Ghost Force (53 page)

And so they sat the night out, watching through their field glasses, sleeping in turns, one man always at the machine gun. They started their little Primus stove, found some fresh water in a stream, and boiled up some powdered vegetable soup, which they ate with bread and cheese. They did not dare to try any sustained cooking, nor did they intend to do so until they were safely on their way out.

The next evening at 1930, with night now casting a pitch-black darkness over the air base, they stowed their camp, leaving Don Smith to clear their gear into exit mode, and then maintain guard with the radio active in case of an emergency. Rick’s seven-man team moved off in light rain at 1945, toward the Rio Grande base, home of the Super-Etendard aircraft.

Rick and Doug had taken the view that the two checkpoint gates, one out on the right and one adjacent to the main buildings, would be heavily guarded, but they did not know the extent of the wire that certainly surrounded some of the field.

Rick led them forward, walking through the high grass into the teeth of the freezing wind. They all noted with satisfaction it did not penetrate their jackets, nor their waterproof camouflage trousers. And in some ways the wind was their friend, because their enemy was upwind of them, and the SEALs would hear everything as they approached the field.

Rick again ordered them to hit the deck, but this time with rifles in their hands. And they crawled through the thick ground cover, making the final two-hundred-yard approach on their bellies, almost in a canoeing action, just as Doug had been taught at Sandhurst, out on Barossa Common, thirteen years ago.

When they reached the outer border of the base they ran into a heavy wire fence. And they could not tell how far it stretched in any direction. “No sense hanging around to find out either,” said Commander Hunter. “Wire cutters, Bob…let’s go straight through…then we’ll take some kind of a mark inside, and this hole right here will be our way back to the rendezvous point…hit the hole and head due north on the compass for one mile and a half…that way we can’t miss if we get separated.”

Bob Bland made short work of the fence, cutting a hole two feet high by four feet long, virtually unnoticeable in the grass, unless you were looking. Rick made a note of the GPS position at the hole, and radioed it back to Don Smith. One minute later the team was inside the perimeter fence, hurrying over to the main runway on which they had seen aircraft coming and going. Once there, they turned left down the blacktop and went in search of the Super-Es, which, according to Coronado, were four hundred yards down the main runway to the right.

They had traveled almost three hundred yards when they came to the first group of aircraft, out on the left, nearest the buildings. They counted eight of them, all identical, A4 Skyhawks, the single-seater American-built low-altitude bomber, distinctive by its high, curved top fuselage. And by the heavy clips for the thousand-pound bombs it could carry under its wings.

“That’s not the ones,” said Dallas, who had spent much of the afternoon studying aircraft shapes.

And in the darkness, they moved on down the runway, to the next
group—twelve sleek, black, strike fighter aircraft, a slight tilt to the nose cone, the tail fins set slightly higher than the aft fuselage.

“Jesus, guys
…
this is it.”
Rick Hunter stared at the dark shadows of the supersonic French-built Dassault-Breguet Super-Etendards. “This is the bastard we’re after.”

Dallas and R. K. Banfield immediately moved in to check the location of the hatches that cover the engines. They were simple to find, and even simpler to open. Within two minutes, the SEALs had their extremely stable C-4 explosive ready to cut and shape like modeling clay, with two men assisting Dallas and two more helping R. K.

The two young officers placed the charges and inserted the fuse that would detonate the explosive. They then attached the detcord and ran it out to a position on the ground midway between four aircraft. Rick Hunter was waiting there to splice the four lengths of detcord into one pigtail, which he screwed into the timer and set for four hours. All four aircraft engines, and much of the fuselage, would be obliterated at precisely the same moment.

The entire four-aircraft project took the biggest part of one hour, each team sabotaging two aircraft. And then they repeated the operation twice more, ensuring that, barring a miracle, not one of Argentina’s brand-new Super-Es would ever leave the ground again.

Only once did the SEALs need to hit the floor, when a big Hercules C-130 came in, and the lights at the end of the runway lit up half the field. The rest of the time they were more or less undisturbed, although they did notice a guard patrol, traversing the entire field in a couple of Jeeps at irregular intervals, once at 2030 and again at 2115. Rick thought they were going too fast to notice anything.

By 2300 they had completed their task. A pale moon now cast light on the secondary blacktop strip, which ran north-south at the far western end against the ocean. They could see it was a parking area for helicopters, five of them, in plain view now that the night was less dark.

This operation
, thought Rick,
has been a whole lot less trouble than it might have been
. And he led his six teammates back up the main runway, walking fast, anxious now to get out through the fence, back to their base camp, and out of there as fast as possible.

Up ahead they could see the great dark shapes of the wooden telegraph-pole piles that supported the wide gantry of runway landing
lights, the ones they had seen light up only once this entire evening, over two hours ago. Far away to the right they could see the lights of two vehicles speeding along the southern perimeter, though from this range they could not tell whether they were inside or outside the fence.

Either way, it scarcely mattered. If the security guards were driving right around the base, the SEALs troop would just flatten out in the dark grass two hundred yards from the outer track, until the Jeeps had passed. No problem.

But one minute later, with the Jeeps now only a half mile away, there
was
a problem. With a sudden devastating flash of voltage, the runway landing lights came on, catching the SEALs full in their fluorescent glare, lighting them up like small black figures on a milk-white background. Rick froze. He could not tell whether the distant guards had seen them. If they had been seen, with the fence still one hundred yards away, and they hit the ground now, they were finished.

Rick only had one choice.
“Run! Run, guys, for fuck’s sake, run! Straight for the fence…I’ll see you there…”

Dallas, Douglas, and R. K. needed no second instruction. They set off like Olympic sprinters, with the other four right behind them, Bob Bland running with the M60 machine gun. The two Argentinian Jeeps were now bearing down, probably six hundred yards away, as the SEALs hurtled across the high grass, led by Dallas and Dougy, still in the full glare of the runway lights.

They could see the hole through the wire now, but the ground was very rough, and every one of them stumbled and fell, fighting their way back upright, racing, falling, getting up, charging on, trying to escape the lights, an air of desperation adding fleetness to their strides. It was not possible to move any faster over that ground than those six men traveled. They were now lining up to get through the hole.

But, with absolute horror, Doug Jarvis realized the CO was no longer with them. “Rick…Ricky!!” he yelled. “Answer me. Where are you?” But there was only the revving of the Jeep’s engine to be heard, and no sign of the Commander.

He was back in the grass, lying prostrate, facedown, the light on his back, but still, he guessed, hard to see. If the Jeeps kept going, fine. He would wait ’til they had passed, wait ’til the plane had landed, wait
’til the lights were out, and then make his way back to the rendezvous point.

But if the guards in those Jeeps had spotted them, then they would slow down, and make for the fence, with their radios, and lights, and instant access to helicopters, maybe even dogs. And in a race across country, Rick’s men would have hardly any start on them. In his opinion, they might very easily be looking at the last hour of their lives. Rick knew he needed to stay still and then move in from the rear, machine gun blazing, if the guys were caught.

And now he could see the Jeep coming on, fast, two yards away.
Jesus Christ! Are they slowing? Fuck me. Yes, they are. They’re stopping. Oh, shit. They’re getting out. At least three of them are
…
headed for the fence.

Rick lay still, making his preparations, squirming his way toward one of the big wooden pylons supporting the gantry. He felt the pin of his first grenade in his fingers, pulled, and ran forward. He saw the soldier in the rear Jeep turn toward him and raise his rifle, and then he hurled the grenade, diving sideways back into the grass, the bullets ripping into the ground two feet to his right. The grenade sailed high and landed in the back of the Jeep, and the explosion lifted it into the air, killing four men and blowing the second vehicle forward onto its nose.

Rick came to his feet again and hurled the second grenade, which hit the underside of the upturned Jeep and blew it, and its driver, to smithereens…and Rick came running in behind the blast.

The three Argentinians at the fence had turned around, staring at the destruction, uncertain what had happened, half blinded by the massive lights, stunned by the closeness of the explosions. Not one of them had even seen Rick Hunter, and for a split second they just stood there, mouths open, bathed in a light that was brighter than the flames.

And now they ran back toward their burning vehicle. And as they did so, the SEAL leader stepped out from behind it. Rick’s CAR-15 fired three lightning bursts, and all three Argentinian guards fell instantly dead in the illuminated grassland in front of the fence. And the runway lights were still so shatteringly bright, neither the explosions nor the fires had made any impact upon the darkness.

Without a second glance, Rick bolted for the fence, diving under
neath, picking himself up and running straight into the arms of Doug Jarvis, who had come back for him. “Christ, Ricky…I thought you’d bought it…”

“No. Not me, Dougy. The only thing I bought was about thirty minutes for us to get the hell out of here…come on…back to base…before we all get killed.”

0120, SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 1
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, RIO GRANDE BASE

Acting Sub-Lt. Juan Alvarez, his eyes glued to the screen, was watching for the second Hercules C-130 of the night to make its approach from the north. He had been talking to the pilot, calling out height and distance, when Rick Hunter wiped out the entire mobile guard patrol. Juan saw nothing.

His only other colleague in the control tower was Jesus de Cuelo, aged twenty-one, who had been trying to read a book above the interruption of Juan’s jargon with the Hercules, and was just about to tell him to keep it down when the Jeeps were blown.

Jesus thought he had seen a bright flash way down at the end of the runway, and he stood up to see what was happening. However, at that moment, the Hercules came in, thundering out of the sky, its landing wheels hitting the blacktop with their usual heavy impact. Both men watched it taxiing in, but it was not until the Hercules came to a halt that Jesus took another look down the runway.

“You see something way down there near the big lights?”

“No. Where? What kind of thing…?”

“Sudden bright light…almost like an explosion…I think I can still see something…turn out the runway lights…there’s nothing else coming in ’til tomorrow, hah?”

Juan hit the big switch, plunged the distant part of the airfield back into darkness, and there, quite clearly now, were two flickering lights, almost a mile away.

“What the hell’s that?”

“Can’t tell…maybe a plane crash. Ha ha ha.”

“No. That couldn’t be. We’d have seen it.”

“Just joking. But it has to be something…can you see the guards’ Jeep? We could get ’em on the radio…tell ’em to go have a look.”

“Wait a minute…I’ll get ’em…”

Two minutes went by. “That’s funny. They don’t answer…I’ll try the guard room.”

“Fat chance. They’re all asleep.”

“Well, I’ll have to wake ’em up, hah?”

And they took a lot of waking. It was five minutes before the duty officer came to the telephone and listened to Juan Alvarez report that he thought he could see two small fires at the end of the runway, that he could get no reply from the patrol, and would one of the hundred lazy pigs in the guardroom kindly get down there and find out what the hell was going on, or else he’d call the air base commandant.

The guard knew better than to argue with the night chief of Air Traffic Control, who wore on his sleeve, he knew, the tiny gold crossed anchors and thick single stripe of a junior officer.

“Right away, sir,” he growled. But it was not right away. It was about ten more minutes before he and his three colleagues were in a vehicle and ready to go. Five minutes later they stood staring at the burned-out wrecks of the two patrol Jeeps, in which it was obvious that several people had died.

The area around them was pitch-black, save for the headlights and the dying embers of the fires, and they called into the tower for Lt. Alvarez to switch on the runway lights.