Echo Platoon (37 page)

We left the chutes spread out, so my jumpers could examine and pack their own. You don’t want to trust that kind of thing to anyone else, especially when the jump is going to be potentially lethal.

2200. We held a team meeting to make the assignments and hand out the uniforms Randy’d bought on the street. Oleg brought his own. The LAMA crew would be Oleg, and me, with Nigel flying in the pilot’s seat. That was three. Then I figured we could squeeze three more, if they were small. On that basis, I chose Half Pint, Digger, and Nod. Which left just enough room for Ashley. I had to admit that her presence would give us five, maybe six more seconds of distraction, which could mean the difference between life and death.

Then it came time to assign the jump teams. Pick was recused. He had to pilot the Arava, because I didn’t want some Azeri who didn’t know fuck-all about HAHO jumping to be at the controls when my guys went over the rail. He grumbled and he groused, but
that’s the way it was gonna be. As for the rest, Rotten Randy’s knee still hurt like hell—but there was no way he was being left behind. He and Duck Foot volunteered for one of the tandems. So did Hammer and Goober. So did Timex and Mustang. That made six.

Which was when Oleg, who’d just arrived, interrupted. “Give each tandem team a machine gun,” he said. “It is how we train to provide . . .”—he screwed up his face, hunting for the right word, then smiled when he found it—“suppressive fire in hostile landing zones.”

I thought about what he’d just said, and it actually wasn’t a bad idea—even if it was terminally flawed. One of the down sides of a jump insertion is that you are vulnerable as you come in over the enemy, because it is impossible to steer a chute and shoot a weapon simultaneously. But if my jumpers were using tandem chutes, the bottom man might actually unharness his weapon and lay down suppressive fire while the top man steered as they dropped into the DIP.
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But jumping with a machine gun? That’s something you might see in a Hollywood movie—not in real life. And even if the Russkies did jump with machine guns, Russkie jumps were normally performed off static lines, not free fall. Moreover, the Russians have never minded taking 80 percent casualties when they stage an assault. If half their jumpers went splatski, it was just too bad. SEALs would rather their opposition took that kind of casualty rate.

That was all on the one hand. On the other hand, if
my guys came down using tandem chutes, and the bottom men were able to unharness their MP5s on final approach, the fucking technique might actually work. I looked over at Hammer and Randy. The smiles on their faces told me what they were thinking. Randy jumped to his feet—and winced. “I’m going to tape my fucking knee,” he said, heading for his room where his personal and much beloved MP5 sat field-stripped in the locked box by his bedside.

I looked around the room and gave my people the rest of the good news. We had four operational Ram-Airs left and only three remaining jumpers. It’s amazing how sometimes, things just work out.

0400. W
E TRUCKED OUT TO THE AIRPORT.
A
RAZ BROUGHT
us around through the back gate so we wouldn’t attract any attention. I let my jumpers deal with their own chutes. Me, I wanted a good look at the chopper.

I had to admit it: Oleg had kept his word. The LAMA had been repainted in the anonymous dark OD of the Russian military. It wasn’t a pretty job. Close up you could see blisters of rust beneath the fresh paint. But it would do. Nigel and Pick did a walk-around. Then Nigel climbed into the pilot’s seat and played with the switches. He waved me over. “They all seem to be working, Skipper. I’m gonna try the engine.”

I gave him an upturned thumb. He began the start sequence. The engine coughed and whined and protested, but the motherfucker turned over, the big blades moving slowly at first, then whirling faster and faster. Nigel’s face was a study in concentration as he checked his instruments, and played with the controls. Then, the rotors at full pitch, he lifted off the ground, hovered at a height of six feet, then set the chopper back gently on the deck and shut everything down.

He climbed out, and looked critically at a dribble of oil that was running down the engine housing. “It’ll fly,” he said. “I don’t know that I’d like to spend a long fucking time in this bird, Skipper. But for a single short hop, it’ll do.”

“It better.”

He gave me his Serious Pilot Look. “It will.”

0455. It is harder than it may seem to coordinate a two-pronged attack, especially one in which one of the prongs is jumping onto the target. Basically, the Arava would fly into a standoff position roughly twelve miles off the hotel. As the chopper approached, the jumpers would launch, form up, and fly in, hitting the ground two and a half minutes after the chopper touched down. That would give us another 3.5 minutes in which to find Ambassador Madison’s butt. After six minutes, she’d probably be dead.

So, let’s do the math. After launch, the jumpers forward speed would be twenty-six miles an hour, with no wind. If they hit headwinds, the schedule would have to be adjusted. If there were tailwinds, we’d speed things up. And if there were crosswinds, we’d simply be fucked.

Now, there’s a mathematical formula for determining the HARP, or High Altitude Release Point, during jumps like these. That formula is known as the modified D=KAV, where D equals the gliding distance in nautical miles, K equals the canopy drift constant, A equals the altitude, and V equals the wind velocity in knots. But D=KAV doesn’t do any good if you don’t know the wind velocity, the gliding distance is variable, the altitude is give or take a couple of thousand feet, and the LZ conditions are unknown. So what was going to happen here was that my jumpmaster,
Boomerang, was going to have to read the air currents and winds as the team came in, and make his adjustments accordingly. In training, you’ll want at least a “3” safety factor for jumps like this. This morning, our safety factor would be somewhere in the minus two-digit column.

0548. Equipment check. We used our own web gear. It looked a little strange with the Russkie uniforms, but at least we’d know where everything was. I’d assembled a Russian colonel’s uniform. The sleeves were two inches too short and the trouser legs were three inches too long, but as they say, WTF. Since weight on the chopper was going to be a factor, we’d use our MP5-PDWs, which we could conceal under our uniform blouses if we had to. Each man would carry eight thirty-round mags of 9-mm, plus a USP in 9-mm, with five fifteen-round mags. Each man in the chopper assault team also carried three DefTec distraction devices, three concussion grenades, and three frags. Nod and Butch Wells each packed prefab door busters: triple-thick loops of det cord taped to sheets of plastic foam, fuse material, and nonelectric blasting caps, just in case we met any doors we didn’t like. I shoved a portable scanner into my blouse pocket. You never know when you may want to listen in on the opposition.

Timex and Mustang, Tandem Team One, had rigged their sub-guns so they could jump with the weapons secured, then lock and load during the long glide to the target. Tandem Three, Hammer and Goober, came up with one of Araz’s AKs, and three thirty-round mags. While they loaded mags and checked the weapons, I went over the flight plan with Pick and Nigel.

Naryndzlar was 316 kliks from the runway at Baku as the bird flies. But the straight route put us in jeopardy, as it took us precariously close to a pair of Azeri radar sites that Oleg said were controlled by the
chornye
. If they spotted us, they might conceivably warn Steve Sarkesian. Did I know for sure that they would?
Nyet
. Was I willing to risk the op?
Nyet
. So, I decided we’d take a more southerly route. From Baku, we’d head southwest and overfly the sparsely populated Mughan Steppes, keeping low enough to avoid the Iranian radar site at Parsabad. At Bejlagan we’d vector in a northerly direction, skirt the army base at Aghdzabadi, start climbing the ridge at Aghdam, and then follow the single-lane unimproved road that led straight as an arrow from Syrchavand, through the medieval town of Vanklu, all the way up the mountain ridge to Naryndzlar.

The Arava, which has a range of just about 650 miles, would take off twenty minutes after the chopper did, pass it enroute, and circle, waiting our arrival, over the Aghgol Nature Reserve, well east of the border of mountainous Karabakh. We’d keep in touch by radio, and as we began our climb along the ridgeline, the plane would come in, line up on the same road we were following, launch the jumpers, then skedaddle back to Baku and wait for us to show up with the ambassador. The road ran more or less due east/west, so my jump teams could follow it easily. Best of all, they’d have the sun at their backs, so they’d be in full surprise mode as they came into the LZ. Piece of baklava, right? Sure it was—at least in my head.

0636. I was standing outside, running Murphy factors through my head when Ashley parked her blue
and white Suburban next to Araz’s truck and climbed out, showing a lot of leg—and more. I turned. I looked. I blinked.
“Geezus.”

“Like it?” She whirled, like one of those fashion models you see on TV.

I guess the best way to put it, was that Ashley was out of uniform. She was wearing Nike sandals and a turquoise blue spandex minidress. From my long experience with these sorts of things, I can tell you for a fact that although she was wearing socks with her sandals she hadn’t bothered to put on very much underwear.

“If you don’t throw on a pair of coveralls, you’re gonna get drooled on by my whole crew.”

“I’m way ahead of you.” She reached back into the big Chevy, pulled out a regulation Nomex flight suit, and climbed into it. She zipped up. “Better?”

“No, but safer. Much safer.”

As the men did the final load-out check, I took Araz aside and filled him in on Sarkesian’s plan to attack the U.S. embassy. I told him the attack would probably come from one of Ali Sherafi’s units. The Azeri’s face turned grim. “I will handle this, Captain Dickie,” he said.

From his determined expression, I knew that he would.

0640. I came back to discover Oleg huddled with my tandem jumpers. He took the MP5 from Randy, and attached the submachine gun’s safety line to his own body. “Like this,” he said. “And—” He tucked the butt-stock close to his chest. “Even after chute opens, during glide, keep tight your hold. If you do it like this”—he let the butt slip forward—“it cuts into the airstream, and you will . . .” The Russkie’s hand started to spiral and wobble.

“Corkscrew,” Randy broke in.

Lapinov nodded.
“Da.
Corkscrew.” He handed the weapon back to Randy. “No fun, corkscrew.”

Randy, Mustang, and Hammer practiced tucking their weapons’ buttstocks tightly against their chests, as they and their partners mimed free-fall maneuvers. Oleg watched critically, nodding, and correcting, until he was happy with what he saw.

He smacked Mustang on the shoulder, rocking the big SEAL back two feet into Timex. Mustang threw his chest out.
“Spasiba,
General.”

“You will all do well,” Oleg said to the tandem teams. “You learn fast.” The Ivan’s mustache twitched in the early morning heat. “And if not, you will go—” He clapped his hands explosively, turned, and walked away. “Boom,” he said as he marched off. “Boom. So learn fast.”

Loading the chopper was kind of like stuffing all those big tall clowns in the tiny circus car. Nigel had the pilot’s seat. Nod and his MP5 took the front passenger seat, so we’d have firepower as we came in for a landing. We put Oleg on one side of the rear bench, and me on the other, to make sure the craft stayed in trim. Half Pint squeezed between us, and Ashley settled on his lap, making the squidge-size SEAL the happiest (and most politically erect) man on the flight. That left Digger O’Toole, who crammed himself onto the deck plates in front of Ashley’s knees.

Then Nigel and Nod started handing our equipment to us. By the time they finished, we were completely wedged in.

Which is when I realized that somehow, Mister Murphy had managed to squeeze himself on board, too. I held up my hand. “Whoa,” I told my troops, “this ain’t working.”

I mean, just think about it. Once we’d touched down up at Naryndzlar, we were going to have to scramble out of the fucking LAMA looking like a Russkie general’s elite bodyguard unit, not a bunch of fucking circus clowns.

“Unload,” I told Nigel. “We have to reconfigure.”

He groaned and started to protest. “Oh, Gov—there’s another chute. Just let Digger go in the Arava”

No fucking way. I wanted all four SEALs and their firepower when we dropped into Naryndzlar. So I stopped the little Brit short, reminding him that he didn’t have to like it, he just had to do it.

0702. Time was as tight as Ashley’s dress. But until I solved our exit-the-chopper problem, we weren’t going anywhere. We unloaded, restowed, and tried again, and rehearsed jumping out. It wasn’t perfect, but at least Oleg, Half Pint, Digger, and I weren’t tripping over one another as we piled out of the LAMA onto the tarmac in orderly and combat-ready fashion.

0712. Wheels up. For the literalists among you I am speaking metaphorically because the LAMA we were using didn’t have wheels but skids. But you know what I mean. Nigel increased his engine revs, changed the pitch of his rotors, and the LAMA shuddered, then tail first, lifted off the deck. The little Brit hovered, getting his bearings on the controls. The craft rose another six feet vertically and perhaps a dozen yards horizontally, when we came down—hard enough to rattle my teeth.

Nigel’s narrow face turned toward me. “We got too much weight aboard, Gov. I’m not gonna be able to hold ’er steady—and she’s certainly not capable of making the altitude we’ll need out by Naryndzlar.”

Doom on me. I leaned in his direction and shouted
to make myself heard above the engine noise. “How much weight are you talking about?”

He shrugged, fighting the controls as the chopper bounced up and down precariously. “From the way it feels, it could be a hundred pounds, it could be a couple hundred.”