Incheon, three hundred miles away across open water. And even if it could, they would need twelve hours or more, with the Chinese navy chasing them. Suddenly their odds seemed worse than hopeless.
“No way,” Wells said.
“No choice.” Cao hugged the men who’d driven them, spoke a few words in Chinese to the old man beside the boat. Wells wondered what their helpers would do next. Probably ditch the truck as best they could and disappear.
Cao stepped inside, his plastic leg thunking on the side of the boat. Wells followed, nearly falling over as he did. Cao was right. They didn’t have a choice. In the distance he heard a helicopter. He sat down heavily on the wooden bench and rubbed the bandage that covered his broken chest. He felt light-headed and feverish despite the cool night air. He wondered if he could last even twelve hours.
The drivers and the fisherman stepped forward and pushed the boat off the sand. It slid forward easily, lolling on the flat waves. Cao jabbed at a red button on the side of the outboard and the engine grumbled to life. He turned the tiller sideways and they cruised into the cove. The men on shore waved.
“Cao, do we even have a compass?”
Cao handed Wells a compass. “Straight east. Easy.”
“Incheon or bust.”
36
THE C-130J HERCULES LUMBERED DOWN THE RUNWAY, slowly accelerating as it bounced over the tarmac. Not far from the grass overrun at the end of the 9,000-foot strip, its nose finally lifted. Inside the cockpit Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bosarelli exhaled. The C-130 was a sturdy beast, but he wouldn’t have wanted to skid off in this particular plane.
Nobody joined the Air Force to fly C-130s. But during eighteen years as a Here pilot, Bosarelli had grown fond of the ugly old birds, the four-propeller workhorses of the Air Force. They weren’t as sexy as F-22s or B-2s, but they were far more useful most of the time. They could endure massive damage and still take off or land just about anywhere. Besides hauling cargo and airdropping special-ops units, they worked as fuel tankers, firefighters, even gunships.
But Bosarelli guessed that in the five decades since the first C-130 joined the Air Force fleet, none had ever carried a load like this one.
And that was probably for the best.
THE TACTICAL OPERATIONS CENTER AT OSAN had received the first reports of the attack on the
Within an hour of the
While the fighters soared off, Bosarelli had nothing to do except drink coffee in the ready room and try to ignore the acid biting at his stomach. Ninety percent of the time — heck, ninety-five — he had more to do than the fancy boys. But at moments like this, he felt like a fraud. Against a fighter jet, any fighter jet, his C-130 was nothing but a flying bull‘s-eye.
Then the door to the ready room opened. A lieutenant looked around and headed straight for the table where Bosarelli sat. “Colonel Bosarelli.”
“Yes.” Bosarelli knew the guy’s face, though not his name. He was one of Hansell’s runners. Lieutenant General Peter Hansell, the commander of the 7th Air Force, the top officer at Osan.
“Colonel, General Hansell would like to see you.”
HANSELL’S OFFICE WAS in the Theater Air Control Center, a squat building that everyone at Osan called Cheyenne Mountain East because of its ten-foot-thick concrete walls. As he trotted through the center’s narrow corridors, Bosarelli wondered what he’d done wrong. Or right.
Before Bosarelli could figure it out, they reached Hansell’s office. “This is where I get off,” the lieutenant said. “Go right in. He’s expecting you.”
Bosarelli wished he had a minute or two to shine his shoes and make sure his uniform was squared away. But he wasn’t about to keep Hansell waiting. He threw back his shoulders, stepped inside, and gave the general the crispest salute that he’d offered anyone since his first year as a cadet in Colorado Springs.
“Sir.”
“Colonel. Please sit. You’ve been flying the Here for eighteen years, is that right?” It wasn’t a question. Bosarelli nodded. “Your record’s spotless. Two years ago, you landed in Bagram on one engine.”
Bosarelli was thoroughly nervous now. Three-stars didn’t butter up lieutenant colonels this way unless they wanted something.
“And you requalified on the chutes just last year.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“I have a mission to discuss with you, Colonel. An unusual mission. You’re the first Here pilot I’m offering it to. But I want you to understand. This is a request. Not an order. No hard feelings if you say no.”
“Yes, sir. I accept, sir.”
“Thank you,” Hansell said. “But first I need to know if it’s even possible.”
For the next five minutes, Bosarelli sat silent as Hansell outlined what he wanted.
“So? Can we do it?” Hansell said when he was done. “I’d rather use a Predator”—a lightweight unmanned drone—“but they just don’t have the payload to make it work.”
Bosarelli wished he could ask who’d okayed this insane idea, and why. On second thought, he didn’t even want to know. Somebody up the chain, that was for sure. Way high up. Maybe all the way. He looked at the ceiling, avoiding Hansell’s ice-blue eyes, visualizing the steps he’d take.
“And we’d be doing this—”
“Tonight. The goal is four A.M.”
“No time like the present.” Craziest thing I’ve ever heard, Bosarelli didn’t say. He’d always wanted to be in the middle of the action. Now he was.
“Go on, Colonel.”
“I assume we’ve got the smart boys at JPL and AFKL”—the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio—“running sims to figure our trajectory after we flip the switches.”
“We’ll have projections within an hour.”
“Then, yeah, if they sign off. We can do it. And you’ll damn sure be able to see it a long way off.”
“So. Now you know. Are you still game? Take a minute, think it over.”
Bosarelli couldn’t pretend he wasn’t nervous. Any sane man would be. The risks were off the charts. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and Marines took chances just as big every day. No way was he turning this down.
