by John Weisman
Wei-Liu said, “Your batteries are dead.”
“No—these are infrared. Look through the NV.”14
Wei-Liu took the monocular back from Umarov and stared at the ground. “Whoa—that’s bright.” Ritzik dropped the radio into the pocket of his ill-fitting Kazakh blouse and headed for the warehouse. “You guys wait here until they shut down and chock the wheels.”
0357. The only reason Wei-Liu saw anything at all was because she’d kept the monocular. She stood to the side, fascinated by the complexity of it all—and the ability of these people to work at breakneck speed in complete darkness, without any talking. That wasn’t her only surprise, either. Her vision of Special Operations—what there was of it—had been formed by the snippets she’d seen on television and in movies. So she’d expected to find a bunch of profanity-spouting, trigger-happy rogues pile out of the darkened C-5 aircraft, not the quiet, disciplined group of men who’d arrived just before four.
Even their equipment was different than she’d anticipated. She’d thought they’d all be in camouflage, carrying huge machine guns, wearing flak jackets, and strapped into harnesses dripping with grenades, like the photos of Special Forces teams she’d seen in Afghanistan.
She’d been partially correct. Certainly, the Rangers, who’d come through the troop doors, jumped off the plane, and set up a defense perimeter even before the engines had shut down, were dressed that way. They all had night-vision goggles attached to their helmets. They wore camouflage uniforms, flak jackets, and combat harnesses or load-bearing vests hung with equipment. The Rangers carried short carbines with electronic red-dot sights and sported side arms in thigh holsters. They wore dark knee and elbow pads over their uniforms, and Wei-Liu could make out black earpieces and small microphones under their Kevlar helmets, with wires running to the radios Velcro’d to their vests.
But the Delta people? Well, except for the Buck Rogers devices strapped to their foreheads, they looked like a senior-league rugby team. Their hair was longer. Some had mustaches—a couple even sported beards. And they all wore civilian clothes—jeans or khakis, polo shirts, anoraks, and running shoes—and almost every one of them carried a soft-sided briefcase that looked as if it held a laptop computer.
0402. One of Ritzik’s Delta people, a barrel-chested man with a shaved head and short, light-colored mustache wearing a black polo shirt and black cargo pants, dropped out of the forward port-side troop door and jogged over to where Wei-Liu stood with Umarov.
He flipped up his night-vision goggles, grabbed the big Kazakh, hugged him, and lifted him clean off the ground. “Assalamu alaykim, Colonel, it’s great to see you again.”
Umarov beamed. “And upon you, Rowdy, waghalaykim assalam.” He stepped back. “You look good—ready to fight.”
“So do you.”
Umarov wagged his index finger under the American’s nose. “But you didn’t tell me everything, did you?” Yates shrugged. “I couldn’t.”
Umarov shrugged, too. “It is all right,” he said. “I understand. OPSEC.”
The American bear-hugged him again. “We’ll make it right for you, Talgat. I promise.” Then he turned toward Wei-Liu. “Miss Wei-Liu?”
“Yes?”
“Please call me Rowdy. The major wants me to look after you. So, anything you want or need, just come and find me, and I’ll try to help you out.”
“Thank you.” She looked up at him and, flustered, blurted, “Major Ritzik always refers to you as his best shooter. So, where are your guns?”
“Pistol’s in my briefcase.” Rowdy tapped his padded black nylon attaché on its shoulder strap. He pointed toward the C-5’s cavernous fuselage. “We stow our long guns when we travel, ma’am,” he growled amiably. He turned, flipping the night-vision down over his eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am.”
0407. Wei-Liu watched as a pair of Rangers leaned an extension ladder against the side of the two-story warehouse. Then, long, bulky cases slung over their shoulders, they clambered up onto the roof. She saw them pass down a length of rope. Other Rangers carried a series of good-sized bundles of painted plywood from the plane. These were quickly pulled up onto the roof one after the other. Then four more Rangers carrying cases made the assent, and the half-dozen men quickly assembled what appeared to Wei-Liu to be three large, dark rectangular boxes. The rigid boxes, perhaps three and a half feet high, eight feet long, and four feet wide, were then set slightly back from the edge of the flat warehouse roof.
She broke off, found Rowdy, and pointed to the warehouse. “What’s going on, Sergeant?”
“They’re constructing sniper hides,” he explained.
“Huh?”
“What would you think if you were a tourist, or a business flier, and you happened to catch a glance at some building, say, at Washington Dulles Airport, and you saw a bunch of men in uniforms, with binoculars and big sniper rifles, lying on the roof scanning the area with their weapons and field glasses?”
“I’d probably be scared out of my wits,” she answered.
“Exactly. So now what do you see?”
Wei-Liu peered upward through the night-vision device. “My God, the boxes look just like air-conditioning units. They’ve even got exhaust fans on top.” She turned back to Yates. “And the snipers are inside.”
“Give yourself an A.” He paused, uncomfortable. “Look—Miss Wei-Liu, I’d love to talk, but I’ve got—”
“Things to do. I understand. But thanks for the info.” She turned back toward the aircraft. In just a few seconds, the entire back end of the humongous dark-painted fuselage had split into clamshell doors. Now the rear deck was dropping so as to form a ramp.
0410. Wei-Liu walked the hundred and fifty feet to the aircraft and peered inside. It was too dark to see anything. She brought the night-vision up. There, secured by straps to cargo hooks in the flooring, were a dozen pallets, their contents hidden beneath thick, black plastic sheeting.
A forklift, driven by a man wearing night-vision goggles, was backing rapidly toward her. “Make a hole. Make a hole—”
“Sorry!” Wei-Liu jumped off the edge of the ramp as the forklift and its speared pallet bounced onto the apron, wheeled sharply, and careened toward the warehouse. She retreated, embarrassed, not wanting to get in anyone’s way.
0419. Two four-man groups hefted a pair of generators out of the Galaxy’s forward troop door and lugged them to the side of the warehouse. There, the devices were fueled and fired up. From a black trunk, one of the Delta people pulled a pair of industrial-size surge protectors. He attached them to the generator outlets, then plugged light-colored junction boxes to the surge protectors. He pulled a dozen coiled electrical lines from the trunk, attached them to the junction boxes, and began to run them into the building. Thirty seconds later, a puddle of light seeped under the warehouse doors.
0426. Wei-Liu made her way back to the C-5 and peered inside the Galaxy’s cavernous fuselage. It was virtually empty. Night-vision to her eye, she made her way up the ramp and took a dozen tentative paces inside. The interior smelled of hydraulic fluid and jet fuel. Her back to the bulkhead, she watched as the flight crew, in their overalls and long gloves, stowed cargo straps and checked hose connections. Up by the forward troop door the sergeant called Rowdy, along with two others, was stacking bulky canvas carryalls on a lonely pallet. Wei-Liu walked forward and prodded a bag with her foot. “What are these?”
He looked up at her. She almost laughed because the night-vision goggles attached to his shaved head gave him a sort of alien-creature bug-eyed appearance.
“Our parachutes, ma’am.” Rowdy put two fingers to his mouth, turned toward the port-side doorway, and gave a shrill whistle. He slipped a cargo net over the pallet and secured it.
As he bent over, his polo shirt rode up and Wei-Liu saw the butt of a pistol protruding just above the thick leather belt of his cargo trousers.
Rowdy looked toward the rear ramp, frowning, and whistled again. “Goddammit.” He jerked
his thumb toward the warehouse. “Doc, get Curtis and the effing forklift back, will you? They have to close this thing up in three minutes so they can get the hell outta Dodge.”
“Yes, Sergeant Major.”
Wei-Liu blinked. It was the most dialogue she’d heard anyone speak since the C-5 arrived.
0429. Wei-Liu stood under the C-5’s massive wing looking up at the huge turbofan engines through her NV. Each one had to be almost thirty feet long. “Impressive, aren’t they?”
She turned toward the sound of the voice. A woman in a dark flight suit appeared out of the darkness. She wore a flight helmet with night-vision goggles attached, and she carried an infrared flashlight. Wei-Liu said, “Are you part of the crew?”
“I’m the pilot.” She thrust the flashlight into the thigh pocket of her flight suit and extended her right hand “Captain Jodi Wright.”
Wei-Liu took her hand and shook it. “Tracy Wei-Liu. You were on the radio with the major. ‘Cocoa Flight.’”
“Yup.”
“That was incredible, the way you brought this … thing in.”
“I didn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw somebody do it, either. But with practice …”
“A lot of practice, I’ll bet,” Wei-Liu said. “What are you doing now?”
“A walk-around,” Wright said. “Visual inspection. I gotta be out of here in eleven minutes and I don’t want anything falling off.”
Wei-Liu nodded. “I won’t keep you.” She offered her hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” The pilot smiled. “Good luck to you, too.”
0440. Holding her ears against the whine of the massive turbofans, Wei-Liu walked across the dark apron and pushed through the warehouse door. The curtain of brightness made her squint. Inside, lit by half a dozen generator-powered work lights, men were stringing cables that connected secure telephones, laptops, and servers. Others had opened the weapons cases and were checking over the short, wood-stocked carbines. Still others sat on the floor, scores of curved metal magazines in front of them, loading round after round of ammunition. One man was taking grenade bodies out of a small wood crate and screwing handles with pins and rings stuck through them into the baseball-sized explosives. A length of curved metal that resembled a half-column mold leaned incongruously against the wall behind the ammo loaders.
Ritzik was on his back, under a long folding table that held three large flat computer screens. A trio of video cables trailed behind him. Wei-Liu said, “Major?”
Ritzik looked up at her. “Hey.”
“I’m feeling useless. Isn’t there any way I can help?”
“You could grab some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
“Frankly, Major, I’m too wired to sleep.”
“Too bad for you.” He pulled himself off the floor. “I should introduce you.” He put two fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. “Hey, people.”
The men stopped what they were doing and looked up. Ritzik said, “This is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy Wei-Liu, who’s volunteered to come with us.” He paused as Wei-Liu looked around the room self-consciously, then he started pointing people out. “You already know Sergeant Major Yates. That tall prematurely gray fella hiding behind him is Doc Masland—you can probably guess what he does by his name.”
Rowdy said, “Yeah—he gives second opinions.”
Masland tapped Yates on the shoulder. “You want a second opinion, Rowdy?”
“Sure.”
“Okay—you’re ugly.”
Ritzik barked, “Hey, can it for a couple of seconds, will you?” He continued moving counterclockwise. “The slightly built guy standing next to Doc—the one who thinks that’s a mustache on his upper lip—is Curtis Hansen. Next to him is Shep—Gene Shepard. The two people on the floor loading magazines—Ty Weaver, one of our snipers on the left; and Alex Guzman—we call him Goose—on the right.” Ritzik frowned momentarily when he spied a young, red-haired Soldier peeking over the top of a flight navigation chart. “The surfer hiding from me in the corner is Michael Dunne—Mickey D. He’s a chopper jockey from the SOAR. I think he’s lost.”
Dunne self-consciously wiggled his fingers in Wei-Liu’s direction and ducked behind his map.
Ritzik continued: “The squinty-eyed fella working on the computer over there, he’s William Sandman,” Ritzik paused. “Know what we call him?”
“Sand Man?”
“Close but no cigar, Miss Assistant Secretary,” Ritzik said. “We call him Bill.” His index finger kept moving. “That’s Roger Brian next to Bill—Roger the Dodger—and Todd Sweeney next to Brian. Todd’s our other sniperman, call sign Barber—”
“Like Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street?”
“You got it.” Ritzik peered at the far side of the warehouse. “Finally, back in the corner there, working on the explosives, are Joey Tuzzolino—the Tuzz—and Mark Owen, call sign Marko.” He paused. “Say hi, guys—and be nice. She outranks all of us put together.”
0444. “Okay,” Wei-Liu said, “I’ve been introduced. If you don’t mind, I’m going to do some homework.” Ritzik shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Wei-Liu slipped the canvas briefcase off her shoulder, unzipped it, extracted a sheaf of handwritten wiring diagrams, and flipped through them until she found the one she wanted. She paused, then looked up at Ritzik. “What’s going on in here?”
“We’re setting up a TOC—a tactical operations center.”
“Which is?”
He raised his voice to carry over the whine of the C-5’s engine, then decreased his intensity as the sound grew fainter. “Something like a command post. We’ll coordinate the mission from here. All the real-time intelligence—satellite imagery, signals intercepts, target intelligence, weather conditions, everything—will funnel into this building from the U.S. The crew manning the TOC will be in constant touch with Bragg, with Washington—and with us, too—all on a secure basis. They’ll pass us what we need as we need it.”
Wei-Liu peered at the racks of electronics. “This looks like one of my research labs, Major. But when you say ‘command post’ all I can think about is sandbags and crank telephones.”
“That was The Dirty Dozen.” Ritzik grinned. “Welcome to Net-Centric warfare 15 and the twenty-first century.”
“Touché.” She settled onto a crate and focused on her diagram. When she looked up some minutes later, he’d disappeared into the night.
0512. The satellite images were finally feeding in. Ritzik looked at the streaming infrared video of the IMU’s six trucks and three 4x4s as they made their way across the desert. On another screen, he saw overhead imagery of the single runway at the Changii military airfield, forty-five kilometers northwest of Ürümqi. The fact that there was no activity was reassuring. A third screen showed a two-hundred-square-mile picture of the Tarim Basin. The terrorist convoy, displayed as a flashing star, was right in the middle of the screen. Two other screens displayed weather patterns for the region.
Tracy Wei-Liu tapped Ritzik on the shoulder. “Pretty incredible stuff.”
“It’s helpful.”
“That seems like an understatement. How did anybody deal with warfare before this kind of information was available? It must have made things awfully difficult.”
Ritzik said, “It may have been harder in the old days, sure. But not impossible.”
As A CADET at West Point, Ritzik had read several studies of Ranger operations during World War II. The one that had stuck most deeply in his mind was Colonel Henry A. Mucci’s January 30, 1945, rescue of the Bataan Death March survivors from the Pangatian Japanese POW camp, five miles east of the Philippine city of Cabanatuan.
In 1944, Mucci was a thirty-three-year-old West Point graduate who, through force of character, motivation, training, and example, had transformed the 98th Field Artillery Battalion, a moribund rear-echelon unit that had never seen any combat, into the Sixth Ranger Battalion, one of the finest fighting machines of World War II.
Whether in training or in battle, Mucci never asked his men to do anything he hadn’t done first. He trained his men the way they’d fight: twenty-mile forced marches at night; ten-mile runs in the mud and rain; two-hundred-and-fifty-yard swims with fifty-pound combat packs under live fire. Those who failed, or quit, were sent down—no exceptions. Mucci wanted no one who didn’t have the heart, the will, and the guts to overcome all obstacles.
And like officers in the very best unconventional units, Mucci didn’t stand on ceremony, either. He thought—and acted—outside the box. He’d once been faced with a serious discipline problem: one of his NCOs made highly disparaging public comments about him. Mucci sought the man out. In front of the Rangers, he tossed the sergeant an unsheathed bayonet and taunted the man to kill him if he felt so strongly. The sergeant took Mucci up on his challenge. It took Mucci mere seconds to disarm the malcontent—and win his total loyalty.
In combat, Mucci’s Sixth Rangers wore no insignia. In fact, he ordered his men not to recognize rank in the field. His reasoning was keep-it-simple-stupid battlefield logic: insignia made the NCOs and officers easier targets for Japanese snipers. “If you’re stupid enough to call me colonel, I’ll salute and call you general,” he reportedly once told one of his junior officers. “We’ll see which one of us the Japs shoot first.”
On January 27, 1945, Mucci was given the go-ahead to hit Pangatian. His mission: truck 120 enlisted men and eight officers seventy-five miles through Japanese-occupied territory to a town called Guimba. There, Mucci and his Rangers would link up with roughly 250 indigenous Philippine forces. The combined group would then work its way past villages and Japanese garrisons, ford the Talavera River, then work its way south, bypassing the large Japanese garrison at Cabu. The march would take them more than twenty miles behind enemy lines. Just southwest of Cabu, the Rangers would attack the Japanese camp and liberate the Americans (and any other prisoners they might find) before the Japanese could slaughter them. Then, with the help of fighter aircraft cover, they’d exfiltrate everyone to safety.
