"Three three oh two, this line unsecure. Captain Long speaking."
She put the phone down on the cabinet and returned to the bed. "It's for you, wise guy."
Mitchell cursed as he got out of bed and grabbed the phone. "What?"
"Hey, bud. Get your butt on down here to the team room and start working for a living."
Mitchell immediately recognized Riley's voice.
"Hey listen, Dave, don't screw with me, OK? It's two in the morning if you haven't noticed. Are you out drunk with the guys?"
"Listen, Mitch, I'm not bullshitting you. I just talked to the Old Man. It's an alert and you're back in charge of the team for this one. The colonel's in his office right now if you want to call him and check. But hurry up, 'cause we got to get moving for isolation. This one's got a short fuse."
By now Mitchell knew that Riley was serious. He tried to get his alcohol-and sleep-fogged brain to wake up. "How the hell am I going to get from here down to Seoul at two in the morning?" He and his wife didn't have a car — they weren't allowed at ChunChon and Mitchell didn't need one at Yongsan. And the train had stopped running hours ago.
"I'll get the Old Man to call the MPs there and have them run you down in one of their cars."
"All right. I'll get my stuff and head over to the MP building. See you in a couple of hours." Mitchell looked across the darkened room at his wife, then went over and sat next to her on the bed. She was so tired that she had almost fallen back to sleep.
Mitchell shook her shoulder gently. "Hey, babe. It's an alert. I've got to go back down to Seoul."
Jean struggled to open her eyes. "Are you going to deploy?"
"I don't know. Go back to sleep. I'll give you a call when I find out what's going on." He got up and quickly dressed.
Jean wanted to get up and say good-bye, but she was completely exhausted from her eighty-hour work week. They'd both been through alerts like this many times before. "Take care," she whispered as her husband walked out the door.
Riley wandered around the isolation area. It was an old one-story building, barely big enough to isolate all five teams from DET-K at once. The building had no windows and was routinely swept for listening devices, since the North Koreans would have been very interested in hearing what went on inside. The facility was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Armed air police guards manned the one gate, admitting authorized personnel only. Once a team entered isolation, they had no outside contact until the mission was complete.
Team 3 had commandeered one room as their main work area. It already had blank map boards and tables in it. Another room, with twelve bunks, would be their sleeping area. Colonel Hossey and Hooker, along with three other personnel from the S-3 shop, worked out of the forward operating base operations center (OPCEN), which also held the SATCOM terminal and radio equipment.
A forward operating base, or FOB, was a Special Forces headquarters, usually at battalion level, which was designed to run up to eighteen A teams through isolation and then be headquarters and radio base station on missions. Since Team 3 was the only team this FOB was isolating, Colonel Hossey could give it more personal attention. The FOB's mission was to isolate the team while the team prepared for the mission. Then the FOB commander would listen to the team's briefback, where the detachment presented its plan for conducting the mission. The FOB commander then would either approve or disapprove the plan. If the plan was approved, the team was launched on the infiltration. The FOB's mission from then on was mainly to monitor the team's radio traffic. The FOB also was the link to higher headquarters, which was usually called a Special Forces Operating Base, or SFOB. For this mission, the USSOCOM element at Fort Meade would be their SFOB.
In the OPCEN Riley glanced up as someone opened the door. He smiled as he saw a bedraggled Captain Mitchell hauling his rucksack and duffel bag through the door. "Hey, partner, let me give you a hand."
Mitchell passed over his ruck. They threw the gear into the sleeping area and went back to the op center. Mitchell looked over the area. "Where's the team?"
Riley pointed at the door leading into the isolation work area. "I got them started getting the area ready. Comsky and Lalli got here just before you did. Hooker managed to track them down in Itaewon."
"What's the mission?"
Riley shook his head. "I don't know. All Colonel Hossey got was an alert notice from USSOCOM and a reference to Typhoon 17 Alpha."
Mitchell nodded. "That's the war plan against China. But did it say which part of the plan or give any sort of time line?"
"Nope. Just be ready to go at 0500. Which we are."
Mitchell thought the whole thing was unusual and didn't mind saying so. "Is this real or just an exercise? Do you have an offset area?" He paused as Hossey came in the door on the far side of the room and gestured for the two of them to come over. "Glad you could make it, Mitch."
"What's going on, sir?"
Hossey pointed at three locked one-drawer metal file cabinets stacked on a table. "Typhoon 17 Alpha." He handed over a set of keys for the locks. "You should have most of what you need for planning in there. I haven't received the warning order yet. It should be coming through. We just got commo set up with the SFOB. They say we'll get the warning order about 2100 Zulu. They're operating out of Fort Meade, for some reason, so we should be able to get some good intel from NSA if they're willing to get off their asses and walk next door. In the meantime you might as well hang up the maps and get started with the stuff in those files."
4
"Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to
attack the enemy's strategy."
Colonel Hossey read the warning order as it rolled out of the terminal, then looked over at Hooker. "Is this for real?"
Hooker shrugged. "As far as I know it is." He grabbed the paper. "I'll give it to Captain Mitchell."
Hossey took it out of the sergeant major's hands. "I'll do it."
Since DET-K was smaller than a normal Special Forces battalion, Hossey's FOB was also smaller. He had himself, Sergeant Major Hooker, and only three other enlisted men to run the shift work. Mitchell, as the S-3, would normally have been in charge of the operations center. Now that Mitchell was back with the team, Hossey had taken over that job himself. For the duration of this mission he would let his executive officer command the other four teams in DET-K who were doing normal training back in Yongsan. His top priority lay here, especially if this mission turned out to be real.
Hossey took the warning order and left the operations center, going into the isolation area. The team had already set up tables, chairs, and map boards. They were all staring at him expectantly as he walked to the front of the room. He beckoned to Captain Mitchell and Riley.
"I've got your warning order." He handed it to Mitchell, who read it and handed it to Riley without comment.
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET
TO: CDR FOB Kl/ MSG 02
FROM: CDR USSOCOM/ SFOB FM
SUBJ: WARNING ORDER
REF: OPLAN TYPHOON ONE SEVEN ALPHA
1. SITUATION/
A/ ENEMY FORCES/ AS PER OPLAN ORDER OF BATTLE B/ FRIENDLY FORCES/ 1 ODA DETK/ 1 MCI30 1ST SOS
2. MISSION/ ODA INFILTRATES VIA MCI30 PEOPLE'S
REPUBLIC OF CHINA/ HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE/