Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [159]
The final evolution of the mission readiness exercise is a gunfight. Late that afternoon, 915 and 912 rechamber and rebarrel their M4s to adapt to Simunitions, or Sims. Sims are 9mm paintball rounds that are adapted to the standard M4 rifle. They have the same cyclic rate of fire and short-range trajectory as the real thing. The rounds make a splotch and a sting when they hit, but nothing more. A few of the older soldiers have trained with Simunitions, but for most, this is their first time—their first firefight. The contestants in a Sims fight wear protective goggles and face masks. A good Sims fight is the dream of every little boy who played war games when he was a kid. I was one of those little boys.
There’s a deserted training compound nearby that 915 elects to defend. A squadron of National Guard H-60 helos are training at the airfield, and they agree to insert the attack element—912. It’s the honor system; if you’re hit, you go down. Soon it’s game on, and the two teams are running and gunning. When it’s over, 915 has more men standing, but then the advantage always goes to the defender. Sergeant Blackman calls the two student ODAs in for the after-action review.
“OK, this training was a bonus for you and a game—a paintball fight—but what did we learn? The basics work, right? You guys in 912 had a hard job, assaulting a fixed position with the enemy alert and ready for you. But you executed a fire-and-maneuver attack pretty well. Remember, a steady volume of covering fire is key to the success of the maneuvering element. Also keep in mind, plywood and twigs may stop a Sims round, but not a real one. Real bullets are for keeps, and concealment is not necessarily good cover. And basic infantry tactics work, even for us high-speed, Special Forces guys.”
Nine-One-Five and 912 patrol back to the Rowe Training Facility. They overhaul their gear that evening and get a good night’s sleep, perhaps for the last time in Phase IV. Ahead of them are four days of intensive planning and preparation before they infiltrate into Pineland for Robin Sage. The student ODAs are now under strict isolation protocol. They can interact with their higher command and those role players assigned to their forward operating base, but no one else. This is the final countdown to Robin Sage.
In the 915 team room, Captain Santos staffs out the planning assignments for his team. There’s a lot to do, but they have been thinking about and working toward this since they arrived at Camp Mackall. There are six computers in the team room. All are on a local area network that supports Robin Sage. Weather data, mission-planning software, and the full Pineland scenario—history, economic data, politics, geography, demographics, and maps—are in the database. Seldom did I go into 915’s team room, day or night, and not find a soldier at each of the computers.
The drill is not unlike what took place in the planning rooms during the mission-planning exercises of the 18 Alpha’s Phase III. Only these are a group of soldiers, not officers with mission-planning experience, and five of Captain Santos’s ten enlisted soldiers have been in the Army less than eight months. His assistant detachment leader is an excellent officer, but he’s new to the mission-planning doctrine as practiced in the American military. The heavy burden for supervising and planning and the mission briefback will fall on Miguel Santos.
Everyone has a hand in the planning and in preparing equipment for the mission. A great deal of the initial planning effort falls on Sergeant Brian Short, the team’s intel sergeant. He begins to work up the intelligence picture and format it for the briefback. The weapons sergeants have to plan ammunition requirements, both what they and the team will carry in and what has to be staged for the resupply bundles. They also have to identify weapons spare parts and build repair kits; there are no armories in Pineland. The engineering sergeants have their demolition requirements in the way of explosives, det cord, time fuse,