Brandon was looking forward now, and I could see the shore looming into view. It was a dark smudge against the blacker sky. It was slightly overcast tonight, with a new moon. That had been the deciding factor in the decision to go in at night, I suspected.
The boat ground onto the shore with a soft, sibilant sound. I caught glimpses of their activities as Brandon supervised the disembarking, and hiding the RHIBs in nearby cover. He left one man on guard, and the rest of them set out for the airfield.
"Is something wrong with the sound?" I asked Lab Rat.
He checked his instruments, then shook his head. "No. Why?"
"No reason." I wasn't about to explain that the SEALs were moving so silently through the dense jungle that I thought we had an equipment failure. I didn't want that getting back to Sykes, even as a backhanded compliment.
It took them an hour and a half to make it to the perimeter of the airfield and base. Once there, Brandon sat motionless for at least twenty minutes. I tapped my fingers impatiently, waiting for something to happen, then realized that it probably was. As the leader of the team, Brandon was hanging back and coordinating.
Then he moved, so silently and slowly that at first I missed it. It was a slow, careful slither through the underbrush, and from what I could see, not a branch around him moved. Without the pictures, I never would have believed just how invisible a SEAL can be in deep cover.
Then I saw what had attracted his attention. A two-man patrol, their voices now reaching the microphone at his lips. He'd heard them well before I had, and had moved into position. But for what?
I got my answer shortly. Brandon raised one hand and positioned it in front of the camera. There was a long, pale strip in his hand. It loomed at me now, filling the screen, wiggled, then held still.
"What the-?" I turned to Lab Rat. "We've lost the picture?"
"It was a stupid comment. Lab Rat didn't say anything, just stared at me.
Then I understood. Maybe Brandon had briefed him, but probably Lab Rat had just figured it out himself. There was something going on on the ground that Brandon didn't want me to see. Whether because he was protecting me or his men, it was important to him that my silent, watchful presence at the scene be eliminated.
Then the sound went dead. For about five seconds I was completely cut off from the SEAL team. Then I saw Brandon's hand appear, ripping away the covering over his camera, and I heard the small night noises of the jungle. I caught another glimpse of the thing that had obscured my vision earlier.
"A Band-Aid?" I asked. "Do they carry them all the time for just that purpose?"
Still, Lab Rat was silent.
And the guards were nowhere in sight.
Just exactly what had he done? Shot them? He must have, because there had not been time for him to approach them on foot and eliminate them. And I was certain that that was exactly what had occurred.
"He can't-" I began.
For the first time in our relationship, Lab Rat cut me off.
"You sent him in to do a job, Admiral. He let you come along for part of the ride, but only as long as it didn't interfere with his capabilities. Do you really want to see what just happened? Do you want to know and be forced into some action? Or will you settle for having things just the way they would have been before this newest toy?"
"Damn it, I'm responsible!" I stood and started pacing again, angry at more than just Brandon Sykes.
"Of course you are," Lab Rat said. "But do you really want to know what just happened?"
I considered the matter for a moment, cooling off as I did so. The truth ― no, I didn't want to know. No more than I wanted a bird's-eye view of the men and women who died following our bombing run, the tiny sparkles of flame that spurted briefly across the J-TARPS screen, then collapsed.
"They're in," I said, and took my seat again.
Indeed they were. What I at first took for shadows on the ground were two SEALS, now edging closer to the back end of the revetments. This thing was massive, extending back into the jungle and shaded by the trees. Each could have easily held thirty or forty aircraft, though why they would have concentrated all their assets in one area was a mystery to me.
They crept around the side of the revetments still in Brandon's view, barely discernible moving shapes against the night. They moved out of his field of vision, and I heard Brandon's breathing pick up speed. Had the microphone been any more sensitive, I was certain I would have heard his heart pounding away as well.
It was over fast, so fast. Five minutes later, they were creeping back out as carefully as they'd gone in. They joined on Brandon, then the three of them moved out, picking up the other two along the way. They moved more quickly through the underbrush now, it seemed to me.
I had just started to breathe again, when all hell broke loose. A loud, wailing siren went off and the jungle behind the SEALs lit up like daylight. Someone had evidently discovered the two missing guards on patrol, and the response was fast and deadly.
I couldn't see them yet, because Brandon was concentrating on his own path, but I could hear the screams and commands being shouted out behind him. All five men had abandoned their complete stealth mode for a quiet but much speedier exit from the area.
What had taken them an hour to cover quietly, they did in less than ten minutes hauling ass. Before any effective patrols had been sent out after them, they were back at the boats and hauling them out, and were already en route to the ship when the first patrols appeared on the beach. All I could see was the rubberized side of an RHIB ― Brandon was evidently crouched down low in the boat, making as small a target as possible for the spatter of gunfire now splatting in the water around the RHIB. There was a heavy, consistent thud-thud-thud ― the bow of the RHIB slamming down against the waves as it hauled ass back out into deeper water.
"The helo is airborne, sir," Lab Rat reminded me. "All he has to do is make it to the five-mile point ― then the helo will rope them up and have them back on deck before the Vietnamese know what happened."
We'd established five miles as the safe point to keep the helo well out of the range of Stinger missiles as well as any other shoulder-portable weapons the Vietnamese might carry. The helo was going in low to avoid search radars, running a mere ten or fifteen feet over the tops of the waves to the intercept point.
"Shit!" I heard one of the electronic warfare technicians say. "Not now, damn it!"
Lab Rat turned and surveyed the numbers flickering by on the Signal Intercept equipment. Whatever he saw drained the blood out of his face.
"SAM sites, sir," he said, his voice low and level. "They're lighting up all over the coast."
"Have they got the helo?"
"No indication yet. They're still in search mode, but they're definitely alerted. He's going to have to fly low level all the way back."
Lab Rat knew what that meant just as well as I did. At night, without much ambient light, low-level-over-water operations were particularly dangerous.
But not as dangerous as being in a RHIB with people shooting at you.
"How much longer?" I asked.
"Another two miles," Lab Rat answered. "The helo's got a visual on them ― says they're doing well, evading all the fire. No indication there's been any casualties."
Those two minutes were some of the longest I've sat through, made particularly painful by the fact there was nothing I could do to help these men. Time has a way of stretching out when you're under fire, when seconds become minutes and minutes eternities. Your nervous system is so flooded with adrenaline that you're thinking faster, moving more quickly than you ever have before in your life. Survival depends on making the right decision, and making it seconds before you have to.