The two men, D’Angelo and Ben Ali, took special care tonight. Surprise was on their side now. But that would change. Hopefully, after the game they’d still have a window of opportunity to slip through the Libyan infrastructure to freedom.
Sami lit his fifth cigarette and turned another page he hadn’t read. Three minutes to go.
The young agent knew that the sound would follow the flash. He wouldn’t hear the incoming Mavericks’ rocket engines. But their presence would be unmistakable.
He truly hoped no one was in the building. It was of no real military value. Targeting it was strategic only because of its position. The missiles would come in from the northwest. They’d hit the corner, a few feet above the ground, forcing the building to crumble on the narrow intersection below. Within seconds the rubble would slow or block the route of any armed personnel carriers, tanks or light artillery called in to combat the Special Ops forces due down the street.
Two minutes.
Three delivery trucks approached the intersection, followed by what looked like an old man slowly peddling a rusty bicycle.
He forced himself to turn away from the faces of the people who might die. They were working late, despising their jobs, wanting a better life that General Kharrazi or his sons could ever provide. Who would live and who would die? It all depended on whether they’d clear the intersection in 90 seconds.
Sami hadn’t been briefed on the full playbook. However, he did assume that Special Ops men would come from the air, hit the roof of Fadi’s building and somehow get inside.
Helicopters? Did he hear the sound of helicopter blades approaching? They’d be moving slower than the Super Hornets or the missiles. That would be about right.
He checked his watch. Barely one minute.
Sami put his book on his lap at precisely minus-sixty from the 2nd quarter. He turned the flashlight off and deftly twisted the bottom of the tube and entered the code. He aimed it at the building and gave the battery compartment the quarter turn back to the left. At minus :45 seconds to his play he aimed the thin laser beam across the sky to a support pillar at the first floor of the building.
Definitely helicopters. It sounded like two.
His hand shook and the light bounced off the building into the darkness. He steadied his whole arm on the park bench, found the precise targeting point. The missiles had to be on their way, adjusting to his arm movements; receiving computer instructions on their destination. He held his breath and focused every sense on staying perfectly still. It took all of his will.
Helicopters passed to his right but he resisted the urge to look at them. He lost track of the time. Any second.
The flash transformed night into day. A hot, blinding force blew debris up the street toward Sami at an ungodly rate.
He dove for the tree to his left and pressed his back up against. He remembered to open his mouth. It helped prevent a concussion. Then the sound. The awful sound. And the faces of the last truck drivers and the bicyclist came to mind. Did they even know?
When the noise abated he peered out from behind the tree. The corner building was obliterated. The Mavericks had done their job. So had he.
Tripoli, Libya
0105 hrs
20 January
D’Angelo heard the explosion. A perfect fake, he hoped. Less than twenty seconds after the two missiles hit, he saw the Black Hawks hover 10 feet over the eight story high sports complex, home to Fadi’s growing empire. Four Apaches covered them from another 500 feet above. Each had their fuselage mounted 30mm automatic Boeing M230 chain guns tilted downward ready to let loose with 625 rounds per minute of ground supressing fire.
D’Angelo was on the move, listening to the play-by-play and waiting for the next quarter to begin. If all went well, they’d be out on their own. If it didn’t, he was on hand with an alternate escape route for the Special Ops.
As he approached the building, he couldn’t see what was happening eight floors above him. However, the President aboard the USS Carl Vinson could, though approximately two seconds behind real time. The signals were being individually uplinked by satellites to the IBCC command at McGill, then relayed to the Vinson. The lag time was normal, but it still made everyone nervous.
“Going for first and ten,” squawked Slange over the comm line. “Hitting the field now.”
Morgan Taylor sucked in a deep breath as he watched Slange’s men rapel the ten feet to the roof. The wind from the rotor blades kicked up only a little bit of dust. Most had been washed away in the torrential rain, so the video was very clear.
One after another they leaped to the roof. Slange, Gardner, Recht from Black Hawk One. Jones, Aplen and finally Roarke from Two. A technician at the Vinson control panel switched from a Black Hawk down-looking camera to Recht’s helmet cam. He carried another on his shoulder covering his back. Aplen was similarly wired, but with wider angle lenses. They kept ten feet between each other, giving ample four camera coverage of the playing field.
“Setting for ‘Hail Mary’,” Slange commanded over the radio. The team moved in a swift coordinated effort, anchoring their aluminum alloy, 4 1/2” locking D carabiners to the roof with fast drill bolts. Next, they fastened the end of their 11mm rappelling ropes to the anchor, pulled against the carabiners which would stand a 5500 pound test, and laid out fourteen feet of slack in parallel lines to avoid getting tangled with one another. Four members of team—Slange, Recht, Aplen and Roarke—stepped to the end of the ledge and awaited the colonel’s call.
“On five.”
The president could see the nods. They looked like cyborg troopers ready to take on an alien force; each with their night vision optics in place over their helmets. Only the American flag patches on their arms told the viewers what this was all about.
“Hut one. Hut two. Ready. Three. Four…. Five.”
In one motion the Special Forces team leaped off the roof. Four men in simultaneous descent pushed out to about ten feet from the building. Their slack tightened and they arced back toward the windows to Fadi’s offices. With feet first, they each hit a double pane. Four windows in all.
Gardner and Jones remained on the roof for cover. Once Jones had confirmation of the team’s entry, he signaled for Black Hawks One and Two to move up and out until exfiltration. Hopefully in a matter of minutes.
0107 hrs
Roarke felt the glass shattering around him. Fortunately none of the shards penetrated his clothes or helmet. Still, the moment played out very differently than any scene from a martial arts movie. Even his old Master, Jun Chong, crashed through treated Hollywood glass in his films. The real thing could kill. And this was the real thing. One long piece on the floor could puncture a vital organ.
Like the other members of the team, Roarke had been taught to push beyond the impact point and land solidly on two feet.
Two feet, he told himself in a moment of suspended animation. Training paid off. Roarke nailed his landing. Everyone quickly disconnected their cords from their belts by depressing a hook lock.
An alarm blared. The team didn’t have intelligence on the actual security system. But they weren’t surprised. After all, they were breaking into the inner sanctum of General Kharrazi’s son.
Recht panned the room with his camera. Aplen did the same. Both were fitted with infra-red optics and the room, though dark, was clearly visible in their view finders.
The men stepped forward in pairs, each with their back to a partner. This way every unit was able to survey the room with a 360-degree sweep.
“Second and ten,” shouted Colonel Langeman. Only fifteen seconds had elapsed since they jumped from the roof. “Proceeding to goal.” The filing cabinet was in sight.
Aplen and Slange then broke to the outer offices and into the darkened hallways, scanning for the enemy through their infra-red. Their immediate targets were the elevator shafts and the stairwells.
One of the two elevators was already on the move. Aplen took a nod from Slange, pried open the
metal doors with an adjustable utility tool from his belt and lobbed a grenade into the shaft. The blast immediately sent the cage plunging down to the basement. No one would survive. While he did the same to the second shaft, Slange concentrated on the stairway. Two guards rounded a corner, firing as they came into his sights. Slange popped off eight rounds from his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun with its HK 100 laser aimer; four into the chest of the first poor Libyan security guard, four into the other. Then he added a grenade for good measure. All of this bought them needed escape time and cost only forty seconds.
The wail of ambulances and fire trucks pierced through the night air. They were on the way to the collapsed building a short distance away. The cacophony easily masked the fanning of the helicopter rotors above Fadi’s building. This was a residual benefit. The emergency vehicles were tying up traffic. No armored personnel vehicles could possibly get through the mess the Mavericks had created a few blocks away. They were forced to seek an alternate route. That would take three or four more critical minutes.
Slange returned to the office and went for the goal—Fadi’s filing cabinet. Once there, he called into his microphone. “Next play, handoff to fullback.” That was Roarke. Recht positioned himself to get complete game coverage for the fans in the bleachers.
The cabinet stood some four feet high. There were no locks to blow or booby traps to disable. Fadi obviously never considered theft likely.
Aplen aimed a light at the old metal cabinet and Roarke stepped forward. Thanks to the intelligence report he knew exactly where to look. Thirty seconds later he had it in his hands.
He pulled out fifteen inches of files and held it up to the cameras. Recht moved in. The president told J3 to get even closer. The word was relayed. “‘Top Gun’ wants to be able to be close enough to read the fine print.” Recht obliged.
Roarke imagined his audience 285 miles away, watching the multiple television screens. It was also being recorded on hard drives and burned onto DVD’s. Every effort had been taken to insure proper authentication. The Western press would need it. So would the Muslim world.
Roarke removed his backpack within view of Recht and Aplen’s field of view. He took out a roll of gaffer’s tape and wrapped it around the entire thick file. He checked his watch. 0110. Using a Sharpie tucked in his sleeve, he wrote across the tape. 0110/20 Jan/Fullback. Open at locker.
Roarke carefully placed the package in his backpack and stepped aside. Now the rest of the team unloaded the other files from the cabinets and split up the cache in their own knapsacks. No one knew what secrets they held. But they weren’t about to leave without them. In under two minute’s time they carried the sum total of Fadi’s Personal files on their backs.
“Reverse action play,” Slange squawked. They returned in formation, back to back, covering each other as they stepped to the window sills.
Almost immediately two harnesses dropped directly in front of the window. Roarke grabbed one, Recht the other. His camera never strayed from the fullback. “Hike” was Slange’s next command and the power wenches aboard the lead Black Hawk immediately jerked both men up to the waiting helicopter.
Suddenly shots rang out from below. An armored personnel carrier had gotten through earlier than expected. Recht took a bullet in the leg. “Shit!” he yelled as Gardner pulled him to the roof.
Twenty seconds later, the harnesses were down again. Slange and Aplen’s turn. But now they needed a play from the sidelines. They didn’t have to wait long. An Apache gunner answered the attack from the ground, taking out the enemy with a volley from a M230. The lead Apache hovered looking for another target to pop up. There were none.
“Reverse complete. Let’s go for touchdown.”
At that moment, Black Hawk One sharply descended. Captain Dale Coons put its wheels lightly on the roof while still hovering. He knew that the weight of his armored helicopter—some 20,000 pounds at this point in the mission—could collapse what assuredly was a substandard top floor ceiling. Quickly, all six men leaped through the open door and belted themselves. The Black Hawk immediately lifted up and flew off, joining the twin Black Hawk another 800 feet above the building. At 3500 feet they scrambled for the goal line. The fourth quarter had begun.
It was at that point that their Lockheed Martin AN/AAR-47 missile approach warning system detected a threat.
Michael O’Connell sat in the back tier of the CommCenter located on the upper deck of the USS Carl Vinson. He had asked for and been granted five requests: Desk space to type notes on his Sony ultralight Vaio. His own video feed with a running clock to track the real time images closely. A separate video camera focused on him and his immediate work area establishing a non-stop audio/video record of O’Connell's “in the moment” presence. An intelligence officer to remain at his side to translate any techno speak. And finally, continued access to the president.
O’Connell typed for speed, not accuracy. Initially he was full of questions, but from the moment the team crashed through the windows he never uttered a word. He touch typed, watching the screens, totally caught up in the events which were unfolding at a dizzying speed. The writer was astonished at the clarity of the pictures from Fadi’s offices. He could read the lettering on the files that Roarke held up to Recht’s camera and he automatically ducked when bullets passed by Recht as he he was hoisted onboard.
Michael O’Connell was so caught up in the images that he missed the shrill deedle-deedle-deedle alarm that pulsed out of the helicopter’s threat detectors.
“Targeting SAM’s,” the pilot of the command Black Hawk announced.
From another speaker, “Confirmed.” The overflying AWACS reported in. Nothing passed unseen or unheard from its powerful electronic eyes and ears. And everything was automatic. Seconds earlier, the location and range of the threat had been diagnosed, by computer fed to the circling F/A-18’s, and an attack plan had been plotted.
The Vinson command center heard a faster deedle-deedle-deedle now.
“Oh shit.” The president knew that sound first-hand.
“Missiles away,” was the report from the AWAC’s cool radar officer, Lt. Linda Rodriguez. She plotted four missiles targeted for the Black Hawks. “Probably old Volga SA-2 SAM’s.” Old, but still deadly Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles with a range of thirty-one miles.
“Down range 17 miles,” Rodriguez called out. “On course to intercept.” She ran some fast calculations and keyed a command to the Eagles. The Black Hawk pilots knew what to do.
The SAM’s maximum velocity was Mach 3.5, or approximately 2640 miles per hour. It was deadly enough to bring down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 over Russia in 1960, and reason enough for the United States to prepare for war when they were shipped to Cuba in 1962.
“Thirty seconds.”
A technician onboard the Vinson superimposed a digital clock on screen.
“Countermeasures,” was the only word from Coons in Black Hawk One. He dropped his chaff and flares in hopes of drawing the incoming missiles away from his two T700-GE-701C turboshaft engines. Captain Spencer Dayton, piloting Black Hawk Two, did the same.
Even Michael Connolly knew what was happening now. He stopped typing and watched the monitors.
Army captain Dale Coons might have had fewer than 30 seconds to play with, but he certainly didn’t act as if they’d be his last. He was calm and focused in the cockpit of his lead Black Hawk. His tactical display showed the threats, but also his assets—the Super Hornets.
They were all computer linked to the AWACS for targeting. Thirty seconds was like the two minute drill in football. Ample time for a solid offensive play; time for Quarterback Sneak to get pass protection.
The computer fed the coordinates to his missiles onboard guidance systems. The chief weapons in Coons’ stores were Hellfire missiles. These miniature aircraft carried copper-lined-charge warheads, powerful enough to burn through the thickest tank armor in the world. His Black Hawk employed eight of them—a pair mounted to each of f
our pylons split between the wings. They would target the mobile SAM launch sites that sent the missiles aloft, as well as their radar guidance centers.
Coons triggered the release sequence, igniting the propellant. In an instant and with 500 pounds of force, the first two missiles broke free of the firing rail, accelerated and locked on their aiming coordinates, which read a laser light reflecting off the target. Another two fired, followed by two more, then the final two.
Coons banked his helicopter away. His work was done. The rest was up to the F-18’s.
High above them, Commander Rico Rupp was earning his day’s pay as pilot of the command F/A-18E. Within eight seconds of the SAM launches, he had called up two AIM-7 Sparrows, attached to his nacelle fuselage stations. Not waiting for a launch order, for they had been authorized in his briefing before takeoff, he released the two 500 pound supersonic missiles. The air-to-air heat seeking missiles had earned their stripes in the Persian Gulf War. Testament to their capabilities were the twenty-two Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft and the three helicopters that were downed by the radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow missiles during that brief war. Most of them were killed within ten miles of launch. Rupp’s missiles, and those of the other three Navy pilots in the skies, had just under nine miles to work with now.
Rupp’s second wave came from his AIM-120 AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile. This killer had even greater speed and range than the enemy’s SAM’s. At supersonic speeds, the distance quickly closed between the incoming and returning fire.
“Six to impact,” Rodriguez radioed.
Exactly twenty-six seconds after the first SAM launch, and barely four seconds from intercepting the Black Hawks, Rupp’s missiles scored.
Executive Actions Page 48
