Riley turned from the stunned team leader. With hand signals he let everyone know to put on their rucksacks and move out quickly, then watched with satisfaction as the many hours of drilling paid off. Within a minute they were moving, the team leader sullenly falling into place in the formation.
The lead man, weapons specialist Sfc. Tom Chong, wore night-vision goggles, as did Riley and the last man. The bulky goggles were a pain to use sometimes, but on night missions like this they were worth their weight in gold. Through the goggles the moon-and starlight was computer enhanced, and everything appeared almost as it would in daylight. The only drawbacks were that all images were in a shade of green, and the viewer lost his sense of depth perception to a large extent. The advantage of being able to see in the dark more than made up for these disadvantages.
Chong could see like a cat in the dark, even without the aid of the goggles. The point man also had an uncanny sense of location and direction. Riley depended on him extensively during night moves. On many previous exercises in rough terrain, even when Riley himself had been confused, Chong had found the way. Riley had worked with some excellent trackers, but he had never seen anyone able to move like Chong.
The other team members referred to Chong jokingly as their resident native. Chong had been born in Korea and spoke the language fluently. He had also attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California, to learn Mandarin Chinese. Chong had helped the team out numerous times with his ability to speak the local language as they roamed the Korean countryside. He also got them better deals when they shopped in the native markets.
The slim, dark-skinned man in the lead had the azimuth and distance to the target memorized, as did Riley. Using his pace count, Riley figured that they were within a kilometer of the target when the team leader signaled a halt. Riley moved back to the captain to find out what was up. He found the detachment commander crawling under his poncho and making a map check with a red-lens flashlight. In doing so, he was making enough noise to attract the attention of anyone within five hundred meters. Riley figured that Peterson had learned this little trick in Ranger school. He waited until the team leader was done.
"We're about two kilometers from the target, Sergeant Riley. I think we need to head more to the west."
"Sir, we're less than a klick away and right on track. Chong is the best navigator I've ever seen at night and he knows this land. I've been checking his azimuth and pace count and we're dead on. Trust me, sir. Unless of course your pace count is much different." Riley waited. He figured that the new team leader had not been keeping a pace count since leaving the cache site. The lack of an answer confirmed this.
Riley gave the move-out signal. In twenty minutes the team was on target. Following a quick halt to drop rucksacks, the team broke down into its various tactical elements.
Riley settled back in his overwatch position and observed the team run through the maneuver they had practiced. Four team members split into two groups and moved out along the service road of the power line to provide security. Each two-man team had one of the new squad automatic weapons (SAW) and a pair of light antitank weapons (LAWs). Two other team members were fifty meters back in the tree line, where the team had dropped all ten rucksacks, and would link up once the charges were set and blown. Riley and Captain Peterson observed from the tree line as the two team engineers ran up and placed the charges on the tower holding the power lines.
From leaving the tree line to completing wiring their charges, Smitty and senior engineer Sgt. Dan Hoffman took two minutes and thirty seconds.
They double-primed the plastic explosive for a nonelectrical detonation as they'd been taught to do by Riley. Before he made rank and became team sergeant, Riley had been a Special Forces engineer also, so he rode his engineers hard and set high, exacting standards.
Hoffman did a last check and then moved back toward the tree line, unreeling his detonating wire. Once the engineer reached the overwatch position, Riley flashed a red-lens flashlight at both flank security teams and they rushed back. After accounting for all personnel, Riley signaled Hoffman to blow the charge. Hoffman pulled the igniter and yelled "Boom!" Riley jumped.
"Sorry, Top. Just thought I'd do it for effect," Hoffman admitted sheepishly as they moved back to pick up their rucks.
Riley was happy with the actions on target. Less than five minutes from leaving the rucks to picking them up. The team could do better, but that wasn't bad. They threw on their rucks and moved out. The dummy demo was left in place to be evaluated and removed the next day.
The team made it to the pickup zone (PZ) thirty minutes early. It was just getting light enough to see out into the dry streambed where the helicopter was supposed to land. At exactly 0658, Riley stepped out onto the rocks under the watchful guns of his team and turned on his strobe light. Light flickering, he waited. The appointed time came and went. At 0702 Riley shut off his light and came back to the team.
Exfiltration was supposed to be a highly coordinated and exactly timed event. A window of two minutes prior and two minutes after the designated time was all that was allowed for security reasons. In this case, however, Riley mused, the highly coordinated part seemed lacking.
Another blown exfiltration because the helicopter didn't come. Since he'd been on Team 3, Special Forces Detachment-Korea (DET-K), Riley had not been exfiltrated on time on more than half his training missions, due to helicopters not showing up on time or at all. It worried him. He'd been told by other, more experienced Special Forces NCOs about helicopter pilots in Vietnam who had flown through all sorts of obstacles, both natural and man-made, to pick them up. But in this peacetime army, it seemed that the birds wouldn't fly if there was a cloud in the sky.
Riley heard the muttered curses of the team members as they realized that they had a fifteen-kilometer walk back to the truck pickup point. God help us if we ever have to do this for real and those birds don't show, Riley thought. We'd be walking a hell of a lot farther than fifteen kilometers.
Meng pointed at a stack of papers on one of his desks. "Those are your copies of the oplans for the units involved, along with my initial mission assessments."
Ron Wilson looked at the bulging stack with little enthusiasm. After just having finished the debrief on Dragon Sim-12, he wasn't thrilled about jumping right into the next mission. In his opinion, Doctor Meng was pushing the whole project too quickly. Wilson knew that Meng wanted to get onto the Medusa scenario, but this pace was too much. "What's the time line, Doctor?"
Meng didn't even bother turning. "Top sheet."
Wilson looked at the schedule with dismay. "Inbrief tomorrow?"
Meng looked up from where he was still flowcharting the mission. "The operation starts here tomorrow morning. I'll inbrief the strategic mission commander and his staff then. You can relax for a little while. I want you to look over the Medusa scenario for me anyway. You'll pick up your shift day after tomorrow on Sim-13."
Wilson sighed as he started sorting through the pile of papers, all stamped top secret. He was getting very tired of all this work. His responsibility in the Strams exercises was to back up Meng. The two of them usually split the time for the exercises, each spending twelve hours on duty.