by Bob Mayer
Olinski wasn't sure himself. Going over the ground in the morning light, they'd found a few clues. "The bear must have smelled the food we ate last night, or maybe it just scented us and was curious. I don't think it would have attacked. But O'Shaugnesy must have been startled. He got off two shots on semi from his sub. I figure he shot the bear and all the 9mm did was piss off the bear and make it go after him.
"It took all nine of my shotgun rounds to put it down. And every other round in my gun is a solid slug. That thing took four 12-gauge slugs and five double-aught."
Olinski looked over at the bear carcass and shuddered. It was a big one. It had stood over six feet tall on its hind legs.
O'Shaugnesy had caught a few pellets from Olinski's first shot, but Olinski figured if he hadn't shot when he did, the bear would have finished tearing O'Shaugnesy apart. By the time Reese got out of his bivy sack, Olinski had managed to put the thing down with his last round. Otherwise the carcass would have had a hundred rounds of 5.56mm from Reese's SAW in it too.
Fort Meade, Maryland Wednesday, 7 June, 2345 Zulu Wednesday, 7 June, 6:45 p.m. Local
Meng was napping in his office when his computer chimed, waking him up. He snapped alert and keyed in his personal access code. He stared in disbelief at the latest message from the FOB.
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
TO: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM/ MSG 56
FROM: FOB Kl
DENSER HURT BY BEAR/ CONDITION SERIOUS/
REQUIRE O POSITIVE/ REPEAT O POSITIVE/
WHOLE BLOOD ON EXFIL HELICOPTERS/
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
For the first time, Meng wasn't really sure about the decision he had made. He realized with a sudden chill that he had never stopped to consider there were real men at the other end of the terminal, men who could lose their lives. He had been so used to playing the game here in Tunnel 3 that none of it seemed real. Punching keyboards and reading computer screens was a strong insulation from reality.
Meng knew the seriousness of his actions and was prepared to face the consequences—probably the end of his career. Theoretically, he had known quite well that there was a chance that members of the team would be killed or injured—after all, he was the one who had written the Dragon program.
Was it worth a human life to send a message to the Old Men? Meng shook his head angrily, dismissing that question—many lives had already been lost, his son's among them. They were a small price to pay for freedom for a nation. The small chance that this mission might seriously shake up the Chinese government and cause change was worth everything.
Meng looked at the clock. Less than nineteen hours to go until the team hit the target. That is if they hit the target now, Meng suddenly realized. He tapped into his keyboard. First he wrote out a message to the helicopter crews at the launch site at Misawa Air Force Base, telling them to take the blood. Then he wrote one to the FOB.
FOB, Osan Air Force Base, Korea Wednesday, 7 June, 2354 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 8:54 a.m. Local
Hossey looked at the message from the SFOB with confusion. They were asking if the team was still mission capable. He looked up at Hooker.
"Don't these assholes think I would have told them if the team wasn't mission capable?"
Hooker shrugged. "Hey, sir. Remember you're dealing with staff wienies. They don't know what a team can or can't do."
Hossey considered the question seriously. Mission capable meant whether the team was capable of blowing the pipe. The team still had the explosives. They were within reach of the target. They had enough healthy bodies to do the mission.
He shook his head and tapped out a message to the SFOB, assuring them that the team was still able to conduct the mission—and reminding them about the blood.
ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0100 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 9:00 a.m. Local
Riley reviewed the situation. There had been no enemy activity in the area so far. If those FM transmissions or shots had been heard last night, they would have seen something by now. So our luck isn't all bad, he reflected. Although two injured, one seriously, without any enemy contact wasn't too good.
In the light of day, he looked around the small patrol base. With five men at the exfiltration pickup zone and the surveillance still at the target, only the remaining five team members were gathered here. Everyone was awake. Riley could feel the anxiety that permeated the camp. The accident with O'Shaugnesy had underscored the seriousness of the situation. They'd trained for years for something like this; now they were going to put it all on the line. It was difficult to train men to such a high level of preparedness, then keep them on a leash, waiting to go. Team 3 had been let off its leash.
When they got back, the men would never be able to tell anyone where they'd been or what they'd done on this mission. They would be provided with a cover story and would have to stick with it. O'Shaugnesy would be listed as having been injured during training. It sucked, Riley thought, but it was the way things had to be.
Riley imagined that the Department of Defense had a good cover story all prepared in case some of them didn't come back from this mission. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your husband was killed during an aircraft crash over water and we haven't been able to recover the bodies." It had been done before and it would be done again.
Riley watched as Lalli limped about, setting up his radio to receive the next send. Riley went over to the captain and sat down on the ground next to him. "Hey, Mitch, we having fun yet? Aren't you glad I asked for you to go with us on this mission?"
Mitchell looked over at his team sergeant and grinned wryly. "Yeah, the old fun meter is all pegged out. Sure beats sitting up there in the S-3 shop fighting paperwork." The team leader turned serious. "I've been thinking about the helicopter lifts. We probably ought to rearrange the exfiltration aircraft loads based on the new situation. Here's the way I see it. Shift O'Shaugnesy forward to the first bird. Devito will be on board to take care of him. Then we'll move Lalli back to the second with us and Comsky can be in charge of him."
It hadn't occurred to Riley that both the team's communications men had been hurt. It made sense to put O'Shaugnesy on the first aircraft. They always tried to cross-load the team as much as possible, putting one man of each specialty on each aircraft just in case an aircraft crashed. The main reason for the shift was that if only one aircraft made it to the pickup zone, they definitely wanted O'Shaugnesy to be on it.
That made the first lift: Trapp in charge, O'Shaugnesy as commo man, Devito as medic, Reese as weapons, Smitty as engineer, and Olinski to round out the six. The second aircraft would have Riley and the captain, Comsky, Hoffman, Chong, and Lalli. Riley considered this mixture, using factors such as the weapons each man was carrying and his skills. Something else occurred to him. "Let's switch Lalli and Olinski. Any of us can handle the radio. O'Shaugnesy sure doesn't count as an effective commo man now anyway. If we get only one bird, then Lalli, who can't walk that well, will go out; Olinski, who can speak Russian, will stay with us. Hell, if we don't get two birds we might as well have Olinski. We can use him as an interpreter when we marry some local girls over the border and settle down in the area. Either that or Chong can take care of us here with his Chinese, 'cause it's a goddamn long walk if we can't fly."
Mitchell agreed to the change. "Good idea."
The captain reached into his ruck and pulled out a freeze-dried meal. "Breakfast for the day. Lunch and dinner also, if you want to get technical. Shall we dine? Or shall we see what wondrous news the FOB sends
us, prior to our repast?" Mitchell added, as he watched Lalli limp over with his sheet of paper.
Mitchell pulled his one-time pad and trigraph out of the cargo pocket of his pants. He started transcribing and decrypting.
ZEROTW OROGER ZEROTW OBLOOD ONEXFI LBIRDS XXGOOD LUCKXX DRATTSX
Mitchell handed the message to Riley. "The colonel wishes us well. We need to get organized to make the hit. We're going to have to make some adjustments with
O'Shaugnesy down and Trapp and Comsky at the PZ."
Riley thought a minute. "All right. We've still got the surveillance in place. We've got O'Shaugnesy torn to pieces down at the pickup zone. Trapp and Comsky are also at the PZ, and they're two of the snipers we need to take the cameras out. We'll have to get them back up."
"Yeah," Mitchell agreed. "But I think Trapp will figure that out, don't you?"
Riley smiled. "Yeah, Jim's pretty sharp."
PZ Drable, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0112 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 9:12 a.m. Local
Olinski had set the radio for the 2400Z receive and then decrypted the message. He looked at it for a few seconds, then called Trapp over and handed it to him. "Blood will be on the birds."
"Comsky will be glad to hear that."
Trapp scratched his head as he worked the tactical situation. "Comsky and I are going to have to go back up there. We can wait for dark. I guess we ought to call the guys on the hour and make sure the plan's the same. Hey, Ape." Trapp called Comsky over. "Do you think you can leave O'Shaugnesy without a medic?"
Comsky considered. "Yeah, for a couple of hours. I've done all I can do for him. Ski here can do as much as I can at this point."
"Good, 'cause we got a hot date with a pipeline and I don't want to miss it."
Naryn, Peter the Great Bay Thursday, 8 June, 0200 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 11:00 a.m. Local
Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk of the Soviet Navy ordered the speed of the Naryn diminished from the twenty-five knots she had been doing to five knots. With the change, the small patrol boat was barely making headway against the current that surged north out of the Sea of Japan toward the Tatar Strait.
Chelyabinsk was disappointed. He'd been enjoying his leisurely patrol along the coastline. The Naryn's usual job was to watch for smugglers running the coast from North Korea into the Soviet Union. As always, there were people on both sides of the border willing to make deals. Chelyabinsk usually stayed in tight along the shore, cruising in and out of the many rocky bays, searching for signs of criminal activity. But several hours previously, shore-based radar on Sakhalin Island had picked up the radar image of an American missile frigate of the Knox class moving through La Perouse Strait. A patrol plane out of Vladivostok had been sent to investigate and had found that the American ship had turned south, once it passed through the strait. They expected the ship to join the other American warships participating in the annual naval exercises with the South Koreans. Still, the operations officer of the Joint Naval Forces at Vladivostok had obviously decided that the American ship needed to be watched.
That had resulted in the order to the Naryn; they were to reduce speed so they would be in position to move out from the coast to investigate if needed. If the American ship stayed on course, the Naryn should pick it up on surface radar in a couple of hours.
The patrol plane was sent back to Vladivostok. Where else could the Americans go but south? Soon the American ship would come in range of the Naryn. It was not important enough to keep a plane circling for hours.
ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0222 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 10:22 a.m. Local
Riley tilted his head and listened. The beat of rotor blades sounded off to the east. He checked the surveillance notes. Pretty close. Yesterday it had come at 0300Z. Within an hour wasn't bad. The next time the Chinese helicopter came they'd be long gone.
Trapp had called at ten from the pickup zone and they'd briefly confirmed the message and the updated plan.
The mood was growing more tense at the rally point. Riley could feel it. Adrenaline was starting to flow. Hoffman and Smith were starting final preparation of the charges. Everyone was checking his weapons and cleaning them. Reloading magazines to make sure every round was properly seated. Repacking rucksacks and tying everything down. Hoffman and Smitty had run six lines of rope from rocks on the ground up to a nearby tree and were practicing placing their charges.
In isolation, Hoffman had come up with a simple device to speed up the emplacement process. Each charge was taped to a piece of rubber from an inner tube. The rubber was wrapped around the wire, holding the charge tight against the cable, and then fastened there by hooking the end of the rubber on a nail embedded in the plastique charge itself. It took less than three seconds per cable to attach the charges.
Riley reread the security notes and discussed them with Mitchell. Together, they decided on two slight modifications of the tactical plan. They'd have Hoffman and Smith blow the hole in the fence on the east side of the compound instead of the north. It appeared that the T-field fence system wasn't working over there. Every little bit of advantage would be needed. Additionally, they would not have to use the line charge to blow a path to the berm, because the landing of the helicopter inside the compound had confirmed that the ground was not mined.
Riley just hoped they'd receive the final go. He hated to think of the effect a no-go would have on the team.
"Thus, those skilled in war subdue the
enemy's army without battle." Sun Tzu: The Art of War
11
Misawa Air Force Base, Japan Thursday, 8 June, 0600 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 3:00 p.m. Local
Chief Warrant Officer C. J. Mclntire pulled in collective with his left hand and felt the Blackhawk's wheels leave the ground. He climbed to five hundred feet and then waited until the other Blackhawk, with his friend Luke Hawkins at the controls, slid into place to his left rear.
While his copilot updated the Blackhawk's Doppler navigating device with their present location, C.J. pushed his cyclic control forward and turned on an azimuth of due west.
The Doppler is a navigating device that theoretically would allow them to find the Rathburne in the middle of the ocean. C.J. was worried because in his experience the Doppler was unreliable over water. He hoped that a combination of staying on the proper headings for the designated amounts of time, and interpreting what information the Doppler did give, would allow them to locate the ship. If absolutely necessary they could call the Rathburne and have it turn on an electronic beacon. They had already planned on doing that for the return trip, but C.J. preferred not to rely on that going in. The fewer electronic transmissions, the less the chance of alerting the North Koreans or Russians.
C.J. estimated a 3.7-hour flight to the Rathburne, arriving about 6:43 p.m. local time. That would give them a six-hour rest on board before having to fly the rest of the mission. Just as important, it allowed them to fly this leg in daylight, saving their goggle time for the actual penetration of the hostile airspace.
Once he was sure everything was working, C.J. let his copilot, Tim Yost, take the controls. C.J. leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He was trying to control his nervousness. Despite all his flight hours, this was the first time he was flying a mission like this—into hostile airspace with state-of-the-art detection devices. Between the Soviets, North Koreans, and Chinese, there was a pretty impressive array of air defense systems waiting up ahead.
Once they left the Rathburne and got down into the wave tops, C.J. felt confident they'd make the shoreline. From there to the pickup zone, it would be terrain flying under goggles. Terrain flying consisted of following the contour of the earth with a margin of safety of only twenty-five feet above the highest object. At that altitude they should avoid getting picked up on radar, yet be high enough to avoid crashing into an obstacle.
The trip out was going to be the hairy part, C.J. figured. It all depended on whether or not they were spotted. He didn't know what the people he was picking up were doing, but he had a feeling it was something that probably would upset the natives. C.J. shook his head—flying under goggles at any time was dangerous work. Those mountains were going to require some good flying tonight.
Naryn, Peter the Great Bay Thursday, 8 June, 0800 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 5:00 p.m. Local
Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk peered at the green haze on his surface radar screen. There in the center sat the brightly gl
owing dot that indicated the American warship, more than one hundred kilometers to the east. The Komar-class missile boats had a curious radar setup: They could see farther on the surface of the ocean than they could into the sky. The ship was designed to attack surface ships, not air targets. According to the radar, the American ship had been steaming in a tight circle for the past hour. Chelyabinsk didn't know what it was doing out there and frankly he didn't care. It was a nice, clear, crisp day. As long as the ship didn't come any closer he was happy.
Chelyabinsk looked to the west at the shoreline. The Changbai Mountain Range loomed in the distance. It was at times like this that he was glad he had joined the navy and not the army. Imagine being out in those hills looking across the border at the Chinese or North Korean pigs, he thought. Much nicer here aboard ship, where a man could always get hot food and stay out of the rain and snow.
He glanced forward along the short deck of his ship. Seamen Second Class Aksha and Kachung were manning the forward, twin 25mm antiaircraft gun. Chelyabinsk looked at the two Mongolians with undisguised loathing. The riffraff he had to work with. Those two idiots hadn't even known what boots were until they'd been drafted into the navy to do their obligatory two years of service. Chelyabinsk wasn't even sure they knew how to fire the 25mm.
In his three months in command, the crew had never had an opportunity to conduct a live-fire exercise. The cost of ammunition was too high, they'd been told. Chelyabinsk could only assume that the two gunners had been taught how to shoot in their basic naval training, but he wasn't confident of that. The men spoke only the most basic Russian.
