Chase looked at the gunnery sergeant. “Sounds like it would be pretty hard for us to get access to that.”
“I agree,” said the gunny.
“What were they hoping to get in there?”
Chase said, “An important piece of hardware.”
Captain Calhoun said, “When do you want to move?”
Chase said, “The longer we wait, the better their fortifications are going to get.”
Gunnery Sergeant Darby said, “And to be clear — if we can get you into the communications center, would you know what you’re looking for?”
Chase nodded. “Yes. They gave me training on how to identify it and remove it.” He patted a zipped pouch near his waist. “They gave me something that looks like a bottle opener to unlock it. And I’ve got wire cutters.”
“How often do they change out personnel in the comm center?” Chase asked the Marine who had been watching the base.
“About every six hours. Something like that. I’ve got it written down.”
“And how many are in there?”
“Just two at a time.”
“So for watch turnover, when the door gets opened, we’ve got four to worry about.”
The gunny gave him a look. “And anybody who sees us walk up to it. Remember, you got a couple of bunkers down there. Those guys have got nothing better to do than look around and see what’s out of place.”
Chase said, “Then we’ll need a distraction.”
“We’re Marines,” the gunny said. “We’d always be happy to blow something up for you.”
Chase smiled. “I appreciate that.” He frowned. “Do we still have access to the drone?”
“Yeah, but they told us not to use it. Too risky.”
Chase rubbed his chin. “You know, maybe I do want you to blow something up after all.”
The gunny smiled. “Now you’re talking.”
They waited until the next night. The day was spent pulling in extra help from the remaining Marines in the Raider unit and carefully watching the patterns of the base.
There were two valuable bits of work that any reconnaissance unit performed. One was to report precisely what they saw. How many enemy troops? What type of vehicles? Pictures and video were even better. It allowed the experienced analysts at the DIA, CIA, and other agencies to extract information that the untrained eye would miss.
The other important thing recon units did was to take note of patterns. How many hours between aircraft arrivals? What times were the watch turnovers? How long did the watch turnovers take? Were there different numbers of guards at night versus during the daytime?
Since the Blackout attacks of a few weeks ago, military communications had been severely hampered. That meant that there were no pictures or video being instantly streamed back to the collection and analyst teams.
This was why the CIA had sent Chase down here to participate in this operation. He had been trained on what to look for. And based on what he witnessed, he had been briefed on what action to take.
The Marines in this unit were excellent observers. Chase suspected they had a lot of experience over in the sandbox doing just this.
Captain Calhoun had placed two of his Marines near the extraction landing zone to the north. He moved the rest to the top of their observation mountain. From there, they had access to a nearby dirt road that lead to the base. This would be where the small group would get dropped off after stealing the crypto key.
The MARSOC team also had the option of humping it down the other side of the ridgeline and sprinting to the extraction LZ in about an hour if things got too dicey.
Four men infiltrated the Manta base. What could have been a thirty-minute journey took seven hours. Chase, Gunnery Sergeant Darby, and two of the other Marine Raiders walked, crawled, and slid down from their elevated observation point through the jungle brush. Once down the mountain, they stayed concealed while following a stream that ran around the airfield.
It was a balmy eighty-two degrees. The light mist that covered the top of the ridge now grew thicker. This would reduce visibility between the Marines on top of the mountain and Chase’s small team of infiltrators. Chase silently cursed himself. As was often the case, the weather would negatively impact their plans.
They didn’t speak over radios. If the adversary had been a third-world military unit or some wannabe ISIS group, they might have used headsets and encrypted comms, but the Chinese were a different story. Any radio communications, whether encrypted or not, might alert the Chinese communications personnel that a military unit was operating in close proximity. And that could signal doom.
So they synced their watches and agreed on a timeline. If Calhoun saw that Chase had infiltrated the communications center without any trouble, then he didn’t need to do a thing. Just wait for the team of four to make it back, and then they would all head to the extraction point. The four Chinese communications personnel would hopefully not be found until the Raider unit was loaded onto the Blackhawk and headed north to safety. That was the best-case scenario.
If, however, either Calhoun couldn’t see Chase’s progress, or the time was after 2300 local and Chase hadn’t entered the comm center, Calhoun was to use the drone for its special purpose.
Crawling through the tall grass next to the stream was painfully slow. The sun had set around 1830. That had helped. But there were freaking Chinese and Ecuadorian military all over the place.
Chase’s team had made gradual progress once they had gotten near the airfield. If they moved too fast, they risked being spotted. If they moved too slowly, they wouldn’t make the timeline.
He looked at his watch. It was 2240. They still had about a one-hundred-yard crawl through the brush until they got close enough to the comm center. From the right angle, they could make it to the communications trailer without being seen by the watch team. The Chinese communication center’s duty section turnover the past few nights had been at 2250 local time, plus or minus a few minutes.
The gunny risked a whisper. “We’re gonna have to pick up the pace. If we don’t make their watch turnover, it will be a lot harder to get inside.”
Chase nodded.
They could hear the faint echo of voices in the distance. Laughter. Probably some of the soldiers shooting the shit while on the night shift.
They reached the edge of the jungle brush, to where it fed into the grass cutout of the air base. A few hundred yards away stood the communications center. The building was nothing more than a trailer on cinder blocks. A coil of razor wire about three feet high surrounded the structure. Dozens of antennae and a few dishes protruded up from its roof.
Two Chinese soldiers caught Chase’s eye. They spoke in a loud, casual tone and headed for the communications trailer. He looked at his watch. Time: 2251. He glanced up at the ridge. The glare of base lighting made it hard for him to see anything but darkness now. He looked through his observation scope, but its night vision revealed only the layer of mist returning green and black twinkles of scintillation. Chase had no idea if Captain Calhoun was able to monitor their progress. Shit. Unless they hurried, Calhoun was going to switch to plan B no matter what. If the “distraction” occurred too early, that would make it much harder for Chase and the men.
The two Chinese soldiers approached the entrance of the communications center.
Chase whispered, “Let’s go.”
The four men rose up from the brush. Each of them carried an MP-7, fitted with a suppressor and a forty-round magazine. Chase and the gunny had their MP-7s secured, however. They brandished suppressed shotguns that were specially designed for the use of US special operations.