Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (7 page)

Miller brought up another thermal/low-light-level video composite of the same camp. It rotated slowly in a clockwise direction, which meant the Kch herISR bird was circling high above in a counterclockwise orbit. The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft were marvels of technology in integrated imagery overlay. They could lock onto a piece of earth like this base camp and, using a combination of visual, thermal, infrared, and radar sensors, deliver an enhanced picture that was both encrypted and real time. They were now looking at imagery that was eight hours old. The best imagery was obtained at night when the ISR platforms could fly lower and see better than in the daytime. Neither Engel nor Nolan asked if this was a drone or a specially outfitted light aircraft flown by a military contractor. It didn’t matter. They could see that the number of people in the camp had risen dramatically, as had what appeared to be an increase in security activity in and around the camp.

“As you guys can see, something’s going on down there, and it doesn’t fit the normal pattern of drug activity. This building here,” Miller said, pointing to a single structure at the edge of the main encampment grouping, “is probably where they have her—if she’s there. We’ve been able to establish that this hut gets traffic at all hours, suggesting this may be where she’s being held and where they’re probably interrogating her. Earlier today, we got a cell-phone intercept that all but confirmed she’s in the camp. So it’s a straightforward personnel recovery mission. It won’t be easy, but it’s doable.” The senior chief smiled wolfishly, “But, hey, easy for me to say. I’m not going in.” He tabbed a key and the image went to a smaller scale showing a river snaking past about a quarter mile from the camp. “We can insert you here by parachute, probably a free-fall drop since the drug-traffic trapline is alert for low-flying aircraft. As for coming out, we have a special boat team with the amphibious ready group cruising offshore. They can be inserted well downstream and be standing by for an extraction. And, who knows, you might need some on-call firepower.”

“Any intel on the opposition?” Nolan asked.

“Not much. It’s my guess—our guess,” Miller replied, glancing at Lyons, “that security will be in tiers and on loan, or on lease, from the cartels. From the imagery, there’ll be a dozen or more at the site, but there are sure to be plenty more in the area. So you’ll have to limit your time on target. As for Morales, they know what they have and who they have. They’ll interrogate her and either put her up for sale, what’s left of her, or just kill her. Given the connection to Christo and Shabal, they’ll probably just kill her. So a high-value target but not necessarily high-value security. Standard druggie armed thugs but good ones, and they’ll probably be reasonably alert. They will be well armed with minimal training, but not afraid to fight and die. Lots of collective bravado, tactically primitive, and unpredictable. Most certainly, dangerous.” He gave them a palms-up gesture. “Wish I could be more specific, but that’s about it.”

“It’s like this, gentlemen,” Susan Lyons said in a quiet voice. “She put herself and her organization at risk to help us. Now she needs our help. A very brave lady is going to die a horrible death unless you can do something about it. And she does have information we’d like the opposition not to have. Yet I know how it is—that on a mission like this, it’s your call. All I can ask is that you please try and help her.”

With that, she rose and exited the TOC, leaving Miller, Engel, and Nolan Kl, th=sitting in a tight little circle around the flat screen. They were quiet for a long moment before Engel broke the silence. “She certainly does know how it is,” he said, “and she put the turd in our pocket.”

They all, in fact, knew. Personnel recoveries were dangerous and chancy business. Balanced against the chance of success was a significant risk of failure. Failure came in at least two forms: getting the subject of the recovery killed or getting some of your own guys killed, or both. Ultimately, unless it was a rare issue of immediate national security, the go/no-go decision to commit a team to a personnel recovery operation rested at the task force or local level. Since they were operating as an independent detachment, it was their call—they could be ordered not to go, but it was their call to go. It was Nolan who finally spoke.

“If it was just some do-gooder who had gotten lost or pissed off the locals, I’d say she made her bed and let her sleep in it. But since she was working for us, well, that makes it different. Kind of binds the cheese, so to speak.”

Engel nodded. “Yeah. Technically, this makes her one of our own, and we don’t leave one of our own behind. Senior, you’re more read into this than either one of us. You think the good lieutenant is leveling with us?”

Miller leaned forward, elbows on his knees over steepled fingers. “I think she is. She didn’t say as much, but I think she knows and admires this Morales lady. But I give her credit; she seems to be giving us the straight stuff. Either we go get Morales or she dies badly. Sir, it’s your call. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, and chiefs like Nolan and I have to make do on starvation wages.”

“Well, shit,” Engel said. He pushed himself to his feet and began to pace about the TOC. The call would be his—his and Nolan’s. But ultimately, the responsibility was his alone. As with all small-unit commanders, there were three things he must weigh and weigh quickly, as the mission was time sensitive. He had to balance the mission, the lives of his men, and any risk to noncombatants. Noncombatants would be a side issue on a mission like this, but even in a druggie camp there could be women and children.

“When can we go, Senior?” Engel knew Miller would already be staging assets and arranging clearances to support the mission, should he elect to go.

“I can have your support package in place by midnight. It would seem a predawn hit would be in order, with an after-dawn extraction.”

Engel again nodded, this time with some finality. He had only to glance at Nolan for his input—he nodded imperceptibly. “Okay, then, it’s a go. Senior, you know what to do. Chief, roust the boys, and let’s get at it.”

“You got it, Boss.”

Nolan left the TOC to get the other SEALs up and moving. Miller returned to one of his communications terminals and set in motion the mechanics of a special- operations personnel-recovery operation. Engel stepped out to find Susan Lyons. He wanted to see if he could get a little more straight talk from her.

*  *  *

Once alerted for a mission and briefed on the mission basics by Chief Nolan, the SEAL Bandito squad set about their business. They’d done this many times before and needed little direction. Each had his own area of responsibility. From now until they launched for the mission, the squad would collectively prepare equipment, plan the mission, brief the mission, and rehearse their actions on target. This is what they would do if they had two days, two weeks, two hours, or, in this case, about eight hours.

Sonny checked with each SEAL to confirm what weapon he would be carrying and began to set out ammunition, grenades, and special weapons systems accordingly. Since on this mission he would be engaged in room clearing rather than fire support, he would carry the lighter M46, a belt-fed .556 submachine gun. As the squad member tasked with air-operations responsibility, he would also see that the parachutes were laid out and inspected along with the gear bags they would use in the jump. Ray, as the primary communicator, began work on the comm plan with primary and alternative frequencies. He would work closely with Lieutenant Engel to manage the on-call support assets and to monitor the command-and-control net. He also set up the tactical SEAL net, which would drive the flow of the operation on the ground. Part of Ray’s job would be to ensure that each multiband inter-squad team radio was inspected, encrypted, mated to a fresh battery pack, and fully tested. They would not have a dedicated sniper overwatch team for this mission, but Weimy would carry a suppressed Mk12, a sniperized version of the M4 assault rifle that was sniper-accurate for the ranges they’d be working. He, too, could be tasked with room-clearing duties, and the Mk12, if a little long, would still serve in that role. But his primary job would be to kill quietly at a distance. There was little for Mikey to do, as each SEAL medical kit was up to date, as was his own squad medical bag, but he knew he would be responsible for tending to Morales and getting her ready for travel. He haunted the senior chief and Lieutenant Lyons for any updates on her condition. A.J. was the squad point man. His job would be to take the team from the insertion point to the target and from the target to the extraction point. Although the waypoints to the target and the extraction lanes would be GPS-driven coordinates and azimuths, he also needed to be able to find his way by compass and pace count should their GPS fail. For most of the afternoon, A.J. pored over maps and imagery to establish insertion points, extraction sites, and alternative extraction sites.

Nolan and Engel spent the balance of the afternoon reading intelligence reports and looking at imagery of the target. They focused on developing the plan of attack and the all-important actions on target. They’d done this many times before in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the sandbox they had two very distinct advantages. First, they were blessed with good intelligence on the opposition and precise, state-of-the-art targeting imagery. Second, there was always an overwhelming quick-reaction force on standby if they got into trouble. On this mission, they had sketchy intelligence on the bad guys and the target area, and if they ran into problems, their contingencies were limited. They grabbed a quick MRE and worked into the evening. By 2200, they had constructed a reasonably accurate sand-table terrain model of the target encampment and what they hoped was the building where Morales was being held. Nolan stood back to inspect their work.

Kallto “It’s not great, Boss, but it’s probably as close as we’re going to get.”

“I agree,” Engel replied. “You never know enough, but in this case I’d sure like to know a helluva lot more.”

Nolan shrugged. “In the end, it all comes down to the basics—the element of surprise and violence of action. If we get that, then we’ll get this done.”

“And God help us if for some reason they know we’re coming.”

“Amen to that. You ready for operational briefing?”

“As ready as I can be. Let’s do it.”

Fifteen minutes later, the squad was assembled in the TOC. The senior chief and Lieutenant Lyons updated them on the intel picture. Then each member of the squad gave a short briefing on his area of responsibility. Engel then gathered them around the terrain model and walked them through their actions on target—what they
planned
for actions on target. After a short rehearsal behind the warehouse using an old shed as a target building, they began to gear up for the mission. At midnight, an MC-130H landed at the remote airstrip and paused to receive the squad of heavily armed SEALs. As they moved out onto the tarmac, Lieutenant Lyons stepped from the shadows.

“Guys, I’ll not be here when you get back, but I wanted to thank you for what you’re about to do. Good hunting and Godspeed.”

The SEALs clambered aboard yet another C-130 airframe, but this one was different. It was an MC-130H Combat Talon II—a special-operations, deep-penetration bird. At more than three times the cost of a C-130H or one of the later variants, the Combat Talon had an electronic suite that allowed it to “feel” its way through commercial and military radar coverage to stealthily deliver its cargo. But for the guys in the back, the cargo, there was little discernable difference; it was still a 130. For this clandestine pickup, there was the noise of the aircraft coming and going, but no lights. It was a black operation—literally. As they gained altitude, Mikey, who was seated next to Engel, leaned close and shouted in his ear.

“Hey, Boss, me and the other guys have been talking. When we get back to Coronado, we’re gonna get that guy.”

“What guy?”

“The guy that gave you that fucked-up haircut.”

Across the bay of the 130 and to either side, broad white smiles cut the blackened faces of the squad SEALs. A short time later, the drop aircraft approached the target at twenty-two thousand feet, well above an altitude where some notice might be taken on the ground. The ramp/door combination ground open and the heavily laden SEALs shuffled to the rear, bunching up on the ramp. The smiles were gone; now was the time for business. The red lights on either side of the ramp winked out and were replaced by green lights. The SEAL squad tumbled from the rear of the 130 as a single mass.

*  *  *

As the SEALs tumbled into space over Costa Rica, two Sikorsky CH-53E “Super Stallion” Marine Corps helicopters sat turning on the massive flight deck of the USS
Bonhomme Richard
(LHA-6). The “
Bonnie Dick
,” as she was known in the fleet and by those who served on her, was a U.S. Navy big-deck amphibious ship steaming fifty miles off the coast of Costa Rica—forty-one thousand tons of versatile U.S. Navy expeditionary muscle. The
Bonnie Dick
had an impressive array of defensive armaments, as well as a wing of AV-8B Harrier II attack jets, a fleet of assault helicopters, and close to two thousand marines. The downdraft from the Super Stallion’s seven-bladed rotors washed the ship’s flight deck with gale-force winds as the bird’s pilots performed their final prelaunch checks.

“Tower, Bulldog Six-One and flight, ready to lift.”

“Bulldog Six-One and wing, cleared to lift, winds eighteen knots on the nose and stay with me on this net.”