Lemester turned his gaze to the north. He knew that his ship had already been picked up by shore-based radar on Sakhalin Island and pretty soon he could expect to be shadowed, at least electronically. Once he reached his destination and started circling in place, he had a feeling that the Rathburne might get a visitor or two, curious about what the hell they were doing. He'd rather have Soviet visitors than North Korean. Pueblo II was a nightmare Lemester could live without.
Riley returned from the meeting with the target surveillance just as Lalli burst out the 2300 Zulu send. Riley checked in with the captain. It had been a long night for all of them, ever since Trapp had woken them up after hearing the shots. Just before Riley left to link up with Chong and Hoffman, they'd finally received a radio call from Comsky and Trapp. The two had reached the pickup zone a little less than an hour after leaving the objective rally point. Comsky had worked on O'Shaugnesy for almost three hours and then radioed a brief summary of his condition, trying to stay on the air as little as possible.
The bottom line of Comsky's report was that O'Shaugnesy had lost a lot of blood. There wasn't anything they could do other than run a transfusion, which Comsky wanted to avoid unless absolutely necessary. O'Shaugnesy was stable, but that could change. Comsky had pumped the wounded man full of antibiotics but wasn't too optimistic about the chances of preventing infection. Some of the wounds were deep.
The best medicine for O'Shaugnesy would be to get him on the birds tonight and into a hospital.
In the 2300 Zulu send, the captain had written the following:
ZEROTH
DENSER
ABLEXX
RINGWH
XFILCH
OODXXS
REEROG HURTBY URGENT OLEBLO OPPERX EEYOUT
ERZERO
BEARXX
HEGETT
ODXXXW
XTARGE
ONIGHT
TWODEN
SERIOU
OHOSPI
HOLEBL
TSTILL
XXDOUB
SERXXX
SBUTST
TALXXB
OODONE
LOOKSG
LEXXXX
Denser was O'Shaugnesy's code name. Riley knew that message would cause a bit of an uproar at the forward operating base. They'd say the same thing he and the captain had said the previous night: a bear?
Well, that's the way it goes, Riley thought angrily. He could sense a depression settling over the team. With O'Shaugnesy hurt, the team's mood was low.
As soon as it got dark, they'd pull out of the ORP and link up with the target surveillance. Hopefully all the talking on the FM radio hadn't been picked up.
Hooker looked up from the message. "A bear? What the hell did they do, try and pet it?"
Hossey was upset. One of his men was hurt. Mitchell having written serious meant that O'Shaugnesy was really messed up. Hossey didn't know how it happened and it really didn't matter. What was important now was that they get them out tonight. He told Hooker as much.
Hooker held up his hands in defense. "Hey, sir. I care as much as you do about this. I'll contact the SFOB and make sure both birds have the blood on board. We've got his type from the isolation information. The weather looks good for the exfil flight. Let's hope nothing else goes wrong. This thing has been screwed up from the start."
Olinski wearily watched the sun come up and start chasing away the night's chill. His uniform was covered with dried blood. Comsky came by and squatted down next to him.
"How's he doing, Doc?"
Comsky stretched his arms and back. "He's screwed up bad. If he isn't in a hospital in forty-eight hours, he's going to be in real bad shape. You did good last night, stopping the bleeding. If he'd lost any more, we'd be burying him right now. What the hell happened?"
Olinski wasn't sure himself. Going over the ground in the morning light, they'd found a few clues. "The bear must have smelled the food we ate last night, or maybe it just scented us and was curious. I don't think it would have attacked. But O'Shaugnesy must have been startled. He got off two shots on semi from his sub. I figure he shot the bear and all the 9mm did was piss off the bear and make it go after him.
"It took all nine of my shotgun rounds to put it down. And every other round in my gun is a solid slug. That thing took four 12-gauge slugs and five double-aught."
Olinski looked over at the bear carcass and shuddered. It was a big one. It had stood over six feet tall on its hind legs.
O'Shaugnesy had caught a few pellets from Olinski's first shot, but Olinski figured if he hadn't shot when he did, the bear would have finished tearing O'Shaugnesy apart. By the time Reese got out of his bivy sack, Olinski had managed to put the thing down with his last round. Otherwise the carcass would have had a hundred rounds of 5.56mm from Reese's SAW in it too.
Meng was napping in his office when his computer chimed, waking him up. He snapped alert and keyed in his personal access code. He stared in disbelief at the latest message from the FOB.
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
TO: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM/ MSG 56
FROM: FOB Kl
DENSER HURT BY BEAR/ CONDITION SERIOUS/
REQUIRE O POSITIVE/ REPEAT O POSITIVE/
WHOLE BLOOD ON EXFIL HELICOPTERS/
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
For the first time, Meng wasn't really sure about the decision he had made. He realized with a sudden chill that he had never stopped to consider there were real men at the other end of the terminal, men who could lose their lives. He had been so used to playing the game here in Tunnel 3 that none of it seemed real. Punching keyboards and reading computer screens was a strong insulation from reality.
Meng knew the seriousness of his actions and was prepared to face the consequences — probably the end of his career. Theoretically, he had known quite well that there was a chance that members of the team would be killed or injured — after all, he was the one who had written the Dragon program.
Was it worth a human life to send a message to the Old Men? Meng shook his head angrily, dismissing that question — many lives had already been lost, his son's among them. They were a small price to pay for freedom for a nation. The small chance that this mission might seriously shake up the Chinese government and cause change was worth everything.
Meng looked at the clock. Less than nineteen hours to go until the team hit the target. That is if they hit the target now, Meng suddenly realized. He tapped into his keyboard. First he wrote out a message to the helicopter crews at the launch site at Misawa Air Force Base, telling them to take the blood. Then he wrote one to the FOB.
Hossey looked at the message from the SFOB with confusion. They were asking if the team was still mission capable. He looked up at Hooker.
"Don't these assholes think I would have told them if the team wasn't mission capable?"
Hooker shrugged. "Hey, sir. Remember you're dealing with staff wienies. They don't know what a team can or can't do."
Hossey considered the question seriously. Mission capable meant whether the team was capable of blowing the pipe. The team still had the explosives. They were within reach of the target. They had enough healthy bodies to do the mission.