The special-operations aircraft had arrived on schedule from the 39th’s base in Germany. The Combat Talon II was an extremely capable aircraft, modified from the ground up for special operations. It featured a full array of avionics to fool enemy sensors, and, if necessary, defeat them with a flood of bogus electronic emissions. The interior lighting supported night-vision goggle operations — a must for clandestine insertion, but brutal on pilots flying at treetop altitudes. A long refueling probe graced the nose. In the rear, a modified cargo ramp permitted low-level delivery for heavy equipment. The key piece of avionics was terrain-following/ terrain-avoidance radar supported by dual altimeters and dual inertial navigation systems. It gave the Talon its renowned insertion capability in any weather and over any terrain. The plane’s capacity was formidable — fifty-three passengers or twenty-six jumpers, 35,000 lbs of cargo
“Load up.” Rawlings’s stomach began to churn. He patted each soldier on the back as they passed in single file.
Gonzales was last in the line and paused by the boss. “We’re gonna make it, Captain. No sweat.”
Rawlings forced a smile. Without Gonzales, he’d be lost. The stocky Hispanic jogged up the ramp and took his seat, his eyes focused intently on the bulkhead. The others on the Team strapped themselves in, no one saying a word. Rawlings stood alone at the base of the ramp. He glanced to his right and saw Henson in the fading light. The colonel had just seen another Team off, a stateside A-Team that had rendezvoused with a similarly equipped Talon two hangers away. He covered the tarmac in hurried strides. Rawlings stiffened and saluted. The colonel’s face showed the fatigue from three days straight on his feet.
“Good hunting, Captain. You know the score.” He hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words. “It’s critical we knock out those mobiles. No sense holding back or playing it too cautious, if you know what I mean.”
Rawlings knew exactly what he meant. Day patrols instead of waiting for darkness, taking on superior forces if necessary, foregoing laser designation for the fighters if they could get a direct kill. It had all been clearly spelled out for them.
“I understand, sir.” That was all he could say. He entered the aluminum cavern and counted heads, making sure his boys were all there. They sat passively, weapons resting on their laps. There were twelve in all, his men, his Team.
The loadmaster signaled all secure to the flight crew and raised the ramp. The ground crew backed away, ear protection in place. One by one, the four turbo-prop engines kicked over and roared to life with a momentary burst of black smoke. The air force pilot promptly taxied toward the runway, the British watching the departure unemotionally, while the air force personnel were already packing their gear for evacuation. Within a minute, the Talon was airborne, climbing rapidly, engines straining, beating the cool evening air into submission. Leveling at five thousand feet for the short flight over the English countryside, the plane turned east and began its long journey to the Russian Motherland.
The tethered loadmaster, a burly air force staff sergeant, lumbered forward and tapped Rawlings on the shoulder. “Five minutes to the jump-off point, sir.” Rawlings shook off his drowsiness and glanced at his watch—0133—then surveyed his crew who sat in varying stages of disrepair. The four-hour-plus flight had been punishing; the terrain-following autopilot had jerked and shaken the men unmercifully as they had skimmed over both land and sea. A few had vomited, unable to handle the constant thrashing.
The flight plan had unfolded like clockwork. No air contacts were detected, the skies eerily vacant. The Germans had kept their promise of free passage. Hitting the beach in Latvia after a stint in the Baltic had been tense, but anticlimactic. The country was jet black and stone cold. Not a sign of life emanated from the ground, even when flying at two hundred feet over towns and factories cloaked in darkness. The flight crew had screamed along main arteries to avoid crossing deadly power lines but even then hadn’t seen anything with wheels. Rawlings had once rode in the cockpit of a MH-53J helo when flying a training mission at night and had come away awestruck by the crew’s competence. It took nerves of steel and a steady grip to avoid instant disaster at the hands of power lines, towers, buildings, or other obstacles.
Crossing into Russian territory had brought little change. Only spurious electronic signals danced on the airwaves, signatures of air-search radars or patrolling interceptors, none of which would be able to distinguish the Talon from ground clutter. Only once had they deviated from their base course to avoid a suspected surface-to-air missile site.
“Let’s go!” Rawlings yelled over the cabin noise. He stood and stretched out his sore back. It took a few moments to catch his balance. Six SF soldiers on each side of the pallets shuffled to the rear, past the helmeted crewmen. They hooked-up to the wire static line, bunched nuts to butts, buffeted by a violent ride. They would bail out in one continuous run into empty space, followed by the heavy pallets coasting down the rollers two seconds apart. The goal would be to have minimum separation between the men and machines once on the ground.
The loadmaster reached for the chest-high ramp lever. The whine of hydraulics triggered a rush of adrenaline to Rawlings’s body. The first crack of pitch black brought a deafening roar, and an unexpected backblast of swirling, frigid air that made them shiver. Nature’s violence, mixed with fear of the unknown, hit Rawlings. He breathed deeply, muscles tense, as the ramp lowered into place.
“Two minutes.” The twin lines, led by Rawlings and Gonzales, edged aft and bunched even closer. The ramp was completely distended and locked, the edge dropping off into nothingness. Rawlings purged his lungs and suddenly felt invigorated. The thick forest below rushed by in a blur; his eyes were unable to focus for more than a second. At only six hundred feet, there was no margin for error. A good chute pop and two swings and they’d be hitting the ground hard.
“Go.” The loadmaster gave a thumbs-up as an adjacent light panel flashed green. Rawlings gritted his teeth and leapt into Russian airspace, his static line jerking open his main parachute. It unfurled in a rush and roughly snapped him upright as he twisted back to glance at the departing Talon. The others were in various stages of deployment, and the first pallet had swung free of the plane, the huge chutes resembling mushrooms in a clump. Rawlings turned to see the ground rushing toward him. He aimed for a small clearing, smacked the dirt, and rolled. He sprang to his feet and reeled in his chute. His first thought was finding concealment. He didn’t want to be caught in the open by Russian troops.
Catching his breath, he moved through the trees in search of the next man in the jump chain. The sooner they linked up, the better. Rawlings remembered the words of an old family friend who had seen action in Southeast Asia in the secretive late fifties, when death in the jungles brought only word of a “training accident” to a distraught family. “It all gets very real very fast when your feet hit the ground,” he had offered, and as Rawlings stared into the dense Russian forest with a lump in his throat — alone — he realized how true those words were.
CHAPTER 33
Thomas and Hargesty were waiting to see the president aboard NEACP, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post. The acronym was somewhat of a misnomer — it implied a single aircraft, but there were originally four in the inventory, identically configured for the complex mission of controlling US strategic forces during nuclear war. Two were still operational on this the fifth day of the war. One had been destroyed on the ground, while the other, with its battle staff, had fallen prey to sabotage while taking off from an air force installation. Flares popping off as the plane lifted from the runway had proved inadequate against two shoulder-fired, IR homing missiles. Both were sucked up by the huge turbo-fan engines, blowing them clean off the wings. The crew didn’t have a chance when the crippled plane splintered into chunks before bursting into flames.