Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  Operation Royal Banana: Belize, 2009

  Calle de San Bartalome, Antigua, Guatemala, September 30, 2009

  The volcano was earning its name tonight, making an aggressive spectacle of itself, its peak glowing brightly through the sparse clouds threading across the sky, infusing them with fiery veins of light. Comfortably warm in his shirtsleeves, General Hidalgo Guzman had brought his small group of advisors out into the mansion’s courtyard, wishing to enjoy the unseasonable weather while they finalized their plans. It was dry for autumn, a time of year when the coastal towns and villages stood braced for tropical storms blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. Normally, the highlands were soaked with rain, or at best blanketed with a mist that sent dampness deep under the skin. Indeed, Guzman had heard that a hurricane was brewing somewhere at sea. But here and now, things could not have been more pleasant.

  A map of the Airborne invasion of Belize.

  JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD., BY LAURA ALPHER

  All is perfectly clear to me, he thought. Clearer than it has ever been.

  From where he sat, the dictator could see Volcan Fuego’s rugged upper slopes surmounting the roofs to the southwest, looking for all the world like the throne of a mythical, ruby-eyed Cyclops. To the southeast, Volcan Agua was visible in silhouette, as was Volcan Acatenango west of the city. No man had ever lost his way in Antigua; one could always find his bearings by searching the distance for the three volcanoes. Perhaps, Guzman mused, this was the true secret of its endless allure for travelers.

  He breathed in the air of his garden, savoring the fresh tang of eucalyptus, and then lowered his eyes to study the two men sitting beside him. At the far end of the stone bench his Minister of Defense, Captain Juan Guillardo, acknowledged his gaze with a slight nod, eager to resume plotting tomorrow’s military action, his shrewd, narrow features making him resemble a coyote ... or so it seemed to the General, anyway. Between the two men, Colonel Eduardo Alcazar, Guzman’s first cousin and Minister of State, had been nursing his thoughts in tight-lipped silence.

  “You seem not to appreciate this fine evening, Eduardo,” Guzman said. “Or perhaps the dinner my staff prepared wasn’t to your liking. Your wife’s cooking is unmatched, I know, but we bachelors must make do.”

  “I have other concerns on my mind,” Alcazar said. “Dismiss them if you want, but it would please me if they weren’t mocked.”

  “You worry too much,” Guillardo said. “As long as they have our reassurances that the oil will flow freely—and cheaply—in their direction, the United Kingdom will never become involved. The most we can expect from them are diplomatic squawks in the Security Council.”

  “History warns us otherwise,” Alcazar said.

  “If you intend to bring up the Falklands and Kuwait again, please spare me,” Guzman said. “The dispute over that godforsaken pile of rocks occurred a quarter century and several British prime ministers ago. The present head of Parliament is no Thatcher. And remember, the oil strike has yet to produce the kinds of wealth that made supporting the Kuwaiti government so attractive to the rest of the world. Belize is a virgin land, with nobody to protect it.”

  “What do you suppose he is doing in Washington if not discussing contingencies? Playing card games with the Yanqui President?”

  “We’ve been over this a dozen times. His visit was announced weeks ago. The timing is coincidental.”

  “Even if that’s true, there are political realities to be considered. The English monarch continues to be recognized as the Belizean head of state, and the two nations have existing treaties ... ”

  “And we have prior territorial claims.”

  “Which were relinquished in 1992!”

  “By a government whose legitimacy I’ve never officially recognized.”

  Alcazar produced a humorless laugh. “How far back in time do you reach for justification, then? Will you tell our U.N. ambassador to cite the conquistadores for dividing the Mayan empire? It seems you’ve suddenly found that you have latino roots ...”

  “Don’t push me too far, cousin!” Guzman shot him an angry look. “You know the potential oil revenues we stand to gain from the annexation as well as I do. Even with Mexico taking their fifty percent, our share would amount to billions, perhaps trillions of dollars. Enough to transform our economy.”

  As well as keep your hold on power from slipping away, Alcazar thought, his mind attaching the unspoken codicil before he could stop it. There was, however, no denying the truth of his cousin’s words. Even by conservative projections, the oil money pouring in from the new offshore field would fill Mexico’s almost bankrupt treasury and make Belize the Brunei of the Western Hemisphere—and having lost out on this manna from heaven was as galling to Alcazar as it was to his companions. Still, he was a pragmatist by nature, and his doubts over tomorrow’s planned invasion stemmed from political considerations rather than moral scruples.

  Things would have been so different, so simple, had it not been for a bitter fluke of geography. But circumstances were as nature had created them millions of years before. The previous winter, a joint PEMEX/Texaco exploration team had discovered a vast stratographic trap just along the continental shelf of Belize and Mexico ... and just beyond Guatemala’s territorial waters in the Gulfo de Honduras. Their survey showed it to be an offshore pool of a potential rivaling that of the North Sea find of the 1960s. The two nations had immediately entered into an agreement that split development expenses and future revenues right down the middle. Fate had handed tiny Belize, which had already grown prosperous from a booming tourist and agricultural trade, riches on top of riches.

  Even as the pacts were being signed, Alcazar had known it only would be a matter of time before Guzman began claiming a portion of the wealth for his own financially bankrupt regime. But he’d underestimated the extent of his cousin’s jealousy and resentment, the covetousness of his grasp. Or perhaps Guzman’s waning support among the populace, as well as the growing strength of the revived leftist rebels in the countryside, had pushed him towards a move of desperation. Something that would rally public sentiment and increase his chances of political survival. In the end, Alcazar supposed Guzman’s reasons didn’t really matter. The fatal decision had already been made. The armed forces would roll into Belize the following morning, and nothing he could say would convince his cousin and the rest of the ruling junta to abandon the undertaking. His immediate task as Minister of State, then, was to anticipate, and if possible, moderate the inevitable world reaction.

  If possible.

  He could readily imagine the universal outrage his nation’s action would provoke, and knew England would not stand alone in expressing its condemnation. The security of Belize’s borders had been guaranteed by numerous international treaties and precedents; in fact, the allusion he’d made when speaking of history’s warning was not so much to the Falklands conflict—as Guzman had hastily jumped to assume—but to America’s decisive intervention when Iraq moved on Kuwait in 1990. What would happen if the current U.S. administration responded to Guatemala’s attack in a similar manner? Alcazar suddenly felt Guzman’s hand slap him on the back and, startled from his thoughts, turned to look into his grinning face.

  “Relax, Eduardo, you’re full of knots,” Guzman said. “Like Cabrera in the last century, we soon will be having Fiestas de Minerva in the streets of the capital.”

  Alcazar kept looking at him. What Guzman failed to mention, and perhaps realize, was that neither Manuel Estrada Cabrera’s pretensions of being a bringer of illumination and culture, nor his costly festivals to the goddess of wisdom, invention, and technical achievement, had prevented him from ultimately driving his nation to ruin.

  “Very well,” he said without enthusiasm. “We’d best get on with our discussion. It’s late, and there are still numerous points that must be clarified.” Guzman regarded him a moment, sighed, and then shifted his attention to Captain Guillardo.

  “Run through the details of the troop
buildup again,” he said. “Leave nothing out; I want you to give me the position of every man and piece of equipment being used in the campaign.” Guillardo nodded and dutifully gave them to him.

  White House, Washington, D.C., September, 2009

  The photographic intelligence (PHOTOINT) had first told the tale, though not because the U.S. intelligence services were watching closely. On the contrary, the early evidence of unusual Guatemalan troop activity along the Flores-Melchor de Mencos road was recorded by a commercial one-meter Space Imaging satellite that had been leased to the nations of Belize and Mexico for the charting of their offshore oil fields. This was in early September. The subsequent processing and analysis of these aerial views by photo interpreters had been so alarming they had hurried to quietly report their findings to government officials. Then, after a quick examination of the images, those officials had in turn raced to put them in the hands of local CIA station chiefs.

  Within days, two boxcar-sized Advanced KH-11 “Crystal” photoreconnaissance satellites circling 160 miles/257 kilometers above the earth were jogged into orbital paths above northeastern Guatemala. Here they began transmitting a stream of digital images to ground stations, whose operators had been placed on heightened, round-the-clock alert. An advanced KH-12 Lacrosse synthetic-aperture radar-imaging (SAR) satellite was also routed over the area. This was due to the start of the annual rainy season, and the KH-11’s telescopic eyes would be easily blurred by the dense cloud cover that usually prevailed during this period.

  The data flowing in from these overhead surveillance systems confirmed and added to the information originally gathered by the commercial satellites: Perhaps as many as three brigades of Guatemalan infantry and light armored units had been moved from various army barracks to assembly points along the highways to Belize, and were now concentrated within three miles/five kilometers of the border. There was also clear evidence of stepped up coastal patrols by Guatemalan naval forces outside the Belizean Cays. The consensus reached by CIA and State Department reconnaissance experts was that a military incursion into Belize was imminent. Upon being notified of this conclusion, and taking a firsthand look at relief maps prepared from the satellite imagery, the President held an emergency meeting with his Secretaries of State and Defense, both of whom agreed that the Belizean ambassador should be called to the White House and apprised of the situation with all due haste. The British Ambassador and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were also contacted, as was the newly elected Prime Minister of Britain, Herbert Foster.

  On September 5th, hours after receiving a redline call from the President concerning the Guatemalan troop buildup, Prime Minister Foster announced that he’d accepted an invitation to Washington at the end of the month, citing an economic agenda as the reason for his trip. This was, of course, a cover story to satisfy the news media. His one and only true aim was to confer with the President in person about the worrisome developments in Central America. To aid in the subterfuge, the Belizean Prime Minister Carlos Hawkins was asked to remain in his own country. The first day of Foster’s visit was September 25th. That same day, a newly processed batch of PHOTOINT and SAR images showed that the Guatemalan troops, armor, and heavy artillery had moved into positions along the Belizean border.

  By September 29th, a special joint U.S./British envoy was quietly dispatched to Guatemala City with a message that neither power would tolerate an act of aggression against a peaceful neighbor. The small group of high-level diplomats sat waiting outside General Hidalgo Guzman’s executive office in the Palacio Nacional for three hours before being told that he was too busy to see them. The following day, the President and Prime Minister Foster held a White House press conference in which they made public the situation in Central America, and warned Guatemala to stand down from its offensive posture or risk serious consequences. Their words were carefully chosen to leave no doubt that their two governments meant business. Guzman’s response, issued within hours through his U.N. ambassador in New York City, was that his ground forces were on routine training maneuvers and presented no threat to Belize or any other sovereign state in the region. That same afternoon, Prime Minister Foster flew back to London for a meeting with his chief advisors. At the same time, the President asked General Richard Hancock, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to report to him ASAP with a full assessment of American military options. Whatever Guzman thought he was doing, the President, who had sprouted more than a few gray hairs during the Sudanese embassy evacuation of 2007, was positive of one thing: for the second time since he’d taken office, he had a major international crisis on his hands.

  Western Highway, Southwest of Belize City, 0100 Hours, October 1st, 2009

  While Guatemala was hardly a military Goliath on a global scale, it was in comparison to Belize, all things under the tropical sun being relative. Unlike most of its regional neighbors, Belize was a representative democracy that settled internal political disputes with ballots rather than bullets. The crime rate was low and civil strife was nonexistent, unless one counted the heated, and occasionally foul-mouthed debates that were televised during election years. Roughly the size of Massachusetts, with less than 250,000 citizens, Belize had never developed the national means or inclination to expand beyond its borders, and strived to cultivate friendly and open relations with surrounding nations. The closest equivalent it had to an army was the Belize Defense Force (BDF), which was really little more than a local constabulary equipped with handguns, light automatic weapons, and a modest but well-maintained fleet of military Land Rovers.

  The Guatemalan invasion force, therefore, surged across the border virtually unopposed, advancing toward Belize City in a long file of infantrymen and mechanized armor—the latter consisting of two light tank companies and perhaps a hundred French VAB armored personnel carriers (APCs). Simultaneously, militia units acting under the regular army’s direction began slipping into the country at various points along the flanks of the main column, conducting a series of disruptive strikes on its power and telecommunications grid, severing phone and power lines, and knocking out electrical plants and switching stations, particularly in key population centers. Used to watching over a peaceful citizenry, grimly aware that any attempt at resisting the Guatemalan military outfits would be like trying to hold back an avalanche with nothing but their bare hands, the BDF constables confronted by the advancing column gave up with only a few scattered outbreaks of fighting.

  By seven AM, a mere six hours after the incursion began, the Guatemalan army had seized control of both of the country’s major airports. By eight o‘clock Guatemalan soldiers and tanks had massed before the Government House on Regent Street. By eight-fifteen its Guatemalan emissaries had been dispatched into the building to demand a formal declaration of surrender from the Belizean leadership. At nine o’clock Prime Minister Hawkins came out onto the steps of the building to acquiesce, cursing a bloody streak as he submitted to military custody. A descendant of the British pirates that had harried the coastline in the 16th century, he had inherited their roguish nature and hated yielding to anybody. However, nobody knew that much of the bluster was a well-played act.

  White House, Washington, D.C., 0800 Hours, October 12th, 2009

  Although he would always deny it publicly, General Richard Hancock had taken the name of the plan from a joke he’d overheard one of his staffers telling at the watercooler outside his Pentagon office. It had involved Guatemala’s biggest fruit export, General Guzman’s pants pocket, a visiting princess, and a punch line that went something like, “I’m sorry, Hidalgo, what I’d really prefer is a royal banana!” Hence the name, Operation Royal Banana.

  “In summation,” he was saying, “the plan is to devastate the enemy with superior numbers and a tightly synchronized, highly maneuverable air-ground attack, with each tactical element enhancing our collective combat power on the battlefield.”

  “Call me dense, but I’d like to hear the specifics one more time,” the President said. “If you pleas
e, General Hancock.”

  Hancock nodded crisply, reached for the water pitcher near his elbow, and refilled his half-drained glass. The President had been accused of being many things by his political opponents, but nobody on Capitol Hill had ever called him dense. To the contrary, he had a tremendous head for facts and details, and was energetic enough to remain whipcrack sharp after working for days with little or no sleep. Now he looked at Hancock across the briefing table, keen-eyed and fresh although the past ninety-six hours, a period in which he’d finally obtained resolutions of condemnation and ultimatum against Guatemala from the U.N. Security Council and OAS, had been one of the longest of those furiously paced, round-the-clock stretches in memory. On the other hand, the Secretary of State, who was the President’s junior by almost ten years, seemed to be having trouble keeping up. He sat on his immediate right, dark half-moons under his eyes, his hair slightly tussled, his skin the color and texture of drying pancake batter. On the Chief Executive’s left side, the Secretary of Defense seemed just a bit further from the edge of utter fatigue.