“I don’t know, sir.” Johns’ response was automatic, but his face had gone pink.
“Colonel, those teams have already taken casualties. It appears likely that the orders you were given might have been aimed at getting them all killed. People are out hunting them right now,” Ryan said. “We need your help to go get them out.”
“Who exactly are you, anyway?”
“CIA.”
“But it’s your goddamned operation!”
“No, it isn’t, but I won’t bore you with the details,” Jack said. “We need your help. Without it, those soldiers aren’t going to make it home. It’s that simple.”
“So you’re sending us back to clean up your mess. That’s the way it always is with you people, you send us out -”
“Actually,” Murray said, “we were planning to go with you. Part of the way anyway. How soon can you be in the air?”
“Tell me exactly what you want.” Murray did just that. Colonel Johns nodded and checked his watch.
“Ninety minutes.”
The MH-53J was far larger than the CH-46 that had nearly ended Ryan’s life at twenty-three, but no less frightening to him. He looked at the single rotor and remembered that they were making a long, over-water flight. The flight crew was businesslike and professional, hooking both civilians up to the intercom and telling them where to sit and what to do. Ryan was especially attentive to the ditching instructions. Murray kept looking at the miniguns, the impressive six-barrel gatlings set next to enormous hoppers of live shells. There were three for this flight. The helicopter lifted off just after four and headed southwest. As soon as they were airborne, Murray had a crewman attach him to the floor with a twenty-foot safety line so that he could walk around. The hatch at the rear of the aircraft was half open, and he walked back to watch the ocean pass beneath them. Ryan stayed put. The ride was better than the Marine Corps helicopters he remembered, but it still felt like sitting on a chandelier during an earthquake as the aircraft vibrated and oscillated beneath its enormous six-bladed rotor. He could look forward and see one of the pilots, just sitting there as comfortably as though at the wheel of a car. But, Ryan told himself, it wasn’t a car.
What he hadn’t anticipated was the midair refueling. He felt the aircraft increase power and take a slightly nose-up attitude. Then through the front window he saw the wing of another aircraft. Murray hastened forward to watch, standing behind the crew chief, Sergeant Zimmer. He and Ryan were both hooked into the intercom.
“What happens if you tangle with the hose?” Murray asked as they neared the drogue.
“I don’t know,” Colonel Johns answered coolly. “It’s never happened to me yet. You want to keep it quiet now, sir?”
Ryan looked around for “facilities.” He saw what looked like a camper’s John, but getting to it meant taking his seat belt off. Jack decided against it. The refueling ended without incident, entirely due, Jack was sure, to his prayers.
Panache was cruising on her station in the Yucatan Channel, between Cuba and the Mexican Coast, following a racetrack pattern. There hadn’t been much in the way of activity since the cutter had gotten here, but the crew took comfort from the fact that they were back at sea. The great adventure at the moment was observing the new female crewmen. They had a new female ensign fresh from the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, and a half dozen others, mainly unrated seamen, but two petty officers, both electronics types, who, their peers grudgingly admitted, knew their jobs. Captain Wegener was watching the new ensign stand watch as junior officer of the deck. Like all new ensigns she was nervous and eager and a little scared, especially with the skipper on the bridge. She was also cute as a button, and that was something Wegener had never thought of an ensign before.
“Commanding officer, commanding officer,” the bulkhead speaker called. Wegener picked up the phone next to his bridge chair.
“Captain here. What is it?”
“Need you in the radio room, sir.”
“On the way.” Red Wegener rose from his chair. “Carry on,” he said on his way aft.
“Sir,” the petty officer told him in the radio shack, “we just got a transmission from an Air Force helo, says he’s got a person he has to drop off here. Says it’s secret, sir. I don’t have anything on my board about it, and… well, sir, I didn’t know what to do, sir. So I called you.”
“Oh?” The woman handed him the microphone. Wegener depressed the transmit button. “This is Panache. Commanding officer speaking. Who am I talking to?”
“Panache, this is CAESAR. Helicopter inbound your position on a Sierra-Oscar. I have a drop-off for you, over.”
Sierra-Oscar meant some sort of special operation. Wegener thought for a moment, then decided that there wasn’t all that much to think about.
“Roger, CAESAR, say your ETA.”
“ETA one-zero minutes.”
“Roger, one-zero minutes. We’ll be waiting. Out.” Wegener handed the microphone back and returned to the bridge.
“Flight quarters,” he told the OOD. “Miss Walters, bring us to Hotel Corpin.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Things started happening quickly and smoothly. The bosun’s mate of the watch keyed the 1-MC: “Flight quarters, flight quarters, all hands man your flight-quarter stations. Smoking lamp is out topside.” Cigarettes sailed into the water and hands removed their caps, lest they be sucked into somebody’s engines. Ensign Walters looked to see where the wind was, and altered course accordingly, also increasing the cutter’s speed to fifteen knots, thus bringing the ship to Hotel Corpin, the proper course for flight operations. And all, she told herself proudly, without having to be told. Wegener turned away and grinned. It was one of many first steps in the career of a new officer. She’d actually known what to do and done it without help. For the captain it was like watching his child take a first step. Eager and smart.
“Christ, it’s a big one,” Riley said on the bridge wing. Wegener went out to watch.
The helicopter, he saw, was an Air Force -53, far larger than anything the Coast Guard had. The pilot brought it in from aft, then pivoted to fly sideways. Someone was attached to the rescue cable and lowered down to the waiting arms of four deck crewmen. The instant he was detached from the harness, the helicopter lowered its nose and moved off to the south. Quick and smooth, Red noted.
“Didn’t know we were getting company, sir,” Riley observed as he pulled out a cigar.
“We’re still at flight quarters, Chief!” Ensign Walters snapped from the wheelhouse.
“Yes, ma’am, beg pardon, I forgot,” the bosun responded with a crafty look at Wegener. Another test passed. She wasn’t afraid to yell at the master chief, even if he was older than her father.
“You can secure from flight quarters,” the CO told her. “I didn’t know either,” Wegener told Riley. “I’m going aft to see who it is.” He heard Ensign Walters give her orders, under the supervision of a lieutenant and a couple of chiefs.
The visitor, he saw as he approached the helo deck door, was stripping off a green flight suit, but didn’t appear to be carrying anything, which seemed odd. Then the man turned around, and it just got stranger.
“Howdy, Captain,” Murray said.
“What gives?”
“You got a nice quiet place to talk?”
“Come along.” They were in Wegener’s cabin shortly thereafter.
“I figure I owe you for a couple of favors,” he said. “You could have given me a bad time over that dumb stunt we pulled. Thanks for the tip on the lawyer, too. What he told me was pretty scary – but it turns out that I didn’t talk to him until after the two bastards were killed. Last time I ever do something that dumb,” Wegener promised. “You’re here to collect, right?”
“Good guess.”
“So what’s going on? You don’t just borrow one of those special-ops helos for a personal favor.”
“I need you to be someplace tomorrow night.”
“Where?”
Murray pulled an envelope from his pocket. “These coordinates. I have the radio plan, too.” Murray gave him a few more details.
“You did this yourself, didn’t you?” the captain said.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you ought to have checked the weather.”
27. The Battle of Ninja Hill
ARMIES HAVE HABITS. These often appear strange or even downright crazy to outsiders, but for all of them there is an underlying purpose, learned over the four millennia in which men have fought one another in an organized fashion. Mainly the lessons learned are negative ones. Whenever men are killed for no good purpose, it is the business of armies to learn from the mistake and ensure that it will never happen again. Of course, such mistakes are repeated as often in the profession of arms as in any other, but also as in all professions, the really good practitioners are those who never forget fundamentals. Captain Ramirez was one of these. Though the captain had learned that he had too much sentiment, that the loss of life which was part and parcel of his chosen way of life was too difficult a burden to bear, he still remembered the other lessons, one of which was reinforced by the most recent and unpleasant discovery. He still expected to be picked up tonight by the Air Force helicopter, and felt reasonably sure that he had evaded the teams set out to hunt Team KNIFE, but he remembered all the lessons of the past when soldiers died because the unexpected happened, because they took things for granted, because they forgot the fundamentals.