Operation Southern Cross - 02

by Jack Shane

  Meanwhile, Autry and the Special K would head for Mount Usborne.

  McCune flew about five miles down the Falkland Sound, each member of his crew looking for anything that seemed unusual on the ground. The terrain was so featureless, it seemed like an easy search. Anything not covered in snow or windblown dirt, or twisted crazily from the gales would stick out prominently and would be sure to catch their attention. Or so they thought.

  A few minutes into this, Mungo pulled up alongside McCune’s copter. He began motioning wildly to McCune with his hands, and for some reason, he had his night-vision goggles down, even though it was now a relatively bright if snowy morning.

  Either Mungo’s radio was not working or he didn’t want to speak even in code, but he continued to perform these weird hand gestures for McCune for at least a minute. Then, inexplicably, Mungo turned his copter 180 degrees and started heading in the opposite direction, back up the channel, toward the open South Atlantic beyond. Before McCune knew it, he was gone.

  McCune had little enthusiasm for figuring out Mungo’s bizarre behavior. He tried calling the wayward pilot twice, but when he didn’t receive any reply, he just gave up and continued his own search south. Not ten seconds later, as they came around one particularly sharp turn in the channel, McCune’s crew spotted something very unusual.

  It was a ship, anchored in a small cove and surrounded by ice. It was tucked up against a huge outgrowth of rock, making it difficult to spot if someone wasn’t looking for it. Obviously this was done on purpose.

  McCune banked left as soon as he spotted the vessel. His guys in back had their gun doors open, their weapons sticking out into the snow. McCune went in slowly, all the time expecting the hills around them to open up with gunfire. But there was no opposition, and it was obvious the boat was empty—or at least its decks were. After two slow passes above the cove, McCune set his Black Hawk down on a small ice-encrusted beach nearby.

  He left his copilot and two gunners with the copter while he and the other two gunners sprinted for the ship. It was about sixty-five feet long, with high sides, an ice-breaking bow and a gaggle of antennas and satellite dishes sticking out of its bridge house. The vessel appeared to be a cross between a very elaborate tugboat and a luxury yacht. After one long look, McCune realized it was probably some sort of research vessel.

  He left one of his gunners at the lowered access ramp and he and the second man went aboard. The deck was covered with snow and ice—and the lack of footprints told McCune that it had been tied up here at least since before the last snowstorm, which could have been just an hour or two ago.

  He forced his way through a door leading to the level just below the elevated bridge. The vessel was very well appointed inside, more luxury here than tugboat. It seemed like too good of a vessel to be down here near the bottom of the world. The Bahamas looked to be more its style. Or the Caribbean.

  He and the gunner walked slowly down the passageways, weapons up, looking in the cabins but finding little more than unmade bunks, candy wrappers and empty Coke cans. They climbed up to the oversize bridge—but there was no evidence here, either, that would suggest the ship was connected to their search for the killer laser. That is, until McCune happened to open a closet door that read FOUL WEATHER GEAR.

  Obviously this was a place were bad-weather clothing would be stowed—but there was no such gear inside. What McCune found instead was a couple big duffel bags holding the clothes of the people who’d apparently donned the foul-weather gear. He reached in and pulled out the top article of clothing.

  It wasn’t a sweater or a wool hat, or heavy jeans or cold-weather gloves.

  It was a red bandana.

  McCune just looked at the gunner and said: “Who the fuck does this belong to?”

  AUTRY’S COPTER AND THE SPECIAL K TROOPSHIP found Mount Usborne ten minutes later.

  Again, it was just over 2,300 feet high, but as mountains went on the very flat terrain of East Falkland, it was the tallest.

  The hopes of both copter crews were raised when they spotted a blue tent pitched on the north side of the summit. Weir’s mission report told them that the killer laser would probably not look like something from a sci-fi movie, stating rather that it might not be any bigger than an amateur telescope, and that the sodium-crystal power supply might not be any more elaborate than several car batteries lashed together.

  All that could very well fit inside this tent. And again, as this place was the highest place on the island, maybe they’d hit the jackpot on their first try. Autry called over to the Special K troop truck to prep up for landing. They were going to assault the top of the mountain.

  They circled the summit twice, ready for but not receiving any hostile fire. The two copters landed and their troops fell out, weapons up, ammo belts slung around their necks. For a moment, though, the soldiers climbing off Autry’s copter—more than a dozen guys now with Lynch and Snow’s crew with them—looked at the guys getting off the Special K troop truck…and laughed. The troop truck crew laughed back. Not only were they all still dressed in their green camos, many still had their faces painted green, and some even had green jungle slime still on them. But everything around them was snow, ice or windswept dirt and they could count on one hand the number of trees they could see, even from way up here.

  Everyone got the joke. Since its inception, XBat’s thing was to blend in with their environment, to become invisible within it. But this time at least, XBat had not dressed properly for the party.

  Half the troopers set up a defensive ring around the two helicopters. Though their rotors had been disengaged, their engines were still running. The other half spread out over the summit. The mountaintop was about ten acres square, with lots of shrubbery and jumbles of wind-shorn rocks. Every inch of it had to be searched, and anything of interest studied as evidence that the laser beam had been here.

  As this was happening, Autry led six troopers down the north side of the mountain, where they’d spotted the blue tent. They approached it cautiously, even though it had appeared abandoned when they flew by it. Up close now, they found it to be nothing more than a simple camper’s tent, one rigged for extreme weather but at the same time, absolutely ordinary. It was empty, and appeared to have been for a while. Did it belong to someone who’d been up here with a laser? Or was it the property of a local climber who’d camped out up here? There was no way to tell.

  Bottom line: XBat’s one clue turned out to be no clue at all.

  When Autry returned to the top of the mountain, he found the rest of the troops looking at something off to the south. Only when he reached their position did he see what it was: a gigantic snow squall was coming at them like a tidal wave of white. This was nothing like the local sea gale they’d flown in on. This was a monster that appeared to be blowing in from Antarctica.

  Autry had to make a quick decision. He ordered the rotors on both helicopters tied down and rocks stuck in front and behind their landing gear. Then he told the troopers to split up and get back into the two helicopters. They would have no choice but stay on the mountaintop until the massive storm blew over.

  Autry climbed up into his pilot’s seat and shut down all but the essential systems—in this case, radio and heat. Then he went over Weir’s mission report again, seeing if there was anything he’d neglected to read concerning this extreme environment, what to do in a snowstorm and so on. But he hadn’t missed a thing, because the report, so short on specifics and so hastily prepared, was barely two pages long. Autry had read it so many times now, he practically had it memorized.

  Thirty minutes went by. The snow became so intense, it covered his cockpit’s windshield. Autry soon lost sight of the Special K even though it was barely fifty feet away. He could still hear the other copter though. In order to keep their cabins heated, both copters had left their engines running, with rotors disengaged. Though this used up precious gas, not to do so was just asking for trouble. In weather like this, it was better to keep an engin
e going, no matter what the fuel situation, simply because there was no guarantee that it would start again if you shut it off.

  The important thing now was, how long did these snow squalls last?

  Forty minutes went by, and still there was no letup. Snow had completely obscured his cockpit windows and the wind was drowning out almost all sound. Autry had tried several times to reach McCune or Mungo on the radio, but each time, all he heard was static. Autry was about to reread the mission report again when he heard banging at his cargo bay door. The guys in back quickly opened it to find one of the troopers from the Special K troop truck.

  He was wearing a body bag in an effort to keep warm.

  “Tell the colonel we’ve got real trouble now,” the trooper said to his comrades inside. “We’ve just ran out of fuel.”

  This was bad news—but it wasn’t as if Autry wasn’t expecting it. Only Autry’s copter and the DAP Lynch and Snow were driving had been able to fuel up at the fish plant—and then the DAP had been destroyed. With the mysterious gunfire preventing any of the other copters from reaching the fuel on the dock, all of them were low on fuel except Autry. Having last refueled in the container ship, it was no surprise that the Special K ran out when it did.

  Autry called back to the man and told him that all the troopers from the troop truck should transfer to his copter immediately. This was done quickly—but now there were three crews, jammed inside his Black Hawk.

  And all of them were wearing body bags for warmth.

  AFTER AN HOUR, THE STORM FINALLY BLEW ITSELF out.

  On Autry’s call, the copter’s cargo-bay doors were opened and incredibly, vast amounts of sunlight flooded in. The sky above was now perfectly clear. The squall was long gone, on its way to bombard the capital, Stanley, fifty miles to the east. The snow it left behind, very dry and light, was about a foot deep and even now, most of it was blowing away.

  The troopers piled out of the crowded copter, everyone in dire need to stretch their arms and legs.

  That’s when the gunfire started.

  It first came as a barrage pinging off the bottom of the Special K’s rotors. Again, Autry thought that one of the unit’s own weapons had discharged. But then another stream of tracers started kicking up the ice on the high rocks around them and again, he realized this was no misfire. People were shooting at them from below.

  Autry barked out a mouthful of orders and in seconds, the XBat troopers were on their stomachs, setting up gun positions along the south-facing ridge, the direction of the gunfire. Autry crawled through the snow and looked over the icy ledge himself. All he saw were muzzle flashes below—dozens of them. There were gunmen hidden all over the southern face of Mount Usborne.

  At that moment, two troopers crawled up to Autry. They reported gunfire coming for positions all around the mountain. Indeed, with one look behind him, Autry could see tracer fire flying up at them in all directions.

  There was only one explanation: the faceless, better-prepared gunmen, maybe the same ones who’d attacked them at San Carlos, had used the storm to their advantage and now had XBat surrounded at the top of the windblown peak. And obviously these guys were somehow connected to the killer laser.

  Autry was in a pickle. He couldn’t lift off with three crews stuffed inside his aircraft. Just having Lynch and Snow’s guys onboard had made flying in the frigid weather a chore. Now they had the Special K’s oversize crew with them too. The lone working Black Hawk would never get off the ground.

  So, unless the circumstances changed dramatically, they had no choice but to fight it out here.

  What followed was one of the fiercest gun battles Autry had even seen. It was impossible to tell just how many gunmen had encircled them—there was still a lot of snow blowing around, and the bright sun made it even harder to spot the enemy in their polar combat gear. The fusillades going back and forth were incredible, though, as the two sides, well-armed, really let it rip.

  Autry spent the time crawling around the mountain’s summit, peeking down at the gunmen and trying to gauge their strength. Just by the sound and the rapidity of fire, he could tell they were all using AK-47s, the most prolific assault weapon in the world. But this seemed to be the extent of their armament. He could neither see nor hear any evidence of higher-caliber guns, rocket launchers, or—thank God—RPGs or mortars.

  Still, XBat was trapped, and woefully ill-prepared for this sort of combat. If another storm came sweeping through, that might be the ball game.

  At the end of that first ten minutes, the XBat troopers had killed about a half dozen of the gunmen, all around the mountain, fools who’d been shot trying to change their firing positions or sticking their heads up too high to aim their weapons. None of the copter guys had been hit yet. But then again, trading body for body wasn’t what this firefight was about. It was about keeping XBat stuck on top of the mountain until they either ran out of ammunition or froze to death. The gunmen, well-insulated by their own polar clothing, seemed content to bring about either outcome. The way things were now, XBat probably would not survive the night.

  It was at that moment that the radio inside his copter started to beep. Autry made his way back to the copter, jumped inside and answered the call. It was McCune. The connection was terrible; he could hear McCane better than McCane could hear him. Typically though, McCune started to tell him everything that had happened to him since they last spoke. Autry had to cut him off. He told the young pilot as succinctly as possible what was happening atop Mount Usborne and immediately he heard McCune’s demeanor change. McCune was the most aggressive pilot in the unit by far, the guy who always came to the rescue. Autry could hear the fury building in his voice.

  They began to discuss what should happen next, but the radio started fading out. McCune quickly double-checked the mountain’s coordinates and then suggested Autry tell the rest of the men to keep their heads down.

  The cavalry was on its way.

  HAD IT BEEN ANYONE ELSE, AUTRY WOULD HAVE taken McCune’s suggestion as part bravado, part exhaustion.

  But he’d been around McCune for almost a year now, and he knew that Higher Authority’s decision to remove the young pilot from the Iraqi theater for overly aggressive behavior had not been a mistake. McCune would come in all guns blazing, there was no doubt about that.

  So as soon as Autry got off the radio, he rolled out of the copter and started yelling at his men to stop firing and hunker down.

  “Captain McCune is on his way in,” he announced. That was really all he had to say. His troopers immediately began pulling back from their positions and making their way to the most solid cover they could find. The many outcrops of jagged rocks on the mountain’s peak provided plenty of this.

  They heard him coming just a minute later, dampened engines not so quiet in the chilly air. The gunmen must have heard him too, because all fire being directed at the top of the mountain suddenly stopped, and was directed nearly straight up instead.

  McCune’s copter roared over a moment later. He came up and over the north side, an unexpected angle of attack, and as advertised, he arrived with all guns firing.

  McCune’s copter was a DAP, meaning it had rocket launchers hanging off both sides, twin cannons in the nose and quad 50-calibers on either side of the cockpit. He also had his four gunners in the back, each firing his own 50-caliber. Usually a DAP’s commander wouldn’t have all of these weapons firing at once, but McCune was not a typical pilot. He sprayed the north side of the mountain with cannon and rocket fire, turned off the weapons for the two seconds it took to roar over the top of the peak, and then turned the copter 180 degrees and started strafing the south side, all without missing a beat.

  The troopers on top kept their heads down, hugging the icy dirt, letting their colleague do his thing. Back in Vietnam, when U.S. troops were in very tight spots, they used to call in air strikes on their own positions. This wasn’t that desperate, but it was close.

  McCune and his men were making more nois
e and firing off more weapons than a squad of attack copters, all while flying the Black Hawk as if it were a jet fighter, swooping, turning, twisting. And while at first the tracer fire in the air was frightening, it quickly grew less and less, until it was obvious that the gunmen weren’t shooting at the copter anymore. Like the XBat guys on the summit, they were hugging the ground and holding on for their lives.

  His colleagues knew McCune could keep up something like this all afternoon. But suddenly, as he was going over for his sixth strafing run, his helicopter’s engine changed its timbre. The copter shot overhead, and those on top saw that the DAP was wobbling badly. They could hear the Black Hawk’s engine begin to sputter, then backfire. Both were sure signs the aircraft was in trouble.

  McCune turned the gunship over, delivering both rockets and machine-gun fire into the east side of the mountain. Then, with his engine smoking badly, he went over the top of Usborne one more time, swooped down low over the gunmen to draw their scattered fire away from the summit, raced along the flat plain that ran to the southwest, and finally set the copter down with a bang on top of a much smaller mountain about a half mile away.

  What had happened? Had the Black Hawk been hit by ground fire? Autry tried mightily to get McCune on the radio but heard nothing but static. After a few minutes of uncertainty, someone saw a light flashing from McCune’s position, a mirror reflecting the bright, near-polar sun. The young pilot and his crew were sending a message via Morse code. They hadn’t been shot down, the blinks said. They had simply run out of gas.

  Now, this was a real situation. A total of four crews stranded atop two mountains, with just one workable copter between them. They were getting low on ammunition, and the fuel in Autry’s aircraft was running out. Because they were at the bottom of the Earth, dusk arrived about 2 P.M. and even now, they could feel the sunlight begin to fade.

  Another message from McCune, flashed from a half mile away, said it all: I think we’re screwed…