Dragon Sim-13

by Mayer, Bob, 1959-

  Jumping at eight hundred feet left little time for sight-seeing, but Riley took a quick glance about and in the moonlight counted the nine other chutes stretched along the trail of the aircraft. At least everyone looks like they're over the drop zone, he thought. Chonjinam drop zone was so short that sometimes an entire team didn't make it out on a pass, in which case the aircraft had to circle around and do another. That was okay in training, but on a combat jump one pass was all the air force would give them. Riley's standing team policy was that if one man went out the door, everyone on the team went in the same pass. That made for some fierce arguments with aircrews, since the last members of Riley's team would occasionally jump on the red light— the navigator's signal that they'd reached the end of the drop zone. Riley had implemented this policy for two reasons: to instill a solid sense of teamwork, and to train exactly as if the mission were real.

  One hundred and fifty feet above the ground, Riley reached down and pulled the two quick releases that dropped his rucksack to the end of its fifteen-foot lowering line, where it dangled below him. Landing with the bulky rucksack still tight against the front of the jumper's legs made him a candidate for a broken leg. Lowering it too soon, above two hundred feet, induced oscillations that swung the jumper back and forth, leading to a much harder impact. The dark ground rushed up as Riley kept his eyes focused forward on the horizon. Pulling his knees tight together, Riley pointed his toes down and prepared to land. He grunted with the shock of hitting the ground, and rolled onto his right side.

  Riley stood up and began unbuckling himself from the harness. As he did so, he scanned the area to see if he could spot other team members. Another jump done. Now the ground mission began. Once out of the harness, the first thing he did was unsling his M16A2 from his shoulder and prepare it for action. Although he was carrying only blanks and knew that there would be no "enemy" on the drop zone, old habits were good to keep.

  Riley grabbed the apex of his canopy, s-rolled the parachute, and shoved it into its kit bag. Then he shouldered his rucksack and threw the kit bag on top. His slim frame was bent almost double with the combined weight of forty-eight pounds of parachute and a hundred pounds of rucksack. Staggering toward the tree line on the northern end of the drop zone, he made his way to the assembly point. Riley figured that a troop of cub scouts armed with butter knives could wipe out his team right now, separated as they were and laden down with rucks and chutes. Infiltration was the most vulnerable part of any Special Forces operation.

  It took Riley twenty minutes to make the eleven hundred meters to the assembly point. He was sweating in the early summer night air. Along the way, he linked up with two other team members. Pete Devito was the team's senior medic; he easily carried his gear atop his bodybuilder's six-foot-two, 220-pound frame. Riley considered Devito a good man. They'd been together in the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, on Okinawa during a previous assignment, and Devito had shown himself to be a conscientious soldier and medic.

  The other man, Smith, was the team's junior engineer and one of the first-termers on the team. For a while, desperate for bodies, Special Forces had allowed soldiers to enlist in the army, go through basic and advanced training, and airborne school, and then straight to Special Forces school. The traditional way was to accept only seasoned noncommissioned officers (NCOs) into Special Forces training. Older NCOs complained about the young kids, but Riley liked them. Sure, they could do foolish things at times and were occasionally immature, but overall they were smart, most of them having spent some time in college, and they added a youthful enthusiasm to things. The process of allowing first-termers into Special Forces had been discontinued a few years ago; Smith was one of the last of the breed.

  Behind his innocent-looking face, Smith had a devious mind. Combining him with Hoffman, the team's senior engineer, made for an extremely effective demolitions team. Both were young and inexperienced, but extremely intelligent. Hoffman, with his mop of red hair and thick glasses, had been dubbed Little Einstein by the team. Give him a problem, and in a few minutes it was solved.

  As the three men passed into the tree line, a voice called out to them in the dark: "Running."

  "Cloudy," Riley replied, followed by Devito and Smitty, calling out their mission code names as running passwords. They entered the small assembly area nestled among the trees. Five other members were already there—three providing security and two digging. They'd have to dig a mighty big hole for ten parachutes and helmets, Riley knew. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of being angry at his new team leader. During mission planning, Captain Peterson had insisted on caching the parachutes, despite Riley's arguments to the contrary. That's the way the young captain had been taught in the Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg and, by God, that's the way they were going to do it. By the book. Riley felt that a man who didn't let common sense overrule the book was a dangerous fellow. He had seen enough of this type in his twelve years in the army.

  Riley took a quick count in the dark. Eight of ten present. He was missing the new team leader—that figured—and Comsky, the team's junior medic. On first impression Riley had wondered how Comsky had made it through the extremely rigorous Special Forces medical school. He just didn't seem to be clicking on all cylinders at times. He even looked slow and dumb. Only five and a half feet tall and barrel chested, Comsky had thick, bushy eyebrows and a body covered with hair. He'd been dubbed the Ape by the other team members when he had first walked into the team room, and the nickname had stuck. He played the ape role sometimes to amuse the rest of the team, scratching his arms and swaggering around the team room. However, given a medical emergency, he seemed to come alive and worked as well as any Special Forces medic Riley had seen—in fact, better than most. Comsky was also one of the strongest men, pound for pound, Riley had ever met.

  After fifteen minutes, the last two members straggled in, beating their way along the tree line. Riley checked his watch. Fifty minutes to assemble. Piss poor, he thought. On a real mission, if they'd been spotted jumping in, the drop zone would have been crawling with enemy forces by now. And the team leader wanted to sit here just off the DZ for a couple of hours while they dug a big hole to dispose of their parachutes. Not only that, but there was no way they could properly camouflage the hole in the dark. Anybody coming by, unless they were blind and stupid, would instantly recognize that something was buried here. They might as well put up a sign: "Parachutes Buried Here!" But Riley would play the game. He'd give Captain Peterson a little more rope to hang himself. That was the only way the man was going to learn.

  The training mission tonight was to move about six kilometers from the drop zone to a power line and simulate destroying it with dummy demolitions that the team carried. The mission had to be completed by 0400 the next morning; at this rate, Riley knew they'd never make it. It was already 2315, and he estimated another two to three hours to finish the burial cache. Riley settled down for the wait as the team members rotated between burial detail and security. Digging in ground laced with roots and rocks, while trying to be as quiet as possible, made for slow progress.

  At 0100 Captain Peterson started getting nervous. Riley figured that Peterson had finally gotten it through his head that they weren't going to make it to the target on time. Peterson came over and whispered to him.

  "Sergeant Riley. I don't think we're going to make the target at this rate. The men don't seem to be digging fast enough. Here's what I want to do. Leave four men here to finish the cache and the rest of us go up and hit the target. We'll link up at the exfiltration point. You pick the men to stay. In fact, I want you to be in charge here. I'll take the other element up to the target."

  Lord give me patience, thought Riley. Sounds like he memorized that little spiel. There's nothing worse than changing a plan in midoperation, especially if contingencies haven't been planned for. The captain's intimation that the team wasn't digging fast enough pushed Riley past his limit. He had had enough of this nons
ense. Time for the captain's Special Forces schooling to really begin, Riley thought.

  "With all due respect, sir, would you care for my opinion?" Without waiting for a reply, Riley drove on, speaking in a quiet, biting, forceful tone that the captain had not heard in the week he'd been with the team. The captain stood silent as he watched Riley's dark face in the moonlight.

  "First off, sir, I told you that we'd never get these chutes buried in time. Secondly, we don't even need to cache the damn things because once we blow the power line, under the enemy scenario in this exercise, any so-called enemy with half a brain is going to figure out what happened. If we don't make exfiltration by 0700 it isn't going to matter if we made the parachutes disappear by magic into the fourth dimension, because we're going to be running so fast and hard, we're going to have a lot more important things on our mind. Like staying alive. So forget the parachutes. We leave them here as they are. I'm signed for them. If they get ripped off it's my ass. We hit the target like we planned with all ten team members and we go now!"

  Riley turned from the stunned team leader. With hand signals he let everyone know to put on their rucksacks and move out quickly, then watched with satisfaction as the many hours of drilling paid off. Within a minute they were moving, the team leader sullenly falling into place in the formation.

  The lead man, weapons specialist Sfc. Tom Chong, wore night-vision goggles, as did Riley and the last man. The bulky goggles were a pain to use sometimes, but on night missions like this they were worth their weight in gold. Through the goggles the moon-and starlight was computer enhanced, and everything appeared almost as it would in daylight. The only drawbacks were that all images were in a shade of green, and the viewer lost his sense of depth perception to a large extent. The advantage of being able to see in the dark more than made up for these disadvantages.

  Chong could see like a cat in the dark, even without the aid of the goggles. The point man also had an uncanny sense of location and direction. Riley depended on him extensively during night moves. On many previous exercises in rough terrain, even when Riley himself had been confused, Chong had found the way. Riley had worked with some excellent trackers, but he had never seen anyone able to move like Chong.

  The other team members referred to Chong jokingly as their resident native. Chong had been born in Korea and spoke the language fluently. He had also attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California, to learn Mandarin Chinese. Chong had helped the team out numerous times with his ability to speak the local language as they roamed the Korean countryside. He also got them better deals when they shopped in the native markets.

  The slim, dark-skinned man in the lead had the azimuth and distance to the target memorized, as did Riley. Using his pace count, Riley figured that they were within a kilometer of the target when the team leader signaled a halt. Riley moved back to the captain to find out what was up. He found the detachment commander crawling under his poncho and making a map check with a red-lens flashlight. In doing so, he was making enough noise to attract the attention of anyone within five hundred meters. Riley figured that Peterson had learned this little trick in Ranger school. He waited until the team leader was done.

  "We're about two kilometers from the target, Sergeant Riley. I think we need to head more to the west."

  "Sir, we're less than a klick away and right on track. Chong is the best navigator I've ever seen at night and he knows this land. I've been checking his azimuth and pace count and we're dead on. Trust me, sir. Unless of course your pace count is much different." Riley waited. He figured that the new team leader had not been keeping a pace count since leaving the cache site. The lack of an answer confirmed this.

  Riley gave the move-out signal. In twenty minutes the team was on target. Following a quick halt to drop rucksacks, the team broke down into its various tactical elements.

  Riley settled back in his overwatch position and observed the team run through the maneuver they had practiced. Four team members split into two groups and moved out along the service road of the power line to provide security. Each two-man team had one of the new squad automatic weapons (SAW) and a pair of light antitank weapons (LAWs). Two other team members were fifty meters back in the tree line, where the team had dropped all ten rucksacks, and would link up once the charges were set and blown. Riley and Captain Peterson observed from the tree line as the two team engineers ran up and placed the charges on the tower holding the power lines.

  From leaving the tree line to completing wiring their charges, Smitty and senior engineer Sgt. Dan Hoffman took two minutes and thirty seconds.

  They double-primed the plastic explosive for a nonelectrical detonation as they'd been taught to do by Riley. Before he made rank and became team sergeant, Riley had been a Special Forces engineer also, so he rode his engineers hard and set high, exacting standards.

  Hoffman did a last check and then moved back toward the tree line, unreeling his detonating wire. Once the engineer reached the overwatch position, Riley flashed a red-lens flashlight at both flank security teams and they rushed back. After accounting for all personnel, Riley signaled Hoffman to blow the charge. Hoffman pulled the igniter and yelled "Boom!" Riley jumped.

  "Sorry, Top. Just thought I'd do it for effect," Hoffman admitted sheepishly as they moved back to pick up their rucks.

  Riley was happy with the actions on target. Less than five minutes from leaving the rucks to picking them up. The team could do better, but that wasn't bad. They threw on their rucks and moved out. The dummy demo was left in place to be evaluated and removed the next day.

  The team made it to the pickup zone (PZ) thirty minutes early. It was just getting light enough to see out into the dry streambed where the helicopter was supposed to land. At exactly 0658, Riley stepped out onto the rocks under the watchful guns of his team and turned on his strobe light. Light flickering, he waited. The appointed time came and went. At 0702 Riley shut off his light and came back to the team.

  Exfiltration was supposed to be a highly coordinated and exactly timed event. A window of two minutes prior and two minutes after the designated time was all that was allowed for security reasons. In this case, however, Riley mused, the highly coordinated part seemed lacking.

  Another blown exfiltration because the helicopter didn't come. Since he'd been on Team 3, Special Forces Detachment-Korea (DET-K), Riley had not been exfiltrated on time on more than half his training missions, due to helicopters not showing up on time or at all. It worried him. He'd been told by other, more experienced Special Forces NCOs about helicopter pilots in Vietnam who had flown through all sorts of obstacles, both natural and man-made, to pick them up. But in this peacetime army, it seemed that the birds wouldn't fly if there was a cloud in the sky.

  Riley heard the muttered curses of the team members as they realized that they had a fifteen-kilometer walk back to the truck pickup point. God help us if we ever have to do this for real and those birds don't show, Riley thought. We'd be walking a hell of a lot farther than fifteen kilometers.

  Fort Meade, Maryland Thursday, 1 June, 1800 Zulu Thursday, 1 June, 1:00 p.m. Local Meng pointed at a stack of papers on one of his desks. "Those are your copies of the oplans for the units involved, along with my initial mission assessments."

  Ron Wilson looked at the bulging stack with little enthusiasm. After just having finished the debrief on Dragon Sim-12, he wasn't thrilled about jumping right into the next mission. In his opinion, Doctor Meng was pushing the whole project too quickly. Wilson knew that Meng wanted to get onto the Medusa scenario, but this pace was too much. "What's the time line, Doctor?"

  Meng didn't even bother turning. "Top sheet."

  Wilson looked at the schedule with dismay. "Inbrief tomorrow?"

  Meng looked up from where he was still flowcharting the mission. "The operation starts here tomorrow morning. I'll inbrief the strategic mission commander and his staff then. You can relax for a little while. I want you to look over the Medusa scenario for
me anyway. You'll pick up your shift day after tomorrow on Sim-13."

  Wilson sighed as he started sorting through the pile of papers, all stamped top secret. He was getting very tired of all this work. His responsibility in the Strams exercises was to back up Meng. The two of them usually split the time for the exercises, each spending twelve hours on duty.

  As he started reading the first oplan, Wilson saw that this next mission was going to involve special operations aircraft and troops. That meant the majority of the actions on their end would be to monitor the message traffic between the strategic mission commander at Fort Meade and the forward operating base (FOB) that would launch the actual mission, at least until it became time for the part on the ground to begin. Then the computer would kick in, generating the simulated message traffic. For the people back at Fort Meade, the whole operation looked realistic and continuous from start to finish.

  Wilson looked up. "Are we going to offset the aircraft and the team

  involved?" An offset meant sending aircraft and troops on a mission similar to the one in the oplan but in a local training area rather than the target country.

  Meng looked up briefly from his work. "No. Once the team gives its briefback, we go to the computer exclusively. The offset didn't work well in the Bear Sim with Special Forces. The computer can do a much better job than the offset. Besides, we're not testing the team. We're testing the people in Tunnel 3." Meng turned back to his work.

  The setup was complicated and Wilson didn't appreciate having inadequate time to get everything going. He glanced at Meng hunched over his tables. Wilson considered Meng a weird genius. There was no doubting the man's ability at programming. He could accurately portray a mission from start to finish to the strategic mission commander and staff in the Tunnel, using the oplans, simulated mission, and feedback from the employed element. But the man had the personality of a rock. He wasn't friendly with anyone on the staff and usually ran the actual Strams exercise by himself once it started, sleeping in his office in the Tunnel for the duration of the mission. It irritated Wilson to have Meng hanging around looking over his shoulder during his shift. Meng slept less than four hours out of every twenty-four, which meant that he was constantly around. Wilson wasn't sure whether it was because Meng didn't trust anyone or simply because he had nothing else to do. An aging photo of a young Chinese woman and a small boy sat on Meng's desk, but Wilson had never heard him make any reference to a family. He wished that the old man had someone waiting at home.