Dragon Sim-13 (10 page)

"I've got your warning order." He handed it to Mitchell, who read it and handed it to Riley without comment.

CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET

TO: CDR FOB Kl/ MSG 02

FROM: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM

SUBJ: WARNING ORDER

REF: OPLAN TYPHOON ONE SEVEN ALPHA

1. SITUATION/

A/ ENEMY FORCES/ AS PER OPLAN ORDER OF BATTLE B/ FRIENDLY FORCES/ 1 ODA DETK/ 1 MCI30 1ST SOS

2. MISSION/ ODA INFILTRATES VIA MCI30 PEOPLE'S

REPUBLIC OF CHINA/ HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE/

1500 ZULU 06 JUNE TO INTERDICT DAQING-FUSHUN PIPELINE

3. CRITICAL TIMES/ INITIAL CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS TO

THIS HEADQUARTERS NLT 1200 ZULU 03 JUNE/

MUST INCLUDE INFIL/EXFIL LOCATIONS/ INTERDICTION

POINT

FINAL BRIEFBACK 1000 ZULU 05 JUNE

4. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS/

A/ STATEMENT OF REQUIREMENTS/ STOP FLOW OF OIL FOR

MINIMUM II REPEAT 7/ DAYS B/ EXFILTRATION/ 2 MH-60/ 2000 ZULU 08 JUNE CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET

Riley looked at the two officers. "Where did this target come from?"

"That pipeline is one of the targets from the Typhoon oplan," Hossey explained. "It's a strategic target that plays an important role in China's economy. You have the map sheets you need from the war plan files."

Mitchell reread the paper and calculated. "This doesn't give us much time. We've got to give them an initial concept of operations by tonight. Plus we have only two days on the ground. That's cutting it real close."

Hossey agreed. "Once you take a look at the target, work out how much time you'll need and I'll send a request to the SFOB for an extension."

Riley asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. "Is this real or an exercise?"

Hossey sighed. It was the same thing he had asked Hooker. "The code word for the alert was real. I imagine we'll find out after the briefback whether this is real or not. At the very least, the infiltration itself can't start without another final authorization code word. I very much doubt that we'll see that."

Mitchell considered all that. He turned to the rest of the team members, who were engaged in various activities getting the room ready for work. "Everyone grab a seat."

He waited while the men sat down. Mitchell had always been the one to coordinate the overall isolation effort; Riley spread his expertise among the other team members and did the tactical plan. It was time to get things on track.

"All right. Listen up. We've been tasked with a direct action mission into China to destroy an oil pipeline, with a down time of at least seven days." He waited a few seconds to let that sink in. He could see questions start to take form on some of his men's faces and decided to forestall that for now.

"I know you're wondering if this is the real thing or just an exercise. I don't have the answer to that and neither does anyone else here. I want you all to work under the assumption that this is a live mission. That's the way we've always done it in the past, and I see no reason to change now.

"We also don't have much time. I'm going to request an additional day of isolation and another twenty-four hours on the ground. Right now we're scheduled to briefback Monday night and infiltrate Tuesday night. We're supposed to be exfiltrated on Thursday night. We've got a four-hour target window on the sixth. You know that's damn tight, even if we infil and exfil almost right on top of the target. We'll be lucky to get twenty-four hours' surveillance before having to do the hit. Despite my asking for more time, I want you to proceed under the assumption that we won't get any more."

Mitchell looked at the message again. "We also have to give a tentative concept of operations by 2100 tonight." He turned to Riley. "See if you agree with me on this. I feel that our priorities should be as follows: First we need to decide how we're going to hit the target. I want you to work with Hoffman and Smitty on that. Once you come up with where exactly we're going to attack, I'll get with you and we'll work out some infiltration drop zones and exfiltration pickup zones.

As you all can guess, we're going in by Talon and coming out by helicopter."

Riley nodded his approval. Mitchell turned to the other members of the team and ticked off their tasks one by one in order of priority. By the time he was done the team was ready to get to work.

Fort Meade, Maryland Friday, 2 June, 2400 Zulu Friday, 2 June, 7:00 p.m. Local

General Sanders watched as Olson worked with his staff. The data link had been established with the FOB at Osan Air Force Base in Korea and the initial mission warning order had been forwarded. Sanders knew from the one previous Strams exercise they had run with Special Forces that it was now a question of waiting until the team and aircrew started sending back their tentative concept of operations. Once Meng got that, he could start working out the rest of the simulation for the actual execution. The computer was already set with the enemy situation, the target, and all the other known factors. The team's plan was the only missing ingredient.

In the meantime, it appeared that General Olson was going to occupy his staff's time by checking all details, to be sure they didn't have any screwups on this end. He'd just quizzed his operations officer, Colonel Moore, on the security of the mission. He also wanted to know whether it might be a problem that Eighth Army and 6th Air Force in Japan were being cut out of the operation—or, on the other hand, what would happen if they found out about the mission. It was obvious to Sanders that General Olson hadn't spent much time on operational planning prior to this exercise. That was typical of high-ranking staffs and officers and one of the reasons that these Strams were run. It was often the first taste of an operational mission for these people.

Moore was reassuring his boss. "It's not a problem, sir. We're authorized to run these types of missions without the various services' intermediate headquarters being involved. The chain of command runs directly from the National Command Authority, through us, to the FOB, to the employed elements. It's been streamlined that way as a result of the after-action reports from the Iranian hostage mission.

We've cut out all the levels that could interfere with or confuse the flow of information.

"The only people who are in on this, besides us here, are the alerted team and aircrew of the Talon in isolation over at Osan. The airplane is presently in a secure hangar out of view. We've got some worker bees involved for the intelligence, communications, and logistics support over there, but they've been told only enough so they can do their job. The other military elements, such as the exfiltration aircraft, will know only enough to be able to accomplish what's needed. It's under wraps, sir."

Olson nodded. "It had better stay that way. And not just because part of our success in the simulation rests on keeping this secure. If it gets out that we're running a simulation exercise to plan an actual attack into Chinese territory, it would cause a scandal that would be the end of me, and you also. Give me an update on the plan as it stands now."

"OK, sir." Colonel Moore leafed through the printouts of the messages from Osan. "The team's been in isolation since 2000 Zulu, or five tomorrow morning their time. We sent the warning order at 2100 Zulu. They haven't had enough time to do much, other than try to digest the intelligence we're feeding them. NSA has provided some great imagery of the entire length of the pipeline, which we're also forwarding. We're going to let the team pick the actual target spot based on the intelligence and target vulnerability."

Olson interrupted. "What about aircraft range limitations?"

Moore let the air operations man on the USSOCOM staff, Lieutenant Colonel Bishop, handle that. "Sir, there's no problem going in. The Talon has the range and then some to make the entire length of that pipe and back out. The problem will be the exfil helicopters' range. I'll see what they send us for exfil location and work something out. I have a few ideas as to how I can expand the range of the Blackhawks if I have to."

Olson nodded and signaled for Moore to continue.

"I'll be able to give you an update at our 0700 staff meeting tomorrow morning. I should have more information from the FOB by then. The time line is pretty compressed, but I think the team can get in a good plan under the wire."

Olson continued, returning to the issue of security. "Let's war-game this a little. What about the simulated mission? What if we get word

that something's happened to the team and they're compromised once they've supposedly gone in?"

Colonel Moore fielded that question also. "The team and all their gear will be entirely sterile. They'll be drawing it from actual war stockage over there. There's not much we can do to stop them from talking if they're captured. I think there really isn't a high probability of that. It's much more likely that they'd get in a firefight and killed, if compromised on the ground. Other than the bodies, the Chinese won't have much to go on.

"I'm actually more concerned about the aircraft we'll be using to go in and out. We can always deny the team if they're caught. We'll look stupid, and people will know, but it won't be as bad as if we get a plane or chopper shot down over Chinese territory and they can parade the wreckage and crew." Sanders knew that everyone in the room would recognize the picture Moore was painting. Desert One all over again.

Olson pointed a thick finger at his subordinate. "That's the last thing we want to happen, Bill. Desert One was a mess. If something comes up and things get hairy, I'll abort before that happens."

Colonel Bishop added his thoughts on that. "Well, sir, you can do that going in, but it might be difficult once that team jumps out of the Talon. The only way we can pick them up is by helicopter. Like I said earlier, I'll be able to work out the details of that once I find out where they want to be picked up. Right now I'm planning to use two MH-60 helicopters out of the flight platoon of the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group on Okinawa. They've been alerted and are forward deploying up to Misawa Air Force Base in northern Japan later today. The MH-60s are specially modified UH-60 Blackhawks. Those aircraft can be traced back to the United States if they go down intact, although the Chinese do have some regular UH-60s that Sikorsky sold them last year under a military aid contract."

Olson was getting into the play of things. "Couldn't we, for the sake of this problem, pretend we're using civilian helicopters, which couldn't be traced back?"

Sanders frowned at that suggestion, but before he had a chance to reply, Bishop shot down that idea. "No, sir. Not if we're going to be realistic. The exfiltration has got to be flown at night for security reasons, and it's going to be a long flight. You need a lot of special equipment to be able to do that. Forward-looking infrared radar, night-vision devices, and so on. With the rush we're in now, we wouldn't have the time to modify a civilian bird and get it over there. Also, the pilots are trained on that type of aircraft and we wouldn't be able to get them qualified on a civilian aircraft in time."

Sanders thought it was time to clear the air. General Olson was running into the same problem almost all the other commanders hit during the initial stage of a Strams exercise—the inability to separate what was real from what wasn't real on the other end, the tendency to want to play it as an exercise rather than as the real thing. "Sir, you need to treat everything involved in this mission as the real thing. Right now everything is the real thing. There is actually an FOB at Osan with a team in isolation. There is actually a Combat Talon sitting in that hangar. As far as those people are concerned, this is a real mission. You can't try to pretend or use something that doesn't exist."

Sanders pointed at the map and message screen. "You're receiving traffic from both the Command Authority and the FOB. You need to treat both as real. Everything between here and the FOB is hard copy in message format just as it would be if this were real."

Olson frowned. The whole thing was confusing. "Well, what about the other direction? I've got some questions for the Command Authority that I need answered. How do I go about that?"

Sanders pointed at the commo gear. "Like you would if this were real. Send a message like you were inbriefed to."

Olson gestured for Colonel Moore. He outlined the message he wanted sent. "I'm kind of unclear on the operational chain of this thing. I know from the oplan that the chairman gives the final go the night the plane takes off to send in the team, but what about after that? Does he want to give a final go to the team on the ground just prior to the target window? Does he want me to make all further decisions, especially concerning aborting, or does he want me to bounce them up to him?"

Moore took a few minutes to put the questions into the format and then fed it into the terminal. A few minutes later the message board lit up and the printer chattered out a hard copy of the reply.

There was a pause as everyone read the message. Sanders looked to the back of the room where Meng was seated. This was Olson's first taste of what the computer could do.

PORTER HERE/

I WANT TO GIVE THE FINAL GO THROUGH YOU/ BOTH WEDNESDAY AND JUST BEFORE ACTUAL DESTRUCTION ON THE

GROUND/ YOU MAKE THE REST OF THE DECISIONS PETE/ REMEMBER THAT IF IT CONCERNS A POSSIBLE COMPROMISE TO ABORT/1 WANT TO KNOW AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG/ END/

Olson stared at the board in amazement. The machine's use of his first name had been as startling as the message itself. It was as if the chairman had actually written the message. The whole thing was much more realistic to him now. He turned to Sanders. "That was the computer answering me, pretending to be General Porter?"

For the first time, Doctor Meng spoke up from the back of the room. "No, General. As far as you are concerned, that was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself answering you. If you remember that, it will make this week much easier for all of us."

FOB, Osan Air Force Base, Korea Saturday, 3 June, 0102 Zulu Saturday, 3 June, 10:02 a.m. Local