Danger Close

by S L Shelton

  I gave up any hope of quietly sitting with the techs and set my tray down near the center of the table where they had made room for me.

  “—so anyway,” Nick continued. “Did I mention he was there to rescue his girlfriend? A diplomat’s daughter.”

  The guffaws and whoops started anew.

  “No way,” the guy next to me said. “I’ve been on Ops for six years and never came across a woman who didn’t look like a camel. You get two foxes all to yourself your first time out.”

  “Beginner’s luck,” I replied quietly.

  “—okay. So he climbed into the back of this moving cargo plane, dressed like a Serb, and throws this hot blonde into the container with the rest of the hostages…his girlfriend included,” Nick snickered, making it sound like a real fun time. “So I’m thinking, if this little prick dies, someone, somehow is going to find a way to blame it on me. So I run up and jump onto the ramp just as it’s starting its turn for takeoff.”

  “So wait! The blonde and the diplomat’s daughter are in the box together?” someone at the end of the table asked, innuendo dripping from every word.

  “Yeah, but her dad and twelve other hostages were in there too, so I doubt anything happened worth repeating,” Nick replied with a knowing grin.

  I heard my name and looked around to see Howard motioning me over to his table.

  “Excuse me for a second,” I said as I got up, leaving my tray behind.

  I walked over to Howard and knelt next to him.

  “The SAT links are all packed up and the radios are tested, but I haven’t taken the COM chests out to the Delta tent yet,” he said. “Since you’re chummy with those guys, would you mind doing it after you eat?”

  I could tell he had a problem with one or more of the assault team. “No problem,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he replied, and then quickly added, “I have to do the prep cycle on the backups.” He lied—I could see it on his face.

  “Sure thing,” I said supportively, not giving away that I saw his discomfort. “I’ll grab them after chow and meet up with you at the COM tent.”

  I walked back over to where the Delta Team members were and squeezed back into my seat. Nick was still telling his story.

  “—knocks the drunk guy out. So I say, ‘I need more time.’ The only problem was the only guys left were all sober. So what does the dumbass do? He hits the biggest son of a bitch on the plane with a right hook,” Nick said, barely containing his laughter, “and the guy just smiles at him.”

  Whoops of laughter burst from the table.

  “—so now he’s fighting this guy that’s bigger than Mac. Do any of you know Mac in DEVGRU?” he asked.

  A couple of guys nodded, so he continued his story. “So this guy, big as Mac, starts coming after him, swinging and kicking,” he said and then looked at me. “I think he laid a couple of good ones on you.”

  “You said to stall,” I replied smiling. “I was stalling.”

  More groans and laughs from around the table.

  “—anyway. So they were fighting, and the guy pulls out a knife—what does Monkey Wrench do?” he asked, jerking his thumb in my direction. “Does he grab a rifle from a Serb?—Nooo. Does he pull his own goddamned weapon out of his holster?—Nooo. He picks up a cargo strap and starts whipping it around like nunchucks or something.”

  The men all laughed.

  “No!” Nick exclaimed. “It’s not funny. I’m thinking this guy is going to die on a Russian cargo plane, and I’m going to have to explain to his girlfriend when we get on the ground that he bravely sacrificed himself as a distraction so they could be freed. I’m picturing the letter to his family back home. The CIA regrets to inform you that your son died from a combination of great bravery and even greater stupidity.”

  More laughter erupted. I thought a couple of them were going to fall out of their seats.

  “But. I have to give him credit,” Nick said, looking right at me. “He kicked the shit out of that big bastard and popped open the ramp.”

  I got a little backslapping with that comment and a couple of ‘good jobs’ and ‘atta-boys’.

  “—so anyway. I send the guide chute out the back and he still isn’t strapped to the box. I get jerked sideways as the sled gets pulled out, and I look back and there’s all these guys falling out the back of the plane. So I’m thinking Monkey Wrench was gonna be a greasy spot in some farmer’s vegetable garden. So I say into my radio, ‘Did you make it, Monkey Wrench?’ All of the sudden, I hear this scream in my ear: ‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… Over.’”

  All hell broke loose. They were laughing so hard several of them did fall out of their seats. Nick sat there grinning, quietly enjoying the spectacle he had created. He looked at me, seeing me smiling in embarrassment, and then he winked.

  I hadn’t given Nick enough credit. The tension had been broken, and now I knew we were ready to get to work.

  **

  11:15 p.m.—H-1 Airbase, Western Iraq

  The broadcast traffic from multiple radios filled the COM tent. Clicks, squawks, beeps, trills, codes, and digitized voices buzzed at irregular intervals, making the whole room seem like some sort of science fiction sound-effects department.

  Howard was reclining in his chair in front of the main monitoring station and a second tech was across the room monitoring air traffic squawk for the Op. Several other techs were in the room—there to listen in on the action or monitor other pieces of equipment.

  I tried to visualize what was going on in the desert using only the radio traffic. Nick and the Delta team had been underway for nearly forty-five minutes. The border crossing from Iraq had gone smoothly with no detection. They were headed toward Mahkan, Syria, as planned; a small town just southeast of Al Mayadin in the Euphrates River Valley—the town where the warheads were being hidden by the Serbs.

  Syrian Route 4 wound like a snake, following the river valley from the Iraqi border. But the three Delta assault teams were traveling in civilian vehicles driving parallel to the highway, far, far into the open desert. They had taken three separate routes to arrive at the same location.

  Nick was with one of the vehicles, and aside from him and the Delta Force guys, everyone else was either here in Iraq, in the Persian Gulf on an aircraft carrier (call sign Sea Witch), or at Langley, listening in on their progress.

  Even from inside the COM tent, I could hear the helicopters on the pad, their rotors already turning in case they needed to make a quick rescue incursion. The only thing that would have made the situation more exciting from my standpoint was if I were on one of those vehicles with Delta—which is exactly where I wanted to be; I was hooked.

  At forty-five minutes into the mission, I got a firsthand lesson about why separate routes and divided backup equipment is important.

  “Uh, Sea Witch, this is Apollo,” we heard over the main mission channel.

  “Apollo, Sea Witch. Go with traffic,” came the reply from the radio operator for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), located on a ship in the Persian Gulf.

  “Yeah, Sea Witch, we've hit a small snag with our transportation,” Apollo said sheepishly. “We found a washed-out gully that wasn’t on the terrain map…we’ve got a mechanical issue we're working on.”

  “Roger, Apollo,” Sea Witch replied. “Are you going to be able to get back on mission?”

  “Sea Witch, this is Apollo. We’re on the repair, but it looks like we lost our COM chest.”

  “Apollo, confirm, Charlie Squad lost COM package?” came the reply.

  “Affirmative,” Apollo replied. “But obviously it’s still working if you can hear me…it just ain’t on the truck anymore.”

  “Shit,” Howard muttered.

  “Apollo this is Sea Witch. Repairs to the vehicle are top priority, but if you can spare the manpower, try and re-acquire that COM Package.”

  “Roger that. Apollo out,” came the reply.

  I’d never done it before, but from what I understood fr
om the Delta guys, driving with night vision goggles is difficult. Depth perception is severely hampered. That would explain the mid-desert traffic accident.

  “The primary COM relay is on the Alpha team vehicle,” Howard whispered to me quietly as we listened to the sporadic chatter. “As long as they don’t lose that vehicle, they’ll still have COM with JSOC.”

  We continued to listen to the radio traffic from not only the assault teams but also the air support and the naval channels that were involved. Eavesdropping was frowned upon, Howard had told me earlier, but the channels weren’t locked out, and it helped give a big-picture understanding when trying to anticipate needs.

  “Sea Witch, this is Apollo,” we heard a few minutes later. “We’ll be back on the road in about five mikes.”

  “Apollo, Sea Witch. Any sign of your COM chest? Over.”

  There was a brief pause and then the speaker cracked to life again. “Sea Witch, Apollo. Negative. It was a pretty long, bumpy ride to the bottom. It could be anywhere in the dark along the way. We’d have to wait for sunrise to spot it.”

  “Shit,” Howard exclaimed. “The squad radio was in that case, too.”

  “Roger, Apollo,” came Sea Witch’s voice. “Can you still make the rally point on schedule?”

  “Sea Witch. No problem…if you don’t want us to look for the COM chest. Ajax can catch us up if we’re late to the dance. Over,” he said.

  “Acknowledged,” came the reply. “Leave it. Get back on the road. Update in ten mikes. Over.”

  “Roger. Apollo out.”

  “We are down to one satellite transmitter and two radios,” Howard said. “And they aren’t even to the target yet. Talk about putting all your money on one horse.”

  “They still have the other two teams’ boxes. They’ll sync up,” I replied.

  “Not if they don’t catch up with the other teams,” he replied. “If they don’t catch up, they’ll be isolated. The range on those personal boxes is short without the relays. Right now they're close enough for the squad radio to pick them up. But if they don’t find it, we’ll lose COM as soon as they start moving again.”

  I nodded my understanding. They had to either catch up or find the radio they had dropped. As we continued to listen to the digital pulses coming through the speakers, there were only occasional voices to be heard, usually from aircraft checking altitudes and readiness status. It went on like that for nearly ten minutes, then we got some static across the team channel.

  There was a short pause, then more static—it sounded like someone was trying to broadcast. Followed by about thirty seconds of silence.

  “Cowboy, this is Sea Witch. Did you catch that last traffic?” the JSOC group said, calling Howard—a rare event.

  “Sea Witch, Cowboy. Negative. Static only. Over,” He replied, sounding a bit like a radio DJ.

  “Sea Witch, this is Ajax,” came the voice of the Alpha Team leader. “That was squad squawk, and I have Ringer on the line, so it must have been Apollo. He’ll be out of range without that squad box. We have to assume he’s on his way.”

  “Roger,” Sea Witch replied. “We’ll continue to monitor and assume he’s en route to the rally point. Out.”

  “Shit,” Howard exclaimed under his breath.

  I knew why he was so upset. The individual radios allowed the assault teams to communicate over a limited range without having to carry heavy units on each person. But the larger squad radios were required to relay the personal radio’s signals—the range on the small ones was severely limited, just a mile or two without the relay. And the satellite COM is what tied it all together and allowed them to talk to the other players. Without either of those, they would be isolated.

  It was near silence for the next fifteen minutes. Only the occasional ‘squawk’ from air support.

  “Sea Witch, this is Ringer,” we heard after a long silence. “We’ve been engaged. It looks like rebels, but they are coming in hot.”

  “Ringer, Sea Witch. Roger. How far out are you?” came the JSOC group’s radio operator.

  “Sea Witch, one five mikes to rally,” he replied over the sound of gunfire in the background.

  “Ringer. Sea Witch. Your call. Are we aborting?”

  “Sea Witch, this is Spartan,” came Nick’s voice from the Alpha vehicle. “Moving to intercept Bravo’s position. We’ll get back to you in two mikes.”

  “Spartan. Sea Witch. Negative. If Bravo is out of commission, it’s a scrub. Over.”

  “Sea Witch. If we can salvage this mission, we have to,” Nick said with a lot of agitation in his voice. “We can be at Bravo’s location in less than two mikes. We can’t lose this package again.”

  There was a long pause, but the coded digital traffic increased dramatically.

  “There’s a command channel we aren’t getting here. Who’s using that frequency?” I asked.

  Howard leaned over to look at his computer screen and pulled up the channel IDs.

  “That’s Langley and the Joint Chiefs,” he replied before plopping back in his chair.

  “Can you bring them up?” I asked.

  He shot me a horrified look. “Not only can’t I, but I wouldn’t if I could.”

  I shrugged. “I was just asking,” I replied. “Relax.”

  I put on the headset for my station and brought up the command channel structure. I probed the connection with a couple of commands and discovered that we did, in fact, have the encryption for those channels. All I had to do was authenticate my station, and I would be able to listen in. I just needed to get the authentication key—the one Howard was using.

  “Spartan, this is Sea Witch. Continue to intercept Bravo. Give us an update as soon as you have one.”

  We waited on edge as the seconds ticked by. The tension had built to almost an unbearable level when we heard Nick’s voice again.

  “Sea Witch, this is Spartan,” Nick said. “Bravo team is in sight. They are taking light fire from a couple of punks with AKs. Wait one.”

  “Roger,” came Sea Witch’s reply.

  A couple of minutes later, Nick’s voice was up again. “Sea Witch, Spartan. The shooters are down. We are one hundred percent combat effective and continuing to objective.”

  “Roger,” came the reply. “Any sign of Charlie Squad?”

  “Sea Witch. Negative. They’d be ahead of us by now,” Nick replied. “We have—”

  There was a sudden squeal across the speakers, and Nick’s voice took on a distorted digital quality before it ended abruptly.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “The satellite feed is gone,” Howard replied, his face turning into a picture of concentration as he began scanning and cycling frequencies to try and detect it again.

  He threw up his arms after a moment’s effort.

  “That’s it,” he said in resignation—too quickly for my taste.

  “What’s it?” I asked. “Nick just finished saying he was one hundred percent combat effective. He’ll keep going to the target.”

  “That’s not protocol. No communications, no Op,” Howard replied with stress in his voice.

  “Cowboy, this is Sea Witch. Do you have Spartan on COM? Over.”

  “Sea Witch, Cowboy. Negative. COM is down,” Howard replied.

  “I know Nick. He’s not going to abort,” I said with a little anger in my voice.

  “Then he’ll be out there on his own,” Howard replied. “JSOC is going to scrub. I guarantee it.”

  “Cowboy, Sea Witch. Standby.”

  There was an uptick in digital traffic again as JSOC, Langley, and the Joint Chiefs began discussing their options. I knew John would be pushing for continuation, I just didn’t know how much pull that would have with the JSOC without someone else backing him up.

  We suddenly heard beeping coming from a radio on the other side of the room. I turned and saw it was coming from the local squad box we had used to test the mission radios. In a couple of seconds, one of the Delta backup team memb
ers—Gopher—came running into the COM center.

  “That’s Morse Code on the squad box,” the Gopher yelled, running toward the box.

  We went to the radio and listened. Gopher began writing down the message, reading it aloud as it came across. I was already smiling, knowing what the message said before it was translated.

  “Monkey Wrench. Spartan. Backup SATCOM and relay connect. Send D4. Meet at rally,” Gopher said as he wrote the message.

  Howard looked at me. “We can’t just deliver a new transmitter. They're fifty miles into Syria!”

  “If my guess is correct, he’s got the truck battery hooked to that squad box and is frying it as we speak just to send this message,” I barked, letting a little of the command tone I’d picked up from John slip into my voice. “If they’re continuing to the target, then I swear to baby fucking Jesus, they’re getting a new transmitter.”

  Just then, the radio squawked to life.

  “Cowboy, this is Sea Witch,” came the command operator.

  Howard ran for the mic. “Sea Witch, Cowboy. Spartan is—”

  I snatched the mic from his hand. “Sea Witch, this is Monkey Wrench. Spartan’s SATCOM is damaged, but has sent Morse code indicating they are on task,” I said quickly. “Connection is not expected to last. Over.”

  Howard reached across me trying to take the mic from my hand, using his considerable bulk to maneuver me. When he lifted his arm, I stuck out my thumb like a hitchhiker and jabbed it into his armpit. He jerked away cradling the spot.

  “Monkey Wrench. Identify,” came the reply from the JSOC operator.

  “Sea Witch. You can authenticate with Momma and Papa on Lima Channel,” I said—John or Director Burgess could authenticate me.

  A second passed, and then I heard John’s voice on the JSOC Tactical Channel. “Monkey Wrench, this is Momma. You have confirmation Spartan is still combat capable?”

  “Momma. Affirmative. Spartan confirmed one hundred percent combat effective. Their SAT link is just damaged. He wants a new one delivered,” I said.

  There was another pause for a few moments, but the digital beeping and clicking over the Langley and Joint Chiefs’ channel increased dramatically. I ran to my station and pulled up the command channel authorization screen.