by Peter Nealen
At the same time, if the inspectors insisted on looking inside, they were equally screwed.
He tried to take a deep breath and relax. They’d been on thin ice in Dubai, during the initial preparations to insert into Khadarkh, too. Either they’d make it, or they wouldn’t. At that point, it was too late for worry to do any good. They just had to take whatever came. At least there were only four of them aboard; the rest hadn’t shown up yet.
He had a sudden vision, as the Customs officers reached the top of the stairs, of the rest of the team showing up and climbing aboard while the Sri Lankans were still on the aircraft. There’d be no disguising the fact that this was something more than a simple cargo flight to Kunming if that happened.
Van Zandt was talking quietly with the two men in the same brown uniforms and blue caps that the security officer at the gate had been wearing. Brannigan couldn’t make out all of it, but it sounded like the Customs officers were informing Van Zandt that this was a surprise inspection, an extra precaution of some sort. Van Zandt was protesting that they’d already been inspected, and producing the forms as proof.
Brannigan expected that both of them were lying. Van Zandt would have greased whatever palms needed greasing to get those inspection forms filled out, without a Sri Lankan cop ever setting foot on that airplane. And the two Sri Lankan policemen hadn’t been ordered to conduct a “surprise” inspection; they were fishing for a bribe.
The Sri Lankans were insisting that they needed to inspect the cargo, that they had not received any paperwork for the aircraft having passed Customs. Which was also probably bullshit; Van Zandt had to have been thorough enough to make that happen.
“I’m telling you,” Van Zandt insisted, “all the papers are in order. I’ve got my copies right here.” He handed over a sheaf of forms. Brannigan thought he could just see the ends of several golden-colored bills tucked into the stack.
The taller of the Sri Lankan police took the forms and studied them carefully. When he handed them back, there was no sign of the bills.
“This is highly irregular,” he said. “But I see that everything does in fact seem to be in order. I will have to get to the bottom of this. Someone has made an error, and it must be fixed. Have a pleasant flight, Mr. Van Zandt.”
“Thank you, Inspector,” Van Zandt replied. “Have a good day.”
The two Sri Lankans turned and left the plane, starting back down the steps. A moment later, Hancock, Wade, and Gomez came aboard, glancing over their shoulders at the disappearing police. “What the hell was that?” Wade asked.
“Some greedy Customs officers looking for a little revenue on the side,” Brannigan said grimly. “I take it they saw you?’
“There wasn’t exactly any way to avoid it,” Hancock said. “We were five yards from the bottom of the stairs when they popped out. I thought all that crap was already taken care of?” He looked at Van Zandt.
“It was,” the former general said. “Like John said, I think these two were just trolling for bribes. They saw the door open and decided it was an opportunity.”
“Are they going to leave it at that?” Brannigan asked. “Or are they going to wonder about more people coming aboard?”
“It’s a risk,” Van Zandt admitted. He glanced at his watch. “Hopefully the rest get here and we can get underway before they put two and two together. That said, I slipped them close to a hundred thousand rupees, so that should be plenty to keep their eyes averted.”
“Or make them suspicious,” Wade pointed out. He was looking back toward the open door, as if contemplating whether or not to follow the two of them and silence them permanently.
“Trust me,” Van Zandt said. “When it comes to corruption, a big enough bribe quiets just about anyone’s suspicions. They weren’t here as inspectors, not really. They got what they wanted, and it’s enough to keep them relatively honest, at least for a certain hazy definition of the word.”
Brannigan looked at his own watch. They still had thirty minutes to the drop-dead time, but the surprise visit had him feeling a little anxious. “Let’s start getting this bird spooled up,” he said. “I want to be ready to roll as soon as the last body is on board.”
Van Zandt nodded, and headed toward the cockpit.
***
“I do not think we have any choice,” Commissar Lee Hyun-Gi said. “If General Cao decides to cut us off…”
“That is not acceptable,” Baek In-Tak said. The man from Bureau 39 was small, stooped, and wore thick glasses that magnified his eyes comically. “The loss of the revenue stream, while not crippling, would be a severe setback, especially with the Supreme Leader’s insistence on accelerating the Special Weapons programs.” He meant “nuclear weapons programs,” but politics insisted that such things be kept strictly secret, even though the entire world was being made well aware of the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal.
“The narcotics themselves are also a weapon,” Commissar Lee pointed out. “They contribute to the moral decay of the capitalist imperialists and their puppets. The Supreme Leader would not be pleased if we lost the use of such a weapon.”
Park knew that the Commissar was right; while he might have had doubts about just how well narcotics trafficking, which was a fundamentally capitalist endeavor in his mind, fit in with being a good Communist, he had long since reconciled it with ideas not unlike what Commissar Lee had just said. The war with the imperialists was a desperate war of annihilation, and with the Revolution as isolated and beleaguered as it was—even the Chinese were compromised when it came to fully pursuing Communism—any and every weapon had to be used. That included drugs and money.
He also knew that to express doubts about the mission was not his place, and could have disastrous consequences for himself, personally. The Commissar was there to support him, but also to watch him for ideological purity and loyalty to the Supreme Leader. Questioning his orders and their mission would be sufficient justification for Commissar Lee to relieve him of command, send him back to the DPRK, and possibly even have him shot.
He stiffened to attention. “I will detail a small force to guard the camp,” he said, “and get the rest of the platoon prepared to join General Cao’s forces. The combat experience will be useful when the war with the imperialists finally begins again.” He had no doubt that it would. They had been preparing for over sixty years. It was inevitable.
Commissar Lee nodded, and saluted him. “You are a credit to the Party and the Korean People’s Army, Chungwi,” he said. “I will, of course, accompany you.”
Of course. Park had known Commissars who would have readily taken the excuse to remain behind, but Lee was quite as fanatical as his words proclaimed. The man belonged entirely to the Party, body and mind.
Another man might have thought, “body and soul,” but Park was a good Communist, and did not believe in any such thing as the soul. To the point that he would not even use the word in an analogy. Instead, he returned Lee’s salute and turned on his heel, to find Jeon and begin getting his troops ready to fight.
CHAPTER 8
“Ten thousand feet!” Van Zandt called to Brannigan from the cockpit. Brannigan nodded, stood up, and stretched.
There was a certain sense of surrealism to the atmosphere aboard the cargo jet. While it certainly wasn’t as quiet as a regular airliner, it also was not nearly as loud as a bare-bones military aircraft, or even the Casa that they’d jumped out of during training. Van Zandt hadn’t even really needed to strain to make himself heard. It was some weird halfway point, lending a certain sense of unreality to what they were about to do.
The rest of the Blackhearts were also getting up, stretching, or walking to the little toilet cubicle behind the cockpit. There wasn’t a lot of hurry; they were still over one thousand six hundred miles from their drop point. They had time.
Together, Brannigan, Santelli, and Hancock started unlatching the straps that were ratcheted down over the lids of the equipment cases in the center of the hold. They wouldn�
�t move much; they were also clamped down by smaller straps that connected to the handles on the sides. Shifting cargo at altitude wasn’t something anyone wanted to mess around with.
The first case turned out to be fatigues, all in jungle tiger stripes. There were more sets than there were mercenaries; they hadn’t gotten everyone’s sizes before Van Zandt had gone shopping, so he’d gotten enough of a spread that they could be fairly sure to have some that fit everyone.
It took a few minutes to get fatigues sorted out. Most of the Blackhearts immediately started stripping down to their skivvies and changing over. Ma Sanda looked flustered for a moment, then, hesitantly, started to do the same. Several appreciative eyes drifted her way as she changed, though were quickly averted when she looked back at them.
Brannigan saw her glance at Aziz. He hadn’t said anything about the stares; hadn’t even given any indication that he’d noticed them. Which was about what Brannigan expected from Aziz. But while she was composed, it was obvious to him that Sanda hadn’t.
It was one more reason he was more than a little worried about her presence.
Santelli was digging combat vests and rucksacks out of two more of the cases, and handing them out. The vests were older-style LBVs, without provision for armor plates, and also in tiger-stripe camo. The packs were plain green Alice packs.
The next two cases were crammed with weapons. The HK G3s all had Zeiss Z-Point red dot sights mounted on them, which bothered Brannigan. He moved over to the cockpit and banged on the hatch.
“What is it?” Van Zandt asked.
“I’m not sure about the red dots,” Brannigan began.
“They’re going to be a hell of an advantage,” Van Zandt pointed out.
“I know,” Brannigan replied. “But I also suspect that the Burmese don’t have any. If a weapon gets left behind, it’s going to be a target indicator to someone that there was more to this than just the constant low-level violence between the rebels and the paramilitaries.”
“Were you planning on leaving a weapon behind?” Van Zandt asked.
Brannigan ground his teeth. It was identical to pompous answers to questions about potential problems that he’d heard before. “Of course not,” he said, “but shit happens. And it’s not like this is a sanctioned mission, with the full force of the US military standing by to sweep in with reinforcements and secure the area if we get into trouble. Somehow, I doubt that the SOG teams in Laos had the latest and greatest weapons and optics, either.”
“Well, it’s a little too late now,” Van Zandt said unapologetically. “The optics have already been zeroed to the weapons. I can’t necessarily say the same for the irons.”
Brannigan’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and Van Zandt actually drew back a little bit. “You zeroed the optics, but neglected the irons?” he asked quietly. “And what if one of the optics goes down? We can’t very well re-zero when we’re on the ground in enemy territory.”
“They’re very reliable optics,” Van Zandt said lamely, apparently unable to summon up a better defense. He had to know that such an oversight was unacceptable, but still hadn’t thought to correct it.
Or else he thought they were all expendable anyway, so it wouldn’t matter all that much.
Brannigan tried to avoid thinking that way. It was true that Van Zandt had come to him precisely to hire him and the rest of the Blackhearts as deniable assets, to do a job that the US was squeamish about even sending Delta or DEVGRU for. But while he’d always known Van Zandt to be a ladder-climber, always willing to slide a metaphorical knife into someone’s back for the sake of his own career, he hadn’t ever really thought he was the type to try to bury his mistakes with the actual bodies of people who worked for him.
Maybe he had been wrong; maybe the last few years had really eroded what had been left of Mark Van Zandt’s soul. Or maybe he was wrong now, and it was just an oversight. A potentially deadly oversight, but an oversight, nonetheless.
“You’d better hope they are,” he said ominously. He turned and left the cockpit, slamming the hatch shut behind him, before Van Zandt could reply.
Curtis and Bianco had broken out the two Rheinmetall MG 3s. Essentially modernized versions of the old World War II MG-42, they might be a bit longer and more unwieldy than Mk. 46s or 48s, but they were reliable, and they were also in the Burmese Army’s armory. If one had to get left behind, they would not point toward the US.
There was, of course, always the problem of the possibility that one of them might get hit, and go down where they couldn’t be retrieved by the rest of the team. Then the game would be up. But if that happened, Brannigan mused, compromising the mission was going to be the least of their worries, anyway.
It took the better part of an hour to make sure everyone was kitted out, with their packs filled with water, food, ammunition, batteries, radios—though they would try their damnedest not to use them until extract—and medical supplies. They had little in the way of comfort items; there wasn’t room for them. And for a few of the men, especially Brannigan, Wade, and Bianco, their own size was already cutting down on what they could carry. The parachutes could only handle so much weight.
They did not don their chutes yet. They still had about another hour before they would need to get in harness, get inspected, and go on oxygen.
Instead, they sat back down, packs and parachutes at their feet, weapons leaning against their knees. Sanda was sitting a little bit farther away from Aziz. Brannigan noted it, but then put it out of his mind. Until it became a problem, it was only a minor detail.
Sanda was going to have a lot more rude awakenings before the job was over, he suspected.
For the most part, they rode in silence, each man alone with his own thoughts. It had always been that way, in Brannigan’s experience. Few men got chatty just before throwing themselves out into space from a perfectly serviceable airplane.
For his own part, he put his head back against the fuselage, closed his eyes, and kept thinking through contingencies. He’d already gone over them all. But he always found it better to think about plans before starting an op. It helped him avoid worrying.
***
An hour before jump-off time, Hancock got to his feet. “Jock up!” he bellowed. “Stand by for JMPI!” He’d be conducting the Jump Master Personnel Inspection himself, just like before.
There was a renewed bustle of movement in the aircraft as the Blackhearts shrugged into warm jackets, overpants, and gloves, then started to don their parachutes. For the most part it was simple; swing it onto the back like a backpack, tighten the shoulder straps and center strap, fasten the waist belt and leg straps. There were always a few nuances to getting the tightness right, to where it would support without cutting off circulation, and without being too loose, which would mean risking falling out of the harness.
The plane was starting to hit pockets of turbulence, which made the process a bit more troublesome, but soon all sixteen of them were in their harness, their rucksacks at their feet, ready to hook them up. Starting at the rear, with Brannigan, Hancock began his inspections.
He was about half done when Van Zandt came out of the cockpit and picked his way down the aisle to Brannigan. “There’s some cloud cover over the DZ,” he said in his ear. “It’s not a lot, and I’m being assured that the ceiling is high enough for the jump, but I thought you should know about it.”
Brannigan gave him a thumbs-up. They’d have to problem-solve on the way down. Because at that point, unless they found themselves jumping blind into a solid overcast, the only options were to go, or to scratch the entire thing, continue on to Kunming, and hope they got the weapons and gear through without getting caught.
Van Zandt returned to the cockpit; from this point forward, unless they aborted, this was Brannigan’s show.
With inspections completed, they sat back down. There was still a good half hour to go. They did, however, don their oxygen masks, helmets, and night vision goggles. Strapping the masks down, they began
breathing pure oxygen, giving their bodies time to adjust before the jump.
Brannigan felt his ears pop as the cabin depressurized. He checked the altimeter on his wrist. They were just below thirty thousand feet. It was only a matter of minutes, now.
Hancock heaved himself to his feet and started back toward the rear hatch. He did not stop at the side door where they had entered, but passed through the very rear door, leading toward the tail.
The 727 had a rear door with its own lowering stairway underneath the tail. It had been used in the past, back into the ‘60s, for precisely the same use the Blackhearts were now going to put it to. There was even a jump light, currently a baleful red, mounted on the wall next to the stairs.
Hancock began to lower the stairs, slowly and carefully. The hold was depressurized, but the slipstream outside could still damage the aircraft if it caught the stairway wrong. It was going to make the initial jump tricky, but they had to make do.
There wasn’t a lot of room; much of the rear of the fuselage was taken up with the “cargo” that was bound for Kunming. Hancock, satisfied that the door wasn’t going to catch anyone and kill them on the way out, took up his position inside the door, on the left side of the fuselage, and waved to Brannigan.
Brannigan rose to his feet, ducking to avoid smacking his helmet and NVGs on the overhead, and waddled aft. The rest of the stick was getting to their feet behind him. He got even with the door, looked Hancock in the eyes, and waited.
Hancock ran through the equipment checks. All sixteen jumpers reported “OK.” Then it was a matter of waiting.
The sun had gone down an hour before. The only thing he could see past the stairs was blackness, even through his NVGs. Somewhere below was Burma.
