Dragon Sim-13

9

Hossey was tired. It would be another two hours before the first scheduled broadcast from the team, their ANGLER report, should come in. Hossey was still angry over the SATCOM communications screwup by the SFOB, but he was smart enough to know there wasn't anything he could do about it. USSOCOM was on the other end at the SFOB, and they had more rank there than he cared to shake a stick at. Besides, Hossey reasoned, they had apologized.

What concerned him more was his own attempt to abort the mission based solely on the lack of communication with the SFOB. Upon reflection, Hossey realized he had acted presumptuously. No commo with the SFOB was not sufficient reason to have made that abort decision. He could account for his actions with only two possible explanations. The first was that he was tired and had reacted poorly under stress. The second, and more ominous, was his gut feeling that something was rotten about this whole mission. He wanted to start dissecting that feeling to see if he could come up with something tangible, but he was too tired to think that hard.

After leaving instructions with the commo man on duty to wake him when the ANGLER came in, Hossey went to the small office he had been using and threw himself onto the cot for a short nap.

Trudging through the swampy forest, the team found the going much harder than they had anticipated. The ground was spongy moss that sucked in the foot almost to the top of the boot. Each step was an effort. It took them an exhausting forty-five minutes to cover the first kilometer, even though the terrain was relatively flat. Mitchell halted the team for a five-minute break after the first hour and moved up next to Riley.

"If it stays like this, we could have a problem. We'll make it to the objective rally point in time, but it's going to be tight for Olinski and his guys to make it to the pickup zone before first light. When we get to the pipeline, I'm going to cut them loose there and have them go straight to the pickup zone instead of coming to the objective rally point. We can use the team linkup SOP if they need to come back to the objective rally point for any reason."

Riley considered this. "With Lalli being hurt we probably ought to keep him with the main body so the medics can look after him. How about switching him and O'Shaugnesy? That way we still have a communications man with each cell. They're carrying the same weapons, too, so Lalli can pull O'Shaugnesy's job at the target site."

Mitchell nodded in concurrence. In isolation they had considered the option of letting Olinski head off early, and agreed to use that plan if necessary. The second change with Lalli and O'Shaugnesy made sense.

Mitchell went to check on Lalli's condition and inform him of the change. When he returned, he gave Riley the night-vision goggles he'd been wearing. For the second hour, the buddy teams switched goggles. The team continued their march.

After three hours, Team 3 had covered an estimated three and a half kilometers, making better time as the men got used to walking in the muck. Riley figured another thirty minutes until they reached the pipeline. The lack of any sign of civilization was comforting, since they stood little chance of walking into anyone in the middle of this vast forest at night, but it was also unnerving to Americans unused to such vast uninhabited spaces.

At 1840Z they halted to allow O'Shaugnesy to send the initial entry message. While O'Shaugnesy set up the antenna dish and oriented it, Captain Mitchell pulled out his message format pad and started writing the ANGLER report.

Translated, using the message format, his report read:

Mitchell then placed the message into final form, eliminating any excess, and writing in segments. He hated this part: writing in six-letter blocks. It made for mistakes and was a pain to read. He double-checked his unencrypted message:

With this done, Mitchell used his onetime pad to encrypt the message. He first wrote the message letters on top of the six-block groups on the page of the onetime pad; then, using a trigraph, which linked all the letters in the alphabet in three-letter combinations, he matched the original message letter with the onetime pad letter to come up with a third letter. The final message he handed to Lalli was unintelligible:

Lalli sat down at the keyboard of his digital message data group device and typed in the coded message. The DMDG took the coded message and, transcribing it into Morse code, placed it on a spool of tape.

Lalli then hooked up the DMDG to the SATCOM radio with a cable. O'Shaugnesy had gotten a successful bounce-back from the satellite they were to use. He'd aimed the antenna at the proper angle and elevation and sent out a brief squelch. He'd received the same squelch bounced back to him from the satellite, which confirmed that the antenna was properly aligned. Now they waited.

When it was time to send the message, the tape would be run at many times normal speed, transmitting the message in a short burst. The purpose of the burst was to reduce transmit time, which correspondingly minimized the possibility of being intercepted and RDF'd. The base station would receive the burst and copy it on tape. The tape would be slowed down and run across the small screen of the FOB's DMDG. The message would then be broken out by reversing the process Mitchell had used. A duplicate of the onetime pad that Mitchell carried was in Colonel Hossey's hands. Even if someone else intercepted the message and slowed it down, there was no way it could be read without that matching onetime pad. Olinski carried the team's backup onetime pad and would use it to monitor the radio traffic from his position at the pickup zone.

At exactly 1900Z O'Shaugnesy pushed the send on the DMDG and the encoded message was burst-transmitted in less than one second. O'Shaugnesy then broke down the equipment and repacked it.

Acknowledgment of the message would come at the team's first scheduled receive in three hours. The whole communication setup between the team and the FOB was a series of scheduled receives and sends. There was no such thing as getting on the radio and carrying on a conversation, or bursting messages back and forth. The necessity to encode and burst made that impossible. This built-in delay in acknowledgment of information could cause problems. For those not used to the delays of Special Forces long-range communication, Mitchell knew that the process was frustrating.

Hossey quickly wrote out the letters as the encoded message worked its way across the display on the DMDG. When it got to the end, he

took out his onetime pad and copied the groups onto the first page. Using the trigraph, he broke the message out. He sighed with relief as he saw the legible words. Everything was good to go so far.

Hossey then transcribed the ANGLER into the terminal for transmission to the SFOB.

It was just an hour and a half prior to first light when Chong stepped out of the woods and saw the pipeline ten feet in front of him. The long silver pipe stretched as far as he could see in either direction. He halted the team and went back to consult with the captain and Riley.

The first glimpse of the pipeline was impressive. The team had studied pictures and knew the dimensions, but the shiny four-foot-diameter pipe, standing three feet above the ground, was much more striking when actually faced. This large pipe stretching for miles on end, from the oil fields in the north down to Beijing, indicated the price the Chinese placed on their black gold. Every thirty feet, the pipe was held up by two stanchions that had conductors on them to prevent the pipe from freezing in the harsh winter. The forest was cut back ten feet on either side of the pipe.

The team quickly crossed underneath the metal snake. Trapp, as last man across, checked to make sure they hadn't left a noticeable trail. As soon as the entire team was in the woods on the far side, Mitchell gave a last briefing to Olinski.

"Monitor all our broadcasts from the forward operating base so you know as much as we do. Every hour turn on your FM radio for any messages we might send. We'll be monitoring for any you might have. If you need to come back and link up with us at the objective rally point, we'll use our link-up SOP along the pipe here, to the south, on the west side. Any questions?"

Olinski didn't mind being reminded of things he already knew. It never hurt to be sure. "No, sir. Good luck."

"Good luck to you, Ski." Olinski, Reese, and O'Shaugnesy faded into the dark woods as they headed west.

Chong led the remaining members of the team on a course paralleling the pipeline forty meters in the forest. The absence of a service road on this side of the pipe told him that they had run into the pipe south of the point where the service road zigged off to the west, heading toward its bridge over the Sungari. Team 3 followed the pipe for four hundred meters, then turned farther west into the woods. They went less than half a kilometer into the dark forest and halted. Mitchell signaled for the men to drop their rucksacks. Team 3 had arrived at the objective rally point. This was to be their home for the next couple of days, until the actual target hit.

Mitchell, Riley, Chong, and Hoffman, after noting the location of the ORP, moved off to take a look at the target. Chong and Hoffman carried their rucksacks, since they would be staying at the target to do surveillance. The five members of the team remaining at the ORP broke out their bivy sacks, and, with two men providing security, the rest tried to get some sleep.

Chong led the three men cautiously along the tree line paralleling the pipe. The first indication that they were close to the target came from the glow of lights ahead. Riley remembered Hoffman briefing that the compound most likely had high-power lights on top of the pylon to enable the surveillance cameras to see at night. The tree line drew back and they had their first glimpse of the target.

Meng knew that Wilson would be here soon to take over. So far everything was going well on both sides of Meng's computer operation. The staff in the SFOB was caught up in the simulation they were playing; the ANGLER from the real FOB had told Meng that in the Far East the mission was proceeding without a hitch.

Meng shifted the FOB communications to his office and locked out the master console from his FOB program. He had just finished when Wilson strode up the center aisle of Tunnel 3.

"Everything going all right?"

Meng nodded. 'The team has infiltrated. The refuel ship is on course and on time. The exfil helicopters are ready."

Wilson took Meng's place. "Anything I need to know about?" Meng shook his head. "No. I'll be in my office resting if you need me.

Riley and Mitchell returned to the ORP, having left Chong and Hoffman at Dagger pulling surveillance. Their initial daylight look at the compound had confirmed everything the satellite imagery had told them: three cameras, an eight-foot fence topped with barbwire, and an inner T-field fence. It didn't appear to Riley that the compound was mined, but unless the surveillance could confirm that, they must assume that it was.

Chong and Hoffman would remain hidden near the target, switching on and off — one resting, the other pulling surveillance. Tomorrow morning, at 0600 local, Mitchell would send Smith and Riley up to confer with Hoffman to see if the plan had to be modified in any way, and to pick up the surveillance team's notes on security patrols and any other pertinent information.

Riley checked in with Lalli to see if he'd copied the transmission that should have been received an hour ago.

"Copied it five-by-five, Top. No problem. Here's the message, hot off the DMDG."

Riley took it over and handed it to Mitchell. While the captain decoded the message, Riley brewed up a cup of coffee for them, using his canteen cup and a heat tab.

Although they were only five hundred meters from the pipeline and six hundred meters from the service road, Riley felt they might as well have been miles from both. The vegetation was so thick they could hardly see twenty-five meters. The team's biggest concern was to prevent any loud noises. The odds were miniscule, in Riley's opinion, that someone would come wandering through the swamp and find the objective rally point. He had yet to see any sign of man, other than the pipe, in the immediate area.

The surveillance teams at the pipeline and pickup zone were in greater danger of being spotted. Both surveillance teams were emplaced well back in tree lines, and both had a small camouflage net they would string up and peer through to further conceal their positions.

Riley felt uneasy with his team broken into three segments, but that was an operational necessity. The day and a half of waiting would be nerve-racking. Hopefully they could catch up on their sleep. Smith also had to do final preparation of the charges. With communications working well, all they needed now was a little bit of luck and things should go fine.

It took Mitchell only five minutes to break the message out. "Nothing exciting here."

Riley took the decrypted message from the captain and read it:

The code word they had agreed on with Hossey was there — DRAFTS, which meant that the message was legitimate. Riley handed the message back to Mitchell, who burned it along with the page from his onetime pad.

When O'Shaugnesy handed him the encrypted copy, Olinski broke the message out and scanned it briefly. Nothing new. He burned the message and pad page, then looked over the pickup zone one more time. Mitchell and Riley would know that PZ Drable was adequate since he hadn't called on the FM radio and told them otherwise. At first glance, Olinski had thought the clearing wouldn't be big enough. The small opening was bordered by tall pine trees on all sides. In the field itself, several small trees struggled to grow. After stepping off the area to measure it, Olinski figured he could easily land one helicopter there, if they cleaned up some of the trees and brush. There was no way two could land at the same time — but one at a time would be sufficient. Just after dark tomorrow night, he, Reese, and O'Shaugnesy would clear away the small trees, and they'd be good to go.

Hoffman studied the compound for the hundredth time through his binoculars. Chong was quietly sleeping ten feet behind him, underneath the branches of a dead pine tree.

They had picked a spot to the northeast of the compound, in the wood line. The compound's access road came out of the tree line more than two hundred meters to the southwest. The northeast corner of the fence was about fifty meters away, directly in front of him. Sitting on his ruck, ten feet into the tree line, with the camouflage net in front of him, Hoffman knew that he was virtually invisible from the compound and service road. Also, he had seen something that made him feel less vulnerable. He noted what he called "Chinese mistake number one": The Scoot cameras were all inner directed. The cameras obviously were remotely controlled by someone at pump station 12. They scanned the compound randomly, but had never yet looked outside the fence. The two on the opposite fence corners looked along the fence and inside the compound. The one on the berm looked down the pipe, then turned back into the compound to surveil the pylon and the pipe as it crossed the river.

Another good sign, Chinese mistake number two, was that the compound didn't seem to be mined. Hoffman couldn't guarantee it, but he'd bet on it. The grass was too high inside. Mines would have to be checked and serviced at least every six months, and the grass couldn't have grown that high in that short a time period. Also, more convincingly, there were random vehicle tracks throughout the compound, probably left by maintenance vehicles.

Chong had pulled the first three hours of surveillance; now it was almost the end of Hoffman's three hours. He woke up Chong to replace him. Just as Hoffman lay down to catch some sleep, they both heard a sound they had hoped they wouldn't — the beat of rotor blades.

Hoffman rolled out of his bivy sack and joined Chong. They both spotted the helicopter coming out of the north. From their training they quickly recognized it as an old Russian MI-4 Hound model that the Chinese had redesignated the H-5. Memorized specifications flashed through both soldiers' minds. The Hound had a crew of two and could carry up to fourteen soldiers in its cargo bay. It was an unarmed helicopter used for transport or scouting.

The H-5 was flying about fifty meters above the pipe. As the helicopter drew up to the compound, it flared to a hover and slowly settled down to land inside the fence on the west side of the berm. A Chinese soldier jumped out the door on the left side of the cargo compartment and started walking the inside perimeter of the compound.

"Now we know it isn't mined," Hoffman whispered to Chong as the blades of the H-5 slowed and the noise level dropped. The soldier appeared to be calling to someone on a hand-held radio. He was tapping the strands of the T-sensor fence every ten meters or so, obviously checking its functioning. When the soldier got to the eastern side of the fence it became apparent that something was wrong. He hit the same location several times, each time talking into his radio and apparently getting a negative response. Finally he threw up his hands in disgust and continued on with his inspection.

"Now that's mighty interesting," Hoffman muttered. "Looks like their stuff breaks down as much as ours does. Chinese mistake number three."

When the soldier finished his inspection, he got back into the helicopter, which lifted and flew to the south compound across the river, where the same procedure was followed. Finally the H-5 lifted and headed south.

Riley was shaken awake from his sleep by Mitchell, who was pulling security. "Listen," Mitchell hissed.

They heard the helicopter and tracked it by sound. When they heard it die down to their southeast they knew that the aircraft had landed near the target site.

"There's no way they could have spotted those guys," whispered Riley as he and Mitchell exchanged questioning looks. "It's got to be a normal security flight."

After ten minutes, they heard the whine of the chopper pick up again for a minute, then die down. Ten minutes later they heard it pick up and fly off to the south.

"They must check each compound," Riley deduced. "I wonder what kind of helicopter that was. I hope it wasn't one of their attack helicopters."

"And I hope those guys don't fly at night," Mitchell said. "If there's a helicopter in the air when we do the exfiltration, that could cause some trouble."

They both knew that the big advantage American helicopter aviation held over the Chinese was superiority at night operations. American pilots had been flying for years with night-vision goggles, whereas the Chinese had only very recently introduced night flying and were still inexperienced. They also didn't have night-vision goggles.

Riley settled back in his bivy sack and tried to catch a couple more hours of sleep before it was his turn to pull security.

Chong was just starting his last hour of surveillance when he heard the rumble of a vehicle engine to his left. He peered along the tree line. A small BJ-212 four-by-four utility truck pulled out of the woods, following the service road, and drove up to the locked gate of the compound.

The sound of the engine died, and three men got out. Two, with slung Chinese Type 56 automatic rifles, started walking around the fence in a clockwise direction. The third stood by the jeep and waited.

Chong watched as the soldiers passed only fifty meters in front of him. He could see their faces and the bored expressions. Even the helicopter hadn't made it all seem as real as these Chinese soldiers walking only a short distance away. Somehow, up until now, the mission had still seemed like some sort of sophisticated training exercise. The armed Chinese soldiers brought home the truth of the situation.

Chong's heart stopped when one of the soldiers came to a halt almost directly across from him at the northeast corner of the compound and turned toward the wood line. The other kept going, turning the corner of the fence.

Chong swore that the man was looking straight at him. Every muscle in Chong's body was tensed. He fingered his SAW machine gun with

his right hand and his grip tightened. He figured he could take out the man in front of him and the other going around the compound. Then he and Hoffman would have to shoot the third guy at the jeep before he could call on the radio. Chong shifted his glance and saw the third soldier sitting on the hood of the truck.

The man directly in front of Chong reached down, opened his fly, and sighed as he began to urinate. When he was done he turned and caught up with his comrade on the far side. They continued their inspection. After completing the circumference of the compound, they returned to the jeep. All three climbed in and the jeep drove off.

Chong slowly relaxed. He pulled out his notebook to enter the incident in his surveillance notes. After two attempts he realized he couldn't write because his hands were shaking so hard.

The sun was low in the western sky. Riley lay next to his ruck on the edge of the seven-man encampment and peered out into the darkening forest. He'd already been on security for forty-five minutes. Before Mitchell turned in to get a few hours of needed sleep, he had given Riley the encoded message for the next send. He got up and took the message to Lalli.

The commo man was leaning back against his ruck, already hooking up his equipment.

"How's the leg?"

Lalli looked up at his team sergeant. "Pretty good, Top. Comsky had to resew it, because all the stitches pulled out on the walk here, but it's doing OK now. Devito gave me a whole bunch of antibiotics to swallow. I'm trying not to move it too much. I'll be all right."

"Think you'll have any trouble making it to the pickup zone?"

"No, shouldn't be a problem. What about at the target? You want me to take O'Shaugnesy's place, right?"

"Yep. Take it easy and get some rest after this send."

Riley left him and went over to the northwestern side of the camp, which was his security responsibility. Devito was awake ten meters away on the southeastern side. They were keeping up two men at a time for security, leaving Lalli out of the rotation so he could make all the radio contacts.

Riley started war-gaming again in his mind, trying to look ahead for possible problems. The exfil still worried him, but there wasn't a thing he could do about those logistics. There was an added problem with the exfil that had not come up during the briefback. Depending on how quickly the Chinese reacted after the pipe was blown, the airspace on the way out could become very dangerous. Additionally, they still had to go over either North Korean or Soviet terrain to make it to the ocean. If the Chinese called a military alert along the border after the attack, it could set off a corresponding alert with the Koreans or the Russians. Neither would look kindly upon a helicopter coming out of Chinese airspace and violating its borders.

That was one of the main reasons Riley had kept to a minimum the time between the actual attack and the pickup at the PZ. The less time between the two, the less time the enemy would have to react.

Hossey considered his situation. They'd received a "roger" from the team, reference the first message fifteen minutes ago. Everything seemed to be secure on that end. The only thing left for him to worry about was the exfiltration the next night. So far that was looking good, except for one potential problem.

The debriefing of the MC-130 crew after their return had brought out the information about the radar in the vicinity of Vladivostok— the radar that had caused them to switch on their spider leg and hit the drop zone ten minutes early. Hossey had relayed that information to the SFOB with an advisory that this same radar might affect the exfil helicopters. Following the debrief, the Talon crew was catching a few hours of sleep, then would fly back to the Philippines later in the day, with strict instructions not to discuss the mission they had just participated in.

Other than the intruding radar, Hossey was relatively satisfied. The message traffic from the SFOB was back up to normal and it was just a matter of waiting.

Meng pondered the issue of the radar mentioned in the FOB's message. He had no idea whether or not it would be able to pick up the inbound helicopters. He looked around Tunnel 3. The men who would have the answers were seated down below him. Meng was considering how he could ask them, when the answer suddenly came to him. His fingers flew over his keyboard and he pressed the enter key.

In the front of the room on the message board a new communication from the FOB appeared. The SFOB staff watched it carefully. Since the initial confirmation of the ANGLER report on the team's infiltration, things had slowed down.

Meng smiled to himself as Olson reacted to the message by ordering his air operations officer and intelligence officer to get on top of the situation and brief him in one hour. The air operations officer ordered imagery of the area while the intelligence officer started scouring his data, searching for Soviet ships that carried the Pot Drum-type radar along with information on the radar capabilities.

Meng settled back to wait. He'd let the SFOB do their job.

O'Shaugnesy had the radio set up and pointing at the designated satellite. At exactly 1200Z he heard the hiss of the burst through his headphones, and the DMDG indicated message successfully received. He turned off the PSC3 radio. O'Shaugnesy hand-copied the unintelligible letters flowing across the screen of the DMDG. He handed the encrypted message to Olinski, who was pulling security, and then crawled back into his bivy sack for a few hours of sleep before it was his turn at security and surveillance.

Olinski pulled his poncho liner over his head and, using a red-lens flashlight, copied the message onto his one-time pad. Below the letters on the pad, he slowly broke out the message.

Olinski hated reading messages in their six-digit blocks. This one told him nothing new. The forward operating base rogered the team's second send, and this was the second one the FOB had sent. No change in weather, and the FOB wanted a confirmation on the location of the pickup zone. The captain should confirm pickup zone Drable on his next send, since Olinski hadn't gotten back to him, either over the PRC68 FM radio, or in person, with a negative report. Mitchell was probably reading this message right now.

Turning off his light, Olinski put his SPAS 12 shotgun across his knees and leaned back against his ruck. He scanned the open area encompassing the pickup zone. Odds are that nothing will happen here, Olinski thought. But then he had heard a helicopter earlier in the day. Since this area had so few open fields, there was always the possibility that the Chinese might use this one for something — practice landings maybe. A slim possibility, but that's why they were here.

In the dark of the night Olinski watched the stars appear. This is beautiful country, he thought. Relatively uninhabited, at least in this area. Plenty of game, and miles of unspoiled wilderness. Too bad this is the only way you could come visit — with the United States Air Force travel service, he chuckled.

The satellite imagery had arrived and Meng listened with interest as General Olson was briefed by his staff. Colonel Moore, who seemed more and more to Meng to be the key man on the USSOCOM SFOB staff, was handling the talking.

"We've got pretty good imagery of the area the Talon said they were receiving the radar output from. The pictures show a Komar-class Soviet patrol boat moving roughly in a northeast direction along the coast. Plotting the ship's course out, if it keeps going at the same speed and in the same direction, it will be four hundred kilometers north of the point where the Blackhawks plan on crossing the coast."

Olson nodded. "What do you have on the ship?"

The SFOB S-2 handled that. "Our intelligence on that ship indicates it does have the Pot Drum early warning radar. That system is rated out to less than twenty kilometers and definitely has no over-the-horizon capability. They shouldn't be able to pick up the birds going in or out. Besides, the Soviet radar is so lousy, they could be only ten kilometers away and I don't think they'd pick out those birds coming in over the wave tops."

"What kind of armament on the ship?" asked Olson.

"It's pretty outdated. Two launchers for SS-N-2A, which are surface-to-surface missiles, and one twin 25mm cannon in the front. The cannon can be radar controlled against air targets by the Pot Drum, but it has to acquire first. The Komar-class boats are mainly used for close-in coastal patrolling or attacking surface targets. They're the oldest active patrol boats in the Soviet fleet."

Meng was relieved to learn that the potential problem could be discounted. The last thing he wanted was to lose one of those aircraft. They had to get the team out on the first try. If they didn't succeed on the first attempt they wouldn't have another chance, because the Chinese would be alerted after destruction of the pipeline.

Olson seemed relieved too. He ordered his staff to tell the FOB not to worry about the radar. He also commented that he was quite impressed with the simulation's realism — finding that Soviet ship and using it in the play of the problem.

At the end of his two-hour shift, Olinski woke up O'Shaugnesy and handed him the night-vision goggles. Olinski wearily crawled into his bivy sack and was asleep in minutes.

O'Shaugnesy was tired. He hung the goggles around his neck and lay his MP5 down at his side as he leaned back on his rucksack and looked out into the darkened pickup zone. Between pulling security and making contacts, O'Shaugnesy had had only two hours of sleep since leaving the FOB more than twenty-four hours ago. He slowly scanned the open area.

An hour had gone by and O'Shaugnesy felt himself nodding off. He jerked himself awake, then cocked his head to one side. He thought he'd heard something. There it was again. Something was moving behind him in the trees. O'Shaugnesy turned slowly and peered through the woods.

The meager light from the stars and moon didn't penetrate the foliage. O'Shaugnesy couldn't see anything, but he could hear it. Something big was moving out there and it was damn close. He reached down, picked up his MP5, and slipped the safety off, placing the weapon on semiautomatic.

He peered into the darkness. Whatever was out there was big, man-sized, and it was coming this way. One-handed, he reached down, grabbed the night-vision goggles where they rested on his chest, and slowly brought them up to his eyes. He turned them on. The darkness disappeared and the area in front of him suddenly became clear.

O'Shaugnesy swung up his MP5 and pulled the trigger. Whoever was standing there was only five feet away, on the other side of the sleeping bodies of Reese and Olinski. The gun made a soft chunk as the first round fired. There was a yell of pain and the figure leapt at O'Shaugnesy. He got off one more shot before he was overwhelmed.

Olinski awoke as he was knocked aside by the figure charging O'Shaugnesy. O'Shaugnesy screamed as Olinski swung up his shotgun. In the moonlight Olinski saw two figures, the smaller of whom had the outline of an MP5 in his outstretched arm.

Olinski hesitated briefly, then fired. The initial buckshot round separated

the two figures. Olinski fired the rest of his shotgun rounds into the larger figure as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Riley was shaken awake. Trapp put his head next to the team sergeant's and whispered in his ear, "I think I heard shots."

Riley's senses swung into full gear. "How long ago, how many, and what direction?" he asked.

"Just about a minute ago. I waited before waking you to see if there were any more, but there haven't been. I think I heard seven or eight. They were real faint. I'd say a couple of klicks. Off to the west maybe. I really can't be sure."

"Who's on security with you?"

"Comsky."

"Get him over here," Riley ordered. He pulled himself clear of his bivy sack and put on his shirt against the chill night air. He woke Mitchell.

West, Riley thought. That's the direction of the pickup zone. There's nothing else out there. Trapp had said a couple of kilometers away. That ruled out someone on the service road, which was only four hundred meters away.

Comsky made his way over to Riley in the dark.

"Did you hear anything, Comsky?" Riley asked. Mitchell sat up, trying to clear his head.

"Shots, I'd say eight or nine. Pretty far away. If it wasn't such a clear night I never would have heard them. They were real faint. I really couldn't tell what direction. Sounded to me like a shotgun. There was one, about a second pause, and then all the rest came real fast, like someone blasting away as fast as they could pull a trigger."

"OK, thanks. Get back to your post."

Riley turned to the captain. "Jim heard the same thing and woke me up. He thinks the shots came from the west. If you add it all up, it sounds like Olinski. He has the SPAS 12 and it's the right direction and distance. Hell, O'Shaugnesy could have fired a thousand rounds, too, and we'd never have heard it. I don't think anybody is going to be up in the middle of the night hunting here."

Mitchell looked at Trapp in the dark. "What do you think? Could it have been the pickup zone team?"

Trapp thought for a few seconds. "Sir, it's been a long time since I've heard firing in the distance like that. In Vietnam, I could have told you the azimuth, distance, and type of weapons involved with no problem. But it's been awhile.

"I think Comsky is right. It was a shotgun. Definitely wasn't an AK; I've heard enough of them fired at me to remember what they sound like. Wasn't a SAW, even fired on semiautomatic. Shotgun sounds right, and, as fast as those rounds were fired, it was either a semiautomatic or two guys firing pumps as fast as they could in succession. Most likely a semi. Which I very much doubt anyone in this area has."

Mitchell and Riley considered this. Riley stirred. "Damn! What the hell was he shooting at? You heard no return fire, yet it sounds like Olinski emptied the entire magazine. No explosions, no nothing. Maybe he pulled off a very effective ambush. But then why use the shotgun and not the MP5? Or maybe they used them both? But who the hell would they be ambushing in the middle of the night down there?"

Mitchell spoke slowly. "All right. This is what we'll do. Before we go blundering off in the dark, we'll see if they come up on the FM radio at," he looked at the glowing dials of his watch, "2400, in twenty-five minutes. Hell, turn the damn thing on now, in case they're trying to reach us. Even if they aren't, we'll come up and ask them if they're OK and what the hell happened. If we get no answer at 2400, we'll send some people over right away. I'll go with Comsky in case they might need a medic. Trapp too. We'll leave Smith here with the demo, Lalli to make commo, and Devito to take care of Lalli. What do you think, Dave? I need to leave you here 'cause one of us has to stay. I want to confirm the pickup zone anyway."

"All right, sir. Jim, you trade in your SVD for an MP5. That way you'll have two silenced subs if you do have to go."

"Fuck the red light. Take the lens off so I can see," Olinski hissed at Reese, who was holding the light. Olinski continued to work on

O'Shaugnesy. He knew that white light could be seen for a long way, in the unlikely event someone was in the area to see it, but if he didn't get O'Shaugnesy to stop bleeding soon they were going to have a corpse on their hands. A red light doesn't do much good when you're trying to find where all the blood is coming from.

Olinski had already bandaged some of the more obvious places. O'Shaugnesy is really screwed up, Olinski thought. He'd already given the wounded man a syringe of morphine, and he was still moaning in pain. Damn! We need a medic and we need him fast. He looked at his watch — another fifteen minutes until he could call the ORP.

"Hey, Ski," Reese whispered.

Not now, thought Olinski, as he probed a gash on O'Shaugnesy's stomach. "What?"

"Maybe they heard the shots at the base camp and are monitoring."

Why hadn't he thought of that? Olinski chided himself. In all the excitement it hadn't occurred to him that they might have heard the shots over at the ORR "Get the radio and see if they're monitoring," he told Reese.

"ORP, this is PZ. Over."

Mitchell grabbed the radio. "This is ORP. Over." "We need a medic over here ASAP. Denser is all screwed up. Over." "Roger, what happened and what's the extent of his injuries? Over," Mitchell replied calmly as he hand-signaled Riley to get Comsky and Devito.

"He got attacked by a bear. He's got lacerations all over; his stomach was torn open and Ski just finished strapping his guts in place. He's got bites on his arms and shoulders and face. It's real hard to tell. Ski's been bandaging him for twenty minutes now and there's blood all over the place. We need that medic real fast. Over."

Mitchell turned to Comsky, who had come over from his security position. "Got that?" he asked. Comsky nodded. "Get your stuff together. I'm sending you and Trapp. As soon as you're ready, go. Take Riley's 68 with you, too. Keep it on until you link up with those guys." Comsky moved out.

Mitchell punched the send button. "Roger, you've got a medic and help on the way now. They're monitoring a radio, so if you need any professional advice, go ahead and ask. I'll also have the other doc here monitoring this radio. Put out an IR chem light for them to home in on. Over."

"Roger. Right now we got white light down here. It's the only way we can work on him. But we'll pop the IR and turn the light out as soon as we can. Over."

Mitchell looked at Riley. They both shared the same thought: a bear?

The more Riley thought about it, the more he realized the high probability of such an occurrence. During the briefback Devito had said that brown bears were dangerous wildlife endemic to the operational area. The pickup zone team probably had left food out, or done something else that attracted the bear. Normally, bears didn't attack unless provoked.

Riley watched as Comsky and Trapp moved out, wearing night-vision goggles. In a little more than six hours, Riley knew he would have to go forward and check the target security in preparation for the hit. At least O'Shaugnesy was already at the PZ. We won't have to carry him there, Riley thought — about the only bright spot in the situation.