Riley, Comsky, and Mitchell would stay here at the surveillance point— Riley to shoot out the berm camera and Comsky to shoot out the southeast one. Hoffman and Smith were waiting with them, prepared to hit the target as soon as the snipers finished firing.
In the glow of the security lights from the compound, Riley could see the gleam of anticipation in the others' eyes. He was nervous but wouldn't show it in front of the team. He knew that everyone was nervous — and scared. Once they hit the target, the clock started. The hunt would be on. And Team 3 would be the hunted.
Junior Lieutenant Omsk took his duties as watch officer very seriously. Senior Lieutenant Chelyabinsk had impressed upon him the importance of maintaining a vigilant watch, since the American ship was circling farther out to sea.
"You never know. The Americans may attack you!" Chelyabinsk had told Omsk, laughing, before he retired to his captain's quarters for the night, leaving strict orders not to be disturbed.
Omsk didn't think it was amusing. He was a commissioned officer in the navy of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Enemies of the state were only one hundred kilometers away. Certainly that was nothing to laugh at.
Omsk had grown even more serious a minute ago, when the radar operator reported picking up two low-flying objects moving directly toward the Naryn. Objects coming from the direction of the American ship. The two blips would be flying by in only a few seconds. Omsk glanced down quickly at the 25mm-gun crew. He yelled at them to be prepared. They stared back at him stupidly.
As Omsk was debating about waking up Chelyabinsk, the first helicopter flew by only fifty meters off the port bow. Omsk didn't know what to do. He hadn't recognized the outline of the helicopter and didn't know if it was friendly or not. Then they saw the second helicopter.
Hawkins didn't even see the patrol boat as he flew by it. Flying lead for this leg, he was concentrating on trying to make out the shoreline through his goggles. His instruments told him that the coast should be coming up any second. The two helicopters had been switching off lead every thirty minutes to reduce fatigue.
He saw the ship only when its searchlight came on and probed the sky. The flare of the light exploded in his computer-enhanced goggles, causing them to shut down momentarily to prevent overload. At first, Hawkins thought he was being fired at. His helicopter dropped toward the surface of the ocean before he regained control. He turned slightly left to see what was going on, then saw the ship and the searchlight.
Jesus Christ! Hawkins thought. What the hell was a patrol boat doing here? Hawkins hit his right pedal, swung the tail of his aircraft toward the ship, and opened his throttle all the way, heading for the safety of the shore.
C.J., piloting the trail bird, had also been blinded. He'd seen the patrol boat in his goggles just a second before they blacked out. His first thought concerning the flash of light was missile launch!
C.J. immediately took the proper evasive action, diving down and toward the direction of the missile. This pointed his helicopter directly at the ship. The purposes of this maneuver were to turn the hot exhaust of the helicopter away from a heat-seeking missile, to present a smaller target, and to give the missile less time to react.
In the two seconds it took to tear off his goggles, he'd closed the two hundred meters between his aircraft and the ship. Looming in front of him were the searchlight and mast of the ship. C.J. frantically hauled back on his collective and jerked the cyclic to the right. He felt, rather than saw, his aircraft hit something. It shuddered momentarily, then the power was back and he was gone, slowly gaining altitude. He yelled at Yost to take the controls so he could put his goggles back on.
Omsk stared in amazement as the second helicopter flew off into the dark night. He would have sworn that the helicopter was going to crash into the ship after he turned on the searchlight. It had passed only ten feet above his head, striking the radar mast. Looking up, Omsk could see that the mast had been severed just below the tip. Who were those fools? he thought, just as Chelyabinsk staggered onto the deck.
"What the hell was that?" Chelyabinsk roared.
"A helicopter," Omsk replied.
"What helicopter? Whose helicopter? What hit us?" Chelyabinsk barked out questions.
"I don't know, sir. There were two of them. They had no lights on. The first one kept going. The second dove right at us when I turned on the searchlight. We'd picked them up only a minute ago, coming from the direction of the American ship."
Chelyabinsk stopped yelling at his junior lieutenant. It was obvious that the man was ignorant. He ordered the ship's searchlight turned off.
Back in his cabin, Chelyabinsk sat down and tried to figure out what he would report. How the hell can I put together a report when nobody seems to know what happened? Probably some army pilots out of Vladivostok in training — maybe buzzing the American ship. That fool Omsk must have blinded the pilot by turning on the searchlight. I'm surrounded by idiots. Well, Omsk would pay dearly for the damage to the ship. I'll file the report when we get back to port, Chelyabinsk thought. The captain turned off the light and went back to sleep.
"Fuck this shit. Let's go home."
C.J. turned his eyes momentarily from the mountains flashing by and glanced at his copilot through the goggles. He knew that the little wimp would chicken out when things got tough. He'd never liked flying with Yost and had complained to the captain several times, saying he didn't think Yost had the right stuff to make a flight like this.
"Listen, Yost, we're only three and a half hours out. Those guys will be waiting for us. We're going in."
"Bullshit, C.J. We had a blade strike at least. This thing could shake apart on us any minute. Plus somebody knows we're here now. We'll never get out. That ship will be waiting for us when we come back."
"So we come back south of there. No big deal."
"Come on, C.J. We'll never make it. Fuck those guys. Nobody will blame us for turning around. Not after hitting that ship."
As he flew, C.J. considered what Yost was saying. True, no one would blame them for turning around now. In training, a blade strike is considered an emergency that requires immediate landing, followed by replacement of the entire transmission of the helicopter, since a blade strike can cause damage to the gears. If the transmission seized up while they were flying, the UH-60 would have all the aerodynamics of a rock and would land accordingly.
If that ship reported them, the Soviets would be alerted, which meant they might have lost almost three hours in reaction time. C.J. figured that the Soviets must be on alert — hell, that asshole was missing part of his mast. If that was so, then they would just have to come out over North Korea.
C.J. carefully felt the controls, playing with them slightly. Everything felt normal — no unusual vibrations, just that brief loss of power
when they hit. At least they didn't shoot at us. Probably means they had no idea who we were, C.J. reasoned.
He really couldn't blame Yost for being scared. They all knew that the Blackhawks, loaded with more than sixteen hundred gallons of fuel, were an explosion waiting to happen. If they crashed or were shot down, they wouldn't have to worry about the Chinese finding any wreckage. There wouldn't be enough left of the aircraft to make an ashtray. Yost was probably envisioning that fate.