Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  “And in this, we will be joined by the governments of Great Britain and Chile, and anyone else we decide to press-gang into assisting us with our case.”

  “And how, Arnie, do you propose we conduct this mass assault on Rio Grande—nuke it?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it will come to that…think about 1976, when Israel’s elite commandoes stormed another nation’s main airport and took it…remember they smashed their way into Entebbe in Uganda, completely overpowered a big force of guards, blew up ten MiG fighters, rescued a hundred Israeli hostages, and took off back to Tel Aviv. Not bad, right?”

  “No, not at all bad,” agreed the President.

  “They came in by air. In four darned great Hercules C-130 transports, landed in the dark, taxied right up close to the airport buildings, and the next thing Idi Amin’s men knew, the Israeli commandos were on them, gunning down the terrorists and anyone else who got in the way. Twenty Ugandan soldiers were shot down in their tracks because they were not ready…frankly, I doubt the Argentinians would be much sharper.”

  “You mean you actually have a vision of one of our big transporters coming in to land at night in Rio Grande, taxiing over to the main building, where eighty of our guys exit the aircraft, rush out and open fire, blowing up the building, getting rid of the Argentinian guards, and then demolishing the aircraft?”

  “Subject to adequate reconnaissance, yes. I think it would work well. Very well.”

  “And from where does this mythical U.S. military transporter take off?”

  “Oh, I think our very good friends in Chile might help there, eh?” The aircraft would, naturally, be redecorated, a nice shade of light blue and white.”

  “And what do you think are the odds of it coming to that kind of a crunch?” asked the President.

  “About one hundred to one against,” replied the Admiral. “If the guys remove all twelve of those brand-new Super-Es tonight, we’ll have the Argentine government on the phone tomorrow morning asking for terms.”

  1700, FRIDAY, APRIL 29

  PUNTA ARENAS NAVAL BASE, CHILE

  Rick Hunter’s team was huddled in the embarkation area, faces already blackened, ready for the insertion into Rio Grande. Each of them carried a personal weapon, the light, compact, and terminally deadly CAR-15 assault rifle, which is close to perfect for work behind enemy lines. The CAR rapid-fires an extremely-high-velocity .223-caliber cartridge, which is sufficiently light for each man to carry six thirty-round magazines.

  The SEALs’ rucksacks were carefully packed with standard combat gear, insect repellent, water, purification tablets, power food bars, a little regular food, wire cutters, battle dressings, knife, medical kit. Already stowed into the helicopter was the C-4 explosive with detcord and timers, one M60 E3 machine gun, ammunition, two patrol radios, the PRC319 rescue communicator, which could send encrypted short-burst satellite transmissions, in particular the one from Rick that would probably read, “get us the hell outta here !” There were also two handheld GPS systems and a dozen hand grenades.

  Standing with Rick were Lt. Commanders Dallas MacPherson and Douglas Jarvis, Chief Petty Officers Mike Hook and Bob Bland, the beefy combat SEAL who would carry the machine gun most of the way. There were the two Petty Officers First Class, Don Smith and Brian Harrison, and the new man, the twenty-six-year-old explosives wizard, Lt. R. K. Banfield, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, or as the young SEAL put it, “from raht down there by that big ole river.”

  By late afternoon conditions were beginning to deteriorate. There were reports of claggy conditions over the Argentine coast, but the pilots were confident in the ability of the high-tech instruments in the HH-60H Sikorsky Seahawk, one of two purchased from the United States in the past year.

  By 1800 they were ready, and in a rising wind, with rain sweeping across the airfield, the SEAL team jogged out toward the helicopter, ducking instinctively below the great whirring blades, and clambering on board, weighed down by their heavy packs, but ready to carry out the mission.

  It was dark now and they took off, clattering straight up to their cruising speed of 120 knots and heading southeast over the Magellan Strait. Rick Hunter sat up in his small private cabin poring over the chart, wishing they had a better map, wondering what the terrain would be like between the airfield and the Chilean border, both west and south of Rio Grande.

  Like everyone in the SEAL planning team, he regarded the getaway as infinitely more dangerous than getting in. That should be simple… but if we should get caught, and have to fight our way out, that’s not going to be so simple … I just wish I could tell what this ground is going to be like.

  Doug Jarvis, one of the best night navigators who had ever worked at Stirling Lines, had brought up an interesting point…“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, sir, we get caught and we have to take out a few Argies. I know Coronado thinks we should immediately make our way west following the river, making a beeline for the Chilean border, but I’m not too sure about that.”

  “Why not? It’s the fastest way to friendly territory,” said Rick.

  “Exactly. And if I was an Argentinian officer in charge of the pursuit, that’s the way I’d go, sir. Right along the river with helicopters, looking for the filthy intruders trying to get into Chile the fastest way they could.”

  Rick stared at the chart. “What would you do, Dallas?”

  “I’m with Dougy, sir. I’d go south, straight for those hills, and the border at the Beagle Channel. No doubt in my mind. That’s the way the Argies won’t go, sir. They’ll try to hunt us down along the short route, along the Rio Grande River.”

  Rick allowed his eye to wander down the chart, noting the several rivers that rose from the mountains south of Rio Grande. He stared at the high peaks all the way down to the Beagle Channel, trying to hold a mental picture of the very last segment of land on this earth before the icy wastes of Antarctica.

  “It’d be a walk of almost eighty miles, south to the Beagle Channel. And it would be over a range of mountains, some of ’em ten thousand feet.”

  “I know,” replied Douglas. “But where would you rather be, sir—fighting your way through the mountains to safety, with a chance of rescue at any moment, or dead on the banks of the Rio Grande.”

  “I’ll take the mountains.”

  “Good thinking, Ricky baby. Let’s hope we don’t have to do it, though.”

  The one-hour flight passed swiftly as they flew down the Magellan Strait, and then turned east up Inutil Bay, crossing their first land fifteen miles south of Lake Emma, still in Chile. Less than a half hour later, they crossed the border into Argentinian airspace, thirty-four miles east-northeast of Rio Grande.

  Twenty minutes later they saw their first fog bank, drifting in off the Atlantic Ocean. They flew right through it, as they began to lose altitude, and almost immediately ran into another, and then another.

  “These conditions are a damned nuisance,” the pilot called back. “We keep flying in and out of the fog, and I can only just make out the coastline…those lights up there are San Sebastian.”

  The pilot’s observer was following his chart, and right behind them Rick and Doug were following theirs.

  “Here we go, sir…here. We’re looking for the river…”

  “Gottit,” said Rick. “Then we go over another couple of small rivers…then this lake…then land here…53.48S 67.50W…eight miles due west of the air base.”

  “Fifteen minutes, sir…”

  And now the team began to muscle up, zippin
g up their padded, weatherproof Gore-Tex jackets, checking waterproof boots, pulling on gloves, as the helicopter slowed down to eighty knots, the pilot trying to cut out the noise as they flew in over the cold deserted landscape below. All of them wore thick, heavy-duty woolen hats, and all of them could feel the helicopter swaying in the gusting breeze as they came on down toward the Rio Grande River. This made it slightly awkward for their final gulps of hot cocoa from the specially provided flasks, but somehow they managed.

  “GPS showing 53.47S, longitude correct.”

  “Two minutes.”

  “There it is, sir. Dead ahead. Break left…not too close in case it’s marshy…longitude correct, 53.48 right now, sir.”

  “Coming in.”

  The chopper swayed to a halt, hovered and then touched down softly, the rotors now beating quietly, but the engine still making an unbelievable racket in the night air.

  The observer climbed out first, and Rick Hunter jumped down, setting foot on Argentinian soil for the first time. Dallas and Doug were right behind him. Then Mike Hook, Smith, Harrison, Lt. Banfield, and Chief Bland, who had manhandled the machine gun and the communications system into the hands of the SEALs.

  Then the observer jumped back on board, slammed the door tight, and all eight of Rick Hunter’s team watched as the helicopter took off, keeping low as it edged its way west toward the border. From there it would head out over the strait back toward Punta Arenas.

  The wind that was backing south gusted hard over the rough damp ground, and it whipped away the sounds of the retreating helicopter, leaving Rick’s men alone in the silence of the South American wilderness. The dark was all-consuming, as more cloud, drifting in from the Atlantic, brought down a wet night mist, blotting out the stars.

  Rick and Doug took a long careful look at their compasses, confirmed their route was due east, and set off on course zero-nine-zero. In the absence of a path or track of any kind, the rest just stayed on bearing and followed the firm marching of their leader out in front, going with the gradient, sometimes clambering over ridges, sometimes moving easily down thick grassy hills, but always moving forward.

  Every fifteen minutes they all paused and strained their ears for any sound, perhaps a car, maybe even an aircraft, but there was nothing. Only the wind, which was now southeasterly.

  Mike Hook heard it first, a dull rumble in the clouds to the north. “Sir! I think it’s an aircraft … coming in … can’t see it yet … ”

  “Great,” snapped Rick. “It’ll give us a fix. Right now, everyone hit the deck…”

  The eight men went down, secure in their heavy camouflaged jackets, trousers, and hats, facing due east, peeping up over the grass, watching for the aircraft. They could hear it way behind them, and then, suddenly, it was on them, howling down the flat plain, right above, possibly only a couple of hundred feet, its landing wheels outstretched for home.

  They watched its lights all the way, even catching the slight bounce as it touched down bang in front of them, less than a mile away.

  “Okay, guys,” said Rick. “A few decisions have been made for us right here…the first one being we don’t wanna be stuck directly under the flight path of every incoming jet. I just don’t wanna get caught here—that’s all. Because then we’d have to fight and kill, and if they did subsequently catch us…well, don’t wanna think about that, right?”

  Without further talk, they made their way left, to a point about a mile and a half off the outer perimeter of the airfield. They had some cover, and a fair view, between two huge rocks, of the takeoffs and landings. They would also have a chance to observe the guard patrols. So far as they could see, there were no guard posts out here in this most remote part of the field, which, according to Dallas, was assessed as “good to totally fucking excellent.”

  And so they sat the night out, watching through their field glasses, sleeping in turns, one man always at the machine gun. They started their little Primus stove, found some fresh water in a stream, and boiled up some powdered vegetable soup, which they ate with bread and cheese. They did not dare to try any sustained cooking, nor did they intend to do so until they were safely on their way out.

  The next evening at 1930, with night now casting a pitch-black darkness over the air base, they stowed their camp, leaving Don Smith to clear their gear into exit mode, and then maintain guard with the radio active in case of an emergency. Rick’s seven-man team moved off in light rain at 1945, toward the Rio Grande base, home of the Super-Etendard aircraft.

  Rick and Doug had taken the view that the two checkpoint gates, one out on the right and one adjacent to the main buildings, would be heavily guarded, but they did not know the extent of the wire that certainly surrounded some of the field.

  Rick led them forward, walking through the high grass into the teeth of the freezing wind. They all noted with satisfaction it did not penetrate their jackets, nor their waterproof camouflage trousers. And in some ways the wind was their friend, because their enemy was upwind of them, and the SEALs would hear everything as they approached the field.

  Rick again ordered them to hit the deck, but this time with rifles in their hands. And they crawled through the thick ground cover, making the final two-hundred-yard approach on their bellies, almost in a canoeing action, just as Doug had been taught at Sandhurst, out on Barossa Common, thirteen years ago.

  When they reached the outer border of the base they ran into a heavy wire fence. And they could not tell how far it stretched in any direction. “No sense hanging around to find out either,” said Commander Hunter. “Wire cutters, Bob…let’s go straight through…then we’ll take some kind of a mark inside, and this hole right here will be our way back to the rendezvous point…hit the hole and head due north on the compass for one mile and a half…that way we can’t miss if we get separated.”

  Bob Bland made short work of the fence, cutting a hole two feet high by four feet long, virtually unnoticeable in the grass, unless you were looking. Rick made a note of the GPS position at the hole, and radioed it back to Don Smith. One minute later the team was inside the perimeter fence, hurrying over to the main runway on which they had seen aircraft coming and going. Once there, they turned left down the blacktop and went in search of the Super-Es, which, according to Coronado, were four hundred yards down the main runway to the right.

  They had traveled almost three hundred yards when they came to the first group of aircraft, out on the left, nearest the buildings. They counted eight of them, all identical, A4 Skyhawks, the single-seater American-built low-altitude bomber, distinctive by its high, curved top fuselage. And by the heavy clips for the thousand-pound bombs it could carry under its wings.

  “That’s not the ones,” said Dallas, who had spent much of the afternoon studying aircraft shapes.

  And in the darkness, they moved on down the runway, to the next group—twelve sleek, black, strike fighter aircraft, a slight tilt to the nose cone, the tail fins set slightly higher than the aft fuselage.

  “Jesus, guys … this is it.” Rick Hunter stared at the dark shadows of the supersonic French-built Dassault-Breguet Super-Etendards. “This is the bastard we’re after.”

  Dallas and R. K. Banfield immediately moved in to check the location of the hatches that cover the engines. They were simple to find, and even simpler to open. Within two minutes, the SEALs had their extremely stable C-4 explosive ready to cut and shape like modeling clay, with two men assisting Dallas and two more helping R. K.

  The two young officers placed the charges
and inserted the fuse that would detonate the explosive. They then attached the detcord and ran it out to a position on the ground midway between four aircraft. Rick Hunter was waiting there to splice the four lengths of detcord into one pigtail, which he screwed into the timer and set for four hours. All four aircraft engines, and much of the fuselage, would be obliterated at precisely the same moment.

  The entire four-aircraft project took the biggest part of one hour, each team sabotaging two aircraft. And then they repeated the operation twice more, ensuring that, barring a miracle, not one of Argentina’s brand-new Super-Es would ever leave the ground again.

  Only once did the SEALs need to hit the floor, when a big Hercules C-130 came in, and the lights at the end of the runway lit up half the field. The rest of the time they were more or less undisturbed, although they did notice a guard patrol, traversing the entire field in a couple of Jeeps at irregular intervals, once at 2030 and again at 2115. Rick thought they were going too fast to notice anything.

  By 2300 they had completed their task. A pale moon now cast light on the secondary blacktop strip, which ran north-south at the far western end against the ocean. They could see it was a parking area for helicopters, five of them, in plain view now that the night was less dark.

  This operation , thought Rick, has been a whole lot less trouble than it might have been . And he led his six teammates back up the main runway, walking fast, anxious now to get out through the fence, back to their base camp, and out of there as fast as possible.

  Up ahead they could see the great dark shapes of the wooden telegraph-pole piles that supported the wide gantry of runway landing lights, the ones they had seen light up only once this entire evening, over two hours ago. Far away to the right they could see the lights of two vehicles speeding along the southern perimeter, though from this range they could not tell whether they were inside or outside the fence.