The situation that Fretello beheld was pretty much what he had expected. He knew that the odds of finding the silo undefended were low. Still, the Special Forces major had clung to that hope right up to the last minute that they, and not the Russians, would reach the isolated spot first. While anxious for an opportunity to demonstrate his abilities as a leader during a mission such as this, he would have been just as happy had this foray been a simple matter of walking up to the silo, placing their demolitions on top of it. setting off the charge, and marching away.
That he would need to do more than oversee the placement of explosives was painfully clear. The scene he beheld was not encouraging. From their perch, the three men were able to identify a number of defensive positions ringing the silo. The cover and concealment employed by the Russians made counting them difficult. Still. Fretello concluded that there were, at most, eighteen defenders, armed with an assortment of small arms. It made little difference that all of the positions appeared to have been hastily thrown up and were rather shallow. Nor did the lack of heavy crew-served weapons at the site provide any optimism. Patrick Hogg was quick to point out that those weapons could have been placed just about anywhere in the surrounding countryside, set away, yet able to cover the silo. "We could be looking at bait. Or maybe those are the goalies down there, charged with keeping us from booting in the winning score if their teammates fail to keep us away."
While he never cared much for the use of sports analogies to describe tactical situations, Fretello understood what his second command was saying. Just the thought that they might be looking at only a small portion of the defending force caused him to look closer for any sign of other enemy positions. With that thought in mind and exercising just as much care now as they had while approaching the site, the three withdrew to where their men waited for their return.
Having been sufficiently spooked by what Patrick Hogg had said, the American major dispatched three two-man recon teams to hunt out any foes that may have been overlooked during his personal reconnaissance. One team was led by Hector Allons. Together with the Polish NCO who would be overseeing the placement of the demolitions, he made his way to a location not far from where he had stopped earlier with the American and British commanders. Since his men would have the honor of placing the demolition charges, the Spaniard felt it was important to become familiar with the target area. A second team, made up of two men Hogg had picked from his own contingent, circumnavigated the entire site, just inside of what had once been a thriving pine forest that had concealed the missile silo. The third team, commanded by an American Special Forces captain, also circled about the site, but much farther out than the circuit taken by the SAS. The task of the Americans, like that of their British colleagues, was to confirm or deny the existence of an outer defensive perimeter. Though this took time, no one complained, especially since the three teams were also tasked with the additional responsibility for seeking defensive positions that they themselves could occupy once the site was secured.
When the three teams had returned and finished rendering their reports, Andrew Fretello settled down to the task of deciding how they would execute their mission. Drafting a. plan for this sort of thing would be easy for an officer of his training and abilities. As a commander of a Special Forces A team years before, he had faced tactical problems far more complex than this one. During his tour as a staff officer back at Bragg, he had drafted plans that dwarfed his current efforts in every way.
All of those previous efforts, however, had been theoretical exercises or training events. Tempest had been the first major operation he had planned and seen implemented against a real foe. And the assault on the silo that lay but a few hundred meters from where he sat would be the first combat mission that he himself would lead. There would be no after-action review, in which all of the key leaders from both sides would gather and discuss what each of them should and should not have done. The soldiers of the opposing forces would not be able to gather themselves up, dust off their uniforms, and return to their billets, where they would clean up their equipment before calling it a day. Only one side would walk away from the action that Fretello was now planning. Few, if any of those on the losing side would live to see another day. This last fact, together with the understanding that he had but one chance to get it right, created a degree of pressure on the young American major unlike anything he had ever experienced before. With his map laid out and all the information that his scouts had provided scribbled down in his notebook, the staff major began the tedious task of determining how best to proceed.
There were a number of options open to Fretello, each of which entailed its own risks. The presence of the Russians at the silo meant that there would be an assault. How best to go about taking down those defenders was the first problem he addressed. He neither had the numbers with which to overwhelm his foe, nor did he have any interest in throwing away the men he had by simply rushing the site. The advantages Fretello assumed he did have, and which the Russians could not easily match, lay in his superiority in weaponry and the skill with which the NATO troops could employ them. Beside the fact that every man with him was a crack shot, each of the teams had a designated sniper armed with a powerful, large-caliber rifle. Though it would take some time, Fretello was fairly sure that he could deploy the bulk of his command in a manner that would allow them to bring their superior firepower to bear upon every square meter of the site. If he couldn't physically throw the Russians out, he would cut them down one by one.
Having opted to eliminate the opposition by fire, the timing of the attack had to be settled upon. Had his command been an established one, or one that had trained together for an operation such as this, Fretello would have preferred a night attack. But he had serious reservations about initiating an action in total darkness with a group of people who had been thrown together in a haphazard manner. Coordination of their efforts during the engagement would be, at best, problematical. If he found that the situation was getting out of control once the assault had been started, Fretello appreciated the fact that he lacked the experience, the procedures, and the means of communication with which to exercise proper command and control under those conditions. Though it meant losing one of the edges that special-ops units often relied on, the risks of striking while it was still light were far less than waiting for darkness and placing his faith in the hope that nothing would go wrong. If there was one thing that Andrew Fretello did know for sure, it was that things always went wrong in battle.
Patrick Hogg watched the American major fret and ponder over what to do next. The SAS officer knew that the Special Forces officer was struggling with decisions that he himself had faced before. For a moment, Hogg considered venturing over to the American and offering his services and advice. That was, he imagined, what the American colonel had in mind when he assigned the SAS contingent to this group.
The idea of interrupting like that, however, went against Hogg's nature. Like most officers who chose Special Ops over a more conventional military career, the Irishman enjoyed the independence and freedom from over supervision that the SAS offered. He derived a certain amount of pride in the fact that when handed an assignment, he was only told what he was expected to do, not how to do it. Since the mind-set of America's Special Forces wasn't much different than that held by an SAS officer, Hogg figured that his efforts to assist would be construed as arrogant and insulting. So he let the matter drop. Besides, if there was something about the final plan that the American came up with that he didn't much like, he would have the opportunity to voice his concern when it was briefed to him and the other officers waiting patiently to get on with the task at hand.