Night of the Hawk Page 5

  Aggravating this identity problem was the status of the many former Soviet military installations and other important government facilities in the Baltic states. Lithuania had twenty such installations, ranging from radar sites to research laboratories to fighter and bomber bases. The land belonged to Lithuania—that was clear. The structures, equipment, and products within these facilities belonged to the Commonwealth of Independent States, subject to transfer negotiations between Minsk, the capital of the CIS, and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. But occupying some of these bases were Soviet scientists and engineers, some of whom never agreed to or wanted a new commonwealth to upset their system of rank and privileges assured them under the old Soviet system. Some facilities were under the control of former KGB officers who still wielded considerable power. Other facilities were guarded by heavily armed troops who were loyal to who was the richest, the most powerful, or the most influential at the moment-the KGB, the CIS, Belarus, or themselves.

  The main objective of CIA operations in the Baltics was to study the complicated, potentially disastrous mixture being brewed here in Lithuania. The best way to do that was to cultivate HUMINT resources. In a poor, unorganized land such as this, the CIA found lots of willing informants. But it wasn’t long before the CIA needed help in order to successfully run all their informants, so they had called on MADCAP MAGICIAN.

  Since the Valley Mistress was a real, privately-owned salvage vessel, subject to searches by all seagoing navies when not operating on behalf of the U.S. Navy, she could not have normal intelligence sections in her—no Commonwealth or non-aligned nation would allow such a vessel in its territorial waters. But White devised a system to solve that problem. The Mistress’s specially designed cargo containers (MISCOs) could be shipped like any other container or easily transferred by the Mistress’s big crane between vessels while under way. The containers were completely self-enclosed, with all necessary subsystems installed, and were fully functional once ship’s power was applied. The Valley Mistress’s six MISCOs were strapped down to the middeck area abaft the crane. Three belonged to the CV-22 aircraft’s maintenance and support crew, one was a heavy-weapons armory for the CV-22 and the assault crew, and two made up the mission command center, or Intel, which contained all of the classified radar, communications, and intelligence-gathering equipment necessary to run the mission and communicate with U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida. All six MISCOs could be slid overboard in case of an unexpected boarding or attack, and self-destruct charges and incendiaries would ensure complete destruction of most of the incriminating evidence.

  The CV-22 PAVE HAMMER aircraft itself was the newest addition to the Air Force Special Operations Command arsenal. This unusual tilt-rotor aircraft had the ability to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but then fly like a conventional turboprop airplane. It had twice the range, speed, and payload capability of a helicopter, but had all the advantages of vertical flight. It carried a crew of three—pilot, copilot, and engineer/loadmaster plus a combat crew of eight soldiers, and was armed with one 20-millimeter Hughes Chain Gun on one outrigger pod and one twelve-round Stinger missile pod on another; both pods were steerable by either the pilot or copilot with helmet-pointing fire-control systems. The CV-22 PAVE HAMMER folded itself into a compact 58-foot by 18-foot by 18-foot unit that fit perfectly into the DSRV chamber on the Valley Mistress.

  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 anticipa
tion. 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.

  None of them said a word as White strode to the CV-22’s cockpit. Inside were two Air Force pilots, Major Hank Fell and Major Martin J. Watanabe. The black-suited soldiers circled in behind White as he stepped inside the tilt-rotor aircraft and squatted between the two pilots’ seats. The crew engineer and loadmaster, Master Sergeant Mike Brown, left his place at the compartment doors and hurried to join them. The assault team leader, Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Jose Lobato, squatted behind the left-hand copilot’s seat to listen in as well.

  “Visit from the boss just before a mission,” Fell quipped as White was about to speak. “Looks serious. Decision time, eh?”

  “You got it. Listen up. The same fucking spy ship is still out there, but I think we can radar-shadow you enough to get away clean—we’re at ten miles now, and we’ll probably be right on the edge of his radar horizon by launch time. The problem is in the target area. There’s a chopper circling the pickup point, the same one we’ve seen the past two days.”

  “Still just one chopper?” Fell asked. White nodded. “No other activity from Liepaja?”

  “Plenty of activity, but nothing associated with the lone chopper or with us—at least I don’t think so,” White replied uneasily. “Radar pictures from two hundred miles away are not enough to accurately estimate enemy movements, but I think they’re still looking for RAGANU. They may be close, but I don’t think they got him. In any case, eyes are in the target area, and maybe eyes on us right now. It’s looking very risky. We have to off-load the MISCO trailers tomorrow morning before we enter Swedish waters or we’ll be in deep shit if we’re caught with them on board.

  “My question is, do we go or cancel? The book says cancel.” He paused, gave a sly smile that went unappreciated by the black-suited warriors, then continued: “My gut says we go for it! But since it’s your asses on the firing line, I wanted to hear from you.”

  “I need to see the radar plots,” Fell said. A technician came up a few moments later and delivered several large sheets of paper, each with different four-color screen dumps of the digitized radar picture from the AWACS radar plane. Fell examined them briefly, then handed them over to Watanabe, who began correlating the radar targets with his mission chart. “Any idea what aircraft they have at Liepaja other than the patrol and supply choppers?” Fell asked. “Any fixed-wing stuff? Any of the attack planes or helicopters from that squadron in Kaliningrad move north into Latvia?”

  “Still the same info,” White replied. “Light-patrol, medium-search and rescue, medium-troop, and heavy-cargo helicopters only.” He referred to the screen dump. “Maybe a twin-engine liaison plane shuttling between Riga, Liepaja, and Vilnius, but no armed fixed-wings from Liepaja East. No apparent increase in numbers which might signify a reinforcement of the garrison already there. Except for that one chopper, it’s business as usual out there. Vainode is a large Soviet fighter base, thirty miles east, but we haven’t seen much activity from there except in daylight hours.”

  Fell gave a sarcastic snort. “Yeah, right. Business as usual-meaning ten thousand troops, a spy ship, several gunboats, and thirty choppers within ten miles of the target zone.” Fell looked over at Watanabe. “Got all those targets plotted, Marty?”

  “Plotted and laid in the mission computer,” Watanabe replied, handing the printouts to Gunny Lobato for him and his men to peruse. The CV-22’5 advanced AN/AMC-641 computer would warn the crew of any known enemy positions and would use the multimode radar to update that information during the flight; during withdrawal it would plot a best-guess evasion route out of the area and offer suggestions for safe escape-and-evasion routes in case they were shot down. Watanabe looked at his watch. “We need to start pulling out on deck if we want to recover before first light.”

  “I take it you vote ‘go,’ “ Fell said dryly. Watanabe nodded and began strapping himself in. Fell turned to Lobato. “Gunny?”

  “Walk in the park,” the dark Marine said quietly. “We go.”

  “We go, then,” Fell said. “Turn us loose, Colonel.”

  “One last sweep of the area and you’re on your way,” White said, stepping out of the CV-22 PAVE HAMMER. “Good hunting, gents. See you in a few.” White stood and watched as the Marine assault team loaded aboard the CV-22, the aft pressure-chamber access doors were opened, and the aircraft was winched out of the chamber onto the helicopter pad. White headed back to the bridge as the CV-22’s on-board auxiliary power system was started.

  By the time White made his way back onto the bridge, the CV-22 had begun its transformation from a wadded-up puzzle into a flying machine. The rear-engine nacelle swiveled until it was horizontal, allowing it to clear its stowed position between the twin tail rudders; then the entire wing began to swivel from its stowed position parallel to the fuselage into its normal perpendicular position. As the wing moved into position, the aft-engine nacelle swiveled vertically into position and, like the petals of a rose, the rotors began to unstow themselves on each wingtip nacelle. By the time the wing was in flight position, the rotors were extended to their full thirty-eight-foot diameter and the engines were being started.

  “Pre-launch sweep,” White called out to Operations Officer Knowlton.

  “In progress, Paul,” Knowlton replied. “Radar reports negative. That Gagarin radar ship is over our horizon at one-five miles—Ladybug needs to stay below one hundred feet and no less than fifteen miles to stay outside of his normal radar horizon.” Knowlton said “normal” because the Gagarin-class ship was reported to have shipborne over-the-horizon radars that they very well could employ. “Data being transmitted to Ladybug—he’ll have it on his tactical computer and should have a course to keep him well out of range. His initial heading should be one-six-zero, no farther east than that. Pre-launch report from PATRIOT coming in now.

  The pre-launch radar scan was worse than before: the helicopter was still in the target area, and there were more boats than before along the coastline. “Looks like fishing vessels to me,” White said to Knowlton.

  His operations officer gave him a questioning expression—how could White know they were only fishing boats?

  “It’s about the right time for them to head out,” White added, as if he had heard Knowlton’s unspoken question. Then again, they might not have been fishing boats—they could have been Soviet patrol boats. But no great numbers of patrol boats had ever been deployed like this before, so either they were indeed just fishermen… or the Soviets somehow knew they were coming.

  “Pre-launch from PATRIOT shows clear,” Knowlton reported as a teletype machine on the bridge clattered away. He went to the small repeater scope, which had a smaller version of the Intel section’s digital situation screen. “Can’t tell about those boats—they’re not traveling in much of a straight line, as if they’re on a course to a particular spot. But only a few I can see are coming from the military docks—the rest look like they’re coming from the commercial docks. No aircraft up, except for our friend—but it looks like he might be heading back to base.”