Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  “Why is it hush-hush?” Riley asked. “I understand keeping the air strikes secret so the rebels don’t hide their equipment, but it seems like they would publicize the Rangers and the armor to the max.

  Make the rebels worry and maybe even fool them into forgetting about the air stuff.”

  Comsky didn’t say anything.

  “You were going to say something about another mission during the briefback and the Group S-3 cut you off,” Riley said. “What were you going to say?”

  Comsky shook his head. “Just rumors that I heard around Bragg before we went into isolation. You know how people talk.” He shook his head. “Nothing, really.”

  Riley looked him in the eyes and Comsky returned the look. Riley nodded and tapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

  Comsky pulled his poncho liner back over his head. He was snoring before Riley got out from between the pallets.

  Luia River, Angola, 13 June

  “We got a reply,” Trent said, handing Quinn a piece of paper with a string of letters on it.

  “Put out a perimeter,” Quinn ordered. “We’ll spend the night here.”

  He sat down and pulled out his code book to break the message. When he was done, he handed it to Trent.

  TO QUINN FROM SKELETON

  VICINITY CHILUAGE ACROSS BORDER IN ZAIRE AT COORDINATES SEVEN TWO THREE SIX FOUR EIGHT—DATE TIME SIXTEEN JUNE ZERO NINE ZERO ZERO GREENWICH MEAN—LINK UP WITH PARTY—FOLLOW ALL ORDERS OF PARTY TO BE MET—PARTY TO BE ONE MAN TO BE TAKEN TO LOCATION NORTHEAST ANGOLA THEN BROUGHT BACK TO PICKUP POINT—YOUR CONFIRMATION RECEIVED—BONUS ONE MILLION TOTAL HALF ALREADY IN YOUR ACCOUNT OTHER HALF WHEN YOU RETURN PARTY END

  “A million? They already put half in?” Trent whistled. “They must want us to do this job real bad.”

  Quinn pulled out a match and burned the paper with the message on it. “Skeleton’s never been stingy. A million isn’t that much to him or the man he works for.”

  “It’s a lot to me,” Trent said. He looked over at the men spread about the area. “How about them? What do you want to tell them?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Quinn said.

  “You mean we’ll destroy that bridge when we get to it,” Trent said with a smile.

  “Maybe.”

  “Some of ’em are good men,” Trent said. “We could let the rest go when we get to the border. Just take a couple with us and that will increase the shares on the million.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Quinn replied. “Like I said, we’ll deal with that when we have to. We’ll need a few of them to do this. We might run into some of Savimbi’s boys.”

  “So what do you think this fellow is going to do in northeast Angola?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Can’t be diamonds,” Trent said. “We’ve got that base covered already. And that’s the only thing in this whole stinking place that’s worth that much money.”

  “Well, obviously there’s something else to be done or found around here that’s worth a million now.”

  “I wonder if Skeleton’s boss is behind this whole Angola thing,” Trent said. “I’ve got my theories about—”

  “You ought to be keeping such talk to yourself,” Quinn cut in, looking around. “Skeleton and his people would as soon kill you as look at you. You and I both know he works for Pieter Van Wyks, and you should know even better than me that he don’t like people talking about him.” Quinn leaned closer to Trent. “I wouldn’t doubt but that one or two of these fellows we’ve got with us answer directly back to Skeleton. Making sure we don’t keep any of the diamonds and go into business for ourselves.”

  The look on Trent’s face told him that his top NCO had not even considered the possibility of a double agent in the patrol. “You have any idea who the bastards are?” Trent asked, his hand slipping to the butt of his knife.

  “I don’t even know for sure there is a spy or spies, but I wouldn’t put it past Skeleton. He’s a mean dude.” Quinn tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s just watch each other’s backs, right?”

  National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland, 13 June

  Tim Waker carefully dipped the tea bag in a mug of hot water. He placed it on a spoon, then wrapped the string around, squeezing the last drops out, and discarded the bag into the waste can next to his desk. He cradled both hands around the mug and leaned back in his large swivel chair, staring at the oversized computer screen in front of him. He had six programs accessed and his eyes flickered from one to another.

  The NSA was established in 1952 by President Truman as a replacement for the Armed Forces Security Agency. It is charged with two major responsibilities: safeguarding the communications of the armed forces and monitoring the communications of other countries to gather intelligence. The term communications had changed from the original mandate in 1952. Back then the primary concern was radio. Now, with the age of satellites and computers, it involved all electronic media.

  Waker had been “given” Angola yesterday. Normally, the NSA didn’t invest much time in the entire continent of Africa, never mind a single country. There just wasn’t that much being generated there to zoom in on, besides the relative lack of strategic interest in the area. But with the recent deployment of U.S. forces, the NSA director had passed the order down and it had stopped at Waker’s desk. Waker, and the two men picking up the other shifts, were to keep the NSA’s electronic eye on Angola.

  So far it had been interesting, but mainly because he had spent the last several hours sifting through the communications and signals generated by both the U.S. forces and the Pan-African forces. His ears and eyes were a battery of sophisticated and tremendously expensive equipment.

  A KH-12 satellite had been moved to a fixed orbit over Angola for the duration of the mission. Hawkeye and AWACS surveillance aircraft provided radar coverage of the airspace. A JSTARS plane was on call to paint a more complete picture of what was happening on the ground across the light spectrum.

  Right now, the KH-12 had divulged some interesting information. Someone in the Lunda Norte province had transmitted several hours ago on a narrow band to a satellite and a reply had been sent back down just fifteen minutes ago. Waker put the tea down and leaned forward. He accessed information from the database on the satellite that had been the middleman on both transmissions and found out it was a commercial one that had hundreds of corporate clients. Because of that, the other end of the message was more difficult to trace. He was only able to tell that one end of the relay was in Lunda Norte because the U.S. military had its own satellites overhead and they had picked up the uplink coming out of Angola. If it was essential, Waker knew he could use other means to get information out of that civilian satellite, which, according to the computer, was owned by a French communications consortium.

  But the only way to know if it was essential would be to know what the message was. Not being in the direct uplink of the broadcast, the KH-12 had only picked up part of the transmission. As he had expected, what the satellite had intercepted was not decipherable. The computer’s best guess was that it was encoded in a one-time pad format.

  Waker summarized the information and put it in his duty log. Then he ordered the computer to alert him the next time a message was picked up. Until then, it wasn’t that important.

  Airspace, Angola, 13 June

  “I’ve got a faint image,” one of the radar operators in the back of the Hawkeye announced. “Helicopter. She keeps popping up and down. Staying real low.”

  “Location?” the combat information officer asked.

  “Departing Huambo. Heading northeast.”

  The CI checked the overlay. He was supposed to have four F-18s on station, but one had mechanical problems and its partner was staying close to the carrier offshore. That meant he only had two war-planes in the sky. This was very bad timing. He had to keep the pair in close to his own position for defensive purposes on the off chance the rebel air force launched some sort of preem
ptive strike against either the Hawkeye or a quick cross-border attack against the PAF forces massing in Namibia.

  After the downing of the MI-8 earlier today, everyone was operating on a higher level of anxiety. He could ask the op center on the Abraham Lincoln to give him two more planes, but the CI knew that the officer in charge of the planes on board the carrier had a lot on his mind right now and they were in the middle of important preparations.

  “Still up?” the CI asked.

  “He’s staying low, now following the main road to the east.”

  That meant the chopper was on the dividing line between the U.S. and PAF forces. It could go either way before he could get planes on it.

  “Let it go,” he decided. “It will probably land before I can get something in the air to take care of it. Log the sighting and transmit the information to headquarters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 6

  Cacolo, Angola, 14 June

  “How come you military people always do things in the middle of the night?” Conner Young asked.

  “Because it’s more uncomfortable,” Riley replied facetiously. “And also more difficult for reporters to see what they’re doing in the dark. Never mind that it might catch the bad guys off guard.” They were on a UH-60 Black Hawk flying east over the Serra da Chela mountain range, heading up to the high plateau that made up the western part of the country.

  From the inbriefing that Riley had given her, Conner knew that Angola was split into three distinct geographical regions: a coastal lowland, an escarpment of hills and mountains of which the range beneath their aircraft was a part, and the high plateau flowing out of the escarpment to the east.

  The capital city of Luanda was located in the western part of the country. Conner and company had landed there four hours ago. With quite a few aircraft flying in and out, the activity at the airfield had appeared confused to Conner, but in surprisingly short order they had been cross-loaded onto the Black Hawk. Their gear was put onto another helicopter, and they were flying east to Cacolo with ODA 314 along with a second team that was going to be working out of the AOB there.

  They were leaving the western part of the country, where the majority of the population of Angola lived. Conner wondered, not for the first time, if she had taken the wrong bus and everyone else was headed for center stage and she was going far off Broadway. Luanda was where the U.S. contingent in this operation was going to be headquartered. It was where the other networks, along with a bigger SNN crew, were going to be descending like flies in the next few days to record the latest international peacekeeping effort. And Conner was half afraid she was going to be out in the boonies counting trees. Too late for that, she thought, looking out of the helicopter and mentally focusing on where they were going.

  The northeast section of the country was on a high plateau. The rivers in the area drained into the Congo, north in Zaire. Signs of civilization were few and far between. The dominant industry was diamond mining, and Conner had more than a passing interest in that fact. She knew the Van Wyks cartel had a shady past and she wondered where the long hand of that organization would touch down during this operation. The major reason, though, that she was going out here was simple reverse logic. At least that was the way Riley had explained it. All the other news agencies were going to be at JTF headquarters on the west coast in Luanda. “So be where they aren’t,” had been Riley’s suggestion.

  Conner looked across the dimly lit cargo bay at Riley. He was still, but she could see the glint of his eyes as he looked out the open door at the moonlit terrain. He was a strange man. She knew Sammy, her sister, and he talked quite a bit. At first she had been hopeful that maybe Sammy had finally found herself a good man, but after watching and listening to them one time when they passed through St. Louis on a story, Conner had finally resigned herself to the fact that Sammy had found herself a good friend who happened to be a man.

  Conner wasn’t quite sure what was going on with both of them, and she really didn’t have the time to concern herself with it. She’d been busy this past year, racing around the globe, always against a deadline, trying to keep the status she’d earned with the Eternity Base story.

  Not only the location but the angle on the Angolan mission—going on the ground with a team—had been Riley’s suggestion. Conner had thought long and hard about it. There was no doubt it was a gamble, but you didn’t stay on top by taking the safe route. On the positive side, Conner knew she’d have a camera on the ground with a live satellite feed long before any of her competitors, who were going to be content to sit in the hotel in Luanda and get the daily military briefing. On the negative, she could end up with a live feed of not much.

  The fallback position, a term she had picked up from Riley, was that she would most certainly have a unique perspective. One of the greatest criticisms of the media during the Gulf War had been the contentment of correspondents to sit in Riyadh and accept the military daily briefings with very little effort made to get out on the ground to see what was really happening.

  However, a unique perspective wouldn’t be enough if there wasn’t a story to get a perspective on. And Conner also had to remind herself of the one news crew that had gone out on its own during Desert Storm to try and get a story and ended up getting captured by the Iraqis for their trouble. She looked at Riley’s silhouette one more time and felt that at least she held an advantage over that team with his expert presence.

  Conner was distracted from her thoughts as the crew chief made some sort of gesture with his hands. Next to her, one of the Green Berets from the briefback pulled a magazine out of his vest and slammed it home into his weapon. He placed the gun between his knees, muzzle pointing down. This time, though, there were no blank adapters on the end of the weapon’s muzzle, nor a MILES harness strapped on top of their load-bearing equipment. There were live bullets being loaded.

  The combination of the thud of the blades above her head, the wind, the soldiers, and the loading of weapons, and suddenly Conner felt a strange sensation in her stomach. While she was puzzling over what it was, the young soldier suddenly turned and looked at her. He smiled and leaned close. “Just a precaution, ma’am. The AOB is secure, but it never hurts to be ready.”

  Conner nodded and looked out the open door. She could see a scattering of lights on the ground up ahead—Cacolo. The helicopter suddenly plunged earthward toward the landing zone, rapidly descending into and through SAM-7 range.

  On the ground in Cacolo, Sergeant Ku rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was tired and his head hurt. Damn these Americans. Why did they have to do this in the middle of the night? What was the rush? As long as Ku could remember he’d been at war. What would another night matter?

  Three helicopters landed, one after another, and men and materiel poured off. The aircraft shut down their engines and silence descended on the AOB. ODA 314 and another team, ODA 315, stood there in the darkness. Major Gungue and the American major, Lindsay, walked out and greeted the team; Ku reluctandy followed as he was instructed.

  Cacolo’s population could never really be tabulated because it was determined by the flow of refugees from the surrounding countryside, which depended on two factors: the way the war was going, and the way the crops were growing. Currently, the town had over thirty thousand souls crammed into it. A few relief agencies had set up camp and were supplied from the small dirt landing strip on the east side of the city.

  The AOB advance had appropriated several buildings near the landing strip and turned them into an SF camp with barbed wire all around the perimeter and sandbagged gun positions guarding all avenues of approach. There was more open land to the north of the AOB for the 82d Airborne to take over when it arrived.

  Lindsay greeted the two team leaders and team sergeants and linked them up with their indigenous guides. He took the entire party back, along with the pilots of the helicopters and the news team, to the AOB operations center, a former garage when there had actually been cars that
ran in Cacolo. Ku reluctandy followed, wishing the headache that throbbed in his temples would go away.

  Riley looked at the setup as he entered the garage with Conner and Seeger. It was typical of a Special Forces operation. Everything jury rigged, but jury rigged well. Maps lined the wall and radios were manned by men pulled from other teams to supplement the AOB.

  He’d spotted a team on the roof of the garage with .50 caliber machine guns well sandbagged in at opposing corners. They were taking security seriously here, which made him feel better.

  Lindsay didn’t spare any punches. “We’re putting you in before dawn.” He turned to Dorrick. “You first.” Lindsay used a pointer on the map. “ODA three one four will go in to two locations.”

  Riley listened carefully, making notes as Lindsay rattled off grid coordinates, time of departure, flight paths, false insertion points— the entire operations order.

  Conner tugged on his elbow. “This morning? Already?”

  Riley nodded. “No wasted time.”

  “Who do we go with?” she asked.

  “I’ll talk to Captain Dorrick after the OPORDER is over,” Riley said.

  He could tell from what Lindsay was saying that 314 had two targets to be reconned and targeted. One was the airfield on the southeast side of Saurimo, the local rebel stronghold. The other was the road leading north out of Saurimo where a bridge crossed a deep streambed. The airfield team was to help in the destruction of both the field and the planes currently stationed there. The bridge team was to laser-designate the bridge so that it could be destroyed with smart bombs. The intent was to sever Saurimo’s major ground link to the north.