So intent was he that he didn’t even count the outgoing shells. His loader had to slap him on the shoulder to advise him when the entire twenty rounds had been expended. With the fire mission completed, the mortarmen grasped the base plate of their weapon and heaved, toppling it over the side with a splash. The two support planks followed a moment later.
Fore and aft, knives flashed and the anchor lines were severed. The captain engaged the propeller clutch and opened the throttle, getting them under way once more.
They made no attempt to race from the scene, or to do anything else foolish to draw attention to themselves. They were leaving as they had come, as part of the meandering flow of small-craft traffic along the Gold Coast. There were no other weapons aboard the craft, nor any piece of military equipment or documentation. Should they be stopped and boarded by the Guinean military or police, as they probably would be before reaching home waters, there would be nothing to connect them with the Conakry attack.
With its engine chugging softly, the pinasse turned away to the east, steering by the stars and by the flickering glow of the fires left behind in its wake.
Over the ringing in his ears, Macintyre heard Christine Rendino give a soft, grating cry of pain and protest. Rolling his weight off her, the Admiral tried to get to his feet, blindly seeking for air that wasn’t tainted by dust and smoke and the acrid, sour stench of high explosives. As his hearing returned, he began to make out more of what was going on around them: the wail of an emergency vehicle siren, the belated iron honking of a Klaxon calling the base to battle stations, and the crackling roar of open flames. There were also weak calls for aid in half a dozen languages and cries of agony that could be universally understood.
“What happened?” Christine asked, dazed.
“Mortar barrage,” Macintyre replied shortly, helping the young female officer back to her feet. “Are you all right?”
“I hurt all over, but no place too specific, so I guess I’m okay… Oh God!”
Together the intel and the Admiral took stock of the holocaust that had broken loose around them.
Out on the parking aprons, the French Transall had taken a direct hit. The aircraft and the fueling truck that had been servicing it were islands of incandescent wreckage in the midst of a lake of flame. The 747 air freighter was also engulfed in a haze of smoke, and the base fire trucks were converging on it in a desperate race to prevent another conflagration. Aircrews and linemen were running to the other grounded transports, checking for damage and making frantic preparations to tow or taxi the aircraft away from the spreading flames. Other blazes lit up the sky over the stores depots and in the base motor pool area.
The arc lights had gone out, either killed by the attack or deliberately extinguished to make targeting for a second strike more difficult. Even so, the flickering illumination from the fires was enough to show that the headquarters building had taken a near miss. The revetments near the entryway were torn apart and the two Guinean army sentries on duty there lay sprawled in the sand spilling from the shredded sandbags. A short distance from where Macintyre and Christine stood, another white-clad figure also lay crumpled on the tarmac.
“Emberly?” The Admiral took a step toward the fallen man. Then, from somewhere out on the flight line, there was a secondary explosion and a sudden flare of light. At his side, Macintyre heard Christine Rendino gave a choked moan of rising horror. Without thinking, he put his arm out to her, drawing her in and pressing her face against his chest, just as he would have tried to shield his own daughter.
Only moments before, Christine Rendino had said that if Phillip Emberly didn’t take the West African Union more seriously, he’d get his head blown off. She’d meant the words as a warning, not as a prophecy.
Upon later reflection, Christine Rendino would grimly conclude that some good had come with the Union attack. The base sections of the different national military missions had abruptly found themselves thrown together, working to extinguish the fires and tending to the wounded. Facilities would have to be shared as the base rebuilt itself and assistance was offered and accepted on all sides. Lines of communication would be established, reliances developed, bonds built in the great brotherhood of “them what’s been shot at.”
Sometime after midnight, she found herself back in her office in the intelligence section. The window had been blown in and the glass scattered across the room, but beyond that things were intact. She sank stiffly into her chair and procured a condensation-wet can of Mountain Dew soda from the small ice chest wedged in behind her desk. Her summer whites were a bedraggled ruin, but then white was a stupid color for a military uniform anyway.
“You wouldn’t have another one of those, would you, Commander?” Admiral Macintyre stood in her doorway, looking as smoke-stained and battered as she did. Christine started to get to her feet, but he waved her back. “Oh, stay put. As Halsey said, The shooting’s started, so we can dispense with all this damn jumping up and down business.’”
“That’s good with me, Admiral,” Christine replied, digging another soda out of the cooler and passing it to the suddenly very human three-star. “Here you go, sir. It’s part of my private stash.”
Macintyre popped the can’s tab and drank off half the contents in a single thirsty pull. “God, that might just let me get through the night. How’s TACNET? Did your people take any damage?”
“We’re pretty much okay,” she replied. “The drone control station lost a transceiver antenna, but they have a spare in stock. And the guys over at the Predator group had a shell drop right beside their hangar. It only put a few holes in the wall, though. No personnel injured and no damage to the drones themselves. How bad did the rest of the base get it?”
Macintyre brushed one of the office chairs free of glass fragments and sank into it. “Seven dead, three of them ours,” he replied. “Twenty-four wounded. Some losses in stores and equipment, but nothing that can’t be replaced. It could have been worse, except that Jim Stottard gets a gold star for the way he’s hardened this facility up. The supply depots and quartering areas are pretty well dispersed, and the revetments and blast walls he’s had built contained a lot of the damage.”
Macintyre took another sip from the can. “Yeah,” he continued wearily. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Christine flashed back to those hellish seconds out on the tarmac. She’d been in battle often enough before aboard the Cunningham, but there she’d at least had the psychological protection of the ship’s bulkheads around her. This night, though, she’d lain naked before the War Gods for the first time.
She suppressed a shudder. “By the way, Admiral, thank you for knocking me on my face out there.”
Macintyre shrugged. “Old instincts, Commander. Forget it.”
“Whatever, sir.” She managed a grin. “And if you don’t mind, I answer better to Chris. I’m still just getting into this ‘Commander’ jazz.”
Macintyre managed a grin of his own and an acknowledging nod. “Chris it is, then. And so, Chris, what happened out there tonight?”
“A fast mortar strike almost certainly fired from a boat holding off the south end of the runway. It slipped in on us merged with the native coastal traffic and disengaged the same way. Twenty-four hours from now, with TACNET fully operational, we could hand you this guy on a silver platter. In fact, we probably could have spotted him working in. Since it isn’t, we can’t and we couldn’t, and he’s long gone. Sorry, sir.”