Red Hammer 1994

The tall stand of trees surrounding the Green Berets’ clandestine base camp blocked the direct sunlight, scattering constantly varying shadows about but trapping the day’s heat. Rawlings wiped his dirty and sweaty brow with the back of his hand and replaced his floppy camouflaged bush hat. Black-and-green grease paint still covered his freckled face, the pattern now broken by cuts and scratches sustained when crashing through the thick underbrush in the right-hand seat of the FAV. They were all tired, nerves frayed. Rawlings secretly hoped for contact with the Russians. Anything to break the tension. The Special Forces captain stood and stretched while Gonzales stayed put, still studying the grease-pencil-marked map.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should try more to the north. It looks open,” Rawlings said. The overwhelming stillness floating through the air made him feel like he was in a cathedral. The unnatural quiet wore on them.

Gonzales frowned. “Maybe, but that terrain twenty miles out will play hell with trying to get the jump on the Ruskies.” Rawlings had given up on stealth or tactical surprise. Time was running out. And, for some crazy reason, he just wanted to get it over with. He wanted to search and clear their assigned map grid and then head west and try to make it to the Baltics. He grimaced. Hundreds of miles, much over flat, open steppes. It was a joke. But what the hell.

“This crap around here is too thick. We can’t make decent time or cover any ground. It is great for an ambush—theirs.”

Gonzales rolled his parched tongue around his lips and furrowed his brow. “You might be right. They’d expect our flyers to concentrate on the thicker forests. Maybe we should move the camp?”

“We’ll stay put, and see how it goes tonight.”

“Sounds good, Captain,” Gonzales said with a touch of indifference. He rose and moved off to check on the Team. He too had drawn a blank on creative thinking.

Rawlings walked over to his men sprawled out next to one of the FAVs. “Sergeant Pickford,” he said in a hushed voice, “we’ll move out at 1900 hours.”

Pickford glanced up, and then the lean, black sergeant nodded slowly and turned to the others. “OK, fellows, let’s draw straws and see who stays.” The twelve men in an A-Team come in twos. There are two officers, medics, comms, ops/intel, heavy weapons, and light weapons. Four would stay with the gear and one of the FAVs, the backup. Everyone begged to go, figuring that the stragglers would be dead meat once the shooting started.

Rawlings broke open a box of MREs and rummaged to find something suitable. He headed to the nearest fallen tree for a backrest. Not really hungry, he sliced open the heavy olive-green pouch with his knife and began to pick at the food. He sighed and looked off into the distance. The day had been unproductive. Rawlings knew he was being cautious. The others sensed it but didn’t complain or second guess. He wanted to get oriented, get his feet on the ground. Tonight would be their first real test.

The previous night had been a near disaster. The temperature had been incredibly cold for late summer. The dense forest canopy had made a shambles of their timetable. It took over an hour just to assemble the men, and then they scrambled to collect the gear and outfit the FAVs and stash the pallets and cargo chutes in the brush and clear the area. Fortunately, all the FAVs had survived the drop intact. The whole exercise took way more time than he thought it would. He still worried about the amount of gear hidden under tree branches and dirt. If the Russians discovered the stuff, they’d swarm the area with hundreds of soldiers. He prayed the vast forested expanse worked as much against the Russians as it did against them.

Morning had peeked over the horizon by the time they got underway at a little after 0600. The three-vehicle convoy had moved cautiously, gear piled high in the FAVs. Rawlings called a halt five miles from the drop zone, not wanting to risk detection. The suppressed exhaust from the engines seemed to echo forever in the thick, primeval forest. Choosing a concealed site for the camp, the team set up claymores on the two most likely approaches. At 1000, Rawlings had split the men into three sections, each hiking out on a radial 120 degrees apart. In retrospect, it had been a bad plan. Isolated from each other, unfamiliar with the lay of the land, they would have been easy prey for Russian patrols. Luckily, everyone drew a blank. No signs of anything out to a four-mile radius.