Each man also carried two pistols. One was a 9mm automatic of choice, either Beretta or Browning High Power, in a holster on his vest. Strapped inside his shirt in a shoulder holster, each man also carried a .22-caliber High Standard semiautomatic pistol equipped with a silencer.
These were last-resort weapons, carried more for survival use than anything else: Using the silenced .22 pistol, team members could kill small animals for food if they had to evade for an extended period. To use a .22 on a person required a high degree of accuracy and luck, because the small-caliber round could not be counted on to stop whatever it hit.
Every man also carried one thermite grenade and three small Ml8 high-explosive grenades, which had an effective bursting radius of five meters. A Claymore mine was packed in the top flap of each rucksack. The Claymore was a crescent-shaped mine full of small ball bearings. When fired, it exploded thousands of these balls on a wide front, out to a range of twenty meters. The effect was devastating on anyone caught inside that arc.
O'Shaugnesy and Devito each carried a Soviet-made RPG rocket launcher and five rounds, since they would be the security team on the service road during the actual target hit. The RPG could fire accurately out to five hundred meters and disable most vehicles. The shaped charge in the rocket warhead could even penetrate a tank if it hit in a vulnerable spot.
In addition to the demolitions, the team carried an assortment of special equipment. Every other man carried PVS-5 night-vision goggles. The men would work the goggles in pairs, switching off every hour. Extended wear of the goggles caused eye strain and diminished their usefulness.
O'Shaugnesy and Lalli each packed a PSC3 satellite communication radio, which weighed twenty-seven pounds when combined with its antenna and digital message device group sender (DMDG). This made their rucksacks significantly heavier than the rest of the team's. Once the men were on the ground, the SATCOM radios would be rigged with thermite grenades for emergency destruction. Four PRC68 FM radios were carried for internal communications among the team, if needed.
Two 120-foot ropes were carried. Riley had long ago discovered that he always found a lot of potential uses for a rope whenever he didn't bring one, so now Team 3 always carried two. Every other man also carried a small vial of CN powder, which was a condensed form of the powder used to generate tear gas. This powder could be sprinkled along a trail behind a person if dogs were tracking. A good whiff of CN and a dog would be done tracking for a long time.
The basic food load was five meals, each dehydrated and weighing less than a pound. Heat tabs were carried, which could be used to heat water in canteen cups. A Goretex poncho and bungee cords were taken for shelter if needed, and to sleep the men could crawl into a waterproof Goretex bivy sack.
Each man wore an internationally manufactured brown Goretex boot. Goretex gloves and black watchcaps completed their outfits.
Colonel Hossey had questioned the relatively large load each man was carrying for a three-day mission, but Mitchell and Riley had stood by their decision. Fully loaded, each man had an approximately forty-pound rucksack. Their combat vests weighed almost thirty pounds apiece when filled out with spare magazines, pistols, grenades, survival kit, butt pack, and two full one-quart canteens.
While heavy, the seventy pounds of total gear each team member carried was actually far lighter than the load carried on training exercises. Picking up his ruck with one hand, Comsky referred to it as a "nerf' ruck, it was so light compared to what he was used to. The team had once deployed for thirty days without resupply — just one meal a day added up to thirty pounds of food alone. Riley remembered an exercise they had conducted the previous winter in the mountains of Korea when the team had carried almost a hundred and thirty pounds of gear apiece.
Mitchell and Riley felt satisfied with the choice of weapons and equipment. They had prepared for the worst possible scenario, which they envisioned as making contact and/or having to escape and evade for several days before being picked up. Despite all the ammunition they carried, Riley hoped only three rounds would be fired — the three rounds needed to blind the surveillance cameras.
Riley checked his watch. Two hours until the Combat Talon took off. He considered doing one last verbal run-through of the mission but decided against it. He'd allow the men to spend this remaining time with their own thoughts.
8
Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver.
What is difficult about maneuver is to make
the devious route the most direct
and to turn misfortune to advantage."
The members of Team 3 completed loading their rucksacks onto the floor of the Talon and seated themselves along the right side of the plane on the cargo webbing seats. Wearing black rubber dry suits, with hoods and camouflage face paint, the men looked like seals out of water. The one-piece black dry suits, manufactured by the Viking Company of Norway, covered the entire body except hands and face. It was entered through a zipper in the back; latex seals around the wrists and neck kept out water. Theoretically the person inside would remain completely dry, although Riley had gotten soaked more than once inside a leaky suit. They had triple-checked these suits, and all seemed to be functioning properly. To keep their hands warm in the chilly water, each man wore diving gloves. A dive compass on one wrist would help in navigation once they were in the water. A dive knife was strapped to each soldier's right calf.
Riley had coordinated six checkpoints en route to the drop zone. The loadmaster in the back of the aircraft would relay the checkpoint number from the navigator to Mitchell as they crossed each checkpoint, keeping the team oriented as to where they were on the route. At checkpoint 1, where the aircraft dropped altitude and headed north, Riley would have the team start their inflight rig; at the last checkpoint, six minutes from the drop zone, Riley would start his jump commands.
Every team member felt a surge of adrenaline as the loud whine of the four powerful turboprop engines filled the air. It was a sound that any person who was ever on airborne status would never forget. It meant you were going: no weather delays, no broken airplane, no last-minute cancelation. You were taking off, and the only way you could land was with the parachute on your back.
Meng could sense a slight increase in tension in Tunnel 3. For the members of the SFOB, the simulation was about to start. For Meng, something much more vital was beginning. He had linked up the main console with his office terminal. The link with the FOB no longer existed here in Tunnel 3 because the computer simulation was taking over, but Meng's reprogramming the previous night had kept open the line from his personal program to the FOB. If the real FOB made a call to the SFOB, the message would be routed to Meng's office terminal and stored in a locked data file that only Meng could open. His plan was to monitor his office terminal and answer the FOB using a reverse of the simulation.
In other words, Meng had set up a double simulation. He was running the expected Dragon Sim-13 for members of the SFOB here in the Tunnel. That in itself should not be a major problem. The difficult part for Meng would be keeping up the pretense to the FOB in Korea. He felt that he had worked out most of the bugs the previous night. Both jobs consisted exclusively of monitoring and replying to message traffic.