by Bob Mayer
“Shut up,” Jenkins growled, but without anger. The same jokes now for months—it was almost a ritual. One that Vaughn wished would end.
Several other men loomed up, all equipped the same way, except for two who carried heavier Squad Automatic Weapon machine guns. Ten men. Vaughn’s team. Across the field, in a long tin building, was the platoon of twenty-five Filipino commandos who were to accompany them on this raid. And in between, squatting on the field like man-made bugs, were five UH-1 Iroquois transport helicopters with Philippine army markings. Like wraiths in the darkness, the pilots and crew chiefs of the aircraft were scurrying around them, doing last minute flight checks.
Vaughn looked at his watch. “Time. Get our allies,” he ordered one of his men, who took off at a jog toward the barracks. He turned to another. “Got the designator?”
The man answered by holding out a rucksack. “It’s set for the right freq.”
Vaughn took the backpack, slid one of the straps over one shoulder and the MP-5 over the other. “To your birds.” He and Jenkins headed toward the lead helicopter while the others split up. The sound of excited Filipino voices now echoed across the field as the platoon of commandos also headed toward the choppers.
Jenkins suddenly froze, putting an arm out and halting Vaughn. With one smooth movement, Jenkins’s right arm looped up over his shoulder, grasped the well-worn handle of the machete and whipped the blade out and down. The razor-sharp blade sliced into the foot high grass—and through something else.
Jenkins leaned over and picked up the still wriggling body of a beheaded snake. “Very deadly,” he commented as he tossed it aside. “Got to watch out for bad things in the grass.”
Vaughn stood still for a moment, then followed his team sergeant. Without another comment they continued on to the helicopters. Jenkins slapped Vaughn on the back as he turned for the second bird while Vaughn turned toward the first. But then Vaughn paused and reached out, grabbing his brother-in-law by the arm and pulling him close.
“Hey, Frank,” he whispered harshly. “This is the last mission for you. Don’t do nothing stupid.”
Jenkins smiled. “For sure, Jim. You watch your own ass. Linda will—” The smile was suddenly gone, and he didn’t complete the sentence. The two stood awkwardly for a moment, then both of them nodded and turned toward their respective aircraft.
What Vaughn didn’t mention was the promise he had made his sister to keep her husband out of any last mission—a promise he’d known he couldn’t keep as soon as he made it, because Frank Jenkins wasn’t the type of man to be held back from doing his duty. But Vaughn had made the promise to give his sister peace of mind. She’d lost her first husband in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on nine-eleven, and it was a testament to her love for Jenkins that she had married him though his job put him on the front line on the war against terrorism.
Reaching his helicopter, Vaughn scanned the other four birds and got the pilots’ attention by circling his arm above his head, indicating it was time to power up. He climbed onboard the aging UH-1 Huey and sat on the web seat directly behind the pilots, facing outboard. Another Delta Force man took the seat next to him. Vaughn’s MP-5 submachine gun dangled over his shoulder and he put the designator pack on the floor between his legs.
The turbine engine above his head came to life with a loud whine. Vaughn checked his watch again. Three minutes before liftoff. Even though the aircraft were Filipino, the pilots were Americans, and like Vaughn, dressed in unmarked uniforms. They were from the elite Nightstalkers of Task Force 160, the best chopper pilots in the world. All the pilots selected for this mission were old warrant officers, as most of the newer 160 pilots had never flown a Huey, being brought up on the more modern Blackhawk. Vaughn grabbed a headset from a hook over his head and placed the cup over his ears so he could listen to the crew on the intercom.
“One minute,” the pilot announced.
Vaughn looked up. He knew the pilots were ready to hit their stopwatches and would lift off on time. This entire mission depended on everyone doing their job at exactly the right second. The Filipino commandos filled out the rest of the space on the web seats in the chopper. In addition to the Delta operator on his left, there were two American “advisors” in the rear of each chopper to complement the Filipinos.
In fact, the Americans were running the show, and Vaughn was the senior U.S. Army man. A Filipino colonel was technically in charge of the commandos and the raid, since it was taking place in his country, but the older man had declined to participate, claiming it was more important that he remain behind to “supervise.” Even though there was nothing to supervise. There would be no radio communication at all. The last thing anyone from here to Washington wanted was a recording of American voices in combat operations in a place where they weren’t supposed to be.
Vaughn opened the backpack and pulled out a bulky object that looked like a set of binoculars piggybacked onto a square green metal box, with a glass eye at the front end and a small display screen on the rear. The manufacturer called it “man portable,” and at thirty-two pounds, Vaughn supposed it was, but it was an awkward thing to use. Designated the LLDR— Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder—it could both tell the distance to an object viewed through the lens and, when needed, “paint” it with a laser beam, designating the spot as a target for smart bombs. A steady green light on the rear indicated the designator was on, although the laser was not activated. There was also a GPS—Global Positioning System—built into the device that would feed location information to the computer, in conjunction with range to the designated target, which then was transmitted to incoming missiles, directing them. It was a lot of technology designed for one purpose: to put a bomb on target within a designated three-meter spot.
Ten seconds. Vaughn heard the jet before he saw it. An F-114 Stealth Fighter roared by overhead, stubby wings wagging in recognition of the helicopters below it. Right on time. He pressed a button on the back of the designator—a double check to make sure the bomb carried under the wing of the jet and the designator were on the same frequency. The green light flickered as it made radio contact with the bomb, then returned to steady green. Good to go. Vaughn put the designator back in the pack.
The fighter pilot pulled the nose up, and the jet shot into the sky until it was lost from sight and sound. Which is where it would remain, at high altitude, out of visual range from the ground, for the entire mission. The fact that it was a stealth plane would keep it off radar screens. The pilot would never even see the island where the target was located. It was Vaughn’s job to target the bomb the pilot would drop at the planned moment.
With a shudder, the Huey lifted its skids exactly on time. Vaughn turned to the Filipino commandos in his bird and gave them the thumbs-up. He noted that none of them returned the gesture, nor did they seem particularly enthused. They were going into the mouth of the dragon to rescue foreigners, not a high priority for any of them. The raid was headed to Jolo Island, controlled by Abu Sayef rebels, who he knew had a long history of kicking the Philippine army’s ass. He’d worked with the Philippine army before, and found their enthusiasm level for combat muted at best. Most were in the army for the pay, three hot meals, and a bunk. Not to get killed.
Eight days ago, eighteen tourists, most of them Americans, had been kidnapped by the rebels off a sailing boat as it passed by the island. Six days ago, a video of the rebels executing one of the tourists, an American man, had been sent to a Philippine news station in Manila. The next day, Vaughn and his small group of Delta Force operatives were on a flight from Fort Bragg to the Philippines. Their participation in the raid was a violation of both Philippine and American law; thus the extreme requirements for secrecy.
He would have preferred that the entire raiding force be American—not out of any prejudice on his part, but because the Filipino commandos were not trained anywhere near the level of his men, especially at the most difficult military task of all: rescuing hostages. But co
mpromises were a political reality that often crept into missions such as this one.
Vaughn leaned back in the web seat and closed his eyes. He could sense the fear coming off some of the commandos, especially those who had not experienced combat before. They were going to “see the elephant,” the age-old military term for experiencing combat. He wasn’t sure where the term came from, although he suspected it might stem from as far back as Hannibal crossing the Alps, elephants in tow to engage the Romans. He was a student of military history, and that explanation seemed to make as much sense as any other.
He mentally ran through the sequence of upcoming events, war-gaming the plan. It was too late to change anything, but he wanted to keep his mind occupied. He’d learned that it could drift to bad places if left to its own devices. The helicopters cleared the edge of the island they had been on, and the pilots dove toward the ocean until they were flying less than five feet above the waves.
Vaughn pulled the LLDR out of its pack and checked the small screen on the back to update their position, then he looked at his watch. Exactly where they were supposed to be at the exact time. He had worked with Nightstalker pilots before, and they were meticulous about their flight routes and timing.
‘Ten minutes.”
Vaughn relayed the time warning to the Filipinos while he flashed the number ten with his fingers.
The commandos nodded glumly and pulled back the slides on their M-16s, chambering a round. His own MP-5 already had a round in the chamber and the safety was off—the rule in Delta was that one’s finger was the safety.
It was dark now, and he reached up and turned on the night vision goggles, letting them warm up but keeping them locked in the upright position for the moment.
“Five minutes,” the pilot announced. “Landfall in sight.”
The flight plan called for them to hit the north shore of Jolo Island, fly close to the terrain over the island, then split formation when they cleared a pass between two peaks. Vaughn’s helicopter would go to the left, while Jenkins and the other four birds would go right, taking twenty seconds longer to get to the target. The reason for the delay was because Vaughn had the laser designator.
Satellite imagery had given them the location of the camp where both American and Filipino intelligence believed the hostages were being held. There were two tin buildings set in a treeline on the southern shoreline of the island, about twenty meters apart. The one to the east, according to intelligence, was the barracks for the guards; the one to the west, the prison for the hostages. The beach itself was about fifty meters wide at low tide, a factor they had taken into account while planning the mission since it was the only place in the area where they could land the helicopters. Intelligence also said there were only a pair of guards on duty at the holding building at night, while the rest—estimated at thirty to forty men—would be in the guards barracks. Vaughn had to wonder how intelligence had come up with this estimate, but the mission was based on it so he hoped it was correct. He also had to trust that intelligence had the two buildings labeled correctly, because he’d hate to designate the one with the hostages in it.
He leaned forward in his seat and could see a dark mass ahead—Jolo Island. It was among the most southwestern of the thousands of islands that encompassed the Philippines. Not large, and not particularly important, except for the fact that the Abu Sayef made their headquarters somewhere on it and had expanded their sphere of influence over the entire island. There was no government presence on the island, and from what Vaughn had picked up from his Filipino counterparts, the two sides existed in tense pretend-ignorance of each other—that is, until the terrorists went out and kidnapped foreigners, bringing intense pressure on the powers-that-be in Manila. All in all, no one was happy with the current situation.
“Formation is breaking,” the pilot announced as they passed between two black masses. The announcement wasn’t necessary, since Vaughn could see that himself. But it was standard operating procedure for the pilot to call out all checkpoints, and he was a big believer in SOPs. Without them, little details tended to get screwed up, and enough little screwed-up details added together could lead to big mistakes. The other four helicopters, Jenkins’s in the lead, vectored off to the right. They would arrive from the west twenty seconds after the bomb exploded. Vaughn watched the dark form carrying his brother-in-law disappear around the mountain.
It was hard for him to believe that Frank was retiring. They’d worked together for six years. Vaughn had introduced him to his sister five years ago, when she’d stopped by Fort Bragg for a visit. The two had hit it off, which had surprised him. Since her first husband died, she’d been raising her two boys on her own. Vaughn had tried to help, but he was deployed so much with Delta Force, his presence had been spotty at best.
He had not been happy about the blooming romance between his team sergeant and sister, primarily because he knew Frank’s presence in his sister and her sons’ lives would be as infrequent as his own had been.
But he’d kept his unhappiness to himself, partially because he had always lived in fear of his older sister. She’d bossed him around as long as he could remember, and that had never changed. But after seeing them together enough, he’d given in, realizing there was something special between the two. He was going to miss Frank, but was glad that in retirement his friend would be with his sister full-time.
Vaughn shook his head, clearing it of the stray thoughts. He had to focus on the mission. His chopper was swinging wide so they would come to a hover over the treeline next to the beach about a kilometer east of the target. The Stealth Fighter would be coming in from farther to the east and much higher up on its targeting vector.
They were flying just above the tops of trees, as close as they’d flown over the waves. He picked up the LLDR once more, checked the screen, and froze when he saw that the green light was no longer on. Had he accidentally turned it off? There was no time to even consider the question before he reacted, pressing the on button. Nothing. He ran his hands quickly over the casing to see if it had somehow been damaged, but the machine appeared intact.
He pressed the on button several times, hoping it was just a glitch, a ghost in the machine playing games with him. Not the slightest flicker.
The battery.
“Three minutes.”
He slid open the cover to the battery compartment, pulled out the bulky green object, disconnected the leads, tossed the battery out of the chopper, then reached into the pack for the spare one that SOP dictated would be carried. He ripped the clear plastic cover off the replacement and shoved the leads in.
As he pushed the battery back into its compartment, he pushed the on button and was rewarded with a flickering green light, indicating that the system was powering back up. How long would it take to acquire a satellite? he wondered. He’d never timed it, but knew it was variable, depending on how close the nearest satellites were, cloud condition, and the vagaries of the machine’s inner workings. He was at the mercy of the machine and the electronic forces inside of it.
“Two minutes. On final approach.”
That meant that not only was his helicopter on final approach, but the F-114 Stealth Fighter over 10,000 feet above their heads was in its bombing vector, and the other four helicopters were heading in toward their landing zone on the beach.
“Missile away,” the helicopter pilot announced as his stopwatch passed the correct moment.
Vaughn could visualize it all in his mind’s eye. The pilot of the Stealth Fighter had just punched the release at the designated time and the missile was coming down. The fighter then banked hard left and headed home, mission done.
The green light on the laser designator was still flickering.
“On station,” the pilot said as he brought the helicopter to a hover over the treeline and turned it sideways, giving Vaughn a perfect view of the terrorist camp almost a kilometer away on the shoreline. The ocean was off to his left, and a small mountain island about four kilo
meters in that direction visually confirmed their position.
He knew that someone awake in the camp might be able to hear the helicopter now in the distance, but they had expected that—it was supposed to be too late, since the missile would impact the guard barrack in less than a minute. Even if an alert were issued right now, there would be at least a minute or two of confusion as men awakened in the middle of the night searched for clothes, boots, and weapons, and tried to figure out what the heck was going on. And guards were usually slow to issue an alert for a sound at a distance. There were always those moments of uncertainty, of fear of waking up a superior for nothing, of wondering what exactly was going on.
But without laser designation, the missile was flying blind.
The green light became steady. Vaughn peered through the optics. He could see the two buildings now. He put the reticules on the barracks, pressed the designate button, and was surprised at a flashing red warning light that appeared in the scope.
In a second he realized his mistake as the specs for the machine ran through his brain—when the battery had died and the computer rebooted, the GPS needed to be reset or else the designator only broadcast its own position, awaiting confirmation of setting by the handler. Which meant the missile was heading directly toward the designator in his hands and the helicopter.
Worse, the other four helicopters were due to land on top of the camp twenty seconds after missile impact. Which meant they’d be sitting ducks for the guards who were supposed to be dead.
“One minute.”
There was no time to consider courses of action. Vaughn jumped forward and slapped the pilot on the back. “Go for the camp. All out.”
As befit his training, the Task Force 160 pilot didn’t question the surprise order. He pushed forward on his collective and the Huey picked up speed. Vaughn leaned forward, as if by shifting his weight he could make the helicopter go faster. For him, time began to slow down, the helicopter moving in slow motion. All he could think of was the missile descending through the sky above and behind him.
