The brief mission was relatively simple in planning, with the potential for unexpected complications in execution.
They were to go ashore and take a quick sneak and peek at the Cubans’ facility on the southwest corner of the island.
The overhead imagery revealed new construction on the base, as well as the possibility that the downed American pilot was being held hostage there. Their orders allowed them to take action, if they could do so without compromising the unit’s safety, to free him. Every one of them had firmly resolved to do just that if at all possible.
In addition to the normal bag of tricks, Huerta carried a few extra goodies. A low-light camera, capable of concentrating the ambient light to take pictures even under the worst of conditions. Two small, portable motion detectors, each barely larger than a small tape recorder, for mounting at the entrances to their areas of surveillance.
And finally, the piece of gear responsible for the particularly grim expression on their leader’s face a microcircuitized Geiger counter.
The muffled hammer of the specially silenced engine attached to the RHIB soaked into the fog around them.
Barring exceptionally poor luck, the team was undetectable.
“Shore,” Sikes said finally. He pointed forward in the fog.
Barely discernible was the dark outline of land. The SEALs made their final preparations for disembarking, careful to keep metal from hammering against metal and alerting a randomly patrolling sentry.
The boat ground ashore with a harsh rasp, small pebbles and rocks digging into the thick rubber bottom. Minutes later, the boat was dragged out of the water and safely concealed under a clump of brush in a small grove of trees.
The eight SEALs broke into two teams of four, the first headed for what satellite imagery showed as the new construction area. The second group slanted away from them toward the highly fortified encampment that intelligence specialists suspected contained the captive pilot.
They would meet back here in two hours, with or without the pilot and with or without the information they were after.
The insistent beeping of the ALR-45 radar warning and control system shattered the silence of the cockpit. Gator moved quickly to silence the alarm, then called out the identification. “MiG just watching.”
Bird Dog swore quietly. At this range, the MiG could be on top of them in ten minutes. His orders were to avoid an actual confrontation with any Cuban aircraft. It ate at his gut to have to run, but if he allowed the Cuban to approach them, the other pilot would quickly see through their deception. Still, to let the Cubans think that the mere presence of this MiG could make the Americans turn and run was distinctly distasteful.
“Bird Dog, get us the hell out of here,” Gator ordered.
“We could have some fun with him,” Bird Dog suggested. He held the Tomcat steady and level.
“I mean it. You know what our orders are.” The RIO’s voice notched up two notes on the octave. “There’s no point in being a diversion if we blow it the second they come out to take a look.”
“But what would be a more realistic deception than to go toward the MiG? The rest of the flight can turn tail and run, but the presence of one aircraft lingering around here is bound to get ‘em interested.
Besides, there’s only one launching, right?”
“As far as I can tell,” the RIO admitted grudgingly. “This is one of your worst ideas ever.”
Bird Dog reached forward and flipped off the radios.
“Jefferson will see what we’re doing,” he continued blithely.
“If they want us to RTB return to base they’ll let us know.”
“Not with the radios off.”
“Who says the radios are off? Communications problems are not unknown in the Tomcat, you know.” He could hear the RIO’s disgusted sigh over the ICS-the interior communications system.
“You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?” Gator said finally. “To hell with your career, my career let’s give it all up so you can play grab-ass with the Cubans. You’ve been missing that ever since we were on patrol in the Spratlys.”
“Think of it as a diversion within a diversion,” Bird Dog suggested.
“The rest of the flight turns away, and I’m the diversion that lets them go. It makes sense perfect sense.”
“There’s only one thing wrong with this plan. A really critical factor.” The RIO’s voice was harsh.
“What’s that?”
“Somebody forgot to tell the Cubans it’s just a diversion.
What if they take it a little more seriously than that?”
The SEALs slipped silently through the vegetation, invisible in their woodland-patterned cammies and face paint.
They moved slowly, brushing vegetation aside carefully to prevent inadvertent rustling of leaves, watching where they placed their feet in order to avoid twigs and branches underfoot. Not that the woodland debris would have cracked under their feet the entire area was as sodden, and as dark, as a rain forest.
Ahead of them, the wire-mesh perimeter fence barely reflected the ambient light in a regular pattern. The SEALs crept up to within six feet of it, still hidden by the underbrush.
The SEAL leader motioned to his second in command, using only hand signals to convey his intentions. The other SEAL nodded, reached into his belt, and withdrew a heavy-duty set of wire cutters. Intelligence had indicated that the fence was electrified, but not alarmed, and that the Cubans lacked even rudimentary pressure sensors and motion detectors along the perimeter.
The SEALs waited. Their luck held within a couple of minutes, a bulky Cuban patrolling sentry came into view, his presence announced five minutes earlier by his clumsy, stumbling progress along the perimeter.
The SEALs held their breath, watched him pass by them on the interior of the fence and then disappear in the dark.
They waited a little bit longer, until they were certain he was out of earshot. Then Sikes motioned sharply Move out!
Garcia scampered up to the fence, slipping on his heavily insulated gloves as he moved while holding the heavy wire cutters with their rubberized handles in one hand. He crouched low, blending in with the low vegetation already struggling to reassert its domination over the trimmed area.
He worked quickly but carefully, snipping away the heavy strands and finally tossing aside a semicircular portion of the fence. Grinning, he held it aloft for a moment for his compatriots to admire, then laid it carefully on the ground. He scuttled back to join his teammates and resumed his normal position in the formation.
Sikes led the way, moving quickly across the open area.
Behind him, at two-minute intervals, the rest of the team followed.
They regrouped at the rear of a ramshackle wooden building. The short, hundred-meter dash had driven the last traces of stiffness and cold from their muscles. They paused for a minute, regrouping, then employed the same silent dart-and-wait maneuver to move steadily across the rest of the compound.
Their target was the open field to the north of the main cluster of buildings, the one the satellite imagery had shown as under construction.
“I need altitude,” Bird Dog said as a warning. He slammed the throttles forward, kicking the massive jet into afterburners, and yanked back on the yoke. The Tomcat rotated in the air to stand almost on end, its nose pointed toward the one clear patch of sky Bird Dog had found. Rain still spattered the canopy, the drops driven quickly aft by the jet’s wind speed to leave most of the forward part clear. Five hundred knots of airspeed was better than any windshield wiper ever designed.