She turned to face Macintyre once more. “As you have indicated, sir, they have done so. Now, I have them all concentrated at one fixed location. The reason I brought PGAC-1 into Conakry Base at this time was to rearm with full war loads of surface-to-surface bombardment rockets. Upon taking departure, it is my intent to proceed directly to Yelibuya Sound and to wipe out both the Boghammer squadrons and the naval base they stage out of.”
Macintyre was startled out of his anger. “Good Lord, Amanda, you can’t be serious?”
“I’m deadly serious, Admiral. We have an opportunity here to blow the entire western campaign wide open, and I don’t intend to pass it by.”
“We’re authorized by our U.N. mandate to maintain the maritime exclusion zone and to act in defense of ourselves and of the nation of Guinea. Defense! We don’t have any kind of authorization to take offensive action against the West African Union.”
“I look on it as a matter of semantics, sir.” Amanda returned to the desk, leaning against it with her hands braced on its edge. “The Union naval base at Yelibuya is the real threat to both our forces and to the Guinea coast. The Boghammers that stage out of it are just the bullets fired from the gun. Tonight Belewa shot that gun at us. Within that definition, destroying Yelibuya Base is an act of self-defense and thus is within our mandate.”
“Damn it all entirely, Amanda.” Macintyre shook his head in dogged denial. “I know you’re a radical operator, that’s why I pulled you in for this job. But if you try this stunt, they’re going to say that you deliberately stretched your rules of engagement to pick a fight with Belewa.”
Amanda lifted her hands from the desk edge. “Well, of course. Because that’s exactly what I am doing.” She took a step back from the desk. Her arms crossed over her stomach, she began to pace the length of the dank little workspace, her head lowered. “Damn it, sir. We simply do not have the resources to fight this conflict conventionally. The attack on our aerostat carrier and that British minesweep just proves the point. If we give Belewa the advantage of choosing only his own battlegrounds and times of engagement, we are handing him the victory. I can’t win a war of attrition against an enemy of Belewa’s caliber. I have got to go on the offensive. If the U.N. rules of engagement block me from doing so overtly, then I have to stretch those rules when I counterpunch. That’s my only remaining, valid option.
“Tonight, I have been given an opportunity to counterstrike within a broad definition of my operational mandate. I have to hit him hard enough, now, to change the basic strategic equation. I can’t pass on this chance!”
Macintyre sighed heavily and shook his head. “Lord, Amanda, I see where you’re coming from. And from a purely military standpoint, I can agree with it. But there are other factors to be considered. An escalation of this nature takes us beyond the shooting war and up to the diplomatic interface.”
“I am fully aware of that, sir.” Amanda paused in her pacing. “And the diplomats, statesmen, and potentates are welcome to it. However, I was brought here specifically to deal with the shooting war, and I am endeavoring to do so to the best of my ability. All of my experience and all of my instincts tell me that going for the base at Yelibuya is the one best possible action we take at this time, given the current operational and strategic situation.”
She sought for and met Maclntyre’s gaze with her own. “Speaking frankly, sir, I wish you hadn’t been on the ground here tonight. As senior tactical officer on station, I’d have kicked off a UNODIR advisory to you, then I’d have gone ahead and executed the strike and let the cards fall where they may. After all, what’s one captain pro tem in the greater scheme of things.
“However, you are senior on site and this mess falls into your lap now. I understand fully that as CINCNAVSPECFORCE you have larger considerations and responsibilities to deal with than I do. Accordingly, you can’t afford to play the game quite as fast and loose as I can. As the situation stands, though, I can only urge you in the strongest possible manner to allow me to commit the strike on Yelibuya Sound. It is what needs to be done if we are serious about bringing this conflict to a successful outcome.”
Macintyre studied the slender, tanned figure before him. “Tell me something, Captain,” he said after a moment. “What happens if I elect to not carry through with the strike on Yelibuya?”
“Then, Admiral,” she replied quietly, “I will formally accept responsibility for both the Union attack this evening and for PGAC-1’s failure to intercept the Boghammer force following the attack. I will also formally request to be relieved of this command. I have no interest in fighting a war that I am being ordered to lose.”
In his younger days, he might have taken that statement as a threat, a challenge, or a bluff. Damnation, even now he would take it as such coming from certain officers of his acquaintance. But not from this one. From Amanda Garrett, it was a simple statement of fact. Asked for and given.
The laugh was born deep inside of him, a rumbling chuckle that rose from deep in his chest. “Lord, and I asked for this,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “Thank you, Captain.… Thank you, Amanda, for reminding me that, theoretically at least, victory is what this is all supposed to be about.”
He straightened in his chair, his mirth fading to a glint of self-derision in his eyes. “And thank you for also reminding me that, in a world that is more comfortable with a muddled mediocrity, there are still certain people who do not accept the concept of compromise. You are correct on all points, Captain. Operation approved. Carry on. And forgive my momentary lapse into micromanagement. I’ll mind my own business in the future, which will be dealing with those assorted diplomats, statesmen, and potentates you mentioned. In the mean time, you go on and win their war for them. Whether they like it or not.”
Amanda Garrett flashed a sober smile that transcended the room’s muddy incandescent lighting. “Aye, aye, sir.”
The Union naval base at Yelibuya was neither a Norfolk nor a Portsmouth, but Captain Jonathan Kinsford was content with his command. As he walked slowly down to the command post bunker, he surveyed his realm by the light of a three-quarters moon.
Yelibuya Base had once been one of Sierra Leone’s colonial era palm-oil plantations. The aging, white-pillared mansion house still overlooked the estuary of the nameless little river that emptied into Yelibuya Sound. Now, however, the mansion served as a combined officers’ club and billet, while the old plantation dock had become the base fueling pier, a gasoline barge moored to its downstream side. Upstream, a rank of smaller finger piers now lined the east side of the estuary channel, the Boghammers gunboat force slotted neatly in alongside them. A row of ordnance and engine maintenance sheds had been constructed behind the piers along with a boat railway for hull repair work.
Upslope from the water, beyond the mansion but still inside the forest line, were the clustered tents of the enlisted men’s quarters and the small base motor pool along with the heavily sandbagged mound of the ammunition bunker. And directly downslope, between the mansion and the shore, centered in what had been the estate’s broad front lawn, was a second, sandbagged emplacement, the base command post to which Kinsford was bound.
Kinsford was proud of that command post. He liked for things to be secure. That was why a quarter mile downstream at the river’s mouth, he’d had two more sandbagged emplacements built and manned. One on either side of the entry channel. Each fortification mounted a Bofors L70 40mm antiaircraft cannon, positioned and ready to sweep the sea or sky approaches to the base.