Dragon Sim-13

8

The members of Team 3 completed loading their rucksacks onto the floor of the Talon and seated themselves along the right side of the plane on the cargo webbing seats. Wearing black rubber dry suits, with hoods and camouflage face paint, the men looked like seals out of water. The one-piece black dry suits, manufactured by the Viking Company of Norway, covered the entire body except hands and face. It was entered through a zipper in the back; latex seals around the wrists and neck kept out water. Theoretically the person inside would remain completely dry, although Riley had gotten soaked more than once inside a leaky suit. They had triple-checked these suits, and all seemed to be functioning properly. To keep their hands warm in the chilly water, each man wore diving gloves. A dive compass on one wrist would help in navigation once they were in the water. A dive knife was strapped to each soldier's right calf.

Riley had coordinated six checkpoints en route to the drop zone. The loadmaster in the back of the aircraft would relay the checkpoint number from the navigator to Mitchell as they crossed each checkpoint, keeping the team oriented as to where they were on the route. At checkpoint 1, where the aircraft dropped altitude and headed north, Riley would have the team start their inflight rig; at the last checkpoint, six minutes from the drop zone, Riley would start his jump commands.

Every team member felt a surge of adrenaline as the loud whine of the four powerful turboprop engines filled the air. It was a sound that any person who was ever on airborne status would never forget. It meant you were going: no weather delays, no broken airplane, no last-minute cancelation. You were taking off, and the only way you could land was with the parachute on your back.

Meng could sense a slight increase in tension in Tunnel 3. For the members of the SFOB, the simulation was about to start. For Meng, something much more vital was beginning. He had linked up the main console with his office terminal. The link with the FOB no longer existed here in Tunnel 3 because the computer simulation was taking over, but Meng's reprogramming the previous night had kept open the line from his personal program to the FOB. If the real FOB made a call to the SFOB, the message would be routed to Meng's office terminal and stored in a locked data file that only Meng could open. His plan was to monitor his office terminal and answer the FOB using a reverse of the simulation.

In other words, Meng had set up a double simulation. He was running the expected Dragon Sim-13 for members of the SFOB here in the Tunnel. That in itself should not be a major problem. The difficult part for Meng would be keeping up the pretense to the FOB in Korea. He felt that he had worked out most of the bugs the previous night. Both jobs consisted exclusively of monitoring and replying to message traffic.

Meng scanned his locked data file. No messages from the FOB since they had rogered receipt of the go authorization. Meng really didn't expect any traffic from the FOB until infiltration was accomplished.

He settled into his chair at the master console. It was going to be a long day.

Riley checked his watch. Right on time. The wheels of the MC-130 lifted off the tarmac and the plane roared into the night sky, exactly at 1237 Zulu. The plane, listed by Korean aviation authorities as a normal U.S. Air Force run to Misawa Air Force Base in Japan, powered its way up to five thousand feet.

Devito, the senior medic, started passing out motion-sickness pills to those who wanted them. All the men had experienced rides on Combat Talons before and knew that once the plane penetrated the shoreline, the terrain-following flight would cause extreme discomfort. Motion sickness was an integral part of any Talon flight.

Riley smiled as he glanced down the side of the plane. Comsky was already asleep with his head against the cargo netting and his mouth wide open. Riley couldn't hear the snoring over the roar of the engines, but he had no doubt that it was loud. Comsky could sleep through anything. The other members of the team tried to get as comfortable as their bulky equipment and dry suit would allow. For the next three and a half hours it was the air force's show.

Hossey had watched the Talon drill a hole into the eastern night sky until it was no longer visible. Then he had slowly driven back to the operations center. After writing a message to the SFOB detailing the successful departure of the aircraft, he settled in to wait. The next communication he should receive from the team — barring any last-minute problems en route — would be their ANGLER report after they were on the ground in China. Hossey could make contact with the Talon, but he would do so only in an emergency. Even though the odds of the aircraft's SATCOM being picked up were very low, it was still considered poor procedure to make any sort of broadcast. Besides, Hossey reflected, he had nothing to say to the team or the aircraft now. They were on their way. All he could do was sit here and wish them well.

The staff of the SFOB was tracking the simulated progress of the Talon on the electronic map. The aircraft was just about at checkpoint 1. Meng had computed in no problems with the infiltration simulation. The less fuss, the better, as far as he was concerned. He accessed his locked message file for the FOB. Still nothing. No news was good news, as the Americans were fond of saying.

Riley felt the aircraft bank and the air pressure change slightly as the plane rapidly descended. He unbuckled his seat belt and staggered down the center of the plane. Leaning over Mitchell, he signaled and then yelled in the officer's ear. "Time to rig."

Mitchell started rousing the team members. Riley and the loadmaster moved to the back of the plane and undid the cargo straps holding down the parachutes and rucksacks. They passed out the chutes, a main and reserve to each man.

Riley and Mitchell buddy-rigged each other. Riley went first, slipping the harness of the main chute over his shoulders and settling it on his back. Mitchell helped him fasten the leg straps and attach the reserve to the front of the rig. The SVD sniper rifle was cinched down over Riley's left shoulder using the rifle's sling and cord. The rucksack was added last, hooked on with quick release straps below the reserve in the front.

Finished, Mitchell tapped Riley on the rear and gave him a thumbs-up, signaling he was good to go. Riley then helped Mitchell rig and

"jumpmaster-inspected" his team leader. When he was done with Mitchell, Riley moved on to the other team members, making sure all were properly jumpmaster inspected.

All the team members' weapons had been waterproofed and tied off. Swim fins were stuck in the waistband of each parachute and attached to the jumper with cord. After thirty minutes of checking, Riley was satisfied. They were ready to jump.

In the front half of the cargo bay, Major Kent was watching his screens diligently. He was catching reflections of some shore-based radar up in Vladivostok, but he knew that the Talon was too low to be picked up by that. He ran through the various wave bands, searching for any invisible groping finger that might pinpoint them.

The loadmaster leaned over to Captain Mitchell. "The navigator wants to talk to you," he screamed above the plane's roar and passed his headset to the captain.

"Hey, Captain, we're picking up radar echoes along the flight route, up by Vladivostok. We think it might be a Soviet warship. We don't want to take any chances. We're switching on the spiderweb to another leg. The new route comes pretty close to going straight from checkpoint 2 to checkpoint 5. We'll pass almost right over the North Korean-Soviet border now. The EW officer isn't picking up too much radar activity there and he thinks it's safe. We'll be going over the shore in about fourteen minutes. We want to get lost in among the mountains there, so this ship won't pick us up. This is going to cut off some time. I figure on getting to the drop zone about ten minutes early, give or take a minute or two."

Mitchell acknowledged and turned to Riley to pass the word along. This often happened on a Talon flight. The crew planned not one route, but an entire spiderweb of routes. That gave them options, depending on the enemy threat. If Team 3 got to the drop zone a few minutes earlier, that was fine with Riley. The more minutes of darkness they had, the better.

Everyone was awake now and fidgeting. No matter how much they had trained, it couldn't prepare them for the fear and uncertainty of the real thing. They were only a few minutes from the shoreline. Once they hit that, the ride would get extremely bumpy as the pilots used their sophisticated electronics to keep the aircraft down in the radar cluster of the terrain. The tension in the aircraft was palpable.

Riley was sweating under his dry suit. He hated waiting, and he hated having his destiny in someone else's hands. He'd feel a lot better once they were on the ground.

Hossey was trying to work a crossword puzzle but couldn't help glancing at the clock every few minutes. The team was twenty minutes out. He knew what it must feel like in the back of that Talon. The team members would all be rigged, ready to go. At this point, Hossey knew, all they wanted to do was get out of the aircraft and start the operation.

He looked up at Sergeant Major Hooker, who was pacing nervously around the room. Hooker didn't like sitting on his butt in an FOB. The sergeant major was a person who'd rather be at the doing end.

Hooker stamped out his cigarette, then went over to the commo terminal and looked restlessly through the message logs. He frowned. "Didn't you get a roger on the departure message?"

The commo man shook his head. "Negative, Sergeant Major. I haven't heard anything from the SFOB in more than four hours."

Hooker knew that wasn't unusual — the FOB and SFOB really had nothing to say to each other at this point. Everything was in the team's hands right now. Still, though, there should have been an acknowledgment of their last message saying that the Talon had departed for infiltration.

"Send a message to the SFOB and ask them for acknowledgment of," Hooker looked through the out log, "message number forty-three."

"Yes, Sergeant Major."

Hooker lit another cigarette as he waited, then took another stroll around the room, ending back where he had started from. "Well?"

The communications man shook his head. "I'm not getting anything from the SFOB."

Hooker frowned. "Go to backup."

He waited while the man switched to the backup terminal and sent the message. "Nothing, Sergeant Major. It's like they're not even on the air. I'm getting good bounce-backs off the satellite, so I know it's not on this end."

"Colonel," Hooker called out. "You'd better be aware of this. We've got no commo with the SFOB."

Hossey got out of his chair and hurried over. "What about backup?"

"We've tried it. Nothing. It's not this end. Our stuff is working."

Hossey bit his lip. What the hell was going on? "When was the last time you heard from the SFOB?"

"There's been nothing for more than four hours." Hooker showed him the log. "They didn't acknowledge our message that the Talon had departed."

Hossey looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes out. His gut feeling told him something was wrong. "Go clear voice to the SFOB. Maybe their decrypter is down."

He waited impatiently as the comm man called the SFOB in the clear. Still no answer. He looked at Hooker. "What do you think?"

Hooker shook his head worriedly. "Something's wrong. If they didn't acknowledge that departure message, it means they might not even know the team is on the way."

"They would have gotten ahold of us by now if their SATCOM was down, don't you think?"

Hooker shrugged. "I don't know, sir. You know how difficult it is getting through from the States to here on the phone lines."

"Shit!" Hossey exclaimed. Loss of communications with the SFOB didn't mean they had to abort, but it made him suspicious. This whole mission was flaky. He didn't like the idea of his team going into China.

Hossey grabbed the phone. He'd try the emergency phone number they'd been given for the SFOB at Fort Meade.

Meng looked up as a warning light flashed on his console. Someone was trying to get through from the FOB on the phone line. His initial reaction was relief that he had programmed the comm system to switch all such calls over to his computer — then he began to worry. Why would someone from the FOB try calling on the emergency number when they could use the SATCOM? There hadn't been a message from the FOB over the SATCOM for more than four hours, according to Meng's restricted message file.

A possible reason occurred to Meng in a moment of sickening realization. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he checked. The answer popped onto his screen. Someone here had shut down his SATCOM link with the FOB. Meng's mind rewound. He remembered telling Wilson that he had switched over the program. He pictured Wilson leaving. Damn! Meng thought. Wilson had stopped by the comm desk prior to leaving. Meng had seen him do it. The idiot had probably told Tresome to cut the link.

Meng shut down the emergency phone line and went to work to reopen the SATCOM link to his terminal.

Riley held six fingers aloft. "Six minutes!" He extended both hands, palms out. "Get ready!" The team members unbuckled their safety straps.

With both arms Riley pointed at the men seated along the outside of the aircraft. He pointed up. "Outboard personnel stand up."

The members of Team 3 staggered to their feet in the wildly swaying aircraft, using the static line cable and the side of the aircraft for support.

Curling his index fingers over his head, representing hooks, Riley pumped his arms up and down. "Hook up!"

Riley watched as each man hooked into the static line cable. As jumpmaster, Riley was already hooked up and facing the team as he screamed the jumpmaster commands. The loadmaster was holding onto Riley's static line and trying to keep him from falling over as Riley used both hands to pantomime the jump commands.

"Check static lines!"

Each jumper checked his snap link hooking into the cable and traced the static line from the snap link 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.

"Check equipment!"

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

Riley cupped his hands over his ears. "Sound off for equipment check!"

Starting from Captain Mitchell, who slapped the man in front on the rear and yelled "OK," the yell and slap were passed from man to man until Comsky, who was to be the jumper behind Riley, yelled "All OK, Jumpmaster," giving the thumbs-up.

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

Hossey slammed down the phone in anger. "The operator says I was connected to the number but it went dead." He looked at the clock and made a decision. "Cancel it. Call them back. This whole situation is too uncertain. It's better if we do nothing than go when it looks like our SFOB has disappeared. I'll take responsibility. We can always go again tomorrow night. Get me the Talon on voice. We still have twelve minutes."

"Yes, sir." The communications man went to work on his equipment.

The loadmaster leaned over Riley's shoulder and stuck an index finger in his face. Riley 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 minimum safe drop altitude. The noise level increased abruptly as a crack appeared in the ramp, growing into a gaping mouth. As the ramp leveled off, Riley stared out into the night. It was hard for him to believe that he was actually over China.

Fighting the bulging rucksack hanging in front of his legs, Riley got to his knees. Grabbing the hydraulic arm on the right side of the ramp, he peered around the edge of the aircraft, looking forward and blinking in the fierce wind. It took a few seconds to get oriented, but there it was in the moonlight. Only about twenty seconds away loomed a lake. It had the right shape. He could see a river — it had to be the Sungari — to the left of the lake. Despite himself, Riley was impressed. More than two hours of low-level flying, an en route change, and they were right on target.

He stood up awkwardly and yelled over his shoulder as he shuffled out to within three feet of the edge of the ramp. "Stand by!"

Riley stared at the red light burning above the top of the ramp. As soon as the light turned green he'd go. He moved a few inches closer to the edge. Looking down he could see the leading shore of the lake below.

The green light flashed. Riley yelled "GO!" over his shoulder and was gone. Comsky followed. Then Chong.

As the sixth jumper approached, the light turned red. Olinski ignored the stop signal. If one went, all went. The rest of the team did the same. The loadmaster lunged forward from the side of the plane and tried to grab the last jumper as he went by. Captain Mitchell shrugged off with a surge of adrenaline and stepped off into the swirling air.

Hossey was livid. "What do you mean they're gone?"

Through the static of the scrambler, the pilot of the Talon patiently explained. "They jumped about a minute ago. We had to change course to avoid Soviet radar we picked up along the way. The new route was more direct and cut about ten minutes off the drop time. We got the message just after we turned on the green light. The first several jumpers were already gone. The loadmaster tried to stop the rest but couldn't." Hossey considered the situation. The plane was still over Chinese airspace and it wasn't a bright idea to keep them on the air too long anyway. "All right. Out here." Hossey put down the mike.

Hooker summed up the situation. "The bottom line is that the team

is on the ground now. In about five hours we should get their ANGLER report, giving us their status. Our first scheduled contact going to them is in eight hours. Do you want me to tell them to abort then?"

Hossey's mind raced. What a screwup. There was nothing he could do about it now. The team was in. He looked up as the SATCOM terminal came alive for the first time in several hours. Hossey snatched the message as soon as it cleared the printer.

"Bullshit," Hossey muttered to himself. "Get out of the way." The comm man moved while Hossey sat down and typed in his own message for reply.

Meng almost smiled as he saw the message from the FOB run across his screen. It had been a close call and a stupid mistake on his part. He tapped out his response.

Jumping at 500 feet left little time for anything other than landing. Riley was only 250 feet above the water of the lake when his main parachute finished deploying. He barely had time to check his canopy before he was in the water. The natural buoyancy of the air trapped under his dry suit popped him back to the surface after a brief dunking.

The parachute settled into the water away from him where the wind had blown it. As the pull of his two weight belts tried to draw him back under, Riley quickly pulled his fins out from under his waistband and put them on to tread water. He worked rapidly to get out of the parachute harness. Unhooking his leg straps, he then pulled the quick release on his waistband. He pulled out the parachute kit bag, which had been folded flat under those straps, and held onto it while he shrugged out of the shoulder straps.

With the harness off, Riley pulled in on the lines to his parachute. Holding one handle of the kit bag with his teeth, he used his hands to stuff large billows of wet parachute into the bag. After two minutes of struggling, Riley succeeded in getting the chute inside and the kit bag snapped shut. Riley took off the second weight belt he wore and, attaching it to the handles of the kit bag, let it go. The waterlogged chute and kit bag disappeared into the dark depths.

Allowing his rucksack to drag behind him on a five-foot line, Riley turned to swim in the direction he believed the aircraft had been heading. As he lay on his back and started finning, he checked his wrist compass to confirm the direction, straight along the azimuth the Talon had flown over the DZ. Soon he heard muffled splashing ahead, which verified that he was heading in the right direction.

This was the first time that most team members had ever conducted a water jump under these kinds of circumstances. In training, safety requirements, combined with the cost of parachutes, required one safety boat per jumper to assist in recovery of the jumper and parachute. There was no one to assist in recovery now. The lack of realistic training was showing itself in the noise and time it was taking the other team members to derig. For Paul Lalli, a disaster seemed in the making.

Lalli came down facing directly into the six-knot wind. When he popped to the surface after landing, he found his parachute descending on top of him. The two weight belts he wore gave him an almost neutral buoyancy and, without his fins on, he found it difficult to keep his head above water. When Lalli reached up to push away the nylon so he could breathe, the movement caused his head to slip underwater. In the dark, with the chute bearing down on him, Lalli became disoriented and panicky.

The first thing he needed to do was get his fins on. That's what Riley had emphasized during the jumpmaster briefing at Osan, but Lalli had forgotten this in his initial panic. Now he reached down, pulled out his fins, and tried putting them on. He got his right one on, but as he was maneuvering the left one, the suspension cord from the parachute got caught around his arm and leg. He was momentarily trapped two feet below the surface. In his panic, Lalli dropped the fin and it was swallowed by the cold water. Struggling even harder, he got himself more entangled. Using his right leg he stroked vigorously and broke surface underneath the canopy. Taking a gulp of air, Lalli sank back underwater, wrestling with his parachute.

Meng looked up as the words scrolled by on the message board.

The reaction in the Tunnel from the USSOCOM staff was one of relief. Meng watched as General Olson turned to his operations officer. "That's one hurdle crossed."

If only they knew, Meng thought.

Riley couldn't see the chem light the captain was supposed to hold up for the assembly point. He figured that Mitchell was still struggling with his parachute. Riley continued swimming until he came upon the next jumper in the water. It was Comsky, who had followed him off the ramp. He helped Comsky finish stuffing his parachute in the kit bag and sink it. They hooked together with a six-foot buddy line and, trailing their rucksacks behind, slowly finned on their backs along the compass heading.

Lalli was losing his battle. The parachute was becoming waterlogged and he knew it would stay afloat for only about ten minutes. He estimated he had been in the water more than five minutes now. Using his one free leg to struggle to the surface and grab quick breaths, he was tiring. The sodden nylon was suffocating him, pressing down like a cold, wet blanket.

Then Lalli remembered something that Riley had told them to do in such an emergency. He reached down his right leg to where his dive knife was strapped, pulled it out, and started hacking wildly at the suspension cord that entangled him. On his third slash he managed to drive the point of the dive knife into his left thigh almost an inch. Despite the pain, he yanked it out and continued his efforts. He was rewarded by his left leg finally coming free. Treading water, Lalli pushed out against the wet silk and took a few seconds to catch his breath. Then he used his knife to cut through the parachute to open air.

Slowly, Riley gathered in the members of the team as he swam. After meeting up with the third jumper he saw the blue chem light come on ahead. It was then that he came across Lalli treading water in the middle of a half-submerged parachute. With the other three team members, Riley pulled Lalli free of his chute and finished sinking it. As Lalli treaded water next to Riley, he told him of his self-inflicted wound and loss of a fin.

"Can you make it to shore?" Riley asked.

"It really doesn't hurt. I'm not sure how much it's bleeding or how bad it is. I can use the leg. The only problem right now is that my suit is filling with water and with only one fin I can't swim as fast as the rest of you."

"Drop your weight belt and use your ruck for buoyancy if you need to. Don't worry, we aren't gonna leave you. We got plenty of time." Riley hissed at Comsky to come over.

Riley told Comsky what had happened. "You stay with Lalli the whole way in. As soon as we get to the changing area, check him out."

"Right, Top." Comsky hooked himself to Lalli with his buddy line and peered at him in the dark.

"You hurt, Comsky fix," he grunted. Just the hulking presence of Comsky in the water next to him made Lalli feel better.

Riley picked up only two more jumpers; the rest of the team headed toward the captain on their own. When he arrived at Mitchell's position, he found the entire team accounted for. That in itself was a major hurdle crossed, Riley knew: infiltrated in the right place with all people accounted for.

With some difficulty, they organized themselves into their team formation for swimming. Lining up in pairs they started finning, Riley and Hoffman, the second-strongest swimmer after the team sergeant, in the lead. They finned slowly, on their backs, arms tight to their sides, not allowing the tips of their fins to break the surface. The weight belts kept their bodies submerged except for their camouflaged faces, which looked up into the night sky. Waterproof rucksacks bobbed in the water behind each swimmer. From the air the formation appeared to be a long, swimming centipede, edging its way toward shore.

After only five minutes of finning, they felt the lake bottom, quickly discovering that the shore was not solid but swampy. Unhooking their buddy lines and taking off their fins, Team 3 stood up and trudged through the swamp for two hundred meters until they hit a patch of firm ground. The buddy teams formed a circular perimeter, and as one man took off his dry suit, the other readied his weapon and provided security.

Each man's dry suit, weight belt, buddy and rucksack lines, dive knife and fins all came off and were stuffed into a sack. Captain Mitchell had decided that they would not cache this equipment, but carry it with them. The extra twenty pounds were a burden, but the captain didn't want to take the chance of a cache site being discovered. Also, the dry suits could become part of one of the variations of their escape and evasion plan if that became necessary.

Comsky peered at Lalli's leg in the dark. Using his fingers he probed the gash. Lalli's sharp intake of breath alerted him that he had found the edges. From his probing, Comsky thought it wasn't too bad. The biggest danger with the wound would be infection.

"Does it hurt?" Comsky solicited kindly, as he pressed the edges of the slash together.

"Yes."

"It ought to. It's going to hurt even more in about two seconds, as I take this armed suture and stick it here, and push it through to here."

Lalli gritted his teeth with the pain. Comsky could be downright nasty and ghoulish when he worked on a patient. Actually, his apparent lack of bedside manner was calculated; it served the purpose of getting the patient so mad at him that they tended to forget their own troubles for a little while — at least that was Comsky's theory.

Finished, Comsky reported to the captain and Riley. "Ape Man fix. No more bleed." Turning serious he added, "The wound itself isn't too bad. It'll start hurting him but he can walk on it if he ain't a wimp. The suture will pull out on the walk and he'll start bleeding again. I'll have to redo it at the base camp. I'm not going to give him any painkiller, considering the walk we have to make. Actually what worries me right now is that he's wet. As long as we keep moving he'll be all right, but if we stop too long he might start getting hypothermic."

Riley considered this. They hadn't brought any change of clothes with them. It wasn't that cold out. In the mid-fifties. But the combination of being wet and wounded could be dangerous. Riley consulted with Mitchell and they walked over to see Lalli.

Mitchell knelt down next to the wounded soldier. "Hey, wild man. How you doing?"

"All right, sir. Comsky did a good job. I think he enjoyed himself."

Riley and Mitchell smiled. Comsky and Devito divided the medical chores between them. Devito considered himself the internal medicine man because he preferred handing out pills to team members when they were sick. Comsky liked the more dramatic injuries. If a detachment member wasn't bleeding, he wasn't hurt, according to the Ape.

Mitchell decided to cut their rest halts down to only five minutes instead of the normal ten on the hour. That would give Lalli less of a chance to cool down. Carrying a ruck through the woods would keep all of them warm. The captain told Comsky to monitor the wounded man and inform him immediately if there were any problems.

With dry suits tied off on top of their rucks, weapons at the ready, and half the men wearing night-vision goggles, the team struck out on a 195-degree azimuth south-southwest. They had more than four kilometers to go before they reached the pipeline. Then they would cross under it, turn south, slide along the pipeline a few hundred meters, and move to their objective rally point.

As far as Meng could tell, everything was proceeding smoothly. There had been no more messages from the FOB, so apparently the commander there was mollified about the earlier communication problem. Meng allowed himself to relax slightly. The next time they should hear anything would be the FOB forwarding the team's ANGLER report.

In the last five minutes, Meng had reprogrammed the computer to alert him whenever a real message from the FOB went to his office terminal. It would sound a tone on the computer in his office when he was in there. For the master console here, all Meng had to do was type in a code word at the start of his shift and the message would be forwarded here; he would be alerted by a special code word appearing on the terminal screen, and he could then access the message. That would hopefully prevent him from being slow in answering any future messages. He didn't want to have any more trouble with the FOB over communications.

He glanced up as he heard General Olson talking to his operations officer about something that concerned Meng also. "Is the ship for the refuel moving?"

Colonel Moore nodded. "Yes, sir."

The general's next words demonstrated that he still wasn't getting into the play of the problem.

"I mean is it really moving? I know you deployed those Blackhawk helicopters up to Misawa, but are we really going to have the navy move one of their guided missile frigates just for this exercise?"

General Sanders fielded that question. "Yes, we are. This is a test of command and control. The Rathburne is not a unit that normally falls under USSOCOM authority. Actually getting the ship to move to the point where it would do the mission is a test of how well the tasking authority of this headquarters works. You have authorization from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to task any element of the armed services to support this operation. The problem is that you also have to keep this whole operation secure."

Colonel Moore nodded. "I had a hell of a time getting the navy to release the ship to conduct the mission. It's moving now, but there's probably going to be a stink about it. The navy is real big on chain of command, and this mission requires that we short-circuit that as much as possible. I have several recommendations I'll put in the afteraction report that would help improve the system for interservice taskings in the future."

Sanders nodded his approval. "That's part of the reason we run this. To learn before we do the real thing."

Meng was relieved. The SFOB staff was doing the majority of the work for him. All he had to do was push the units one step further to actually do the tasks they were assigned. In every case all that consisted of was using the authorization code words listed in the oplans.