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some twenty-nine months; there just weren’t that many missions that called for a complete naval invasion. It had gone through the number of skippers, and had had at least one complete crew change because of the Gaza flotilla mission.
    Still sneering at the rust, Pearson thought, Maybe it’s necessary, but it’s just not right. Ah, well, at night, at least, it doesn’t show much. Which is . . . ah . . . important, what with the fucking Army showing up. Though if that were the only problem . . .
    Though the regiment was just the regiment, members of its air and naval squadrons still tended to think of themselves as “Air Force” or “Navy,” and the ground components as “Army.” The two exceptions were Cazz’s Third Battalion, which thought of itself and was thought of as, “Marine,” and Biggus Dickus Thornton’s team of former SEALS, who were in the “Army” portion—Second Battalion—but generally worked with and for, and still thought of themselves as, “Navy.”
    Though, at least, we’ll be getting Charlie Company, Third Batt, which ought to know its way around a ship.

    “Ahoy de Bland ,” Mr. Drake called up from his small Guyanan Revenue Authority watercraft. The boat was, of course, intended to help him improve Guyanan revenue. Perhaps it did. From Drake’s point of view, though, its major purpose was helping him do a pretty good side business on his own. This had gone way past turning a blind eye to M Day’s activities for a little financial consideration. Since his daughter, Elizabeth, had married into the regiment, the customs officer had become an unindicted coconspirator.
    Not dat de regiment don’ pay fair for meh trouble , Drake mused, while waiting for an answer from the deck of the ship, looming above. But it not so important as watchin’ out for meh little girl . . . even indirect.
    A dozen people, none of them uniformed, sat the boat behind where Drake stood at the wheel. These were three each from the Aviation Squadron and Charlie Company, Third Battalion, plus four from Alpha Company, Second, and two from the regimental medical department. Drake’s next lift was to bring out the first four cooks, a couple more each medics and nurses, two aviation maintenance crew, and A and C companies’ armorers.

    Still seated on a none-too-comfortable bench, A Company’s exec, Captain Tracy P. Warrington, tall, slender, mustached, and graying, looked up at the Bland with distaste.
    My whole fucking family, for about a dozen generations back, was Navy. I joined the Army to avoid it. So where am I? About to board a ship to sail to points not particularly well known. Fuck.
    Bastard Welch, sticking me with this shit while he goes gallivanting to the Philippines to do something I’m better at—Human Terrain Analysis—and ducking what he’s better at.
    Still . . . I suppose politics intrudes and, given the client, we had to put highest rank forward. Oh, well; I didn’t make the world—or make it start falling apart. I just have to live in it.
    Warrington let out an audible sigh. And with the people in it.
    “Stand by, Customs,” called a voice from above. “We’re lowering a ladder.”
    Warrington heard a scraping, followed by a splash. When they say ladder; they mean ladder. Oh, my aching, weary bones.
    Glancing in the direction of the infantry company commander tasked to support the operation, Warrington asked, “Cazz brief you people on shipboard customs and courtesies?”
    “Yes,” answered Andrew Stocker, late of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, now commanding—pending an anticipated change in the personnel system—an A Team of C Company, Second Battalion, which team provided the leadership of C Company, Third Battalion, M Day, Inc. The team itself tended to be Commonwealth: Canadian, Brit, British Gurkha, Aussie, and Kiwi. Supposedly, that anticipated change would come sometime soon, with a break in the command relationship between the teams and Second