Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  At least they’re too tired to launch into their usual point-counterpoint routine, Hancock thought. It would be a godsend if he could get through the remainder of the briefing session without hearing them snarl at each other. He sipped his water, feeling it soothe the rawness at the back of his throat. At the table this morning, in addition to the President, his bedraggled national security team, the 82nd Airborne’s commanding officer General Roger Patterson, and Hancock himself, was the British team. Made up of the British Secretary of Defence, and Brigadier General Nathan R. Tenneville and Air Vice Marshal Arthur Raddock, of the 5th Para Brigade and Royal Air Force respectively, they were here to explain the British position and plans. Each of the men had plenty of questions for Hancock, and he’d nearly talked himself hoarse answering them.

  Well, here went what was left of his voice. “To ensure strategic and tactical surprise, and give us the overwhelming numerical advantage I spoke about a moment ago, all three brigades of the 82nd Airborne Division, along with the 5th Paras, will drop into Belize within two hours of each other and rapidly take control of its major airfields,” he said. “As we’ve seen on the maps, there are only two of any size and consideration, the larger of them located 10 miles/16 kilometers northwest of Belize City, the other about 1.5 miles/2.5 kilometers from the center of the city. Once the airheads are fully secured, the 501st Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division will be delivered with transport, scout, and assault helicopters to seek out and destroy fielded Guatemalan forces in Belize. At the same time, a MEU (SOC)—I believe it’s going to be the 26th—will take island and port facilities, and hold them open for follow-on forces and supplies. Finally, to suppress further Guatemalan aggression, the aircraft of the 366th and 347th Wings will conduct a short air campaign to destroy Guatemalan command-and-control facilities, as well as leadership and fielded forces targets. The importance of coordination, agility, and timing cannot be underestimated for the success of this operational plan. Our forces must drive the pace and scope of the battle.” Hancock paused, took another drink of water. “At this point, Mr. President, I’ll respectfully defer to General Tenneville, who can best give you the particulars of Great Britain’s role in the operation.”

  “That’ll be great, I’m all ears,” the President said briskly, smiling at the British one-star. “Please feel free to get started.”

  The Secretaries of State and Defense sagged a little in their chairs. The President glanced from one to the other, then looked over at Tenneville and shrugged. “Maybe we’d better have some coffee and doughnuts first,” he said.

  Fayetteville, North Carolina, 2300 Hours, October 25th, 2009

  A city of 75,000 souls on the banks of the Cape Fear river, Fayetteville is both home to Fort Bragg and a convenient stopover for Florida-bound snowbirds making their seasonal migration along I-95. Over the years, a cluster of motels has sprung up in the downtown area, offering clean, comfortable, and reasonably priced lodging to the heavy flow of travelers and visitors to the XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters. Nothing exceptional, mind you, but the guests who check into these places generally aren’t looking for mirrored ceilings, heart-shaped whirlpool baths, and glitzy nightclub entertainment. What they want is a decent meal, and a firm mattress on which to catch a good, quiet night’s shuteye before getting back on the highway. Unfortunately there was very little sleeping, and a whole lot of restless tossing and turning going on in Fayetteville’s motel rooms tonight. The noise of transport aircraft lifting off at nearby Pope Air Force Base was loud enough to keep even the weariest, bleariest motorists wide awake in bed, never mind that most had shut their windows to muffle the continuous racket. After two weeks of intensive preparation, Royal Banana had gotten underway precisely on schedule, and the first transports carrying U.S./British airborne forces, ordnance, and supplies were wheels up and heading towards their objective.

  Aboard a 23rd Airlift Wing C-130J Hercules Transport, Over Belize, 0200 Hours, October 26th, 2009

  As a kid growing up in downeast Maine, Pfc. Drew Campbell had lived across the road from a small commercial airfield that had primarily serviced local charters—single—engine propeller planes carrying tourists, hunters, and airfreight shipments to areas along the coast. Watching the flights take off and land had sparked a lifelong fascination with aircraft, and Drew had spent most of his weekly allowance, and later on, after getting his first job with his uncle’s Penobscot Bay fishing operation, an inordinate chunk of his weekly paycheck on aviation books and hobby kits for building scale models of military airplanes. The one thing he had never expected, though, was to be flying into a hostile DZ aboard the noisy cargo hold of a Herky Bird transport, packed in with two Chalks of the 2/505th, his face smeared with camo paint, his lower back aching from a bulky 120-pound/ 55-kilogram load of parachute and combat gear that made him wonder how tortoises could lug around their shells all their lives while always managing to look so goddamned content. Well, c’est la vie, as his fiancée would say. If it hadn’t been for his uncle selling his fleet of boats and retiring to Boca Raton, he’d never have enlisted in the army, never have volunteered for jump training with the 82nd, and never have wasted a moment of his precious time thinking about tortoises and their burdensome lot. Not that there weren’t more important things to contemplate right now. Specifically, the tough job ahead of him, and his chances of staying in one piece until it was over and done.

  In the troop seat to his right, First Sergeant Joe Blount seemed less worried about his own prospects for survival than those of the heroes in the X-Men comic he’d just finished reading, having squinted to see the pages in the red-lit semi-darkness of the hold. A veteran of Operation Fort Apache with a unit patch and Bronze Star to prove it, Blount was shouting something to the man on his immediate right about Cyclops’s mutant eye-beams being more than a match for the Sentinels’ photon blasts, whatever the hell that meant. According to some guys in the company, Blount could act so blase about the prospect of dropping into enemy fire because he didn’t appreciate his own vulnerability. However, Campbell had a very different sense of his inner workings. He believed Blount, who had once stood down a tank amid a hail of Sudanese antipersonnel fire, knew what could happen to him as well as anybody, but simply had more guts than most. Which, considering that he belonged to an airborne unit full of brave men, made him as extraordinary as the superheroes he was always jawing about. Never mind that he didn’t even have mutant powers to save his ass in a pinch.

  Feeling it dig painfully into his shoulder, Campbell adjusted the strap of his chute harness, shifting it a millimeter to the left ... only to have it begin hurting him in its new position two or three seconds later. How did those big turtles stand it, anyway? he thought, knowing that he would soon forget all about his discomfort. Soon, in fact, the Hercules would be nearing the drop zone, and the pilot would throttle back to a speed of 130 knots as he made his approach, and the troopers would get set to exit the plane.

  Now Campbell glanced toward the rear of the fuselage, where the jumpmaster was impatiently staring at the lights above the door, as if he could make the green blink on through sheer willpower. But the red warning light continued to glow steadily in the dimness, indicating that their V-shaped formation of Hercules transports had yet to reach the target zone. Studying his own meshed, tension-white knuckles again, Campbell silently wondered what everything was going to be like when they finally got there. No way it’s gonna be dull, he thought tensely. I can damn well count on that.

  The rapid taking of BZE International airport by the 505th and its support elements was key to the success of Royal Banana. Located just a few klicks outside Belize City, it would be a clear, easy-to-find rally point for the descending paras, and a vital aerial port for follow-on supplies and reinforcements. Campbell knew it, as did every man in his company. The enemy would know it too. Satellite photos had already confirmed that the airport’s perimeter was surrounded by air defense batteries and it was a sure bet th
ere were also machine-gun teams covering its runways. These would be ready to catch the paratroopers in a lethal crossfire the instant they touched ground. Those first few minutes after landing, as they got out their weapons and jettisoned their chutes, would be a terribly vulnerable period for them. Still, the paras had a considerable numerical advantage in their favor, and, to some extent, the element of surprise as well. It was one thing for the enemy to be prepared for a massive airborne assault, but unless their intelligence was better than anybody suspected, they couldn’t be certain when, or even if, it would actually occur. Furthermore, the paratroopers would be coming down fast, jumping from an altitude of just five hundred feet.

  “Get ready!”

  The moment he heard the shouted command, Campbell snapped his eyes toward the jumpmaster, who stood to one side of the door giving his hand signal, both arms extended, palms up. Suddenly, Campbell’s stomach felt like a taut, twisted length of rope. It was almost time for the drop.

  BZE International Airport, Ladyville, Belize, 0230 Hours, October 26th, 2009

  Regardless of which side they fought on that night, it was an awesome scene that all of the soldiers who lived through the battle would never forget: thousands of paratroopers swarming down onto the field from their swift, low-flying delivery aircraft, their inflated chutes filling the darkened sky like shadowy toadstools.

  Even as his canopy bloomed overhead, Campbell heard the rattle of hostile ground fire and saw tracers sizzling through the air around him. The enemy had been roused, but there was nothing he could do about that, nothing he could do to defend himself ... at least not until he’d made a successful landing. Keeping a tight body position, he clamped down his fear and let his training take over, concentrating on the specific actions that would have to be performed in the next twenty seconds: inspecting and gaining control of the thirty-five-foot canopy, getting oriented in relation to landmarks and other paras, and watching out for obstacles on the ground as he prepared to execute his PLF sequence.

  A quick scan of the sky confirmed that he was falling at approximately the same speed as the troopers that had jumped with him. Good. He was right on target, with the lights of Belize City glimmering to the southeast, and the passenger terminals, parking areas, and outbuildings of the airport complex visible in the nearer distance. Also good. Below him the ground was dark, which meant he was coming down on tarmac or concrete. Not so good. He’d been hoping to get lucky and fall onto a soft cushion of grass, but you couldn’t have everything, and he had no problem with settling for two out of three. With less than five seconds to go before impact, Campbell checked his drift and pulled a two-riser slip into the wind, keeping his legs together and the balls of his feet pointed slightly downward. His head erect, eyes on the horizon, he unclipped the rucksack between his legs and felt it drop on its tether, hitting the ground with an audible, impact-absorbing thump. He came down with a jolt that sent streaks of pain through his right knee and shoulders, but didn’t think he’d been seriously hurt. Quickly spilling the air from his canopy, he pulled the quick-release snaps on his harness and began to unpack his weapon. All around him, he could see other jumpers landing and doing exactly the same thing.

  “Campbell, you all right?”

  It was Vernon Deerson, his fire team’s SAW gunner, scrambling over on his belly. He was already wearing his NVGs and had mounted an AN/PAQ-4C “death dot” on his weapon.

  “Yeah,” Campbell said, also keeping his head low. His eyes searched the night as he rolled onto his side, got his M203-equipped M16 out of the carrying case against his left thigh. He’d heard the crackle of a machine gun from the rooftop of a nearby terminal and was trying to get a solid fix on its position. There was another burst of fire. Louder. Closer. And then another sound. A revving engine. “I think ... ” Then headlight beams suddenly swept through the darkness and they both hugged the ground. A pair of jeeps had rounded the corner of the building, engines growling, the Guatemalan gunners in back raking the tarmac with fire as they came speeding toward the two paratroopers.

  Aboard USS Wasp (LPD-1), PHIBRON 4, Caribbean Sea, 0235 Hours, October 26th, 2009

  While the squadrons of USAF Hercules troop transports were nearing the DZs, the Gator Navy’s Amphibious Squadron Four—composed of the USS Wasp, USS Whidbey Island (LSD-41), and USS Iwo Jima (LPD-19) escorted by the USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55), USS Hopper (DDG-70), and operating with the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)—had come surging around the fluke-shaped Yucatan Peninsula, and then skirted the outer bounds of Cuban territorial waters to enter the Caribbean Sea. The huge, forty-thousand-ton Wasp was steaming toward its destination in the lead, its decks and hangars alive with activity. Behind a dimly lighted console in the Wasp’s Combat Information Center (CIC), Captain William “Wild Bill” McCarthy, commander of PHIBRON 4, sat watching his multi-faceted sensors and display screens, as personnel at separate terminals across the island /bridge monitored and processed a torrent of communications and reconnaissance information from a vast range of sources.

  At its present speed, the ARG would elude the majority of the enemy’s naval defenses, but it was nonetheless certain to encounter some hostile patrol boats. Though McCarthy was confident they would present only a minor hindrance to his battle group’s forced entry of Guatemalan waters, he was anxious to get past them and move into position for the amphibious /helicopter assault’s kickoff. He knew that aboard John Stennis a brigade of the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” were readying their attack choppers for essential air support of the parachute units inland. He also knew that the enemy would put up one hell of a fight for the airports, and that this counterattack would come by morning’s first light. He was bound and determined to have an unpleasant surprise waiting for Guzman’s forces when that happened.

  Government House, Regent Street, Belize City, 0230 Hours, October 26th, 2009

  Under house arrest in his living quarters on the second floor of the building, Prime Minister Carlos Hawkins exultantly sprang off his chair, his spirits lifted by the sound and fury outside his window.

  “Hey!” he shouted to the armed guard outside his door. “Come on, open up, I’ve got an important message for your commandante!”

  The door opened a crack and a soldier in a Guatemalan uniform looked in at him. “Sí,” the guard said. “What is it?”

  “Okay, you listening close?” The soldier nodded. Hawkins grinned and leaned his head toward him. “Tell Guzman I hope the Yanquis give his arse a hard, bloody pounding!” he said.

  BZE International Airport, Ladyville, Belize, 0235 Hours, October 26th, 2009

  As the onrushing jeeps sped closer, their machine gunners chopping out a vicious hail of fire, Deerson propped himself on his elbows. Spying the target through his night-vision goggles, he swung the red aiming dot of the PAC-4C on his SAW onto the front of the lead vehicle, and squeezed off a short burst. The weapon kicked against his shoulder, gobbling 5.56mm ball ammunition at a rate of almost 1,000 rounds per minute. The windshield of the jeep shattered in an explosion of broken glass, and the jeep went into a screechy, fishtailing skid, the wheels leaping off the road as the driver veered toward a large industrial Dumpster. An instant before the vehicle smashed into the Dumpster’s metal side, Deerson triggered a second laser-aimed volley that sent the gunner flying from the rear of the vehicle, his combat fatigues drilled with bullet holes.

  The second jeep was almost on them when Deerson heard the bloop! of Campbell’s tube-fired 40mm HE grenade separating from its cartridge case, glimpsed the tiny silhouette of the projectile out the corner of his eye, and then saw the shell arching down over the jeep. The 40mm fragmentation grenade detonated in midair just inches above the open-topped vehicle, its explosive charge blowing the frag liner and converting it into a cloud of shrapnel that ripped into the jeep, penetrated its gas tank, and sparked its fuel lines to rupture in a dazzling blister of flame that incinerated both riders before they knew what hit them. Without wasting a second, Campbell and Deerson spr
ang to their feet and rushed into the darkness side-by-side, eager to link up with the rest of their platoon.

  BZE International Airport, Ladyville, Belize/TZA Municipal Airport, Belize City, 0400 Hours, October 26, 2009

  Captain “Wild Bill” McCarthy had been absolutely correct—the Guatemalans did indeed “put up a hell of a fight” for the airports, but it was a losing battle from the very beginning. Within just a few hours after the American and British paratroop units made their drops, both airfields had been captured from the vastly outnumbered enemy force. Scattered encounters persisted until dawn as the airborne troops seized runways, cleared terminals and hangars, and swept the offices, hallways and stairwells of every building. The heaviest flurries of resistance came at the perimeters of the airports, where the Guatemalans had set up roadblocks and artillery emplacements along approach and exit routes. The British and American paras, however, were skilled at night fighting, and had been given extensive practice in assault maneuvers prior to the mission being launched. This was training that gave them a crucial edge over their opposition. Though scores of Guatemalan infantrymen were killed in these firefights, and hundreds more taken prisoner, only two Americans and one member of the British 5th were fatally wounded as the paratroops overran the barricades using a variety of infiltration and urban combat tactics. The last of the Guatemalan troops at the airfields were neutralized shortly after 5:00 A.M.

  By daybreak, both airports were declared fully secure, with rifle and artillery units setting ambush positions along the very avenues of approach they had cleared. Now that the airports had been taken, the paras’ job was to hold them and let the airhead develop behind them. It was a sure bet the bad guys would want them back.