To Sail a Darkling Sea

CHAPTER 24

“Oh,” Sophia croaked, holding her hands over her ears to blot out the sound of the guns. “I have got to either give up drinking or give up early mornings.”

The sun was just rising over the marina of Perto De Gulmar and it was another fine morning in the Canary Islands. Seabirds squawked over the dead bodies of infected as fish jumped to avoid the sharks that were swarming to the flowing blood.

“More water, ma’am,” Sergeant Major Barney said. “When is the rest of the team arriving for the operations meeting, ma’am?”

“After they finish firing and secure, Sergeant Major,” Sophia said. She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced again. “And hopefully after the Tylenol kicks in.”

The chosen target zone was a small beach outside the entrance to the marina. The guns had finished off the infected on the beach and the Golden Guppy raised its three anchors and pulled out to sea. There was another group of infected at the end of the seawall protecting the marina. The problem was, if it fired from its current location, it would be firing into the marina and probably hit some of their target vessels. It moved out to sea, into the rolling combers, and prepared to engage again. This time, it was doing so without anchoring.

The fire was much less on target, with rounds going over the zombies as well as below. The problem with “below” was the large rocks of the jetty. They had various angles to them and tracers went everywhere, including towards the anchored boats.

“Guppy, Division. Check fire, check fire, check fire. Try it again, anchored.”

“I told ’em that wouldn’t work,” Sophia muttered, picking up the radio. “Catenary is a bitch. And we don’t have all day. Division, Senorita, over.”

“Senorita, Division.”

“Recommend pull into the marina entrance, fire from there. Very little wave action, over.”

“The tide is going in, Senorita. They’d have to maintain position to fire against the flow, over.”

“Permission to approach for close rifle fire. There are only ten or fifteen. And I can maintain position against the tide. Over.”

“Roger, stand by. Guppy, clear and lock all weapons and stand off. Senorita approaching for close rifle fire. Confirm.”

“Division, Guppy. We can get this, over.”

“Wasn’t a request, Guppy. Confirm.”

“Clear and lock all weapons then stand off, over.”

“Roger. Division out.”

“And so we’re moving,” Sophia said, raising the anchor. “Sergeant Major, I assume you can still fire a rifle?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Sergeant Major said. “And I even was given an opportunity to zero.”

“I’m going to back in,” Sophia said, turning the boat around. “Get Olga and you and she fire ’em up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Sergeant Major said.

* * *

There was a nasty little eddy at the entrance caused by a combination of the wave action and a small metal wall that was probably to prevent silting. But Sophia finally found a stable point.

“Okay, this is as good as you’re going to get,” she shouted.

* * *

“We may have to discuss uniform at some point,” Sergeant Major Barney said.

Olga had turned out in shorts and a bikini top with her LBE thrown over.

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” Olga said.

“How do you normally do this?” he asked.

“The only time I fired from the boat I was up on the flying bridge,” Olga said. “And I didn’t hit many. We were anchored but the boat was rocking.”

“There is a technique for that,” the sergeant major said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t a Marine and I’ve never studied it. We’ll use the deck up front. What’s it called?”

“The sundeck, Sergeant Major.”

The sergeant major followed her up to the sundeck, trying not to pay too much attention to the butt and legs.

“Prone position,” he said, getting down creakily. It had been a bit since he’d done this and he mentally made the note that he was going to have to figure out how they were going to engage in physical training. Not to mention general discipline and uniform standards. “Slow, aimed, fire. We have time.”

“Yes, Sergeant Major.”

“Go ahead and load then open fire,” the Sergeant Major said. He wanted to observe her technique.

“Open fire, aye, Sergeant Major,” Olga said. She charged the weapon then took careful aim. There was a crack and one of the infected stumbled. It didn’t go down, though, so she fired again. That time it went down.

“Bloody five five six,” the Sergeant Major muttered.

“Lieutenant Smith, Faith that is, calls these things Barbie guns,” Olga said, taking another shot.

The Sergeant Major looked through the Aimpoint scope and considered his shots. He knew he shouldn’t do it, but he went for a headshot. Fortunately, he hit.

“Very nice,” Olga said. “I’m not quite that good.”

“Luck,” Barney said. “And about twenty-four years experience.”

He picked out another that wasn’t moving much and dropped it with another head shot. That seemed to be working, the range was no more than forty meters and Lieutenant Smith was keeping the boat comfortably steady. He fired again.

“Okay, I know I hit that one in the bloody head,” he said, just as the infected dropped.

“Barbie guns,” Olga said. She was just using two or three rounds in the body to drop hers.

“They shouldn’t be able to survive being shot in the bloody head,” Barney said. “Not even for a few seconds.”

In less than ten minutes from when the boat had entered the marina entrance, all the infected were down. More than half of them from headshots from the sergeant major.

“Position is clear, ma’am,” the Sergeant Major called.

“Roger, Sergeant Major,” Sophia said. “I’m going to move into the turning area for the conference. Might as well be comfortable.”

* * *

“We still have infected leaking into the area,” Lieutenant Chen said. “But the presence is down. Sergeant Major, aware that this is your first such operation, would you prefer to suggest an action plan or have Lieutenant Smith present hers?”

“I’d rather the Lieutenant present hers, sir,” Sergeant Major Barney said. “I do have thoughts but it is my first time on such an operation and I would like to have the Lieutenant’s insights.”

“Sophia?” Chen said.

“The primary purpose of this mission is the recovery of the ocean capable yachts,” Sophia said. “Most of those are tied up along the breakwater. As such, I would suggest putting in a primary security team at the base of the breakwater, probably with a 240 and some rifle support, then go through and clear and remove any infected from the yachts. If we place a gunboat alongside one of the yachts, oriented to fire parallel to the breakwater, they can support if there is a heavy response by infected. If there are still too many, have inflatables in place to support the retreat of the security team. I would recommend the Sergeant Major primarily be with that machine-gun and rifle security team. That’s the point that is most likely to have major infected response and Anarchy was our only person fully qualified with the 240. He trained Rusty on it so I’d suggest Rusty as the gunner. I’d suggest the Guppy as the support boat with the Chief onboard to maintain control of the fire from the gunboat. Leave all the Guppy’s gunners aboard, the ground team taken from the Wet Debt and the other boats with security. For the defense team I suggest use most of the Wet Debt crew. For the clearance team… Olga and I can handle that.”

“Sergeant Major?” Lieutenant Chen said. “Comments?”

“I think the overall plan is good, sir,” the Sergeant Major said. “However, the Lieutenant should not be involved in active clearance with respect, ma’am.”

“Light clearance like this isn’t hard, Sergeant Major,” Sophia said. “But it is adrenaline pumping. And when you have adrenaline pumping, you get ADs. It takes a steady nerve. Olga, despite her apparent flightiness, is pretty steady. I’ve done it plenty of times. Rusty has done it some. The rest of them aren’t experienced at it.”

“Choose someone else, Lieutenant,” Lieutenant Chen said.

“Yu?” Sophia said. Then: “To be clear, Seaman Recruit Leo Yu from your boat, sir.”

“Yu is a good steady hand,” Chen said, nodding.

“Better him than Steinholtz, that’s for sure,” Sophia said.

“Two Seaman Recruits,” the Sergeant Major said, frowning.

“What we tend to have is Seaman Recruits, Sergeant Major,” Lieutenant Chen pointed out. “And they haven’t been through recruit training. There hasn’t been time. For an example, our schedule calls for cutting out the vessels, clearing this town, recovering survivors and making it to the next town by no more than twenty-three hundred hours, local, so as to start the next party and attract the infected. And so on and so forth.”

“You have to have some time for training, sir,” the Sergeant Major said.

“Tell that to the Commodore, Sergeant Major,” Chen said. “Who, in fact, agrees. And also notes that if we’d taken time for training, we might never have found you. Or me. Or any of the security specialists, seamen, etcetera. We’re not going to be able to clear the entire Canary Islands before we leave. We know there are more liners tied up alongside in This more or less is training.”

“Understood, sir,” the Sergeant Major said, frowning. “Well, then, we’ll have to hope for the best and plan for the worst I suppose, sir.”

“That’s the spirit, Sergeant Major,” Sophia said, smiling tightly. “What’s the worst that could happen? A zombie apocalypse?”

* * *

“Where do you want to land?”

The inflatable was crewed by another bloody twelve-year-old. And a nervous one at that. Everyone was nervous which wasn’t enjoyable for Sergeant Major Barney. Nervous troops did tend to AD. He had a vision of one of these bloody ponzers shooting out one of the bloody pontoons and them all going in the drink. Because there were, yes, sharks. They seemed to be following the bloody boat.

“On this end,” Barney said.

“Why here?” Steinholtz asked. “It’s a long damn walk down that pier.”

“Because I bloody well said ‘land here,’ Seaman Recruit!” Barney boomed. “Is that good enough for you, Seaman Recruit or would you like a bloody valentine with it?”

“Sure, sure,” Steinholtz said.

“Quit looking so nervous, you lot,” Barney said, shaking his head. “We’ve got a bloody damned gunboat backing us up, we’ve got a bloody Singer and so far there aren’t any bloody zombies to shoot. This isn’t taking down a Taliban stronghold. We’re picking up some yachts from a bloody marina. I won’t say this will be a walk in Hyde Park but take a bloody breath, follow orders and we’ll all come back heroes. Right? Right. Just pull the bloody boat up to the damned pier if you will, Coxswain!”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant Major,” the driver said.

“And would people quit calling the Chief and I ‘sir’?” the Sergeant Major said, shaking his head. “The Chief and I work for a living.”

“But… you call a Chief sir, Sergeant Major,” Yu said. “Don’t you?”

“What?” Barney said. “Since when?”

“Isn’t that like a Master Chief?” Yu said. “And the Master Chief in Halo always was called ‘sir.’ ”

“What?” the Sergeant Major said. “What the bloody hell is Halo?”

“The video game, Sergeant Major,” Olga said, clearly trying not to laugh.

“DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A BLOODY VIDEO GAME TO YOU, SEAMAN RECRUIT?”

“Well, now that you mention it… ” Olga said, trying to keep a straight face.

The sergeant major just held his hands to the sky and growled.

The yachts that were the target were tied to a narrow pier separated from the breakwater by a stretch of water about ten feet wide. There were bridges from the pier to the breakwater, which had a road on top of it, at regular intervals.

The Sergeant Major stepped ashore first and caught the tossed line from Olga. He held it in one hand as the group got out of the inflatable then tossed it back into the boat. This was only part of the “security team.” The rest were in the second inflatable with the Lieutenant.

“SR Zelenova on point,” Barney said. “Up to the first bridge then Zelenova and Yu break off and the rest up on the breakwater.”

They got to the first bridge and Olga continued down the pier followed by Steinholtz.

“Steinholtz,” Barney snapped. “Get up on the breakwater,” he said, pointing.

“By myself?” Steinholtz said.

“Oh, God Lord,” the Sergeant Major snapped. “We’re all bloody following you! That’s what point means you bloody poofter! Cross the bloody bridge! It’s not exactly the Rubicon!”

“What?” Steinholtz said.

“Just cross the bloody bridge! It’s not as if there are zombies! The road is bloody clear!”

“Actually, there are, Sergeant Major,” Olga said, pointing. A lone infected had finally found its way to the flock of seagulls feasting on the dead and was now loping down the breakwater. It had a ways to go to get to the group and was still better than two hundred meters away. “Well, one.”

“Can I shoot ’im?” Steinholtz said, racking a round into his weapon.

“Oh, let’s just wait here and let Steinholtz try to shoot the bloody zombie,” Sergeant Major Barney said, crossing his arms over his weapon. “Go ahead, Steinholtz. Try to shoot the bloody zombie. Why not? We’ve all day.”

Steinholtz raised his weapon and started firing. And firing. And firing.

The zombie had slowed. Not because it had been hit, but because it was emaciated and clearly out of energy. If it even noticed the group it wasn’t apparent. And it definitely didn’t notice the fire.

“Steinholtz,” the Sergeant Major said, pushing through the group and placing his hand on the weapon. “Before you run out of bullets, we’ll just cross the bridge, shall we?”

“But its… ” The infected was still more than a hundred meters away but he was clearly unhappy getting near it.

“Cross the bridge, Steinholtz,” Barney said, giving him a light push. “We’re going to have a demonstration of why one doesn’t attempt to fire from a rocking platform if one has a solid platform available.”

He got the reluctant former security guard to cross the bridge then got him down in the prone position on the dirt road of the breakwater. The zombie had closed to maybe seventy-five yards and was starting to speed up with fresh meat so close.

“Now, take a deep breath and shoot the zombie in the chest, Steinholtz,” Sergeant Major Barney said. “One round only.”

Steinholtz fired. And missed.

“Oh, good Lord. You missed that shot? Try it again. You’re jerking your trigger. Slow squeeze, Steinholtz… ”

This time the Seaman Recruit managed to hit the infected. The zombie was nearly dead from dehydration and malnutrition and it dropped with one round.

“I got it!” Steinholtz said.

“At under fifty yards with a gun capable of aimed fire at four hundred,” the Sergeant Major said. “We’re clearly going to have to work on marksmanship.”

“I’m better with a pistol,” Steinholtz said, starting to stand up.

“I did not give you permission to get up, Seaman Recruit Steinholtz,” Sergeant Major Barney said. “While you’re down there, you can give me twenty push-ups for your inability to follow the simplest orders. And a one and a two… ”