He shook his head and tapped out a message to the SFOB, assuring them that the team was still able to conduct the mission — and reminding them about the blood.
Riley reviewed the situation. There had been no enemy activity in the area so far. If those FM transmissions or shots had been heard last night, they would have seen something by now. So our luck isn't all bad, he reflected. Although two injured, one seriously, without any enemy contact wasn't too good.
In the light of day, he looked around the small patrol base. With five men at the exfiltration pickup zone and the surveillance still at the target, only the remaining five team members were gathered here. Everyone was awake. Riley could feel the anxiety that permeated the camp. The accident with O'Shaugnesy had underscored the seriousness of the situation. They'd trained for years for something like this; now they were going to put it all on the line. It was difficult to train men to such a high level of preparedness, then keep them on a leash, waiting to go. Team 3 had been let off its leash.
When they got back, the men would never be able to tell anyone where they'd been or what they'd done on this mission. They would be provided with a cover story and would have to stick with it. O'Shaugnesy would be listed as having been injured during training. It sucked, Riley thought, but it was the way things had to be.
Riley imagined that the Department of Defense had a good cover story all prepared in case some of them didn't come back from this mission. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your husband was killed during an aircraft crash over water and we haven't been able to recover the bodies." It had been done before and it would be done again.
Riley watched as Lalli limped about, setting up his radio to receive the next send. Riley went over to the captain and sat down on the ground next to him. "Hey, Mitch, we having fun yet? Aren't you glad I asked for you to go with us on this mission?"
Mitchell looked over at his team sergeant and grinned wryly. "Yeah, the old fun meter is all pegged out. Sure beats sitting up there in the S-3 shop fighting paperwork." The team leader turned serious. "I've been thinking about the helicopter lifts. We probably ought to rearrange the exfiltration aircraft loads based on the new situation. Here's the way I see it. Shift O'Shaugnesy forward to the first bird. Devito will be on board to take care of him. Then we'll move Lalli back to the second with us and Comsky can be in charge of him."
It hadn't occurred to Riley that both the team's communications men had been hurt. It made sense to put O'Shaugnesy on the first aircraft. They always tried to cross-load the team as much as possible, putting one man of each specialty on each aircraft just in case an aircraft crashed. The main reason for the shift was that if only one aircraft made it to the pickup zone, they definitely wanted O'Shaugnesy to be on it.
That made the first lift: Trapp in charge, O'Shaugnesy as commo man, Devito as medic, Reese as weapons, Smitty as engineer, and Olinski to round out the six. The second aircraft would have Riley and the captain, Comsky, Hoffman, Chong, and Lalli. Riley considered this mixture, using factors such as the weapons each man was carrying and his skills. Something else occurred to him. "Let's switch Lalli and Olinski. Any of us can handle the radio. O'Shaugnesy sure doesn't count as an effective commo man now anyway. If we get only one bird, then Lalli, who can't walk that well, will go out; Olinski, who can speak Russian, will stay with us. Hell, if we don't get two birds we might as well have Olinski. We can use him as an interpreter when we marry some local girls over the border and settle down in the area. Either that or Chong can take care of us here with his Chinese, 'cause it's a goddamn long walk if we can't fly."
Mitchell agreed to the change. "Good idea."
The captain reached into his ruck and pulled out a freeze-dried meal. "Breakfast for the day. Lunch and dinner also, if you want to get technical. Shall we dine? Or shall we see what wondrous news the FOB sends
us, prior to our repast?" Mitchell added, as he watched Lalli limp over with his sheet of paper.
Mitchell pulled his one-time pad and trigraph out of the cargo pocket of his pants. He started transcribing and decrypting.
ZEROTW OROGER ZEROTW OBLOOD ONEXFI LBIRDS XXGOOD LUCKXX DRATTSX
Mitchell handed the message to Riley. "The colonel wishes us well. We need to get organized to make the hit. We're going to have to make some adjustments with O'Shaugnesy down and Trapp and Comsky at the PZ."
Riley thought a minute. "All right. We've still got the surveillance in place. We've got O'Shaugnesy torn to pieces down at the pickup zone. Trapp and Comsky are also at the PZ, and they're two of the snipers we need to take the cameras out. We'll have to get them back up."
"Yeah," Mitchell agreed. "But I think Trapp will figure that out, don't you?"
Riley smiled. "Yeah, Jim's pretty sharp."
Olinski had set the radio for the 2400Z receive and then decrypted the message. He looked at it for a few seconds, then called Trapp over and handed it to him. "Blood will be on the birds."
"Comsky will be glad to hear that."
Trapp scratched his head as he worked the tactical situation. "Comsky and I are going to have to go back up there. We can wait for dark. I guess we ought to call the guys on the hour and make sure the plan's the same. Hey, Ape." Trapp called Comsky over. "Do you think you can leave O'Shaugnesy without a medic?"
Comsky considered. "Yeah, for a couple of hours. I've done all I can do for him. Ski here can do as much as I can at this point."
"Good, 'cause we got a hot date with a pipeline and I don't want to miss it."
Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk of the Soviet Navy ordered the speed of the Naryn diminished from the twenty-five knots she had been doing to five knots. With the change, the small patrol boat was barely making headway against the current that surged north out of the Sea of Japan toward the Tatar Strait.
Chelyabinsk was disappointed. He'd been enjoying his leisurely patrol along the coastline. The Naryn's usual job was to watch for smugglers running the coast from North Korea into the Soviet Union. As always, there were people on both sides of the border willing to make deals. Chelyabinsk usually stayed in tight along the shore, cruising in and out of the many rocky bays, searching for signs of criminal activity. But several hours previously, shore-based radar on Sakhalin Island had picked up the radar image of an American missile frigate of the Knox class moving through La Perouse Strait. A patrol plane out of Vladivostok had been sent to investigate and had found that the American ship had turned south, once it passed through the strait. They expected the ship to join the other American warships participating in the annual naval exercises with the South Koreans. Still, the operations officer of the Joint Naval Forces at Vladivostok had obviously decided that the American ship needed to be watched.
That had resulted in the order to the Naryn; they were to reduce speed so they would be in position to move out from the coast to investigate if needed. If the American ship stayed on course, the Naryn should pick it up on surface radar in a couple of hours.
The patrol plane was sent back to Vladivostok. Where else could the Americans go but south? Soon the American ship would come in range of the Naryn. It was not important enough to keep a plane circling for hours.