Operation Southern Cross - 02 (24 page)

Once that second jumbo tanker reached its bingo point, it would fuel up the KC-130 one more time, wait until the Herk filled up the copters again, and then both of the big planes would turn back. At that point, XBat would be on its own.

The dance began immediately. Autry fueled up, followed by Mungo, McCune, a DAP being flown by WSOs Lynch and Snow and a Special K troop truck piloted by WSOs Whalen and Ramirez. The first round went off without a hitch, the strange formation heading due south by now, with only the bottom of the world waiting for them. The odd thing was, by the time all the copters took on fuel from the KC-130, and the KC-130 took on fuel from the KC-10, it was time for the copters to line up for refueling again.

Despite all this maneuvering, Autry had felt a safety factor when the big planes were flying escort for them. The aerial ballet carried them past midnight, and after eight hours, nearly a thousand miles closer to their goal. Trouble was, that was barely more than half the way to their destination. And when the first KC-10 left, their collective morale went down a notch. Then, an hour later, Autry got the call from the KC-130 that the copters should line up for their last refill. This time, the air was a bit turbulent, and the fliers maybe a bit nervous. Each of the five copters had problems hooking up with the flexible hose booms, Autry included.

Once all the fuel was passed, the KC-130 blinked off and with the nearly depleted KC-10 tanker flying high above, turned back to the north.

XBat was on its own.

THEY FLEW ON HIGH ABOVE WHAT WAS FAST BECOMING
a very wild South Atlantic.

About an hour after the tankers turned back, the copter crews spotted an immense black wall stretching across the southern horizon. At first it appeared to be a sort of optical illusion, following the curvature of the earth, blotting out the spectacular rivers of stars dotting the southern hemisphere’s sky. But this notion was dashed when, as they drew closer, they discovered this many hundred miles’ wide swath of black was actually a gigantic storm, churning itself into existence somewhere between their destination and the South Pole.

All of the XBat guys had seen some powerful snowstorms during their North Korean adventure. But none of them had ever seen anything like this.

The clouds got bigger and darker and more ominous as the copters’ formation continued south over the increasingly whitecapped ocean. Their next stop would be the most perilous of all—they had to find a ship down there, somewhere, that somehow had fuel onboard to give them. Navigating strictly on time and GPS, the five copters were about a hundred miles off the coast of Uruguay when they started picking up stray radio signals that may or may not have been from their fuel ship.

It was up to Autry to go down to the surface and check it out. What he saw was a very rusty, very old container ship battling the waves, and nothing more. He took a chance and opened his radio channel to the ship, this as the weather that they’d been watching for the past two hours suddenly loomed right over them. After a couple tries a voice—an American voice—finally replied. The container ship, as unlikely as it seemed, was their refueler. The crew had cleared an area right in the center of its loading bay, clearing away some containers in order for the copters to set down. The voice also reported they had aviation gas to spare.

But again, there was a catch: There was neither time nor space to allow more than one copter to land at a time. And as it was getting bad weather-wise, each copter would have just two minutes on the deck to get as much fuel as possible before leaving to make room for the next aircraft. It was going to be like a NASCAR race—except the fuel men weren’t exactly like a pit crew. Not that anyone could blame them. By the time Autry finally worked out the details with the ship, the waves had grown to fifteen feet, the wind was starting to howl and just to make it even messier, it had started to snow.

Autry landed. The fueling guys ran out onto the sea-washed deck, hooked up the hose and started pumping. This gave Autry a moment to look around, scanning the ship with his night-vision goggles. While it looked like a typical container ship, he spotted some sophisticated communication gear hidden in a forest of antennas atop the vessel’s bridge. He also saw armed men, standing in the shadows but carrying large weapons similar to those that XBat’s guys brought into battle.

And everyone aboard appeared to be a well-fed American—very unusual for a ship like this on the high seas.

Who were these guys, and why would they be down here, near the bottom of the world, with some extra aviation gas to spare?

Autry didn’t know. And at that point, he really didn’t care.

His fueling operation was about two-thirds complete when a huge wave hit the container ship broadside. It was such a violent, watery collision, it disconnected the fuel hose from Autry’s Black Hawk and the hose started spraying gas everywhere.

The fueling guys rushed forward and tried to reattach the fuel line, but it would not adhere. So they held it in place, but it wasn’t flush, so even more fuel sloshed around the deck. Meanwhile, other crewmen were throwing boxes of ammunition aboard the helicopter, high winds and sheets of freezing rain making any conversation with the copter guys impossible.

At that point, with tanks only half filled, Autry got the wave off. His two minutes were up. He looked behind him and saw Lynch’s Black Hawk coming down fast. He waved off the fueling guys and started to lift off into the gale. But just as the struts were leaving the deck, a guy appeared on the deck, running toward the copter. He was carrying a big cardboard box. He threw the box into the Black Hawk’s bay just as Autry was taking off.

“These might keep you warm,” the guy yelled to Autry’s crew.

Autry finally lifted the copter off, trailing what seemed like gallons of fuel behind it, as if their gas cap wasn’t on tight.

He cleared the ship and started south, moving deeper into the storm. The guys in back opened the box and found it contained dozens of folded-up plastic body bags.

Autry looked at the box and then at his guys huddled in the back.

“This is not good,” he muttered.

FOR AUTRY AND HIS CREW, THE NEXT THREE HOURS
were like driving through a car wash in the middle of a snowstorm. The South Atlantic’s infamous terrible weather was living up to its reputation. Both the snow and rain turned immediately to ice once they impacted his helicopter, the ice forming on the nose of the aircraft being the worst. Autry’s windshield wipers were working overtime trying to clear away the slushy mess but succeeding only marginally.

The unit was no longer flying within sight of one another. The ragged formation they’d held before reaching the container ship had been broken up by the refueling procedure, and there was no way the first copters could hang around waiting for the last guy to get filled. The shoestring plan called for them to proceed south once taking on their last bit of fuel, stay in radio contact with one another and, hopefully, reach their destination at roughly the same time.

The flight turned into a monumental struggle for Autry and his new copilot, WSO Winters. Just keeping the copter level was a huge strain on their muscles, both of them taking turns wrestling with controls that just did not want to obey. The temperature inside the copter had fallen to the point where they could see their breath. The guys in the back were all huddled facing the rear of the copter, up against some instrument panels that separated the bay from the flight deck, known to be the warmest place on the aircraft. Each man was wrapped in an oily cargo blanket and one of the heavy-duty plastic body bags.

They’d flown in and out of the night; it was getting light again. Autry’s eyes were constantly checking his fuel load; nothing mattered as much as that. It was strange, because at one point, with Winters flying the copter, Autry took his helmet and top gear off and wiped his head and sweaty face. He’d stopped looking at his dual watch by now. Getting back to Atlanta on time was a virtual impossibility. Now he just wiped the grime and slime from his forehead and chin, and closed his eyes for just a few moments of rest.

That’s when he heard Winters say: “Goddamn, Colonel—look at that.”

Autry opened his eyes, expecting to see their fuel emergency light blinking, but instead saw that a clearing had opened up in the inclement ocean clouds. Straight ahead, just barely visible on the horizon, were the chilly Falkland Islands.

Son of a bitch,
Autry thought to himself.
We actually made it.

BUT NOW CAME THE HARD PART.

They went down to just five hundred feet and entered the Falkland Sound, the irregularly shaped channel that separated the two main islands, east and west. Their touchdown point was a place called Port San Carlos, on East Falkland Island, about ten miles down this middle channel. The freezing rain had stopped by this time, but it was still snowing heavily.

“Isn’t it ever summer down here?” Winters asked.

The terrain around them was unspeakably bleak. Cold, windswept hills, ice flowing in the channel, snow blowing everywhere. It was hard to believe anyone actually wanted to
live
down here, never mind fight a war over the place.

Autry spotted their landmark, the wreck of a British supply ship sunk here in the 1982 war. Five hundred yards east of the rusting hulk was a small dock containing a fish-packing plant, now abandoned, and a parking lot. In the parking lot was a fuel tank that held aviation gas for the only privately owned helicopter on the island—or at least that’s what Weir’s CIA information said. Autry’s fuel gauge was just about on red by this time. Getting more gas—workable gas—was important. The terrain on both Falkland Islands was harsh—as the Brits found out in 1982. If XBat had to search for the killer laser on foot, with all these hills and hollows, it would take a lifetime.

Autry put his copter into a slow circle around the dock. As this was happening, another DAP appeared out of the snow shower. It was the copter being flown by WSOs Lynch and Snow.

Autry and his crew were relieved to see them. At least they weren’t down here alone. Their first priority now was to gas up and search the highest point on East Falkland, a place called Mount Usborne. The bare 2,300-foot mountain about fifteen miles southeast of Port San Carlos was one place the killer laser was suspected to be. If the refueling went well, Autry and the other DAP would set off for the mountain immediately. There would no need to wait for the others. They would know what to do once they arrived.

Both copters set down in the fish plant’s parking lot. The half-acre-square lot turned out to be more ice than asphalt, but somehow the copters stayed in place. Two of Autry’s guys jumped out and slid their way over to the bright red, rusty fuel tank. It looked like a big oil barrel turned on its side and was held in place by an ancient wooden framework. Remarkably, a small electrical heating unit was humming away nearby, keeping whatever was inside the tank warm, or at least from freezing.

The tank’s spigot was covered with ice; the two troopers hastily chipped it away. It took the strength of both of them to move the draw handle, but finally a slow drip appeared out of the access pipe. One of the troopers placed a drop of it on his tongue and then gave Autry a thumbs-up. As promised, it was aviation fuel.

A hose was found under the tank and quickly attached to Autry’s copter; within minutes his tanks were full. He moved his aircraft out of the way and allowed the second DAP to fill up. Even after this was done, there was still several hundred gallons of gas left for the other XBat copters following on.

The pair of copters took off again; Autry first, rising above the boarded-up fishing plant, clawing its way into the frigid air. About thirty feet off the ground, Autry saw a yellow streak of light cut through the snow flurries and go right past his cockpit window. Before he could react to it, another streak of light went by, then another and another. Only then did he realize that these were tracer bullets coming right at him.

What was happening?
At first he thought that a gun on the second DAP had misfired. But an instant later, he knew this wasn’t the case. The isolated, barren, peaceful hills in front of them suddenly looked like they were on fire. Dozens of people hidden up there were shooting at them.

The second DAP was immediately hit on its rotor stack. It had lifted not twenty feet off the parking lot when it began to fall. Lynch and Snow wisely increased power, giving the rotors a few last spins. This prevented the copter from coming down on its side and probably killing everyone on board.

As it was, the DAP came down very hard, bounced once, and hit again even harder. Some of the guys onboard dove out of the stricken aircraft before it hit the second time, rolling away in the snow. The pilots killed power, which kept the wounded copter on the ground for good. But the gunfire around them only increased.

Autry didn’t even think about it. He immediately put his own chopper between the gunfire and the downed DAP. His guys opened up with their big fifties while Winters began spraying the hills with rocket fire. It was enough of a display to force the gunmen to put their heads down. When this happened, Autry brought his craft down low enough for the crew of the stricken copter to jump in.

But just as quickly, the storm of gunfire started up again. Autry could hear bullet rounds pinging off his landing slats and his rotor blades. With the extra men on board, he was now overloaded; this made handling the copter even more troublesome. For a moment he thought they might not make it, the gunfire was that intense. But then salvation arrived in the form of one of the Special K troop trucks.

It had appeared out of the snow over the channel. Quickly assessing the situation, its pilots turned their troop hauler into a weapons platform. The Special Ks were not as heavily armed as the DAPs, but those XBat troopers riding inside had their own ways to compensate. They simply slid open their cargo-bay doors, stuck their personal weapons out and started firing. As the copter swept over the small dock and parking lot, all this firepower was trained on the gunmen on the hill.