Riding the thunder of their rotors, the Seawolves came in low across a sky-colored sea. They also came ready for war, the blunt-muzzled grenade launchers in their chin turrets seeking for targets while their door gunners leaned watchfully out of open side hatches.
Flying nose to tail, the skids of the four UH-1Y “Super Huey” gunships almost grazed the golden sands of Turtle Island as they swept across the beach, their pilots pulling up to barely clear the uppermost limbs of the banyan forest beyond.
Their speed and their belly-raking altitude were a mechanism of survival. A hostile shooter firing from the forest floor would see only a momentary blur of dusty low-vis gray flashing past overhead.
Ahead lay their objective, a clearing that materialized amid the darker trees, a patch of swampy green just large enough to serve as auey Huey landing zone for a single aircraft.
The helicopters broke formation, the leader flaring into the LZ in a deft, precise combat approach, its three flight mates going into a race track holding pattern around the clearing, warily guarding their vulnerable sister.
The lead Huey didn’t quite touch down but went into a minimum-altitude hover, bobbling a few feet above the rotor-flattened salt grass. Around the perimeter of the clearing, four patches of vegetation wavered and transmuted into four men, their faces, clothing and equipment mottled in shades of green camouflage.
Double-timing through the mud and scrubby undergrowth to the impatient aircraft, they hurled weapons and load-bearing harnesses in through the open side doors, the men heaving themselves over the hatch sills after their gear.
Turbines spooled up and the Super Huey lifted for the sky, making room for the next recovery helo in the LZ and taking its place in the guardian circle.
Aboard the gunship, the fire team of Force Recon Marines, sweat-sodden and mosquito ravaged, were content to sprawl on the aircraft’s deck, panting, and dreaming of hot showers, soft bunks and beautiful, wondrous air conditioning.
Then the team leader swore savagely.
Stacked in the forward end of the cargo compartment were fresh rations, ammunition reloads and full hydration bladders for their MOLLE harnesses. This was no recovery. They were merely being transferred to another of the training ranges staked out around the perimeter of Bonaparte Bay. Another simulated combat mission awaited them – and another night to be spent with the mosquitoes and crocodiles.
There was nothing for it but to slouch against the rear bulkhead and curse fate
and the grinning helicopter crewmen. The man who commanded them and the woman
who commanded that man were both ardent believers in the truism, “The harder you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.”
The second and third helos each scooped up their respective fire teams. But only a single passenger awaited recovery by the fourth and final aircraft.
An M-8 assault carbine with a shotgun module clipped below its primary barrel sailed through the helicopter’s open side hatch. Amanda Garrett caught the compound weapon. Passing it on to the gunship’s crew chief, she braced a foot against a cleat in the deck of the cargo compartment and grabbed the shoulder straps of Captain Stone Quillain’s MOLLE harness, assisting him in his heave through the door.
Over the hammer of the flailing rotor blades, she faintly heard the crew chief
yelling to his pilot, “Passenger embarked! Go, go, go!”
The helicopter pitched and swooped like a small boat in heavy seas, lifting out of the Landing Zone. Quillain shucked out of his gear and collapsed into one of the aircraft’s aluminum and nylon strap seats. Amanda belted herself in beside him. Before attempting to speak with the commander of her Sea Dragon company. she plunged a hand into an ice chest strapped to the back of the cockpit braces, passing Quillain a can of Coke dripping with condensation. Coca-Cola was the only soft drink the big Georgia-born Marine ever indulged in. It was a matter of patriotism.
She let him drain the first two cans. When he started to sip rather than gulp the third, she knew he had adequately rehydrated and she passed him a cranial helmet with an intercom headset.
“What the hell are you doin’ out here, skipper?” Quillain spoke without preamble or obsequiousness into his lip mike. As plank owners of the Sea Fighter Task Force, Stone and Amanda had long ago entered into the unique comfortable comradery and intimacy that exists within a small close-knit fighting unit.
Beyond that, Stone Quillain had become possibly the closest male friend she had ever had, at least with romance left out of the equation. In either instance, Stone was on her list of privileged individuals.
“Partially to see how training is coming,” she replied, “and partially to pick up and deliver you. Admiral Sorenson wants another
conference with his element commanders this afternoon.”
The helicopter had departed from the extraction formation. Proceeding independently, it had broken training protocols and was heading out over the bay at a conventional altitude, returning to its mother ship.
The expression on Quillain’s bluntly angular features went from its usual dour to sour and his lip mike
caught a muttered “Christ Almighty.”
“Sorry to have to drag you out of the field like this, Stone, but that’s how our new boss does things. How’s the cross-training and unit integration coming?”
“Getting there, skipper.” The Marine backhanded the perspiration from his forehead, smearing the pattern
of his face paint. “My boys are perfect – but then you knew that. The Anzacs ain’t at all bad either, but we figured that’d be the case too. The Aussies and the Kiwis have always had a handle on jungle
warfare. And the guys from the Marine Amphibious Unit are all right. They aren’t Special Operations Capable, but they’re a good solid line outfit and there ain’t nothing you can’t teach a Marine about fightin’. Mostly it’s a matter of getting everybody broken in and used to how the other guy does
things. That, and getting the time in the field to get it done.”
Amanda recognized the heavy emphasis Quillain placed on certain of his words. “How are you getting on with the MEU’s commander?”
“Colonel Dogert is a very capable officer, ma’am.”
Amanda grinned at the rough-edged sophistry. “I didn’t ask about his capabilities, Stone. I asked how you were getting on with him?”
Quillain killed the last of the third Coke and crushed the can in one massive
fist. “Well, I probably won’t really kill the tight-assed son of a bitch.”
She laughed aloud. “We’re spoiled, Stone. That’s our problem. We’ve been our own lords and masters for too long. It’ll do us good to be back in the real military for a while.”
Amanda was the TACBOSS of the Sea Fighter’s and she had to set a good example. Accordingly, she didn’t mention the occasions with Admiral Sorenson when she’d had to strangle down a screamed, “Just what in the hell are you thinking of?”
Quillain glanced at her. “Maybe it’ll do us good, but how much good will it do for the job? When are they cuttin’ us loose again, skipper? We got business to finish up north.”
Amanda found herself glad that her sunglasses screened her eyes. Too much truth
might have escaped otherwise. “That’s for wiser heads than ours to decide, Stone. For now, the job is to help bring
the Intervention Force up to speed and ready to move when the time comes.”
Quillain didn’t reply aloud, but his faintly derisive, faintly sympathetic expression told her that he recognized her militarily correct platitude for what it was.
The Sea Fighters had been the ones who had uncovered the Harconan plan. Amanda also knew how close to final fruition it was, and that the window of opportunity to stop it was closing rapidly. She also recognized the extent of the holocaust about to be unleashed upon the islands to the north.
And here she sat, chained in this bay, unable to do anything about it.
Damn! Damn! Damn! When was Admiral MacIntyre going to cut her loose to go after Harconan?
Over the years, MacIntyre had become – in the vernacular of the Fleet – her “Sea Daddy,” her sponsor and mentor. First with 2nd Fleet in the Drake’s Passage Conflict and then with NAVSPECFORCE off the China Coast and West Africa, the Admiral had always trusted her with freedom of action. He’d selected the targets and pulled the trigger, allowing her to do the job as she’d seen fit.
She could recognize now that she had come to both relish and rather take for granted her role as Eddie MacIntyre’s troubleshooter. In return, she had always given a hundred and ten percent of herself to justify his confidence. She had created the Sea Fighter Task Force for him and had forged it into the premier strike element of Naval Special Forces.
Possibly upper echelons had tied MacIntyre’s hands. Maybe CinC 7th had insisted that the Sea Fighters be placed under the overall command of the Regional Intervention Force. She knew there were those in the service who considered her a loose cannon, possibly with some justification.
Or maybe MacIntyre was reining her in himself.
