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"But good guesswork. Thanks, Nick."
After Nick and Chase had left, Ben sat for a long time at his makeshift desk: an old door placed on two sawhorses. Ben didn"t like to be outsmarted, and if Nick was right-and Ben felt he was-Duffy had done just that.
Problem was, there wasn"t a d.a.m.n thing Ben could do about it. The cities in France had to be cleared of creeps. The countryside had to be cleared of roaming gangs. And while Ben and his people were accomplishing those tasks, Duffy and his main body of fighters were going to be heading east to link up with thousands of other punks along a north/south route that ran through a half dozen countries.
"And they"ll be moving in small groups," Ben muttered. "Probably at night, so that lets out strafing. s.h.i.t!"
He called in Mike Richards and Rene Seaux and laid it out for the men.
Mike frowned and then cursed. Rene stood up and paced the room. Rene was the first to speak. "They fed us false information, and we took the bait like a hungry fish. I am sorry, General. Truly sorry."
"It wasn"t anyone"s fault," Ben said. "The prisoners we took were the expendable ones, and they had been given false information. But to correct the mistake, we"ve got to move very fast."
"You have a plan, General?" Rene asked.
Ben nodded his head and frowned. "Not much of one. But it"ll have to do." He walked to the door and opened it. "Corrie. Call all the batt corns in. I want them here like a hour ago!"
215 "I can"t even find the d.a.m.n borders on these old maps!" the former Navy SEAL, Ike McGowan, b.i.t.c.hed.
"You redneck ninny," Dan Gray, the former British Special Air Service officer, said with a smile. He couldn"t let this pa.s.s. "Don"t confuse that salt.w.a.ter-logged brain of yours with international borders. It"smuch too much for a fat frogman to absorb."
"SEAL, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" the Mississippi-born Ike told him for about the one millionth time. "SEAL! You tea-drinkin" limey priss-pot. And I"ve lost fifteen pounds, thank you anyway." He did his best to ignore Dan"s chuckling and said, "Ben, this idea sucks! We"re goin" to be spread all over the d.a.m.n map!" He shook his head. "But if we don"t do it, that bunch of punks and thugs stand a pretty good chance of boggin" us down for months." He held up a finger. "But... gettin" supplies to you is goin" to be tough, and where in the h.e.l.l are the pathfinders goin" to set up the DZ?"
Ben pointed to a map. "Here, here, and here."
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William W. Johnstone Ike shook his head. "It"s goin" to be tight."
"Not with the type of chutes we"ll be using. Relax, Ike. You"ve jumped into tighter places."
"Ben," Ike persisted. "Those were quick in and outs. s.n.a.t.c.h-and-grab ops. The weather can turn s.h.i.tty over there in a matter of minutes and lock you people in. And," he added with enough ice in his voice to match the climate outside the room, "we both were much younger back then."
"I"ll be landing on a nice, soft field of snow," Ben said with a smile.
"Let"s stop bickering. It"s settled." He turned to Thermopolis. "Therm, logistics?"
"Are you kidding?" the hippie-turned-warrior said. "There is already snow between here and there that"s a.s.s-deep to a giraffe. You won"t have tanks. You won"t have heavy artillery. The list of what we can"t immediately get to you is longer than a child"s Christmas list. You will have to seize and clear Cointrin Airport the very first thing. And if the weather turns lousy, you just may be cut off for days."
"Swiss Resistance people are going to meet us," Ben said. "Up here," he pointed to the map, "we have German Resistance groups ready to start blocking roads. Down here, Italian Resistance groups are in place and ready to go. It"s a piece of cake." He eye-balled the group. "And it"s settled," Ben ended the discussion.
Ben and his 1 Batt, Jackie Malone and her 12 Batt, Danjou and his 7 Batt, Dan and the 3 Batt, Buddy and his 8 Batt special ops group, and West and his 4 Batt would be jumping into and around Geneva.
Ike, Pat O"Shea, Tina, Rebet, Raul, and Nick would 217.
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concentrate on clearing out Paris proper. Rene Seaux and his resistance people would be with Ike"s command.
Georgi, Greenwalt, Jim Peters, Buck Taylor, Mike Post, and Paul Harrison would be out in the French countryside, after the dregs of Duffy"s armyof punks. They would start north and south of Paris and work east, toward Ben"s position, working in a wedge-shaped march, with the point aimed at Geneva.
"Therm," Ben added, "Emil will stay with you. I don"t want to have to put up with him on this op."
"Thank you so very much, Ben."
"You"re welcome. Let"s get this circus moving."
The steel wall of secrecy came down with a bang. The press knew something was up, they just didn"t know what. And those in the know weren"t talking.
Ben had long held the opinion that no military campaign could be completely successful as long as the press was in any way involved; His philosophy was to win the war first and then invite the press to visit.
Ben was of the opinion that for years the majority of America"s press had hated the military and would stop at nothing to criticize, belittle, and nitpick anything the military did. And so far the majority of the press had done nothing to lessen that opinion.
The head of meteorology had some good news. "The way it looks now, we feel you"re going to have about three days of excellent weather, General. The next two days will show a gradual deterioration, then snow."
Ben told the batt corns who were jumping in with him, "One day to take the airport, two days to gather 218.
William W. Johnstone the air-dropped supplies, two days to get the runways in shape." He smiled at Thermopolis. "Would you like to jump in with us, Therm?"
"No, I most certainly would not!" Therm said quickly. "But thank you so very much for the invitation."
Therm beat it out of the ready room and back to his own operations building. Throwing his body out of a perfectly good airplane held absolutely no appeal for Thermopolis.
"We don"t have enough planes to drop five full battalions in at once,"
Ben was told. "Not with supply drops as well. We can drop two battalions in with supplies, then two more that afternoon, then two more the next day. Sorry, General."
Ben had already figured that out. There was nothing he could do about it. "My 1 Batt and Dan"s 3 Batt will go in first, followed that afternoon by Buddy"s special ops group and West"s 4 Batt. At dawn the next morning, Danjou"s 7 Batt and Jackie"s 12 Batt will come in. The pathfinders are in place. They HALOed in. (High Alt.i.tude, Low Opening.) They"ll smoke the DZ. We go in tomorrow morning. That"s it."
What press remained had gathered at both Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports. Ben and his people loaded up without a word and took off. At Ben"s instruction, the pilots headed due north and then cut toward Geneva. Helicopters were originally planned to be used to land troops,but much to the surprise of the weather 219.
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prognosticators, the weather turned so bad the choppers were all but useless.
"So much for modern science," Jersey muttered, sitting next to Ben in the plane.
"The weather around Geneva is good," Ben told her. "Cold, but ideal for jumping."
"Wonderful," Jersey replied with a total lack of enthusiasm. Jersey had never developed Ben"s love of jumping.
Ben laughed at her and stood up, walkings-waddling, with all the equipment he was carrying-to the rear door. It was not a long flight, and he was going to act as jumpmaster. He would be the last one out of the big transport.
Ben sat down and waited for the crew chiefs signal.
Duffy Williams sat and stared at the message just handed him. Ben Raines and about six or seven battalions were in the process of leaving the Paris area by transport plane. The spy had said the Rebels walked funny; looked like they were loaded down with so much gear they were bowlegged.
Duffy, an ex-paratrooper, knew exactly what that meant. Airborne troops had to carry so much gear they appeared to be bowlegged under all the weight. That"s where the term straightkg came from. Any nonjumper was sometimes sarcastically referred to by paratroopers as a straight-leg, or leg.
So the Eagle himself was leading an airborne drop, Duffy mused. But where? The spy said all the planes headed north. North? Were the Rebels going to drop 220.
into Belgium? That had to be it. Couldn"t mean anything else. Good. His plan was working.
The Judge in Geneva looked at the message just handed him by a runner from communications. Rebel paratroopers leaving Paris and heading north.
North? That had to mean the Rebels had chosen to invade Brussels. Good.
That could only mean the Rebels were not going to attack Switzerland until spring. That gave his people several more months to prepare for the invasion.
The Judge looked over at the screaming, half-maddened child he"d been brought for lunch. A nice fat child. He smiled and reached for his knife.
Ben received the signal from the crew chief. One minute to red light.
"Stand up!" he shouted.
The Rebels laboriously rose to their boots.
"Check equipment!"Equipment checked. The rear gate lowered and a blast of frigid air swirled around the jumpers.
"Hook up!" Ben shouted.
The sticks on either side of the plane hooked their static lines to the wire.
"Hey, boss!" Jersey shouted. "I forgot how to yodel. Do I get to stay in the plane?"
Ben grinned at her, his eyes on the lights, waiting for the green. "Keep your feet together when you hit!" Ben shouted. "I don"t want any cracked spines." It was an unnecessary command from an old paratrooper, for 221.
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the chutes they were using allowed the jumpers to land easily, unlike the old models that left raspberries on the shoulders and sometimes promised a very hard landing.
The green light popped on.
"Go! Go! Go!" Ben shouted, and the lines shuffled forward toward the gaping rear of the plane.
Static lines stretched tight and the chutes popped, the grunting of the jumpers at the opening shock lost in the cold air and the roaring of engines. Ben jumped into nothing, legs together, knees slightly bent, arms folded.
The few creepies in the city of Geneva who were at street level could but stand and stare in disbelief at the hundreds of chutes that floated down to the ground- Rebels and equipment. By the time they recovered from their shock, several hundred Rebels were running through the snow toward the airport runways and terminal buildings.
Jersey spilled too much air and landed wrong, the chute collapsing all over her. "s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t!" she hollered, her voice m.u.f.fled under all the panels. "I hate jumpin" out of airplanes."
Beth ran over to her and slashed at the lines with a jump knife, freeing the diminutive bodyguard. "Get me outta here, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" Jersey shouted.
Ben landed with a grunt just a few yards away from the cussing, hollering, kicking, and flailing Jersey . . . and laughing Beth. He grabbed up his equipment bag, uncorked his .223 CAR-he had opted for the lighter weapon because of its ease of handling-and ran over 222.
William W. Johnstone to Beth and Jersey just as Jersey was struggling to her boots.
"Let"s go, short-stuff!" Ben shouted, and took off for the airport, his team right behind him.Dan and his people had landed south of the city, the River Rhone between Ben and his group.
The first Rebels had jumped in with only light machine guns, a few mortars, and three days of rations. The heavier .50"s and other gear would be coming in about fifteen minutes behind them. Teams of Rebels would be jumping in just seconds behind the equipment, to unpack and set up. It was a dangerous drop, and Ben knew it, but it had to be done.
The airport was three miles from the city. It was going to be dicey.
Very dicey.
"They"re down!" The word was shouted to Ike. "Looks like everyone made it in okay."
"It was a complete surprise." Another shout brought a smile to Ike"s lips.
But the smile quickly faded. "Estimates say there are probably eight to ten thousand creeps in and around that city," he said to no one in particular. "It"s goin" be chancy as h.e.l.l until Buddy and West get on the ground."
"I hope this doesn"t turn out to be one town too far," Tina said, a grim expression on her beautiful face, after looking at a map and silently counting the miles between Paris and Geneva.
"Yeah," was all Ike said in reply.
223.
223.
Cooper was carrying a SAW (squad automatic weapon). A 5.56-mm machine gun with an effective range of about 1200 meters. The SAW utilized a 200-round magazine, and Cooper was carrying two more of those. Corrie was carrying another mag for the SAW, and Jersey and Ben each carried a full mag for the weapon. The Rebels were literally staggering under the weight of weapons and ammo.
Cooper bi-podded the SAW and fell down in the snow as a line of creeps ran toward them. The line crumpled and went down under the hail of 5.56 lead, and the snow turned technicolor. Cooper was on his feet and running before the death kicks stopped.
Bloop tubes fitted under the barrels of M-16"s blooped out their 40-mm grenades, and more lines of creepies went down as the Rebels clawed their way toward the tarmac. The Rebels ran through the b.l.o.o.d.y snow.
Across the river Dan and his 3 Batt were on the edge of town and setting up a holding position. The transport planes were hammering their way back to Paris, where Buddy and West and their batts were impatiently waiting on the tarmac.
By now the press knew a big op was in progress, but they could not get a word out of anybody. They finally decided it had to be Brussels and reported it. Then they saw the transports returning from the east and started cussing. Suddenly P-51E"s screamed overhead, traveling at morethan 500 mph, heading east, carrying a tremendous payload.
224.
"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" Paul Carson yelled. Kathy Bonham shrugged her shoulders. "Typical Ben Raines," she said.
The newly built and highly modified Mustangs began taking out the bridges that crossed the Rhone River. They took out every bridge except the double span that connected Place Bel-Air with Quai des Bergues. Then a squadron banked and came in low over the airport, the .50-caliber guns yammering and making a big b.l.o.o.d.y mess of the creepies trying to cross the runways to stop Ben"s 1 Batt. The pilots did not use their cannon for fear of further damaging the runaways. As it stood now, it was going to be a ma.s.sive undertaking for the thin ranks of Rebels to clear away all the debris now littering the runways ... in the time Ben had alloted for them to work.
These were the traditional Night People, hooded and robed, and the pilots had no difficulty in telling the good guys from the bad guys. And as Ben quickly found out, they shared one other thing with their brothers and sisters in cannibalism: They stank like buzzard puke.
Ben ran into a building on the outer edge of the airport, his team right behind him, and came face to face with several creepies. He lifted his CAR and pulled the trigger back and held it, letting the .223 slugs howl and spit. Jersey stepped up and added her M-16, as did Beth with her CAR. The creepies flopped on the dirty floor and died.
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"Phew!" Beth said, wrinkling her nose. "Some things never change, do they?"