The V-22 family of tilt-rotor aircraft had made a name for itself in the fledgling U.S. Border Security Force, or “Hammerheads,” which was to receive sixty of the hybrid aircraft for border patrol and drug-interdiction duty. Hidden within that appropriation bill had been six other birds, modified by the Air Force, General Bradley Elliott’s High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC) in Nevada, and transferred to the Special Operations Command. This was to be one of its first actual missions …
… If it was to go at all.
In the cramped, cold interior of the second container that formed the new Intel offices aboard ship, Paul White watched as five days’ worth of radar plots were replayed on a digital situation board. The map of the target area — a spot ten miles north of a small port and resort town called Liepaja, on the Baltic coast of Latvia, a few miles north of the Lithuanian border — showed numerous aircraft transiting the area. “Which one are we looking at?” White asked.
“PATRIOT says it’s this one,” an intelligence officer explained. He pointed at a persistent radar dot just north of the town, farther away from the other aircraft that seemed to circle near the town. “Liepaja has a large civil airfield here, called Liepaja East, used by the CIS Baltic Sea Fleet to resupply the naval patrol base. Lots of helicopter activity. There’s another base, a CIS air-defense fighter base, thirty nautical miles east-southeast of Liepaja at Vainode. Mostly older MiG-19s and MiG-21 s — daylight fighters — but once in a while they’ll deploy a couple of MiG-29s there. They’ve also deployed Sukhoi-25 ‘Frogfoot’ attack planes and ‘Hind-D’ attack choppers, too. I’d assume they have ‘em there now.
White nodded impatiently — he was well familiar with the deployment of the Commonwealth troops in the Baltic states. Technically those jets and choppers might have belonged to the CIS, but the pilots and commanders who controlled them were Byelorussian. In recent months Belarus had stepped up military activities in Lithuania, ostensibly to protect Byelorussian citizens moving out of Lithuania and to guard products and shipments being transferred across Lithuania from Kalinin, the small sliver of land on the Baltic Sea coast between Lithuania and Poland.
But Lithuania was no threat to Belarus. The real reason for the increased military activity, White feared, was a move by Belarus to at some point occupy Lithuania.
Like Iraq before its invasion of Kuwait, Belarus seemed on the brink of breaking out of its isolation and claiming some valuable, unprotected neighboring territory. All the elements were there, and the parallels between Iraq and Belarus were frightening: Belarus was industrially advanced but cash- and resources-poor; Belarus had a large, well-equipped, and well-trained military, whose officers had seen a great decline in their prestige and perquisites after it joined the CIS; Belarus had no outlet to the sea and had to bargain with others for access to ports and commercial overseas-shipping facilities; and it was very dependent on the CIS, Poland, and Lithuania for raw materials for its factories. It would be difficult to stop Belarus if it decided to stretch its legs a bit.
So far his theory had no basis in fact, but White could see the signs. Something was brewing out there. …
“The pickup point is here,” the intelligence officer continued, pointing to a forested area several miles north of Liepaja, “and here’s the helicopter they’re looking at. It’s been in the target area for two days and seems to be hanging on for another day. The area is flat and marshy, and land navigation is pretty bad. Farther south is a resort area, very popular in the summer, but this is too early in the season. Railroad tracks and a highway farther east, very well traveled and patrolled.”
“What a damned stupid place for an exfiltration,” White muttered. “Less than ten miles from a military base. Hell, let’s just pick him up in a limo at the base!” But White knew they had no choice. According to the CIA, their subject, a lieutenant stationed at a research facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, had gone home to Siauliai, a town between the coast and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The young Lithuanian Army officer had been a longtime informant for the CIA, code-named RAGANU (Lithuanian for “witch”), but he was not a professional spy. He had inadvertently delivered a batch of fake data on a CIS Air Force deployment to Lithuania, an error that pointed directly at him as the infiltrator. Fortunately RAGANU was home on leave when the Americans discovered his cover blown, and he was told by his American handlers not to return to his unit but to execute one of his pre-planned exfiltration plans, the best of which was to send RAGANU to the coast to await pickup.
RAGANU was obviously clever enough to keep out of sight for one or two days, but as soon as his disappearance was noticed, the hunt for him would be on. From his hometown of Siauliai, they would track him down easily. After four days AWOL, the net would be very, very tight around him. He was probably a dead man, White thought, at least by daylight if not right now. The pickup plan was for RAGANU to meet at a predetermined spot and monitor it. Eventually someone would be inserted to retrieve him at that location.
That “someone” was MADCAP MAGICIAN.
White looked at his watch and cursed again — time was running out. It would take the Marines almost two hours to paddle into the drop area and travel overland to the target area — then they had to find RAGANU, travel to the pickup point, and find the CV-22, all before daylight. To make matters worse, the Valley Mistress’s cover was going to run out soon. She was scheduled for a port call in Kalmar in southern Sweden just seventy miles away, and it would attract a lot of attention if she was late. The Italian-flagged cargo vessel Bernardo LoPresti was going to rendezvous with the Valley Mistress in twelve hours to off-load the mission containers before the Mistress pulled into port — the mission had to be over by then. A decision had to be made.
White left the Intel section and made his way to the aft chamber, where the CV-22 aircraft was stowed. In the subdued night-vision red lights of the chamber, the CV-22 looked as if it were damaged. Its main wing was swiveled parallel to the fuselage instead of perpendicular, and the fifteen-foot-long rotors were folded flat against the engine nacelles. It looked as if it would never be able to untangle itself. But White knew that the CV-22 could go from completely stowed to ready for engine start in five minutes, all with the push of three buttons.
When White entered the chamber, the CV-22’s eight-man Marine Corps Maritime Special Purpose Force (MSPF) crew snapped to their feet in anticipation. Even after working with these guys for so many months, White was still in awe of them. They were members of “Cobra Venom,” Tenth Force Reconnaissance Company, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), deployed in the Mediterranean with the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet aboard LHD-1 Wasp and detached for service in Oslo. The MSPF were the elite of the elite and consisted of only fifty Marines in the United States specially trained for deep reconnaissance and covert penetration missions. The men in the MSPF could walk across cables stretched between two buildings, climb a ten-story building without a rope, swim ten miles in bone-chilling water — and kill with absolute precision, stealth, and speed. Most were unmarried, but the meaner ones were — meaner because they had more to fight for than just themselves.
The eight men here had received extra training in working not with Marine air-combat elements, but with U.S. Air Force special-operations forces, which they considered inferior but tolerable to their own. MADCAP MAGICIAN, on the other hand, seemed insane and dangerous enough for them, so they took him in stride.