His wheels touched steel and he rammed the throttle to full power. There was an eye-rattling jolt as the hook grabbed wire, and the Tomcat slowed from one-fifty to zero in two seconds. For an instant, Tombstone hung suspended in his harness then he was throttling down, backing the aircraft to spit out the wire, following the waving yellow wands of a deck manager guiding him to a parking slot.
It's over! The thought was exultant. It's over!
Tombstone felt as though he'd never been so alive as he was at that moment.
DAY FOUR
CHAPTER 17
The SEAL team consisted of Lieutenant Brandon's thirteen men, operating under the call sign "Bushmaster." They sat crowded shoulder to shoulder on narrow seats, facing outward, bathed in a dim red glow barely sufficient to illuminate the helicopter's cabin. Anything like normal conversation was impossible under the hammering of the SH-3H Sea King's five-bladed rotors, so there was no talking. Each man, his face and hands heavily blackened, wore a wetsuit, life preserver and harness, and a face-mask. Each man held swimfins, letting them dangle between his knees. At his feet was a waterproof rucksack holding weapons and equipment.
They'd boarded the Sea King over an hour earlier, watched only by a few curious sailors on Jefferson's flight deck. Now they were approaching the Korean coast, skimming the waves at one hundred fifty miles per hour.
Several possible plans had been discussed for inserting the team. The most common means for getting SEALs ashore was to release them from the diving trunk of a submarine, but the nearest U.S. sub equipped for SEAL ops was still a day's sailing time away, and the shallow waters east of Wonsan were risky haunts for subs in any case. Both HALO ― A parachute drop from high altitude with the chute opening delayed until the last moment ― and HAHO ― A drop from high altitude with the chute opened immediately and steered across dozens of miles to the drop zone ― had been considered and discarded. Jefferson's Prowlers were busily jamming North Korean radar, but it was still possible that parachutists, especially high-flying, long-ranged HAHO jumpers, would be spotted coming in. Besides, the North Korean landscape was a rugged jumble of mountains, woods, villages, and industrial complexes. Without pathfinders to secure and mark the DZ, a parachute landing was extremely risky.
The solution, to insert by helocast into the sea and make the final approach to shore by raft, was risky too, but it offered several advantages. North Korean radars ― those that could burn through the American jamming ― had been picking up Jefferson's SAR helos all evening. Helicopters had been deliberately overflying the area for hours now, even deliberately penetrating the twelve-mile limit. By now, one more helo wouldn't attract undue attention… if it was seen at all against the scattered returns from the waves.
Too, in a helocast, the possibility of one or more jumpers injuring themselves was smaller, and this was an op where even one casualty would seriously weaken the team's chances.
Lieutenant Sikes held one hand to the communications helmet he wore. "Three minutes!" he heard the aircraft commander say over the headset.
Sikes picked up his equipment bundle and padded barefoot across the cabin to the big sliding door on the starboard side, feeling the deck vibrate beneath his feet. A Navy helicopter crewman grinned at him and gave a jaunty thumbs-up, then undogged the door and slid it back. Wet air thundered past the opening.
The blackness outside was complete. The SEAL lieutenant took his position by the door, turned, and gave his men a hand signal. "Get ready!"
Sikes removed the communications helmet and handed it to the sailor as the team members unstrapped themselves and gathered up their gear. The stick leader, Boatswain's Chief Manuel Huerta, helped the lieutenant drag a black-shrouded bundle weighing more than three hundred pounds and fitted with safety lines and flotation collars, across the deck and position it near the door. He signaled again. "Stand up!"
The men unbuckled themselves and shuffled into line, Huerta taking his place at the head, facing Sikes. Wind tugged at the lieutenant's life vest, but its force was lessening. The Sea King was slowing now as it approached the drop zone.
"Check equipment!" As for a parachute jump, each man checked the gear of the man in front of him, rucksack snap-linked to harness, fins looped over one arm, knife, flare, first-aid kit, and pistol secured to web belt. Sikes double-checked them all, and Huerta checked him. The sailor, hearing a warning from the aircraft commander over his com helmet, held up his forefinger, crooked over to show half. Thirty seconds. "Stand in the door!" The lieutenant could make out the oily flash of wave tops in the blackness below the helo, could taste air-flung salt as the rotors lashed spray from the surface. The Sea King had slowed now to less than twenty knots, coasting a bare fifteen feet above the water. The seaman gave a signal. "Go!" The bundle went out first, already unfolding as its C02 valve triggered. Huerta was next. Earlier that evening, a metal bar had been welded to the helo's side, just ahead of the door and extending three feet from the hull. Huerta reached out the door and grabbed the bar, swung clear of the cabin with his body angled slightly forward and his gear bag dangling below, then let go. The splash was lost in the roar of the engines.
One by one, the SEALs shuffled forward and repeated the procedure. When the last man had vanished into the spray-whipped night, Sikes grinned at the sailor, took his own place at the bar, then let go.
The water was cold, engulfing Sikes in a numbing grip. By the time he resurfaced, the Sea King had already picked up both speed and altitude, its roar dwindling into the night. The lieutenant slipped his fins on, cleared his mask, then began closing with the rest of the team. He could hear them nearby, gathering at the black rubber raft riding the heavy sea swell. The IBS ― Navyese for Inflatable Boat, Small ― could carry fourteen men and up to one thousand pounds of gear. It took only minutes for the SEALs to get themselves and their gear on board, to unship the waterproofed electric engine and secure it to the motor mount. Sikes checked his compass and indicated a direction. Land was that way about five miles off if the helo had put them in the right place. The IBS began moving silently through the night.
One of the bunk-rooms reserved for six of the wing's junior officers was affectionately known as a Me Jo, a humorous acronym which stood for Marginally Effective Junior Officers. The quarters belonging to six of VF-95's lieutenants and j.gs had been taken over by pilots and RIOs from half a dozen of the wing's squadrons.
The party was in full swing when Batman arrived, at least twenty men crowded into the bunk-room, talking, laughing, and making the inevitable "there I was right on this guy's tail" motions with their hands as they described again and again their specific engagements during the dogfight. Snake Hoffner and Zombie Callahan were enjoying the attention as they talked about their fish-eye view of the battle and their long, cold wait until a SAR Sea King had reached them. They'd been released from sick bay only moments earlier, arriving just before Batman. Since liquor was strictly prohibited aboard ship, refreshments were limited to Kool-Aid and coffee served from a pair of silver ten-gallon urns set on a cart in the corner. Food ranged from chips, pretzels, and other assorted junk from the ship's exchange to "autodog," soft ice cream so-called because of what chocolate ice cream was supposed to look like as it was extruded from the automatic dispenser.