NORTH OF WEST FALKLAND

USS Toledo ran slowly inshore, 51.16S 59.27W on the GPS, five miles north of the rough and rocky north coast of the island. They came to periscope depth and checked for deserted seas. Captain Fraser ordered the inflatable boats launched in twenty minutes as the submarine came creeping into waters only a hundred feet deep.

Commander Rick Hunter and his team heard the CO order his ship to the surface, and they watched the two Zodiacs being hauled out onto the casing, followed by their four engines, each of which was manhandled up out of the torpedo room on swiftly erected davits set inside the sail.

Commander Hunter and Dallas MacPherson led the other six out onto the casing, and they all stared in awe at some seriously worsening weather, with heavy swells riding up the bow of the submarine. The wind was not yet gale force, but it was almost certainly building, and Captain Fraser advised them to move fast and make the run into the beach with all possible speed.

The embarkation nets and rope ladders were in place on the submarine's hull within two minutes, and the seamen lowered the two boats brilliantly down into the water, each one containing its driver just in case it somehow broke free.

Commander Hunter would be last away, and Dallas MacPherson led the men down the ladders, four in each boat, carrying as much of their gear as possible in extremely difficult circumstances.

At 2030 the helmsman turned the boats south and opened the throttles, driving toward the landing site, the headland jutting out into Pebble Sound, sheltered from the onrushing Atlantic waves, and possibly from a big nor'wester. But it was susceptible to a strong tidal pull through the narrows, which might make things extremely tough for the SEALs.

To the southeast, they could see the 780-foot height of Goat Hill, which would give them some protection from surveillance, if the Argentinians had retained their high garrison on White Rock Point, the western guardian of the entrance to the Sound. But this was ten miles from the landing beach.

The near gale-force wind buffeted the boats in which the SEALs crouched, their loaded rucksacks packed with ammunition, food, waterproof sleeping bags, and the radio. The helmsmen were unable to make much headway in this sea, but they pushed along at ten knots, aware that it would take a very alert surveillance officer to locate them out here in the pitch-black ocean.

Rick Hunter was personally acting as navigator, and he knelt on the wooden deck, staring at the compass, trying to locate the gap in the low hills on the shoreline up ahead, the hills that would identify the Tamar Pass, through which they would find shelter and calmer seas, and the landing beach.

It took ten minutes to spot the flashing buoy on the east side of the gap, and they raced through, much faster now as the water flattened, leaving the warning light a hundred yards to their port side.

The landing beach was slightly more than a mile ahead, dead straight, and they came in at an easy speed, the engines cut and raised forty yards offshore to avoid grounding out on the shingled seabed, while the men paddled in with big wooden oars.

They beached both boats and unloaded them separately, with each man moving to a preplanned task, precise as a tire change by a Grand Prix pit team. The disembarkation took less than forty-five seconds.

Rick Hunter quickly checked his team was all present. And they began the most serious part of the landing, which was to haul the Zodiacs somewhere out of sight. Each of the eight men gripped one of the handles and heaved, generally amazed at how light it was with this much muscle providing coordinated power.

They moved the first boat back around seventy-five yards into the shelter of a few rocks and some sparse- looking bushes and went back for the second. Then they unscrewed the engine bolts and manhandled them flat onto the ground. They turned the boats upside down and placed them over the engines, propping up the bows to give the wheel clearance. It was a major effort, but it removed the problem of metal engine casing glinting in the sun and betraying their position.

Rick asked Don Smith and Bob Bland to cut some gorse to lay over the upturned hulls and to weigh them down with rocks. Within another ten minutes the boats were secure and invisible from the air, ready for the attack, and perhaps more important, ready for the getaway.

Using a flashlight, they discovered they were in a relatively sheltered spot, in an uninhabited area. They pulled out the spade and dug in for the night. It was bitterly cold, but it was dry, and they could stay out of the wind in the lee of a long flat rock.

Commander Hunter ordered Ed Segal and Ron Wallace to stand guard for ninety minutes each, while the rest of them snatched some sleep, and then prepared to receive the HALO drop at midnight. That would keep them up until dawn.

Right now at 2100, the United States B-52H long-range bomber out of Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, was refueling in Santiago, in readiness for the final 1,300-mile flight down to the Falklands.

This great gun-gray warhorse of the U.S. military was 160 feet long and weighed 220 tons. Its distinctive nose cone made it look like a great white shark with wings, and tonight, with its light load, it would fly high and fast, close to five hundred knots, following the lofty peaks of the Andes. It would stay in Chilean airspace all the way south until it angled east above the Magellan Strait, then straight to the open ocean and the Falkland Islands.

As it skirted Argentinian air space, the B-52 would be cruising at 45,000 feet, too high, but fuel-efficient. It would be transmitting only nonmilitary radar. Civilian aircraft, flying high at night, are not routinely checked out by airline authorities in southern Argentina, nor indeed by Chile. Ryan Holland had been very definite about that.

At 2120 the U.S. Air Force Stratofortress came hurtling off the Santiago runway and set a course due south, which would take it nine hundred miles down the entire Pacific coastal length of Chile. They had flown on an extremely tight schedule from North Dakota, refueling once at North Island, San Diego, where they picked up most of the explosive contents for the HALO canister.

And right now the veteran frontline pilot out of the Fifth Bomb Wing, Lt. Colonel E. J. Jaxtimer, was running approximately seven minutes late. The B-52 would be directly over the SEALs' hide at 0007, though he hoped to pick up time during the high-speed run through the very thin air above the mountains.

Meanwhile, the SEALs slept. And the night hours flashed by. At 2330 everyone was awakened. They ate some concentrated protein, drank fresh water, and prepared for the oncoming arrival of the 250-pound computerized bomb-shaped canister, swinging downward beneath its black parachute, having dropped like a stone for almost 45,000 feet. That was the whole idea of HALO — high altitude, low opening — as untraceable as a falling meteorite for 99 percent of its journey, then too low to be located by anyone's radar.

Rick Hunter was checking the high-tech target marker he would place on the ground, sending a powerful laser beam streaking into the black sky to the east. This was the beam that would flash a pinpoint-accurate GPS reading to Lt. Colonel Jaxtimer and his team—51.21.05S 59.27W. The ops room of the Stratofortress would lock right on to it in the brief minutes before they jettisoned the canister out of the B-52's bomb bay.

The beam in Commander Hunter's target finder was life and death for this mission. If it failed, everything failed. If it functioned, the Argentine Air Force could bid adios to their fighter attack bombers parked on the airfield at Pebble Beach. Parked, incidentally, in this remote, inaccessible spot without even a semblance of a guard.

At 2345, the SEALs took up their positions. Commander Hunter placed the target finder in the precise spot indicated by the GPS system, accurate to within five yards. They made it secure in the shingle and drew out its collapsible aerial pointing to the east. Mike Hook stood with him, and the remaining six spread out in three pairs to form a forty-yard-wide triangle around him.

Rick decided this was such a remote beach he would risk placing three dim chemical light markers with each pair of SEALs in order for everyone to know precisely who was where, a considerable luxury in a pitch-black, moonless night like this. It would also give them the best possible chance of seeing the canister's arrival. They all knew the B-52 would see nothing visually, but would rely totally on the laser beam from the target-finder.

At six minutes before midnight Commander Hunter activated the beam, hitting the switch that would send it flashing up into the dark skies, a lonely beacon in the heavens, ready to guide the precious canister down.

Right now Lt. Colonel Jaxtimer was still thirteen minutes out, which put the Stratofortress a little more than a hundred miles to the east, 61.10 West, flying high and fast toward the jagged headland of Byron Heights, the northwesterly point of West Falkland's mainland.

On the ground, the wind was rising out of the east, gusting a wicked chill across the exposed beach where the team from sunny Coronado was waiting, shivering and hopping around to keep warm.

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