In the bow of her craft, Amanda Garrett cautiously lifted the edge of the RAM hood and peered toward shore.
Soon.
The Admiral and the intel had elected to use the briefing trailer as their headquarters rather than to further crowd the already cramped confines of the Operations and TACNET vans. Half a dozen systems operators manning laptop workstations along the conference table linked them into the mission data flow and the big flatscreen monitors on the forward bulkhead gave them their overview of the battle zone.
“It’s all pretty straightforward, sir,” Christine said, her fingertip traveling down the graphics map of the Union coastline. “Union units are in red. Pink for militia. Bright red for the regulars. Red with the blue outline for the naval elements. Ours are blue. The Brits green. The French gold. Each point boxed in along the coastline indicates an area where a specific diversionary action is going to take place!’
Macintyre nodded, and leaned back against the end of the conference table. His day’s worth of beard rasped lightly against the collar of his flight suit. “Where’s Captain Garrett and the assault force at this moment?”
“Here, sir. Holding at Point Fathertree, off the northern port breakwater. They were inserted by the PGACs and will hold on station there until the coast is clear for the final approach and penetration of the harbor area itself.”
“Are the PGs still with them?”
“No, sir.” Christine indicated a spot roughly three miles off the harbor mouth. “The Three Little Pigs are moving out to Point Sun Village at this time, running in swimmer mode and fully stealthed. Sun Village is the missile-firing station for the strike against the Monrovia power and communications net. Following the strike, they’ll move up to Point Blue Mountain, here about one mile off the harbor entrance. They’ll hold there for the extraction call by the boarding teams.”
Macintyre gave a noncommittal grunt, studying the screen.
One of the systems operators looked up from her terminal. “Commander Rendino. We are coming up on initiation point for Diversion Treestump.”
Christine glanced back. “Very well. Intelligence access, do we have any situational changes ashore?”
“Negative, Commander. Intel indicates no changes.”
“Okay, then. Signals, pass the word. Initiate Treestump. Execute as planned.”
Christine looked back to Macintyre. “Now, sir, we start dazzling them with our fancy footwork”.
“In theory,” the Admiral replied, leaning back against the end of the table. “This is an aspect of this operation that I’m worried about. It seems like we’re taking an awful lot for granted here.”
“We don’t have much choice, sir. Belewa knows when we’re coming, he knows where we’re coming from, and he knows where we’re going. We have to do something to throw him off balance. Essentially what we are attempting to do, above and beyond sprinkling a lot of general confusion around, is to build a certain mind-set that will encourage Belewa into doing certain things that will let us sneak in through the door.”
“I understand that, Chris,” Macintyre replied. “I also understand that trying to run your enemy by remote control can be a damn tricky thing to pull off. He might not be in an obliging mood tonight.”
The intel grinned back. “You have to remember that Captain Garrett has an edge in this situation, Admiral. She’s a woman, and we females have a certain knack at getting men to do what we want them to.”
The dull-black Fiberglas paddles didn’t flash as they dug into the wave crests.
The half-dozen raider boats surfed onto the broad sandy beach, their passengers springing over the gunwales into the trailing foam. Catching up the nylon strap carrying handles looped around the gunwales of the small inflatable craft, the Marines lifted them from the sea and bore them up onto the beach.
Ahead, beyond the beach, lay a band of heavy brush and trees. And beyond that, the coast road. For the moment, the roughly paved stretch of highway was empty, the landing carefully timed between the intermittent Union motorized patrols.
To the north and south of the landing site, perhaps a mile in each direction, were the faint, guttering lights of fishermen’s shacks. Out at sea, blacked out and circling slowly, the Patrol Craft USS Santana held station. She had delivered the Fox company assault platoon to its objective and, God willing, she would take them away.
Carrying their raider boats with them, the Marines hurried up the beach, the last man from each boat party blurring their tracks in the sand with a gunnysack.
The Foxmen did not want their presence known. At least not yet.
One of the command track’s radiomen looked up. “General Belewa. There is a communication from Captain Mosabe aboard the Promise. He wishes to speak with you, sir.”
Belewa took two fast steps to the radio console and caught up a handset. “Belewa here.”
“We are tracking unusual targets on our radar, General,” the gunboat squadron commander’s filtered voice replied. “Many of them.”
“What do you mean unusual, Captain?”
“Like nothing we have ever seen before. Small surface contacts. Many of them. They seem to appear and disappear at random. Either that or they are moving at incredible speeds from point to point. Faster than we can establish a plot.”
“Where are they coming from?” Belewa demanded.
“Nowhere, General. They just started to appear on our screens.”
“Could this be some kind of American radar jamming?”
“It’s nothing that we recognize.”
“Speed, number, heading?”
“General, we cannot get an accurate count or an accurate plot! There is just a whole wave of them out there, bearing down on us.”
One of three such craft involved in the same enterprise, the sixteen-foot navy miniraider chugged slowly along while an assembly line ran in its bow.
Two enlisted hands inflated a small weather balloon with helium while a third tied off a thirty-foot length of high-test fishing line to the balloon’s hard point. The other end of the fishing line, in turn, was attached to a short length of two-by-four that would serve as a floating sea anchor.
The two-by-four was tossed over the raider’s side and the balloon was released to soar upward to the full length of the fishing line, the thirty feet of tether being just enough to bring the balloon above the scan horizon of the surface-search radar at Port Monrovia.
Suspended beneath the balloon on another single strand of fishing line was a three-square-foot panel of common kitchen aluminum foil, its edges stiffened with light wire. As the balloon drifted slowly toward the Union coast, the foil panel twisted in the mild trade winds, randomly displaying first its edge and then its reflective broad side to the probing Union radar beams.