Stauer was not fooled. Pointing at Biggus Dickus, he said, "Him, I understand. He's got people out there lost and he's worried sick over them. But you? I thought I had a sensible girl."
"Didn't you tell me once, Wes," she asked, softly "that a rational army would run away?"
He glared at her. Not fair to bring up old discussion points, sweetie.
"I knew what you meant," she continued, "which is almost certainly not what Voltaire intended; that it took something beyond pure reason and rational selfishness to make an armed force work.
"I'm not asking you for this for the excitement," she said, "though I won't deny that the self-satisfaction from doing everything I can to help is in there somewhere. But the fact is, I'm either a part of this or I'm not. If I'm not, I don't belong here at all. If I am, then I need to be where I'll do the most good, for everybody."
Stauer turned away from the two, walking to the pot of invariably vile coffee always brewing on the bridge. He filled a Styrofoam cup with the nasty stuff, then sipped it, thinking, It might be the right thing to do. It might be the only right thing to do. But, dammit, she's my girl.
Which gives me zero excuse.
"Fine, then. Do it," Stauer said, with something less than good grace.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Marines have landed,
and the situation is well in hand.
-Richard Harding Davis
D-Day, Beach Red, north of Bandar Cisman, Ophir
The dust became a little more noticeable the closer they came to shore. Behind him, Cazz could feel his radio-telephone operator, or RTO, hmph-hmphing, trying to suppress a cough.
The beach was a grainy-green image of sloping sand and light surf in Cazz's night vision goggles. Twenty meters out from it the man on the motor cut power and rotated it out of the water. Thereafter, the rubber boat drifted in under its own inertia. With each meter closer to the beach, Cazz could feel the tension rising in the boat.
I guess it's all pretty academic until you actually get near the beach, he thought.
The boat scraped along the sand and gravel below it, then shuddered to a stop. The company commander was out of the boat and churning through surf to shore in an instant. His RTO followed a few steps behind. The other members likewise slid over the sides and raced forward, except for one, the one who had been manning the motor, who more deliberately picked up a metal stake attached to the bow by a rope. This one walked until the slack was taken up, then dragged the boat farther up until its bow was out of the water. Then he drove the stake into the sand.
About fifty meters up the gently sloping beach, Cazz took one knee. His RTO dropped likewise behind him. Seconds later, the rest of the first boatload ran past him, continuing on maybe another three hundred meters.
Yeah, maybe they're all old codgers like me, Cazz thought, chest swelling with pride, but we had a lot of time in Brazil to work the kinks out. And, still, "once a Marine, always a Marine."
Inland, the old men then began to spread out to form what would become a perimeter. These men went prone as soon as they'd reached their immediate objective. Their rucksacks were still behind them, in the rubber boat. They'd send a party of two back to retrieve those after the perimeter was set up and secured.
Cazz looked around behind him to where the rest of the rubber flotilla was coming to shore. As boats touched in, more short lines of men streamed, forming themselves on the first group to go to ground. Almost directly behind him the mortar crews struggled to get their guns and a few rounds each across the surf, two men stumbling and falling once as the uneven ground, the pulse of the water, and the massive baseplate they were trying to hump proved too much.
They'll be a while.
More mortar ammunition, twenty-two rounds of 120mm per gun, would come in by helicopter, later.
D-Day, MV Merciful, four miles off the coast
There were three landing craft, each capable of carrying two of the armored vehicles, or three of the Ferret scout cars, or one AML and two Ferrets, to shore at a time. There simply wasn't room for more than that, though the boats wouldn't sink under considerably more weight. The round trip took about fifty minutes. Loading took twenty-five minutes to half an hour, and that only because Mrs. Liu was good at her job. It would be at least five hours from when the first LCM left to when the mechanized company was fully ashore.
Just as Cazz had been the first man to hit the beach, so Reilly, as a matter of principle, was going in the first load of heavy equipment. Lana was already loaded on her boat, number three. Standing with one leg over the gunwale, his foot locked in the net, Reilly passed on last minute instructions to his exec, FitzMarcach.
After five minutes of that, Fitz held up his hands, palms out, and said, "Enough, sir. I know what has to be done and how to do it."
For half a moment Reilly felt anger building. Then he realized, Yeah, what the fuck am I doing? He knows what to do.
"Sorry, Fitz. Maybe I was just remembering back when you were a lieutenant."
"I could do this back then, too. Just relax, boss. Go have fun. Top and I will follow in the last boat to unscrew whatever you fucked up ashore."
"Right. See you ashore."
With that, Reilly twisted to bring his belly to the gunwale, and his other leg to the net. He then carefully climbed down to where the LCM Number One waited. Once he felt his feet touch the cleated deck, he turned to the rear and walked between armored car and hull to stand under the raised cockpit. James, carrying a radio, followed, as he'd followed his chief down the net.
Looking upward, one thumb raised, Reilly said, "Take us in."
Back in LCM Number Three, Lana Mendes felt the sudden surge of the engines as the boat eased away from the hull.
Oh, my God, she thought, I'm really doing this. It's not a dream. I'm going to go and get to fight in an armored vehicle, and nobody's stopped me just because my plumbing's wrong.
For this, Reilly, you old bastard, I will even learn your fucking Nazi song. She smiled then, unseen by anyone, even Viljoen and Dumisani, thinking, And you can't even imagine the other things I'll do for you, for letting me do this.
D-Day, Beach Red, Ophir
The ramp splashed down, raising spurts of surf and sand around its edges. Instantly, one of the armored cars' engines revved. The car itself spun wheels on wet, cleated steel for a moment, before the wheels caught traction and it surged forward. Up it went, up the sloping front, before thudding across the space between ramp and hull. It went straight for a moment, then nosed down slightly as it took the ramp into the water. Whitish spray surged around the wheels. Then it was off and moving to the shore.
By the time the next vehicle from LCM One moved off its ramp, Number Two had ramped down, while Number Three was perhaps fifty or sixty meters out from the shoreline.
James following, Reilly walked off, down the ramp, and into the surf. There he was met by Cazz.
"Quiet as soft shit," the former Marine said. "There's nothing out there but us, for at least five hundred meters in every direction. I think this is going to work."
"It's not like we didn't pick the loneliest, most desolate strip of nothing for fifty miles," Reilly answered.