The Black Hawks swept down into the Sulu Islands – the Wild West of South-East Asia. Sawtell and the SEALs had sit-repped. The SEALs were about to relieve the Marines at the Hainan Star, then they were going to work inland to a small township and secure it, ask some questions, see where the bomb might have been left.
Sawtell’s Alpha group was going straight into the highlands. Using map databases, DIA had confi rmed a mine at the top of one of the island’s valleys.
If things turned bad upstream, the SEALs would support. Mac didn’t like it, thought the navy could take the ship, the Marines could move into the small town. He wanted those two other Black Hawks fi lled with SEALs to be right on his wing.
Mac fi red up the mic to Sawtell. ‘Mate, this is Sabaya country.
I’d feel happier if the SEALs were with us.’
‘Negative,’ Sawtell fi red back. ‘It’s a CBNRE mission so we’re tasked for the VX. The Twentieth sets the priorities on this. Sorry.’
Mac sort of understood that you couldn’t go chasing the bad guys when the actual item you were trying to retrieve could be anywhere
– could be on a ship, could be in a town, could be sitting on the side of a road waiting for a farmer to pick it up, take it home in his cart.
The island was very small but it had to be shut down. And that started with the wharf and the ship.
They fl ew over the island with a couple of hours of daylight to play with. About three miles across, it was fi ve miles north-south. Mac’s gut churned when he saw how diffi cult the terrain was – mountainous, heavily jungled with jagged peaks and valleys running down to river deltas at the coast. It looked like the pictures they showed candidates at the Duntroon military academy in Canberra. The pictures they put on the wall when they talked about Vietnam and why foreign powers shouldn’t fi ght a land war in Asia. Mac had a second lesson to add: don’t fi ght an island war in the Pacifi c. The Americans had tried that during the Second World War and suffered casualty rates they were still embarrassed about.
He controlled his breathing. Next to him, Spikey shook his head as he looked out the window. Turning to Mac he said, ‘Looks like Basilan. Holy shit!’
‘That’s enough, Spike,’ came Sawtell’s voice over the headset.
The other soldiers might have heard about Basilan Island – the Abu Sayyaf fortress – but they hadn’t fought there. They were new to this. Sawtell had told Mac what the Basilan campaign had been like and it had sounded like a cross between hell and purgatory: snipers in trees, Claymore mines strung across water sources, poisoned dams, bear traps, hit-and-run guerrillas, and all of that while fi ghting blind against people who knew every inch of the place.
Now they were back to do it again, with Mac along for the ride.
Acid stirred in his stomach as he sensed Abu Sabaya waiting, smiling.
It was going to be a long, long night.
The Hainan Star looked intact and under wraps as they swept over it and aimed up the valley leading away from the wharf. Sawtell spoke with the Marines commander at the ship. They were waiting for the SEALs to come in. Waiting for the Twentieth to start their search.
Mac watched Sawtell point his pilot up the valley, thought he saw a glint of excitement. It was funny the way different people were strong, thought Mac. Sawtell had fallen apart in the face of child slaves. But he was the guy you’d follow into a direct confrontation.
His courage was infectious.
Mac craned his neck around, saw Paul up and about, stretching, looking out the window in the sliding door, looking down at the terrain. Then he walked to the cockpit bulkhead, shoved his head between the pilot and co-pilot, turned to speak with Sawtell and came back to Mac, kneeling in front of him.
‘Only one road up here, mate,’ shouted Paul.
Mac gave thumbs-up, and the sweat came down cold and sticky from his forehead. There wasn’t going to be any screwing about. One road, one valley, one mine entrance and one Green Berets captain with a glint in his eye.
Sawtell had a set of binos at his eyes as he mouthed something to the pilot, or maybe to Don back in the Chinook. The soldiers around Mac were tuned in to their leader, legs jiggling up and down, thumb-shakes starting along with small whoops, little regimental chants.
Mac concentrated on his breathing.
The Black Hawk gained height as they got closer to the head of the valley. Remembering the thing about SAMs and heavy machine gun fi re, Mac realised if there was an anticipated hot zone on this island, Sawtell and the pilot thought they were pretty close to it.
Mac burned inside, desperate to be on the ground – to stand, get running, get his bearings.
The Black Hawk suddenly banked away in a massive loop, like a dipper on a roller coaster. They fl ew up the other side of the loop by banking in the opposite direction, moving around the peak of the valley to another valley.
Finally they set down. Sawtell roused the troops, checking lists, giving orders, yelling instructions into his mouthpiece to the Black Hawk behind them.
The door slid open to reveal a clearing with jungle rising wherever he looked. Everything around them was fl attened by the helo’s downwash. Mac hauled his lightweight Army bergen on, tightened it as Paul slapped him on the shoulder and leapt out onto the grass.
The noise was deafening as Mac raced behind Paul to an RV by the ringing trees, keeping his head bowed and stowing his M4 with both hands, his US Army helmet bouncing slightly on his head.
The troopers assembled and Spikey counted heads. Sawtell was the last across, arriving as the two Black Hawks rose into the afternoon sky.
Spikey gave the head-count to Sawtell, then the troopers checked guns, grenade launchers, grenades, rat packs, water and radios. They cammed-up, pissed, took a shit. Some vomited and some prayed. Did what they had to do.
Sawtell pulled the team into a huddle, kneeling in the middle and spelling it out. He looked into faces, zapped people with courage, reminded his boys they were professionals.
He caught Mac’s eye, winked, and then said to everyone, ‘No heroes on my watch. Okay, ladies?’
The team walked in two groups to create a less-concentrated target.
Mac walked with Sawtell in the middle of the fi rst group. The ‘jockey’ they called Fitzy took point, Spikey swept. Mac felt in good hands.
Sawtell’s boys had been one of the fi rst special forces outfi ts into Kandahar in ‘02, but their real specialty was jungles like Mindanao and Basilan. Tough environments where tiny mistakes were the difference between everyone living and everyone dying.
They moved quickly around the spur towards the head of the valley and the mine entry. Sawtell wanted to do the jungle transit during daylight. Mac liked that, and he liked the way Sawtell’s boys maintained total silence while moving really fast. Not quite a jog but more than a march.
Around Mac the men managed to clock the tree tops at the same time as watching where their feet were treading. It was a particularly hazardous assignment for the guy on point. The Sabaya MO – as Sawtell had reminded everyone at the briefi ng – was to mine and booby trap the approaches to his hide-outs. Fitzy was trying to fi nd a path through the jungle as well as check for Claymores and triplines.
They came into a clearing after twenty minutes, panting, staying low, staying silent. Some drank from water bottles.
When the other team caught up, Sawtell conferred with their team leader, a fi rst lieutenant called Gordie.
Sawtell came over to Mac, got in his ear. ‘That’s the mine entrance, about half a click at our two o’clock. We’re going over the top of it, take out any sentries. Copy?’
Mac nodded.
‘You, Paul, Fitzy and Jansen take the ridge right up to the top and check for air ducts or escape routes. Don’t engage. Only recce.
Copy?’
Mac nodded.
Sawtell gave an RV for six pm, then moved away.
Mac turned to Paul. ‘Hear that?’
Paul nodded. Mac beckoned Jansen and Fitzy over. ‘Know the mission, guys?’
They gave thumbs-up.
‘Fitzy takes point,’ said Mac.
‘And Jansen can sweep,’ said Paul.
The Green Berets nodded. If they hadn’t been asked, they would have suggested.
They lined up a point about four hundred metres above the mine entrance and then climbed straight up the spur, making good time.
The jungle was less dense than the valley they’d come through, with visibility through the trees as much as one hundred metres in places.
They stuck to the Green Beret MO and maintained silence. Mac’s advanced hand signals had deteriorated since the Royal Marines but he still had the basics.
They got to a false summit after half an hour and stopped on the ridge. Mac slugged water and looked around. The area was like a small plateau – strangely fl at for a piece of ground on a hillside in this sort of country. He did a three-sixty, his M4 already a part of his hands, looking for a chimney-like structure that would alert them to an air vent for the mine. Sixty years ago the dirt was probably excavated and spread around, hence the fl at area. Trees had grown up through it and a thick carpet of leaves covered the earth. But it still felt fl at, out of place. Maybe.
Paul had the same idea. ‘This is the go, right here, I reckon.’
The area was about the size of a basketball court and the vent should have been noticeable. They wandered around the area but no luck.
Mac came back to Paul, who had been doing his own recce, and pointed up the hill. Paul gave thumbs-up – there was a cracking sound and then he disappeared. Vanished.
Mac threw himself to the ground, wondering where the sniper had shot from. Paul groaned quietly, out of sight. Carefully, Mac scanned the fl at area and the trees, looking for the shooter.
Fitzy had a sheltered position on the edge of the clearing and Mac could see him looking everywhere at once, pointing his rifl e, trying to pick the sniper amongst all the leaves. Facing the other way, with his back to Fitzy’s back, Jansen was scoping the ground and trees with ninety-degree arcs.
There were no more shots and Mac’s breathing was now ragged.
Jansen crawled to Mac on his elbows and they crawled to Paul together, Mac thinking, Being hit twice in two days – what are the chances?
Stopping where Paul had gone down, there was no sign of a body.
Mac was almost hyperventilating. He had no idea where Paul was, had no idea where the shooter was hiding, had no idea if these were his last seconds.
He cast about, looked at Jansen. Jansen leaned further over and almost disappeared himself, yelping slightly.
Mac heard an echo, grabbed Jansen by the bergen and pulled him back. They moved leaves aside with their M4s. A two-and-a-half-foot tunnel disappeared perpendicular into the ground. Sitting about fi ve feet down was Paul, his right leg jammed into an iron ladder rung, his left leg dangled down into the tunnel, his body wedged against the far side of the tube.
Great if you were into yoga, thought Mac.
Paul was in agony. The painkillers he’d been taking for yesterday’s gunshot wound would not be strong enough for the contortion.
Mac dropped his rifl e, pulled the bergen off and eased down onto the top rung of the built-in ladder. Putting his hand down, he gripped around Paul’s wrist and heaved. After three tries Paul came up like a cork out of a bottle. Jumping onto solid ground and limping around the clearing, he checked his right leg, mouthing the word fuck twenty or thirty times but saying nothing aloud. The slightest human noise in that vent would amplify many times over by the time it echoed into the main tunnel below.
They knelt around the hole and let Paul walk off the twisted ankle.
He was in agony.
Mac put his fi ngers to his eyes, Jansen nodded. They crawled to the hole, dragging leaves away from it so nothing fell down. Leaning over, they stuck their heads in. A breeze came up thick and strong, indicating the mine had some part of it open. But they couldn’t see anything; it was completely dark.
It would require patience to hear sounds, evidence of people.
Jansen and Mac got comfy and listened while Paul and Fitzy stood guard.
Mac was just about to call it quits when there was a faint clanking sound. Jansen looked up at Mac, then listened again. More clanks, a male voice.
Mac and Jansen crawled into the cover of the trees where they joined Paul and Fitzy. Mac keyed the radio.
Sawtell came on, grumpy with someone breaking radio silence.
‘Thought you might like to stealth this?’ said Mac.
‘Better than storming a steel door,’ replied Sawtell.
‘We’ve found the vent. Right up the spur, where you said it was.’
‘How long?’
‘Take you twenty minutes.’
‘See you then. Out.’
Mac and Paul locked eyes. Time to fi nish this.