“Yeah, well listen, bub—” Wonder started. He’d balled his fists and taken a step in Koby’s direction.
Avi looked at Wonder. “He’s pulling your leg,” he said.
Wonder thought about it for three or four seconds. “I knew that,” he said.
Koby pointed toward a storage locker behind him. “The chutes are in there,” he said. “They’re already packed, but I know that you’ll want to make them again over yourselves.” He paused. “All except Avi, of course.” He clapped me on the shoulder, moving me forward about six inches. Believe me, the man was strong. “In case you didn’t know, Avi doesn’t like heights. I don’t know what I did wrong to get stuck with him the first day of jumping school but I did. By the second day I realized I was in charge of making sure he made it through so he could wear paratrooper’s wings.”
He looked at Avi, whose face was noticeably reddening. “So, every jump, I threw him out of the plane.” Koby started to giggle. “First, we were using an old Dakota with a removeable hatch cover. He left fingerprints on the molding he was squeezing it so tight.” The Israeli’s head tilted back and he began to laugh uncontrollably. “Every jump—I’d pick him up”—Koby mimed the process—“and toss”—his arms swung forward in a big arc—“and he’d scream all the way down ‘You ben zonaaaaaa!’ ” He wiped tears with his fist. “Then, then when we got to the Hercules, y’know—with the ramp—I had to—”
“Koby—shtock—enough,” Avi interrupted. “I told him all about it. He knows—he knows. So, stop already.”
“Oh, but it was so funny—” The big non-com daubed at his eyes and waved his friend off, “The point is, if he’s going to jump, you’d better make sure he goes first out the hatch, otherwise you’re going to be on the ground by yourself and he’ll be waving ’shalom, litrahot, have a nice trip’ from the plane.”
“I understand.”
“So, okay, mister officer,” he asked, “what’s the plan?”
I explained how I wanted to insert.
The Israeli shook his head. “No way Avi can do that. He’s not trained.”
“I know. That’s why he and I’ll tandem down.”
Koby roared with laughter. “Shiga-on—fantastic idea.” He looked at me again, this time with a hint of grudging respect. “I think maybe you were a sergeant once.”
0250. Wonder and I repacked the chutes we’d use, and went over the harnesses carefully. The chutes were old, but they’d been well cared for. The tandem was a big, nine-cell commercial Vector. I’d jumped the military version before, and liked the way it responded. We sat them next to the shed’s door, then packed and repacked the rucksacks. I covered all the rifle muzzles with tape to prevent their getting filled with earth on landing. We loaded magazines and set them inside the pouches we’d bought, then taped the pouches shut. Wonder gave me half the explosives he’d rigged and half the detonators. You never want one man carrying all the explosives—if something happens to him, the only thing you can do when you get to your target is point at it and go “Boom.”
Koby took me to see the plane we’d be using. It was an old Arava. The Israelis first built Aravas in the late sixties. They’re STOL—Short TakeOff and Landing capable—aircraft. I saw a lot of’em in Honduras and El Salvador in the eighties, when they were used to resupply Contra troops or Salvadoran special forces, landing on rutted eight-hundred-foot dirt runways bulldozed out of jungle only hours before. They can hold seventeen paratroopers, or, when configured as medevacs, twelve stretchers. They also make nice gunships, air-to-air tankers, and ASW—Anti-Submarine Warfare—aircraft. Best of all, they come with oxygen for the crew and jumpers—they have a ceiling of about twenty-five thousand feet.
Of course, our problem was that while the aircraft had oxygen, Avi wasn’t at all sure about the condition of the four portable oxygen rigs at the jump school. They had ’em—so the neighborhood paratroopers and Save’eret personnel could practice HALO jumps. But Koby had no idea how full the bottles were—or what condition they were in.
Sometimes, friends, you just have to go. This was one of ’em. Besides, we wouldn’t be going out of the plane at any twenty-five thousand feet tonight. I’d figured a ten-mile parasail—and given the charts Koby showed me, as well as what he’d overheard on the shortwave weather report broadcast by the Israeli Air Force tower at Ramat David airfield, thirty miles away, we’d be able to exit the plane at sixteen thousand feet. That’s just over a mile above what’s normally considered the safety limit for jumps without oxygen.
Safety limits? Yeah—you see, at altitudes above ten thousand feet, the air temperature drops just over three and a half degrees Fahrenheit for every thousand feet of altitude. At ten thousand feet, the air temperature is about twenty-five degrees. At sixteen thousand feet, that temperature drops to just below zero. Then you figure in the windchill factor—the aircraft speed—as well as the ambient humidity, and you end up with what is known as BFC—Ball-Freezing Conditions.
If we were doing this the SEAL way, we’d be outfitted with insulated undergarments, balaclavas, insulated goggles, heavy gloves, and other extremity-protecting accoutrements. Tonight, we had our jumpsuits, some light Nomex gloves, and balaclavas, and commercial plastic helmets and goggles.
But I was worried about the oxygen. Hypoxia can be a real problem at altitudes over ten thousand feet. It manifests itself in many ways—but the most common is drowsiness, sluggish reaction time, loss of muscle control, blurred vision, and a confused, almost drunken thought process. Kind of the way Stevie Wonder feels after a night on the town.
So were the bottles full, or were they empty? How could I tell? There is an answer, friends—one that I learned at the webbed feet of Roy Henry Boehm, the godfather of all SEALs. “Pour warm water over the oxygen bottles,” Roy once growled to his SEAL pups—including me. “The place on the bottle where you feel a change in temperature, is where the oxygen level is.”
But Roy, what if you’re somewhere where there ain’t no hot water?
“Then,” Godfather Roy quoth, “you improvise. Fuck—you use piss if you have to. Better a smelly O2 bottle than a dead SEAL.”
I looked at Koby. “You have any hot water around this place?” I was downright relieved when he nodded in the affirmative and pointed me toward the spigot.
Six minutes later I knew that the school’s oxy bottles were two-thirds full—more than ample to get us where we wanted to go. We’d solved another of the major problems when we’d bought our two commercial Magellan global positioning system finders. Using a flight map, we could punch our destination into the keypads, and the Magellan would read our positions off of a NAVSTAR satellite, giving us up-to-date information about where we were in relation to our target, as well as keeping us on our flight path. Of course, reading a Magellan while you’re descending in total darkness at a rate of about sixteen feet a second presents its own unique set of challenges. But we’d worry about such things later.
It was the flight path itself that was going to present the greatest challenge. We’re kind of short on time here, but let me give you a nutshell sit-rep. Most of the airspace over Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan is restricted. There are narrow ATS—Air Traffic Service—routes that are clearly marked on all commercial air pilotage charts. There are also notices on those charts that emphasize that travel outside ATS routes is (and I am repeating the capital letters just as you can see them on the maps) STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IOW—in other words—fly outside commercial air lanes and you can get yourself shot down. No warnings. No “excuse me’s.”
Now let us go over the map. To our east, lay two of Israel’s largest and most well-defended Air Force bases, Ramat David and Meggido. To our north was the dual-use, civilian/ military field at Haifa. So our options were somewhat limited. And in any case, all the puddle-jumper tourist sightseeing, crop-dusting, and parachute-school flights from Binyamina were vectored in a narrow north/south corridor, which stretched from the foothills ten kilometers west of Ramat David
, to a five-kilometer strip over the ocean. It was a rectangle twenty-five kilometers wide and twenty kilometers long, which ran from just north of Hadera, to just south of Nasholim, so that tourists could overfly the extensive Roman ruins at Caesarea, peek down at the fish-farming kibbutzim on the coast, and ogle the hotti-hot—which is Hebrew for POA, or pieces of ass—who lay sunning themselves on the miles of first-class shoreline.
Koby stuck a large index finger onto the map just west of Binyamina. “Best bet is here,” he said. “We take off, fishhook south, drop down off the plateau, and fly low along the water, maybe nine, ten kilometers out. It’s the route the Army normally takes to Lebanon, and with the signature the Arava gives off—and if we maintain radio silence—maybe we’ll be mistaken for a flight from Sde Dov.”
Sde Dov. you’ll remember, is the small airstrip just north of Tel Aviv from which most of Mossad’s clandestine flights leave. They don’t usually identify themselves to air controllers. Avi ran his finger along the route. His Hebrew sounded to me as if he was in agreement with Koby.
He turned 10 me. “He’s right—we’ll stay low—keep it right on the water until we’re past Nabatiyeh, then swing inland, cut past the oil tanks near the pipeline at Nahr ez Zahni, then go up the valley, just like we did in ’93.”
They were talking gibberish so far as I was concerned. In ’93, 1 was chasing stolen Tomahawk nuclear missiles in the Pacific with Red Cell. Avi saw the expression on my face and explained. “We had a bad tango problem back in the early nineties,” he said. “The Syrians were allowing half a dozen cells of Hizballah to operate out of the demilitarized zone about twenty kliks from Qiryat Shemona—lots of Katyushas.” I knew where Qiryat Shemona is—it’s the northernmost town in the Israeli panhandle, and the one most likely to be on the receiving end of hostile rocket fire.
Koby picked up the story. “The UN had set up sensors all along the southern route to keep us out.” He spat derisively. “The fucking UN has always been on their side anyway.” Koby’s finger traced a longer, more circuitous route. “So we came in from the north—here—the way they least expected us. Hooked in from the sea, came down the valley, and took ’em from behind.”
I gave Koby a double thumbs-up. “Classic back-door op.”
He grinned. “We killed every one of the furshtunken Hizballah—as well as their Syrian advisers and the Russian mercs keeping tabs on the Syrians. The border was quiet for another seven months. No kids spending the night in bomb shelters. No Katyushas. No terror.” He thumped Avi’s shoulder. “We called it TNT, right?”
Avi nodded.
Wonder grinned. “Because it was an explosive op, right?”
“No—” Koby shook his head. “It’s a whatchamacallit—when all the letters mean something.”
“An acronym.”
“Biduke. Acronym. In Hebrew, TNT stands for Terror Neget Terror—terror against terror.”
I liked the way this man did business. He played for keeps. “We’ll do a little TNT tonight, too—although we’ll be well north of your AO,” I said. I punched the coordinates I’d received from Ken Ross into the Magellan, waited for a readout, and showed the screen to Koby.
The big Israeli made notes on a sheet of paper, took a straight edge, and started drawing lines on his pilotage chart. Moments later, he called me over to the rigging table. “Nu, mister officer, what do you think?”
It was so KISS that it had to work. Which is exactly what I told him.
“KISS—keep it simple, stupid,” he repeated. “I like that. I like it. You know, in the Israeli Army we also have a saying that means much the same. It is, The best is most of times the enemy of good.’”
I knew exactly what he meant, too. You come up with a plan—and it is a good plan, given time restraints, tactical limits, and other operational blips. A workable plan—something that will achieve success. Then, someone way down the line with stars on his collar orders you to stand down and wait. Why? Because staff is working on a better scenario. Or logistics is just about to receive a more sophisticated piece of equipment. Or the intel weenies are almost positively assured of receiving an additional EEI—an essential element of information. And so you stand down. And you wait. And in the meanwhile, crucial opportunities are lost. Your operational edge is gone.
So, in the end, you may achieve that strategic superiority the staff says you will achieve—but tactically, you’re fucked. The hostages will already be dead. And you may now have the advantage of the best state-of-the-art equipment—but it doesn’t do you any good anymore—because there are no bad guys to use that equipment on. And you may have the most up-to-date information available—but you’ll have blown the mission because you waited too long. Bottom line? Lives will have been lost because you sat on your butt waiting for “best.” when you should have kicked ass and taken names with “good.”
Tonight, we were going to keep it simple, stupid—we’d go with good. Shit—we’d go with mediocre if we had to. We’d use what we had, and we’d do what we’d have to. But we would also win at all costs.
Yes, I know they’d probably never literally served in a ship together, but remember what I said earlier about shipmatedom—it can be a matter of shared risks and responsibilities rather than the actual oceangoing experience.
Chapter 21
0323. TAKEOFF WAS SMOOTH. KOBY KILLED THE PLANE’S EXTERIOR lights as soon as we were wheels up, just skimming a dark patch that he told me were banana trees. He banked the Arava to port, and dimmed the instruments. I slid into the copilot’s seat. He handed me the pilotage chart, and a red-lensed pencil light.
“Here,” he said, a finger pointing at a patch of blue off the coast, “is where there will be a problem.” The red light illuminated an irregular-shaped dark blue outline just beyond the hundred fathom mark. It started at Hadera, and ended just south of the Lebanese border. “Military zone,” Koby explained. “We run regular sweeps of the area to keep an eye out for the terrorists who come by sea. The Navy drops passive sensors, and we also use naval commando patrols and some kinds of electromagnetic buoys out there.”
“What’s the solution?”
“I’m going to drop to fifty feet and stay just inside the sensor line, mister officer. One thing in our favor—the Army’s more worried about craft coming east or south. The way we’re heading—north—and the way we’re flying—just the way our Boys might go if they were planning something tonight—maybe we won’t get asked any questions.” He banked starboard as we slid over the coastline.
“Feet wet, I think.” Wonder called out, his nose pressed against one of the small, double-paned aft ports.
I studied the map. “What’s our ETA on drop zone?”
“Good question.” Koby grinned. “Tonight we’re flying—how do you Amerikai say it—by the bottoms of our trousers. If I monitor the radio, I give off signals. If I transmit, I give off signals. So we fly quiet, and maybe the plane will tell me what I have to know by how it handles, and what the winds are like. And if not—inshallah—what happens will be God’s will.”
“So like I said, what’s our ETA?”
“Just like all officers—you want to know everything.” The Israeli laughed. “Okay, mister officer, I would say, fifty-five, sixty minutes at the most—depending on what we find. Look. Dick, by the bird’s route, we’re only going two hundred, maybe two hundred thirty kilometers. But the long way—maybe three thirty, three forty, something in there. We’ve been airborne for what—twenty, twenty-one minutes. We’re cruising at two hundred sixty kilometers an hour—and we’re going to move slower or faster depending on whatever we find. So, you’re the one with gold on his shoulders, you do the arithmetic. I’m only the sergeant—I’ll fly.”
I peered out the windshield for a few minutes, then pulled myself out of the right-hand seat and squeezed my way back. It looked the way most flights do at this stage—the men were grabbing some rest on whatever surface they could lie on. Wonder was sacked out, his head resting on one of the ru
cksacks. Avi had stretched out on one of the two canvas benches that ran along the sides of the fuselage.
I tapped them with my toe. “Let’s start the check,” I said.
Wonder cocked an eye. “Killjoy.” He rolled over and pulled himself to his feet. Avi did the same. “Okay. Skipper.” he said, “what’s the plan?”
Good question. I mean, we had a location. But that was about all that we had. How many hostiles were we going to face? Who knew. How would they be positioned? No idea. Was the positioned fortified? And if it was, by whom—Russkies? Syrians? Mercenaries?
All that sat in the negative column. But we had certain advantages, too. I mean, who the fuck would expect us to come a calling in the middle of the night? Not in the middle of fucking Syria. Not forty fucking miles outside Damascus.
Well, friends, let me tell you a story here while Avi, Wonder, and I go over each and every piece of our equipment to make sure that Mr. Murphy has not screwed with it since we checked it last.
Back in December of 1990, when my nasty, hairy Slovak butt was incarcerated down at the Petersburg, Virginia, federal bad boy’s prison camp and mayoral blow-job facility, my old friend Colonel Anthony Vincent Mercaldi, he of DIA spookdom, came to visit. Over Diet Pepsi and Moon Pies—two of the more gastronomically sophisticated selections from the visiting room’s haute cuisine vending machines—he asked whether or not I’d be interested in a two-week furlough from my lucrative, ninety-eight-cents-an-hour job at the prison’s cable factory, where I worked making electrical harnesses for the Department of Defense. The time, he explained, would be spent training a small unit—no more than eight men—of volunteers. When we’d completed our training, we’d all climb on a C-141 StarLifter aircraft, and ship out to an undisclosed location in the Middle East. From there, I’d infiltrate my team into Baghdad, where we would perform the kind of mayhem SpecWarriors get to do only once or twice in their lives—and that’s if they are very, very lucky. Those of us who survived our visit, Tony explained, would have to find their own way out.
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