Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (8 page)

“Roger, Tower.”

With that, both birds lifted gently from the deck. The intensity of their downwash increased to hurricane force as they pulled into a hover.

The Bulldog wingman, Bulldog Six-Three, dipped his nose and thundered straight ahead into the blackness, the helo’s rotating red anticollision beacons and tiny red, green, and white position lights providing the only light, save that of a full complement of stars overhead. Bulldog Six-One, the lead helo, slid smartly to the
Bonhomme Richard
’s port side and remained in a hover, sixty feet above the black ocean below. Once in a stable hover, the big helo began to drift back to the port stern quarter of the
Bonnie Dick
.

As Bulldog Six-Three turned lazy circles directly above the ship and Six-One hovered, one of the two Special Operations Craft-Riverine, or SOC-R for short, was positioned on the aft portion of the
Bonhomme Richard
’s flight deck. The flight-deck drill this night was to hang a thirty-six-foot, fourteen-thousand-pound combat craft from each helo. Inside each bird, a five-man boat crew from Special Boat Team 22 looked on anxiously. For these highly trained Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, or SWCCs, this was high drama—and more than a little nerve-racking. All they could do was watch as the twenty-ton helicopter hovered over the beloved boat.

Bulldog Six-One’s pilot carefully lowered his hover to just ten feet over the first SOC-R combat craft. A flight-deck crewman in his yellow flotation vest and flight-deck helmet reached up with a long pole and attached the steel cable from the SOC-R’s boat harness to the large cargo hook on the underside of the Super Stallion. Once complete, the landing signals officer standing directly in front of Bulldog Six-One raised his spread arms up and up again, signaling the pilot to lift his hover and accept his burden. Gradually, the Super Stallion took tension on the four-point sling, and the SOC-R was airborne.

The Bulldog lead pilot, moving more carefully now that he had his cargo slung underneath and making small cockpit corrections, dipped the nose of the Super Stallion as he began Kn a he to creep forward. Once through translational lift, he increased speed to ninety knots and took up position on the
Bonhomme Richard
’s starboard side, orbiting in circles five hundred feet above the black ocean. The Super Stallion and the SOC-R now moved as one.

With Bulldog Six-One’s pickup complete, Bulldog Six-Three’s pilot spiraled down from five hundred feet and followed the ship’s wake until he was at
Bonnie Dick
’s fantail. He then eased over and above the second SOC-R boat. The pilots and crewman on the deck completed the same maneuver as with the lead bird. Bulldog Six-Three, mission ready and transitioning to forward flight, eased away from the
Bonhomme Richard
’s port side. Thanks to the skill of the Marine pilots, the delicate maneuver had taken less than fifteen minutes.

“Bulldog Six-One and flight, you are cleared to switch control frequency; come up 262.5 megahertz and have a safe flight.”

“Bulldog Six-One, roger,” the lead pilot replied as he flew straight ahead, still at five hundred feet. Within a minute Bulldog Six-Three was formed up in loose cruise formation on Six-One’s starboard side as the two Super Stallions turned gently east toward the west coast of Costa Rica.

Forty-five minutes later, the two CH-53Es thundered over the treetops of the lush Costa Rican jungle, their slung matte gray SOC-R boats conforming to their every move. They remained just above the treetops to avoid any commercial radar detection, and they showed no lights. The Marine pilots, relying on their Helicopter Night Vision Systems, their GPS navigation systems, and hours upon hours of night-flight training, made their way precisely toward their insertion point with no ground reference points or electronic emissions.

The two Super Stallions slowed as they found the river, Bulldog Six-Three pulling into loose trail behind his leader. Established in a hover over the wide river, the Super Stallion’s pilots gently lowered the SOC-R boats into the water. As they did, each boat’s five SWCCs, with a great deal of relief, clambered down rope ladders into their boats. Once waterborne, they were back in their element.

The “boat guys,” as their SEAL brethren called them, traced their roots back to the U.S. Navy torpedo boats of World War II. The SWCCs, called “swicks,” could take the SEALs where deep draft Navy ships couldn’t—into shallow water and far up rivers like this one. The SOC-Rs drew just twenty-four inches. Their mission this night wasn’t to deliver the SEALs to the fight; it would be to extract them.

The coxswains gave their respective Super Stallions a thumbs-up, and the bird’s pilots cut the umbilical holding the boats underneath them. Their mission complete, the CH-53Es turned west toward the blue water and their home plate, the
Bonnie Dick
. The boat crews immediately began to prepare their craft for high-speed travel into harm’s way. The well-tested engines roared to life at the touch of the ignition. The coxswains then pointed their bows upriver, the engines at an impatient idle and the two Hamilton waterjets holding each craft steady against the gentle current. Each boat leader, a Navy chief petty officer, took charge of his boat and directed his small crew to “armor up.” The SOC-R carried a formidable arsenal of .50-caliber machine guns, 40mm grenade la Kmm hisunchers, and 7.62mm mini-guns.

Chief Ricardo Bautista—the officer in charge, or OIC, of the lead, or One Boat—quietly barked orders to his crew. The noise of the departing helicopters marked their presence, but no use letting those who might be listening know there were
North
Americans on the river.

“You know the drill, Wilson. I want the .50-cals fore and aft, and the mini-guns port and starboard.”

“Got it, Chief.”

“Bachmann, have the grenade launchers at the ready in case we need them.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

There was a flurry of activity as both crews removed the weapons systems from their tied-down, stored positions and mounted them on their craft’s gunwales and fixed stanchions. Heavy cans of ammunition were broken out and made ready. Neither boat showed a light as the crews went about their business in total darkness. There was the occasional flicker of a well-hooded red penlight. The swicks knew their boats, and they knew their systems. On the lead SOC-R, each crewman reported when he was up and ready. It was much the same on the Two Boat.

Bautista watched from his coxswain’s flat, missing nothing. When all was ready, he pulled himself up to his full five feet eight and turned to the others. “Okay, guys, bring it in.” His four swicks collapsed in around the helm. “Now, listen up. We got SEALs on the ground in bad-guy territory. Our job is to extract them safely, and the recent intel says there’s a good chance it’ll be a hot extraction. Everyone, stay focused and stay professional. Call out your targets; do it just like you trained. There’ll be bad guys out there as well as our SEAL brothers. Make damn sure of your targets, then bring the pain. Got it?”

Bautista’s crew nodded in unison. They got it.

“Two Boat, One Boat, over,” Bautista said into his encrypted lip mic.

“Two Boat here, manned and ready, over.”

“Roger, Two. Standby to get underway, One out.”

With that, Bautista slammed the SOC-R’s throttles forward, and the twin 440 Yanmar Diesels went from their idle grumble to a full-on roar. First one craft, then the other, leapt up on step and roared up the river at forty knots. The Two Boat followed a hundred meters behind the One, its crew undoubtedly motivated by a talk just like Bautista’s.

As the two boats sped upriver, their crews, all wearing the latest generation night-vision devices, scanned the shorelines, where the jungle ran right into the water. The river was flat-black under the stars and narrowed imperceptibly as they made their way upstream. Bautista wore a singular night-vision optic. This allowed him to see the dark ribbon of river ahead and to monitor the nav-aids on his console. His primary aid was an enhanced Garmin GPSMAP 720 Marine Navigator, not unlike those fo Kliknitund on mega-yachts. The river, the riverbanks, the Two Boat, and any above-water features were easily seen on the color monitor. Even without the night-vision ocular, he could find his way. Getting there was one thing; getting there at the right time was yet another. A hot extraction could be chancy, high-risk business.

They needed to be on time to recover their SEALs but not too early, as the SOC-R’s roaring engines could be heard for miles. Timing was everything, and in this case, “everything” meant life and death. His split concentration, half river and half electronics, was broken by Wilson on their tactical net.

“Shit, Chief, this jungle looks really thick, probably just like the jungle your pappy saw when he was driving Swift Boats in Vietnam.”

Wilson,
Bautista said to himself. It was always Wilson. He was the crew clown—the two-boat section clown, actually. But Petty Officer Josh Wilson was a superb gunner and considered one of the best in Special Boat Team 22. So Bautista put up with him—even indulged him. The boy was a surgeon with a mini-gun.

“That was my
grand
pappy, Wilson. Now keep your eyes on your sector and your mind on your job.”

“No worries, Chief,” Wilson replied, stroking the barrel of his 7.62mm mini-gun.

“Bachmann, you awake?”

“Roger, Chief, right here.” The reliable Petty Officer Ted Bachmann was both awake and ready. He was the team’s electronics and communications specialist.

“Let’s get the Raven ready to launch.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

Bachmann had carefully assembled and tested the RQ-11 Raven drone. He had only to reach down into the bottom of the boat and carefully lift the little aircraft from its cradle. Less than three feet long and weighing only four pounds, the Raven was one of the better and more useful unmanned aerial systems. The SEALs and the Special Boat Teams depended on it for tactical surveillance and reconnaissance. The Raven’s digital data-link was capable of pushing streaming video of everything its sensors could see from just overhead to the bird’s ten-thousand-foot operational ceiling. This Raven variant has an extended-range capability that allowed it to stay aloft for close to three hours. It was a lot of capability in a small, portable, combat-ready package. And it was operator friendly. Both SEALs and swicks used it extensively.

“Ready, Chief.”

“Make it happen, Ted.” Bautista slowed the One Boat to twenty knots; the boat was faster than the bird.

Bachmann activated the Raven’s sensor package and checked to see that he had a presentation on his laptop computer. Then he switched on the battery-driven electronic motor and held the little drone over his head. Usually it was “thrown” into the air for a launching. This night, with the moveme Kth helnt of the boat, the Raven just floated up and away.

“Raven’s airborne, Chief,” Bachmann reported. “I have good copy on all sensors.”

“Good job. Keep it headed upriver and just ahead of us.” Bautista touched a key on the front of his body armor to shift frequency. “Two Boat, One here. Be advised our Raven is away. We’ll continue upriver at this speed. Estimate we’ll be at our initial layup position in fifteen mikes, over.”

“Ah, roger, One. Initial layup in fifteen minutes, Two out.”

Ten minutes later the two SOC-Rs cut their power and came off step. From there to their initial layup or standby position on the river, they would move at idle speed. At a predetermined 45-degree bend in the river, first one craft, then the other, folded itself i
nto the foliage on the left outside bend of the riverbank. They tied off on mangrove trees with quick-release mooring lines. Both boats shut down and waited in a deafening silence. Each had an unobstructed view up and down the river, and they were virtually invisible along the bank. Ten minutes later, the UHF SATCOM radio crackled to life in Bautista’s headset.

FIVE

All seven SEALs hit the same partially cultivated field within seconds of each other and in a tight group. That was the beauty of a free-fall insertion with steerable parachutes. The seven had formed up on Sonny after they left the MC-130H, fell three thousand feet, and opened their chutes at the same time. Then, under canopy, they followed him to the precise drop zone location he’d selected in planning the jump. Without a word, the squad rallied and moved into the shelter of an abandoned banana grove, stashed their parachutes, and began to quietly strap on their body armor, operational gear, and weapons. It was doubtful that they had been seen, but they were taking no chances. Once geared up, they went into a security perimeter and listened for five minutes in complete silence. Engel called Ray over to him. Ray passed him a handset that was on a coiled tether to his satellite radio.

“Mother Goose, this is Blackbeard, over,” he said in a low voice.

“This is Mother Goose, over.” Through the encryption and the space-borne relays, he could make out the controlled voice of the senior chief. And, Engel thought, perhaps a note of relief as well.

“This is Blackbeard. We are at Point Alpha, how copy, over?”

“Mother Goose. Copy you at Point Alpha, over.”

“Blackbeard, roger, out.”

While Engel called in their safe insertion, Chief Nolan began to work his way from man to man around the circle, making sure there were no issues from the jump.

“Nicely done, Sonny,” Nolan said in a low voice when he came to the big SEAL. Nth hedth="1“Couldn’t have picked a better DZ.”

When he got to A.J., “Ready?”

“Ready, Chief. Target is two eight zero, about four clicks.”

Finally, he made his way to Engel. “We’re up, Boss. A.J. has us about two and a half miles east of the target. Y’know what I really like about an operational jump?”

Engel paused, rolled his eyes, knowing he would have to hear this.

“You don’t have to hump your shit a mile or so off some big Army drop zone, and there’s no rigger standing by to give you crap about how you coiled up your chute.”

Engel couldn’t help but grin. “Okay, Chief. Now that we’ve got that settled—let’s go to war.”

Nolan turned and signaled to A.J., pumping his fist in the air. The Bandito point man turned, rose, and began to move. Without another word, seven dark forms filed out of the banana grove traveling east—A.J. on point followed by Engel, Ray, Sonny, Mikey, and Weimy, with Chief Nolan bringing up the rear. Periodically, A.J. would halt the patrol, and they would all listen and then move out again. Their drop zone was at one thousand feet elevation, just above the coastal mangrove that bordered the edge of a deciduous forest. As they descended to lower elevation, the ground became incrementally wetter. A.J. picked their way through small groves of ceiba and bamboo with an occasional fig or mango tree. The undergrowth was a mosaic of saw grass, low palms, ferns, and flowering shrubs. Had it been daylight, they would have been amazed at the variety, density, and coloring of the orchids. Since they had left the banana grove, they had encountered no sign of cultivation or any structures, but that was expected. They were making their way toward the marshy coastal lowlands. Apart from a dog barking in the distance and the occasional scurrying of an animal or a reptile, they moved in complete silence and solitude. They also moved quickly with the help of their night observation devices, or NODs, and a sliver of a moon that would not set until just before dawn. A.J. had planned their route well, keeping them on solid ground. Only as they approached the target did they begin to walk through marshy areas. At a security halt some four hundred meters from the target, Engel again turned to Ray, who was just behind him in the patrol. This time Ray took a pigtail from his satellite radio and plugged it into one on Engel’s combat harness.

“Mother Goose, Blackbeard. You still with me, over?” he now spoke into his encrypted helmet mic.

“Mother Goose, here, over.”

“Roger, Mother Goose. Approaching target from the east per our planned route. Anything from Whiplash, over?”

Miller paused a moment and then, “Whiplash is on the move and expects to be operational at his insertion point in ten minutes, over.”

“Roger, ten mikes to his insertion. We are moving to the pre-assault position. Estimate forty mikes to beginni Ses iarng the assault, over.”

“Copy forty mikes to the assault. Mother Goose, roger, out.”

At a hundred meters from the camp, they smelled the damp smoke of a wood-burning stove. At sixty meters, they began to hear voices, but there was no alarm in them—mostly coughing, bursts of guttural Spanish, and an occasional laugh. Otherwise, there were only the normal jungle-swamp noises. A.J. halted the patrol forty meters from the encampment, and no one moved for ten minutes. Then he called Engel forward, and the two lay side by side. They could clearly see the long, low building that was the compound’s central structure, plus two outlying structures that were more distant and partially shrouded in the mist rising from the swampy ground. The area immediately in front of them was dark but for dim interior lighting in the main building. This was where they were holding Morales—if their intelligence was accurate. They could see what appeared to be security lights on poles on the other side of the camp, the side served by the main access road, but from their vantage they appeared only as distant and luminescent balls of cotton to the naked eye. In their night optics, they were fireballs. They knew there were other structures near the main access road, but they were lost in mist and mangrove. That there were lights but no generator sound meant there was electricity and perhaps even phone service. What was not shrouded in the rising mist they could see well with their night-vision devices. These were the latest generation of NODs, with low-ambient light and thermal capability. The huts were cheap wooden-framed constructions—cottage-like affairs with corrugated roofing. All were built a few feet off the ground on stilts. There were planks leading from the front and rear of the main building in deference to the muddy ground. Almost all the camp, except what lay directly before them, was protected by a crude eight-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Between the SEALs and the huts, there was twenty meters of a shallow estuary that joined the main river several hundred meters north of the compound. The SEALs had purposefully selected a route that would bring them in this way; it was the most difficult and therefore the least likely avenue of approach.

The encampment was served by a dirt road that led from the far side of the camp due west toward the coast. A secondary road led north from the main building to the river some four hundred meters beyond. A.J. brought them to the eastern edge of the encampment exactly as planned. Engel squeezed him on the shoulder—good job. A.J. had secured his GPS receiver and continued to study the camp with his NOD.

“Security?” Engel whispered.

“I’ve seen two. One is on roving patrol, and the other is seated on a bench just outside the front door to the main building. And off to the right, about forty-five feet in the air, see it?”

Engel did, easily. “Got him.” Both knew that the glow of a cigarette tip that high, which looked like a flare with the NODs, could only mean a sentry in a guard tower. Everything else, including a second guard tower on the far side of the camp, was obscured by a stand of mangrove and the night mist.

The plan called for a predawn assault with an after-dawn extraction. Dawn was still an hour away, which meant they had ample time to scout the encampment and careful St ar a prly ease into position before moving on the target building. Engel moved back close to Ray.

“Tell the senior chief we’re at the camp and have the target structure in sight. Proceeding according to plan.”

Ray nodded and quietly called Mother Goose on his radio with their position and information. Then Engel keyed his tactical radio, speaking quietly into the boom mic from his helmet. Due to the marvels of technology, SEALs and other special operators all wore headphones that allowed them to hear radio traffic clearly, and they had only to whisper into their boom microphones to transmit. The headphones were also equipped with sound-canceling and enhancement features that blocked loud noises, like gunfire and explosions, but amplified all other sound. They could hear footfalls, quiet conversation, leaves rustling, and the buzz of the swamp sounds quite clearly. Engel carried two radios, one tuned to the frequency of his support net and the other to the frequency of his squad tactical net. He keyed his tactical net freq.

“Okay, Banditos, radio check.” They answered in turn.

“A.J. here.”

“Ray here.”

“Sonny here.”

“Mikey with you.”

“Weimy here.”

“All present,” Nolan added.

“Okay, guys,” Engel whispered into his mic, “we’re at the camp and at the jump-off point. Stand by to move to your pre-assault positions. Boss out.” Then he keyed his other radio, the one that connected him to his support net.

“Whiplash, this is Blackbeard. You with us, over?”

“Whiplash is standing by and in position. Laying up thirty mikes at a fast run from your primary extraction site, over.”

A wave of relief swept over Engel. His boat support team was in place, according to plan and just as he had expected. Had it been otherwise, the senior chief would have told him. Still, it was comforting to know there were friends nearby.

“Good to have you with us, Whiplash. We are on target and moving to our pre-assault positions. Our Raven airborne, over?”

“The Raven is airborne and headed your way, and Whiplash is standing by. Good hunting, out.”

Engel paused to take a deep breath, then keyed his tactical radio.

“Chief, come up here.”

“Roger, moving.”

Nolan moved up the file, dropping to a knee between A.J. and his lieutenant. The three of them again studied what they could see across the short expanse of dirty water. For a security force, the water represented a barrier and security; for SEALs, it meant concealment and sanctuary. A few minutes earlier, A.J. had spotted another two sentries on roving patrol on the far side of the camp. That made a total of five. But to get across the water, the sentry in the guard tower would have to be dealt with. Engel bent close to his chief.

“We’re a bit ahead of schedule. Believe we should bring the squad up online and hold here for another ten minutes or so, then begin working our way across the water toward the target hooch. There’s a shallow rise just a few meters to our right and just above the water. I can control from there, and it’s a good perch for Weimy.”

Nolan studied the ground. “From the looks of the security on this side of the camp, there may be a few more Tangos than we bargained for.” Tangos, in the SEAL lexicon, were terrorists, but the term could be applied to any member of the opposition. “Might be we could use your gun in this fight.”

Engel considered this. In a small-unit engagement, the platoon or squad leader needed to keep himself in a position where he had oversight of the ground action and could coordinate the supporting elements. His weapons were his radios. If he were in the fight, he could not do that as well. So, as was often the case, the leader positioned himself to control the fight, and his number two led the fight. Given what he was seeing across the canal in the way of security, another gun in the assault element would certainly help, maybe even be a game changer. But this assault might well turn into a melee, and he needed to stay above it.

“That’s tempting, but I better be where I can control the action.” He glanced at his watch. Then, “Let’s get ’em online and do this thing. Let me know when you’re ready to cross.”

Nolan nodded and keyed his tac radio. “Okay, guys, let’s go get this lady. Weimy, you’re with the Boss. The rest of you, on me.”

The five SEALs moved as one across the short piece of open ground to the edge of the estuary, making good use of the palmetto growth at the water’s edge. Engel and Weimy moved off to their right to a gentle rise that afforded them a good view of the encampment and the main camp building. Weimy began to scan the camp through his Mk12 optic sight, noting targets for future attention and looking for others not yet found. Engel laid his M4 to one side and pulled a small case from his rucksack. Using the lid as a light shield, he flipped on the Toughbook laptop. It took a few moments for the device to find the satellite and bring up the preset program. Then the screen filled with an infrared presentation of a jungle canopy moving slowly from the top of the screen to the bottom. He keyed his radio on the support net.

“Whiplash, this is Blackbeard. I’ll take control of the Raven now, over.”

“Blackbeard, Whiplash. You have the Raven, over.”

“Blackbeard, roger, out.”

Engel typed in a set of GPS coordinates, and the presentation began to rotate as the little drone responded to new guidance. Within minutes, the camp came into view. Engel put the aircraft into an orbit over the target, brought it down to a thousand feet over the camp, and adjusted the camera zoom. He began to pick up details of the camp, the long central building, and finally the two guards on the ground, plus the third in the guard tower.

Nolan came up on the tactical net. “Okay, Boss, we’re in position.”

“Roger, stand by to move when I give you the word.”