'I'll say one thing, Commander Hunter,' the officer from South Carolina shouted back, 'even when I'm inches from fucking death in a hellhole like this, you still think I'm as crazy as you!'
Rick's great roar of laughter somehow recalled for both him and Dallas other times when they had cheated death together. And each of the eight men sensed it, and somehow found it comforting as they settled into a steady rhythm, moving the boats forward, through the drifting fog, leaving behind a small bubbling wake on the leaden surface of Pebble Sound.
They stayed close, separated by only fifteen feet. Rick Hunter called out the stroke rate…
Occasionally glancing at the tiny light on his compass, he would order a minor course change…
They kept going for a half hour, then rested. But Rick was afraid to wallow around for long because he knew the tide would drag them off course. They each had a drink and settled back to row for another thirty minutes, warm in their wet suits but going slower than they had hoped because of the short, choppy sea, which kept shoving the light bows of the boats upward. It was not, however, life-threatening, nor even capsizing, weather. Just roughish water, hard to row through, but ultimately navigable for eight powerful pullers.
By 2030 they were still going in the pitch dark with no sign of land. Rick's GPS was telling him they ought to be on the beach by now, but visibility was so bad he could not know how close they were. Eventually he called the tired rowers to a stop and told them the boats might be somewhere up a bay, with the headlands on either side. Thus he was proposing to make a right turn and hope to hit a beach.
The weary troopers just nodded and did as they had been told, and Rick's boat scraped up onto a sheltered shingle beach just five minutes later. They had been rowing along this shore for a half hour, about 250 yards from the beach, unable to see
They landed in the shallows and dragged the boats out, unloading the equipment and moving toward the low hills behind the shoreline. There was no sign of life, no light, no buildings. Visibility was still only about twenty yards, and they went back for the boats, and then made camp for the night, brewing some more tea, and heating soup, silently preparing themselves for the opening mission at the airfield.
At 2100 Rick Hunter sent in his signal to Coronado…
With machine guns cocked and ready, the troopers had tea with bread and cheese at 2200, and for the third time, Rick issued his detailed final briefing…'We cut the wire right here and move forward onto the runway, all together…all the aircraft are parked a hundred yards farther on, to the right…we all move down together…unless there is an emergency or a patrol, in which case Bob and Ron peel off left and right of the concrete and take 'em out. The rest of us hit the deck, in the grass.'
'That applies both before and after we fix the aircraft?' asked Dallas.
'No. Only before. Ron and Bob are not explosives guys. During the operation, Bob will man our big machine gun, the one that arrived in the canister…right here…that way he can cover all directions. His relief will be Ed Segal because he'll be leaving early…and, anyway, a patrol can come from only one direction…straight down here from the building. The trick is to stay quiet.'
'Okay, sir. Gottit.'
'Right,' continued Rick. 'Only six of you will work on the aircraft. Ed stands guard, while Bob cuts out the new exit.
'Now, the timers are set for sixty minutes after we've finished. That's our getaway window. And we're moving out fast to the west, on a different route back to the beach. There's a gate in the way, which Bob will have dealt with before we reach it. You all know the reason for this…if we are caught on the fucking airfield, we don't want to be restricted by just one way out through the wire, because that's where any Argentinian patrol will be waiting for us, if they find it, and if they've got any sense.'
Everyone nodded, and Rick pressed on, lighting the map with his narrow flashlight.
'Okay, guys, we charge through Bob's gate right here…and four hundred yards along here…on this track where we're headed…the guys in planning have marked a very large low building, surrounded by wire, which they think is a huge ammunition dump.
'By the time we arrive there, Bob will have cut an entry gap, and we'll proceed to blow it sky-high with the hand grenades. These places usually have a few minor explosions first, and then it takes about four more minutes for the whole lot to go up, which gives us time to get clear.
'As you all know, the massive blast will attract the Argentine patrols, and hopefully they'll think it was some kind of accident. And hopefully no one will even guess we might blow the aircraft, and that's important. Because until they see that ammo dump go up, they will not even suspect we were there.'
'How big a blast is it, taking out one of those aircraft?' asked Bob.
'Not much. Because it's internal,' replied Rick. 'Our aim is to split the engine in half. This makes a bit of a thump, but it's dull, muted, with hardly any flash. There's a good chance they won't even notice 'til the morning…if the guys at Coronado are correct, that ammunition dump is going to look, and sound, like Hiroshima for about twenty minutes. It's full of fucking bombs and missiles and Christ knows what else…'
The SEALs spent another five minutes staring at the map, and then, gathering up the magnetic bombs and detonating gear, plus their own machine guns, hand grenades, and ammunition, they set off for the airfield, moving low through the elephant grass.
Using just the compass and GPS, they followed the detailed maps, which would lead them to the airfield and the destruction of the entire Argentinian air operation right here on Pebble Island.
It took them a couple of hours to get there, moving well off track, through the pitch-black night. When they arrived, they checked out the small settlement located close to the airstrip, on the south part of a narrow piece of land, about five miles from the landing area.
Each house was marked on the map, but the entire place was dark, no lights, no sentries, probably just the homes of Falkland Islanders, farmers. Anyway, there was not one sign of Argentinian military personnel.
The air base, according to all Coronado intelligence, now contained less than 75 personnel, and Rick's map showed, accurately, he hoped, the position of all fifteen fighter aircraft on the ground parked in lines of three west of the runway. By 2300 they had not seen one guard patrol.
The problem was, as it so often was down here in the fickle, frigid weather systems of the South Atlantic, the wind seemed to be rising again. Rick Hunter could sense it gusting across Pebble Sound, and he imagined it putting whitecaps on the short, low waves through which they must drive the inflatables.
Out in front of the air base where they now stood, he could hear the wind tugging at the beach grass, and the black sky overhead seemed ominous. Rick imagined the dark cloud banks in layers that completely blocked out the moon and the stars.
The getaway would be difficult in these conditions, but the attack on the aircraft would take place in the best possible conditions, out here on the dark western perimeter of the airfield.
Rick could not see a hand in front of his face, and they all crouched against a grass hillock, before Ron Wallace and Bob Bland moved blindly forward to the tall unlit fence where they would silently clip a ten-foot gap in the thick 'tennis court' wire netting.
According to Commander Hunter's map, all the aircraft lay dead ahead, down the runway to the right. And by some miracle, Ron and Bob found the fence twenty yards on, right where the map indicated it would be, and all eight SEALs found themselves walking on concrete as soon as they moved forward through the gap.
Rick ordered them onward and they moved slowly down the runway, counting the strides to one hundred, when they guessed the aircraft would be to the right. So far they had not used a flashlight, and they did not do so for another three minutes, when Don Smith walked straight into an A4 Skyhawk and uttered a short sharp cry of
Rick whipped the beam of the flashlight around, and for the first time they could see their targets. The team leader snapped softly, 'Okay. Deploy.'
The six SEALs with the explosives headed to the first two lines of aircraft. It was 0006, and Brian Harrison climbed the length of the bomber and positioned himself on the wing, as arranged. Ed Segal was crouched low, and
