The warrior code, p.18
The Warrior Code, page 18
part #2 of Seal Strike Series
The tail ramp lowered and the sides of the tail split open, peeling back to create a large opening at the back of the plane. A bright yellow forklift promptly rolled up and was so quick it startled the crew chief, who jumped off the tail ramp and signaled frantically for the forklift to stop.
Jared was informed by the crew chief that his team had at least ten minutes of post-flight checks and cargo preparation before they’d be ready to begin the offload process. Jared laughed. The air force was so precise and focused on their rules. Then again, that approach probably paid off when you were trying to keep a plane in the air.
Six minutes later, the crew chief walked over to Chief Sampson. The chief nodded and then turned to the SEALs of FOXTROT Platoon and gave the men the signal to unbuckle and grab their personal packs. He looked over at Jared. “You going to join us, lieutenant?”
Jared was going over the phone call with the Group One Operations officer for the tenth time since leaving San Clemente Island. The request to be removed from the rescue mission was the right thing to do, yet he felt it had only served to put a black mark against himself, the chief, and the platoon.
Jared snapped out of his funk and unbuckled his seat belt. He stood up, snatching his pack off the seat next to him as he did so. “You seem to be in quite a hurry, chief.”
Sampson shrugged. “We got more sleep in this machine than we’ve had in the last two days. These guys are still loopy. I want them fed and in the rack, as soon as that can happen.”
Jared walked up to the chief and waited as he watched the enlisted leader direct the platoon to exit using the forward side door instead of the tail ramp. “There’s enough crazy going on back there, gents! No need to add another sixteen swinging dicks to the problem.”
Jared and his chief watched until everyone was gone, then looked around one last time to make sure nothing was left behind in the cargo area. “I think we’re good to go, chief.”
Sampson nodded, then, having satisfied himself that all was in order, he led the way through the side exit and into the thick Panamanian air. Jared followed his chief down the steps to the concrete taxiway below. The rest of FOXTROT Platoon stood twenty yards off to the side. One of the men waved Chief Sampson over.
“What’s up?”
“Chief, that lady over there, the hot looking one to the left of the forklift, she told us to get our ass into the hangar; but I wasn’t doing anything until you directed us to move.”
Jared spotted the attractive woman and noted she wasn’t wearing a uniform. “Spook?” he guessed.
“Fuck if I know, sir. Could be the agency, but whoever she is she’ll make this place just a little bit easier to endure.” The chief winked at Jared.
Jared waved the chief forward. “It’s okay. Let’s get everybody out of the sun.”
FOXTROT Platoon moved with a purpose toward the big doors. As he got closer, Jared could make out multiple cargo containers and a beehive of activity inside. This was the real deal. He stopped at the entrance and waited until all his men were inside, and that’s when he met Captain Singer.
“Welcome to the mission isolation area, lieutenant!” The army captain was built low to the ground, probably a college wrestler, Jared thought to himself. He took the offered hand and shook it.
“My men are tired, but eager to get briefed. We were in iso status in California and assumed our target area was the Philippines; clearly that is wrong.”
The captain nodded. “Your confusion makes sense, lieutenant. Major Lane Sanchez is the lead on mission background, weather, and enemy order of battle. She’s air force. You probably saw her outside when you arrived.”
Jared raised his eyebrows. The hot Latina lady wasn’t a spook after all. If all air force women looked like her, he might have to consider a cross-service transfer. He followed the captain to a container and was told to drop his gear next to the pile of SEAL backpacks already piled up in front of the metal box.
“Your team is over there, by the large refrigeration units. We have your mission bio-planning down to the calorie, and we have your sleep cycle programmed for peak efficiency. First, you eat, then the general briefing, then a nap. We’ll get into the details of the operation this evening.”
The captain shook Jared’s hand and left him alone. Jared watched him walk away and then looked around for the attractive major. If she was the intel resource, maybe she’d share a preview of the job right now.
Jared saw the major speaking with an enlisted airman near the back corner of the hangar. He strolled over, casually soaking in the environment’s sounds and smells. The smells were pretty strong.
Lane spotted him walking in her direction, and Jared noted her attempt to focus her attention on what was in front of her. Ten feet away, Jared stopped and politely waited his turn. She was worth waiting for.
Chapter Thirty-Three
River infiltration point, Ariari River, Colombia
As rehearsed, the weight of the canoe forced it to roll cleanly off the boat trailer. Matt, Oby, and Boone moved, trying to keep pace with the speed of the canoe’s departure.
They didn’t want to fall too far behind and become separated from their boat in the dark. All three of them remembered to crouch down as they were exiting the aircraft to avoid smacking their head on the upper portion of the exit door.
Matt wasn’t ready for the warm water hitting his body. It felt like a comfortable bath, he thought, struggling back to the surface. He spotted the bobbing heads of his two partners and moved with several powerful strokes toward the silhouette of the canoe. Thankfully the canoe had landed right side up.
Matt, Oby, and Boone reached the canoe at the same time. Matt and Boone grabbed the boat and stabilized one side to allow Oby to crawl inside. He quickly checked the equipment and gave Matt a thumbs-up. They were in luck; nothing had fallen out during the insertion.
Matt realized he couldn’t hear the helicopter at all anymore. That was a positive sign. The aircraft was loud, but once it was around the bend in the river the trees muffled the noise surprisingly well. I guess that part worked the way it was supposed to, he thought. Boone climbed into the canoe, then Boone and Oby helped Matt scramble into his position in the middle of the boat.
Boone and Oby spent the next two or three minutes untying the outboard engine and getting it into position at the aft end of the boat. The dugout was flat, providing a transom for the outboard motor.
The motor was lowered onto this section of the boat and screwed into place. The lower part of the engine was then placed into the river. Oby messed around with the engine cover for a minute or so while Matt checked his watch.
They were right on schedule. Boone and Matt both had donned their night-vision goggles or NODs, and their weapons were in their hands. Each SEAL took a bank of the river and scanned both sides of the shoreline, pointing their M-4 rifles at the darkness. Although the engine wasn’t running yet, the canoe was staying midstream, pushed rapidly toward their objective by the current.
The rough coughing sound of the outboard engine coming to life startled Matt. For the ruse to be effective, the three SEALs must look and sound like locals moving down the river on their way downstream. Matt lowered his rifle so it couldn’t be seen from the riverbank and placed it across his lap, but he kept the barrel pointed outward. Boone saw his leader and followed suit.
Matt was concerned. Had they done too good a job making the engine sound like an old piece of crap? The outboard didn’t sound like it was going to make it much further than the next bend. Boone reached inside the equipment pack stowed near his legs in the bow of the boat and pulled out a small transmitter.
The communications device was just like the beacons carried by US pilots for search and rescue response. He pushed a rubber-coated button, and the beacon began emitting a pre-designated signal, specially coded to indicate the SEALs were safely in the canoe and en route to the target. The execution checklist code word was PADDLEWHEEL.
Somewhere out there someone was noting the beacon and crossing the code word off the list after noting the time it occurred. The beacon had the added benefit of marking their exact location; satellites, drones, even strike aircraft could see where they were and track their progress to the camp.
The beacon was a great way to communicate the situation on the ground without spending too much time exchanging verbal signals. Matt didn’t need confirmation that the signal had been heard. It was only sent to make the boys back at headquarters feel warm and fuzzy about the progress of the reconnaissance mission.
He knew there was a fifty-fifty chance their mission had been compromised by the loud insertion event. If it was, the easiest way to take the SEALs out was to hit them with a river ambush. The guerillas would radio ahead and set up where the canoe had to slow down as it curved around a tight bend.
Matt caught himself; there wasn’t necessarily an ambush up ahead and the bad guys here were not JSOC superheroes. These guys were farmers converted to poor riflemen by people who didn’t understand tactics or how to fight an elite American unit.
Too often SEALs allowed the opposing force to grow in size and capability in their minds. The normal result was overplanning and overloading men with too many bullets that resulted in slowing down their mobility, a key requirement in a fast-moving firefight. They weren’t compromised, and they had darkness and the element of surprise on their side.
The recon team traveled down the Ariari River at a fairly quick clip with the steady current helping them. That was a good thing. Matt didn’t want to arouse suspicion by pushing the outboard hard enough to draw attention. The average Joe out there wouldn’t push their precious engine just to go home or to go fishing. In this part of the world, things moved slowly anyway.
The three navy men rode in silence for the next thirty minutes. Matt’s GPS indicated that they were making a solid five knots in speed. He had to be careful not to get too close to the camp or overshoot the position. He was about to tell Oby to slow down when Boone poked Matt, jabbing him in the shoulder to gain his attention.
Boone pointed to the bottom of the boat. “Aqua!” he said, with a poor Spanish accent. “Mucho aqua!” he continued, sounding alarmed.
Matt looked but wasn’t able to see anything in the inky darkness. He reached down with his hand and felt around. His fingers found six inches of river water lying in the bottom of the canoe. The scooped-out interior of the canoe was shallow.
The design allowed enough room for a few people, sitting one behind the other, the walls of the cayuca were only twenty-four inches above the bottom of the boat. Any leakage could be a big problem.
Matt didn’t understand how water possibly could have seeped or slopped into the boat. He leaned forward and whispered to Boone, “You think this is from the drop?”
Boone considered it for a moment then shook his head. “No way, boss. When I was scrambling around looking for the radio, it was bone dry down there. The water’s been rising steadily for the last thirty minutes.”
Matt reached outside the edge of the canoe to feel how much freeboard there was between the top of the canoe and the river’s surface. The canoe was noticeably lower. There was no accurate way for him to determine how fast the water was coming in or whether it was still coming in.
Oby couldn’t hear what the other two were whispering about, so he reached out and kicked Matt in the leg. Matt scooted backward to get closer to the sniper.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“The canoe has water in it,” Matt said. “Hey, look out!” Oby had inadvertently steered to the right when Matt started speaking, causing Matt to duck a low-hanging tree branch.
“Make sure you keep this thing in the middle of the river.”
Oby shoved the tiller hard over to the right, moving the canoe away from the dark line of jungle foliage at the edge of the river. He moved back into the river and resumed course. Then he leaned forward.
“Okay, so there’s water. It’s probably from the insertion.”
“It is not from the drop,” Matt said. “Boone said it was bone dry when he went for the radio half an hour ago, and it’s getting worse.”
In the time it took to discuss the leak, the water had risen another inch. If the wet stuff kept coming in at this rate, they’d be sitting in a bathtub within ten minutes.
“Boys, I think we’re sinking.” Boone expressed his alarm louder than a whisper, but it went unnoticed by the others.
Oby was first to pose a plausible theory. “You know, these boats are supposed to be waterproof. They’re carved from one tree trunk, then put in the water so the wood can swell up. I mean they are virtually unsinkable.”
Matt countered, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all that, but we still have water coming in.”
Oby continued, “Boss, we had this canoe out of the water for a good two or three days. It’s possible this thing just dried out. I mean, consider how many cuts and cracks this boat has. It’s likely the water seeped right through since the wood shrank in the heat. You know, I didn’t think to check the bottom of the boat once it was staged on the trailer.”
Matt moaned, “Shit, Oby, I see what you mean!” Meanwhile, Boone was getting tired of trying to decipher the quiet debate going on in the back of the boat.
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” said Boone. Matt leaned forward to bring his frustrated point man up to speed.
“Oby thinks we left the boat out on the trailer too long and it dried out. The holes and dings in the bottom of the boat would have gotten bigger once the wood shrank in the sun.”
Boone nodded in the dark. “Makes sense. So we are a bunch of dumb shits! Now what? Do you think this thing’s going to swell back up in time?”
Matt checked the depth of the water in the boat again; it was now ten inches high. “I don’t think so,” Matt said to Boone. “It looks like we’re going to be swimming and sooner rather than later.”
“Sir, why don’t we try to increase the speed of the boat and get as much distance as we can before it sinks completely?” Oby asked from the back of the boat.
Matt smiled; that was a great idea. They were still a good five miles out from the target. Every mile forward on the river closed the distance to the camp and reduced the possibility they’d have to abort the mission.
“That sounds like a plan, Oby. Go ahead and accelerate; but if that outboard starts making a racket, slow down. We need to eat up the distance, but we also don’t want to wake up the neighbors.”
Oby throttled up and the canoe reacted. Although the three men traveled in silence, Matt had a million problems flying through his mind. Using the LAR Five scuba was out of the question now.
There wasn’t any guarantee they’d be able to find them later so they’d have to destroy their capability to operate and sink them with the boat. Could they swim with all their equipment to the objective, still using the river’s current to help them or should they go on land and hump through the jungle?
Chapter Thirty-Four
In BUD/S training, every SEAL candidate had to swim five nautical miles. Five nautical miles was the equivalent of about seven land miles. If they could get another mile or so out of the boat, they’d be within reasonable swimming distance with the current in their favor. It would be the same as BUD/S, except they had three times as much crap strapped onto their bodies and at BUD/S nobody was shooting at you.
Boone must have been thinking along the same lines. He moved closer to Matt and whispered in his ear, “Well, boss, at least we don’t have to worry about navigation, just point our nose downstream and start stroking!”
Matt agreed, “Yeah, and the river current will make the trip much shorter timewise. What do you think, do we need every piece of gear or should we strip down the loadout a little?”
Boone studied the question for a moment before answering. “Sir, I think we should keep everything with us except the dive rigs, of course. It’s all waterproof and neutrally buoyant. All we should have to do is tow it along behind us or lay on top of it and float. We may need all that stuff before this job’s over.”
Matt made the decision. “Okay, Boone, we’ll take all the equipment.” By now, the water had risen up to their waists. Luckily it was warm; SEALs hated cold water. “Take your fence cutter and start disabling the LAR Fives. When you’re done, start handing out our gear so we can rig up while we’re still afloat.”
Boone complied with Matt’s order, disabling the scuba rigs so they would have to be rebuilt by an expert before they were functional again. Next, he untied the mission bags, and in turn handed them to Matt and Oby. Matt received his and snapped it into his combat vest.
Isolation Hangar – Panama
A JSOC officer Jared hadn’t seen around the hangar approached Jared as he was walking away from the dining area, his belly happily full. The navy commander carried a large package under his left arm. Jared stopped and waited until the commander smiled and extended his hand. Jared shook it, but his eyes never left the package.
“Here you go, lieutenant,” the commander said, handing Jared the large yellow envelope. “You now have all the frequencies and communications information you’ll need to conduct your operation. As you know, the reconnaissance mission has been launched already, and we received the insertion and underway codewords right on schedule.”
“When will the recon be in a position to begin reporting what they see on the ground?” Jared asked.
“Good question. We expect to begin receiving a real-time feed of target data in four to five hours. For now, you’re to focus on planning your infiltration. The helicopter crews are at your disposal. Ask for any other information that you need from us to complete your analysis or to support your mission planning. Use any information the reconnaissance team provides you to modify how you might strike the target. You don’t have a lot of time, lieutenant. I suggest that your men get as much rest as they can when they can.”
Jared nodded, quietly taking the package, “Yes, sir, thank you.” Chief Sampson walked up as the staff officer departed.
