Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 42
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
“It looks like a condemned man's last meal!” said Davies cheerfully, before tucking in. Whitfield threw a fork at him, and Davies plucked it out of the air with ease. Maric smiled. This was how he wanted his team to relax, as they readied for the mission – completely at ease with each other.
Maric settled in to enjoy the evening with his people. Russo had told him in no uncertain terms that he was sleeping in his own bunk tonight. He was not abandoning her in the early hours of the morning to go and jump out of a plane with his mates. Besides, she was running last checks on the comms and control center until late that evening.
Maric had enough understanding of women to appreciate her point of view. Still, it made him smile all over again. When things were working between him and Russo, life was good.
"What are you so happy about?" said Mosha, stopping with a drumstick halfway to his mouth.
Maric’s face closed over. "Nothing," he said quietly, "just an old memory."
Mosha looked at him suspiciously. He had known Maric for a long time. When Maric was this happy, it usually meant a woman was involved, and Russo was on the same base . . .
Mosha turned his attention back to his food. Now was not the time to bring that up, if in fact there ever was a time to bring up what was private business.
There wasn't any alcohol allowed before a drop, something to do with dehydration when their flight altitude was already bad in that regard, but it was a happy band that settled in to socialize for the evening.
There was little point in turning in early and tossing around unable to sleep, so they stayed up to their usual times, which gave them around four hours sleep.
Maric was up first, and into his flight clothes five minutes later. The parachutes had already been loaded on the airlifter for them, and the team would grab something to eat once they were in the air.
He joined Davies and Pavic on the way out of the dormitories, and the last member of the team arrived at the hangers a minute after Maric did. It was pitch black away from the lights around the hangars, though a quarter moon would be rising in the east shortly.
“What the hell is that?” said Whitfield, as their ride was towed out in front of them.
“It’s an Atlas,” said Maric. “NATO must have sprung some real money for our ride in.”
The Airbus A400 Atlas was one of the more recent military airlifters. The US didn’t use them, which explained Whitfield’s confusion. The flight plan for the insertion called for the team to deploy at 3000 m, and avoid the HA/LO need for oxygen loading and frostbite protection at more than three times that height.
Colonel Brightwater came up beside him, much to Maric’s surprise. It was not traditional.
“Come back!” said Brightwater, as he extended his hand. Maric took it, and his opinion of the Sigonella operational commander went up a notch.
Twenty minutes later they were airborne. Two and a half hours after that the coast of Albania slid beneath the Airbus. Maric wouldn’t have known that, but he got a call to come up to the cockpit.
“We’re over land,” said the pilot curtly, then he handed over to his co-pilot. He motioned Maric to a seat that dropped down from the wall section behind the other pilot.
“You signed non-disclosure and confidentiality clauses when you were assigned to this mission, yes?” he said, just as bluntly.
Maric barely had time to nod when the pilot carried on.
“What you are about to experience, as you approach your drop zone, is highly classified. You will impress this fact on your men, and stick to it equally as firmly yourself. Do you understand what I have just said?”
“Affirmative, er, Sir,” said Maric, not sure what rank a pilot in NATO held. It was all a bit mysterious, but the pilot turned back towards the complex banks of controls in front of him, and the discussion was, apparently, over.
Maric was walking back to his seat in the hold of the Atlas when the floor tilted slightly forward, and the aircraft dropped and steadied, while the engines dulled to a gentle whisper. He regained his balance, and hurried back to his seat.
“What’s going on?” said Mosha, as he arrived. Some of the others weren’t taking the apparent loss of power quite so calmly. There were a few white knuckles on armrests.
“Some sort of acoustic stealth mode,” said Maric, since that was his best guess. “If anyone asks, we don’t have it. NATO doesn’t have it, the US doesn’t have it, and it’s a pipe dream still twenty years in the future, understood?”
There were some astonished glances, then a round of nods.
“And they’re trialing it on us?” said Anderson.
“Well, we’ve been guinea pigs before,” said Maric with a grimace, “but I don’t think this is the first time it’s been used in the field.”
No one said anything much after that, and then they were over the drop zone, and the loading doors opened.
“Follow the directionals in,” said Maric, running his team through the drill one last time as they stood. “Watch your helmet displays, and open at 800 meters above the landing site. See you on the ground.
“Now,” he said firmly. “Go, go, go!”
CHAPTER 17
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The first few moments were pure exhilaration. You might call it a perk of the job. Where else did you get to throw yourself out of a plane in pitch darkness and tumble at terminal velocity for minutes at a time. Maric guessed that all of the special forces must be adrenaline junkies at heart.
He stabilized himself in a starfish pattern, and forced himself to concentrate on his breathing. Dropping from low pressure at altitude to the higher pressure at the Earth's surface was much the same as coming up from the ocean depths to the surface. It seemed odd, but the chances of getting ‘the bends’ were very real for anyone in a HA/LO drop. At 3000 m, his team would be safe, but they were all forcing their breathing on the way down, giving their bodies the best chance of catching up with the changing concentration of oxygen around them.
The Atlas had automatically locked on to the directionals placed out in a triangle pattern by the guides, and then adjusted for cross winds. Maric had to trust the system had done its job, and his people were on target. He had to, in the same way he had to trust the altimeter in his helmet visuals that would tell him when to open his parachute.
Then at last he saw the tiny lights of the directionals below him.
He adjusted the controls for his helmet visor until he had enough night vision capability to land safely. Each of the parachutes around him had a tiny transmitter built into the top of it, and his helmet was picking up the low frequencies they were generating. He pulled on his control lines, and veered away from another parachute that was lower and a little to his left.
Then he saw the ground coming up, and opened his chute a little to pick up speed. Judging it perfectly, he flared out and touched down. There were two figures ahead of him, and then another one came in on his left. They all hit the dirt and waited until the last of the team had come in over them. Night time operations were always difficult.
The first two down got their weapons operational as quickly as they could, and stood sentry duty while the others detached parachutes before wrapping them into a ball. Then someone took over from the sentries, who now had the chance to go through the same procedure.
The helmet visors got dumped with the parachutes. They would leave with the guides, so there was no trace of the recon team in the area. Once he had his night goggles out of his pack and on his head, Maric was able to scan the area more fully. It looked like they had landed in a broad valley, with a cliff a few hundred meters to the left. Maric oriented himself. That was west, the direction they needed to follow to get to the bridge structure in the cavern.
It was a good drop zone, an open area for landing but away from skylines. Then he spotted movement in a belt of trees to his right.
“Contact 150 m north-east, at the treeline,” he said crisply, and saw the others sharpen up as they heard his words through their helmets.
He didn't say anything else, and the team spread out and hunkered down automatically. Maric was quite happy for the figures at the tree line to come to him. The forest behind them was a great place to set up an ambush, and he wasn't going anywhere near it.
The reconnaissance team must have looked daunting to the two hunters who were to be their guides. They came forward with their hands up. When they had passed Whitfield and Anderson, who were the perimeter on that side, Maric rose from the ground and came forward to meet them.
"Maric, NATO recon team,” he said crisply, and waited for the two men to identify themselves.
"Besim and Vali Mehmeti,” said the older of the two men. “We are brothers.” His English was good, though his speech tended toward the round East European vowels.
Maric eyed them up and down. They were fit, that was clear, and while their gear was rough, it was in good working condition. They had high-powered hunting rifles slung across their backs, complete with telescopic sights. In their own way, they were snipers whose skill levels must be close to Anderson’s.
The two men reminded Maric of deer hunters he had known back in New Zealand. The older one sported a magnificent mustache and rather long hair, while the younger, Vali apparently, was clean shaven and more conservative.
“Thank you for your help, gentlemen!” said Maric, more warmly this time. “We need a place to hide our parachutes and visors, and I would like you to take them out with you when you leave.”
“Yes,” said Besim, “this has been explained to us. We have horses further back, behind the trees. There is an old abandoned farm there. The horses will be fine until we get back, and the extra baggage will be no problem.”
Maric nodded his thanks. Vali collected up the directionals – flat discs about the size of a Frisbee – and jogged off toward the treeline. Anderson helped Besim make one tight bundle out of the parachutes, and then Besim set off in the same direction. Maric figured the men would hide what they had in the trees, and pick it up when they returned from guiding the recon team to their first objective.
The two guides didn’t have the benefit of night goggles, but their night vision had been acclimatizing for long enough on the trip in to be at its best. The quarter moon had now risen, and that seemed to be enough for them. Maric was impressed.
He thought about making contact with the comms and control center at Sigonella, and decided against it. There was little that could go wrong with a LA/LO drop. He would wait until the guides had led the team to the bridge structure in the cavern. Once he’d seen that, he might have something worth reporting.
When the two Albanians got back to the group, he sent Mosha out on point, with Whitfield and Davies at flank further back. He had a few questions for the guides before the recon team went to silent travel, and he would discuss those with the guides now.
The remaining four members of the team dropped back 50 meters and brought up the rear. It was standard practice to spread out, in case of snipers or ambush.
Once they had crossed the low scrub and dry grasses of the valley floor, the recon team clambered up a slope of rough debris until they were right under the line of cliffs that had been to the west when they landed. Maric handed over point to the guides, and they climbed a steep pile of boulders before dropping down out of sight. Maric shrugged, and followed them.
When he got to the top of the boulders he found he was looking down into the start of a cave system. There were rusty steel pegs driven into the solid rock wall below layers of boulders, and he could see the remains of old ropes.
It was quite an experience for Maric to stand where the partisan fighters of WW2 had built themselves hidden trails, leading to temporary hideouts, so they could mount hit and run raids against the Axis powers.
His own SAS had developed out of the need for soldiers to function effectively in conditions like these, and he would have liked to show the partisans what their efforts had grown into today.
He lowered himself into the start of the cave system hand over hand. Then he was looking directly into the smooth bore of what had once been a large underground river. The rest of the recon team clambered down behind him.
There was some good-natured grumbling when two of the team had to give up their night scopes so the guides could be properly equipped. The two ‘blind mice’ would have a minder each, and a place of safety in the middle of the group. Markovic and Pavic accepted their new role with good grace.
A few more steps, and the recon team had left the outside world of night and day, and living things, behind. Maric adjusted his night scope for the light conditions along the dry watercourse.
In places the river had created sinkholes, and narrow paths had been carved out of the limestone around the sides of them. Every sound echoed along the smooth walls of the tunnel, and it took all the team’s skill to remain silent, or nearly so.
After half an hour they found themselves in part of the tunnel that supported small ferns and tufts of grass, and water lay in pools around their feet. Maric looked up and saw stars shining like bright city lights through his night scope. A number of smaller galleries made their way into the gorge, and it was clear the area had been heavily cut through by old stream beds.
Maric pulled the night scope off his face, and then he could see the edges of the gorge above him as they stood out against the stars. He remembered what he had read about this area. In some places the rock above the river beds had collapsed, and created spectacular gorges.
A little later, as the gorge formed a roof above them once more, Besim led them to a wooden ladder along one wall. It led to a gallery a couple of meters up, and it looked sound enough. More recent, thought Maric. Caving expeditions had left it there perhaps.
“Now we branch off,” said Besim softly. “If you don’t know these galleries you could die in here, so mark your way back or memorize it carefully.”
Maric didn’t intend to come back this way. If they had to evac at speed they would find a way to the surface to be picked up. He nodded all the same. Besim was just trying to help.
Half an hour later, after some tight twists and turns, the gallery dropped into a good-sized cavern. It narrowed as it dropped away below them, and the sound of rushing water could be heard in the depths. The path clung to the side wall, and it was slow going.
The old metal structure they had been calling ‘the bridge’ appeared as they rounded a corner. Maric worked out what it had originally been for. The pulleys must have held ropes and buckets, and that made sense. The water running through the limestone mountains these days had cut itself tracks a lot lower down then when it formed the cavern.
As he got closer he could see there were electric cables running down into the abyss below. The partisans had been generating electricity? It was in common use in the 1940s, but still. They must have been an ingenious bunch.
Then he saw the remains of a platform several meters lower down, and smiled. Latrine station. They couldn’t have human waste building up over the years they were here.
The metal structure probably had been used as a bridge across the cavern, though it looked a flimsy thing. It was built out of what could be carried in on the back of the partisans.
Two metal runners, about a meter apart, had been connected with lighter supports that zigzagged between them. Then it had been turned on its side for strength, and attached to spikes driven into the rock. Its various attachments hung off on either side.
“The bridge will take your weight,” said Besim, “with packs and all. We’ve used it before. To go due north you have to start from the other side of the cavern.”
Due north was where the Count’s base would hopefully be. Maric looked at the home-made structure once again. It appeared they didn’t have any choice. They would have to cross the bridge.
CHAPTER 18
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There was a wide shelf on the other side of the ravine, and rooms that ran off behind that. Some of them looked natural, and some had been extended by hand, or perhaps they had been entirely excavated that way.
Maric could understand why the partisans had chosen the site as a permanent base. It could accommodate a large number of personnel, it had water close by, and it was easy to defend. He could only see two ways in, and they were both bottlenecks.
Then it was time to cross the bridge. Juric stared fixedly ahead as he inched his feet along the lower beam and clung tightly to the top one. Maric could see the man's fear of heights, but he could also see how Juric was controlling his feelings. That was a testament to his mental toughness.
It didn't take long for the rest of the team to make their way across. True to Besim's word, the flimsy-looking structure supported each of them and their packs, one at a time.
The two hunters had a final word with Maric. Then they handed back the night goggles and produced small torches from their backpacks. After that they headed back the way they’d come in.
There was nothing more that the hunters could do to help. When the time came for the recon team to leave, they would be airlifted out. Maric sensed that the NATO agent in Debar had chosen well. He was confident the guides would keep their mouths shut about what was happening here.
Maric looked at his watch. Dawn would be breaking outside, though it was impossible to tell down here in the cavern. He called a half hour halt, and gave the team time to look around the site. It was, indeed, an interesting experience.
There were a number of signs of the everyday life the partisans must have led. Cavers seemed to have respected the site, or it was simply too remote, and little had been taken as souvenirs. There were makeshift bunks in the caves behind the wide shelf of rock, and the rotting remains of benches. Even a few bully beef tins that hadn’t been opened.
There was an old German Luger in one corner, the barrel bent out of alignment. It was a captured item no doubt. There was no sign of other military items, but there was that second site up ahead, the munitions dump that Cal’s friends with their ground-penetrating radar had discovered.
