Missions

By Bobby Tyler

Garland gets on the radio and calls it in. He hears, "This is Seahorse 2-1. How can I help you?" Monique says, "A submarine can't help us." Garland says into the radio, "Seahorse 2-1, what are you?" "Just look over your heads." Monique said, "That's a small plane. He couldn't even kill us in that. What do you think he can do?"

"He can bring fire and brimstone down on you if he wants to." Garland said. "Seahorse 2-1, we have enemy soldiers in the valley. Can you take care of them?"

"This is Seahorse 2-1; I have a ship that needs a mission. How soon can your men clear the area?"

Garland said, "About five mikes" (minutes)." "This is Seahorse 2-1; it will take about five mikes for the ship to punch in a shooting solution. The ordinance on this ship is new. They might be a little wild. They are about a mile off the coast and I need salt and pepper."

Monique asks, "Why does he need salt and pepper? We don't have any salt and pepper. He couldn't land and get it from us even if we had some."

I looked at Monique and said, "Salt and pepper are the panels we put out for friendly troop positions." Monique said, "We don't have any panels." Garland removes two flags from his pack.

Seahorse 2-1 said, "I see your panels. I am switching over to the ship's frequency and giving them six-digit coordinates. The valley has been wiped out. It looks like some of the fighters are climbing up the mountains."

I asked, "Seahorse 2-1, what is your name and your outfit?" I hear "This is Seahorse 2-1; my outfit is the 183rd Aviation Company. My name is Cpt. Donald Tyler. Do you need any more assistance?"

I said, "Seahorse 2-1, thanks for your help."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638814870

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I wanted to take a vacation with my family and not have to worry about getting shot. We headed for the beach, of all places. You would think that I would be tired of the beach, but there was nothing like relaxing at the seashore with my family. This time, I would be in the sand in the United States and not hiding in the bushes in a place that I didn’t know the name of or someplace where sand was blowing in my face.

My daughter was in the water, and my wife and I were lying on the beach, getting some sun.

My wife said, Look, there is a man walking on the beach, and he’s wearing a suit. He is waving at us. My wife waved back.

I turned over, and I saw Hooker walking toward us. He came up to us, and after our greetings, he told me that he wanted to see me in his office the following day. I reminded him that I was retired.

Hooker said, There is a man who wants to discuss the gun and how it operated in combat. Will you have time to talk to him?

I looked at my wife. She gave me a nod.

I said to Hooker, I agreed to be there tomorrow at 0800 hours.

The next morning, I entered Hooker’s office. He had put a rug on the floor. It looked like a thick bear rug. It was soft and spongy. I had never seen a rug like this on a military base. (There has to be a first time for everything.) There stood a man by Hooker’s desk. He introduced himself as Bryan.

I asked, Are you the man who wants information about the gun?

He said, No, but I will take you to him.

How long will this take?

Two or three days.

I said I was not told this in advance. I needed to talk to my wife.

Hooker said, Call her on the phone.

After the phone call, I said, Let’s go.

I had no idea where we were heading. When we arrived at the airport, there was a small jet waiting for us.

I asked, Where are we going?

As usual, I was not given an answer.

We boarded, and after a short time on this fast little jet, we landed. This place was in the desert somewhere with mountains close by. I went inside with Bryan, who took me into a room and opened a locker.

He said, Strip. I will get you a set of clothes to wear.

After dressing, he led me to another room. I entered, and Bryan left. There was a man standing close to a window, looking out.

He said to me, Welcome to Area 61.

I said, Do you mean Area 51?

No, this is Area 61.

He walked over, shook my hand, and introduced himself. My name is Donald, and I believe you are called Adam.

Yes, sir.

He said, This is a top-secret base. Tell only your team about this base. Its real name is Hideaway Proving Ground. He asked, Are you the one who carried the gun into combat?

Yes, sir.

How did it operate in combat?

I said, I would not be standing here if it wasn’t for that gun.

Donald said, "We have made improvements on the gun. The radium packet is at least twice as powerful, and the pin that explodes the gun is now an indent instead in the same place on the barrel. It needs to be pushed three times in succession. Once the gun is activated, it will destruct in ten seconds. You will see a big improvement in the gun when you use it again. The information I heard was that you could handle any job thrown at you.

We have a situation here that must be handled carefully. Your team is our last chance. He called me over to the window and said, Do you see the three mountains?

I do.

"Well, the ones on the left and right are owned by the United States. The one in the middle is owned by a company that calls itself DGRT. Don’t ask me what that means because I don’t know. After some research, we have found out that this mountain is owned by a foreign country. I have a lot of pictures of the mountain. About three-quarters to the top is a round building about ninety yards high. Three-quarters of the way up the building and stopping about fifteen feet from the top is an opening. This opening is a big window that looks like smoked glass. We can’t see through the glass, but we believe they have telescopes, recording devices, and other equipment that track and record our every move. Your target is to get rid of that tower and the people who work in it.

I have moved in a military smoke-generator company to provide smoke when needed. They do a great job, but this takes us only so far. This is a touchy one. I will give you all the help that we can provide. The foreigners running the tower are American citizens. They have the backing of the government and the FBI. You can’t kill them. You can’t legally destroy the building. We don’t want a national crisis. I will get with Hooker, and between the two of us, we can provide whatever you need to get the job done. As I have said before, we have improved the power of the gun. It will be available if needed. Your mission is to get them to leave that mountain but in a safe way, not killed.

I said, Donald, you have really given us a tough mission.

Here are three badges to the Hideaway Proving Ground. You and your team will not have any trouble getting in. This is an army facility. We also have air force flight tests here. When you come on the base, stay on the roads. There is some unexploded ordnance around, plus there could be some biological and chemical residue around. We want to expand about sixty-six more square miles, but the tower is a hindrance. The ball is in your court. One more thing, their lawyers are on the ball. Everything we have thrown at the tower is met with a bunch of lawyers contacting me or my boss almost before it happens. I have hit you with a lot. Come back and discuss any plan with me before you do anything.

Donald called Bryan. Take Adam back to Hooker’s office. Hooker will know how to get in touch with me.

I headed back to Hooker’s office.

I said, Hooker, I need Garland and Mary Jane.

He agreed.

They both showed up within a week. Garland was a retired army ranger. He was about six feet, one inch, and was really built. You could tell that he was a strong man and could handle himself if needed be. Mary Jane was a beautiful five-foot-ten-inch woman. She had long black hair. Her favorite weapon was her knife. The knife had a handle like brass knuckles, and the blade came out from the handle and came across the knuckles. The knife was so sharp. It could cut paper. It had a sharp point. She carried it in a leather pouch. It was rumored that she killed twelve people with that knife in one night. I say, Don’t let that beauty fool you. Both were proficient in languages. They were also experts in all kinds of weapons and were jump qualified.

I had all the pictures and information about the mountain. Hooker gave us a building to use so we could spread out and plan. The building was shaped like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, only bigger and taller. After working for three weeks, we were ready to throw some ideas at Donald.

The next day, we headed to Donald’s office. We walked in, and Donald was standing at the window.

He said, The president of the United States informed me that, if we can’t get rid of the people in the tower, then we will have to move. If we can find a suitable place and can move everyone and everything there, it will cost about $80 million or more. I don’t want that. What have you come up with?

I said, Those are Mary Jane and Garland. They are the other part of the team.

Glad to meet you two.

I said, Let’s block the road where Area 61 only has access.

Donald said, We tried that, and their lawyers went to court, and we lost.

How about some type of reflectors aimed at the glass?

We tried that, and their lawyers fought that. We lost. They haven’t been able to stop the smoke from the generators yet.

How about a microwave beam?

Donald said, No, that might kill them. We can’t do that. We need these people to leave without being killed. Please continue to work on this. DGRT lawyers are the best money can buy. Keep trying. There has to be an answer somewhere. You three are smart. This is why you are here. Come up with a solution. You have to beat their lawyers at their own game. Your team is my last hope. Bill spoke highly of you three. If you fail, it will cost the United States a lot of money. Keep me informed before you try anything. We may have tried it before. Remember, their lawyers are sharp!

We left and headed back to our base. Once there, we went back to our building. We were shaking our heads. We started looking at what they need to sustain themselves. They need electricity, water, and fuel. Without fuel, DGRT can’t function.

We headed to the little town near Area 61 and checked out the fuel station in town. We found the one that furnished fuel to DGRT. We asked the manager if he would stop. He said they were the best customer that he serviced. We kept pressing him, and he finally admitted that DGRT had bought him out. They were paying him $100,000 a year to keep furnishing their fuel. He said he was not going to give that up. I don’t blame him. That was a dead end.

He told us that he furnished two thousand gallons of fuel about every three weeks. When they call, we fill the tanker with two thousand gallons, and the next day, we deliver it to the mountain.

The truck could only pull two thousand gallons up the mountain. This would give us a chance to work on our plan.

We decided to get two five-thousand-gallon military tankers. One would be empty, and the other would be half-full of water. We would pull one-half of the fuel out of the tanker into the military tanker and then backfill his tanker with the same amount of water from our other tanker.

We now waited for their tanker to be parked in the fuel yard waiting for the next day’s delivery. We watched the yard, and one day, we saw the tanker being filled. Tonight was the night we worked our plan. The gate was locked, but we knew we could lift the gate off its hinges. They would never know we were there. It was finally dark enough for us to make our move. We went through the gate. We moved our tankers where they couldn’t be seen from the road. The fuel was out, and the water was in their tanker. Everything went off without a hitch. Our tankers left. We placed the gate back on its hinges and left. Now we waited until morning.

The next morning, we were on the US-owned mountain, looking down at the tower with our binoculars. The truck entered their compound. We were excited to see what happened next. The driver went out and opened the top hatch. A guard went into the shack and came out with what looked like a fruit jar with a long rod attached to it. What was he doing? He climbed on the truck and dipped the jar down into the fuel. He walked back to the shack with this jar full of fuel. He must have had a small lab in there. In a few minutes, he came out and talked with the driver. I saw him making a big circle with his hand and arm. Oh gosh, they had discovered water in the fuel. The truck made a big circle and headed back to town. This may have been bad news for us. The manager may have suspected us. These people were smart. They had thought of everything.

The next day, the manager of the fuel station went to the hotel and asked if we had tampered with his fuel.

Garland asked, How can two men and a woman have anything to do with tampering with your fuel?

He said, I had to ask because you are new in town! You three were asking questions a few days ago. I just wanted to check. Thanks.

I asked Mary Jane to watch the gate for a few days to see how they got food and water and if anyone came to or from the tower. See if you can get a picture of the driver and vehicle.

We three traded off for seven days. No one came or went to or from the tower. Now we had to assume that they lived in the tower. They had to have food and water. On the eighth day, a truck came in and brought food and water. A foreign worker brought a forklift out from the tower and unloaded the palletized food and water and took them into the tower. He then ordered the truck to leave and locked the gate.

The next day, we tracked down the supplier of the food and water. The store was in town. As we spoke with him, we found out his business was owned by DGRT and he worked for them. They paid him a good salary to keep them supplied.

They are my best customer. I do whatever they ask.

At this point, we now realized the foreigners owned both businesses. We were in a pickle.

We got a call from Donald.

He said, The lawyers were in my office this morning. They told me to have you three stop your investigation of DGRT or they will sue the United States. You will have to stop being so obvious. You need another plan of some sort. These guys are not dummies.

We headed back to the motel.

Garland said, I have a good idea. Both suppliers need the road. Let’s blow up the road. This is the only way to get to the tower other than a helicopter.

I said, We need to run this by Donald. Tomorrow we will head for Hideaway Proving Ground.

When the morning came, we entered Donald’s office and presented our plan. He had a fit.

How are we going to get back and forth? This plan is a no-go. I have never heard of a plan that is so ridiculous.

Garland spoke up and said, Think about it. We tried to water down their fuel, but it didn’t work. We contacted the company that supplies the food and water, but the foreigners own both of those companies also. We will be working on other plans. We are not giving up. We have just started. I do think that blowing up the road will be better than moving! My suggestion is to fly the employees in and out like they do in Area 51. Give them a place to stay on post if needed. Eventually, the DGRT Company will have to fold. They will not be able to sustain themselves too long. Using choppers will get old and very expensive for them.

A few days later, we got a call from Donald. He wanted to talk with the team. We headed for the Hideaway.

Donald said, The lawyers called me this morning. They said, if we didn’t stop our shenanigans, there would be consequences. You three must be careful. They don’t play fair.

Garland said, I notice a car outside that looks like it was destroyed by fire. Is that your car?

I believe there was an electrical short in the car. It caught fire, and the flames reached the gas tank, and there was an explosion, which caused the car to be ruined. Now I want to ask you three some questions. One, how many people have you seen?

Mary Jane said, Only two.

How many vehicles have you seen coming and going?

No vehicles other than the food and fuel trucks. There are no vehicles around the tower. It looks like they live in the tower.

Donald said, If we blow the road, how long do you think they can sustain themselves? We worry that they will use choppers to sustain themselves.

Garland said, We believe that will get old quickly.

I am considering blowing the road. You three work out the details and come back here next week with a plan.

We left Friday and headed back to our base to work in our building on the plan.

On Monday morning, we were back in our building working when Hooker came over and told us that Donald had lost a building last night in a fire. (It looked like Donald was beginning to have some problems.) Hooker left. It looked like the lawyers had hired someone to hit back at us. I began to talk about the place that we could blow without suspicion. This had to look like an accident.

Let’s go to the top of the mountain and look down at the road. We need to have a good rockslide to cover our tracks. We need to possibly drill holes in the rock to complete the mission.

Garland said, Let’s look at the mountain, and then we can decide how to proceed.

I agreed.

We needed three radios. They had to be SINCGARS combat radios. We didn’t know what type of listening devices they had on the mountain.

Garland said, I will get in touch with Hooker and have them sent immediately.

Mary Jane, you walk along the road. Garland and I will go up the mountain and check the situation up there. When we find a good spot, we will signal you. You take pictures, and we will do the same. Let’s meet tomorrow morning to look at the pictures and possibly make more detailed plans.

The next morning, we looked at the pictures that we had enlarged in size. A lot of rocks were there. We would haul in more from the surrounding areas. The road was very narrow at that point. This would be the place. We now had to run our plan by Hooker. He gave us a go. We then hit Hooker with what we needed to carry the plan out. We needed an engineering company to move and pile the rocks for the landslide. We also needed them to drill holes in the road for the explosives. The plan was beginning to come together. The engineers came on board. We informed them of the situation. We asked them if they could place the rocks at the edge of the mountaintop and drill the holes in the road for the explosives.

I asked Garland and Mary Jane, Have we forgotten anything?

They both said, We have it covered.

Now that everything was in place, we headed for Hideaway Proving Ground. We walked into Donald’s office. He greeted us. We started telling him about our plan. He was amazed that we could get it ready so quickly. He now had to tell his employees the bad news. This meant the employees had to be flown in and out of Hideaway. I needed to arrange all of this.

Be back here next Monday, and we will set a date. One more thing, can the road be repaired at a later date?

Mary Jane said, It can. Our engineers will repair it when we are ready.

Great.

We asked if we could stay here for the night. Donald told us he had a building with army bunks and we could stay there.

We headed for the building. We were tired, so we decided to head for bed early. Around 0300 hours, Garland heard something under the building. He got up and slowly sneaked out. As he approached the back of the building, he saw a person dressed in black running for the fence. Garland quickly looked under the building. He saw a plastic explosive and a timer running.

Quickly he ran back into the building and hollered, Adam, Mary Jane, get up. Get out of here. There is a bomb under the building. Grab your shoes. There isn’t time for you to put them on.

We quickly exited the building.

Garland said, Head for the third building over and lie down behind it. I am going to slide back under the building to take another quick look at the explosive.

The timer was down to eleven seconds. He quickly crawled out and began to run to the third building. He quickly lay flat on the ground just as the building exploded. The next two buildings over were damaged. We were not hurt.

Security showed up shortly and wanted to know what happened.

Garland said, A sapper planted explosives under the building, trying to take us out. I got a look at him. He looked like a small man in stature and was wearing a black outfit.

The fire trucks arrived and went to work on the buildings. Security checked the fence and found where it had been cut.

Garland said, Adam, I bet he came from that mountain right there.

I said, They are trying to take us out. The game is now on. Let’s check the vehicle.

He went to the hood and inspected the small strip of tape. It was still intact.

He crawled under the vehicle and called to me, Adam, crawl under here and take a look.

I crawled under the vehicle. There were two grenades attached to strings and hooked onto the steering rod. When the steering wheel was turned sharply, it would pull the pins out!

Garland said, Grab the grenade bodies and pins in your hand. Sometimes these sappers place a spring attached to the string. When you cut the string, the spring retracts and pulls the pins out.

I held the grenades. Garland cut the string, and sure enough, there was a spring. Had he cut the string, the grenade pins would have come out.

Garland looked at me and said, This is getting dangerous. They have hired a professional. It looks like they want us out of the way.

Mary Jane asked, What is a sapper?

Garland said, It is a person that blows up bridges and other things. These enemy guys sneak in and plant explosives to blow up things, so they are called sappers.

We told Donald that he probably needed to hire more security. The mountain is getting very serious.

I called Hooker and asked for three powerful paintball guns. They needed to reach a height of at least ninety yards.

Have your people really juice the guns up. We need them before tomorrow night. We also need about thirty black paintballs.

We also asked that he send Garland and me our boots with knives in the left boot and the .25-caliber pistols in the other boot! Donald called us later and said the paintball guns and boots are in. Garland went down and picked them up.

Donald asked, What are you going to do with the paintball guns?

Garland said, Tonight we will have some fun, I hope.

About 0300 hours, we headed out. I cut the lock on the fence, and we headed for the tower. The three of us spread out about five steps from each other.

I said, Cover the window well.

We started shooting the window. Paint was running everywhere. We had the window completely covered and then some. We started heading back to the gate when we heard some noise coming from the tower. It was dogs barking. In fact, it was three dogs, and they were coming at us in a hurry.

I said, Mary Jane, run for the gate. Have the car running. Garland and I will take care of the dogs.

We pulled our .25-caliber pistols from our boots and squatted down.

I said, Garland, I will take the one on the left. You take the one on the right. We will both take the one in the middle.

The dogs were running fast. We squatted, and I pulled the trigger. One dog fell. Garland pulled the trigger, and the other dog fell. Now the third dog was right at us. Garland put his arm up to keep the dog from going for his throat. I fired for the head