Without remorse - Tom Clancy [198]
Kelly stood next to Captain Pete Albie, who, it had been assumed for the purpose of the exercise, was dead.
He was the only officer on the team, an aberration that was compensated for by the presence of so many senior NCOs. As they watched, the mannequins were dragged to the simulated fuselages of the rescue helicopters. These were mounted on semitrailers, and had come in at dawn. Kelly clicked his stopwatch when the last man was aboard.
'Five seconds under nominal, Captain.' Kelly held up the watch. 'These boys are pretty good.'
'Except we're not doing it in daylight, are we, Mr Clark?' Albie, like Kelly, knew the nature of the mission. The Marines as yet did not—at least not officially - though by now they had to have a fairly good idea. He turned and smiled. 'Okay, it's only the third run-through.'
Both men went into the compound. The simulated targets were in feathery pieces, and their number was exactly double the worst-case estimate for the sender green guard force. They replayed the assault in their minds, checking angles of fire. There were advantages and disadvantages to how the camp was set up. Following the rules in some nameless East Bloc manual, it didn't fit the local terrain. Most conveniently indeed, the best avenue of approach coincided with the main gate. In adhering to a standard that allowed for maximum security against a possible escape attempt of the prisoners, it also facilitated an assault from without - but they didn't expect that, did they?
Kelly ran over the assault plan in his mind. The insertion would put the Recon Marines on the ground one ridge away from sender green. Thirty minutes for the Marines to approach the camp. M-79 grenades to eliminate the guard towers. Two Huey Cobra gunships - known with lethal elegance as 'snakes' to the troops, and that appealed to him - would hose the barracks and provide heavy fire support - but the grenadiers on the team, he was sure, could take out the towers in a matter of five seconds, then pour willie-pete into the barracks and burn the guard force alive with deadly fountains of white flame, doing without the snakes entirely if they had to. Small and lean as this operation was, the size of the objective and the quality of the team made for unplanned safety factors. He thought of it as overkill, a term that didn't just apply to nuclear weapons. In combat operations, safety lay in not giving the other guy a chance, to be ready to kill him two, three, a dozen times over in as little time as possible. Combat wasn't supposed to be fair. To Kelly, things were looking very good indeed.
'What if they have mines?' Albie worried.
'On their own turf?' Kelly asked. 'No sign of it from the photographs. The ground isn't disturbed. No warning signs to keep their people away.'
Their people would know, wouldn't they?'
'On one of the photos there's some goats grazing just outside the wire, remember?'
Albie nodded with some embarrassment. 'Yeah, you're right. I remember that.'
'Let's not borrow trouble,' Kelly told him. He fell silent for a moment, realizing that he had been a mere E-7 chief petty officer, and now he was talking as an equal - more accurately as a superior to an O-3 captain of Recon Marines. That ought to have been - what? Wrong? If so, then why was he doing so well at it, and why was the captain accepting his words? Why was he Mr Clark to this experienced combat officer? 'We're going to do it.'
'I think you're right, Mr Clark. And how do you get out?' .
'As soon as the choppers come in, I break the Olympic record coming down that hill to the LZ. I call it a two-minute ran.'
'In the dark?' Albie asked.
Kelly laughed. 'I run especially fast in the dark, Captain.'
'Do you know how many Ka-Bar knives there are?'
From the tone of Douglas's