C.J. was tired and irritable. "All that's nice and fine, but what happens if we make it to the PZ and no bird comes tonight? We'll still
have to deal with the Chinese tomorrow. Maybe we ought to head back the way we came and try to evade them."
Riley disagreed. "No way. It kicked our ass coming down here. We can't go back up. Besides, what's up there? They'll catch up with us eventually. We might as well go for broke tonight. If the aircraft doesn't come tonight, we'll try to slip through and head on down to the coast like originally planned. We can't run forever."
Chief Warrant Officer Colin Lassiter was finishing running up a Blackhawk on the flight line when Captain Long finally tracked him down. He watched the approach of the captain through the windshield. She was with another warrant officer. Lassiter did a quick scrutiny of the man's uniform badges — you could learn a lot from a man's badges. No flight wings above the man's left shirt pocket: a warrant officer who wasn't an aviator. He noted the Special Forces patch on the man's left shoulder and the same patch on his right shoulder, indicating combat service in Special Forces. He wondered if that meant he had been in Vietnam.
Lassiter was too young to have been in Vietnam. He'd been in the army sixteen years, twelve of them as an aviator. He'd taken up flying because he liked excitement and he loved flying. He still loved flying but the excitement had worn thin. He was fed up with the army and planned on getting out after this tour in Korea. He was tired of all the games he had to play. He didn't know what he was going to do when he got out, and he really didn't care as long as he could fly.
He watched the captain and Special Forces warrant come up to the aircraft as he started to shut the bird down. Lassiter respected Captain Long. None of the warrants in D Company had been thrilled when they got a female commander, but their original antipathy had grudgingly given way to acceptance. Some still didn't like having a woman in command and never would, but after only two months in command, the captain had earned the respect of most of the men in her unit. Lassiter respected Long because she made decisions and didn't bullshit people. She told the truth as she saw it and was fair. That was unusual in officers, in Lassiter's experience — which was another one of the many reasons he was getting out of the army. On top of her command abilities, Lassiter also respected Captain Long's flying skill. She was one of the best pilots he had ever flown with.
With the engine finally shut down, Lassiter stepped out of the aircraft.
Long introduced the two warrants. "Jim Trapp, this is Colin Lassiter." She turned her direct gaze on Colin. "Jim is in my husband's unit down in Yongsan. He's come to me with a problem. I might be able to help him out but I need some assistance. I came to you first because I thought you might be willing to give us a hand."
Lassiter gathered together his flight gear, throwing his helmet in its bag. "What do you need?"
"I need a copilot to help me steal a helicopter and fly it to China to rescue my husband and some of his team members."
Lassiter put down the bag. Captain Long had a good sense of humor, but this was a little strange. "Come on, ma'am. That's pretty good. What do you all need?"
Trapp looked Lassiter in the eye. "She isn't joking. We were in China on a classified mission. Their helicopter crashed. Mine made it out. They've been written off as far as everyone else is concerned, but we know that some of them are alive. We can't get anyone else to react in time. We have to go in tonight."
Lassiter looked from one to the other. It sounded like dialogue from a bad movie. But he could tell they weren't joking. "You're serious," he said incredulously.
Jean Long looked at him piercingly. "Please, Colin. My husband is there. They've got three wounded men. We've got to go tonight to get them out."
Colin shook his head. "Why me? Why'd you come to me?"
"Because I know you're getting out and are fed up with this stuff. You're bored. You aren't married. You're a good pilot. And truthfully because you're probably the only one crazy enough to do this with me."
Colin considered this. "The last one is certainly true. I'd have to be crazy as hell to do this." He rubbed his chin in thought — things were looking more exciting by the second. "China, heh? I've always wanted to see China. What's the plan?"
"Let's go to my office and we'll show you."
The plan had been done scientifically. The 46th Army had five divisions. Two had been sent to Beijing. That left three infantry divisions at an authorized strength of ten thousand men each. Minus those sick or injured, the few on leave, and those slots that were unfilled, 26,345 were left to participate in the search. One wheeled vehicle per company was authorized to carry equipment and for radio control. Everyone else was on foot.
Taking out the truck drivers, division staffs, and various other support people, there were 24,395 soldiers on foot. Dividing the two hundred kilometers they were to cover by that many soldiers gave each man a search area approximately eight meters wide. With this gap between soldiers, the 46th People's Liberation Army marched toward the mountains.
The cordon already had run into twelve hunters and two trucks from mines in the mountains. The army commander was taking no chances. All had been taken into custody until their identification could be verified. Each regimental commander checked off the phase lines as their units crossed them. The pace had been set at two kilometers an hour.
Like a rising olive-green tide, the army swept the foothills of the mountains.
Hossey, Trapp, and Hooker had spent the hours profitably. They war-gamed the situations they might face and devised plans to meet them. They decided that Trapp and Hooker would fly with the Blackhawk until the refuel point. Hossey wanted to go with them, but Trapp convinced the colonel that he had another important mission.
"Sir, you need to stay on the phone and get someone to believe that those men are really on the ground. I don't know what the hell is going on at US-SOCOM with them denying any knowledge of the operation, but you have to try to get to the bottom of it. We also need you to prepare for the return of the helicopter so it doesn't get shot down trying to get back into South Korean airspace."
Hossey was forced to agree with Trapp's logic. He took Hooker's car and headed back to Yongsan.
It had taken Lassiter and Long an hour to finish their flight plan for the mission. They plotted their route in and out of the target area and studied the maps they had available. The lack of good imagery was a handicap. Luckily the pickup zone appeared to be located just by the intersection of a river and an unimproved road. The plan was simple. They'd fly up the coast and turn left when they saw the lights of the North Korean town of Najin on its promontory. Circumnavigating the town, they'd fly almost due east until they saw the river, then turn left and fly until they hit the dirt road. Jean felt that they would have enough points over land to be able to update the Doppler en route and get them close to the PZ.
They planned to lift off just prior to 9:00 p.m. local. In the hours remaining they had a lot to accomplish. The internal tanks had to be filled on 579, the helicopter they would be using. They had to file a false flight plan with base operations so they could take off. They had to draw their night-vision goggles. Trapp and the sergeant major had to load some equipment on board the bird. And all this had to be done without arousing the suspicions of anyone in the unit.
Fortunately, the military mind-set aided them in their endeavors. No one questioned them as they went about preparing for the mission. The fact that it was a quiet Saturday afternoon helped. Jean let Lassiter handle the helicopter while she went over to flight operations and filed a flight plan. She told the NCO on duty the same story she had used on her first sergeant: She and Lassiter were taking 579 down to the range early and would spend the night there. Jean knew the story would last long enough for them to make the east coast of Korea. After that she wasn't sure what the reaction would be, but hopefully by then they would have disappeared from all radar screens as they hit the wave tops.