Hayes stood. He ran a hand along his upper lip, wiping off a thin sheen of sweat, then went to the maps.
"Either into the water or the jungle is the best way. You want to avoid the villages, naturally. Any strangers will immediately be reported to the Abu Sayef. And none of you are going to pass for locals."
"We land in water," Vaughn noted, "it's a bit of a walk to the mountain."
Hayes nodded.
"True, but the closer you come down to the mountain, the more eyes will be watching. One thing the Abu Sayef are constantly warned about during their training is to watch the sky, that the government troops would come in helicopters or by parachute from a low flying airplane. You can be sure that there are antiaircraft missiles hidden somewhere on that mountain."
Vaughn remembered the RPG that had killed his brother-in-law. Things would have been much worse if the terrorists had used surface-to-air missiles. For this mission, he had entertained thoughts of landing right on top of the mountain and working their way down to find the entrance. Military dogma dictated taking the high ground.
"You said a low flying plane," Vaughn noted.
"I think we can get in at night using HAHO with offset."
He was referring to a high altitude, high opening parachute operation. It was a procedure where the plane flew very high, sometimes at an altitude of over 20,000 feet with the jumpers on oxygen, exiting at that height. The aircraft would not only be high, but offset laterally from the drop zone. After exiting the aircraft, the jumpers would immediately deploy their parachutes and then "fly" them to the drop zone. Offsets of ten to fifteen miles were common using such a technique, but the aircraft never got close enough either in altitude or lateral distance to raise suspicions.
Orson nodded.
"HAHO definitely for the recon team. The question is, who here is qualified to do that kind of jump?"
Vaughn raised his hand. Then Tai. That was it.
"We have our recon team," Orson announced.
"When do we go?" Vaughn asked.
"As soon as we can get a plane to drop you," Orson said. He tapped the map.
"You pick your drop zone. You HAHO onto the island. Check it out. Radio back to us how the rest of the team will get in. And you find Abayon. Let us know how we can get to him, and we'll do the mission prep for the actual kill. You let us know what we'll need to bring."
How about a tactical nuke? Vaughn thought. He didn't think much of the plan. It put him and Tai into enemy territory in an exposed position.
"And if we're compromised?" he asked.
Orson's dead gray eyes fixed Vaughn with their gaze.
"Then you're dead. Do not allow yourself to be taken alive, because we're not coming to get you, if that's what you're asking."
Vaughn took the thermal imagery and went over to the map of the island.
"I say we land here," he said, tapping the very top of Hono Mountain, where there appeared to be a small clearing.
"That all right with you?" he asked, looking at Tai.
She nodded.
"Fine."
Orson almost seemed disappointed.
"All right. I'll arrange the aircraft. You go in tonight. Get your gear ready today. The rest of you, back to work."
The request to send in a reconnaissance team had generated a great deal of debate among the staff officers who were working the simulation. Most were against it and argued instead that more assets be allocated. The operations officer even sent a request to the National Command Authority for more troops and some Air Force assets with greater firepower. General Slocum, part of the old school that believed in using a sledgehammer when a hammer might do, signed off on the request, adding in an appendix the alternate plan for a recon element to be sent in early to try to pinpoint Abayon's position and the attendant risks of doing so.
It only went as far as Foster's computer, which was acting as National Command Authority. He denied the request for more assets, on the grounds that the operation was to be conducted clandestinely. Then he gave the go-ahead for the reconnaissance element to be sent in. The operations officer then turned around and, after having Slocum sign it, sent the tasking for a C-130 transport to conduct the HAHO drop that night, thinking it was all part of the simulation. In fact, Foster sent this tasking with the official signature block and proper code words to the designated Air Force squadron in Okinawa.
It was a shell game, one that only Foster knew the extent of and controlled. He had his own ideas about why he was being used to do this. He assumed that he was the "cutout," the link between those doing the mission and those ordering it.
Foster wasn't naive, though. He also knew that things were done in certain ways to allow for deniability. No one would be able to prove who gave the orders. While he yearned to work for the National Security Agency, he also knew that he'd be traveling much further into the world of covert operations than while working military simulations here in Hawaii. Not that the thought bothered him. If one wanted to play in the big game, they had to be willing to take big risks. And there was also the issue of the threat the NSA representative had held over his head. He was still shaken by the revelation that the secret he had assumed was buried in the past was not only known by others, but well-documented.
When he was in college, during his senior year, the football team had been invited to a bowl game in San Diego. Two nights before the big game, Foster had gone with a group of teammates across the border into Tijuana. They'd consumed vast quantities of questionable alcohol and finally ended at the desired location: a whorehouse. The group had split up into various rooms as directed by the madam, and to his surprise, dismay, and – to be honest – titillation, he had walked into a room occupied by a young girl. A very young girl. One who not yet made it to double digits in age.
In the years since then, he'd always regretted not turning right around and walking out. But he'd been drunk, he'd been horny, and he'd been in Mexico.
And now he wondered if he'd been set up. He doubted it, given the years that had passed since with nothing happening, but when the mysterious David showed him those photos, he'd wondered.
Foster shook off his concerns as he worked both sides of the supposed simulation. He had to accept that he was on the inside now. He was what he had always aspired to be – a player – and he was getting ready to move to the big leagues. He looked out the window of his office at the Sim-Center, at all the men and women in military uniform "playing" their parts, and shook his head. They were fools, ignorant of the way the world really worked.
There was another aspect of this that told him he was already at another level. The intelligence he was forwarding to the team in isolation was not only top of the line from the NSA, CIA, and other alphabet soup organizations in the United States government, but some of it was coming from agencies that worked for foreign governments. He assumed that the NSA had tapped into these sources somehow and was coopting them.
Foster ran through the message traffic being generated on Okinawa. Most of it was mundane, the normal stuff that was to be expected from a team in isolation, and it mirrored what his computer was generating for the staff in the simulation. There were some minor differences, however. For example, the team was asking for two Squad Automatic Weapons, while the simulation had not anticipated such a request. Foster pulled that message out of the flow and sent it on to the appropriate facility on Okinawa, giving it the proper authorization from Westcom headquarters. He did the same with the request for sniper rifles and the equipment for the HAHO jump. It was almost a ballet of data, he thought, and he was into it, playing both sides with the expertise he had built up over the years. Those being tasked did as ordered, as far as supporting the mission, while those giving the orders as part of the simulation didn't know that some of the orders were actually being implemented.