Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  Hancock nodded. “Once the troopers have been delivered, they fight their way into the embassy, relieve and reinforce the Marine guard detachment, and then establish a perimeter around the compound. This done, they hold on until the helicopters of an offshore Marine Expeditionary Unit—Special Operations Capable [MEU (SOC]) can come into the compound and fly the evacuees to the waiting ships.”

  “What about the paras?” the President asked. “Who gets them out after the people inside the embassy have been removed?”

  “The troop evac’s been thoroughly integrated into the plan, sir. As the civilians are being taxied offshore, the airborne troopers and their Marine supporters will conduct what’s known as a ‘collapsing bag’ defense, tightening their perimeter with each successive relay of choppers, and finally exiting the area on the last relay wave.”

  “There’s still the question of air support,” the Secretary of State said.

  “I feel confident that the embarked MEU (SOC) will have what it takes to do the job,” Hancock said.

  There was a sudden silence in the room. It stretched. At last the President looked at the Chairman and nodded soberly.

  “Let’s get this train on track,” he said.

  Pope AFB, North Carolina, 0400 Hours, February 17th, 2007

  Long before dawn broke over the airfield, the “Green Ramp” assembly and aircraft-loading areas at Pope Air Force Base were alight with sodium lamps and bustling with activity, the readiness standard operating procedure (RSOP) moving along like clockwork. Indeed, like the gears and knobs of the famed Swiss clock against which the accuracy of all other timepieces are measured. As America’s quick-reaction ground force, the 82nd was trained and equipped to get a battalion task force ready for deployment to any corner of the world within eighteen hours of receiving its execute orders. These had come down by way of an encrypted redline telephone communication from a duty officer at XVIII Airborne Corps Headquarters, who had rushed to the emergency operations center to make the call after he received the classified message from a DoD courier.

  The 82nd Division consists of three brigades, each of which remained on alert as the division ready brigade (DRB) for a standard six-week rotation. The DRB presently doing its tour was the 3rd Brigade (built around the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment), and by N+1 (notification hour plus one) its commanding officers had hastily gathered in a briefing room and received the mission outline. The DRB always keeps one battalion, known as the Division Ready Force (DRF) on alert status. Today it was the 2nd Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/505), and they were pegged for the drop into Khartoum. Two hours later, the 2/505th’s troops had rushed to a marshaling area in Fort Bragg to await the delivery of their urban camouflage BDUs and other equipment from nearby supply depots. Now Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison, commander of the 2/505th, stood looking out over the tarmac of Pope Air Force Base, the complicated digital wristwatch his wife had gotten him for his birthday ticking off the minutes and hours till N+18. He was both un-characteristically tense and vastly impressed: the latter because of the seamless coordination of the procedures that were underway, the former because this would be his trial by fire, his first opportunity to lead his men into combat.

  A hundred yards in front of him, a pair of big-bellied C-17A transports that had been flown in from the 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston AFB, South Carolina, were being loaded with cargo. Others assigned to carry the paratroops were already in the landing pattern. For tonight, the task force’s contingent of heavy lift was limited to a half dozen HMMWV “Hummers” armed with M2 machine guns and Mk. 19 40mm grenade launchers, and two M119 105mm Howitzers. Other than MANPADS Predator and Javelin anti-tank missiles, the soldiers themselves would carry only small-arms ammunition and a single day of rations and water. They would be moving swiftly and traveling light, the plan calling for them to drop into a soccer field near the Sharia al-Geish, or Ring Road, which swings around central Khartoum and comes within a half mile of the embassy. Once on the ground, they would then infiltrate the area around the embassy compound before anyone could raise a hue and cry. If all went well, they would complete the evac and be out of harm’s way within twelve hours of hitting the ground.

  Hurricane watched the loading a while longer, then impatiently glanced at his wristwatch and frowned. Although it seemed as if an hour had crawled by since he’d last checked the time, it had, in actuality, been a whopping ten minutes. Time compression from the stress was taking effect. Taking a deep breath to slow things down, he jumped into his Hummer, driving from Green Ramp toward the marshaling area to inspect the troops. When he reached the area a few minutes later, he found the assembled paras outfitted, on their feet, and ready. Like Hurricane himself, they could hardly wait to be in the sky.

  Aboard USS Bonham Richard (LHD-6) in the Arabian Sea, 0600 Hours, February 17th, 2007

  As he listened to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Jackson was having trouble deciding whether he’d walked under a figurative ladder or seen his lucky star the day he’d accepted command of HMM- 164, the Air Combat Element (ACE) for the 13th MEU (SOC). Seeing the six-month Indian Ocean tour as a golden opportunity for advancement, Jackson had accepted. Little had he known that he’d be flying into the middle of “bad-guy” country as a result of his decision.

  “Our mission is to airlift the embassy personnel and refugees as the 2/505th defends the sector,” his CO was saying, his tone crisp and factual. Colonel Greg LeVardier pointed his laser pointer at a circled area on the digital map being projected behind him. “In addition, Echo Company will be deployed to reinforce the airborne battalion holding the perimeter. Fire support will be provided by artillery inside the ...”

  Jackson listened intently, the tiny down-curved thought lines forming at the edges of his mouth and eyes. Unlike the other Marines in the room, he took no written notes, a practice that would have brought a thorough and far-from-gentle reprimand from LeVardier had he been anyone else in the 13th. But Jackson’s blue-eyed good looks and athletic physique were only his most visible attributes, for he was also gifted with a unique eidetic memory that would allow him to retain everything that was said and done at the briefing in perfect detail. If the fact that he’d graduated Annapolis third in a class of seven hundred without ever jotting a word onto a sheet of paper hadn’t been proof enough of his infallible recall, LeVardier’s obliviousness to his lack of writing tools would have satisfied the most unyielding of skeptics.

  “The third and final relay must be completed no later than 0800 hours,” LeVardier said, wrapping up. “Okay, that’s it. Any questions?” There were very few, and ten minutes later the soldiers rose from their desks and cleared the room, hastening to begin their preparations.

  Aboard C-17 Globemaster III, over Khartoum, Sudan, 0400 Hours, February 18th, 2007

  Flying low to evade the Sudanese air defense systems, the Globemaster III banked over the Drop Zone (DZ) beneath a sliver-thin crescent moon, having reached its destination three thousand miles and three aerial refuelings after takeoff. Braced in the jump door of the cargo compartment, Sergeant Vernon Martin, the flight’s jumpmaster, glanced down through the darkened sky, seeking the beacon lights of the cargo that had been dropped seconds earlier. His combat jacket flapped crisply around his body, and the combined roar of the wind and turbofans filled his ears. He grunted with satisfaction as his eyes picked out the pale orange glow of the lights far beneath him. Each piece of heavy equipment had begun its descent under twin twenty-eight-foot drogue parachutes, and had its earthward plunge further slowed by several big G-11X cargo chutes that had sprouted from the airdrop skids. The tiny beacons attached to the payload served a twofold purpose: They would help the paras avoid crashing into it when they touched down, and would make it easier to recover the vehicles and armament once the ready brigade was assembled on the ground.

  Reassured that the vital gear had landed neatly within the soccer field’s perimeter, Martin cranked his head over hi
s shoulder to see how the pre-jump sequence was going. At the “Ten Minutes Out” call, the troopers had stood up, raised their red seats, moved toward the jump doors in their cumbersome backpacks and T-10 parachutes, and clipped their static lines to the anchor cables that ran the length of the compartment. At “Five Minutes Out”—just before poking his head outside—Martin had given the command for each trooper to check his static line and the line of the man in front of him, backing it up with an arm-and-hand signal because of the loud drone of the aircraft’s engine. Now he tapped his chest with both hands, shouted his order for the equipment check, and watched the men begin looking over their gear from the head down, still holding the static lines, using their free hands to make sure everything from their helmet straps to their bootlaces were firmly secured.

  “Sound off for equipment check!” he said after less than a minute, cupping his hands behind his ears.

  “Okay!” the furthest para from the door called out, and slapped the man in front of him on the thigh. He, in turn, did the same to the next man forward. Lieutenant Everett Ives was first at the door, Sergeant Joe “Brooklyn” Blount behind him. Ives felt Blount tap him to indicate his equipment had made the grade, completed his own inspection, then turned toward the center aisle and gave the “okay” hand-signal to the last man on the inboard Chalk. The second Chalk repeated the procedure without missing a beat. Finally Corporal Tom Cousins, the first parachutist on that side of the aircraft, pointed to Martin and said, “All okay!”

  Martin nodded approvingly and snatched another look outside. The sky was mercifully quiet, no trace of AAA fire disturbing the black of night, a strong indication the opposition remained clueless about the mission. Nor did Martin see any obstructions on the wings or fuselage that could foul the lines. A final downward glance reinforced his confidence. Bare of trees, stony outcroppings, and man-made structures, the level soccer field below made an ideal DZ—assuming that it was not surrounded by gun-toting American-hating fanatics. He turned back toward the men and simultaneously gestured to both port and starboard jump doors. “Stand by!” Ives and Cousins shuffled forward against the opposing shove of wind resistance and assumed identical stances of coiled alertness in the doors, their knees bent, upper bodies straight, eyes to the front.

  Now the green light above the doors blinked on. This was it. “Go!” Martin shouted. A split-second before stepping into space, Joe Blount promised himself he’d down a whole pie at Vinnie’s Pizzeria on his next visit to Bensonhurst, just a little reward for a mission well done. Best pizza in the universe there at Vinnie’s. Have them pile everything on it and stand out on the sidewalk with the box, eat it right on 86th Street under the el, where John Travolta had strutted through the opening credits in that old flick, Saturday Night Fever. Stand there and gobble slice after slice until melted mozzarella and sauce were dripping from his nose and ears. Vinnie’s in Bensonhurst, a whole goddamn pie, yessiree. He sprang up and out into the North African sky, followed at one-second intervals by the other exiting troopers.

  Sergeant Vernon Martin went over last, counting by thousands, seeing the parachutes below mushroom open as the aircraft’s slipstream whipped him toward its tail fin and his silk threaded out behind him. One thousand. Assuming the proper body position on trained reflex, he snapped his feet and legs together, knees locked, toes pointing toward the ground. His head was lowered, his chin tucked against his chest, and he counted silently,

  “... two thousand, three thousand ...”

  Martin sailed downward, the earth rushing up with eye-blurring speed. Then he felt a terrific, wrenching shock through his entire frame, and knew the static line had released the T-10C from his pack. The chute inflated overhead, quickly slowing his descent. He reached up and grabbed his shoulder risers as he floated down, looked and saw Blount descending to the right under his own open chute. The kid was in trouble. His shroud lines had gotten twisted and he was falling with his back to the wind, a bad way to land. For a tense moment it looked as if he’d forgotten his training, and was trying to untangle his suspension lines with his hands. But then he began pedaling his legs as if he were riding a bicycle, grasping his risers behind his neck and pulling outward on each pair until the lines untwisted, “slipping” to avoid a collision with another jumper. He came down to earth with a smooth, practiced roll.

  Martin got ready for his own landing. He released the rucksack clipped to his waist, and it fell away from him at the end of the retainer line, hitting the ground an instant before he did and absorbing some of the jarring impact. Then, holding the control toggles close to his face, he turned into the wind and went into his PLF sequence, twisting and bending his body so the shock of landing was distributed between his calf, thigh, rump, and the side of his back. Barely pausing to catch his breath, Martin spilled the air from his canopy, hit his quick-release snaps to disengage the parachute from his harness, and got to his feet. An instant later he was sprinting toward the rallying point.

  There was a mission to accomplish and no time to waste.

  U.S. Embassy Compound, Khartoum, 0430 Hours, Sudan, February 18, 2007

  Hoping he didn’t look as scared as he felt, Ambassador Neville Diamond let his eyes roam the gymnasium where five hundred human beings were packed together like cattle, their faces pale and sweaty in the abominably close quarters. Scant hours ago, Nathan Butto had slipped into the compound in the dead of night and met with Ed Sanderson, staying only long enough to deliver a brief but all-important communique he’d received from the American State Department: Cochise has left the village. It meant that the rescue team’s arrival was imminent. Sanderson had immediately rushed to Diamond’s quarters and told him to start rousing the occupants of the compound in preparation for the airlift. Within the hour, every last man, woman, and child had been hustled into the gym. A few of the children clutched dolls or favorite toys. Otherwise, they would leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

  Diamond’s gaze lingered on a pretty little blonde girl across the crowded room who was clutching her mommy with one hand and a stuffed panda bear with the other. She looked sleepy, confused, and terribly vulnerable. Feeling his stomach tighten, he tore his eyes from the child and shifted his attention back to Sanderson, who stood beside him talking to the commander of the embassy’s small Marine guard detachment. The CIA station chief’s voice was low and deliberate. Controlled as ever. Having already briefed the guard on the evacuation plan, he was now underscoring the need to maintain calm and order among the civilians as the compound was vacated. Diamond thought that sounded fine. You sure as hell didn’t want anybody to panic and yell, “Fire!” so to speak. But then his gaze briefly wandered toward the puffy-eyed face of the little blonde girl, the face of his daughter Alissa, still clinging to her mother and her panda for dear life, and the tightness in his belly became a painful cramp. How calm could they expect her to be if fighting broke out? he wondered.

  How calm would anyone be?

  Sharia Pasha al-Mek, One Block South of the U.S. Embassy, Khartoum, Sudan, 0500 Hours, February 18th, 2007

  Minutes before the engagement began, Jamal Wahab was thinking about how much he hated Western foreigners, and Americans in particular. Hated their clothes, their language, their music, their food, hated everything about them. At twenty-four years old, he had never traveled outside the borders of his country, and rarely left the capital city, where he lived. He had been raised poor, the third eldest of seven children in a family where food had been scarce and material comfort was beyond even imagining. His father had eked out a meager living selling meat rolls on the street to Western oil company employees and their families. Those people had always had money enough to buy all the food they could eat, and all the comfort anyone could want. Those people had walked as if they owned the world, and Jamal Wahab had despised them for it. He was a simple man and knew little of politics. He had scarcely learned to read before his father died, and he’d left school to help support his younger brothers and sisters
. As a teenager he’d joined the local militia and listened to his leaders call America the Great Satan and attribute their own nation’s problems to its decadent influence. And he had believed them. Jamal had, in short, needed someone to blame for circumstances he’d never understood.

  Now, stealing toward the U.S. embassy in the predawn gloom, moving quickly with a squad of his brothers-in-arms, Jamal hefted his machine gun and wondered what it would feel like to kill an American. He had been told to fire only on the compound’s military guards and avoid harming civilians unless there was no other choice. But in his heart he knew that even if such an “unavoidable” situation didn’t arise during the takeover, he would make it come about. This morning he would kill an American. Perhaps one wearing the expensive clothes he’d always hated. Would such an act extinguish his burning rage or merely feed it? Only Allah knew. His nerves wound tight, Jamal hurried past the empty storefronts and no-name Eritrean restaurants lining the Sharia Pasha al-Mek, his close friend Ahmed racing along to his left, a big, rough-faced militiaman named Khalil to his right. All three men held their weapons at the ready.

  They had come within a block of the embassy compound when Jamal saw the bulking HMMWV pulled against the curb near its side gate. Startled, he stopped running with a sharp intake of breath, grabbing hold of Ahmed’s shoulder. Though he did not specifically recognize it as such, there was a pintle-mounted Browning .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the Hummer’s roof. Its four-man crew wore black, gray, and white urban camouflage fatigues and carried M16A2 combat rifles, and their faces were smudged with black camouflage paint.

  Jamal knew instantly these men weren’t embassy guards. Far from it. Somehow, the Americans had learned of the takeover and sent in forces to prevent it. “This area is off-limits,” one of the soldiers occupying the vehicle called out as he spotted the band of militiamen. The man standing in the gunner’s hatch swiveled the heavy machine gun in the group’s direction. “Halt and lay down your arms.”