Vaughn shook his head, clearing it of the stray thoughts. He had to focus on the mission. His chopper was swinging wide so they would come to a hover over the treeline next to the beach about a kilometer east of the target. The Stealth Fighter would be coming in from farther to the east and much higher up on its targeting vector.
They were flying just above the tops of trees, as close as they'd flown over the waves. He picked up the LLDR once more, checked the screen, and froze when he saw that the green light was no longer on. Had he accidentally turned it off? There was no time to even consider the question before he reacted, pressing the on button. Nothing. He ran his hands quickly over the casing to see if it had somehow been damaged, but the machine appeared intact.
He pressed the on button several times, hoping it was just a glitch, a ghost in the machine playing games with him. Not the slightest flicker.
The battery.
"Three minutes."
He slid open the cover to the battery compartment, pulled out the bulky green object, disconnected the leads, tossed the battery out of the chopper, then reached into the pack for the spare one that SOP dictated would be carried. He ripped the clear plastic cover off the replacement and shoved the leads in.
As he pushed the battery back into its compartment, he pushed the on button and was rewarded with a flickering green light, indicating that the system was powering back up. How long would it take to acquire a satellite? he wondered. He'd never timed it, but knew it was variable, depending on how close the nearest satellites were, cloud condition, and the vagaries of the machine's inner workings. He was at the mercy of the machine and the electronic forces inside of it.
"Two minutes. On final approach."
That meant that not only was his helicopter on final approach, but the F-114 Stealth Fighter over 10,000 feet above their heads was in its bombing vector, and the other four helicopters were heading in toward their landing zone on the beach.
"Missile away," the helicopter pilot announced as his stopwatch passed the correct moment.
Vaughn could visualize it all in his mind's eye. The pilot of the Stealth Fighter had just punched the release at the designated time and the missile was coming down. The fighter then banked hard left and headed home, mission done.
The green light on the laser designator was still flickering.
"On station," the pilot said as he brought the helicopter to a hover over the treeline and turned it sideways, giving Vaughn a perfect view of the terrorist camp almost a kilometer away on the shoreline. The ocean was off to his left, and a small mountain island about four kilometers in that direction visually confirmed their position.
He knew that someone awake in the camp might be able to hear the helicopter now in the distance, but they had expected that – it was supposed to be too late, since the missile would impact the guard barrack in less than a minute. Even if an alert were issued right now, there would be at least a minute or two of confusion as men awakened in the middle of the night searched for clothes, boots, and weapons, and tried to figure out what the heck was going on. And guards were usually slow to issue an alert for a sound at a distance. There were always those moments of uncertainty, of fear of waking up a superior officer for nothing, of wondering what exactly was going on.
But without laser designation, the missile was flying blind.
The green light became steady. Vaughn peered through the optics. He could see the two buildings now. He put the reticules on the barrack, pressed the designate button, and was surprised at a flashing red warning light that appeared in the scope.
In a second he realized his mistake as the specs for the machine ran through his brain – when the battery had died and the computer rebooted, the GPS needed to be reset or else the designator only broadcast its own position, awaiting confirmation of setting by the handler. Which meant the missile was heading directly toward the designator in his hands and the helicopter.
Worse, the other four helicopters were due to land on top of the camp twenty seconds after missile impact. Which meant they'd be sitting ducks for the guards who were supposed to be dead.
"One minute."
There was no time to consider courses of action. Vaughn jumped forward and slapped the pilot on the back.
"Go for the camp. All out."
As befit his training, the Task Force 160 pilot didn't question the surprise order. He pushed forward on his collective and the Huey picked up speed. Vaughn leaned forward, as if by shifting his weight he could make the helicopter go faster. For him, time began to slow down, the helicopter moving in slow motion. All he could think of was the missile descending through the sky above and behind him.
They were picking up speed, but Vaughn knew it wasn't fast enough. The pilot had them low over the beach, trees off to the right, waves breaking to the left, sand below.
"Time?" he demanded of the pilot.
"Ten seconds to impact."
They were still a good two hundred meters from the camp, and he knew he had cut it as close as he could. He threw the designator out of the helicopter at the same time he yelled into the intercom: "Bank."
The helicopter turned hard to the left over the ocean.
Even though the missile was coming in at supersonic speed, Vaughn could have sworn he saw it flash by. There was no doubting the impact as it landed on the beach where he had dumped the designator. The explosion turned night into day for an instant as flames shot forty feet into the air, followed by a shower of sand. The shock wave hit the helicopter and it shuddered violently for a second, then held steady.
He had averted immediate disaster, but now things were preparing to go from bad to worse.
"Put us down on shore," Vaughn ordered even as a string of green tracers punched through the darkness at them, narrowly missing. He flipped down his night vision goggles. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, which he had to ignore as the Huey landed hard about one hundred meters from the two buildings, to the west along the beach.
The other four helicopters appeared right on time, coming in low along the beach to the west, to be met not with a destroyed barracks and a few surviving terrorists in shock, but a wave of automatic fire from numerous Abu Sayef guerrillas pouring out of the barracks. Undaunted, the helicopters plowed toward their landing zone just short of the target.
"Come on," Vaughn yelled to the Filipino commandos as he jumped off. He had the extended stock of the MP-5 tight to his shoulder and fired twice, double-tapping a figure holding an AK-47, then continuing to run forward, killing two more terrorists and closing on the building where the hostages were supposed to be held.
The other four helicopters were flaring to land when an RPG round fired by a guard hit one of the choppers dead on, exploding as it penetrated the cockpit. Out of control, the helicopter banked and plunged into the surf. Upon impact, the blades ripped off, tearing through the rear compartment, killing those who had survived the initial blast.
The other three helicopters landed on the beach, and the men on board jumped out into the middle of the raging firefight. Vaughn was forced to dive to the sand as concentrated automatic fire tore through the air in his general direction, barely missing him. He had no idea if anyone else from his helicopter had followed him, and he was still a good fifteen meters from the hostage building.
Vaughn continued firing as he spotted targets. He estimated there were at least thirty or forty guerrillas opposing them – the result of failing to destroy the barracks. They had not planned for this. Military tactics dictated a three-to-one ratio in favor of the attacking force for an assault to be successful. The odds here were reversed.