John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Aye, aye, sir,” Chen said, making a note.

“Senior and experienced personnel, such as we have, are to ensure that each gun has traverse limiters in place,” Hamilton said. “And ensure that the gunners understand those fire limits and why we have them. I do not want to have fifty-cal rounds dropping around my ears. Are we clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Chen said. “With your approval, I’ll distribute my senior people to the outlying forces to ensure that. I’d appreciate some assistance from Ma Deuce-experienced Marines for the main landing force. That way I can distribute out the chief and the sergeant major.”

“Agreed,” Hamilton said. “And the plan is approved with one slight modification.”

“Sir?” Chen said.

“ I’m picking the playlist,” Hamilton said.

“Staff Sergeant,” Faith stated, as they were leaving the final planning meeting. “Moment of your time in my office.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said.

Faith marched to her office, entered and sat down.

“The general plan, as briefed, is that the Marines, oorah, are to quarter here on the Grace Tan , oorah, until first call at 0400,” Faith said, her jaw clenched. “Thereafter we chow, assemble, final brief and perform landing after clearance by Navy heavy fire at dawn, oorah?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnard said, standing at parade rest.

“As you may have noticed there is a four-hour preinspection this afternoon on the prep schedule, oorah,” Faith said. “I inserted that preinspection in the op-plan. During that preinspection I will instruct you on my task, conditions and standards for combat preinspection. After that you and I will perform an after-inspection review and determine if this is a procedure, oorah, you find conforms to your views, oorah? Do you have any questions?”

“No, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Inspection begins at fifteen hundred,” Faith said. “We will not form the personnel. We shall, oorah, take each Marine one by one into the gear locker. This technique, oorah, is currently…” Faith paused and frowned. “There is no SOP, oorah. There should be an SOP. We will establish that SOP, oorah?”

“Roger, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Dismissed.”

“I’ve got a target,” Seaman Apprentice Rusty Bennett said nervously.

Rusty was used to shooting up zombies with the .50 caliber BMG affectionately referred to as the Ma Deuce. He’d even gotten pretty damned good, in his opinion, with the monstrous machine gun. He wasn’t worried about whether he could hit anything. What was making him nervous was all the Mickey Mouse. The new Marine colonel who was in charge was being a prick. He’d never even heard of a range limiter before and had to dig through all the parts and crap that had come with the gun to find it. And then he’d had to get the sergeant major, before he left, to show him how to hook it up.

“Sorry,” Rusty added. “I’ve got a target, sirs.”

“So I see,” Colonel Hamilton said as an infected trotted down the beach. It was hunched over as if it was sniffing for something. It was a young black male, nude as all the infected were, his lanky, twisted hair dangling down into his face so Hamilton wondered how he could even see. “Is the SOP to engage any target at will, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Commander Chen was nearly as nervous as Rusty. But he was better at hiding it.

“Infected are drawn to any sign of carrion, such as flocks of seagulls, sir,” Chen said. “Our SOP is to engage any infected that are in the target zone early and often. That begins the attraction process. And infected don’t seem to avoid the target zones. They cannot make the connection between loud gun noises and other infected dying. So, yes, sir, we engage if they are in the target basket, sir.”

“One last check,” Hamilton said.

“Uh, sir,” Rusty said, swinging his barrel towards the target. Just past it the barrel bumped up against the limiter. “It’s about to get off to the side.”

The infected was heading north on the beach and approaching the edge of the fire-limit zone.

“Then we shall wait for a better target,” Hamilton said. “For that matter…Do we know the current location of Division Five?”

The other four gunboat divisions had already left the rendezvous for their respective fire points. Division Five was going to be crossing the fire zone of Division One at some point. Admittedly, it was going to be nearly four miles away and on the other side of the island. OTOH, .50 BMG had a “general area of effect” range of…about four miles. Meaning if you had, say, a dozen .50 calibers firing at the right angle to drop their rounds into an area, they could, in fact, hole a boat at four miles. And probably sink it.

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “I can find out pretty quick.”

“Let’s hold off firing until everyone is in their proper place,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Something to add to the SOP for this. In fact, in the future, we probably just need to have all the boats on one side of the island.”

“Some of the islands I wonder if it would be an issue, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “Islands like Saba, the interior topography is going to make it nearly impossible for us to have rounds go over.”

“Point,” Hamilton said, looking at the lowlying atoll. “Anguilla, however, is not such a case. Wait until all the divisions are in place, do a final check on the guns for their angles, then we can go to free-fire. In the meantime, have your gun crews unload and stand down. I can see that Rusty here, at least, is itching to kill him some infected. Right, Seaman Apprentice?”

“Yes, sir,” Rusty said.

“Call that in to all the divisions. They are not free-fire until all boats are in place, all limits are set and all guns have been checked by senior personnel for limits.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Bloody hell,” Sergeant Major Raymond Barney said, looking through the binoculars.

They were cruising east in the Anguilla Channel—which runs between the relatively low and small island of Anguilla and the much larger and more prominent St. Martin. The two islands more or less defined the juncture between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic in the area and the boat was rolling on waves coming in from the open Atlantic. Which was what had caused the oath on the part of the sergeant major. Not the waves, the mass of wrecked ships, carried in by the Great Southern Current and piled up on the jagged rocks of St. Martin. It looked like some sort of twisted regatta from Dante’s Inferno. There were freighters, tankers, yachts, sailboats, megayachts, lifeboats and life rafts, ships that didn’t quite meet any description he could come up with. There was even what looked to be a section of an oil platform.

“We came through this sort of stuff at night on the way in,” Lieutenant Matthew Bowman said. The skipper of the Golden Guppy and commander of Division Five was a thirty-five-year-old who had made his money early in tech and set out to sail around the world just in time for a zombie apocalypse. “But you could still see the outlines.”

“I mean, there’s usually wrecks,” Barney said, lowering the binos and shaking his head. “They were all over the Canaries. But that is bloody insane .”

The sergeant major was sixty-two, a retired British Army light scouts NCO and NCOIC of the Naval Landing Parties. His position was technically slightly ambiguous. As a British citizen and former soldier he could not, actually, “command” American forces. On the other hand, nobody really questioned who was in charge when Navy parties hit the beach. He’d been detailed to “accompany” Division Five, which was not hitting the beach, to “ensure safe practices” of the Navy gunners. After which he was going to have to take a fucking Zodiac all the way back around the island to link up with Division One. He’d flipped a coin with his nemesis, Chief Petty Officer Kent Schmidt, USN, as to who got the furthest out division and lost.