by Bob Mayer
Mitchell checked out the picture. It showed his wife drinking out of a large tankard in front of a bunch of men. Someone had scrawled across the bottom: MUST BE HARD TRYING TO BE A MAN. "When was this taken?" he asked.
"During my hail to the battalion six weeks ago. They fill that tankard with beer and you have to drink all of it."
Mitchell looked at his wife. "You drank all of it?"
She nodded. "It was only four beers. I had to do it. It's the tradition for a new officer."
Mitchell didn't think much of the tradition. "That's a real professional unit you're in."
"Hey, it was only in fun. I thought it was kind of humorous."
Mitchell stabbed his finger at the printing. "Who the hell wrote this at the bottom?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Someone from my company saw it on the board at flight ops and took it down and brought it to me."
Mitchell was pissed. The resentment that was continually directed toward his wife for being in the army grated on his nerves. He hated it when someone tried to hurt her. It made him want to find whoever had done it and hurt them. Not a very mature reaction, he knew. Jean could, and wanted to, fight her own battles. And she was good at it. She'd held her own for nine years. All she wanted from him was comfort and support.
"What are you going to do about it?"
She put the picture away. "I'm going to talk to the captain in charge over at flight ops. Even if he doesn't know who put it up, if he saw it there he should have taken it down. Then I'm going to talk to my colonel and show it to him."
"Why do people do things like that?"
Jean shook her head. "I'm the only female pilot in this battalion. I think it threatens the men to have me here. They think they're less of a man because a woman can do the same job." She slumped back in her chair exhausted. "I don't know. I just get tired of this shit. If someone has a problem with me I'd rather they come and talk to me rather than do childish stuff like this. This is such bullshit. I just want to do my job."
Mitchell tried to lighten the mood. "They won't face you because they're not man enough. Hell, even I don't like getting in an argument with you and I'm married to you. You always win." He slid his seat toward his wife and put his arm around her. "Listen, sweety-pie, don't let these idiots get to you." He hugged her tight.
Clark Air Force Base, Philippines Friday, 2 June, 1300 Zulu Friday, 2 June, 9:00 p.m. Local
The duty officer for the 1st Special Operations Squadron (1st SOS) looked up as the secure SATCOM terminal machine in the corner hummed with an incoming message. He put down his book and went over to the machine. After five seconds, the humming stopped and the message was spit out. The man's eyes widened as he read the message.
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET
ROUTING: FLASH
TO: CDR 1ST SOS/ 1ST SOW/ MSG 01
FROM: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM
SUBJ: ALERT/ TANGO ROMEO/ AUTH CODE: FIERCE WIND
REF: OPLAN TYPHOON ONE SEVEN ALPHA
REQ: ONE MCI30
START: FRIDAY/ 2 JUNE/ 1500 ZULU
DEST: OSAN AFB/ ROK
POINT OF CONTACT: LTC HOSSEY/ DET-K
END: TBD
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET
The duty officer grabbed the phone and punched in the number for the commander's quarters. Damn, he thought. 1500 Zulu. That wasn't much time to preflight and get a crew together.
Eighth Army Headquarters, Yongsan, Seoul, Korea Friday, 2 June, 1332 Zulu Friday, 2 June, 10:32 p.m. Local
Hossey pulled into the parking lot of the Eighth Army Headquarters on north post less than fifteen minutes after getting the phone call from the duty officer about the Flash message. Hossey showed his ID card to the guard and wound his way through the building until he got to the duty office. The major there checked his ID card again. Satisfied that Hossey was who he claimed to be, the major handed over a sheet of paper.
Hossey put on his reading glasses and perused the contents.
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET
ROUTING: FLASH
TO: CDR DET-K/ MSG 01
FROM: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM
SUBJ: ALERT/ TANGO ROMEO/ AUTH CODE: RIVER THUNDER
REF: OPLAN TYPHOON ONE SEVEN ALPHA
REQ: ONE OPERATIONAL DETACHMENT/ ONE FOB OSAN AFB
START: FRIDAY/ 2 JUNE/ 2000 ZULU
MISC: ONE MCI30 DUE IN OSAN FRIDAY/ 2 JUNE/ 2000 ZULU FOR MISSION PLANNING AND INFILTRATION SUPPORT/ INFILTRATION WINDOW 1400Z TO 1800Z 6 JUNE
END: TBD
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET
Hossey took a minute to consider the message. It was an alert and the Typhoon 17-A referenced the war plan. Hossey couldn't remember exactly which mission it was, but he knew the target was China.
Had to be either the nuclear power plant or the pipeline, but he couldn't remember which. More importantly, he wondered if this was real or a training exercise. The River Thunder authorization code was the real one, but Hossey could see little reason why they would be running a Typhoon mission for real. The ongoing events in China were certainly serious but seemed more a political than a military problem. He decided after a few moments of consideration that it was most likely a training exercise to test their ability to react, while at the same time giving the politicians a military option for a show of force.
Using the duty officer's phone, he started dialing. As the phone began to ring on the other end, he shook his head. A great time to call an alert—Saturday night on a payday weekend. Most every soldier would be off post in Itaewon getting drunk and chasing women. He was surprised when the receiver was lifted.
"Riley here."
"Dave, this is Colonel Hossey. This is an alert. Get your team together and meet me at the compound."
"All right, sir. I'm going to have to go downtown to track most of them down. When do you need everyone?"
Hossey checked his watch and subtracted the drive down to Osan. He added in the number of bars in Itaewon. "Try to get as many as you can by 0100. I'll have Hooker run the rest down as they come in. I'll meet you at the compound at 0200."
"Roger that, sir."
A thought struck Hossey. "You have any idea where Hooker might be right now?"
"Probably at the NCO club, sir. He usually gets fired up there and then heads downtown around midnight."
"Thanks. Out here." Hossey put down the phone and headed for his car to drive to the NCO club.
On the other end of the line, Dave Riley replaced the receiver. He quickly dialed the phone number of the one team member who didn't live in the barracks. Then he went out into the hallway and pounded on the doors of those who did. The only one to answer his door was Olinski.
"What's up, Top?"
"An alert. We need to go downtown and find the guys. I already got a hold of Chong at his yobo's place. He's on his way to the team room. I told him to get our team and isolation gear ready to go."
Riley waited while Olinski threw on a shirt, then they headed for the gate. Riley led the way as he broke into a trot. He knew he could try for a cab, but the chance of getting one of the post-run cabs at this hour on a Saturday night was slim. The same was true for getting a Korean cab right outside the gate. They'd get to Itaewon quicker on foot than by standing around waiting for a taxi. Besides, Riley hated waiting.
With Olinski trailing behind him, Riley turned right on the main Korean street that separated North and South Post Yongsan. After a quarter mile, the cinder-block walls on either side that guarded the military post disappeared, and they arrived at a major four-way intersection. On the other side of the intersection, bright lights indicated the beginning of the Itaewon district. During the day, Itaewon was the mecca for shoppers in Seoul. The many stores and sidewalk vendors catered to both local and foreign browsers. At night, the district transformed itself into Western-style nightlife. Dozens of nightclubs blasted music into the streets, and the twenty-block area was garishly lit by hundreds of neon signs. Clusters of bar girls lurked inside most of those bars, waiting to fall on
GIs with money in their pockets. Riley knew which of the clubs his team members frequented. He decided to start on the main street and then work his way south.
Clark Air Force Base, Philippines Friday, 2 June, 1400 Zulu Friday, 2 June, 10:00 p.m. Local
The crew was scraped together from whoever could be found on base. The 1st Special Operations Squadron didn't normally keep an alert crew. There hadn't been a need for one, since Talon missions usually required a few days of planning and advance notice. One of the hastily gathered-in crew members, Maj. Ed Kent, blinked as a pair of headlights turned in his direction. He opened the glass door to the base operations building and dragged his deployment flight bag outside. An air force station wagon pulled up next to him and a burly black enlisted man got out. "You the new EW officer?"
Kent nodded as he threw the bag in the backseat. "Major Kent." "I'm Master Technical Sergeant Young. I'm the loadmaster for the aircraft you'll be flying on. You must be new. I've never seen you before. You can hop in the car with me and I'll take you over."
Kent got in the passenger side and Young started the car rolling slowly along the flight line. "I just got in country a couple of days ago."
Young looked him over. "How much time in Talons you got?"
Kent shook his head. "I just graduated from the electronics warfare school for them at Hurlburt. I was the EW man on an F-111 before this. You know what this is all about?"
"I don't know what the hell is going on, but it sure got the colonel hopping mad. Lieutenant Colonel Riggins, that is," Young explained. "He's the pilot for our bird. They're preflighting right now. He had to replace the copilot too, cause his usual had a few too many at the o club this evening." He glanced over at Kent. "There a fire we got to put out or something? We don't see too many two-hour notices for a deployment unless someone's shooting at somebody somewhere."
Kent didn't know either. "All I know is, I've got to go with you all. I don't even know where we're going."
"Uh-huh," Young noted. "This is it here," he said as he pulled up to a pickup truck with two air police in it. Young showed his ID and Kent followed suit. The police waved them on. "You see that red line we just crossed?"
Kent looked back at the lit tarmac where the pickup was parked. "Yes."
"We call that the line of death. If someone who isn't authorized crosses that line, those MPs will draw down on them. You're in a secure area of the flight line now." He pulled up next to an aircraft. "And this is my baby." Kent got out of the car and looked over the aircraft.
Kent knew the capabilities of the MC-130E, designated as the Combat Talon, from his classes and training at the home of the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The basic design was that of a Lockheed C-130. Using that airframe, the air force had built a plane unique in the world.
Seeing the fuselage in the harsh spotlights, Kent could note some of the more obvious external modifications. The nose of the airplane had a large bulbous protrusion under the cockpit that normal C-130s didn't possess; that bulb housed many of the additional navigational devices the airplane employed. Also in front, two "whiskers" scissored out from the point of the nose, forming an inverted v along the direction of flight. The whiskers were for the Fulton Recovery System, designed to retrieve either personnel or equipment from the ground. A balloon was used to stretch a cable up from the ground. The pilot flew the plane right into the cable and the whiskers snatched it between them. From the edge of the whiskers, a steel cable with wire cutters extended to the tips of the wings. This cable was protection in case the pilot missed; it would prevent the balloon cable from fouling the props.
In the center of the whiskers, the balloon cable was clamped, then the speed of the aircraft drew the cable up along the belly of the plane. Hanging off the open ramp in the back, another clamp caught the cable and rotated it onto a winch inside the aircraft. Once the winch was activated, the cable was pulled into the aircraft, reeling in whatever had been on the ground
As he ran his eyes back along the craft, Kent noted the extra fuel pods slung under the wings, which increased the aircraft's range. In the rear, he could see Young ground-guiding the driver of a forklift, maneuvering a pallet into the back of the aircraft. Kent wandered around the back.
The rear of the aircraft opened up to allow such cargo to be put in and also for paradrops of personnel or equipment. The back split, with the bottom half coming down to form a ramp and the top half disappearing into the fuselage of the aircraft beneath the massive tail.
Young had positioned the pallet over the ramp. Using hand gestures, the loadmaster had the driver lower the pallet until it sat on a set of rollers. After the forklift driver backed off, Kent hopped up and helped Young roll the pallet into the main body of the aircraft.
The interior of the Combat Talon was the same size as a regular C-130 except that the front half of the cargo area was taken up with the banks of electronic equipment that were Kent's domain. Along with an assistant, Kent operated equipment that allowed them to detect enemy radar systems, a key factor in enabling the aircraft to penetrate hostile airspace without being detected. Another critical component to that ability was the navigational systems the pilots used to fly the aircraft. A precision ground-mapping radar laid out the terrain ahead, allowing the pilots to monitor the plane's location and anticipate upcoming obstacles as the aircraft hugged the ground to avoid radar. Cameras on the nose of the aircraft fed information back to a low-level light display in the cockpit, enabling the pilots to fly at night almost as if it were daylight.
Young was strapping down the pallet when several people climbed up into the aircraft through the front left crew door. Kent followed them up the short ladder that led into the cockpit.
He introduced himself to the airplane commander. "I'm your new EW chief, Ed Kent."
The pilot didn't seem too cheerful. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Riggins. This is Major Bailey, the copilot. The navigator is still doing final flight planning over at base ops. You should meet Captain Bradley, the junior electronics warfare officer, in the back just before takeoff. You gentlemen might as well head on back and get comfortable. We've got a long flight on up to Korea."
Yongsan, Seoul, Republic of Korea Friday, 2 June, 1700 Zulu Saturday, 3 June, 2:00 a.m. Local
Riley had tracked down most of the team. He had them start loading out their gear into the two-and-a-half-ton truck that Sergeant Major Hooker had commandeered. Then he went in search of Colonel Hossey. He found the Old Man in his office.
"You got everyone, Dave?"
"No, sir. Comsky and Lalli are still missing, but I left Devito downtown looking for them. I think he'll find them unless they've already hooked up with a couple of bar girls and are spending the night somewhere."
Hossey nodded. He handed over the message that had started the alert.
Riley frowned as he read it. "What the hell is Typhoon 17 Alpha, sir?"
Hossey pulled out a folder with Top Secret stamped on it. "Part of our war plan. It's a direct action mission into China."
Riley considered that. "Is this for real?"
"I don't know," Hossey shrugged. "The authorization code is real. The oplan is real. My best guess is that it's just a readiness exercise, but I don't want to take any chances. By the way, on this operation USSOCOM cuts Eighth Army and our army SOCOM out of the chain of command."
Riley was confused. "Can they do that, sir?"
"Yes. On strategic missions we're the regional reaction force. We work directly for the National Command Authority under those circumstances. You guys on the teams haven't been involved in it yet.
It's just been me and the S-3 shop war-gaming and working out proposed missions like this one for various scenarios we've been sent by the USSOCOM's G-3 section." Hossey handed Riley the mission folder. "But you're going to be involved now.
"I say you because, as you've already guessed, I've picked you to be team sergeant for this deal." Lieutenant Colonel Hossey peered closely at Riley to see if his annou
ncement got any reaction.
Riley had already figured that one out when he'd noticed that none of the other teams had been alerted. Riley had done many strange things in Special Forces (SF). He'd take this one step at a time. "And the rest of the team, sir? How do you want to work that?"
The twelve-man Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA), or A Team, was the core of Special Forces. Colonel Hossey had five teams in DET-K to choose from. None of the teams was up to authorized strength with twelve bodies, so whenever a mission requiring a full team came down, they pulled members off other teams to fill up the deploying one. Riley knew that Hossey had a couple of options. He could cannibalize all the teams in DET-K to pick the twelve best soldiers, or he could simply fill out Riley's team with two more bodies.
"Well, Dave, I thought I would humbly ask your opinion, seeing as you're the one who's going to have to live with it. I think you know my opinion on composite teams. I didn't like them in Vietnam and now that I'm in command, I'd prefer not to do that now. Plus, I don't have the time or the inclination to be pulling everyone in. I didn't want to alert the other teams because of security."
Riley and Hossey had discussed the concept of composite teams several times in the past. Hossey felt that esprit and cohesiveness, buzzwords that he truly believed in, were more important than having twelve outstanding individuals. Riley agreed with him. Twelve good people who could work together as a team would beat twelve outstanding individuals every time.
Hossey continued. "Now don't get a swelled head, but I happen to think that, besides you being the best team sergeant in this unit, Team 3 is also the best team. But you still need an executive officer and another weapons man to fill you out. Also, if you'd like to replace anybody on the team, we can work something out. What about your junior medic, Comsky? He seems a little slow at times."