"Yes, sir."
Mitchell and Riley were still not satisfied, but they knew they were hitting a stone wall. Maybe Hossey's request would get some action through the SFOB. Otherwise they'd have to go with what they had.
The news that a navy ship was now involved further increased the reality of the situation, Riley thought. The SFOB was sure pulling a lot of strings.
Down the hall from the Special Forces isolation area, the aircrew was laboring over charts and wading through the intelligence they'd been fed by the SFOB.
Major Kent, the Talon's electronics warfare officer, was concerned primarily with the electronic threat that the aircraft would face. In his opinion, from an aviation viewpoint, the target was in an extremely difficult location to reach. The routes in and out were fraught with numerous problems.
Kent had quickly ruled out going over the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) and flying the length of North Korea. The DMZ was one of the hottest spots in the world and was heavily guarded. Despite the Talon's capabilities, Kent knew that their odds were poor of making it over the DMZ without being detected.
That meant they had to make an end run either east or west. Both were about equidistant from Osan. Kent looked at a classified map that listed the various radar and air defense installations in the area. It was obvious that the western route, up over the Yellow Sea, was the more heavily guarded, both by the North Koreans along their west coast and by the Chinese.
Kent studied the eastern route over the Sea of Japan. It looked good except for one major problem — China didn't have a seacoast there. To go in, the Talon would have to cross a strip of land that belonged to either Russia or North Korea. Kent shook his head. Vladivostok was a major Russian port. Although Kent felt that they could avoid its ground air defense radar system, he was concerned about the possibility of Russian ships in the Sea of Japan.
Next he studied the North Korean radar array. Then he examined reports on the alert status of the North Korean and Russian air forces. His conclusion: The scale tilted toward the North Koreans being the greatest threat to alert and launch. Kent decided to make the primary route a shore crossing over Russia rather than North Korea.
Kent lifted his gaze from the maps and leaned back in his chair. Time to put it all on the overlays. He got up and headed over to the navigator to start working on their route options.
Mitchell felt it had been a profitable day. The team had gotten a lot accomplished and was ready to try its first practice run of the briefback. He took his place in front of the team and quickly looked through his notes.
"All right. Listen up. Before we start this practice there are a couple of things I want you to remember about both the briefback and this mission. The primary thing is to treat the mission like it's real. For all we know, right now it is. Every plan you come up with, every little thing you say you're going to do, you damn well better be able to do it."
He swung his gaze to O'Shaugnesy. "If you say you're going to blow the radios in case of compromise, you'd better have requested thermite grenades from the engineers to do just that. Since the sergeant major is giving us the real shit for this mission, I'd also better see a thermite grenade with your radio's name on it among the gear you're packing."
Mitchell took in the entire room. "Saying something during a briefback that you don't really mean or couldn't really do is one of the worst mistakes any of us can make. So when you all listen to each other in this practice, I want you to sharpshoot. If I brief that I'm going to wear yellow underwear with purple stripes, someone better ask to see it."
"No thanks," Riley laughed. The team sergeant turned serious. "Let me add something to what the captain is saying. I know I beat you guys to death on this, but remember first and foremost we're a team. If a fellow team member gets up there in the real briefback before the colonel and says something stupid or answers a question wrong, I don't want to see anybody correcting or contradicting him. To take the captain's analogy a step further, if I brief that every member of the team is going to wear yellow underwear with purple stripes, I'd better see eleven heads sitting here nodding, saying, 'Yes, sir, that's what we're going to be wearing.' "
Riley looked around the room. "We're a team. We stick together no matter what."
6
"Therefore I say: Know the enemy and
know yourself; in a hundred battles you will
never be in peril."
"Good evening, Colonel Hossey, Sergeant Major Hooker. I'm Captain Mitchell, commander of Team 3. This briefing is classified top secret. Team 3's mission is to infiltrate Operational Area Dustey, located in Manchuria in northeastern China, at 1600 Zulu time, 6 June 1989, and destroy target Dagger, between 1600Z and 1900Z on the eighth. The purpose of this mission is to stop the flow of oil through the Daqing-Fushun pipeline for a minimum of seven days. We will be exfiltrated at 2000 Zulu time, 8 June.
"First, I'd like to introduce the members of Team 3 and give you a brief operational overview. I'll be followed by the members of the detachment, each briefing their own specialized areas." Hossey and Hooker knew everyone on the team, but Mitchell wanted to follow the standard format for a briefback. It was good training.
For three hours after the introductions the team presented its plan and then defended it. Mitchell led off by giving an overview of the concept of operations. He was followed by Olinski, who briefed terrain, weather, and the enemy situation in excruciating detail. At the conclusion of his portion Olinski handed Colonel Hossey the team's E & E plan.
Hoffman then stood up to give his portion. "Sir, I'll be briefing our demolitions plan for destruction of the target. The actual tactical plan at the target will be covered after me by Sergeant First Class Riley. First I will cover the target analysis we did on the pipeline, so you can understand why we chose to destroy this portion, and then the actual actions at the target.
"The trunk line of the Daqing-Fushun pipeline is eleven hundred and fifty kilometers long and runs from…"
Mitchell tuned out the history lesson on the pipeline as he'd heard it several times before. The entire demolition plan had been formulated by Hoffman and his assistant, Corporal Smith. When they had briefed Mitchell and Riley on the plan, Mitchell had understood only about half of what they'd said. He'd turned to Riley, who had nodded his approval. That was good enough for Mitchell. But the captain had had the two engineers explain things again to the entire team, and in language everyone could understand. Then the team had rehearsed, as well as they could in the isolation area, the actual placement of charges, until every team member could do it.
Hoffman was on a roll. He pointed at a grid he had drawn on a sheet of butcher paper. "I analyzed the entire length of pipeline inside operational range of infiltration and exfiltration aircraft using the CARVE formula. This acronym stands for criticality, accessibility, recuperability, vulnerability, and effect. As a result of this analysis, we have chosen this portion, where the pipe crosses the Sungari River, as a critical node and our target. As you can see on this satellite imagery, the pipe is suspended above the river by means of cables running over these pylons on opposite shores — in effect a suspension bridge of pipe similar to the Golden Gate Bridge."
Mitchell always insisted that every briefback be given in the simplest terms possible. Everyone had to understand every part of the plan; in fact every member on the team had to be able to get up and give any portion of the briefback from memory. One person missing one critical part could spell disaster. They'd rehearsed for this briefback by randomly choosing people to give the different parts.