To Sail a Darkling Sea - eARC (24 page)

“And there speaketh a Marine Gunny,” Fontana said, laughing. “One shot, one kill or it’s a no-go.”

“And the problem with that is?” Sands asked.

“Barbie guns,” Faith said. “Unless you get a head shot, you’re not going to knock down a zombie with a Barbie gun, Gunny, one shot, one kill, even in the heart. They just squirt more. Sometimes I gotta use two or three with my Haji. And I don’t know when we’re going to be fighting at long range. Even when we were clearing the towns we were mostly fighting at under a hundred yards. Okay, so we’re supposed to clear Gitmo. There might be some places where we are going to fire at over a hundred yards, there. I dunno. But we’ve got the MGs for that, right? Mostly we’re going to be doing what we’ve been doing for a long time. I mean, what are we going to clear on the mainland, if we ever get there?”

“You think we’ll clear on the mainland?” Wilkes asked. “That will be… I mean, we’re going to get
swarmed
.”

“Da doesn’t say what his plan is beyond Gitmo,” Faith said. “But his goal is clearing the US and getting clearance started on places like Europe and Asia. How he’s going to do it, I dunno. And he won’t say. Except that he knows there’s not enough bullets in the
world
so it won’t be bang-bang shoot a gazillion zombies. That’s what he said when I asked him are we going to just shoot ’em up. ‘Not enough bullets in the world. Cross that bridge when we come to it.’ ”

“Maybe the mechanicals?” Fontana said.

“I could see that for port cities,” Wilkes said. “Anybody know how that’s going?”

“According to Seawolf, you don’t want to sail into the south harbor,” Volpe said. “Three mechanicals and the sharks are rolling to the surface with full bellies and even the seagulls are just sitting on the bodies.”

“That’s gotta suck,” Jan said.

“And they’re fabbing more on the
Grace
right now,” Volpe said. “You can see ’em working on them.”

“About the clearance and accuracy issue?” Wilkes said.

“Whatever Da uses, there’s going to be stuff to be cleared. Buildings. Sky scrapers… ”

“I just sort of winced at clearing a skyscraper,” Jan said. “Then I realized that one of these damned supermax is just one on its side.”

“Which is why you
should
wince,” Fontana said. “Cause there’s a lot more skyscrapers in the world than supermax cruise ships.”

“Okay, now I’m getting a long-range picture,” Wilkes said, shaking his head. “Jesus. Clearing New York.”

“Fuck,” Jan said, closing his eyes and bowing his head. “Fuck a freaking duck. We’re gonna need
a lot
of Marines. These things are seriously a battalion objective. How many batts to clear New York?”

“Well, be that as it may, Miss Faith,” the Gunny said. “They had damned well be able to
shoot
. That’s a damned requirement to be a Marine. You gotta be able put the bullets on target. Whatever kind of bullets you’re using.”

“Agreed, Gunny,” Faith said. “But I’m just wondering if concentrating on five hundred and a thousand yards is a good idea. I mean… Sophia’s a hell of a shot with a long rifle. Did you know that?”

“No,” Wilkes said, leaning back.

“She took long distance competitions in her age group back home,” Faith said. “But give her twenty zombies coming at her, she’ll nail five. Maybe three. I’ll nail fifteen. I took the tac competitions in my age group. Including, yeah, zombie tac comps. You know
I
own a Barbie gun? Well, my Da owned it but it was mine. Sweet trick-out with an Aimpoint and hundred round Beta C. Used to smoke zombie comps which are all head shots at under fifty yards. On the other hand, those zombies moved slow and they weren’t shoving into each other and moving their heads back and forth. And they’d fall down go boom with one shot. I’ve seen infected keep coming after you shot them in the
head
with a Barbie gun.”

“Where is it?” Fontana asked.

“Back home in the safe,” Faith said. “We loaded out what we needed, not what we had. Some fucker probably broke into it, too. People knew we were preppers. Point is… I can see where you’re going, Gunny. You want Marines to be accurate. I want Marines to be able to put down zombies in compartments and corridors, fast and accurate.”

“Unlike certain pilots,” Lieutenant Volpe said, grinning.

“Okay, this time
I’m
going to make the point,” Wilkes said, shaking his head and grinning. “Yeah,
pilot
, okay? Gimme a Seacobra and a 20 and I’ll show you who’s the boss, Mike.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Pilot, sir,” Volpe said, saluting.

“I wonder if that’s the plan?” Fontana said.

“What?” Faith said.

“Okay, your ‘Da’ has hinted that he needed a pilot,” Fontana said. “In fact, remember when we were clearing the
Iwo
and he was sort of pissed that there were no survivors in the pilot’s quarters.”

“Didn’t need to be reminded of that, Tom,” Wilkes said. “Those were my friends.”

“Sorry, sir,” Fontana said. “But he’s been practically biting his nails for pilots. Helo pilots. So maybe… hover a helo then blow them away with 20 when they cluster?”

“Oh, please, God, yes,” Wilkes said. “If there is a loving God, yes.”

“Not enough 20 in a LHD,” the Gunny said. “Not even in a pre-po. Not for the whole mainland.”

“Finding a pre-po would be sweet,” Volpe said.

“Pre-po?” Faith said.

“Pre-positioned support ship,” Fontana said. “Just a big roll-on roll-off freighter, sort of like a ferry, that’s filled with all sorts of goodies.”

“All the material support needed for a Marine Expeditionary Unit and thirty days of combat,” Wilkes said.

“Sweet is right,” Faith said. “Where do we get one of those?”

“Norfolk,” Sands said. “There was one tied alongside and there was no plan to punch it. Or Blount Island where the MPF ships are unloaded and reloaded. The truth is, we got more ammo and supplies on the
Iwo
than we got Marines to use it.”

“Which gets back to shoot training,” Faith said. “So, sure, you train them on accuracy. But to be a boarding guy, you need people who can put lots of rounds on target fast and accurate. At mostly short ranges. That’s different than ‘did you hit the center of the black.’ ”

“There’s more to it than that,” Jan said. “We had some training in boarding and clearance. Fair amount. But we’d need more. A lot more. In gear so they get used to the weight.”

“In weighted gear,” Gunny Sands growled. “
Over
weighted gear. The more you sweat, the less you bleed.”

“Gunny, we have so got to get you laid,” Volpe said. He grinned then winced and looked at Faith.

“Hey, don’t look at
me
!” Faith said, holding up her hands. “Hello? Thirteen?”

“I think he didn’t want you to be offended,” Fontana said.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve been hanging out with guys,” Faith said, shrugging. “Which was fine. We played ball. I’d threaten to kiss them and they’d run like mad. Then, all of a sudden, all they can talk about is p… girls. It was, like, what? When did
that
happen? So I’m used to it. No issues. If you say anything I don’t like, I’ll start talking about what happens when you forget to bring along pads. It’s really God awful, you know… ?”

“Okay, okay,” Volpe said, holding up his hands. “We surrender.”

“Glad we got that out of the way,” the Gunny said. “And for your information, Lieutenant, I’m married,” he said, holding up his wedding ring. “And I don’t fool around on deployment.”

“Sorry, Gunny,” Volpe said as everyone very carefully did not look around. All the dependents were back at Lejeune. Which was zombie city. “I forgot.”

“No problem,” Gunny Sands said. “Just looking forward to the float being done with. Wanna get home to my cold-beer.”

CHAPTER 17

“The Royal Netherlands Liner P/V
Saga of Amsterdam
is officially clear,” Captain Wilkes said. “Two hundred and fifty-six survivors, mostly crew and, as usual, mostly associated with food services or housekeeping.”

“Can we use them?” Steve asked, looking at Isham.

“Nine engineering or maintenance personnel,” Isham said. “They’re all onboard with working in those areas. Three passengers with significant boating or yachting experience who are in good enough mental condition to take a small boat. One is a master mariner. I’ve told her we’re going to save her for something that needs her skill. The rest are the usual odds and sods. Some of them are still getting their heads together but I figure most of them will pitch in. Nine that are pretty much round the bend. That’s starting to be a problem. We’ve got forty people in that sort of condition and there’s not much we can do with them except lock ’em in a cabin. Which freaks them the fuck out. The support people are mostly Indonesian. Some of them are already working in cleaning crews finishing up on the
Boadicea
and the couple of boats we’ve pulled in and hadn’t cleaned up.”

“We’ll take the next one down the line,” Steve said. “Did you intentionally finish clearing just in time for the birthday of the Marine Corps, Captain?”

“Let’s say it put a little relish in the hotdog, sir,” Wilkes said, grinning. “I told the guys I couldn’t promise them a day off if they finished by the ninth but I could try to swing it.”

“Do you want it off the day of or the day after?” Steve asked.

“Short day doing initial reconnaissance on the Tenth, sir,” Wilkes said. “Stop operations at sixteen-thirty. Then the day after off.”

“I can live with that,” Steve said.

“We believe we can increase the pace on the next one, sir,” Wilkes said. “If we can get some logistics support.”

“Define,” Steve said.

“Lieutenant?” Wilkes said, turning to Faith.

“The guys can carry their assault packs on clearance, sir,” Faith said. “But they clock out on rounds, anyway. We’re averaging about nine rounds per infected. We need to get that down, but that’s where we’re at. That means that the assault pack and basic load only allows sixty kills.”

“I hadn’t done that math,” Steve said, nodding.

“Nine rounds is really phenomenal, sir,” Wilkes pointed out. “The average in Iraq was six
thousand
rounds per stepped on kill.”

“Six thousand?” Isham said. “You have got to be joking!”

“It was
sixty
thousand in the Korean War,” Steve said. “Lots of use of machine guns. Different situation. So, only sixty infected per Marine per reasonable load. And the answer is?”

“We have spare magazines, sir,” Faith said. “We pretty much brought every mag we could find on the
Iwo
. If we could get support in having spares loaded and moved forward, the Marines wouldn’t have to go all the way back to the entry area then reload their mags. The trip sometimes takes ten minutes and reloads take up to thirty. That’s nearly an hour all around. They’re not bitching about that, they just sort of think that’s what you do. We discussed this with the Gunny and he thinks we’re coddling them, but it would just make clearance more efficient.”

“Loading and moving are two different things,” Steve said. “I can see finding people to load… Jack?”

“That we can find people for,” Isham said, cautiously. “Carrying it through the ship? That’s going to be tougher.”

“My gunners would do it,” Lieutenant Chen said. “My shooters are really chomping at the bit.”

“I’ve got an alternate, there, I was going to bring up,” Steve said. “We’ve got weapons. Put out the usual recruiting call. See how many people we can scrounge up. Put some sort of bennie on it. If we can do it, we’ll do it. At the very least, we’ll get the mags loaded which is a big part of the time. Okay, next point.

“Littoral Clearance Divisions one and two: Your boats, as you just noted, are being under utilized in this operation. We really don’t need the gunboats to hold the pier since it’s blocked and we’re detached from it, anyway. So I’m going to send you out on light town clearance, again. But sans Marines. You’ll have to decide if you want to send people ashore or not. Overall command will be Lieutenant Chen. Chen: One of your gunners is a former soldier, isn’t he?”

“Gunner’s Mate Mcgarity, sir,” Chen said.

“Is he familiar with medium machine guns?” Steve asked. “I don’t think that if you go ashore you should be under gunned.”

“Landings are sort of a Marine thing, sir,” Captain Wilkes said.

“The majority of landing parties, historically, were Navy, Captain,” Steve said. “The Marine Corps did not really start to study large-scale over-beach landings until the 1930s. Most of the force that took Tripoli were Navy sailors. And if I’ve got a choice of Marines clearing small towns and sailors fighting through the bowels of a ship or vice versa, guess which way I’m going to decide?”

“Point, sir,” Wilkes said. “No offense.”

“I’d thought about it, Captain,” Steve said, waving. “And Mcgarity, at least, is really a soldier.”

“Tanker, sir,” Lieutenant Chen pointed out. “But he trained on foot patrolling for a deployment to Afghanistan. And some of the other gunners are more than willing. They sort of enjoyed going ashore in La Puntilla and La Playa. Some stayed onboard, of course. Could I make joining the teams voluntary?”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with discipline,” Steve said. “Just cruise down the coast and clear the towns as you come to them and they look good. I hope I don’t have to warn you to watch the rocks and shoals. Bring spare prize crews with you who can pick up any useful looking boats. I want a lot of boats for the Atlantic crossing. The more boats we have, the more footprint we have for finding survivors at sea. Clear the towns if you think it’s worthwhile.”

“Yes, sir,” Chen said.

“You’re going to have to mostly resupply on your own,” Steve said. “If you run low on ammo, we can run some down to you. But other than that, independent command. Run with it.”

“Yes, sir,” Chen said.

“Jack, we’ve got more gunboats in preparation, right?” Steve said.

“Two more are undergoing renovation right now,” Isham said. “And we’ve got four yachts that are ready for sea. We’re running low on people who know how to run them.”

“Lieutenant Kuzma,” Steve said. “Start a class on basic boat operation. No more than three days. If they can drive it without hitting the sides of the harbor, use the radio more or less and put out a fire, they’re good.”

“You’re serious?” Kuzma said, wincing. “For an Atlantic crossing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said. “And the big class is on how to unrep at sea.”

“Oh, God, sir,” Chen said, covering his face with his hands.

“One boat can cover, at most, a ten mile radius for search and rescue,” Steve said, seriously. “Counting the small yachts we have, what, fourteen?”

“Yeah,” Isham said.

“That’s, only a two-hundred-eighty-mile footprint,” Steve said. “A hundred and forty boats gives us a twenty-eight-
hundred
-mile footprint.”

“That is a point,” Kuzma said. “And a lot more ships that have to be cleared.”

“We’ll take the already experienced people and put them in a follow-on squadron or squadrons,” Steve said. “With Marine boarding parties and prize and salvage crews. See if we can find another boat like the
Pit Stop
to shuttle supplies forward to the main flotilla.”

“You know the sort of people who will sign up for that are the sort of people we need for everything else, right?” Isham said, shaking his head. “We only have so many people.”

“They have to have done a scut job, first,” Steve said. “Cleaning up gear, cleaning compartments, what have you. But if they can read a map, use a radio and sort of not hit stuff, we need the boats.”

“And… ” Isham said. “Steve, look, I’m up to my eyeballs in work already. You want to bump up the number of small boats? I mean times ten? You got any clue how much logistics that is?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Need a hand?”

“Oh, hell, yeah!” Isham said. “You see my enormous staff, right?”

“First of all, if you’ve got numbers to crunch, toss it to the boats,” Steve said. “By which I mean the subs. And speaking of looking for craft, that’s a group that’s going to start being more actively involved. At a certain level, if it’s not in an AO we can effect, I’d rather just not know. But they’ll sweep one wing of the movement. They’ve got sonar, radar and people who will actually maintain a watch. They can’t interact but they can spot. One flotilla of fast response boats with them.”

“Suggestion, sir,” Chen said.

“Always,” Steve said. “Please.”

“Cigarette boats,” Chen said. “Based around one of the megayachts. Something needs to be cleared, the teams head out on those.”

“They use gas, right?” Isham said.

“Yes,” Chen said.

“So now I gotta not only find gas, but have a way to carry it,” Isham said. “Thanks, Zack.”

“Glad to be a buddy, Jack,” Isham said, grinning. “You can pump the diesel out of one of the tanks on the megas.”

“They’ve got a spare gas tank, anyway,” Wilkes said. “And an av gas tank. Speaking of which, you can spot stuff really well with a helo. Hinta, hinta, Captain.”

“Qualified on a Lynx?” Steve asked.

“Does it have a Dash one, sir?” Wilkes said.

“Are your airframe mechanics qualified on getting it up and running?” Steve asked. “We got parts? Thing’s been sitting as deck cargo in storms for six months, Captain.”

“Point, sir,” Wilkes said, shrugging.

“We’ll put that on the to-do list on the crossing,” Steve said. “At least get it surveyed. If it’s working, do you think it would make an okay trainer?”

“Want to learn to fly a chopper, sir?” Wilkes said.

“We’re going to need a buttload of chopper pilots at some point, Captain,” Steve said. “And airframe mechanics and all the rest. After we clear Gitmo, you’ll definitely be turning in the rifle to start working on that program. But that’s for later. Lieutenant Chen’s concept has merit. So, Chen, look for fast ocean going boats with range as well. And, yes, some source of gasoline for them.”

“Tools, parts, fittings… ” Isham said. “Seriously, Captain, I’m going to need some help, here.”

“I’ll find you some,” Steve said.

“I could really use… ” He paused and frowned and looked at Faith for a second. “You know, Zumwald is an asshole and I know he’s on your shit list. But he’s really underutilized.”

“I kind of like that he’s in charge of cleaning our gear,” Faith said. “Serve him right. Sir.”

“Your point is worth considering,” Steve said. “Okay, Marine Corps Ball, continue clearance on Sierra Two. USCG personnel to shift to classes on small boat operations for available personnel. LitClear to go, well, LitClear and collect said vessels. Work on an expansion plan for an unknown number of small boats. Chen, you’ve got about ten days, tops. All clearance to be complete by last week of November. We pull out November 20th. All clear?”

“Got it, sir,” Isham said. “And get me some more staff.”

“I’ll work on that,” Steve said.