Lieutenant Duc, after depositing his first package right on the money, released the aft SPIE rigging and nosed down toward the primary target a quarter-mile dead ahead. He dropped twenty feet more in altitude, leaving a clearance of just that same distance between the boots of the troopers hanging from the forward rig and the ground. Crossing Central Control Road, he accelerated to sixty knots, pushing the dangling troopers toward the rear in a steady sway. The five men remained facing forward, a product of the SPIE rig’s designed stability, their stubby MP5SD4 submachine guns trained on the low gray structure that was coming at them fast. Very fast.
“On target,” Duc said, alerting the men twenty feet below to prepare for landing.
Major Sean Graber heard the warning in his earpiece, but there was no need to key the mic on his right chest and respond. He, like the four others arrayed to his sides on the rig, bent his knees slightly and kept his legs close together without letting them touch. Their boots caught the ground as Duc flared the Pave Hawk, the bunker practically in their face. They all released and went for the two entrances, one each on the north and south sides. Sean, Lewis, and Goldfarb took the south; Antonelli and Quimpo the north.
Graber heard the SPIE rig hit the ground a few yards away as the Pave Hawk cleared to the south, away from where the power masts and the lines strung between them would be. His moves, like all the troopers’, were quick and crisp. They went to each side of the door in crouches. One trooper reached for the top of the hinge side and stuck one end of a gray strip there. The other end hung straight down against the door as a plumb line would, a small wire trailing to the hand of the trooper who had placed it there.
Step one, Insertion, had just been completed.
“Go!” Sean said into the mic.
The triangular shaped det cord exploded as the troopers closed their eyes to avoid the bright flash, though that was more a concern in darkness. A hollow core of aluminum inside the explosive strip, shaped like a V pointing toward the door, focused the force of the blast against the old steel door. It ruptured along a straight line running from top to bottom and tilted inward, swinging toward the latch side, before falling to the concrete floor with a clang. On the north side, the same process was repeated within a second of that on the south.
Step two, Entry, was done.
The proper entry of a room or building where hostiles might be is choreographed long before any attempt is ever considered. When done simultaneously from several points — the preferred method in order that those being assaulted should be surprised from multiple directions — the planning takes on an even higher importance. Shooting a friendly is a distinct possibility in these situations, and this is why each trooper is given an area of responsibility to watch. His slice of the pie. His own personal killing zone.
Lewis was first through the south door, Graber behind him and Goldfarb bringing up the rear. The trio turned to their left, covering the west end of the open, single-room bunker. Lewis claimed the southwest corner and everything between it and him as his. Goldfarb did the same for the northwest corner. Sean took the middle and was the de facto backup should any surprises present themselves. To his back Antonelli and Quimpo had divided the east side of the room into just two sections.
Step three, Assault, was finished.
“All right, outside,” Sean ordered. The run-through, their second, had gone better, and faster, than the first. There would only be time for one more. The biggest hindrance was that the practice runs had all been “dry”— no firing. The makeshift facilities at the Cape were just unsuitable for that. Too much of a chance for ricochet existed, and any chance of that right now was unacceptable. The only other negative was the light conditions. Daylight practice, when the real thing would be going down at night, did not translate fully into complete situational awareness. They were unable to use the NVGs— attached uselessly to their titanium helmets so as to give the “feel” of the real thing — or the LAMs attached beneath the suppressors on the business end of their MP5SD4s.
Ideal, it wasn’t, Major Sean Graber knew, but then he and his men weren’t paid to work under the best conditions — they earned their money by making any situation the most favorable for them and the converse for any bad guys. That, he was confident they could do.
Sean waited for Buxton to trot over from the “cooling tower” with his team. “How’s your timing, Bux?”
“Fifty seconds from touchdown,” the captain reported.
“Good.” Sean checked the timer on his watch. “We were in and done in twenty seconds from touchdown. That means under two minutes for the show.” The “show” was the most interesting part of any mission, namely the time when getting killed went from possibility to probability. “I want to shave five more seconds off our transition on the last run-through.”
“Cho flew that one perfectly,” Antonelli commented as the Pave Hawk circled in and landed a hundred feet away. From its cabin Joe Anderson climbed out and approached while the crewmen retrieved the jettisoned SPIE rigs for the final practice.
“Fifteen minutes, troops,” Sean said, giving his men a short break before they again took to the sky. “Bux, you’re with me.”
Graber and Buxton walked to meet Joe halfway to the helicopter. “Nice ride, Mr. Anderson?”
“Your flyboy should be running the rides at Disney World, Major,” Joe observed. He didn’t know that would be taken as a compliment. “And that is where you want me because it’s safer?”
“You got it,” Sean affirmed. “I don’t want you on the ground until we have the area secured.”
“Yeah, the nine of you, your whirlybird, and that fire-breathing Herky bird.” Joe’s eyes rolled. “Good luck.”
Buxton looked to his commander. “He may have a point, Maj. Once we take out who we have to take out, things could still get interesting. There were a lot of troops in the area according to that last bunch of overheads we saw.”
“Yeah.” Sean’s mouth contorted in reluctant agreement. No matter how fast Delta was, there was liable to be a large, unfriendly force nearby, if not on top of them. The Israelis had to deal with the same problem at Entebbe, with Ugandan soldiers running around in the dark. They had done the smart thing and eliminated the bulk of them before they had a chance to officially become “the enemy.” Sean and his men would have no such firepower behind them. The AC-130 Spectre gunship, a modified C-130 with 25 and 40mm cannons, a 105mm howitzer, and the advanced targeting systems to accurately fire them at night and in bad weather, was worth a lot of men on the ground, but there was no substitute for those, Sean knew, despite all the ballyhoo about the supremacy of airpower. Delta would need some help, but from where?
“Why don’t you just rustle up some airborne guys to come in after you?” Joe asked.
“Because doing that makes it all the more likely that Fidel will know something is up before we get a chance to do our job,” Buxton explained. “Moving anything bigger than what we’re already moving could blow the whole operation.”
Joe looked at the distance from the Pave Hawk to the circle of drums that represented where his target would be. “I’m gonna have to go across four hundred yards of open ground to do my job, and all there’d have to be is one lucky Cuban out there to take me out? To take any of you out?”
All it had taken was one lucky Ugandan to kill the commander of the Israeli operation at Entebbe, the mission’s only military casualty. Terrorists were supposed to be the real enemy there, but finding a nemesis was rarely a difficult endeavor if one looked hard enough. There would be opposing forces to spare down in Cuba. Delta had to get in, secure the missile, let Anderson do his thing, then get out of there, all while the loyalist Cubans had the opportunity to take potshots at them. If only the loyalists would suddenly defect to the other…