All too soon, the day ended as the sun slipped behind the shoulder of Mount Guishu. It was time to move out again.
Rain still dripped from the umbrella of leaves as Boats gathered his small group for a last review of the plan. Spreading out a small map of Nusa Funata, Boats deployed his men. "Jankowski, take Meyer and Cooke. Target the pier and warehouse complex and then the airfield. Stuart, you take Wood, Tagamond and Heigle. Find the hostages. First locate the factory cave. Then set up sniper hide holes to protect the hostages when the strike goes down. I'll take Johnson and Manuelo up Mount Guishu to find that missile and radar complex."
The squads departed on their separate paths. Exhaustion was not an option for these men. Rest was something for after the mission.
Squad One slogged silently through the mangroves again. They headed West for about a mile until they came to the edge of the small bay. Staying hidden in the mangrove, they peered out across the black water. The darkened pier and warehouse area was clearly visible through their night vision goggles. The pier was empty but inside the warehouse were several pallets of silvery cylinders.
Meyer tapped Jankowski on the shoulder and pointed. "There it is, just like that Aussie said. Looks like those super-hardened NBC canisters like Sadam used. It’ll take a direct hit to blast them." he whispered.
They could see heavily armed men patrolling or standing guard around the complex. The gate through the high chain-link fence surrounding the facility was protected by a sand bagged heavy weapons bunker. The snout of an armored personnel carrier protruded out of the warehouse door, its machine cannon pointed down the pier in their direction.
Jankowski raised a digital camera and took several pictures of the facility as Meyer took a GPS fix of their location. RM3 Cooke had set up the portable Satcom data link. Within minutes, the three had transmitted the visual and position data back to SAN FRANCISCO. Confirmation of receipt was immediate. Just as silently as they arrived, they slipped back into the swamp and headed toward the airfield.
Boats, Johnson, and Manuelo headed North. They had to climb to the summit of Mount Guishu. After the first hour, the mangrove swamp gave way to a lush tropical rain forest. They climbed through groves thick with strangler figs enshrouding massive teak, meranti and ramin trees.
In the shade of a particularly large meranti tree, they encountered the horrid smell and awesome beauty of an Amorphophallus Titantium, the Corpse Flower. At nearly a meter across and two meters tall, the short-lived blossom was the world’s largest orchid. The carrion-like smell attracted insects which, in turn, attracted a swarm of feeding fox bats. There wasn't a single sign that man ever walked here before.
The gentle lower slope of the extinct volcano grew progressively steeper as the team climbed. The red lava soil turned into a greasy, clinging mud with a passing evening shower. Burdened by their heavy loads, they slipped and slided up the slope. The last hundred yards turned into a near vertical climb up a rock face. The only other access was a narrow road carved out of the side of the mountain, but the heavy patrols prevented its use.
Razor-sharp lava rock made progress slow and difficult. Each new handhold bit into the flesh, every slip left cut and flailed skin. The team finally lifted themselves over the edge and found meager concealment in the scree laying in heaps around the cliff edge. The radomes were plainly visible under the camouflage netting further up slope, but the missile launchers and command facilities were not to be seen.
Carefully snaking around the cliff edge to the North, the trio conducted an inch by inch surveillance of the mountaintop. The top of the mountain was crawling with troops. It seemed that every few feet they encountered another patrol.
They could not afford to be discovered. Although they might win a firefight up here, the mission would be compromised. Reconnoitering became a process of slipping forward a foot or two, stop and listen for several minutes, carefully move forward another foot. It was excruciatingly slow and nerve-wracking.
Manuelo almost stumbled over a sleeping guard sitting with his back propped against a boulder and his legs sprawled out in front. He managed to stop just short of stepping on the guard's legs and slowly backed away. The guard muttered incomprehensibly in his sleep and rolled over. Manuelo slid the razor sharp combat knife back in its leg sheath and slipped around the other side of the boulder.
Johnson finally found the command trailer and the missile launchers in two adjacent small gullies cleverly camouflaged to appear as a continuous hummock. A faint glimmer of the coming dawn was just visible on the horizon as Boats transmitted the digital imagery and location data back to SAN FRANCISCO. They slid back over the edge of the cliff face to descend in the last bit of cover from the darkness.
The third squad also left the mangrove swamp for the lush tropical rainforest. But instead of climbing higher, they skirted around the base of Mount Guishu to the Northeast.
A few hundred yards beyond the mangrove swamp, they happened on a well-used single lane dirt road. The team concealed themselves in the underbrush for fifteen minutes, carefully watching to see if the road was patrolled. Nothing moved. Finally, Stuart signaled Tagamond to cross. Crouching low, the SEAL scurried across the road and disappeared into the undergrowth. The muzzle of his H&K machine pistol was just visible, pointed down the road.
Stuart signaled again and Wood scurried across. He rolled under a small tree and guarded
