Another wave picked him up and slid him forward until rough sand grated under his legs and swim vest. He waited as the outgoing water sucked at his body, leaving him for the moment exposed on the beach. There was no movement at all, no sound save the repetitious roar of the surf.
Huerta sensed motion to his left. Machinist's Mate First Class Brian Copley was all but invisible in the darkness, but Huerta could make out the flicker of a hand motion, questioning. He replied with a hand sign of his own. "Go!"
Minutes earlier, the two of them had dropped from the raft fifty yards offshore. Lieutenant Sikes was waiting now with the others while they checked out the beach.
A low whistle, barely heard through a lull in the surf, told him the way was clear. As the next wave picked him up and slid him forward again, Huerta rose to a low crouch and loped forward. He ran twenty yards up the beach, then threw himself down at Copley's side. Working quietly, they pulled night-vision goggles from waterproof pouches and put them on. Switched on, the goggles enhanced the available light enough that the SEALs could see a man-sized target at three hundred yards.
They exchanged more hand signals. The SEALs split up, checking a hundred yards up and down the coast.
The beach was narrow, with a steep, boulder-strewn slope rising like a wall in front of them. There were buildings close by, a seaside resort and the ramshackle huts of a fishing village, but this stretch was empty.
Huerta met Copley once more, signaled him to mount guard, and made his way back to the water's edge. He switched off his starlight goggles and raised them up on his head to conserve battery power. Taking a penlight, he aimed it out past the surf and pressed the switch once… twice… three times. There was no response ― no sense in alerting other watchers along the shore ― but minutes later Huerta glimpsed the subdued flash of a black paddle dipping against a wave. The IBS had motored in from the drop point, stopping only once when a North Korean torpedo boat had growled past on patrol. Though their DZ had been well inside the twelve-mile limit, the team had still been forced to motor a long way to reach this portion of the coast, and speed was essential. For the final approach silence and invisibility were the watchwords, so they'd come into the beach with the motors off, using paddles to keep from broaching to in the surf.
Figures materialized out of the night, carrying the dripping rafts. Lieutenant Sikes touched his shoulder, a silent "well done." Huerta led the rest of the SEAL team back up the beach to where Copley was waiting with his suppressed Smith and Wesson M-760 SMG, prone behind his rucksack.
They worked swiftly, half mounting guard while the other half stripped off wetsuit tops and donned camouflaged combat suits, boots and web gear. Headgear, like weapons, was largely a matter of personal choice. Most of the men wore boonie hats. Some, like Huerta, preferred a simple sweat band of camo cloth.
The SEALs took another fifteen minutes using paddles to scoop out holes above the beach's high-tide line where they buried the rafts and motors, paddles, wetsuits, fins, and goggles. Whatever happened now, they would not be needing them again. They spent minutes more checking themselves and each other, making certain that exposed skin was covered with camo grease-paint, that snaps and swivels on rifles and equipment were secured with black tape, that no one wore anything which might shine or clink or rattle and thus give their presence away to the enemy. Rucksacks, lighter now with only ammo, rations, and survival gear, were strapped to backs and loose buckles and ends secured. Each man also donned night-vision goggles which gave him an oddly mechanical appearance, like a robot in a cheap SF horror film.
Huerta and Sikes checked a waterproof map. The SEALs had arrived precisely on the strip of beach chosen from the satellite photos they'd studied at Coronado and during their trip across the Pacific. The North Korean Army camp where at least some of the prisoners had been sighted lay four miles inland, near the village of Nyongch'on-ni. Other features were marked on the map, possible targets for air raids, possible locations of American prisoners, but the team's first priority was to check the camp identified as Nyongch'on-kiji.
Huerta pulled back the velcro seal of his luminous watch and checked the time. It was 0240 hours. They could be there in an hour or two if nothing delayed them.
Each man already knew his place in patrol formation. Huerta, as assistant squad leader, took position behind Vic Krueger, who was lugging one of the team's two M-60 machine guns. With another silent hand motion from Sikes, the team began moving, treading up the slope as silently as ghosts in the night.
CHAPTER 18
Huerta lay flat on his back in the muddy ditch, moving in tiny increments beneath the chain-link fence which surrounded the inner compound of the North Korean base. Runoff from repeated rains had carved this channel beneath the fence unnoticed by its builders, and now the SEAL was using it to gain entrance to the area suspected to be where the Koreans were holding the crew of the U.S.S. Chimera.
He was unarmed save for a knife and his Mark 22, a silenced, custom-made 9-mm first used against guard dogs in Vietnam and subsequently known as the "hush puppy." Those were for use as a last resort only, of course. The last thing he needed at the moment was a dead guard; if he killed someone, he would have to drag the body out of the camp and hope the sentry's superiors thought he'd deserted while on watch.
He'd left his night-vision gear with the others as well; it was too easy to become reliant on those technological wonders, too easy to lose touch with the night. And now Chief Huerta was the night, a black shadow among shadows, edging silently under the fence through the runoff gully.
He'd already traversed the first, outer fence, using bolt-cutters to snip through a few links of the fence in the shadow of a guard tower next to a pole. The rest of the team waited for him outside.
The camp identified as Nyongch'on-kiji lay in a high saddle in the ridge line some seven miles south of Wonsan's waterfront district, surrounded on two sides by rugged escarpments which climbed higher still. A highway passed through the saddle, connecting Wonsan with the town of Anbyon ten miles to the south. At this hour there was little traffic.
The SEALs had reached the eastern slope overlooking the camp after an hour's hike from the coast. From the vantage point of their OP amid boulders, brush, and the scraggly, stunted pines that clung to the rocky slopes in this region, they'd surveyed the camp, identifying the building which was their prime target. One of the long, single-story structures inside the inner fence was the building in the satellite photo which had first confirmed the presence of Westerners inside the Nyongch'on compound the previous day.
That building was Huerta's target now. He'd been lucky so far: no encounters, no guard dogs, and only isolated glimpses of sentries doing their rounds in the distance. If he could get close enough to the suspect building to confirm that Americans were being held there now…
Coyote heard it first, a muffled thump as though something had landed on the roof of the hut. He'd been lying awake on the straw ticking which served as a mattress, and the sound seemed to originate beyond the wooden timbers of the ceiling directly over his head. He sat up. Commander Wilkinson, lying nearby, sat up as well.