by Bob Mayer
PZ Drable, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 1400 Zulu Wednesday, 7 June, 10:00 p.m. Local
At the end of his two-hour shift, Olinski woke up O'Shaugnesy and handed him the night-vision goggles. Olinski wearily crawled into his bivy sack and was asleep in minutes.
O'Shaugnesy was tired. He hung the goggles around his neck and lay his MP5 down at his side as he leaned back on his rucksack and looked out into the darkened pickup zone. Between pulling security and making contacts, O'Shaugnesy had had only two hours of sleep since leaving the FOB more than twenty-four hours ago. He slowly scanned the open area.
An hour had gone by and O'Shaugnesy felt himself nodding off. He jerked himself awake, then cocked his head to one side. He thought he'd heard something. There it was again. Something was moving behind him in the trees. O'Shaugnesy turned slowly and peered through the woods.
The meager light from the stars and moon didn't penetrate the foliage. O'Shaugnesy couldn't see anything, but he could hear it. Something big was moving out there and it was damn close. He reached down, picked up his MP5, and slipped the safety off, placing the weapon on semiautomatic.
He peered into the darkness. Whatever was out there was big, man-sized, and it was coming this way. One-handed, he reached down, grabbed the night-vision goggles where they rested on his chest, and slowly brought them up to his eyes. He turned them on. The darkness disappeared and the area in front of him suddenly became clear.
O'Shaugnesy swung up his MP5 and pulled the trigger. Whoever was standing there was only five feet away, on the other side of the sleeping bodies of Reese and Olinski. The gun made a soft chunk as the first round fired. There was a yell of pain and the figure leapt at O'Shaugnesy. He got off one more shot before he was overwhelmed.
Olinski awoke as he was knocked aside by the figure charging O'Shaugnesy. O'Shaugnesy screamed as Olinski swung up his shotgun. In the moonlight Olinski saw two figures, the smaller of whom had the outline of an MP5 in his outstretched arm.
Olinski hesitated briefly, then fired. The initial buckshot round separated
the two figures. Olinski fired the rest of his shotgun rounds into the larger figure as fast as he could pull the trigger.
ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 1531 Zulu Wednesday, 7 June, 11:31 p.m. Local
Riley was shaken awake. Trapp put his head next to the team sergeant's and whispered in his ear, "I think I heard shots."
Riley's senses swung into full gear. "How long ago, how many, and what direction?" he asked.
"Just about a minute ago. I waited before waking you to see if there were any more, but there haven't been. I think I heard seven or eight. They were real faint. I'd say a couple of klicks. Off to the west maybe. I really can't be sure."
"Who's on security with you?"
"Comsky."
"Get him over here," Riley ordered. He pulled himself clear of his bivy sack and put on his shirt against the chill night air. He woke Mitchell.
West, Riley thought. That's the direction of the pickup zone. There's nothing else out there. Trapp had said a couple of kilometers away. That ruled out someone on the service road, which was only four hundred meters away.
Comsky made his way over to Riley in the dark.
"Did you hear anything, Comsky?" Riley asked. Mitchell sat up, trying to clear his head.
"Shots, I'd say eight or nine. Pretty far away. If it wasn't such a clear night I never would have heard them. They were real faint. I really couldn't tell what direction. Sounded to me like a shotgun. There was one, about a second pause, and then all the rest came real fast, like someone blasting away as fast as they could pull a trigger."
"OK, thanks. Get back to your post."
Riley turned to the captain. "Jim heard the same thing and woke me up. He thinks the shots came from the west. If you add it all up, it sounds like Olinski. He has the SPAS 12 and it's the right direction and distance. Hell, O'Shaugnesy could have fired a thousand rounds, too, and we'd never have heard it. I don't think anybody is going to be up in the middle of the night hunting here."
Mitchell looked at Trapp in the dark. "What do you think? Could it have been the pickup zone team?"
Trapp thought for a few seconds. "Sir, it's been a long time since I've heard firing in the distance like that. In Vietnam, I could have told you the azimuth, distance, and type of weapons involved with no problem. But it's been awhile.
"I think Comsky is right. It was a shotgun. Definitely wasn't an AK; I've heard enough of them fired at me to remember what they sound like. Wasn't a SAW, even fired on semiautomatic. Shotgun sounds right, and, as fast as those rounds were fired, it was either a semiautomatic or two guys firing pumps as fast as they could in succession. Most likely a semi. Which I very much doubt anyone in this area has."
Mitchell and Riley considered this. Riley stirred. "Damn! What the hell was he shooting at? You heard no return fire, yet it sounds like Olinski emptied the entire magazine. No explosions, no nothing. Maybe he pulled off a very effective ambush. But then why use the shotgun and not the MP5? Or maybe they used them both? But who the hell would they be ambushing in the middle of the night down there?"
Mitchell spoke slowly. "All right. This is what we'll do. Before we go blundering off in the dark, we'll see if they come up on the FM radio at," he looked at the glowing dials of his watch, "2400, in twenty-five minutes. Hell, turn the damn thing on now, in case they're trying to reach us. Even if they aren't, we'll come up and ask them if they're OK and what the hell happened. If we get no answer at 2400, we'll send some people over right away. I'll go with Comsky in case they might need a medic. Trapp too. We'll leave Smith here with the demo, Lalli to make commo, and Devito to take care of Lalli. What do you think, Dave? I need to leave you here 'cause one of us has to stay. I want to confirm the pickup zone anyway."
"All right, sir. Jim, you trade in your SVD for an MP5. That way you'll have two silenced subs if you do have to go."
PZ Drable, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 1545 Zulu Wednesday, 7 June, 11:45 p.m. Local
"Fuck the red light. Take the lens off so I can see," Olinski hissed at Reese, who was holding the light. Olinski continued to work on
O'Shaugnesy. He knew that white light could be seen for a long way, in the unlikely event someone was in the area to see it, but if he didn't get O'Shaugnesy to stop bleeding soon they were going to have a corpse on their hands. A red light doesn't do much good when you're trying to find where all the blood is coming from.
Olinski had already bandaged some of the more obvious places. O'Shaugnesy is really screwed up, Olinski thought. He'd already given the wounded man a syringe of morphine, and he was still moaning in pain. Damn! We need a medic and we need him fast. He looked at his watch—another fifteen minutes until he could call the ORP.
"Hey, Ski," Reese whispered.
Not now, thought Olinski, as he probed a gash on O'Shaugnesy's stomach. "What?"
"Maybe they heard the shots at the base camp and are monitoring."
Why hadn't he thought of that? Olinski chided himself. In all the excitement it hadn't occurred to him that they might have heard the shots over at the ORR "Get the radio and see if they're monitoring," he told Reese.
ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 1547 Zulu Wednesday, 7 June, 11:47 p.m. Local
"ORP, this is PZ. Over."
Mitchell grabbed the radio. "This is ORP. Over." "We need a medic over here ASAP. Denser is all screwed up. Over." "Roger, what happened and what's the extent of his injuries? Over," Mitchell replied calmly as he hand-signaled Riley to get Comsky and Devito.
"He got attacked by a bear. He's got lacerations all over; his stomach was torn open and Ski just finished strapping his guts in place. He's got bites on his arms and shoulders and face. It's real hard to tell. Ski's been bandaging him for twenty minutes now and there's blood all over the place. We need that medic real fast. Over."
Mitchell turned to Comsky, who h
ad come over from his security position. "Got that?" he asked. Comsky nodded. "Get your stuff together. I'm sending you and Trapp. As soon as you're ready, go. Take Riley's 68 with you, too. Keep it on until you link up with those guys." Comsky moved out.
Mitchell punched the send button. "Roger, you've got a medic and help on the way now. They're monitoring a radio, so if you need any professional advice, go ahead and ask. I'll also have the other doc here monitoring this radio. Put out an IR chem light for them to home in on. Over."
"Roger. Right now we got white light down here. It's the only way we can work on him. But we'll pop the IR and turn the light out as soon as we can. Over."
Mitchell looked at Riley. They both shared the same thought: a bear?
The more Riley thought about it, the more he realized the high probability of such an occurrence. During the briefback Devito had said that brown bears were dangerous wildlife endemic to the operational area. The pickup zone team probably had left food out, or done something else that attracted the bear. Normally, bears didn't attack unless provoked.
Riley watched as Comsky and Trapp moved out, wearing night-vision goggles. In a little more than six hours, Riley knew he would have to go forward and check the target security in preparation for the hit. At least O'Shaugnesy was already at the PZ. We won't have to carry him there, Riley thought—about the only bright spot in the situation.
"And as water has no constant form,
there are in war no constant conditions."
Sun Tzu: The Art of War
10
Camp Page, ChunChon, Korea Wednesday, 7 June, 1745 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 2:45 a.m. Local
Jean Long slid her night-vision goggles down on her helmet, twisting the on switch when they were in place. She adjusted the focus of each eyepiece separately, looking around the darkened flight line to make sure they were set correctly. Satisfied, she peered underneath the bottom edge of the goggles at the dimly lit instrument panel and checked the gauges. All good to go.
The 309th Battalion was presently out in the field on maneuvers about forty kilometers from Camp Page, due to return the next day. Jean had flown back to Page from the field site three hours ago on a parts run. In the back of the helicopter a mechanic was sitting with the critical parts they needed to fix one of the battalion's aircraft.
As she watched the engine rpm's increase on the gauge, she briefly thought about her husband. She hadn't heard anything from him since he'd been alerted. She felt bad that she hadn't gotten out of bed to say good-bye when he left, but she knew he understood. She was just grateful he was on staff now and wouldn't be doing anything dangerous. He'd joked with her, shortly after moving up to the S-3 shop, that the most dangerous thing he did there was staple together oporders.
With sufficient engine power, Jean lifted collective and pushed forward on the cyclic. The Blackhawk shuddered, then lifted. Jean turned the aircraft to the southeast and accelerated, thoughts of her husband forgotten as she concentrated on the job at hand.
USS Rathburne, La Perouse Strait Wednesday, 7 June, 1800 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 3:00 a.m. Local
On the bridge of the Rathburne Comdr. Rich Lemester shifted his weight nervously as he looked over the shoulder of his chief radar operator. His ship was threading a needle and Lemester didn't like the eyehole. To the north, the radar blipped the outline of the southern tip of Sakhalin Island, only twenty-one miles away. To the south he didn't need radar to tell him where the land was—lights on Hokkaido Island could easily be seen twinkling in the dark. Those two pieces of land on either side squarely placed the Rathburne in La Perouse Strait, separating Japan and the Soviet Union. Cruising at twenty knots, Lemester knew they had another hour before they'd break out into the Sea of Japan.
Lemester was uncomfortable with the whole situation. His orders had told him where he was to go, what he was to do, and how long he would be doing it, but they had not answered the nagging question of why. The Rathburne was sailing into a Soviet bathtub and, like any sane U.S. naval officer, he didn't like it. While the rest of Rathburne's battle group was sailing southeast around Japan to the waters off South Korea to participate in naval exercises, he'd been ordered to break off on this course two days ago. Following his orders he had gone in the opposite direction, northeast around Japan.
For ultimate destination all he had been given was a set of coordinates, 132 degrees longitude and 42 degrees latitude. The Rathburne was to stay within a one-kilometer circle of that point on the ocean. It was most unusual—Lemester had never done or heard of anything like this.
Be there, and be prepared to land and refuel two helicopters between 1500Z on the eighth and 1500Z on the tenth, the orders read. When Lemester had radioed his battle group commander to ask for more information, he was told that there wasn't any more. When he'd protested about sitting still, surrounded to the north and east by Soviet territorial waters and to the southeast by the North Koreans, who were known not to be friendly to American ships, his commander had been unsympathetic, informing Lemester that he didn't know what was going on either, but that these orders had come from very high. The commander's bottom line had been blunt: Get moving.
Outstanding, thought Lemester as he watched the water flow by on either side. I'm going to go sit there, surrounded by Soviet territorial waters on two sides, North Koreans on the third, no room to maneuver, and wait for some helicopters. Obviously he wasn't cleared to know what the helicopters were doing. Just refuel them and do whatever else the pilots ask.
Lemester turned his gaze to the north. He knew that his ship had already been picked up by shore-based radar on Sakhalin Island and pretty soon he could expect to be shadowed, at least electronically. Once he reached his destination and started circling in place, he had a feeling that the Rathburne might get a visitor or two, curious about what the hell they were doing. He'd rather have Soviet visitors than North Korean. Pueblo II was a nightmare Lemester could live without.
ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 2300 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 7:00 a.m. Local
Riley returned from the meeting with the target surveillance just as Lalli burst out the 2300 Zulu send. Riley checked in with the captain. It had been a long night for all of them, ever since Trapp had woken them up after hearing the shots. Just before Riley left to link up with Chong and Hoffman, they'd finally received a radio call from Comsky and Trapp. The two had reached the pickup zone a little less than an hour after leaving the objective rally point. Comsky had worked on O'Shaugnesy for almost three hours and then radioed a brief summary of his condition, trying to stay on the air as little as possible.
The bottom line of Comsky's report was that O'Shaugnesy had lost a lot of blood. There wasn't anything they could do other than run a transfusion, which Comsky wanted to avoid unless absolutely necessary. O'Shaugnesy was stable, but that could change. Comsky had pumped the wounded man full of antibiotics but wasn't too optimistic about the chances of preventing infection. Some of the wounds were deep.
The best medicine for O'Shaugnesy would be to get him on the birds tonight and into a hospital.
In the 2300 Zulu send, the captain had written the following:
ZEROTH
DENSER
ABLEXX
RINGWH
XFILCH
OODXXS
REEROG HURTBY URGENT OLEBLO OPPERX EEYOUT
ERZERO
BEARXX
HEGETT
ODXXXW
XTARGE
ONIGHT
TWODEN
SERIOU
OHOSPI
HOLEBL
TSTILL
XXDOUB
SERXXX
SBUTST
TALXXB
OODONE
LOOKSG
LEXXXX
Denser was O'Shaugnesy's code name. Riley knew that message would cause a bit of an uproar at the forward operating base. They'd say the same thing he and the captain had said the previous night: a bear?
Well, that'
s the way it goes, Riley thought angrily. He could sense a depression settling over the team. With O'Shaugnesy hurt, the team's mood was low.
As soon as it got dark, they'd pull out of the ORP and link up with the target surveillance. Hopefully all the talking on the FM radio hadn't been picked up.
FOB, Osan Air Force Base, Korea Wednesday, 7 June, 2310 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 8:10 a.m. Local
Hooker looked up from the message. "A bear? What the hell did they do, try and pet it?"
Hossey was upset. One of his men was hurt. Mitchell having written serious meant that O'Shaugnesy was really messed up. Hossey didn't know how it happened and it really didn't matter. What was important now was that they get them out tonight. He told Hooker as much.
Hooker held up his hands in defense. "Hey, sir. I care as much as you do about this. I'll contact the SFOB and make sure both birds have the blood on board. We've got his type from the isolation information. The weather looks good for the exfil flight. Let's hope nothing else goes wrong. This thing has been screwed up from the start."
PZ Drable, Operational Area Dustey, China Wednesday, 7 June, 2320 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 7:20 a.m. Local
Olinski wearily watched the sun come up and start chasing away the night's chill. His uniform was covered with dried blood. Comsky came by and squatted down next to him.
"How's he doing, Doc?"
Comsky stretched his arms and back. "He's screwed up bad. If he isn't in a hospital in forty-eight hours, he's going to be in real bad shape. You did good last night, stopping the bleeding. If he'd lost any more, we'd be burying him right now. What the hell happened?"
