"You all have a copy of your orders. Subunit areas are assigned in them. Are there any questions?" As expected, there were none. "One hour, gentlemen."
Tugur left the conference room and went to an adjoining office, where he dialed Yang's personal number in Shenyang.
Yang wasted no time in preamble once Tugur identified himself. "Were there any questions?"
"No, General. They are too scared to think. But they will be moving out on time and be in place by 1200 today."
"Good. Anything else?"
"No, sir."
There was a click as the phone was hung up on the other end. Tugur looked at the dead phone in his hand. He'd been with General Yang a long time and knew him well. Tugur felt his superior was taking a foolish chance now. They'd reported the pipeline explosion to Beijing— it would have been impossible to hide that. But Yang was keeping quiet the news of the crash site, and possible foreign involvement. The general wanted all the potential glory of capturing the foreigners. But Tugur knew that that was a two-edged sword. Yang would also get all the blame if the foreigners escaped. And as Yang's fortunes went, so went Tugur's.
Hossey stared at the phone in disbelief. It had taken him more than an hour to get through the notoriously screwed-up Korean autovon military system to talk to the duty officer at US-SOCOM, and the man had just hung up on him. It was eight at night at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and the only person Hossey could talk to was the duty officer, a Major Mills, who had almost laughed at Hossey's assertion that he had men on the ground in China who needed exfil tonight. The major said he worked in the S-3 shop and would know if US-SOCOM was running a live operation.
Hossey had referred him to the SFOB they had been working with up at Fort Meade. Then the major did laugh. "You mean the exercise up there?" The major turned serious. "That's a classified exercise and we shouldn't be talking about it over an open line." There had been a second of silence. Then Major Mills swore. "You're with the exercise team, aren't you? You're trying to test our security." That was when he had hung up.
Hossey looked at the other two men in the room. "What the hell is going on?"
They'd been moving for two hours and had covered three kilometers. Already there had been two overflights by helicopters. The hunt was picking up pace. A Z-9 had flown by thirty minutes after first light and gone up the draw over the crest. An S-70 had flown by only ten minutes ago, heading in the same direction. Riley knew that the Chinese were serious about this operation if they were using their most advanced helicopters in the search.
All four healthy team members were now carrying the stretcher. It had gotten to be too much for just two of them. Mitchell was moving about twenty-five meters ahead of them, through the trees, to provide early warning. He carried his MP5 submachine gun in his left hand and would fire it one-handed if needed.
Riley was halting the team for rest every thirty minutes. After only two hours he could feel the strain of carrying Olinski.
Riley doubted very much that their message had been received. They'd angled Hoffman's wire antenna so that the message would go south toward Korea. But the more Riley thought about it, the more pessimistic he became. He started chiding himself again for burning all the equipment at the pickup zone. Team 3 had had a lot of bad luck on this mission, but that had been a poor decision, not bad luck.
Riley knew that Mitchell was also blaming himself. As the commander, he was technically responsible for everything the detachment did or failed to do. There's too much self-recrimination going on, Riley thought, and he was one of the worst. He vowed to put an end to it. Moping over mistakes of the past wasn't going to do anyone any good. It was draining energy that was needed to solve the problems of the present.
Riley halted the team for the next break. They slumped to the ground as Mitchell came back and rejoined them. Riley looked at the faces etched with fatigue. He got up on one knee and faced the discouraged men.
"Listen up. There's some of us walking around, and being carried around," he glanced at Olinski, "who are spending a lot of mental energy bitching at themselves for what's happened so far. I know that the captain and I both feel real bad about burning the rucks on exfiltration. If we had brought them along we'd be a lot better off right now."
Riley looked each person in the eye as he talked to them. "C.J., you're getting down on yourself for losing your aircraft and copilot. Olinski, you're feeling bad because we have to carry you. Comsky, you're probably feeling bad because you don't have the supplies to help the hurt people. Hoffman, you're down because we burned out the transmitter. Tom, I don't know if anything is bugging you or not," Riley said, looking at Chong.
"But this bullshit has got to stop. We've got to get our heads out of our butts and think about the here and now. We succeeded in blowing the target. We're alive when we should be dead. We're moving. We have the possibility of exfiltration tonight. Yeah, I'll be honest and admit it's not a sure thing, but it's something. If we don't get out tonight, we make it across the border and to the coast and steal a boat or whatever. This life is the only one you got. If you all want to roll over and play dead, then we might as well go stand in the middle of a field and give the finger to the next helicopter that flies by. But that's not the way I'm going. I'm going to the pickup zone. Every one of you has to decide right now whether you want to go on or stay here and roll over."
Riley got up and looked at the team. It was the longest speech he'd ever made in his life.
Slowly, one by one, the men got to their feet. Olinski looked up from his stretcher. "You guys might as well carry me along. Comsky wouldn't be happy if he didn't have enough injuries to play with."
Hossey was running into a stone wall. No one seemed to know anything about the mission they had just run. He had tried Fort Meade and been told by the post duty officer that US-SOCOM was not running an operational headquarters anywhere. The emergency phone number for the FOB was now listed as no longer in service. The duty officer had referred him to the National Security Agency, which also had pleaded ignorance.
Hossey was weaponless in his fight against the entrenched bureaucracy. He couldn't tell people exactly why he was calling because they weren't cleared to know, and since he couldn't tell them, they weren't very interested in his "very sensitive and urgent matter." Even when he tried being explicit about the reason for the urgency, he had been ignored — it was too preposterous. Hossey felt that eventually he would get through to someone who could take some action. But it could take the rest of the day. Time was running out. He had even tried 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, in Okinawa and encountered the same disbelief.
Trapp looked up from the maps he was poring over as Hossey slammed down the phone in disgust. "Listen, sir. Even if you got through to someone, you know they aren't going to be able to do a damn thing. Not by tonight at least. It's the middle of a Friday night over there." Trapp stabbed a finger at the maps. "Even if you did get someone to act, there isn't an aircraft handy that can do the mission. The range is too great. If anybody is going to do anything, it's got to be us."
Hooker had been watching Hossey's fruitless phone calls, and now he stood up. "Show me on the map where the pickup zone is."
Trapp pointed out the location. Hooker looked at it and then at the large-scale map on the wall that showed Korea, Japan, and southeastern China. He took out a scale ruler and started measuring distance, then shook his head.