Operation Southern Cross - 02

by Jack Shane

  Yet Autry’s mind was wandering. He wasn’t thinking of the rampage the unit had gone on in the past twelve hours, or that the unit hadn’t slept in days, or that they hadn’t had anything to eat in that time either. It wasn’t that their spanking new copters didn’t look so new anymore, or that they were running very low on ammunition, or that the Galaxy Net still wasn’t working.

  He was thinking about his wife and his impending meeting with her. The anxiety was eating away at his stomach, along with the pep pills. He had to be on time. That was explicit in her message. In fact, being on time was what it was all about. No last-minute call to duty, no one last beer with his chopper buddies, no eleventh-hour attempts to save the world. He knew where she was going to be at a certain time. If he was on time, then maybe they could talk about the future.

  The LED glow of his watch was burned onto his retinas, he’d looked at it so many times. And the boulder in his stomach was getting pretty hard to carry around. Reality was seeping in. He knew every second spent here, stuck in the Stone Age, meant he was one second less likely to make this very important meeting, never mind just being on time. Assuming he even lived to see another day.

  He looked at the watch again, sparkling phosphorescence when viewed through the night-vision goggles, and checked the numbers on the left-side display, the current local time. Then he looked deep into the volcano’s crater.

  About a minute to go, he thought.

  One conversation he’d had with her kept coming back to him, he just couldn’t shake it away. It happened in the days before XBat, right before they split up. He was with the regular TF-160 squadron back then and had just returned from a hair-raising two months on the Kosovo border. The three-way Serbia-Bosnia-Croatia war was at its height, and the atrocities being committed were most vile. Serb snipers were shooting old women and children to death in the streets, and TF-160 was carrying various U.S. Special Ops soldiers from one place to another, trying but ultimately failing to keep up with the killers. The weather had been bad; Autry had been forced down more than a dozen times. And while on the ground, he’d witnessed horror beyond anything he’d seen before. Sixty long miserable days, doing missions that would have been disavowed if he was caught by the Bosnians or the Croats—and a sure death sentence—and not a pretty one—should he fall into the hands of the Serbs.

  During his first leave, a week-long respite before he had to go back again, he’d had a major blow-up with his wife. It was the first time in their marriage that he’d been in a sustained combat area for such a long time, and understandably, she had believed he had gone through hell. She imagined that now they would spend his seven days locked in one long embrace, together, day and night, praying that he wouldn’t have to go back. Instead, Autry spent the time drinking beer, watching TV and talking on the phone with his friends who were still over in the theater.

  The blow-up happened about halfway through his leave. If his wife’s goal was to make him forget whatever horrors he’d seen over there, she’d also expected him to be bitching and moaning about having to return to the dirty little war. Yet just the opposite was true. Was it his inability to leave his friends when they were still in harm’s way? Or was it his need to get an adrenaline rush at least once every thirty days? He really didn’t know. But in the middle of a fierce argument over dinner he told her that he wanted to go back.

  He would never forget the look on her face.

  “‘Go back?’” she said, bewildered, tears in her eyes. “Why would anyone want to ‘go back’?”

  The distinctive sound of a jet engine knocked him out of his trance. He began violently chewing his gum again, trying to get his mind back on what he was doing. They were up here looking for VAF aircraft—and they might have just found one. The noise rattled his headphones again. He turned his head in the direction of the sound, and flipped on his enhanced Night-Vision. There was a bright speck against the emerald night sky off to the east. A fighter jet. A Mirage, in fact. Flying slow and low over the jungle.

  “He’s eight miles away,” Winters reported, checking the copter’s rudimentary air defense radar. “And going in the opposite direction.”

  “But they’re looking for us,” Autry confirmed, “and that can’t be good.”

  He checked his watch again. It was now 0230 hours. Owens the diplomat and his two SAS guards were back in Caracas by this time, safe with their friends and families and waiting for the sky to fall in. For obvious reasons, they’d left with a vow not to speak about what XBat was going to do—not until morning anyway. Whatever was going to happen, it would be over by then.

  There were problems, though, in this—quite possibly their last—mission. The unit only had one third of their Hellfire missiles left, and less than 25 percent ammunition for all their other weapons, both attached to their copters and handheld. Their fuel reserves were high, though, because of the raid on Legos. In fact, they had more than enough to run the operation, clean up a loose end and then finally get the hell out of Venezuela.

  The trouble was, there were two targets at Area 14: the missile base itself and the palacelike support building. For all they knew, beneath its white and gold paint, the palace could be hiding more missiles, more fuel, more warheads. Maybe more nukes. XBat had enough ordnance to destroy either the missile site or the palace but not enough to take out both. That was their first problem.

  But one thing XBat excelled at was thinking on their feet, adapting to every situation. They were unique in this regard.

  What to do? They didn’t have a lot of munitions, but they did have a lot of fuel. If used properly, fuel could be a very effective weapon.

  The plan they came up with called for the Hellfires to be used against the missile sites. As for the palace, they were going to firebomb it.

  To do this, they’d pooled their aviation gas, and by strapping four, fully-loaded, external fuel tanks together and attaching an extra impact fuse taken from one of the Hellfires, created a massive high-octane bomb. If they were able to put this gas bomb through the roof of the palace, start a fire and then feed it, the place might go down like the supercrack king’s mansion.

  Problem two was the time it might take to destroy the targets. This would not be the hit-and-run stuff they’d pulled off after the Legos raid. They were certain the entire Venezuelan military was on alert by now—the SBI especially—as the information taken from the cargo ship made it clear they were running the show at Area 14. With Venezuelan air force aircraft so close by, if they didn’t see the fire and smoke once XBat began pounding the missile base, then surely someone at the hidden missile complex would get some kind of radio call off and bring the entire VAF down on them before the strike was completed.

  That’s why XBat needed a diversion. A good one.

  Oil. It’s what Owens said everyone was most worried about: XBat doing something against Venezuela’s state-owned refineries, something that would affect the price of crude around the world. Every conflict was about money, and oil was liquid money. If XBat could somehow get the Venezuelans more worried about their inkwells than what may or may not be happening in “Jurassic Park,” it might make a perfect diversion.

  They couldn’t actually hit one of the refineries, though. With everything else going on around the world, such a strike might cause a global depression, or worse. But XBat could fake an impending attack on one. With the Venezuelans so on edge, all it would take was a single helicopter buzzing one of these places, and the VAF would send in all available air assets in a hurry to protect their precious oil. Or at least, that was the theory.

  While planning the Area 14 strike, they’d called up a map on their flight computers, showing the five largest refineries in Venezuela. One was just thirty-five miles to the north, up on the coast. If XBat signaled any inclination to attack this place, they were sure the Venezuelans would do everything to prevent it.

  But what would the copter pilot doing the dirty work run into? Everything the SBI already had protecting the target, p
lus everything they called in. Certainly a lot of jet fighters and a lot of anti-aircraft fire, maybe even SAMs. It would all come down hard on whoever was flying the copter. While flying the actual mission against Area 14 was extremely risky—considering what they’d be shooting their Hellfire missiles at—when the idea of creating a diversion first came up, Autry realized they needed not just a highly skilled pilot to do the job, but a hero as well. Possibly a posthumous one.

  Mungo was the first to volunteer. His action had a precedent. During their North Korean adventure, when the unit was close to discovering the location of the Doomsday Bomb, they had to put together two emergency recon missions. One called for someone to head north of their position to follow a trail of radiation they believed had something to do with the doomsday device’s moving through their area. Another person had to go south, over territory the unit had already covered, to see where the same trail of radiation began. Of course, going this way put the person doing the recon that much closer to getting out of nightmarish North Korea and to the safety of American ships offshore.

  Mungo volunteered to fly the southern route—and given his reputation for passing on duty the dark day of Black Hawk Down, some in XBat doubted he’d ever come back. That he did return—with conclusive proof that the Doomsday Bomb was close to XBat’s hidden location—did little to reduce the black cloud that seemed to follow him around throughout his Army Air career. His heroic actions in North Korea were highly classified and known to very few. To most people in Army Air, he was still the coward of Mogadishu.

  Now he’d volunteered to go off alone again, on a flight path that would take him into the jaws of hell, but also very close to an escape route as well. Autry had to think about it much longer than if one of his other pilots had volunteered first. True, bringing down the wrath of the Venezuelan military on him was a certain death wish on Mungo’s part. But while the rest of XBat were taking shots at what were probably live nuclear warheads, all it would take would be a right turn instead of a left once he reached the coast, and the controversial pilot would be quickly out of the danger zone and on course for someplace like Aruba or Curaçao.

  But then again, Autry felt, Mungo might, in his quest to convince the world he wasn’t a coward, go all out to fulfill the diversion mission, even if it proved fatal. And at the moment, even a glimmer of 100 percent commitment was what XBat needed if they had any chance of destroying the Venezuelan missile base before the VAF showed up.

  That’s why Autry decided Mungo would be the one to go.

  ONLY WHEN THE VAF JET DISAPPEARED OVER THE horizon did Autry signal the rest of the strike force to get into the air.

  Out of the steam and gloom, the two Killer Eggs, four Black Hawks and the two other Chinook gunships rose just above the crater lip. The AWACs Chinook and its crew would stay behind tonight. Theirs was a rescue ship. There were almost five dozen members of XBat. If they really had to push it, all of them could fit aboard the single Chinook, and it could fly them to freedom. It would be a crowded, uncomfortable, dangerous ride—the Chinook could safely carry about half that number—but it had worked before. This was how the survivors of the North Korean operation had escaped once the mission was done. It was always good to have a lifeboat.

  The strike force went into an orbit around the volcano and each crew checked their vitals: fuel, weapons and communications. Everything on every copter was working fine.

  There was no need for further delay. Mungo, riding alone in one of the Killer Eggs, came right up beside Autry’s Chinook. Their eyes met, just for a moment, in the netherworld of NightVision. Mungo’s lips were moving but Autry couldn’t tell if the pilot was thanking him or cursing him. He just rode alongside the Chinook for about ten seconds. Then, without warning, Mungo broke to his left, went into a wide arc, and pointed his nose north.

  The rest of XBat headed south.

  THE SBI SOLDIERS PROTECTING THE ENORMOUS CaracCo oil refinery were armed to the teeth with anti-aircraft weapons: Pakistani knockoffs of Stinger missiles, used Roland mobile systems, even a pair of U.S.-made Hawk missile batteries. The anti-aircraft ring set up around the half-mile square refinery rivaled that of entire cities or even whole armies.

  There was only one problem: the SBI officers in charge of these missile systems were under strict orders not to use them—not unless a confirmed order from el presidente himself reached their command center, the bunkerlike building located in the middle of the oil facility.

  The reason for this: Any hostile aircraft that made it near the giant oil complex would most probably be loaded down with laser-guided bombs and/or strike missiles. Shooting it down with the Rolands or the Hawks might be as simple as pushing one button and letting the computers do the work. Tracking it with a shoulder-launched Stinger clone would be just as easy.

  The problem was what happened after the airplane was hit. High-speed aircraft struck by SAM missiles don’t usually blow apart on impact. More likely, a wing or tail section is destroyed by the SAM’s proximity fuse, allowing the stricken jet to maintain forward momentum for up to a half minute before finally falling to Earth. A cloud of burning, jagged wreckage could cover a lot of ground in those thirty seconds.

  So, having an airplane deliver a bomb to a place like CaracCo was one thing. Having one crash into the facility after being shot down by a SAM was another. A bomb or guided weapon would do a fair amount of damage. But a mortally wounded jet? That damage could be catastrophic.

  That’s why the ring of SAM sites surrounding CaracCo were more for show than anything else. Something for the American spy planes to take pictures of. The policy was clear: the missiles would be fired, but only if the threat to the refinery was deemed very grave and the president decided that using the SAMs was indeed the last option.

  A better defense was for the VAF interceptors flying out of nearby Simon Bolivar Airport to spot an intruder coming in and shoot it down before it got anywhere near the oil refinery. For this the VAF was fairly well prepared. There was a twelve-plane squadron at the international airport always on alert, two planes always airborne and a half dozen more on the runway, engines running.

  Also flying in the area was an ancient French-built STV-1 liaison aircraft which had been converted into a bargain-basement AWACs plane. It carried two simple but powerful radars that could project seventy miles or more. In theory, they would pick up any attacking aircraft while it was still fifteen minutes out from the target. The interceptors would be directed toward the attackers and a dogfight would ensue. End of problem…maybe.

  Even though the people in charge of defending the oil refinery stuck to this plan like religion, the concept was flawed in two ways. It completely discounted the possibility of a cruise-missile strike, the most likely means for attacking a target like CaracCo.

  It also wasn’t equipped to handle an attack by helicopters.

  IT WASN’T THE AWACS WHO FIRST SPOTTED MUNGO’S Killer Egg. It was a radar hot-linked to a second ring of SAM sites being built around the massive oil facility.

  Located fifteen miles out from the first ring, the new radar set was being tested and just happened to be pointing east when it picked up the blip. At first, the operators thought something was wrong with the new equipment. But when their lieutenant looked at the screen, he saw a profile he was familiar with: a fast-moving, low-flying helicopter. Make that very fast and very low. It was only a fluke that they’d seen it at all.

  It was past them in a blink, and by the time the under-construction SAM site reported the intruder, it was already too close to the refinery for VAF jet fighters to prevent it from penetrating the facility’s airspace. But because the helicopter was flying so low, it was something the SAM platoons could handle.

  Word flashed to the inner ring of SAMs that the intruder was heading their way, and that it was probably an American aircraft. But again, here was the problem: To shoot at the intruder, they first had to get the OK from the presidential palace. And that meant a phone call. Possibly a long ph
one call.

  Sitting in the unimpressive, one-window, multi-screen control center, the officer in charge of the refinery’s air defense brigade—known to all as the SAM CO—barked out orders to the two dozen SBI technicians in the bunker with him. He ordered one section to lock onto the incoming blip, and another to warn the other SAM sites along the ring. Their message was clear: Someone would soon be inside the wire.

  Then the SAM CO called the Presidential Palace.

  MUNGO HAD BEEN THROUGH SOMETHING LIKE THIS before.

  Back during XBat’s North Korean adventure, the unit was called on at the last minute to attack a heavily guarded North Korean army base found protecting the entrance to a huge hollowed-out mountain where the Doomsday Bomb was being kept. They did this by first fooling the North Koreans that their radar system was experiencing a glitch, and then attacking an isolated part of their AA defense ring. While every NK soldier was looking one way, the rest of XBat attacked from the other, and the base was knocked out in about a minute’s time.

  If only Mungo had a similar, well thought out plan now.

  His mission was to attract attention, get people nervous—to put in the minds of the Venezuelans that this place, like all their other refineries, could be attacked, at will. Trouble was, this time the rest of XBat wasn’t waiting for him just over the hill. He was on his own, as usual. And from what he could see, the CaracCo facility was bristling with SAMs.