Red Hammer 1994

The loadmaster signaled all secure to the flight crew and raised the ramp. The ground crew backed away, ear protection in place. One by one, the four turbo-prop engines kicked over and roared to life with a momentary burst of black smoke. The air force pilot promptly taxied toward the runway, the British watching the departure unemotionally, while the air force personnel were already packing their gear for evacuation. Within a minute, the Talon was airborne, climbing rapidly, engines straining, beating the cool evening air into submission. Leveling at five thousand feet for the short flight over the English countryside, the plane turned east and began its long journey to the Russian Motherland.

The tethered loadmaster, a burly air force staff sergeant, lumbered forward and tapped Rawlings on the shoulder. “Five minutes to the jump-off point, sir.” Rawlings shook off his drowsiness and glanced at his watch—0133—then surveyed his crew who sat in varying stages of disrepair. The four-hour-plus flight had been punishing; the terrain-following autopilot had jerked and shaken the men unmercifully as they had skimmed over both land and sea. A few had vomited, unable to handle the constant thrashing.

The flight plan had unfolded like clockwork. No air contacts were detected, the skies eerily vacant. The Germans had kept their promise of free passage. Hitting the beach in Latvia after a stint in the Baltic had been tense, but anticlimactic. The country was jet black and stone cold. Not a sign of life emanated from the ground, even when flying at two hundred feet over towns and factories cloaked in darkness. The flight crew had screamed along main arteries to avoid crossing deadly power lines but even then hadn’t seen anything with wheels. Rawlings had once rode in the cockpit of a MH-53J helo when flying a training mission at night and had come away awestruck by the crew’s competence. It took nerves of steel and a steady grip to avoid instant disaster at the hands of power lines, towers, buildings, or other obstacles.

Crossing into Russian territory had brought little change. Only spurious electronic signals danced on the airwaves, signatures of air-search radars or patrolling interceptors, none of which would be able to distinguish the Talon from ground clutter. Only once had they deviated from their base course to avoid a suspected surface-to-air missile site.

“Let’s go!” Rawlings yelled over the cabin noise. He stood and stretched out his sore back. It took a few moments to catch his balance. Six SF soldiers on each side of the pallets shuffled to the rear, past the helmeted crewmen. They hooked-up to the wire static line, bunched nuts to butts, buffeted by a violent ride. They would bail out in one continuous run into empty space, followed by the heavy pallets coasting down the rollers two seconds apart. The goal would be to have minimum separation between the men and machines once on the ground.

The loadmaster reached for the chest-high ramp lever. The whine of hydraulics triggered a rush of adrenaline to Rawlings’s body. The first crack of pitch black brought a deafening roar, and an unexpected backblast of swirling, frigid air that made them shiver. Nature’s violence, mixed with fear of the unknown, hit Rawlings. He breathed deeply, muscles tense, as the ramp lowered into place.

“Two minutes.” The twin lines, led by Rawlings and Gonzales, edged aft and bunched even closer. The ramp was completely distended and locked, the edge dropping off into nothingness. Rawlings purged his lungs and suddenly felt invigorated. The thick forest below rushed by in a blur; his eyes were unable to focus for more than a second. At only six hundred feet, there was no margin for error. A good chute pop and two swings and they’d be hitting the ground hard.

“Go.” The loadmaster gave a thumbs-up as an adjacent light panel flashed green. Rawlings gritted his teeth and leapt into Russian airspace, his static line jerking open his main parachute. It unfurled in a rush and roughly snapped him upright as he twisted back to glance at the departing Talon. The others were in various stages of deployment, and the first pallet had swung free of the plane, the huge chutes resembling mushrooms in a clump. Rawlings turned to see the ground rushing toward him. He aimed for a small clearing, smacked the dirt, and rolled. He sprang to his feet and reeled in his chute. His first thought was finding concealment. He didn’t want to be caught in the open by Russian troops.