Those golden eyes flicked in Quillain’s direction. “No, cancel that. We’ve got our Marines here now. Triple them.… That’s right, triple them! And we need the stuff flown in. We don’t have the time to wait around for sealift.”
Quillain frowned behind his fixed expression. He’d taken part in this kind of argument himself often enough, trying to pry more training ordnance out of the quartermasters. This was shooter talk.
Apparently she was still dissatisfied with the response she was receiving. Her dark brows knit together and a steely edge came to her voice. “That, I’m afraid, is your problem, Lieutenant. You can take it up with Captain Stottard and he can have a talk with Admiral Macintyre about the situation. I don’t want to have to. Get it done!”
She forcefully returned the phone to its cradle and returned her attention to Quillain, her flash of annoyance dissipating as rapidly as it had come. She stood behind the desk and extended a hand to the Marine, exchanging a firm dry-palmed handshake.
“Sorry about that, Captain. I had to clarify a few matters with our logistics people. I’m Captain Amanda Garrett, your theater TACBOSS. We’re glad you and your people are here.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Quillain replied stiffly. “I’ve just come aboard with my first platoon—”
“Is the rest of your company still on the ground at Conakry?” she interjected swiftly.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be bringing them out—”
“Fantastic! As soon as we’ve finished here, get on the horn to Main Base. Go ahead and bring both of your other two rifle platoons out to the platform, but hold your weapons platoon at Conakry. I’ve got a special job for them.”
“A special job, ma’am?” Quillain found himself falling behind the curve.
“Exactly. A pretty important one that we’ve got to move fast on. Let me show you what the situation is.”
Garrett moved swiftly from behind her desk, crossing to a wall-mounted admiralty chart of the African Gold Coast. Brushing closely past Quillain in her intentness, she forced the Marine to take a couple of awkward steps back out of her way.
“Right,” Amanda continued briskly, “we have two aerostat patrol stations established. Guinea East, here off the border of Guinea and the West African Union, and Guinea West off the border of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.”
Her fingertips swept across the expanse of the chart. “Between them, they give us a full radar coverage of the Guinea Littoral. The problem is that our aerostat carriers are converted TAGOS-class antisubmarine intelligence ships. They’re slow, they’re obvious, and they’re working close inshore. They’re also operated by the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force, which means they’re civilian manned and totally unarmed. They’d be sitting ducks for a Boghammer raid. That’s where your heavy-weapons people come in.”
“My people, ma’am?” Quillain asked, bewildered.
“Exactly. We’ll divide your heavy-weapons platoon into two Naval Guard teams, and we’ll put one aboard each of the aerostat carriers. What kind of weapons loadout do your people have?”
Quillain struggled to shift mental gears again. “My grenadier and rocket launcher squads have their standard Mark 19 chunkers and SMAWs. I didn’t think we’d be needing mortars for maritime boarding and security work, so I had my mortar men turn their sixty-millimeters in and draw Ma Deuce fifties — that is, M2 heavy machine guns, ma’am.”
“Good call, Captain! That couldn’t be better. We’ll hold your people at Conakry until… oh, day after tomorrow. That’ll give them a chance to rest a little and get properly outfitted for the job. Then we’ll heli-lift them out to the ’stat carriers and fast-rope them aboard after dark. We’ll pull them off again whenever the carriers go into Conakry to replenish. If we can keep the guard teams a secret, we just might be able to hand somebody a nasty surprise.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Marine could only agree. Captain Garrett was apparently very good at handing out surprises.
She continued studying the chart, her hands crossed over her stomach and her lower lip lightly bitten in concentration. “That takes care of that,” she continued after a moment. “Now, about your rifle platoons. I know that your men are jet-lagged and are going to need some acclimatization time, but how soon do you think you’ll be ready to start operating?”
“It depends on the mission profile,” Quillain replied promptly, grateful to be back on firmer ground. “What have we got?”
“A series of amphibious recon probes.”
Again Garrett’s hand arced gracefully across the map; this time the gesture encompassed the coasts of Sierra Leone and Liberia as well as Guinea. “Here’s our problem, Captain. We have eight hundred miles of coast to cover and two missions to perform with your hundred and sixty men and my five gunboats and patrol craft. We have to simultaneously protect Guinea from Union sea raids while cutting the coastal smuggling line into the Côte d’Ivoire, the one the Union is using to breach the U.N. embargo.”
She glanced at Quillain. “In effect, we have an east war and a west war, and we can’t fight them both at the same time. No way do we have the assets. At least not if we try and fight conventionally.”
Quillain found he was becoming intrigued in spite of himself. “What are your intentions, then, ma’am?”
“We eat the apple one bite at a time by dividing the problem into sections.” Her fingernail tapped lightly against the acetate cover of the map, indicating the coast of Guinea. “Our first move will be to destroy the Union’s network of coastal bases inside Guinean territory.”
“The West African Union has naval bases inside Guinea?”
“Boat hides, anyway. Small, concealed moorages located in isolated areas along the coast. The Union Boghammer groups use them as rest-and-replenishment points for their raiding. We believe that Union Special Forces teams are using them for insertion and supply when they’re going deep in country. Taking out those boat hides would be a major blow to the Union’s insurgency campaign. If we play it right, we can also cost the Union some equipment and personnel they can’t afford to lose.”
“We got these sites targeted yet?” Quillain inquired, studying the chart.
“We’re getting there.” Garrett smiled enigmatically. “I presume that you’ve heard about how we’ve been making fools of ourselves out here.”
“Uh, I understand that the patrol force has been having some difficulty coming up to speed, ma’am,” Quillain replied, with more diplomacy than he thought he could muster.
“That’s good. Actually we’ve been working very hard for the past few weeks to make ourselves look like the biggest bunch of goobers ever commissioned by the United States Navy. We’ve been faking equipment breakdowns, botching intercepts, aborting patrols, anything to make us look inept to the locals and to the Union’s intelligence service. And it’s been paying off.”
Quillain rested his hands on his hips. “How so, ma’am?” he asked, puzzled.
“The Union navy is losing its fear of us. Beyond the raid on Conakry base, the Union scaled their coastal operations way back when the U.N. blockade went into effect. Our analysis was they were trying to gauge our effectiveness before risking their forces against us. So we’ve been striving to make ourselves look totally ineffective. Apparently our Three Stooges act has made the proper impression, because they’re ramping up their operational tempo again.
“We’ve got Boghammer groups back out there, marauding all up and down the Guinea coast. And every time they do, our TACNET recon drones and aerostat radars backtrack the raiders to their staging points.”