Even at 450 yards, Phil recognized the distinctive outline of the FAMAS “bugle” 5.56mm bullpup carbines being carried by the French troops. By 2015, most of the French army had transitioned to the FÉLIN (Integrated Infantryman Equipment and Communications)—the French infantry combat system of the 2000s. It combined a modified FAMAS rifle with a variety of electronics, body armor, and pouches. The suite had an integral SPECTRA helmet fitted with real-time positioning and information system, and with starlight light-amplification technology. The power source was two rechargeable Li-ion batteries. The SPECTRA helmet was used by both French and Canadian military units. In France, it was also known as the CGF Gallet Combat Helmet.
The chronic supply shortages and breakdown of sophisticated electronics repair facilities during the Crunch meant that the high-tech portion of the FÉLIN gear was rendered useless. Without the communications, positioning, and night vision gear, all that they were left with was traditional “dumb” helmets, body armor, and nonelectronic optical sights and “iron” sights for their FAMAS carbines.
It soon became clear that there was only one pair of ALAT enlisted sentries posted each night in six-hour shifts, and that they walked the perimeter in alternating half-hour rounds. Part of their patrols brought the two sentries together at the far side of the airfield at regular intervals. There, they would often take breaks to smoke cigarettes.
At just after 1:30 A.M., Phil and Stan waited until they saw the flare of cigarette lighters, which spoiled the sentries’ natural night vision. The two sentries, both armed with FAMAS carbines, were sitting side-by-side, sharing one pair of earbuds from a digital music player. They were singing along to a French hip-hop song by Tiers Monde. Instinctively, the sentries faced toward the airport’s perimeter fence.
Wearing the masks from their Nemesis suits to conceal their faces from any security cameras, Phil and Stan quietly padded up behind the ALAT sentries and by prearrangement, shot them each ten times with .22 LR Ruger pistols loaded with target-grade standard velocity (subsonic) ammunition. The pistols had been fitted with empty two-liter soda-pop bottles duct-taped onto their muzzles, serving as ersatz suppressors. Each report was not much louder than a hardback book being slapped shut.
They continued just as they had rehearsed: They reloaded and flipped up the safety buttons on the pistols. Then they removed and stowed the pop-bottle silencers. It took a couple of minutes to clumsily pull off the FAMAS magazine pouches and detach the sling buckles from the lifeless bodies of the sentries. Slinging these extra guns and web gear made their heavy loads even heavier, but they weren’t going to walk away from useful weapons.
They moved in, advancing on the rows of helicopters. There were three Pumas and five Gazelles. First they opened the fuel cells on each helicopter and opened their doors, which surprisingly were not locked. (They had brought a large hammer and a cold chisel in case they were.) Each of the raiders carried four one-gallon cider jugs.
They opened the caps on the jugs and poured the sticky napalm—about the consistency of honey—around the interior of the helicopters. They made a point of heavily coating the avionics panels—and poured traces to each fuel cell. With the cider jugs removed, there was now enough room for the FAMAS carbines in two of their packs. Their hands were shaking as they got those stowed, along with web gear and the Ruger pistols.
Their last task before igniting the napalm was rupturing the brown rubber fuel bladder so that it, too, would burn. Ray did this with a pocketknife, punching a hole at waist level and then giving it a short slash, sending a torrent of the fuel spurting out to form a rapidly widening puddle on the ground. Meanwhile, Phil walked up to the fifty-five-gallon drums and noted that they were labeled “110LL,” which he knew was aviation gasoline. A crewman had left a bung wrench on top of one of the drums, which prompted Phil to whisper, “How convenient.” He quickly removed the bungs from both drums, and with some effort, he tipped the drums onto their sides. Doing so made more noise than the pistol shots.
Phil and Stan simultaneously lit pairs of road flares. Ray opted out of this phase of the plan because he had splashed some JP4 on his hand and forearm when he’d slashed the fuel bladder open. Running in sprints with the flares, they quickly set ablaze all eight helicopters and the nearby JP4 fuel bladder.
They then began what would become a memorable escape. The flames lit up the entire airfield, making them feel exposed until they were through the gap they’d cut in the fence and well into the woods. After two minutes, they started to hear secondary explosions of the 20mm cannon ammunition onboard the Pumas cooking off. A minute later, the flames reached the fifty-five-gallon gas drums. They each exploded with a bright flash and a deep bang in rapid succession. The three men felt both exuberant and terrified. They paused to take off their Nemesis masks and stow them in their packs. These masks badly obscured their vision.
They alternately jogged, race-walked, and more deliberately walked until just after dawn. They ran due north for the first hour, then cut east for two hours, and then headed southeast. They found a particularly dense stand of timber on a steep side hill inside the Williams Indian Reservation, the nexus of the Secwepemc tribe. They carefully picked their way up the hill, doing their best to not leave any tracks. There was no level ground, but they found a large fallen tree that was lying transverse to the slope, so they sheltered behind it, keeping them from sliding or rolling as they slept. After their breathing got back to a normal cadence and they’d had some water, they donned their Nemesis suits, which were too hot to wear during heavy exertion, at least during summer months. (One of their nicknames was “Sauna Suits.”)
Despite having been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, they had trouble falling asleep. As they lay prone behind the downed tree, Phil commented quietly, “You know, we didn’t have to go to all the trouble of mixing up and lugging those jugs of napalm all the way there. If we’d only known that there was not just JP4 but also aviation gas there, all we would’ve needed to carry with us was some empty five-gallon buckets. A few buckets of gas thrown into each helicopter and it would have had about the same effect.”
Ray chuckled and whispered, “We may be amateurs, but at least we’re effective amateurs. You guys get some sleep. I’ll take watch for the first three hours.”
They were comforted by the lack of sound of any approaching helicopters. Phil suspected that the nearest functioning UNPROFOR helicopter was in Kamloops, 290 kilometers away, or perhaps even in Vancouver, which was 540 kilometers. At midday, they faintly heard what they thought was a drone, but they never caught sight of it.
The raiders repeated the pattern of taking turns sleeping during the day and traveling quickly at night. They made a point of following small deer trails, or walking up creek beds, with the hope of throwing off any tracking dogs. The second night they walked eleven exhausting hours, changing directions often, eventually zigzagging to the southwest. They stopped for only a few minutes at a time, several times each night, for sips of water from their canteens. Still feeling edgy, they shouldered their rifles and disengaged their safeties whenever they heard a strange sound. This was often just a deer or a startled grouse.
At dawn they arrived at another hide campsite in deep timber. They were thoroughly exhausted. They took off their sodden boots and wrung out their socks. As usual, this would be a cold camp; they feared even a tiny campfire could be spotted by FLIR sensors. After waking in the afternoon they ate one IMP ration apiece, supplemented by some elk jerky.