Dragon Sim-13 (22 page)

It hadn't occurred to Riley that both the team's communications men had been hurt. It made sense to put O'Shaugnesy on the first aircraft. They always tried to cross-load the team as much as possible, putting one man of each specialty on each aircraft just in case an aircraft crashed. The main reason for the shift was that if only one aircraft made it to the pickup zone, they definitely wanted O'Shaugnesy to be on it.

That made the first lift: Trapp in charge, O'Shaugnesy as commo man, Devito as medic, Reese as weapons, Smitty as engineer, and Olinski to round out the six. The second aircraft would have Riley and the captain, Comsky, Hoffman, Chong, and Lalli. Riley considered this mixture, using factors such as the weapons each man was carrying and his skills. Something else occurred to him. "Let's switch Lalli and Olinski. Any of us can handle the radio. O'Shaugnesy sure doesn't count as an effective commo man now anyway. If we get only one bird, then Lalli, who can't walk that well, will go out; Olinski, who can speak Russian, will stay with us. Hell, if we don't get two birds we might as well have Olinski. We can use him as an interpreter when we marry some local girls over the border and settle down in the area. Either that or Chong can take care of us here with his Chinese, 'cause it's a goddamn long walk if we can't fly."

Mitchell agreed to the change. "Good idea."

The captain reached into his ruck and pulled out a freeze-dried meal. "Breakfast for the day. Lunch and dinner also, if you want to get technical. Shall we dine? Or shall we see what wondrous news the FOB sends

us, prior to our repast?" Mitchell added, as he watched Lalli limp over with his sheet of paper.

Mitchell pulled his one-time pad and trigraph out of the cargo pocket of his pants. He started transcribing and decrypting.

ZEROTW OROGER ZEROTW OBLOOD ONEXFI LBIRDS XXGOOD LUCKXX DRATTSX

Mitchell handed the message to Riley. "The colonel wishes us well. We need to get organized to make the hit. We're going to have to make some adjustments with O'Shaugnesy down and Trapp and Comsky at the PZ."

Riley thought a minute. "All right. We've still got the surveillance in place. We've got O'Shaugnesy torn to pieces down at the pickup zone. Trapp and Comsky are also at the PZ, and they're two of the snipers we need to take the cameras out. We'll have to get them back up."

"Yeah," Mitchell agreed. "But I think Trapp will figure that out, don't you?"

Riley smiled. "Yeah, Jim's pretty sharp."

PZ Drable, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0112 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 9:12 a.m. Local

Olinski had set the radio for the 2400Z receive and then decrypted the message. He looked at it for a few seconds, then called Trapp over and handed it to him. "Blood will be on the birds."

"Comsky will be glad to hear that."

Trapp scratched his head as he worked the tactical situation. "Comsky and I are going to have to go back up there. We can wait for dark. I guess we ought to call the guys on the hour and make sure the plan's the same. Hey, Ape." Trapp called Comsky over. "Do you think you can leave O'Shaugnesy without a medic?"

Comsky considered. "Yeah, for a couple of hours. I've done all I can do for him. Ski here can do as much as I can at this point."

"Good, 'cause we got a hot date with a pipeline and I don't want to miss it."

Naryn, Peter the Great Bay Thursday, 8 June, 0200 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 11:00 a.m. Local

Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk of the Soviet Navy ordered the speed of the Naryn diminished from the twenty-five knots she had been doing to five knots. With the change, the small patrol boat was barely making headway against the current that surged north out of the Sea of Japan toward the Tatar Strait.

Chelyabinsk was disappointed. He'd been enjoying his leisurely patrol along the coastline. The Naryn's usual job was to watch for smugglers running the coast from North Korea into the Soviet Union. As always, there were people on both sides of the border willing to make deals. Chelyabinsk usually stayed in tight along the shore, cruising in and out of the many rocky bays, searching for signs of criminal activity. But several hours previously, shore-based radar on Sakhalin Island had picked up the radar image of an American missile frigate of the Knox class moving through La Perouse Strait. A patrol plane out of Vladivostok had been sent to investigate and had found that the American ship had turned south, once it passed through the strait. They expected the ship to join the other American warships participating in the annual naval exercises with the South Koreans. Still, the operations officer of the Joint Naval Forces at Vladivostok had obviously decided that the American ship needed to be watched.

That had resulted in the order to the Naryn; they were to reduce speed so they would be in position to move out from the coast to investigate if needed. If the American ship stayed on course, the Naryn should pick it up on surface radar in a couple of hours.

The patrol plane was sent back to Vladivostok. Where else could the Americans go but south? Soon the American ship would come in range of the Naryn. It was not important enough to keep a plane circling for hours.

ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0222 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 10:22 a.m. Local

Riley tilted his head and listened. The beat of rotor blades sounded off to the east. He checked the surveillance notes. Pretty close. Yesterday it had come at 0300Z. Within an hour wasn't bad. The next time the Chinese helicopter came they'd be long gone.

Trapp had called at ten from the pickup zone and they'd briefly confirmed the message and the updated plan.

The mood was growing more tense at the rally point. Riley could feel it. Adrenaline was starting to flow. Hoffman and Smith were starting final preparation of the charges. Everyone was checking his weapons and cleaning them. Reloading magazines to make sure every round was properly seated. Repacking rucksacks and tying everything down. Hoffman and Smitty had run six lines of rope from rocks on the ground up to a nearby tree and were practicing placing their charges.

In isolation, Hoffman had come up with a simple device to speed up the emplacement process. Each charge was taped to a piece of rubber from an inner tube. The rubber was wrapped around the wire, holding the charge tight against the cable, and then fastened there by hooking the end of the rubber on a nail embedded in the plastique charge itself. It took less than three seconds per cable to attach the charges.

Riley reread the security notes and discussed them with Mitchell. Together, they decided on two slight modifications of the tactical plan. They'd have Hoffman and Smith blow the hole in the fence on the east side of the compound instead of the north. It appeared that the T-field fence system wasn't working over there. Every little bit of advantage would be needed. Additionally, they would not have to use the line charge to blow a path to the berm, because the landing of the helicopter inside the compound had confirmed that the ground was not mined.

Riley just hoped they'd receive the final go. He hated to think of the effect a no-go would have on the team.

"Thus, those skilled in war subdue the

enemy's army without battle." Sun Tzu: The Art of War

Misawa Air Force Base, Japan Thursday, 8 June, 0600 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 3:00 p.m. Local

Chief Warrant Officer C. J. Mclntire pulled in collective with his left hand and felt the Blackhawk's wheels leave the ground. He climbed to five hundred feet and then waited until the other Blackhawk, with his friend Luke Hawkins at the controls, slid into place to his left rear.

While his copilot updated the Blackhawk's Doppler navigating device with their present location, C.J. pushed his cyclic control forward and turned on an azimuth of due west.

The Doppler is a navigating device that theoretically would allow them to find the Rathburne in the middle of the ocean. C.J. was worried because in his experience the Doppler was unreliable over water. He hoped that a combination of staying on the proper headings for the designated amounts of time, and interpreting what information the Doppler did give, would allow them to locate the ship. If absolutely necessary they could call the Rathburne and have it turn on an electronic beacon. They had already planned on doing that for the return trip, but C.J. preferred not to rely on that going in. The fewer electronic transmissions, the less the chance of alerting the North Koreans or Russians.

C.J. estimated a 3.7-hour flight to the Rathburne, arriving about 6:43 p.m. local time. That would give them a six-hour rest on board before having to fly the rest of the mission. Just as important, it allowed them to fly this leg in daylight, saving their goggle time for the actual penetration of the hostile airspace.

Once he was sure everything was working, C.J. let his copilot, Tim Yost, take the controls. C.J. leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He was trying to control his nervousness. Despite all his flight hours, this was the first time he was flying a mission like this—into hostile airspace with state-of-the-art detection devices. Between the Soviets, North Koreans, and Chinese, there was a pretty impressive array of air defense systems waiting up ahead.

Once they left the Rathburne and got down into the wave tops, C.J. felt confident they'd make the shoreline. From there to the pickup zone, it would be terrain flying under goggles. Terrain flying consisted of following the contour of the earth with a margin of safety of only twenty-five feet above the highest object. At that altitude they should avoid getting picked up on radar, yet be high enough to avoid crashing into an obstacle.

The trip out was going to be the hairy part, C.J. figured. It all depended on whether or not they were spotted. He didn't know what the people he was picking up were doing, but he had a feeling it was something that probably would upset the natives. C.J. shook his head—flying under goggles at any time was dangerous work. Those mountains were going to require some good flying tonight.

Naryn, Peter the Great Bay Thursday, 8 June, 0800 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 5:00 p.m. Local

Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk peered at the green haze on his surface radar screen. There in the center sat the brightly glowing dot that indicated the American warship, more than one hundred kilometers to the east. The Komar-class missile boats had a curious radar setup: They could see farther on the surface of the ocean than they could into the sky. The ship was designed to attack surface ships, not air targets. According to the radar, the American ship had been steaming in a tight circle for the past hour. Chelyabinsk didn't know what it was doing out there and frankly he didn't care. It was a nice, clear, crisp day. As long as the ship didn't come any closer he was happy.

Chelyabinsk looked to the west at the shoreline. The Changbai Mountain Range loomed in the distance. It was at times like this that he was glad he had joined the navy and not the army. Imagine being out in those hills looking across the border at the Chinese or North Korean pigs, he thought. Much nicer here aboard ship, where a man could always get hot food and stay out of the rain and snow.

He glanced forward along the short deck of his ship. Seamen Second Class Aksha and Kachung were manning the forward, twin 25mm antiaircraft gun. Chelyabinsk looked at the two Mongolians with undisguised loathing. The riffraff he had to work with. Those two idiots hadn't even known what boots were until they'd been drafted into the navy to do their obligatory two years of service. Chelyabinsk wasn't even sure they knew how to fire the 25mm.

In his three months in command, the crew had never had an opportunity to conduct a live-fire exercise. The cost of ammunition was too high, they'd been told. Chelyabinsk could only assume that the two gunners had been taught how to shoot in their basic naval training, but he wasn't confident of that. The men spoke only the most basic Russian.

ORP, Operational Area Dustey, China Thursday, 8 June, 0900 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 5:00 p.m. Local

The shadows were lengthening. Riley glanced around—everyone had their gear packed. Lalli finished bursting out what would hopefully be their last send before the PONDER report and exfiltration. The message rogered the last FOB message and reconfirmed the location and time of the exfiltration.

Hoffman and Smith had finished priming the demolitions and placed them on top of their rucksacks. Everyone would move from the objective rally point to the target as soon as Trapp and Comsky rejoined them. Riley figured that the two would show up about 2030 local. Then a half hour up to the target, arriving about 2100. That would give them five hours prior to the actual hit.

It was going to be a cool, clear night, Riley observed. Should be good weather for the exfiltration. The ride home was the only thing that was out of their hands right now—they simply had to be in the right place at the right time.

Riley sat on his packed ruck next to the team leader. "Let's play what if, Mitch. What do you want to do if the birds don't show?"

There were several options in their escape and evasion packet. As long as they had a radio, they could keep communications with the base station and rearrange their exfiltration somewhere along the evasion route chosen.

The first option was northeast: Use the Sungari River itself. Wearing their dry suits and taking advantage of the river's fast current, they could float downriver each night and hole up on shore during the day. With the current at 2.2 meters a second, it would quickly get them out of the immediate area. There were two major problems with that plan. First, they would have to pass through the city of Harbin, where the odds of being spotted were very high. The second was that after 750 kilometers, and an estimated sixteen nights in the water, they would only get to the border with Russia and the Sungari's junction with the Amur River. If they stayed on the Amur, it was more than 1,000 kilometers to the Tatar Strait. There things would get even more difficult, and the options more vague. Perhaps getting picked up off the coast by submarine. Perhaps stealing a boat and making it into international waters. They'd known in isolation that the river option wasn't the greatest, but its one advantage was that it got them out of the target area relatively quickly and unobtrusively.

The second option was to evade to the southeast by foot and strike out directly for the coast. This would entail a land trip of almost 250 kilometers. If they had to walk the whole way, Riley conservatively estimated a minimum of thirty to forty days. Probably more, since the Changbai Mountain Range lay in the way, 150 kilometers from the coast. The mountains were a significant obstacle. At its highest, the range was close to sixteen thousand feet. The planned route called for them to skirt the highest part of the range by going around to the north and crossing the Russian rather than North Korean border.

On the southeastern route there was always the possibility of getting helicopters to pick them up along the way, if they were still in communication with the FOB. They'd listed several potential pickup points in the escape and evasion packet. Every step they took toward the southeast would make the flight shorter.

If they didn't get picked up by helicopter en route and had to walk the whole way to the coast, then the plan was either to coordinate getting picked up by a submarine or ship, or to steal a boat. The southeastern route was more viable than up north in the restricted Tatar Strait because they would be closer to Japan and more open water. Unfortunately, this direction would be most closely watched if the Chinese suspected American involvement. Riley believed firmly in the military tenet that the direct route was always the most dangerous.

Heading west wasn't feasible. Not unless they wanted to spend the rest of their lives strolling across the expanse of China, Mongolia, and then Russia proper.

The last option they had considered was heading southwest, following the pipe to its southern terminal and the coast seven hundred kilometers away on the Yellow Sea. That way was ranked last in choice for two reasons. First, the population increased as you went south, and the chance of being spotted increased correspondingly. The second problem was that the Yellow Sea terminated in the north in either Korea Bay or the Gulf of Chihli. Both bodies of water were surrounded on three sides by either China or North Korea. It was an area that the U.S. Navy and Air Force avoided. The Sea of Japan might be dangerous, but at least it led somewhere other than a dead end. If Team 3 went southwest, the odds of getting picked up were greatly diminished. Any foreign intrusion into the sea or airspace would almost certainly be detected.

Riley and Mitchell ran all these options through their minds, weighing them against the current team situation. After a few minutes Mitchell expressed his thoughts. "The first thing we have to consider is that O'Shaugnesy is hurt. Unless we want to carry him a long way, I think we have only two options. One is to go northeast using the river. We can put O'Shaugnesy in a dry suit and float him along with us without too much trouble. We'd never make it out if we went southeast or southwest, trying to walk and carry him.

"The only other option that seems feasible is staying in place for a while until things cool down and see if the FOB will retry the original PZ. Hunker down for a couple of weeks in the area." Mitchell held up his hand as Riley started to protest.

"Yeah, Dave, I know that doesn't seem too smart. The Chinese are going to be over this place like stink on shit after we blow the pipe. But if we escape their initial sweep, I don't think they would figure that whoever did it would stay in the area."

Riley considered that. He could easily imagine how the Chinese would search the area. Their army certainly had the manpower to do it thoroughly. They would bring in large numbers of troops and make a long search line. Everything and everybody in its path would be found. Riley didn't fancy the idea of trying to evade one of those sweeps. Maybe they could put on their dry suits and hide in the swamp, but he still didn't think they'd escape detection.

Floating down the river didn't appeal to him either, though. True, it would get them out of the immediate area quickly. And it was the one way they could move O'Shaugnesy without having to carry him. But they would be heading in the wrong direction. The team was already on the outer fringes of the range for exfiltration helicopters from Japan. If they went northeast it would further diminish that possibility. Trying to steal a boat or make a water pickup way up there wasn't too likely either. Low probability of success, Riley calculated.

"Yeah, you're right. With O'Shaugnesy hurt we don't have many choices. If the birds don't come tonight, what do you say we head southeast as far as we can carry O'Shaugnesy in the dark, then hole up. See what the FOB has to say about reflying the exfiltration later on."

The unspoken option—one that Riley and Mitchell would not even consider—was leaving O'Shaugnesy. During training exercises, Riley had evaluated teams during their mission planning, and he had actually seen a few teams talk about leaving a wounded man behind if taking him meant the rest of the team wouldn't make exfiltration. That Special Forces soldiers would even discuss such a thing made Riley's blood boil. His early indoctrination into Special Forces had impressed one rule upon him above all: Never leave anyone behind. A team was just that—a team. It should live or die as a team.

The argument Riley heard from those who talked of leaving a wounded man behind was that it was practical. Why trade eleven lives for one? Riley's counterpoint to this kind of reasoning was to ask each person that one important question: "How would you feel if you were the one they were going to leave behind? Think about it real hard before you answer. How would you feel if you were the one who was going to be abandoned?"

Beyond the moral considerations, Riley felt there was also a practical aspect. If a soldier knew that he might be left behind if he was wounded, he'd be much less willing to take chances—potentially to the detriment of the mission.

On Team 3, Riley and Mitchell emphasized teamwork in everything they did. During physical training runs, Team 3 always finished as an intact group. If someone fell behind, the rest would go back and get him. Riley was proud that no one on this team had even brought up the possibility of leaving a team member—not in planning, or even now, when faced with the grim reality of the situation. That might change if the birds didn't show, but Riley doubted it.

Checkpoint 2, USS Rathburne Thursday, 8 June, 0943 Zulu Thursday, 8 June, 6:43 p.m. Local

Captain Lemester squinted into the wind as the second helicopter settled down on the helipad located on the fantail of the ship. He waited until the blades on both birds stopped turning, then walked out to the lead one. He was already disquieted by the fact that the helicopters bore no marking. He recognized the type: Sikorsky UH-60. But he'd never seen a UH-60 Blackhawk with a flat black paint job and extra fuel tanks hung on the small wings above the cargo bay.

With those extra tanks they must be flying an awfully long way, Lemester conjectured. That made him feel even more uneasy. The only countries in two directions were Russia and North Korea. And those birds had come from the third direction: west. He didn't think the navy would go to all the trouble of moving his ship up here to refuel two helicopters if the aircraft were just going to turn around and go back.