And they stood in seriously soft going. They were in open country, about three hundred yards from the wood, the red glow of the chemical light barely visible against the wood’s blackness. The time was 2236, and almost five hundred miles to the north, Lieutenant Colonel Jaxtimer was flying over Finland, toward Russia.
The entry into Russian airspace went without a hitch. Major Parker called in their identifying numbers, and the Russian controllers cleared them instantly, scarcely checking that the numbers did in fact coincide with the flight plan filed by American Airlines. With the blessing of the Russian authorities, the B-52 pressed on southward toward Lake Onega.
Colonel Jaxtimer knew they had to drop their three-part cargo within a four-mile radius circle if the canisters were to lock on, and land, close to the beam from the SEALs’ target-marker on the ground.
Both the aircraft and the SEALs were working to the five-meter accuracy of the GPS. If the SEALs were down there, Colonel Jaxtimer would find them. The big laser sensor in the nose of the B-52 would pick up the beacon from twenty miles, about two and a half minutes of flying time. The canisters would be released when the special bombsight signaled. Once the marker had been picked up, it was a “hands-off” routine, as far as Colonel Jaxtimer and the US Air Force was concerned.
Behind the Colonel in the control cockpit, Lieutenant Chuck Rider was calling out their position relative to their destination every fifteen miles. Lieutenant Segal had located no threatening indications of a military radar sweep, from the ground or the air. To Russian eyes, the United States Air Force B-52 was just another long-haul commercial passenger jet headed south for the Middle East.
In fact, just about every aspect of the flight plan was a total fabrication. The aircraft was not headed for Bahrain, but for the gigantic US Air Force base outside of Dahran on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. There was also a chance the B-52’s fuel would not last the journey. If they met serious headwinds, the Air Force was sending another tanker out to meet them high over the northern end of the gulf.
By 2310 the SEALs were becoming very cold, and the rain had not abated. They stood shivering in the field, jogging up and down, trying to get the chill out of their limbs. Water streamed down their Gore-Tex trousers into their sneakers, which were now waterlogged. They were still dry under their parkas, but the cold rain on their faces was numbing. Rick Hunter prayed that the aircraft would not be late, and that the rain would stop. But it didn’t. The SEALs waited in soaking, windswept silence. None of them uttered one word of complaint.
While they waited, the B-52 raced southward, high above the coastal city of Belomorsk on the southwest corner of the White Sea. Its route would take it above the canal, west of the shoreline of the lake. Lieutenant Chuck Ryder had them steady on the required approach course, as the GPS mechanically counted down the range to the tour ship’s Green Stop. As they flew, the Air Force Lieutenant kept his eyes glued to the GPS, watching the numbers change as the satellites gave an update of their position every one and a half seconds. Right now they were crossing 65.30N. At 63.42N they would be slightly to the west of the city of Segeza, just sixty miles from the northern point of the lake and less than eleven minutes from the drop zone. There were only two rules for Colonel Jaxtimer…don’t be early, and maintain a steady course and speed. Any change would serve as a red flag to a Russian bear in a control tower.
The first rule was easy. They were already six minutes late because the favorable jet stream had eased off. The second rule required no great effort because everyone was right on top of their game. This was the US Air Force at its very best. Major Parker’s radio crackled with a communication from ground control. Once more he called out the identification numbers that would give him clear passage across the old Soviet Union.
Back on the ground Lieutenant Commander Rick Hunter strained to hear the sound of an approaching aircraft, although he knew full well that the B-52 would be far too high for that. There would be no sound whatsoever until it had passed overhead and downwind. He was hoping for a few seconds of warning before the canisters arrived, so he still listened and wondered how long they would have to wait. If anything, the rain was harder, and he struggled to control the shivering and shaking such remorseless cold, wet conditions can bring about.
By 2325, he had placed the laser marker unit on the ground and had activated it, its antenna pointing up and northward. The three SEALs then spread out around it, forming a triangle. They were twenty yards apart from each other. Such a formation would give them the best chance of seeing or hearing the airborne canisters as they came in. The marker unit made no sound as its beam lanced upward into the dark Russian sky, and the silence in the field was total, save for the splashing of the rain in the mud. For a moment Rick Hunter thought he might be going mad. How would anyone or anything find him in this freezing wasteland? What could he possibly be doing here?
The trouble was he knew exactly what he was doing here, and he tried to imagine the big long-range bomber heading south toward him. He glanced at his watch every thirty seconds. It was 2334. He did not know it, but Colonel Jaxtimer was out over the northern end of the lake. And Chuck Ryder was counting. The laser marker had just started “painting” on the aircraft’s receiver, the final seconds now ticking automatically.
Lieutenant Ryder quietly, professionally, helping to keep his Colonel on track, confirmed, “Red light, sir. Bomb doors open…
“Looking good, sir…on track…left…left…on track…on track…6238, sir…that’s it…bombs gone.” No elation. No emphasis. Just quiet information.
Beneath the great bulk of the US Stratofortress, the doors of the weapons bay, in the central fuselage section, between the fore and aft sets of wheels, began to close behind the falling canisters, which were already hurtling through the darkness, straight down the laser beam.
The eight mighty Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofan jets powering the B-52 on toward Moscow left behind a deafening, throaty growl, but it was still not quite audible to the SEALs waiting in the mud below.
Lieutenant Commander Hunter and his men, hunched away from the driving rain, stared at the sky to the north, alert for any warning they might get of the arrival of the canisters. It was almost impossible to see more than about twenty feet above them, and right now there was only blackness. “Should have been here minutes ago,” thought Rick. “Useless fuckers. Have they missed us? Jesus Christ…There’s no way I’m gonna see anything before one of these containers fucking well kills me. But if they don’t drop real close, we’ll never find them. Jesus Christ.”
But then, he suddenly heard the first whisperings of the big Air Force jet engines, high above. “That’s gotta be them,” he thought, his heartbeat rising. And then he saw it — a ghostly shape, almost directly above and very close, falling slightly to one side, jet black. It seemed to swing against the wind. Fast, now slow, silent, and menacing, like a dreadful hooded vampire, swooping low out of the night.
Before the SEAL leader could move more than three paces it was down, landing with a heavy thud in the soft ground not ten yards from where they stood. The field shook, and the parachute billowed and rustled in the wind as Rick wrestled it under control. He called softly into the dark, “Got one. Heads up for the other two.” To himself he muttered, “Holy shit! How about that?”
He heard Chief Cernic say softly, “Here’s one right now…LEFT…LEFT…right there.” And the second canister hit the field almost simultaneously. The third followed five seconds later, twenty yards farther to the south.
“That,” thought Lieutenant Commander Hunter, “was the goddamndest thing I ever saw.” Even more startling, he decided, than the day he and his team blew the engine of General Noriega’s yacht three hundred feet into the air by mistake.
Rick and Ray headed for the nearest canister. “What d’you think, boss?” asked the Lieutenant from Massachusetts. “Do we open it and take a look, or do we just rush all three of them right back over to the woods?”
“The lat
ter,” whispered Rick. “Let’s just get ’em the hell out of this exposed field. Fred, you take the parachutes. Get over to the wood and look for a good spot to bury them with the canisters…leave another chemical marker at the edge of the wood. We’ll start on the first load right away. What are the handles like?”
“Good. Well balanced right in the center,” said the Chief Petty Officer. “Wide with padded leather grips. Big enough for a two-handed hold if necessary.” He grabbed one and lifted. “Christ,” he said. “These things are really heavy.”
Rick’s soaking wet brow furrowed. And he prayed the guys back at Coronado had not misjudged the weight, prayed that he and Ray could lift the canisters. He slipped his big farmer’s hand into the grip of the handle and heaved. The canister came off the ground easily. “Not too bad,” he said. “We can get these over the field and into the trees, but it ain’t gonna be easy — the grass is so damned slippery.”
“Okay, sir,” said the Chief. “I got the first ’chute free. You’re off.”
“Beautiful,” thought Ray. “You’ve made it possible for me to get a hernia…I’ll probably have died from exposure and pain before we get to the next one.”
The Chief quietly confirmed that he now had all three canisters, and the chemical marker at the wall, set up on the GPS. “No one’s gonna get lost unless the GPS dies on us. If you two lose contact, make two short owl-hoots. But stay dead on 130, that’ll take you to the marker on the wall, and on to the wood, where there’s another. If there’s real trouble, that’s three owl-hoots, and we all head for the wall, no matter what.
“By the time I pick our burying spot and get back to the marker light, you two should be there with the first canister. Don’t crash into the goddamned wall like I did.”
“Okay, Chief. Take the left side for your right arm, Ray. We’ll swap sides at a hundred paces.”
The two SEALs lifted the 250-pound canister. Ray’s heart skipped a beat at the weight of it. When he thought of the trek across the slippery grass in the now-driving rain, the bravado drained from him. Rainwater streamed down his face, and he closed his eyes. “This is going to be hard,” he said to himself. “Pace yourself, Ray, old buddy. And please, please God don’t let me fail.” It was the same prayer that had sustained him through Hell Week.
“It worked then,” he thought. “It’d better work now.” He began to move forward, trying to find a rhythm, trying to settle into a regular stride, trying to ignore the fact that this huge weight was much easier for the massively strong Rick Hunter than it would ever be for him. The first twenty strides were not that bad, but the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was rising. Both men were shivering uncontrollably as they fought their way through the pitch black darkness, sliding on the muddy patches, struggling for a foothold. Rick was trying to keep one eye on the dim glow of the compass, trying to hold the flickering arrow on 130. He was also trying to adjust their direction, pulling the canister around, when he went down for the first time, thumping forward onto his knees.
The force of the huge, unbalanced weight heaved Ray Schaeffer forward, and he pitched heavily into the field, breaking his fall with his right fist at the last second. They had gone only forty yards, and Rick climbed to his feet and made two owl-calls into the night. They both heard the Chief answer, “What’s up?”
“Bring the clothes bag, will you. I’ll talk you in…Ray, we gotta stop assing around here like a coupla second-class mud wrestlers…gotta get our stuff off before it gets torn and filthy — that means trousers, shirts, sweaters, and parkas. We can get back in the ship looking a bit wet, but if we stay dressed we’re gonna look like a coupla walking shitheaps on the upper deck. We can’t risk it…We’ll finish this in shorts and sneakers.”
“You mean I’m about to contract pneumonia and a hernia,” said Ray. “Sweet.” He climbed back to his feet and stripped down to his undergarments and stuffed them into Fred’s plastic black garbage bag. And then he grasped the handle on the canister once more, and he and Rick Hunter set off again in driving rain, clad only in their shorts and sneakers. Course 130. The temperature had dropped to 37 degrees Fahrenheit. In the rain and wind, it felt closer to freezing. Neither SEAL mentioned the cold. They just kept moving forward, toward the three-foot-high wall.
After sixty more paces they changed sides. Ray was sweating and shivering at the same time. The cold water streamed down his body, and his left arm was throbbing. He turned to try and grab the handle with two hands, but as he twisted he fell forward into the mud. The canister came down heavily on the back of his thigh, shoving his knee into a sharp flint.
He heard Rick Hunter mutter “Jesus” and felt the great weight move off his leg as the Lieutenant Commander, with an outrageous display of strength, pulled the heavy metal cylinder off him.
“You okay, Ray?”
“Yup. Fine. Just lemme get a grip.”
He struggled to his feet, feeling the warm blood streaming down his leg, feeling the rain trying to wash it away. He hoped the cut was not deep, but there was no time to find out. He grabbed the handle again with his left hand and walked forward, counting the strides as he went. He knew the wall must be close, and he hauled at the canister with every ounce of his strength, trying to ignore the pain in his arm, to dig deep within himself, as he had done so often before, when the chips were down. He did not dare to question whether he could repeat this two more times. He had to repeat it. In the blinding rain, he whispered, “Please, please don’t let me stop.”
“Here’s the wall, Ray.” The welcome words were whipped away by the wind. And then Rick Hunter said, “Okay, let’s rest for one minute, then we’ll get this baby on top of the stones, and drag it down the other side.” Chief Cernic materialized out of the darkness and announced he was heading back into the middle of the field, where the two remaining canisters rested in the mud.
Sixty seconds later, Ray Schaeffer dragged himself over the wall, and he and the big SEAL leader maneuvered themselves into position. Then they carried the canister forward, into the trees, where they lowered it to the ground by the green chemical marker the Chief had left.
The walk back, in the near-freezing rain and twenty-knot southwest wind off the Baltic, was not much short of paradise. Relieved of their heavy burden, the two SEALs marched along, smacking their feet into the mud. After three hundred paces they called out Fred’s name. Just out of sight on the right they heard the Chief snap, “Over here.”
Rick Hunter was concerned at the distance of separation, and he decided they should carry the last two canisters in fifty paces at a time, going back for the third one each time. “That way we get a rest between the drives, and it keeps Fred up close in case we need help.”
It was a psychological masterstroke. Ray Schaeffer felt he could handle fifty paces if he could just get a rest in between, and with a renewed vigor he picked up the new handle, this time with his right hand, and walked forward into the dark. He counted off the first twenty-five paces before the pain began to set in, right across his forearm. Even Rick Hunter was feeling the strain. And the ground seemed to grow more waterlogged by the minute. First Ray went down, then Rick, then Ray twice more. Rick’s knee was cut almost as badly as Ray’s.
But the SEAL code was never broken. Neither of them uttered one word of complaint. When they fell, they got up again. When the pain was too great, they ignored it and walked forward. When Ray felt he could go no farther, he drove on, assuming that he would either make it or die out here in this horrific Russian farmland.
It took one more hour. And it was a truly terrible hour. No ordinary man could have withstood it. The two SEALs, covered in mud, were almost at the end of their tether. Shivering violently, sweat pouring down their chests, they were exhausted by their titanic efforts carrying one-third of a ton across a saturated field, by hand. Neither man had much left.
But they had reached the wall, and now Chief Cernic was stripped for action down to his shorts and sneakers, trembling in the freezing
rain, helping to manhandle the two final canisters over the wall. The three half-dragged, half-lifted them over to the trees, where Lieutenant Ray Schaeffer collapsed on the wet leaves of the woodland.
“Get him up, sir,” snapped the veteran Chief. “Get him up, sir…he’ll stiffen up in two minutes. Get the jackets out and get him upright.”
They pulled the shattered SEAL to his feet, and Rick Hunter wrapped one coat around Ray’s shoulders. The Chief came up with a small flask of brandy, and tipped it between Lieutenant Schaeffer’s lips. The liquid burned its way through the youngest SEAL’s throat and worked its magic. Ray came around, shook his head, and said, “Christ, guys, I’m really sorry. I’m okay. Just lemme sit here for a minute…”
“Keep moving, sir, straightway,” said Fred Cernic, who knew imminent hypothermia when he saw it. “And keep talking…don’t even think of stopping…keep moving.”
He moved to the first canister and opened it. Bull’s-eye. The first things he felt, right on top, were two shovels, and a flashlight. He grabbed them and shut the metal door, handed one to Rick and said, “Pick a spot and let’s start digging…what do you say, Ray?”
“That’s it, Chief…I’ll help in a minute. Just gimme a minute.”
Fred and Rick walked deeper into the wood, using the flashlight sparingly, looking for a spot in the undergrowth. The Chief picked one out under a loose straggling bush. “Let’s pull that out and bury them underneath, then stick the bush back in.”
“Good call, Fred. Let’s go.”
They pushed through the branches, ignoring the scratches and slammed their shovels into the area around the root, loosening the earth. Then they grabbed the stem and heaved, and the entire bush came out in one rush. They did not stop to discuss the matter. They just started to did three trenches, each one six feet long, four feet wide, and three deep, about the size of a well-proportioned grave.
Fred Cernic was tough. He was from New Jersey, and he knew how to dig. But he had never seen anyone dig quite like the country boy from Kentucky who worked beside him. Rick Hunter got into a rhythm, cleaving the shovel into the ground and lifting out a mound of wet earth with every stroke. Fred reckoned he could pull out ten such shovels without a break. Rick Hunter could do thirty.
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