Dragon Sim-13 (34 page)

They walked for ten minutes, gaining fifty meters. Mitchell halted them and peered ahead through his goggles, trying to see what was ahead. He couldn't detect any movement or guards. He tapped Hoffman again and they started moving. Suddenly the crack of the SVD, closely followed by the burst of the SAW, sounded to the north.

1:25 a.m. Local

Riley fired his first round carefully. Now that the moving skirmish line was only a thousand meters away, he could hit with a higher degree of accuracy. He ignored his feelings. The men out there would kill him if they could. It was kill or be killed. His first round was a head shot and took out a platoon or squad leader giving orders.

Riley fired the rest of the magazine quickly, shifting from target to target. In twenty-five seconds all ten rounds had been fired and all had hit. After Riley's first shot, Chong had joined in and the red tracers from the SAW had weaved their destructive path along the advancing line. Heavy machine guns from the trucks, still in their support position, and medium machine guns from the dismounted unit roared a reply. Lacking night-vision equipment, the Chinese gunners could fire only in the general vicinity of the muzzle flashes and the point of origin of the red tracers. 

Mitchell could see the firing off to their left rear. Apparently some Chinese troops had moved forward. Mitchell could only hope that the line in front of him was thin enough to pass through. Only another hundred meters to where the picket line had originally been. Still no sign of anyone ahead. Mitchell tugged on the stretcher and they moved forward cautiously.

Tugur read the latest report with a bit of puzzlement. A machine gun joining in the rifle fire? So there were at least two people up there. Maybe this wasn't a diversion. Maybe the terrorists had seen that they were trapped and preferred to die fighting rather than be hunted down.

Colonel Tugur ordered the first pair of Haitun Z-9 helicopters into the air. There wasn't much the helicopters could do in the dark, but Tugur wanted them up there, just in case. He would rotate his six gunships, keeping two in the air for the rest of the night if need be.

1:30 a.m. Local

The nearest troops were only five hundred meters away. Time to be moving on, Riley thought. He crawled over to Chong. "How you doing?"

Chong looked like an alien with the bulky goggles on. "Not bad, Top. I've fired only two magazines, so I've got four left. Those heavy machine guns are getting the range on us, though. Had a couple of rounds hit damn close last time."

Riley agreed, the Chinese were getting the range. Riley briefly considered not firing again, but he decided they had to. He couldn't be sure that the other men on Team 3 had made it through yet. They had to play the game until the end. "I'll fire five rounds fast and you give them one long five-second burst. Then we're out of here."

Chong nodded in agreement. They set up their weapons side by side on the outcropping. Riley scanned the line and picked a target who seemed to be giving orders. "Ready?"

"Yep."

Riley fired his five rounds in less than three seconds, shifting rapidly from target to target even as the Chinese soldiers dove for cover. 

Chong fired one long burst. The two pulled in their weapons and slid down the loose rock, putting the outcropping between them and the enemy. It was just in time—the return fire was extremely accurate, and incoming rounds cracked by overhead.

"Let's go!" Riley led the way as they scrambled to the north, keeping the outcropping between them and the Chinese for as long as they could. After a hundred meters they had to climb up and were exposed to the enemy. If the Chinese had had any night-vision gear, Riley and Chong would have been spotted immediately as they clambered up the inclined rock wall. As it was, they were invisible in the dark, even as the skirmish line moved forward and swept over the position they had occupied.

Mitchell heard the brief burst of fire from Riley and Chong's position as he approached the area where he estimated the Chinese picket line had been. The shortness of the burst of fire told Mitchell that those were probably the last rounds Riley and Chong would fire in the diversion. The two were probably running by now. Still, they had held their position for almost an hour—far longer than expected. The Chinese response had been slow and uncoordinated.

The remaining members of Team 3 stepped forward slowly and cautiously, moving through the trees lining the riverbank. Mitchell was sweeping from left to right and back with the night-vision goggles. Off to his left he could barely discern a truck about seventy meters to the north. Between the truck and the stream he could see nothing else. They passed the remains of one of the picket-line fires.

They shuffled along slowly, the lead three struggling with the stretcher, C.J. following with his one good hand holding onto the back of Comsky's vest and Olinski's shotgun slung over his back. Mitchell was beginning to feel optimistic about their chances of making it through, when a voice close to his left front called out in Chinese.

"Invincibility depends on one's self;

the enemy's vulnerability on him."

Sun Tzu: The Art of War

Changbai Mountains, China Saturday, 10 June, 1730 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 1:30 a.m. Local

Mitchell froze at the sound of the Chinese soldier's voice. He looked to his left front and through his goggles could clearly see a soldier step out of the dark shadows of the trees. Mitchell wasn't sure how well the soldier could see them. With a type 56 automatic rifle the man gestured for them to stop, then called out. Mitchell debated whether to drop the stretcher and fire his MP5 as the soldier came closer. He decided against it. He didn't think he could fire faster than the Chinese soldier. Mitchell hoped C.J. didn't use the shotgun or else they'd have the whole world down on them in a few seconds.

Mitchell could tell that the soldier was confused, but he could also see that the man had his finger on the trigger. The Chinese soldier came up next to Mitchell and peered at him strangely. Mitchell knew that with his goggles on he was an unusual sight. Mitchell waited. The second the soldier turned his attention elsewhere, he would fire. He figured he had a fifty-fifty chance of killing the man before he got off a shot.

Mitchell was thinking through this plan when the sound of three quick puffs startled him. The Chinese soldier collapsed. Mitchell turned to see Olinski propped up on one elbow on the stretcher, holding his silenced High Standard .22.

The team leader quickly broke out of his frozen stance. "Comsky and Dan. Let's put down the stretcher and throw the body in those bushes."

When they were done, Mitchell quickly gestured for the rest of the team to follow, and they moved out. He led them another three hundred meters past the skirmish line and then halted the small party. They crouched down in the dark. Mitchell knelt next to Olinski and whispered, "Good shooting."

"Thanks, sir."

Mitchell wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. That had been close. Too close. If it weren't for all the confusion and thinning of lines caused by the diversion, they'd never have gotten away with it. He wondered how long they would have before the body was discovered.

He allowed Hoffman and Comsky five minutes of rest, then they moved out again. Another twelve hundred meters and they should be at the pickup zone.

AWACS Surveillance Plane, Sea of Japan Saturday, 10 June, 1732 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 2:32 a.m. Local

Colonel Pete Ehrlich was the commander of the airborne warning and control system (AWACS) plane that General Parker had ordered into the air. As the modified Boeing 707-320B leveled off at thirty-five thousand feet, Ehrlich ordered the thirty-foot dome radar dish, riding on top of the fuselage, to be activated. The advantage the AWACS had over ground-based radars was its ability to look down. The radar signals emitted at altitude were not blocked by the terrain or curvature of the earth. Ehrlich and his crew had an accurate radar picture almost two hundred miles in diameter as the rotodome completed a revolution every ten seconds.

Quickly they began the process of identifying and coding out all known images. Civilian aircraft liners were blanked off the screen. Military training flights were also blanked out. In a short while they had a manageable screen. Only a few spots of activity were left—the four F-16s flying the intercept and search mission, a lot of helicopter activity just south of Yanji in China, and a lone blip inching toward the coast of North Korea, still over international waters.

The radar operator pointed. "That's our boy right there. It's not transmitting any identification transponder code, and it's flying right on top of the waves. Airspeed's right for a Blackhawk."

Ehrlich picked up the headset to call General Parker.

Changbai Mountains, China Saturday, 10 June, 1735 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 1:35 a.m. Local

Riley and Chong continued to climb. Another kilometer north, and three hundred feet in altitude, would get them over the northern side of the draw. Then they'd see if the picket line was intact to the east. If it wasn't, they'd turn that way and head for the border. If it was, they would have to turn west and head farther up into the mountains.

Behind them they could hear the Chinese overrunning the position they had occupied. A sharp crack resounded through the night air, followed by sudden firing. Riley smiled grimly to himself. The grenade he had left behind, attached to a trip wire, had been triggered. The Chinese were responding by shooting wildly into the dark. With a little luck they might shoot each other. At the very least it would slow them down a little.

Riley looked to the east and could see the glow of the moon starting to rise over the horizon. In another fifteen minutes, visibility would improve. That would reduce the large advantage the night-vision goggles gave him and Chong. They would have to start using the terrain for concealment, not just the darkness of the night. Riley also knew that more troops were going to be pouring into the area. He and Chong had to get as far as they could while night lasted. Even as they picked up the pace, they heard the sound of helicopter blades beating the air to the south and getting closer.

Riley took a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the bright searchlights of two helicopters probing the darkness near the site he and Chong had occupied only twenty minutes ago. Whoever was in charge of the search apparently felt that it was worthwhile to fly the helicopters at night and expose them to possible small-arms fire in the attempt to find them. On the ground Riley could also see the headlights of numerous trucks, bringing in more soldiers.

Colonel Tugur listened to the confused reports coming in from the regimental commander in charge at the shooting site. The position the firers had occupied had been overrun, and no trace of the shooters, other than expended cartridges and a booby trap, had been found. Tugur ordered the two Z-9s to move in with their searchlights to aid in the hunt.

Tugur was angry with the regimental commander. The man had ruptured the cordon they had so carefully designed to capture the terrorists. In his haste to attack, the man had opened up gaps. Tugur didn't think that whoever had been shooting could have outflanked the attacking force and escaped. They had to be moving farther into the mountains. Still, there was the slight possibility they might escape. He ordered even more reinforcements into the area.

He instructed the other four gunship helicopters to start up. He also ordered four S-70 helicopters to fly reinforcements above and to the west of the terrorists' likely location. Each aircraft could carry ten men. Tugur planned to emplace a number of squads higher up in the mountains and have them work down, catching the terrorists between them and the picket line.

Eighth Army Headquarters, Yongsan, Seoul, Korea Saturday, 10 June, 1740 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 2:40 a.m. Local

General Parker had listened as calmly as he could to Hossey's story. The fact that the Special Forces colonel couldn't explain the reasons behind the mission, nor could he shed any light on why this Colonel Moore at US-SOCOM was now saying the mission should not have gone, made the whole thing more ludicrous than it already was. The story of a Chinese computer scientist at Fort Meade instigating all this was the icing on the fruitcake.

The ring of the STU III phone cut through Parker's thinking. He indicated that Major Thomas should answer. "Put it on the speaker."

Parker waited as Thomas turned on the voice box. "Parker here."

"This is Jim Gunston."

"What have you got, Jim?"

"The AWACS has picked up an aircraft making its way toward the North Korean coast. It's moving at about a hundred and thirty knots and down in the waves. We're pretty sure that it's the Blackhawk. Also we're picking up a lot of Chinese helicopter activity in the Changbai Mountains, south of Yanji. That's really unusual, because the Chinese very rarely fly their helicopters at night."

"Can you intercept the Blackhawk?"

There were a few seconds of silence on the other end. "No. The F-16s can't intercept in time. Also, there's another problem. That helicopter is flying just outside the twelve-mile limit from the coast in international airspace. It's way down in the wave tops and hasn't been picked up on radar yet. If we send some F-16s in there after it, we're definitely going to alert the Soviet and North Korean radar."

Parker considered this. "What about Wildcard? Can it make it in time?"

There was another pause. "It definitely wouldn't make it in time to stop them. The bird is only about ten minutes out from crossing the coast and only about fifty minutes out from where all this Chinese helicopter activity is. We've got to figure that's where the bird is heading. It would take Wildcard more than an hour to make it there. Plus, it would take us at least ten minutes to get it airborne."

Parker thought about the implications. "Launch Wildcard. I want it to be very clear that Wildcard is not to violate Soviet or Korean airspace. But I want it to get as close as it can to the Blackhawk. We need to keep our options open."

Again, a pause on the other end. Then Gunston's troubled voice came over the line. "Wildcard is only over here for classified test flights. It's not meant to be operational yet."

"I know that, Stu. I've seen the test results. It's already done more in practice than we're asking it to do now. I don't want it to violate sovereign airspace. Just hang off the coast until we figure out what's going on."

"All right. No harm in that. I'll alert them and get them airborne."

Changbai Mountains, China Saturday, 10 June, 1745 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 1:45 a.m. Local

After fifteen minutes of creeping in the dark, wary of another encounter with Chinese soldiers, Mitchell finally arrived at the intersection of the unimproved dirt road and river, which was the guide point for the pickup zone. He shot a 320-degree azimuth and led the rest of Team 3 off through the woods. The pickup zone was about four hundred meters away. The moon had risen and even those without goggles could see relatively well. Mitchell would have preferred no moonlight.

They could all hear the sound of vehicles moving in the dark. Even as they left the dirt road behind, they could see the glow of headlights on it as reinforcements poured into the area.

Sea of Japan

Saturday, 10 June, 1745 Zulu

Sunday, 11 June, 2:45 a.m. Local

While Lassiter flew, Jean Long did some final navigational calculations. They were headed on the right azimuth for landfall just south of Najin and should reach the shoreline in another five minutes. Then it would be twenty to thirty minutes to the pickup zone.

Already one of the internal tanks was dry and they were well into the second one. They would be working on the third when they landed at the pickup zone. That ought to leave enough room to get the survivors on board and also make the helicopter light enough to lift off with the additional weight.

During the hours of low-level flight above the wave tops, Jean had tried not to think about what they might find when they got to the PZ. Colonel Hossey had told her that the message said one man was dead and three wounded. Worrying about her husband would drain energy she needed to fly and navigate, so she had resolutely refused to allow her thoughts to dwell on the possibility that Mitch might be one of the casualties.

Jean scanned the instrument panel, then keyed her intercom to talk to Lassiter. "How do you arm these Stingers?"

Her copilot gave the answer she expected. "I don't know. I've never flown with them before. I imagine that switch down there on the lower right arms them. I know this button here on the cyclic fires them."

Jean had never flown with Stingers either. She hoped Lassiter's guess was right. With a little luck they wouldn't need the missiles.

Changbai Mountains, China Saturday, 10 June, 1750 Zulu Sunday, 11 June, 1:50 a.m. Local

Mitchell scanned the small open field with the night-vision goggles. Aided by the light of the moon, the field appeared as it would in daytime. Its size was adequate for landing a helicopter. Several small trees would have to be cut down, however.

He turned to the other members of Team 3 who were crouched in the tree line on the southeastern corner of the field. "Hoffman and Comsky will help me take down those trees. C.J., you stay here with Olinski. Ski, turn on the FM and start monitoring it."

The three men moved out into the field. Using their survival knives, they began hacking down the small trees that would have impeded the landing of the helicopter they all hoped was on the way. C.J. watched as the men worked. He could hear the rumble of vehicles going by only four hundred meters to the east on the unimproved road. It was obvious that the Chinese were bringing more units into the area. He could also hear and see the two helicopters off to the northwest searching the ridgeline.

Riley and Chong had made it over the crest of the northern ridgeline. They paused briefly to rest while Riley checked the terrain to the east. As far as he could see were the headlights of numerous vehicles moving to the north and south. Making it to the coast was out. He turned and looked up the ridgeline to the peaks of the Changbai Mountain Range. This was not the direction he wanted to head, but it seemed to be their only choice.

He gestured to Chong, and the two resumed their scramble up the ridgeline. The two Z-9s were still flying only a kilometer to their south, quartering the ground in a grid pattern. They would be overhead in less than fifteen minutes. Riley wasn't afraid of being seen by the helicopters as long as it was dark. Avoiding the searchlight would not be difficult. Tomorrow morning would be a different story. Riley was not optimistic about their chances of seeing another sunset.

Their chances further diminished as two new S-70 helicopters, with searchlights on, flew by to the south, higher into the mountains. The two aircraft carefully set down about two kilometers to the west. They landed about eight hundred meters apart, then took off, heading back toward the coast. Riley had little doubt about what was happening. Someone in the Chinese headquarters was getting smarter. Their last option was being taken from them. They had nowhere to go.