Fire Arrow

by Franklin Allen Leib

  Abu Salaam looked at the faces of the Americans with curiosity. Some showed interest in the bizarre show; many showed fear. Two women were weeping soundlessly. Walid has already begun the teaching, he thought. There was one man alone who returned Abu Salaam’s gaze with power, even defiance. A young black marine. Abu Salaam remembered the efforts of radical Arabs to forge ties with American blacks in the 1960s, especially the so-called Black Muslims. Well, no more, Marine. The uniform you wear makes you my enemy. But I can see you are brave, so you will be honored. You will be the first to die. The thought made Abu Salaam feel serene, and he smiled.

  The young commander of the freedom fighters read a communiqué to the television cameras in high-pitched Arabic. He reiterated the demands made earlier through the Libyan leader, and added that once the fighters from Kuwait were delivered to Iran or Libya, the Abu Salaam faction would require forty-eight hours to travel unmolested to a place where they would be given sanctuary, and that then the hostages would be released.

  The television crews were escorted from the building, and the doors were closed. Libyan troops once again surrounded the building. The journalists were loaded onto buses and then taken to Tripoli to file their stories. The buses were held just long enough for Baruni’s motorcade to leave the base ahead of them.

  Tzafon may Eilat, Israel, 1400 GMT (1600 Local)

  Commander Philip Hooper dropped his heavy gear bag on the tarmac of the secret Israeli base and looked around. Behind him, his seven SEALs hefted boxes of heavy equipment onto a flatbed truck, and behind them, the U.S. Air Force transport that had brought them from Norfolk wound up its engines and accelerated toward takeoff. Hooper was a big man, over six-feet-three and 220 pounds, with a florid face under thinning blond hair and small, pale blue eyes. He was stiff from eleven hours in the cramped seat of the aircraft, and he felt every one of his forty-three years.

  He turned to the smiling officer in army utilities and the attractive female Israeli officer beside him. Both saluted. Hooper returned the salute, but his scowl, pressed into his face on the long flight from Norfolk, did not soften. “Stuart.”

  “Hoop!”

  “Who’s the bird?” Hooper noted that the Israeli officer’s smile disappeared as she completed her salute.

  “Captain Rabin, IDF,” said Stuart, his own smile brittle.

  Hooper turned to his seven-man team, then looked around. The engineers and construction crews were busily erecting structures where the two runways of the Israeli air base intersected. “OK, ma’am, sorry. Now look, Stuart, we were friends, lotta years ago, in the Real One. But why in the fuck - excuse me, ma’am,” Hooper bowed with elaborate courtesy to the Israeli captain.

  “Commander Hooper,” Stuart felt Leah’s voice cut like a razor. Hooper became suddenly silent. “I can handle military profanity, and anything else you can think of, as well as you. Welcome to Israel, and fuck your mother.”

  Like it, thought Stuart, grinning. She didn’t even raise her voice.

  Hooper reddened, then he smiled. “OK, Captain, I’m sorry. Stuart, why in the fuck are we here to train under a civilian like your long-gone reservist self?”

  Stuart grinned. “Method, man. Navy brought me back to teach you sledgehammers method. Name of the game here is to bring somebody back alive.”

  Hooper smiled despite himself. “Not, to be sure, our usual mission. We had best get started.”

  “Follow me, gentlemen,” said Leah Rabin as she turned and strode rapidly toward the concrete bunker. Hooper took a long look at Leah’s swinging hips and winked broadly at Stuart.

  Inside, the SEALs stacked their gear in a room assigned to them, then gathered around the big table where the base layout was displayed. The layout had been altered since earlier in the day, and now reflected the changes that were in progress to duplicate as nearly as possible the position of key buildings and other facilities of the central part of Uqba ben Nafi Air Base. Red and blue tapes were pinned through the sand on the table, marked with distances from the reservoir to the Operations Building, and to the nearest revetments that contained fighter aircraft in all the photographs. Distances to the big, open tarmac north of the Ops Building were also measured. Stuart let the SEALs look at the mock-up for several minutes, then led them into an adjacent room where he had pinned up the latest recon photos, plus the detailed plans of Wheelus and the rough Table of Organization for the operation. The T/O was prominently marked, “Top Secret - Fire Arrow.” The men sat in metal chairs, and Stuart picked up a pointer. “Hoop, why don’t you tell us what you know, then I’ll try to fill in what I can.”

  Hooper got up and took the pointer. “OK. Yesterday I get a call. Assemble an eight-man team With HALO experience, the best I have. Naturally I decided to lead it personally.” Hooper was grinning now, and much more the man Stuart remembered from twelve years previously in Vietnam. Hooper had run the SEAL detachment in Da Nang in ‘67 and ‘68, and had been many times decorated, including a Navy Cross for leading a counterattack against a vastly superior enemy force during the Tet Offensive. He now commanded all SEAL and UDT (underwater demolition team) units in the Atlantic Fleet. “The team here is Feeney, electronics; Jones; Ricardo, commo; Cross; Miller; Osborne, night ops.” Osborne raised his hand and grinned. He was very black. “And Goldstein, the medic and our Arab-speaker. We were told we had to do a night HALO into a defended shallow-water target, take and hold some people, and wait for pickup. We were not told where, but being resourceful and able to read newspapers, albeit slowly and with moving lips, we suspect the target is in Libya.” Hooper tossed the pointer back to Stuart and sat down. His men applauded.

  Leah Rabin stood to one side of the picture board. “Commander, what is a HALO?”

  “High Altitude, Low Open, ma’am-”

  “Please call me Leah.”

  “Fine, I’m Hoop. A HALO drop is simply the most terrifying way of getting into someplace undetected ever devised by man. First they load you into the belly of a bomber, stacked on top of each other like logs. Then the bomber gets as high as it can, to get over most radars. The aircrew then tracks onto your drop zone, using the same visual, radar, and computer equipment they have on board to drop a bomb, then they dump you out, wearing more equipment than you can imagine.”

  “Can you describe the equipment, please?” asked Leah.

  “Mighty curious, aren’t we?” Hooper looked the question at Stuart.

  “Leah will be sharing your training here, Hoop.”

  Hooper looked back and forth between Stuart and the trim Israeli captain.

  “It’s part of the deal, Hoop,” said Stuart.

  Hooper looked back at Leah, whose face was devoid of expression. “Parachute, Captain?”

  “Fully qualified, Commander. Also demolitions, night infiltrations, and underwater operations.”

  Hooper smiled. “OK, we’ll show you the gear when we finish here. It’s all in the other room, and fortunately, we have extras of everything.”

  “Please continue about the HALO drop,” said Leah, sitting down next to Hooper. She looked at him intently and smiled a little, and Stuart felt a twinge of something like jealousy.

  “OK,” replied Hooper, all his irritation gone. “The technique was perfected by SEALs to mine Haiphong Harbor. They dropped us out by the sea buoy from B-52s, usually from 40,000 feet, almost always at night. We would free-fall all the way to 2,500, maybe 2,000 feet. Two-stage chutes. We have on wet suits and full scuba gear, and over all that, a pressure-envelope suit, and on our chests, oxygen to breathe on the way down. Beginning to sound like fun?” Hooper grinned at Leah, and Stuart felt irritated and upstaged by his swashbuckling friend.

  “Tell me about landing,” said Leah. Her expression shifted between fascination and horror.

  “Absolutely the best part! We’re very heavy with all the gear, but it’s a two-stage chute, and the second is big, so the landing is soft. The problem, as you will have already anticipated, is that you have to get rid of the ch
ute - which is weighted to sink fast, by the way - and out of the pressure suit and air-breathing tank, and then reach back and start your scuba air and blow up your buoyancy compensator, all the while sinking toward the bottom of the ocean.”

  “What about your mask?”

  “Low volume. Put it on after you get air going.”

  “So you take off your helmet-”

  “Usually do that in the air, as soon as the chute opens. Also, dump the chest pack, which is mounted on the front of the parachute harness. The harness itself has a quick-twist release, and that goes as soon as your fins hit the water. The tough part is the pressure suit, but as soon as you get it unzipped in front and the hood off, you can reach back and get air flowing. Then, you can buddy up to get the rest of it off.”

  Leah frowned. “How could you count on landing close enough together to find each other underwater to buddy up?”

  “Well, remember, we were free-falling in formation. Besides, we had these low-intensity chemical lights attached to our tanks. Very visible under water.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Oh, the rest was easy. Swam in six miles, placed a few limpet mines on the ships at the docks, swam back, and got picked up before dawn by high-speed patrol boats.”

  “But if anything malfunctioned,” Leah shook her head.

  “Yeah, or even got stuck,” said Hooper amiably, “but we never lost anyone in an actual operation. We’ll show you the gear later. Anyway, that’s a HALO, and that is absolutely all I know about why we’re here.”

  Stuart tapped one of the blown-up SR-71 photos with the pointer. “That’s a reservoir, used to hold water for fire fighting. We’ll drop you in there, at night. We figure that you’ll be nearly impossible to see from the Operations Building, here,” Stuart moved the pointer, “200 meters away from the edge of the reservoir.”

  “Control tower on top of the Ops Building?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we have to cross 200 meters of lighted tarmac.”

  “Lines and shadows, Hoop. What you guys do best.”

  “Hm,” said Hooper. “That pond looks bigger here in the photo than it did on the sand table outside.”

  “It is. We’re duplicating only the southwest corner of the reservoir, still plenty big enough to jump into. The Israelis are naturally reluctant to use any more water out here than they have to.”

  “Are you actually going to do a HALO drop into that mock-up, here?” asked Leah.

  “No,” said Stuart. “It’s the only part of the mission we can’t practice, which is why we needed men with prior operational HALO experience.”

  “How deep?” asked Hooper, looking at the photo.

  “At least three meters. Enough for concealment; you can stay underwater for awhile in case anyone sees or hears the splash and comes to investigate.”

  “We can get rid of a lot of gear, then,” said Hooper, beginning to write on a clipboard. “Won’t need wet suits or fins or weight belts; we can use weapons and munitions for weight. One eighteen-cubic-foot tank per man. No buoyancy compensators.” He looked at Stuart, a hint of a grin forming. “So then we slip, unseen and Ninja-like, across the tarmac, and enter and secure. What’s the strength of the opposition?”

  “We think there may be four to six terrorists, either with the hostages or in the tower.”

  “You sure they’re in the Ops Building?”

  “Well, they were. Baruni went out and visited them earlier today, and took the TV crews along. By the way, the leader, Abu Salaam himself, is with the terrorists. Said to be a very crazy dude.”

  “The Achille Lauro,” said Leah.

  “Yeah,” Stuart nodded. “Intelligence expects executions. If you can shoot an old man in a wheelchair, shooting sailors and marines should be much more satisfying. That’s why this operation has to be ready to go ASAP.”

  “So we get in and kill the terrorists, and somebody, presumably a lot of somebodies in green suits screaming ‘semper fi,’ comes and springs us, pronto.” Hooper paused and studied the photographs. “Not easy, but possible. Very possible, in fact, but maybe better done with a smaller team.”

  “Actually, we’d give you more men if we could, but eight is the maximum the Air Force has ever tried to drop from one aircraft at one time. Unfortunately, you’ll have a few other tasks besides securing the hostages.”

  “Like blowing up tanks and planes and stuff.”

  “Like that.”

  “You’re right, eight won’t be enough. What you’re saying is that the Libyans will crash in after we grease the terrorists.”

  “We have to assume so.”

  “So after we stir up the tanks and troops and planes, which would appear to be all over the air base, by blowing up a few of them, who keeps the rest of them off our asses so the jarheads can come and get us?”

  Stuart told them about Loonfeather’s Airborne Armored Raid.

  Fort Bragg, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1500 GMT (1000 Local)

  Lieutenant Colonel Loonfeather sat at the long table in the operations office on the second floor of the 82d Airborne Division Headquarters on 91 Gruber Road at the end of the old All American way. He closed and rubbed his tired eyes, then opened them again. He had not slept in over thirty hours, other than the few hours of fitful dozing in the cramped seat of the air force transport that had brought him back from London. His eyes felt itchy, and he had a throbbing pain in his neck, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was that in the less than four hours since landing at Pope Air Force Base, adjacent to Fort Bragg, he had managed to get his op-order out and have it approved, with maximum priority by the long chain of command all the way through the Joint Chiefs, and disseminated. All the units, all of the men and equipment he would need to execute the Airborne Armored Raid on Uqba ben Nafi, were pledged to him, either at Pope or Bragg or on their way, moving toward him.

  The operation as conceived was not large. The Airborne Armored Raid had been around, as a concept, for years, and one of its intended missions was to seize and hold an airfield intact. The concept had always had its detractors, most of whom thought the force was too light to get the job done. Most airfields were very large in area, and an enemy would be able to reinforce or render the airfield useless by means of standoff weapons. Still, the Fourth of the Sixty-eighth, the only unit in the Army with the air-droppable M-551 Sheridans, kept practicing.

  Shit, it was a long shot, mused Loonfeather. The Sheridans were no match for anybody’s main battle tank, but hell, Libyans? It was certainly clear from the dispositions of the Libyan armor that they expected any attack to come from outside the perimeter. The most recent satellite and aerial recon photos showed some tanks and more guns being moved toward the north end of runway 03/21, probably expecting an assault from the sea. Anyway, Loonfeather knew his operation had to be limited to the area in the immediate vicinity of the Operations Building, where the hostages were being held, and had given his reasons to the senior planning group in London, and they had been accepted.

  Loonfeather would land his force, consisting of A Company, First Battalion, 502d Parachute Infantry Brigade, and eight Sheridans from his own 3/73 with their eight four-man crews, on the long runway, 11/29. The men would form the defensive perimeter, surrounding the area of the Operations Building and securing the northern three-quarters of runway 03/21 for the marine rifle company to come in and for everyone to go out. As soon as the paratroopers and the Sheridans were assembled and disbursed into fighting positions, the Navy would crater both runways south and east of their intersection, to prevent tanks from crossing from their positions to the south in any kind of order.

  Rufus Loonfeather propped his feet on the desk and closed his eyes. He sensed that his whole military career, even his own life, had been preparing him for this single, unique operation. He drifted back to his childhood, to being raised by his grandfather, John Walking Wolf, after his mother and father had both died while Rufus was very young. His grandfather had raised h
im in the old ways, as much as he still knew them, and the two of them had hiked and camped and trapped and hunted the wild country around Manistique Lake and along the Tahquamenoc and the Fox Rivers, in the birch and evergreen woodlands of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

  Walking Wolf claimed ancestry from the Dakota Nation of the West Rivers, which had roamed the territory of Montana and Idaho and the Dakotas, and north into Alberta and Saskatchewan, long before the white men had come and named those places. Walking Wolf had been brought to upper Michigan by his own grandfather, a man already old, in the great dispersion of the Plains Indians, which began in 1876, after the battle the white soldiers had forced on Red Cloud and Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn.

  Rufus smiled as he remembered long evenings with Walking Wolf, sitting close to the crackling fire wrapped in their robes of wolverine and badger fur against the bitter cold of early spring or deep autumn. Walking Wolf taught Rufus how to remember the Old Ones and how to call their spirits. Walking Wolf told Rufus of the Ghost Dances, as he had heard of them from his own grandfather, and he taught the boy that the Old Ones would never disappear as long as living people needed them and remembered them. When Rufus went to school, and later to the University of Michigan, he had told the others, the whites, about the Old Ones. Some had laughed, but not many. Some had asked him whether he believed in the stories and the magic. Rufus had never understood the question. It wasn’t believe or not believe; one kept the Old Ones, or one lost them forever. Rufus would not lose them.