Dragon Sim-13

16

Colonel Hossey cracked an eye as the pounding on his BOQ door intruded on his sleep. "Who's there?"

"It's me, sir — Chief Trapp."

Hossey threw on a bathrobe and opened the door. The blood in his head was pounding against his skull. He'd stayed much too long at the club last night with the remaining members of Team 3, drowning his sorrows.

"You're a little early, Chief."

Trapp slumped into an armchair as he waited for Hossey to get dressed. "We're going to have a hell of a time getting through traffic, sir. I thought we'd leave a little earlier than planned."

Hossey threw on his fatigue shirt. "You going to drive?"

Trapp shook his head. "The sergeant major is. He dropped me off here and went to the compound to check on something. He should be back in a few minutes."

Hossey quickly buzzed his face with an electric razor, then grabbed his beret. "All right, let's go."

Hossey could think of a lot of things he'd rather be doing today than going to Camp Page to tell Jean Long her husband was dead. Even the timing of the notification of death was governed by the oplan, Hossey mused bitterly. He had wanted to tell her last night, but the cover story required that they wait until this morning, when the air force and navy would call off the search for the missing helicopter and declare the helicopter officially lost.

Carrying their overnight bags, the two men clattered down the stairs and went out front. In less than a minute they spotted Sergeant Major Hooker's old battered Mustang pulling up in front of the BOQ. The two men hopped in, Hossey in the back, Trapp up front with Hooker. The sergeant major pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward south post.

Trapp was confused. "Where you going?"

Hooker glanced over at Trapp and shook his head. "I don't know what the fuck is going on, Jim. I did what you asked me to do and had one of the commo dinks up all night monitoring that frequency you gave me. I just went and checked on that idiot."

He threw a piece of paper into the shocked warrant officer's lap. "Maybe you or the colonel can break that out." Trapp picked it up and looked at it.

"I don't believe it! When did you get this?"

"The commo man picked it up just before I checked in on him. In fact, he was on the phone trying to call me when I walked in. He said it was sent four times manual. About midway through the fourth time it disappeared. The kid also said it sounded like somebody who wasn't a commo man was sending, because it was real slow — about seven words a minute."

Trapp handed the sheet of paper to the colonel. Hossey's hand was shaking as he took it. He looked at Trapp. "So somebody's alive."

"How the hell did they transmit without a radio?" Hooker asked.

Trapp shrugged. "Obviously they got a radio somehow. We're talking about some pretty smart fellows. You got the Bible, sir?"

Hossey dug into his overnight bag and pulled out the tattered New Testament. Turning to the agreed-upon page, he started transcribing the message.

Hooker glanced at the backseat. "You didn't tell me you had worked out a backup commo system with the team, sir."

"Riley thought it up," Hossey mumbled as he concentrated on the letters. "You must have been out when we talked about it."

Hossey worked slowly through the groups, using the Bible and his trigraph. "It's a Flight report. Damn. Jim, you got a message format book?"

"Sir, I've been doing this stuff for twenty years. I've got that Flight report memorized. You just break it out and I'll tell you what it all means."

When Hossey was done he handed the decoded message to Trapp. He hadn't even tried to read the six-letter groups. He was afraid of what they would say. Trapp took the sheet and studied it.

"All right, sir. We got a Flight, which is an exfiltration pickup zone report. AAA is location. PAPA LIMA 168253—that's the grid. BBB is time of pickup. Says 10 June, 0100 local until 0500. CCC is heading of exfiltration aircraft. There's nothing there, so they mustn't have had one.

"DDD is markings on the pickup zone — infrared strobe," he continued. "EEE is radio frequency and call signs. We got sixty-two hundred on FM for frequency and to use team code names for authentication. FFF is the enemy situation. Says crash site was found. Expect more enemy activity tomorrow. I guess that means today."

"GGG is remarks. Shit. It says one dead and three wounded. It ends with 'Must get out tomorrow night.' Damn, that means tonight, if we go by the 10 June pickup date." Trapp slumped back in the passenger seat and stared at the message. One dead.

Hooker turned into the DET-K compound. "That's why I'm bringing you here. We need to see what we can figure out." Hooker pulled the car up in front of the headquarters building.

They hurried into the Quonset hut that housed the operations offices for the unit. Hooker beckoned them into an empty office, closing the door tightly behind him. "What now, sir? According to the message, we've got to get them out tonight."

Hossey considered their options out loud. "I don't have the assets to run the exfiltration. I can't exactly go to the commander of the Eighth Army here in Korea and ask him to run it. I'd get laughed out of the office. By the time we get through to US-SOCOM and get them to authorize the mission, it will probably be too late. We don't have the time to mess around. That bird has got to lift this evening." He turned to Hooker. "What about the Blackhawk from 1st Group that made it out on the first exfil?"

Hooker shook his head. "It's already back down in Okinawa."

Hossey made his decision. "I'm going to get ahold of US-SOCOM and see what they can do. Hell, they started this damn thing, they can finish it. Maybe they can get that bird sent back up or task Eighth Army to shit us one."

The survivors watched the ball of fire rise slowly out of the east. Cold didn't accurately describe how they felt. Neither did frozen, but it was closer. Riley knew that they had to get moving in order to warm everyone up. Since the transmitter had burned up at one in the morning, they had spent a long, restless night, shivering, looking at the hands on the watch, willing them to go by faster so dawn would come.

Most of the men were already awake. Comsky nudged the captain, who was huddled at his side. "Hey, sir. Was it as good for you as it was for me?"

Mitchell smiled. "I've had better, but, considering the circumstances, you'll do. Just don't tell my wife when we get back, OK? I'm not sure she'd understand."

Comsky chuckled as he left to check Olinski and C.J. He then reported back to Riley and the captain. "They're both getting worse. We'll start seeing some infection in the pilot's arm today. Without my medical kit, I've got only what I carry on my vest, and that isn't enough to deal with all this. Olinski's insisting he wants to try to walk. He wants me to make him a crutch. He's been feeling bad about us having to carry him. I told him if he got up I'd break his other leg. I think that worked."

Mitchell walked over to Olinski and knelt beside him. "Hey, wild man." Olinski looked over at the captain. "You and I both know you aren't walking anywhere. Right?"

Olinski looked away. "I know that, sir. But I feel like I'm dragging the team down. You guys would be twice as far if you hadn't been carrying me. I feel so useless."

"I know that. I feel useless, too, with my side the way it is. I can't help the others carry you. But suppose somebody else was hurt. You'd be the first person in line to carry them. We're a team, remember? We're going to finish this as a team. We're in no big rush anyway. The pickup zone is only about ten klicks away and we've got all day to make it. OK?"

Olinski nodded.

Mitchell went over to the pilot. "How you doing?"

"Sir, did you go to West Point?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I thought so. They must teach people to ask dumb questions there. How the hell do you think I'm doing? My arm hurts like a son of a bitch. I'm freezing my butt off. I'm hungry. I didn't sleep more than five minutes last night. I'm in the middle of China. My helicopter crashed yesterday and I lost my copilot. Anything I forgot?"

Mitchell smiled. "Yeah. I think Comsky needs to check your bandages again. Hey, Comsky!"

C.J. held up his good hand. "I was only joking. Things are going great. Never felt better. Just can't wait for us to get moving. No need for Comsky to waste his time."

Mitchell nodded. "Much better. See how different things can appear, depending on your perspective? You're part of Team 3 now. That's quite an honor to have bestowed on you."

C.J. gestured at his traveling companions. "Does every prospective member have to go through this same initiation?"

"No, only the ones we really like."

Now that it was light enough to see the way, Riley got them moving. They moved slowly, like old men. Riley directed the team's course along the northern edge of a draw heading east. The vegetation was thick enough now to hide them from the helicopter overflights that Riley expected to start proliferating today. What worried him more was ground troops. Carrying Olinski, they wouldn't be able to outrun anybody.

As they moved along, Riley felt his stiff muscles loosening up and his limbs grow warm. He hadn't heard anyone complain yet. They had to make the pickup zone tonight, by midnight at the latest. Everyone was moving slower than yesterday, but they should still make it to the site in time.

If they weren't picked up by dawn tomorrow, they had only one choice. Keep moving, get across the border somehow, then make it to the coast. Once they got there, they'd do whatever they had to. Steal a radio. Find a boat and kill the crew. Whatever was necessary to get home.

When Colonel Tugur arrived, he took the 46th Army Headquarters by storm. He ranted and raved and screamed. The normally quiet headquarters reeled under the impact of his anger.

The senior commanders and staff of the 46th Army weathered this storm for fifteen minutes in the headquarters conference room. Technically, the army commander outranked Tugur. Realistically, as General Yang's aide, Tugur held the power in the room. Finally the Mongol officer stopped yelling and faced the cowering officers. "Enough. You all have managed to bungle this terribly so far. We must change that now. Listen closely and follow the orders I relay from General Yang. If any of you fail again, it will be your last failure in the army."

Tugur turned to the map. "You found the wreckage here." He tapped the location. "I have just sent your assistant army commander up there, with the pilot of the helicopter who found the wreckage. Until they report back, we must assume there are survivors.

"Since the terrorist act was committed here, along the Sungari River, and the terrorists were fleeing to the east, as we can tell from the wreckage, we must assume they will continue to the east toward the border. I want this entire army to be moving in one hour. We are going to stretch a net for the criminals from here at Yanji down to Mount Paektu on the border." Tugur swept his arm across the map. "Once the net is in place, we will move it to the west and catch our fish.

"You all have a copy of your orders. Subunit areas are assigned in them. Are there any questions?" As expected, there were none. "One hour, gentlemen."

Tugur left the conference room and went to an adjoining office, where he dialed Yang's personal number in Shenyang.

Yang wasted no time in preamble once Tugur identified himself. "Were there any questions?"

"No, General. They are too scared to think. But they will be moving out on time and be in place by 1200 today."

"Good. Anything else?"

"No, sir."

There was a click as the phone was hung up on the other end. Tugur looked at the dead phone in his hand. He'd been with General Yang a long time and knew him well. Tugur felt his superior was taking a foolish chance now. They'd reported the pipeline explosion to Beijing— it would have been impossible to hide that. But Yang was keeping quiet the news of the crash site, and possible foreign involvement. The general wanted all the potential glory of capturing the foreigners. But Tugur knew that that was a two-edged sword. Yang would also get all the blame if the foreigners escaped. And as Yang's fortunes went, so went Tugur's.

Hossey stared at the phone in disbelief. It had taken him more than an hour to get through the notoriously screwed-up Korean autovon military system to talk to the duty officer at US-SOCOM, and the man had just hung up on him. It was eight at night at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and the only person Hossey could talk to was the duty officer, a Major Mills, who had almost laughed at Hossey's assertion that he had men on the ground in China who needed exfil tonight. The major said he worked in the S-3 shop and would know if US-SOCOM was running a live operation.

Hossey had referred him to the SFOB they had been working with up at Fort Meade. Then the major did laugh. "You mean the exercise up there?" The major turned serious. "That's a classified exercise and we shouldn't be talking about it over an open line." There had been a second of silence. Then Major Mills swore. "You're with the exercise team, aren't you? You're trying to test our security." That was when he had hung up.

Hossey looked at the other two men in the room. "What the hell is going on?"

They'd been moving for two hours and had covered three kilometers. Already there had been two overflights by helicopters. The hunt was picking up pace. A Z-9 had flown by thirty minutes after first light and gone up the draw over the crest. An S-70 had flown by only ten minutes ago, heading in the same direction. Riley knew that the Chinese were serious about this operation if they were using their most advanced helicopters in the search.

All four healthy team members were now carrying the stretcher. It had gotten to be too much for just two of them. Mitchell was moving about twenty-five meters ahead of them, through the trees, to provide early warning. He carried his MP5 submachine gun in his left hand and would fire it one-handed if needed.

Riley was halting the team for rest every thirty minutes. After only two hours he could feel the strain of carrying Olinski.

Riley doubted very much that their message had been received. They'd angled Hoffman's wire antenna so that the message would go south toward Korea. But the more Riley thought about it, the more pessimistic he became. He started chiding himself again for burning all the equipment at the pickup zone. Team 3 had had a lot of bad luck on this mission, but that had been a poor decision, not bad luck.

Riley knew that Mitchell was also blaming himself. As the commander, he was technically responsible for everything the detachment did or failed to do. There's too much self-recrimination going on, Riley thought, and he was one of the worst. He vowed to put an end to it. Moping over mistakes of the past wasn't going to do anyone any good. It was draining energy that was needed to solve the problems of the present.

Riley halted the team for the next break. They slumped to the ground as Mitchell came back and rejoined them. Riley looked at the faces etched with fatigue. He got up on one knee and faced the discouraged men.

"Listen up. There's some of us walking around, and being carried around," he glanced at Olinski, "who are spending a lot of mental energy bitching at themselves for what's happened so far. I know that the captain and I both feel real bad about burning the rucks on exfiltration. If we had brought them along we'd be a lot better off right now."

Riley looked each person in the eye as he talked to them. "C.J., you're getting down on yourself for losing your aircraft and copilot. Olinski, you're feeling bad because we have to carry you. Comsky, you're probably feeling bad because you don't have the supplies to help the hurt people. Hoffman, you're down because we burned out the transmitter. Tom, I don't know if anything is bugging you or not," Riley said, looking at Chong.

"But this bullshit has got to stop. We've got to get our heads out of our butts and think about the here and now. We succeeded in blowing the target. We're alive when we should be dead. We're moving. We have the possibility of exfiltration tonight. Yeah, I'll be honest and admit it's not a sure thing, but it's something. If we don't get out tonight, we make it across the border and to the coast and steal a boat or whatever. This life is the only one you got. If you all want to roll over and play dead, then we might as well go stand in the middle of a field and give the finger to the next helicopter that flies by. But that's not the way I'm going. I'm going to the pickup zone. Every one of you has to decide right now whether you want to go on or stay here and roll over."

Riley got up and looked at the team. It was the longest speech he'd ever made in his life.

Slowly, one by one, the men got to their feet. Olinski looked up from his stretcher. "You guys might as well carry me along. Comsky wouldn't be happy if he didn't have enough injuries to play with."

Hossey was running into a stone wall. No one seemed to know anything about the mission they had just run. He had tried Fort Meade and been told by the post duty officer that US-SOCOM was not running an operational headquarters anywhere. The emergency phone number for the FOB was now listed as no longer in service. The duty officer had referred him to the National Security Agency, which also had pleaded ignorance.

Hossey was weaponless in his fight against the entrenched bureaucracy. He couldn't tell people exactly why he was calling because they weren't cleared to know, and since he couldn't tell them, they weren't very interested in his "very sensitive and urgent matter." Even when he tried being explicit about the reason for the urgency, he had been ignored — it was too preposterous. Hossey felt that eventually he would get through to someone who could take some action. But it could take the rest of the day. Time was running out. He had even tried 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, in Okinawa and encountered the same disbelief.

Trapp looked up from the maps he was poring over as Hossey slammed down the phone in disgust. "Listen, sir. Even if you got through to someone, you know they aren't going to be able to do a damn thing. Not by tonight at least. It's the middle of a Friday night over there." Trapp stabbed a finger at the maps. "Even if you did get someone to act, there isn't an aircraft handy that can do the mission. The range is too great. If anybody is going to do anything, it's got to be us."

Hooker had been watching Hossey's fruitless phone calls, and now he stood up. "Show me on the map where the pickup zone is."

Trapp pointed out the location. Hooker looked at it and then at the large-scale map on the wall that showed Korea, Japan, and southeastern China. He took out a scale ruler and started measuring distance, then shook his head.

'They're a hell of a long way away. I don't know. The 2d Infantry Division up at Camp Casey has Blackhawks, but I kind of doubt we can talk the division commander out of one to fly this mission. You've seen what kind of results we get when we call up someone." Hooker rubbed his face. "I don't suppose either of you are helicopter pilots. We could go steal one. Hell, even then, a Blackhawk can't make it from Korea to China and back out, even going to Japan. It's too far. It would have to refuel somewhere."

Something clicked in Trapp's mind. He stood up suddenly. "I know what we can do. I don't know if it will work, but it's a start in the right direction. At least it beats sitting around here wasting our time on the phone. Hook, we're going to need your help. We need you to get us some things first, then we're going to need you to drive."