Strike Eagle

by Doug Beason

  “I understand.”

  “Then can you show me where it is we’re going? I’m not crazy about flying into the side of a mountain. This is definitely not VFR conditions.” At Pompano’s blank stare, he said, “VFR—Visual Flight Rules. You know, being able to see where we’re going.”

  “I will tell you where to go.”

  Head set his mouth. “Look. I understand what you want, but we just can’t do it like that—”

  Bruce grabbed Captain Head by the arm and pulled him aside. “Listen, the guy’s a rock. Nothing gets into his brain unless he wants it to. Simone just had a pissing contest with the guy and lost! So do what you can, but don’t argue with him.”

  “Give me a break—look at the weather, for crying out loud!”

  “Do you really think the military would mount a rescue mission with this old fart and me if they didn’t have to?”

  Captain Richard Head opened his mouth to speak, but closed it and snorted. He threw up his hands “Okay … okay.” He threw a glance at Pompano. “A pissing contest with Simone?”

  “Honest.”

  A flight-suited man swung up on board and banged on the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the rear of the helicopter. “Ready, ready. Let’s crank it.” Two other men joined the crew—gunners—and sat in the back.

  Head settled into his seat. He waved an affirmative to the man. The man turned and cracked a smile at Bruce.

  “Howdy, Lieutenant. I’m Zaz, if you need anything. Gotta have ya strap in, if ya would.”

  Bruce set his M-16 on the floor and strapped himself into one of the webbed seats. The seats extended down either side of the helicopter. To his right was a hatch, and an automatic weapon hung from a mooring, ready to be swung out the door. The .50-caliber machine gun could be used at either hatch.

  The sound of rain was soon overcome by a high whine outside the craft. Bruce recognized the auxiliary power unit. The sound was soon followed by a vibration in the helicopter as the main rotor started up. The rain had left a fresh, washed-out smell throughout the chopper, but that too was replaced by heavy fumes of JP-4 as the craft started vibrating faster.

  Bruce leaned back and watched out the side of the craft. He couldn’t see through the rain across the tarmac. His senses seemed abuzz, numbed by a cottony layer. Thop thop thop thop. JP-4, the rain, the vibrations—the excitement seemed to catch up with him, fully hit him in the gut, as he realized that it wasn’t just Yolanda that they were going after. Losing the vice president was one thing; hearing that he was now only an oath away from the Presidency was another.

  But grasping that he was going to slip through the jungle to rescue him—with the help of an old Filipino with knee problems—made Bruce want to throw up. His stomach lurched. Bruce turned his head and frantically tried to unbuckle, but couldn’t get his fingers moving fast enough. He vomited just as the chopper lifted from the ground.

  Seconds later Zaz shook his head as he surveyed the mess on the helicopter floor. “Damned fighter pilots. You can dress ’em up, but you can’t take ’em out.”

  Pulled out of a nap, Catman felt like he was still dozing. Colonel Bolte had been terse during the briefing; none of the grab-ass that usually accompanied the pre-flight briefs took place.

  Dead serious.

  It was the emphasis on “dead” that got Catman worried.…

  Orbit at thirty seven thousand feet and wait for the tankers launched from Kadena. You’ll be going in “hot” when the balloon goes up, and it will have to be pure IFR—Instrument Flight Rules—with the FLIR and LANTIRN. They’ll be taking out the vice president, so if you miss the bad guys on the ground and hit any friendlies, chances are you’ll be taking out the next President of the United States. Any questions? Okay, if nobody screws up then nobody dies. Nobody but the bad guys.

  One more thing. You’re not screwing around Crow Valley anymore, hosing down old trucks. This is it, ladies and gentlemen; the real thing. Are there any questions?

  FLIR: Forward Looking Infra-Red. That and the LANTIRN navigation and targeting pods had been designed for low visibility. They weren’t made for this weather, and cripes! Especially not with a three-hundred-foot ceiling, pea soup for rain.… And they were supposed to go after an unknown target?!

  They picked up their helmets and stepped out into the rain, toward their war birds.

  Steamboat Springs, CO

  “General, the STE is up. Washington is on the line.”

  “Thanks. And shut the door behind you.”

  General Newman waited for his aide to leave the communications room. When the news of Longmire’s death broke, a helicopter had been dispatched from Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs to pick up the Chief of Staff. Newman couldn’t be in Washington for another ten hours. A hell of a way to run a war.

  “This is General Newman.”

  “Dave—Francis Acht.”

  “Good afternoon, sir. I’m scheduled to get to Andrews by midnight. General Westschloe at Pacific Air Command is throwing every plane that can make it to Clark out over the Pacific; we’re ferrying in over ten thousand troops from Korea and Japan to aid in the search. By the time I get to Andrews, Clark’s population will have doubled.”

  “That’s good. But it’s only a start. Dave—we’ve located the Speaker. He’s jumping at the bit to get something provisional set up.”

  “Provisional?”

  “That’s right, provisional. The Attorney General balks at doing anything rash, say swearing in the Speaker until Adleman is found—at least until she can get a ruling on this. Dammit, Dave, you guys have got to locate him! The lawyers are having a field day interpreting the accession … and no one wants to commit to having the Speaker step in.

  “We’re holding back all public announcements until we get a handle on this. We need an answer, anything that might indicate that Adleman is still alive.”

  Newman interrupted. “General Simone is working the problem, Mr. Secretary. There is a strong lead that he is following, and he has his best people on it now. We’re aware of the situation in Washington; there is just nothing more we can do until we actually find Mr. Adleman.”

  Both men avoided calling Adleman the vice president. At this point he was either the President or a dead man. Newman felt as frustrated as Acht, but even more under the gun. Even with the changes in Iran, the Middle East, China and North Korea, the cuts that the military had been seeing for the past decade had started to affect operational capability. A military surge of this magnitude was the first real test that the forces had seen since the second Iraq war.

  Acht seemed to settle somewhat. “Keep us informed. Secretary Zeringue isn’t here right now, but he wanted me to pass along that he supports what you’re doing and will meet with you tonight at Andrews.”

  The reference to Newman’s boss, the Secretary of Defense, brought a smile to the general. The feisty little Secretary was probably off slashing bureaucrats’ throats. It was the first time that Newman had smiled in the past three hours.

  A tap came at the door. “The helicopter is ready, General.”

  Newman spoke hurriedly. “Thank you, Mr. Secretary. If anything breaks, we’ll keep you informed.”

  “Fine. Fine. And General Simone … this lead he’s working on … what are the chances it will work?”

  Same as a snowball in hell, thought Newman. A damned First Lieutenant fighter pilot and a sixty-year-old-store keeper. But it was all they had.

  “I can’t say, sir. Really can’t say. But Simone says his best men are on the job.”

  Outside of Tarlac

  “This way.” The old man sitting behind Captain Head pointed to the right. The Black Hawk followed the road two hundred feet above the ground. It reminded Richard Head of a James Bond movie, of the helicopter swinging in behind a car carrying the British secret agent.

  Flying this low had led to typical reactions from the ground: people shaking fists at them, young children jumping up and down and waving, startled chickens flapping
around the farms. So far there were no unexpected hazards—Gould kept a running commentary from the GPS, flight maps, and radar, singing out whenever they were about to come up to a tower.

  Head glanced down at the navigation sensors. The TADS/PNVS—Target Acquisition Sight and Pilot Night Vision Sensor—used forward-looking infrared to assist them in the low visibility. The system was slaved to their line of sight and displayed imagery that allowed them to hug the ground.

  Pompano pushed his face right next to Head. He watched a small road as it swept by below. “We are five miles away. You need to land us—quickly.”

  “By the road?”

  “No. You need to take us over the jungle.” He motioned with his arm at a point to the right.

  Head squinted, but could not make out anything more than a mile away. “You want me to take you in there?”

  “Yes. But stay away from the dirt road, or you might be heard.”

  “I got news for you, gramps,” said Head. “They can probably hear us if we’re three miles away. But after all these search flights, they might not pay attention to us. If that’s where you want to go, I’ll get you there.” Head turned away from the road and banked over the trees. They were only a hundred feet above the tree line; misty shapes of hills rose up, just out of view in the cloud and rain.

  “Can you find a clearing?”

  “If not, we’ll let you down on the crane. You’d better get on back with Bruce.”

  “Aih.” Pompano unstrapped and moved slowly to the rear of the helicopter.

  Head glanced down at the navigation system. Once Pompano had left the cockpit he looked up. There was no clearing, as far as he could see—only the dense growth of trees. Head leaned to Gould. “Craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. It’ll be a miracle if it works.”

  “You got it,” said Gould.

  At three thousand feet in the clouds, the MC-130 couldn’t be heard on the ground. The dense cloud layer dissipated the sound from the plane’s four engines.

  The lack of visibility didn’t prevent the crew from the First Special Operations Squadron from completing their mission. In fact, the cloud layer actually enhanced their ability to do their job—keeping track of the MH-60 Black Hawk flying just below the cloud layer.

  Colonel Ben Lutler watched over the shoulders of the two pilots in the cockpit. Outside the cockpit window there was nothing to see—a gray mishmash of formless patterns. It looked like an old, analog black-and-white TV set after the television station has gone off the air.

  But on the console, a color-enhanced display showed the MH-60 Black Hawk in astonishing detail. An elongated pod fastened to one of the MC-130’s wings held an upgraded AN/AAQ-18 Adverse Weather Vision System, a microcomputer-controlled radar and next generation infra-red surveillance device. The back of the MC-130 was crammed full of navigation, surveillance, and electronic counter-measure gear, enough high-tech weaponry to sizzle equipment for miles around.

  Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Minutes earlier, the Black Hawk had turned sharply over the jungle and started to slow. When it started to hover over a part of the jungle, Lutler bit his tongue and waited for the MC-130 aircraft commander to pull the plane into a tight orbit.

  The EWOs—Electronic Warfare Officers—sat in the back of the craft and kept the AN/AAQ-18 trained on the helicopter. The EWOs were specialists in the electro-optical bells and whistles hanging off the airframe. They could listen to a radio signal and tell what kind of gear was transmitting it, where it was, and what they had to do to take it out. They were known as “wizards,” and were treated as such.

  When the MC-130 banked into a turn, the console continued to display the chopper.

  “This is it.” The pilot turned to Lutler. “What do you think, sir? We’ll track Lieutenant Steele once the Black Hawk lets him off, both on IR and the GPS chip he’s wearing. Should we start trying to pin down their destination?”

  “Yeah. But don’t broadcast where they’re going if we find it. There’s a flight of F-15Es orbiting six miles above us, just itching to roll in and take out the bad guys. We want to make damn sure the vice president is out before we call them in.”

  “Rog.” The pilot turned and spoke over the intercom to the rear of the craft. “EWO, pilot. Do a sweep search on buildings near the Black Hawk.”

  “That’s a rog. We’ll get you a list soonest.”

  Lutler settled back in his chair. The wizard had spoken. In minutes they should have a fix on the vice president’s location. If it was close by, another few hours and they’d be ready for the pickup.

  Outside of the cockpit window the two-pronged fork of the Fulton Recovery System was invisible in the clouds. The concept was simple: A person on the ground would strap into a harness and deploy a balloon; the balloon would lift up a cord for the MC-130 to snag. The person on the ground would be jerked into the air and hauled into the Combat Talon.

  The only problem was they’d have to come down out of the clouds before they attempted a recovery.

  It should be a piece of cake.

  Right.…

  “This is it!” Zaz unbuckled and stood in the back of the Black Hawk. Bruce fumbled with the straps. He checked over his combat and survival vest for the tenth time. Two long clips of ammunition fit over his shoulder. He thought momentarily about leaving the extra bullets behind, but they did give him a sense of security.

  Grabbing his M-16 he stood and joined Zaz. The two gunners remained in the back of the craft. Zaz swung a winch out from the bulkhead and positioned it near the hatch. The Black Hawk hovered a good twenty feet over the top of the trees. Zaz turned to Bruce and yelled over the thop thop thop of helicopter blades.

  “Know how to do this?”

  “Roger that.” Bruce remembered being lifted up through the jungle at the end of survival training. The last thing he had seen was Abuj, his dark face silently watching him being hoisted away. Bruce wished that he had the small Negrito with him now.

  Pompano stepped from the cockpit. Zaz led the old man up to the penetrator seat.

  “This will take you through the trees and get you to the ground. Sit on this seat, and keep your arms and legs in tight. Lieutenant Steele will help you off once you get down. Are there any questions?” Pompano shook his head. Zaz turned to Steele. “Ready, sir?”

  Bruce stepped up to the penetrator. Zaz helped him to climb on. The device looked like a long pole that flared out and back again. Bruce sat on the flared section and wrapped his arms and legs around the pole. The penetrator had enough weight to push through the thick jungle foliage, and still offer Bruce protection from the branches.

  Zaz put his mouth next to Bruce’s ear. “We’ll drop the Fulton pack when you give us the signal after the rescue. You’ll have that option if you can’t find a clearing for us to get you out. Got your radios? GPS?” Bruce nodded and patted his survival vest. “After we let you off, Captain Head will return to base for refueling—we can’t do an air-to-air in this weather. We’ll be back up here in an hour. All you’ve got to do is call. We’ll know where you are: there’s an MC-130H tracking you.”

  “Right.” Bruce swung the M-16 over his shoulder and grasped the penetrator. He took a deep breath. “Let’s get it over with.” He knew that they were being watched from a MC-130, but he didn’t want Pompano to know just how closely they were being tracked.

  Zaz started the winch. The penetrator swung off the floor and over to the hatch. Bruce moved out of the helicopter. The rain immediately soaked his fatigues. The wind came straight down, washed down from the rotors. Suspended in air, he swung back and forth, as if on a huge pendulum. He looked straight ahead, and could tell he was getting closer to the jungle.

  Seconds later the foliage enveloped Bruce; green, wet, wood smells enveloped his senses. He couldn’t see the ground. A branch flipped up and ran across his body. There were crashing sounds of tree limbs breaking—he thought everyone would hear them descend.

  The bottom of the penetrator hit. Th
e jungle was a morass of greenery, moss, leaves, shrubs, tree trunks, branches, all jumbled together. Bruce waited a second to see which way the penetrator would fall, then he leapt out …

  He hit a tree, stumbled backward, and twisted his right foot. He crashed through a thicket of plants, finally coming to rest on the ground. He waited a full second before moving. His face stung where the exploding heads-up display had cut him earlier in the morning.

  He pushed up off the ground, covered in mud. He tried to rock back, but putting weight on his right foot caused him to wince. He fell to the side. With a hand he pushed himself up, then sat on a large rock to examine his boot. His foot wasn’t broken, but when he tried to put weight on it again, it stung like crazy—great, probably sprained.

  The penetrator remained on the jungle floor, dormant. Bruce pushed up and wobbled over to the blunt device. He pulled twice on the line and jumped back on one leg. The line tightened, then pulled the penetrator back up. A mass of leaves rained down as the penetrator disappeared through the jungle canopy.

  Bruce quickly plopped down. He rummaged through his survival vest and pulled out a thick wind of bandage. He tightened the laces on his boots, then wrapped the bandage around his ankle on the outside of the boot.

  He could barely hear the helicopter, which lifted his spirits. If he had a hard time detecting the Black Hawk, the bad guys would too.

  It didn’t take long for the penetrator to reappear. Bruce heard the crashing noise from behind him. He favored his right foot and moved through the dense growth. He found that by zigzagging around the larger plants, he could make good time.

  He spotted the penetrator right before it hit. “Jump!”

  Pompano pushed off backward and landed with an “Ooof!” He immediately bounced up. Bruce hobbled up.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Aih.” Pompano narrowed his eyes and looked Bruce over, but didn’t say a word.

  Bruce shifted the M-16 to his left hand. “Okay—where do we go?”