I looked up over the vehicle to see Jimmy waving to me to say that the visitor was okay. Deep down I knew that we should exercise much better security; at the same time I realized that we had such a small site that any incursion would be final. The only way to avoid capture would be to be elsewhere, we three weren't going to fight off shit.
"Lieutenant Nichols, what can I do for you ma'am?"
The LT was our platoon leader, and the main reason that Stretch and I were here. I had given a briefing on jamming and TACJAM at one of her OCS courses. When the battalion discovered that they had three TACJAM systems waiting for them at POMCOS without any trained operators in the unit, she remembered me at good old Ft. Devens. She lobbied the General to request support from TRADOC, and they got three SSG instructors, and three SGT and SP4 students to man the systems. SSG Wolfelt and SP4 Simmons were in the other system on the south side of the division. SSG Brigham and SGT Fields were killed last week by a MIG strafing their site.
"Hello Staff Sergeant, I have some bad news." I tensed up a bit, "Apparently the Soviets decided to cut down some of our technical military advantage by getting rid of the brains behind it. They dropped a MIRV on the Boston area. Everything within 50 miles of the coast is gone. I know they were going after Raytheon and places like that, but they got your family as well. I'm sorry Mick."
I just stood there in shock. My wife and daughter were gone, killed in a war that still made no sense. We had talked about them going to Indiana to stay with my folks, or to North Carolina to be with hers, but there had not been enough time to get everything done before I had to leave, and now there was no need.
Stretch came over and hugged me, her folks had been near DC when it went up, and I had comforted her then in the same manner.
"I do have some good news as well, if you are up to hearing it?"
"Y ... yes ma'am, go ahead. I'll be okay soon. What have you got?"
"Since I am responsible for snatching you folks into this mess, I finally persuaded the Captain to let you run a mission the way you think it should be done. After this last fiasco he was willing to listen. How did you get out of there anyway? I know there wasn't enough warning from us."
"Debra here had a feeling and we took off before you told us to. If you look at the back of the hut you will see just how close it was." I pointed at the piece of missile. "What do you mean let us run it?"
"I mean that you are the experts and it is silly to ignore everything you taught me about jamming doctrine. I'm going to give you a mission with a goal that you should be able to handle. I expect you to coordinate with the other team and do me proud. If you are successful there could be a lot more missions like this. You may change the whole course of the battle, or war."
"Go ahead ma'am, you have our attention." Stretch had straightened up beside me and I could almost feel her focus on the LT.
Lt. Nichols pulled a map out of the HUMV and spread it onto the tailgate of our goat. She looked up then and saw Katrinka sitting on the litter where I had been. "Oh ho, what have we here Staff Sergeant? A little young for you isn't she?"
"Take it easy LT, she was hungry and hurt. We're just helping her out for now. You don't think that I would give her a black eye like that, do you?"
"No Mick, I don't. Sorry about that. Do you think it will be alright to talk in front of her?"
"If she was a spy we'd already be toast. I can't think of anything anyone needs to know about us but our position. She didn't need to stay to give that away."
"Good point, so long as you don't let her leave before the mission is done I won't say anything. The less the CO knows about you guys, the better." She winked at Debra and me. "Okay then, here is what we have for you. There is a counter-battery radar that has been giving us a large amount of trouble. DF has given us the controller's position, but just blowing him away wouldn't stop the radar from calling down arty on what we use against him. What we want you to do is to isolate him without the radar operators knowing it. We want you to interrupt his signals to the artillery batteries and give us a chance to capture him and destroy the radar. You have until 1700 zulu tomorrow to set it up. We are going after him then one way or another. If you have done what you keep telling me you can, it will save a lot of lives."
In other words, step up to the plate or quit complaining. "What's the main call sign?"
"Okhota 56, and here is the entire layout of his net as far as the C's could figure it." The lieutenant sat a notebook down on the map.
"Oh boy, we have been listening to this dip shit for weeks. I've even heard Stretch mimic him. I'll get a plan together and let you know about the time of implementation ma'am. It will probably be a little bit before your jump off time. Do you want me to call you when we start, or just do it?"
"Give me a call Sarge, all you have to do is transmit on my freq, "Boston", and I'll know that the mission is underway."
"Good enough ma'am, hey Jimmy, get over here." I looked up at Katrinka standing in the back of the goat, "could you play guard for us hon? You don't have to do anything but warn us if anyone comes around."
The slight girl nodded her head and affirmed, "Da, I watch." She stepped down and moved over to where Jimmy was coming from.
Lt. Nichols shook my hand and got back into her hummer. I dismissed her from my mind as I took hold of the problem.
"Jimmy, go through the net and find me the most vulnerable links. I'll need azimuths for the log periodic and an estimate of power levels needed. I don't want to use any more power than necessary. Figure out the same thing for team three. Stretch, let's figure out what you are going to have our friend Okhota say."
The next few hours were exciting; I finally had the opportunity to prove what I had been teaching for years. The best way to use jamming capabilities was with just enough power to beat the signal at the receiver, no more. Deception and interference would work much better than raw power. This mission couldn't take more than about 15 minutes, any longer and we would be discovered, any less and we wouldn't be effective. I would use a coordinated attack from both TACJAM units to confuse the direction finding equipment and possibly give us some degree of survivability. The biggest problem was knowing what the activity was supposed to be at 1700 tomorrow, then it occurred to me, we would dictate the activity by initiating it. Debra could mimic Okhota and start the activity our way. The confusion should make them screw up, and step right into our clutches.
Later we called Katrinka in to join us for dinner and after that I sat down with the codebook and made up a message for Jimmy to send to the other jamming team. I also wanted him to contact the folks working in Trailblazer to be on special alert once the mission began to try to give us as much warning as possible of our being targeted.
I was so nervous I had trouble sleeping that night. Katrinka lay on the litter above me and her soft snores finally lulled me to sleep. There was also the hole left by the loss of my family, which disturbed my rest more than once. I was almost glad to be awakened by Debra to go on guard duty. As I patrolled our site, the next day's work kept running around inside my head. I saw all the things that could go wrong and tried to plan an option for each one.
The next day Jimmy sent out the messages. Team 3 got their instructions and you could hear the excitement in their voices as they realized what it was. We, using Debra's ability, would do most of the deception. Team 3 was to concentrate on judicious blocking of selected receivers at selected times. They would have to play their part exactly or we would be caught, everything depended upon the targets not knowing what we were doing.
At 1654 zulu Jimmy sent "Tango Foxtrot four five this is Echo Zulu two three, Boston, I say again Boston, over."
"Echo Zulu two three this is Tango Foxtrot four five, roger Boston, out."
At exactly 1655z Debra started ragging the operator at one of the mobile artillery guns, call sign Piotr 32, about his girlfriend, speaking as Okhota. The antenna was on vertical and pointed directly at the last known location of the gun. At the same time team 3 sent out static pointing their antenna at the location of Okhota. Due to the directional antenna, Piotr received our signal but the static overrode us to everyone else on the net, so our intended target was the only one to hear us. We knew through prior intercept that Okhota, who was the commander of the gun battalion, was screwing Piotr's girl while he was away. That Okhota was responsible for him being away is what we based our deception on. I was in the hut with Debra while Jimmy and Katrinka kept watch. As Debra messed with Piotr's head I was sending random snatches of prerecorded orders from Okhota to the other gun platforms with the other two transmitters TACJAM had available. Team 3 was doing the same thing for other parts of the net to include the counter battery radar site. All this time Okhota was overpowered every time he tried to get on the net. He kept hearing himself giving and countermanding ludicrous orders to his own guns. At 1711z Jimmy hit the scram button and Stretch and I closed down the system and ran outside.
We had prepared for an escape before everything started and Stretch ran over to the Goat where Jimmy was powering up the beast.
Katrinka was standing at the rear of the TACJAM looking confused.
"Come on little one, we have to leave now."
I grabbed her arm and led her to the front of the track. I opened the passenger door and lifted her up to get in. I ran around to the driver's side and disconnected the clamp on the grounding rod on my way past. The engine was already running because it had been powering the system. Hitting the scram button caused the generator to disengage and the motor to return to idle after a 30 second pause, giving us time to shut down the system. I threw a pair of hearing protectors to Katrinka then put the track into gear, hauled on the right brake, released the left, and gave the old girl gas. This turned us to the right and I followed the goat out of the site in a preplanned route to our next location.
The exultation I felt was about to burst through my chest. I could see Jimmy and Debra waving their arms out of the windows of the goat and if the track hadn't been so loud I'm sure that I could have heard them screaming. I didn't know whether or not the extraction team was successful, but our mission was. We had given them the time they had asked for. We had shut down the artillery net for 15 minutes and had survived. Just then the area directly behind us exploded. We had been warned early enough to escape; I hoped that the same was true for team 3.