No worries. Positive vibrations.
His example seemed to be infectious. Although the tension had definitely increased in the aircraft since the jumpmasters' initial warning call, there were few external signs of fear. Of course, packed that tightly together, you could not really do much to show what was churning away inside.
You couldn't prowl up and down. You couldn't shuffle your feet. You could not even shake with fear without alerting your entire row.
You certainly could not run away. All you could do was sweat, and laden with equipment and packed together as you were, you were doing that anyway.
You were committed.
In minutes you would be doing what you had been trained to do. You would be jumping into a hot zone where several thousand hostiles would be doing their best to kill you.
Unless you killed them first. Which was beginning to seem like an increasingly good idea. In fact, the only option.
Acceptance of that decision had a definite calming effect. Instead of focusing on what might happen, you zeroed in on what had to be done and the tools you had to do the job.
Mission focus. The best antidote to fear. Combat-proven since the first cave dweller had sallied out to kill something large and unfriendly for supper.
Carlson's brain was racing. The assault plan was the product of the entire divisional planning team and had been signed off on by the CG and more than a few layers above his pay grade. Nonetheless the core strategy was his and, rather more than he cared to admit, Fitzduane's.
The airborne had half a century's experience in parachute assaults, so how in hell had he allowed this stranger to so influence their thinking?
Conventional wisdom dictated that they should assault Madoa airfield and the heavily reinforced supergun valley simultaneously. Instead, the entire focus was on the airfield and the supergun was being left to destroy itself – with a little follow-up help from the air force.
But what about the troops dug in around the supergun valley's perimeter? Even if the supergun did blow, what was to stop the perimeter troops from attacking the airborne from the rear as they battled to secure the airfield? There were only eight kilometers to cross, and the terrorists had artillery, mortars, and armor.
Fitzduane had argued that the supergun explosion would be devastating and that any survivors of the perimeter forces could be handled by air or mopped up afterward. The clincher was that friendly forces should be kept out of the area until the supergun was destroyed or they would be duck soup too.
It had seemed to make sense, but now Carlson was wondering. Well-dug-in troops have an incredible ability to survive blast. How violent can one conventional explosion be? Anyway, even if the sabotage works, how do we know that the terrorists will fire the weapon?
I know Oshima, Fitzduane had said with absolute certainty. She won't fire immediately. She will keep her options open for as long as she can – but as soon as she knows the full scale of the assault and realizes that she cannot hold, then she will fire. Sooner rather than later.
And then? Carlson had queried.
If the supergun blows, she will do three things, Fitzduane had said. She will fight a furious delaying action for as long as possible; if she has the expertise she may try to mine or activate any nerve agents stored off the command bunker in some way that will buy her time; and she will try to escape.
How can you be so sure? Carlson had argued.
She learned much of her trade under the terrorist known as the Hangman, Fitzduane had said. Her subsequent record proved that she learned well. As sure as it rains in the West of Ireland – both when you expect it and when you don't – Oshima will have an escape route planned.
The Devil's Footprint complex is hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, Carlson had said. Oshima's command bunker in Madoa is going to have two brigades of the 82 ^ nd Airborne Division descend around it and blow it to shit. The airfield itself is surrounded by a belt of mines up to half a kilometer deep. There will be so much aerial reconnaissance an AWACS will have to make sure no one bumps into each other. So how?
That's for her to know and us to find out, Fitzduane had said.
How do we do that? Carlson had asked.
You lie back and soak in a nice deep hot bath with your eyes closed and think a lot, said Fitzduane.
Carlson smiled to himself at the memory, but the anxiety did not go away.
'TEN MINUTES!' shouted the jumpmasters, hands opening and closing twice, energy and urgency radiating from them like some kind of psychic transfusion.
'TEN MINUTES!' roared back the planeload of paratroopers.
Carlson's mind snapped clear of doubt and uncertainty. Repining was useless.
It was going to happen.
'Shit!' said Cochrane. 'I nearly forgot.'
Fitzduane was thinking about the ground disturbance the infra red satellite photographs had shown up. On the face of it an extensive tunnel network had been constructed under the airfield by the relatively fast technique of evacuating the earth, constructing a deep trench, roofing it over, and then covering it in.
But Oshima must have known that surveillance would show up the disturbed ground, and it was not like her to limit her work to something so obvious.
So what else had she done? What had she constructed that would not show? How many of the tunnels she had constructed were decoys? Had she constructed other tunnels by purely underground digging that would not show up on film? The giveaway would be the extracted earth, but that could be intermingled in the earth extracted from the trenches.
Detectable tunnels near the surface. Hidden tunnels much deeper down. But deep digging would be much harder, and this was a rocky plateau. Where could you dig? How fast could you dig? They had seen an excess of bulldozers and surface-digging equipment, but had they seen any tunneling equipment? What were your options?
What he had really needed were the detailed geological reports. The whole area had originally been surveyed when exploring for oil.
'I've got the reports,' said Cochrane. 'Maury dug them up.'
Fitzduane glared at him. 'You’ve spent too long on the Hill, Lee, briefing congressmen just before they vote. It's supposed to be done differently when people are shooting at you.'
Cochrane tried to shrug. It wasn't possible.
'What am I supposed to do with them?' snarled Fitzduane. 'Read them on the way down?'
'Airborne!' said Brock. 'Cool suggestion, sir!'
'FIVE MINUTES!' roared the jumpmasters. Five fingers came up.
'FIVE MINUTES!' came the response.
'GET READY!'
'OUTBOARD PERSONNEL, STAND UP!'
'HOOK UP!'
'CHECK STATIC LINE!'
'CHECK EQUIPMENT!'
'I can't get to them anyway,' said Cochrane. 'They're in the small of my back under all this gear. God, I feel like an Egyptian mummy.'
'You should live so long, sir,' said Brock.
The side doors were slid open. The sound of the engines suddenly increased and was combined with the rush of air and the noise of the slipstream.
'THREE MINUTES!' shouted the jumpmasters.
'THREE MINUTES!' blasted back the paratroopers.
'STAND BY!'
A row of holes appeared toward the tail of the aircraft.
