Eyes of the Hammer (The Green Berets) (23 page)

In the complex modern world of radar and sophisticated air defense systems, the Talon's ability to defeat electronic detection was its key. To aid in that battle the electronic warfare specialists in the cargo bay manned a variety of electronic countermeasures designed to foil enemy radars. The Talon crews thought it was ironic that the air force was willing to spend billions on the Stealth bomber while continually trying to cut funds for the ungainly transport plane that had already proved it could beat radar systems and had led the way in every American military operation since the end of the Vietnam war. The big joke among the Talon drivers was that they could up their funding by loading a few nukes in the cargo bay and redesignating their aircraft the B-130.

At the present moment the aircraft was skimming barely fifty feet above the tops of the waves. A darker line on the horizon indicated the Colombian coast coming up. The Talon hit the coast at a hundred feet and the pilot gradually raised the altitude to two hundred fifty feet as they headed into the foothills of the Cordillera Occidental mountains, a small range of the Andes.

The loadmaster turned to Alexander and held up both hands, fingers extended. Alexander nodded, stood up, and turned to the team. Raising both hands, he screamed: "Ten minutes!"

Alexander quickly lowered himself into the safety of his seat. The plane was jerking from side to side and bouncing up and down as the pilots skimmed the margin of safety that kept them from splattering into a mountainside. The plane crested over the mountains and started heading down, flying so low that the pilots could look up out of the cockpit at the ridgelines on either side of the aircraft.

Getting another signal, Alexander stood for the last time and hooked up his static line. He held six fingers aloft. "Six minutes!" he shouted into the roar of the aircraft. He extended both hands, palms out. "Get ready!" The team members unbuckled their safety straps.

With both arms, Alexander pointed at the team seated along the outside of the aircraft. Then he pointed up. "Outboard personnel stand up." The members of Eyes Two staggered to their feet in the wildly swaying aircraft, using the static line cable and side of the aircraft for support.

Curling his index fingers over his head, representing hooks, Alexander pumped his arms up and down. "Hook up!" He watched as each man connected his static line, snap hook gate toward the skin of the aircraft, into the static line cable, and secured the gate shut with a safety wire.

The loadmaster held onto Alexander's static line and tried to keep him from falling over while he used both hands to pantomime the jump commands. "Check static lines!"

Each jumper checked his snap hook and traced the static line from the snap hook to where it disappeared over his shoulder. He then checked the static line of the man in front, from where it came over his shoulder to where it disappeared into his parachute. The last man, Captain Vaughn, turned and allowed the man in front to check him.

"Check equipment!" Each man made sure one last time that all his equipment was secured and the connections made fast on his parachute harness.

Alexander cupped his hands over his ears. "Sound off for equipment check!" The last man slapped the man in front on his rear and yelled "OK," then the yell and slap were passed from man to man until the second jumper, just behind Alexander, yelled, "All OK, Jumpmaster," giving the thumbs-up.

With all his jump commands done except the final "Go," Alexander gained control of his static line from the loadmaster and turned toward the rear of the aircraft. He waited for the ramp to open, ready to lead the team off into the dark night. He swayed to the front as the aircraft slowed down from 250 knots to 125 knots. Three minutes out.

The noise level increased abruptly as a crack appeared in the ramp and widened into a gaping mouth. As the ramp leveled off, Alexander stared out into the dark. Fighting the rucksack hanging in front of his legs, he got to his knees and, grabbing the hydraulic arm on the right side of the ramp, peered around the edge of the aircraft looking forward. He blinked in the wind. It took a few seconds to get oriented.

He could see the lights of Medellin off to the left under the aircraft. The Cauca River was passing underneath. Alexander at least knew that they were in the right neighborhood, and that was as good as it got with a blind drop.

The loadmaster leaned over Alexander's shoulder and stuck an index finger in his face. Alexander clambered awkwardly to his feet, looked over his shoulder at the team, and screamed, "One minute!"

Ten seconds later his knees buckled as the plane rapidly climbed the 250 feet to the 500-foot drop altitude. Glancing out, Alexander could see the lights of Medellin passing by off to the left. He yelled over his shoulder as he shuffled out to within three feet of the edge of the ramp. "Stand by!"

Alexander stared at the red light above the top of the ramp; as soon as it turned green, he'd go. He moved a few inches closer to the edge.

The green light flashed. "GO!" Alexander was gone. The rest of Eyes Two followed.

In less than three seconds these things happened to Alexander and his equipment: His fifteen-foot static line uncoiled off the back of his parachute, tearing open the pack-closing tie on the chute itself and pulling out the pack-opening loop. The parachute, encased in a deployment bag, pulled free from Alexander's body. The nylon of the parachute was connected to the harness around his body by four risers extending into numerous suspension lines. Reaching the limit of the suspension line, the weight of Alexander's falling body broke the loops of eighty-pound test webbing that connected the apex of the canopy with the deployment bag and static line. The static line, with deployment bag attached, was left trailing behind the Talon still attached to the static line cable, twirling in the prop blast. The parachute, freed of the deployment bag, exploded open and Alexander went from a forward speed of 125 knots and a downward free fall to a zero forward speed and a sixteen-foot-per-second descent.

Feeling the opening shock try to jar his chin through his chest, Alexander quickly looked up and checked in the moonlight to see if he had a good canopy. He reached up on his risers to gain a modicum of control. Steering the T-10 canopy consisted simply of reaching high on the risers, grabbing as much as possible, and hauling it in; this tilted the canopy, and it would slip in the direction of pull.

Satisfied with his canopy, Alexander quickly took a look below. All he could see was a great darkness rapidly approaching. He reached down below the reserve that covered his stomach and searched for the handles to his eighteen-inch attaching straps. He fumbled briefly, cursing to himself. The two straps held the rucksack, which was hanging from the reserve down to his knees. Landing with a ruck still attached was a good way to break a leg. He located one strap and held that tight in his left hand while he forced his right hand between the ruck and reserve searching for the other strap. Finding it, he quickly jerked both straps at the same time. The ruck sprang free and dropped to the end of a fifteen-foot lowering line, where it dangled beneath him.

All that effort had cost him his remaining time in the air. The ground was rushing up. Less than twenty seconds after leaving the aircraft, Alexander reached up, grabbed his risers, rotated his arms in front of his face, bent his knees with his feet together, and said a brief prayer. The prayer turned to curses as his feet hit branches.

Alexander crashed through the branches of a small tree and slammed into the ground. He lay still for a second, mentally inventorying his body and giving thanks that he was alive. There was no evident pain, and everything still seemed to be attached and working. He unhooked the releases for his harness and slid his rifle off his shoulder. He checked to make sure his weapon was functioning and then quickly reeled in his parachute, cutting it out of the branches where it had been stuck. He stuffed the chute and his Kevlar helmet in his ruck.

Upslope from him Alexander could hear someone else wrestling with a parachute. Putting his ruck on his back, he clambered up the hill toward the sound. After two minutes he came upon Atwaters between two trees, rolling up his chute in the dark.

"You all right?"

Atwaters nodded. "Yeah. But this sure don't look like no DZ."

Alexander nodded. He was glad he had followed Riley's advice. He pushed a button on the large watchlike device on his wrist. The two-inch face lit up and a small light started flashing at a point along the edge. Alexander rotated his arm but the light stayed in the same direction, uphill and to the south.

"The captain's thataway," he whispered to Atwaters. "You got all your stuff? All right, let's go." The wrist device could be used as either a homing instrument or a means to home in on another similar device. Only the captain's was set to transmit; the rest of the team's were set to receive. The plan was that they would all converge on the captain. Vaughn had activated his homing device just prior to jumping so it would be the first on, once they hit the ground.

Alexander led the way. He knew that the captain shouldn't be too far away, only a few hundred meters at best. They had jumped too low to be very spread out, unless someone had hesitated going off the ramp.

Glancing at his wrist again, Alexander was dismayed to see another light come on, slightly to the left of the first one. That could mean only one thing: Someone had gotten hurt or hung up and couldn't make it to the captain. Alexander adjusted his path and headed toward the second light. In less than a minute of scrambling up the hillside and breaking brush, he came upon the source of the second light.

Through his night-vision goggles Alexander could make out the dark pattern of a parachute hung up in a tree. Coming closer he found the jumper lying beneath it. It was Paulson, the weapons man. To make sure he wouldn't be fired on, Alexander called out softly, "Eyes Two," as he approached.

Alexander knelt next to the jumper. "What's the matter?"

Paulson shook his head. "I think I busted my ankle. I hit the trees and thought I was hung up, and then the chute popped free and I hit the ground. I can't stand on it. I tried and it hurt too much. That's when I turned on the transmitter."

Alexander turned to Atwaters. "Leave your ruck here and go to the captain. Tell him to turn off his transmitter and bring everyone here." Atwaters nodded and, checking his direction on his wrist, turned and headed off to get the team leader.

Alexander quickly did a primary survey of Paulson to make sure there was nothing else wrong with him. Sometimes the pain of one injury masked the warning signs from another more dangerous one. Satisfied that nothing else was seriously wrong, he checked out the ankle.

Hearing someone coming through the brush, Alexander swung around with his silenced MP5, pointing it in the direction of the intruders. He watched as four men broke out into the small clearing at the foot of the tree.

"Eyes Two," one of the figures hissed. Alexander relaxed. The rest of the team was here. Vaughn and Colden, the medic, came over while the other two men settled in as security, pointing upslope and down. Alexander quietly briefed the captain while Colden worked on Paulson.

After a few minutes Colden rendered his report. "It's a broken ankle, all right. We'll have to carry him."

Alexander reached for the captain's ruck. "Let's see where we are." Digging through the parachute inside, he pulled out a piece of electronics that looked similar in size and makeup to the SATCOM radio. The machine was called MANPADS, for man portable position azimuth distance system. Alexander had relied on it several times before and thought it was one of the most useful pieces of equipment he had ever used.

Opening a cover on the machine, he typed in a brief code by feel. The small LED display dimly lit up with eight numbers, which stood for the grid coordinates of their present location. Then he punched in a second set of numbers that he had memorized—the grid coordinates for the lab site. The display lit up with a second set of two numbers: 282-2.13. Alexander shook his head in amazement. Didn't even need to do a map check. He wasn't sure how the damn thing worked, although he knew it had something to do with satellites. The machine had calculated the azimuth and distance from their present location to the target. Without the machine, they'd probably have spent half the night fumbling around in the dark—a frustrating and time-expensive exercise. According to the information, they had been dropped only about twelve hundred meters from where they had wanted to be.

Alexander looked up at Vaughn. "Just over two k's to the target." He checked his compass. "Thataway."

Vaughn nodded and turned to Colden, who was splinting Paulson's leg and foot. "What's his status?"

"Simple break of the ankle. I'm extending the splint below his foot so he can limp along on it in an emergency, but I don't recommend that unless absolutely necessary."

Alexander pulled a poncho from the outside pocket of his ruck. "I'll make up a travois. We'll pull him. It's downhill most of the way."

FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA

11:18 P.M.

Riley woke with a start. Reaching over, he pulled his watch off the nightstand. 2312. Damn, he hadn't meant to sleep so late. Eyes Two was already long gone and on the ground in Colombia. Riley lay his head back on the pillow and silently wished them luck.