by Andrew Watts
Calhoun nodded, wincing in pain. “Let’s move.”
Once they were traveling, Calhoun began getting treatment for his shoulder wound. It looked to Chase like something had sliced right through the muscle tissue, about an inch deep. He looked to be hurting pretty bad. But the man working on his shoulder cleaned it and poured a clotting agent powder on it, then taped it up well enough for the bleeding to slow.
Chase said, “Even if we get vehicles, I don’t like the idea of being on the roads for too long. I’m going to activate our second option for air extraction.”
Calhoun nodded. “Good idea.” His face was covered in sweat and dirt.
Chase took Calhoun’s radio and made the call, using the code word AUDIBLE in an otherwise innocuous phrase. He repeated the phrase several times until he heard a three-tone reply transmitted back. That indicated that the NSA relay station had picked up the signal. The NSA relay team would then send a message to a US Navy destroyer, the USS Farragut.
The USS Farragut’s orders, which Chase had personally delivered to the captain only a few days ago, were to remain in a defined geographic box, a little more than one hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador. They were to loiter in that position in case they were needed as a backup transportation option for Chase and the Marine Raider team. Chase had thought the chances of them actually being called upon were less than five percent.
Turned out he was wrong. He thought about his sister, getting in her helicopter. Would she realize that her mission was to come rescue him? Probably. She’d always been the smartest of the three siblings.
Chase looked at his watch. “Now that I’ve sent that signal, we’ll have about six hours to make it to the backup landing zone.”
“We’ll have to acquire a few vehicles if we’re going to make it there on time,” the gunnery sergeant replied.
“Yup.”
Chase thought that he would never be as happy to see his sister as when she picked him up in her helicopter today. Then he thought about the chances that someone would have a surface-to-air missile near the next site.
“We’re going to have to set up a perimeter of a few miles around the next LZ, to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen.”
“Got it. There’s only one road. We’ll separate into three fire teams. One will stay at the LZ. The other two can separate along the road and make sure it stays secure.”
They came to a shallow stream. The group crossed it all at once, the water getting only ankle-deep. As the group began to help each other up the bank on the other side of the stream, Chase heard a snap.
The sound could have been confused for a breaking tree branch—except for the fact that one of the Marines collapsed into the stream, facedown. A blur of dark red blood poured out of his back.
Yellow muzzle flashes from the forest behind them, followed by bursts of automatic gunfire. Chase grabbed onto a branch overhanging the stream and pulled himself up the embankment. He then turned around and lay in the prone position, taking stock of their attackers.
A single loud crack to Chase’s left turned into an outbreak of return fire. One of the Marines began firing his M240G squad automatic weapon, or SAW, and the tropical forest erupted in noise. Tracer rounds sliced through the air in a flat line over the shallow stream, and into the dark jungle on the other side.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Chase turned at the noise. Two of the Marines fired grenade launchers toward the attackers and then moved positions.
One of the Marines ran to the stream and grabbed the corpse lying in the water. He slung it over his shoulders, then turned and ran back to cover.
Darby jogged up next to Chase. “Why aren’t those bastards moving in on us? They’re just sitting back there, trying to pick us off from far out.”
“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here and fight. We’ll need to keep moving. What are our options?”
“I could leave a team here, but I’d rather not do that. I could…”
Movement out of the corner of Chase’s eye. Airborne. Chase looked up and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked like a dark grey square, hovering in the air. At first he thought it was a single object. But then he realized that it was the swarm of drones. They had collected together, about a dozen of them flying in close formation.
The drone swarm moved in unison, which created the illusion that they were a single object. The object appeared to be growing larger, and the buzzing grew louder. The drones were flying towards them, Chase realized.
Like they were about to attack.
“Darby.”
“What?”
He pointed at the drones.
As Chase looked again, one of them raced towards them and released a cluster of small objects. As each object impacted the surface, it exploded.
The explosions started in the stream. Spouts of water and rock lifting up into the air, and then walking up the bank and into the forest.
The drone was dropping some type of bomblets. Chase covered his head and ears and lay as tight to the ground as he could. Trees exploded and splintered all around them. Two more drones made similar bombing runs. When the cluster bomb attack stopped, Chase looked up and saw men running on the other side of the stream. It was the Chinese attackers, regrouping. Trying to flank them.
A ringing in his ears. He could barely hear anything. Shit. He should have put in his earplugs. It was stupid of him not to.
The Marine with the SAW began firing up at the drones. He walked the tracer rounds into the area where they were flying and began shattering them into pieces. Then the rectangle spread out, as if on command. Either they were programmed to do it, or one of the Chinese controlling it had spread them out as a defensive measure.
Chase looked at Darby, who was surveying his men. He crawled back to Chase. “Two dead. One injured. The captain’s in bad shape.”
“We need to get the crypto key back to the US. The data that’s on here”—he patted his bag, where the crypto key was stored—“is going to save a lot of lives.”
Gunnery Sergeant Darby looked across the stream. In the shadows of the forest, small groups of soldiers advanced to nearer positions.
Chase said, “Let’s go now. If we run, we can make the village…”
“Do you know where you are going?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you know how to get to the LZ on your own?”
Chase shook his head. He knew what the gunny was thinking. “Don’t.” Even as he said it, he knew his words would have no effect on the gunnery sergeant.
“If you go now, and we stay and hold them off, you’ll make it. If we all run, they’ll start picking us apart. We’ll be slow and ineffective. The mission comes first.”
“If you guys stay here, you could be killed.” Chase regretted saying it as soon as it came out.
“Son, don’t be stupid. I’m a US Marine. They’ll all be killed. Now go.”
Chase turned to go and then stopped. “Listen, just give me a head start. That’s all I need. Then you get your team out of here. Head to one of the villages northwest of here and hunker down near the road. Monitor guard frequency. Once I get to the helicopters, we’ll come pick you guys up.”
“Oorah.” The gunny yelled out the common cheer of the Marine Corps.
“Shut up.”
The gunny smiled.
Chase began running.
17
USS Farragut
200 Nautical Miles Northeast of the Galapagos Islands
Victoria held the fingers and palms of her glove so that they just barely touched the controls of the helicopter. Her heavy steel-toed flight boots were poised with their heels on the deck, angled to be ready to step on the helicopter’s foot pedals at a moment’s notice. She did this because she wanted to be able to grab the controls instantly, but still needed to let her copilot be the one doing the flying.
Her head moved constantly on a swivel. Looking forward to judge the distan
ce between the hovering Seahawk helicopter and the ship’s hangar. Looking down through the glass floor—known as the chin bubble—to judge the altitude to the flight deck. And looking from side to side to gain better awareness in determining their drift.
They were hovering a mere ten feet above their destroyer, the USS Farragut. A gigantic USNS supply ship pitched and rolled alongside the Farragut. She guessed it was maybe fifty yards away.
They had shot lines only a few moments ago, using guns that reminded her of what they used to shoot free tee shirts out at football games. Her ship had fired, and a soft cloth-covered ball, attached to a line, had traveled in an arc from the Farragut and landed on the supply ship.
The two ships were now connected. The supply ship was able to use that first line connection to begin connecting the bigger fuel lines and sturdier supply zip-lines. Deck hands moved pallets and net around the ship with practiced efficiency.
Beneath her twenty-thousand-pound aircraft, several enlisted men scurried about the flight deck, nervously hooking up the netted pallet to the bottom of the helicopter with a line and hook. It must have been a nerve-wracking job to be those men on the flight deck.
The flying pilot was Lieutenant Junior Grade Juan “Spike” Volonte, her inexperienced copilot. It was his first real vertical replenishment, or VERTREP, evolution. His face was a mess of sweat, and he was making constant overcorrections. As a result, the helicopter looked like it was constantly shaking and shimmying.
Up one foot, and then rapidly down two feet. Sliding to the left three feet, then surging quickly back to the right one foot. Their aircrewman, looking through the floor hatch in the rear of the aircraft, was attempting to make gentle correction calls. But he knew that with a pilot this inexperienced, it was almost useless. The kid just needed more practice.
Victoria’s job was to make sure Juan got enough hands-on experience so that he could learn and get better, yet be ready to jump in the split second he made too big a mistake. Basically, she needed to do the same thing she did every other time she flew with these nuggets. Get the mission done without killing anyone.
The way young Juan here was squeezing the black out of the stick, he would be exhausted after a few more minutes.
“Need a break?” she asked.
No response.
“Juan.”
“Yes…” He was grimacing. “Yes…boss?”
“Here, let me have the controls for a minute.”
“Roger, you have the controls.”
“I have the controls.”
“You have the controls.”
Two things happened. First, the helicopter, which had been lurching all over the place and scaring the shit out of the men below, instantly stabilized into a near-motionless hover. Second, Juan’s body sagged into a gelatinous sack of sweat and limp muscle, held to his seat by five tightly connected straps.
“Alright, ma’am, you’re hooked up,” said her aircrewman in the back of the aircraft.
“Roger, coming up and aft.”
She pulled up with her left hand—just a touch. At the same instant, she put in a tiny bit of forward pedal with her left foot and pulled aft on the cyclic with her right hand. Three distinct movements that got the helicopter to move the way she wanted. But they weren’t a conscious set of actions. With her years of flying experience, the control inputs just came naturally. Victoria just knew what she wanted the aircraft to do, and her body moved in such a way that the helicopter’s nose came up and began moving backwards and gaining altitude.
The aircraft floated up and drifted aft until they were about one hundred feet high, and perched directly in back of the Farragut. Two heavy pallets filled with supplies swung from a net below the helicopter. She kept pulling up with her left hand, getting more and more power from the engines as they came out of ground effect. The rotor wash blew a sphere of white sea spray around them as they hovered over the water.
Victoria next moved the cyclic forward an inch to arrest their backward drift. They were now essentially flying in formation with the destroyer, which was itself driving in formation with the large supply ship at her ten o’clock.
Victoria pushed forward with her left foot, and the nose of the aircraft yawed to the left. She moved the cyclic forward and left and pulled a bit more power. Now the helicopter began drifting left, maintaining altitude, and sliding from its perch behind the destroyer on over to a similar spot behind the supply ship.
She maneuvered the aircraft closer and lower to the deck of the supply ship and came to a hover ten feet above the deck.
The aircrewman said, “Okay, you’re in position. Come down. Load’s on deck.”
“Releasing the load.” She pressed the button on her cyclic that opened the cargo hook, allowing the pallets to remain on deck.
“Load’s free.”
Victoria said, “Well, there goes our snail mail. Any bets on how long it takes to reach our families?”
The aircrewman said, “Come up two…one…stead. Okay, they’re hooking up the next pallets now.”
“Roger.”
“Alright, you’re hooked up. Ready to come up and aft.”
She performed the same maneuver as before, effortlessly bringing the helicopter up and then sliding it over back to her ship. This time she transferred four pallets, bundled up in dark green netting, over to the Farragut.
They had several hours of this work to do, and it was one of the more fun exercises in helicopter naval aviation.
“Cutlass 471, Farragut Control.”
“Go ahead, Control,” Victoria responded. She checked the paper attached to her kneeboard, where she logged the current time and fuel. This allowed her to calculate the aircraft’s fuel burn and calculate how much remaining flight time they had. They were burning eight hundred and fifty pounds of fuel per hour—about normal.
“Ma’am, OPS just came over and gave me a strange request.”
She sighed. Whenever the ship communication began with a warning, it always ended badly for the aircrew. “Let’s hear it.”
“Boss, I overheard them talking, and it sounds like they want you to fly to South America.”
“What?”
“Hold on, ma’am.”
She looked back down at her fuel gauge and did the quick math. “We’ll need to land. When do they need us there? And what are we picking up?”
“OPS says he’ll brief you when you land. We’re clearing our flight deck of all supplies right now.”
“I assume the captain has given his approval?”
“Air Boss, this is OPS.”
Victoria paused. It was very odd for him to get on the radios to talk to them while they were flying. “Go ahead.”
His voice sounded tense. “Boss, we just got an emergency message telling us to open up the sealed mission brief in the captain’s safe. We’re to execute these orders as soon as possible.”
“Roger. Can you give me any more details?”
“The captain asked that you please head in for a landing so we can discuss.”
“Copy that. We’re inbound as soon as the deck is cleared.”
Twenty minutes later, Victoria walked in to the port-side hangar, where the operations officer was waiting for her.
She held her helmet under one arm. Her hair and face were wet with sweat. “What’s it say?”
OPS said, “Come with me. Captain’s on the bridge. He wants you to see him first. XO had me tell the pilots. Plug and Caveman read the orders and are in the wardroom getting ready.”
She was happy to hear that. No wasted time. But ready for what?
She walked up onto the bridge. The captain was on the port bridge wing, watching the replenishment at sea. The supply ship was still only a few dozen yards away, still hooked up and pumping fuel into the destroyer. Waves crashed into the hull between the two ships, splashing up white water every few seconds.
“Sir, OPS said that we have the go order?”
He turned to face her. “Yes. It sounds
like they need you to go be a bus driver for some special operations troops. It didn’t say what for. Just gave a time and a place to be. But they want us to send both helicopters. That going to be a problem?”
“Both helicopters?” She thought about that. Dual-helicopter operations from a single-spot ship, like a destroyer, were tricky. Only one aircraft could fit on the flight deck at a time. This meant that when both aircraft returned to the ship, only one of them would be able to land. That helicopter would then need to shut down, fold the blades and tail, and then be traversed into the hangar. That process could take thirty minutes to an hour—during which time the other aircraft would be burning precious fuel, without the ability to land.
She told the captain, “Sir, we can do it. We’ll just have to make sure that one of the other ships in company is designated as our alternate landing spot—I recommend the supply ship since she’s right here and has a big flight deck.”
The captain said, “Fine. OPS, make it happen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any questions?”
“Sir, I still haven’t read the mission orders.”
“Your other pilot has them.”
OPS said, “Plug. In the wardroom. I’ll show you, boss.”
Victoria said, “Alright, thanks, sir.”
The captain nodded, looking annoyed.
She and OPS left. OPS said, “It’s been one of those days with him.”
“Great.” She’d never met such an emotionally unstable man as the captain. It was unbelievable to her that he had risen this high in the officer corps. “Any idea why?”
“Beats me. I guess because this is changing his plan of the day. He doesn’t like change.”
When they arrived in the wardroom, Plug and Caveman were waiting. They had aviation charts of South America. The Colombia and Ecuador charts were spread out on the tables. The two pilots had rulers, pencils, and yellow highlighters and were quickly marking up the charts.
Plug handed Victoria a manila envelope. “Mission orders are in here.”
She took out the two white sheets of paper and read over them. “It gives us a few checkpoints to hit, and a time to be at the LZ. Other than that, it’s not very detailed.”
