private said, holding up a phone. ‘A lot of static.’
Musso thanked the private and took the phone. ‘General Musso.’
‘Franks. This line secure?’
‘I sorely doubt it,’ Tusk replied. ‘It’s probably trailing across one of the sat news channels as we speak, sir.’
He looked around the underground command bunker. Some of the screens were running live feeds from Venezuelan TV. The static on the phone connection grew in intensity. Musso shook the phone, even though he knew it didn’t do any good. It made him feel better.
‘Say again, sir?’
‘As a matter of fact, TVes is running us live, Musso,’ Franks told him. ‘Bastards. What is your status?’
The brigadier general rubbed his forehead and thought for a moment. If they were live on TVes, this conversation was going out to the world, a situation he might be able to use to his advantage. He couched his next words very carefully, trying to remember the lessons he was taught at charm school when he received his first star.
‘Enemy forces are aggressively targeting civilian refugees at my position, sir,’ Musso began. ‘I’ve got multiple civilian vessels burning in the bay or sinking. We lost a C-5 Galaxy as it tried to take off. My air liaison officer tells me that over four hundred US civilians were on board. We’re probably looking at upwards of a thousand civilian casualties minimum, perhaps more. My own casualties are climbing as well.’
‘Any attempt to offer a ceasefire?’ General Franks asked. ‘To mitigate civilian casualties.’
Musso blinked. Every fibre in his soul screamed at him to fight it out, resist to the last, make the enemy pay, but the civilians were his priority. They were his boss, his reason for being in the first place.
‘By us or by them, sir?’
‘Either.’
‘Negative, sir. I’ve not even had a chance to think about it,’ Tusk admitted.
‘The civilians need to be your top priority, General Musso,’ said Franks. ‘I’m ordering you to attempt to contact the enemy commander to seek terms for a ceasefire. We will try to do the same at our end. In the meantime, until you receive such a ceasefire, resist with maximum effort. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Musso replied. What other choice did he have if the Venezuelans weren’t willing to accept terms? Even though he’d moved underground, he could still hear a savage battle chewing up the base above him.
‘Also know this…’ Franks paused for a moment. ‘If you go under, we will exact retribution from the Venezuelans at a time and place of our own choosing. We will make this night very expensive for them. Do you understand, General Musso?’
Okay, I’m not the only one playing to the media then … ‘I do, sir,’ he replied.
‘Carry on, Tusk. Franks out.’
Musso hung up the phone and found Lieutenant McCurry in front of him.
‘We’ve lost the airfield, General,’ she said.
That meant Susie Pileggi was probably dead, Musso realised. He nodded and hurried over to a display that carried security-cam vision of the airstrip area. He could see that the tracer fire across the bay had flickered out now. The burning hulks of civilian and military aircraft littered the runway. On a separate display, the Venezuelans’ armoured column was stalled out, harassed by ambushes set up by Gunnery Sergeant Price’s security teams.
Tusk Musso felt like he was falling into a deep well, an abyss of despair that seemed to know no end. From the depths of this descent, he heard himself speak the words. They sounded faint and weak to his ears.
‘We need to find a white sheet.’