Operation Pink Elephant Read online

  ‘Piece of cake!’ exclaimed Sergeant Tim McHenry.

  ‘Damn straight it is!’ Sergeant Hazard concurred.

  ‘With respect, Major,’ Ben spoke up, ‘I don’t want to put Caesar in harm’s way unnecessarily.’ All the others in the room turned to look at him. ‘If I were to make a hard landing on a pitching ship’s deck, I’d come out of it okay. But Caesar might not. He isn’t capable of breaking his fall the way I can. In an airdrop, he completely relies on me. And he could be seriously injured in a hard landing on a ship.’

  ‘Can’t have that, mate!’ Charlie remarked with concern.

  ‘Too right!’ Baz agreed.

  ‘So, what are you saying, Fulton? You’d rather we left Caesar and yourself out of the mission?’ said General Jones.

  ‘No, sir,’ Ben returned. ‘I’m saying that I’d rather jump into the sea with Caesar and make a soft landing. Can Canberra have a small boat standing by to pull us out of the water?’

  The general nodded. ‘Not a problem. If you want to take a dunking, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘Caesar loves going for a swim, sir,’ said Baz, winking at Ben.

  ‘We’ll alert Canberra to have an inflatable standing by to pluck you and Caesar from the ocean, Fulton,’ said the general. ‘Any more questions from any of you?’

  ‘What is our ETD, sir?’ Hazard asked.

  General Jones looked at his watch. ‘Three hours and seven minutes from now. A Herc from the RAAF’s Number 37 Squadron will be landing here at Pearce any moment. Once it’s refuelled and you people have kitted up, the Herc will fly you to the American base on the island of Diego Garcia for a refuelling stop. You will then fly on to rendezvous with Canberra at sea, somewhere north of Zanzibar, where you’ll make your jump.’

  ‘You’ll receive your final briefing aboard Canberra,’ Major Jinko advised. ‘Meanwhile …’ He held up a dozen waterproof maps, all folded to slip neatly into a pocket in their combat uniforms. ‘Your operational maps of Tanzania. Study them. Baz, hand these around.’

  Baz collected the maps from the major. ‘Who will be giving us that final briefing aboard Canberra, sir?’ he asked, as he distributed the maps.

  ‘I will,’ said Jinko. ‘I’m jumping with you lot, and will coordinate your insertion and on-the-ground movements from the ship’s operations centre.’

  ‘Ha!’ Tim McHenry said with a glint in his eye. ‘Think you can land on Canberra’s deck, Major?’

  ‘I may not have made a parachute jump in a while, Sergeant,’ said Jinko, ‘but I haven’t forgotten how.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll see you on Canberra’s flight deck,’ said McHenry. He nudged the man next to him, Brian Cisco, who grinned.

  ‘Yes, you will,’ said Jinko, definitely.

  ‘As of this moment, gentlemen,’ said General Jones, ‘Operation Pink Elephant has “Go” status! The Prime Minister rang me personally to wish you good luck and good hunting. So, go get Lucky Mertz. And do me a favour – get Abraham Zuba.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ all the men chorused.

  In the darkness, Major Jinko, the dozen men of the GRRR team and an EDD tramped up the rear ramp of a bulky RAAF Hercules C-130J transport aircraft. Each man carried a heavy pack on his back, and most had a bag in one hand and a bulging parachute pack hanging from one shoulder. Ben Fulton had to handle all this equipment while also keeping hold of Caesar’s leash. The packs and bags were filled with clothing and personal equipment that the men were likely to need on their African mission – light clothing for the tropical heat of the days, and warm black outfits for ops on cool African nights. Ground crew had already stowed metal cases aboard the Hercules that contained the weapons, ammunition and communications equipment for the group, all supplied by the Australian SAS. But every man had packed his own main and reserve parachute. Once packed, those chutes would never leave their sight until they jumped.

  Apart from his personal equipment, Ben was toting special gear and rations for his EDD partner. As for Caesar, he trotted up the metal ramp and into the bowels of the Hercules with his tail wagging happily. Caesar knew a Herc by both sight and smell. He liked Hercs. Almost every time that he and Ben flew on one, they ended up jumping out of it and parachuting to earth. Caesar adored parachute jumps!

  ‘Here we go, mate,’ said Ben, as they reached the webbing seats along the side of the fuselage where he and the other GRRR members would strap themselves in for the long flight ahead. ‘Off on another mission together. Go say hello to the others,’ he said, unclipping Caesar’s leash.

  Caesar padded around the interior of the Hercules, nuzzling in between Charlie and Baz as they talked, and receiving friendly pats from each. Other members of the team gave him a similarly warm reception as he moved among them, taking in their scents. Only Casper Mortenson, the Dane, showed no interest. Mortenson had once told Ben that he had never owned a pet of any kind and could not really understand why some people had more affection for animals than they did for fellow humans. Not that Mortenson mistreated animals. He simply didn’t relate to them.

  Caesar sensed Mortenson’s disinterest and accepted it. He returned to Ben, his tail wagging contentedly. Ben knew that these few ‘getting to know you’ minutes at the start of a mission were important for Caesar. Taking in the distinctive scent of each member of the team, the labrador felt assured that he was among old friends and that he was accepted as a member of the team. To him, they were all now members of the same pack, like wolves setting off on a hunt.

  The Herc’s rear ramp was slowly raised. One by one, the aircraft’s four Rolls-Royce engines whined to life and the six-bladed propellers began to spin. Ben, now seated in the webbing, reattached the leash to Caesar’s collar. ‘Okay, settle down, mate,’ he said to his four-legged partner. ‘We’ve got a long flight ahead of us. We should both get some sleep.’

  Resting his jaw on his extended brown legs, Caesar lay at Ben’s feet. When Baz sat next to Ben, Caesar hardly moved, merely raising his eyes to see who it was.

  Baz, in good spirits as he buckled his safety harness in place, turned and punched Ben playfully on the arm. ‘Lucky Mertz, here we come!’ he declared. ‘Watch out Colonel Pink Eye, GRRR’s on its way!’

  Diego Garcia was a small British-owned coral island in the Indian Ocean, 5000 kilometres northwest of Perth. Due west, another 3650 kilometres away, was the east coast of Africa and Tanzania, the destination of the GRRR team. The tropical island traced around a lagoon that looked like a giant footprint from the air. A number of US Navy supply ships lay at anchor in the shelter of the lagoon. On the eastern side sat a small military base and a desolate-looking airstrip operated by the US military, on lease from the UK Government.

  Once the Hercules carrying the GRRR team had landed, the passengers crossed the concrete tarmac through blazing forty-degree heat, to air-conditioned buildings. There, in a US Air Force mess, breakfast had been prepared for them. Ben and Caesar were last in line as the hungry Special Forces men passed by a servery in single file with plates in hand.

  An American cook in an apron and tall chef’s hat looked at Ben and then at Caesar. ‘What’ll Fido have?’ he asked with a wry smile. ‘Eggs over easy? Fried tomatoes? Hash browns?’

  Ben checked out the extensive all-day menu written on a blackboard beside the servery. ‘How’s the steak? Tender?’

  ‘Most tender T-bone in all of Diego Garcia,’ said the cook.

  ‘Then both Caesar and I will have it.’

  ‘Coming right up.’ The chef chuckled to himself. ‘Don’t suppose the dog wants a knife and fork with that?’

  ‘I’ll be doing the carving.’

  Sure enough, Ben chopped his EDD’s steak into small, manageable pieces. Caesar lay under the table, downing his meal, as Ben sat eating and chatting with Charlie.

  Before long, Major Jinko and the Herc’s RAAF pilot Jennifer O’Shay joined them, carrying loaded plates.

  ‘Squadron Leader O’Shay and I have just been talking on the radio to General Jones at S
OCOM in Perth,’ said Jinko.

  ‘Weather conditions in the Indian Ocean are deteriorating,’ the squadron leader informed them. ‘It’s looking like the sea state will be pretty bad by the time we reach Canberra.’

  ‘How bad?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Sea State 4 to Sea State 6,’ O’Shay replied, before downing a mouthful of poached egg.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Sea State 6 means waves of four to six metres,’ the squadron leader replied.

  ‘How stable will Canberra’s flight deck be with swells of that size?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘There will be some deck movement, but not much,’ said Jinko. He took a sip of his steaming-hot coffee. ‘She’s a big ship. We should be able to successfully parachute onto her. I’m most worried about Ben and Caesar. Canberra can launch her boats up to Sea State 4, and launch her heelos up to Sea State 5.’ He looked directly at Ben. ‘If worse comes to worst, a heelo could pluck you two out of the water. But if conditions do reach Sea State 6, Canberra’s heelos will be grounded. That means you and Caesar will be on your own in the water and in big trouble, with no boats or heelos to get you out. And in those sorts of seas, it will be almost impossible to see you two.’

  ‘Trying to talk me out of jumping with Caesar, sir?’ Ben retorted, pausing with a piece of steak on the end of his fork.

  ‘I want to alert you to the risk involved,’ the major answered. ‘I won’t be ordering you and Caesar to jump, Sergeant. It will be your call.’

  ‘But there is a possibility it won’t blow as hard as they’re predicting?’ Charlie interjected. ‘You said Sea State 4 to Sea State 6, ma’am?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said O’Shay.

  ‘How about we wait until we’re over the DZ and see what the conditions are like?’ Ben suggested. ‘We can decide then.’

  ‘Roger to that,’ Charlie agreed. He didn’t want to leave Ben and Caesar out of this operation if he could help it. He knew what a vital role both might end up playing in rescuing Lucky.

  Major Jinko nodded slowly. ‘Okay, we wait. But I don’t want to have to explain to General Jones, or the Prime Minister, that we rescued Lucky at the cost of our best and most famous EDD and handler being lost in the Indian Ocean.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ Ben said with a smile. ‘I’ll admit, before I became an EDD handler, there were times as a soldier that I threw caution to the wind. But now that I’m responsible for Caesar’s life as well as my own, I will never put him in jeopardy. I’ll always protect him, the same way he protects me.’

  Jinko looked relieved. ‘Good to know, Sergeant. Good to know.’

  ‘We’ll make three passes over the DZ,’ advised O’Shay. ‘Two at 1000 feet, the third at 2000 feet. Six men will jump on the first pass, six on the second. The EDD team will jump on the final pass, from 2000 feet – that will give Canberra plenty of time to eyeball you and get a visual fix on your point of splashdown.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Understood, ma’am.’

  Jinko turned to Charlie, the mission leader. ‘You’re all good with that, Sergeant?’

  ‘Copy that, sir,’ Charlie acknowledged. ‘All good.’

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ said Ben, ‘what’s the highest sea state rating?’

  ‘Sea State 9,’ O’Shay replied. ‘That involves waves of fourteen metres and above. Officially, waves that high are described as “phenomenal”.’

  ‘I bet they are,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Cyclone conditions?’ Ben mused.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the squadron leader. ‘You don’t want to be on the sea in any boat, no matter how large, in those conditions.’

  ‘Fingers crossed for Sea State 4 by the time we reach Canberra,’ said Charlie. He looked across at Ben, who nodded.

  At Ben’s feet, Caesar snorted, as if in agreement.

  Five hours later on the bridge of the 27,500-tonne HMAS Canberra, the ship’s commander, Captain Brian Rixon, focused on a single green blip on the aerial radar screen in front of him. The captain, a grey-haired man with thirty years in the navy under his belt, eased back in his chair. ‘How close is the Herc now?’

  ‘Blue Orchid now forty-one nautical miles due east of Canberra and closing, Captain,’ a radar operator advised. Blue Orchid was the codename for the Hercules carrying the GRRR team. The aircraft was seventy-five kilometres away from the ship.

  ‘Estimated ETA, Nav?’

  ‘At our present speed and Blue Orchid’s present speed, ETA seventeen minutes, sir,’ the navigation officer replied.

  ‘Very good.’ Looking to the helmsman sitting beside him, the captain issued a command. ‘Starboard twenty. Bring us into the wind.’

  ‘Starboard twenty, sir,’ the helmsman replied, gently turning a wheel that was much the same size as, and had a similar appearance to, a car’s steering wheel.

  As the ship slowly changed course, Rixon turned his attention to his air division commander, the fair-haired Lieutenant Commander Terry Lockhart, who stood by the vast bridge window. ‘Prepare to launch ASR heelo, then clear the flight deck to receive visitors,’ he ordered, coming to his feet.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Lockhart responded. ‘Prepare to launch ASR heelo,’ he repeated into a microphone, relaying the message throughout the ship.

  Captain Rixon walked to the bridge window on his left and looked down at the flight deck fifty metres below, where a blue-grey RAN Seahawk MH-60 helicopter sat with its rotors spinning. The ship shuddered faintly as it turned into the wind and ploughed into the rolling westerly swell. Rixon stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘What’s the sea state now?’

  ‘Right at the limit of Sea State 5, sir,’ came the reply from the navigation officer behind him.

  Rixon nodded and looked to the gloomy sky ahead. ‘And likely to get worse,’ he said, half to himself.

  ‘We’re at the limit of safe heelo operations, sir,’ the air division commander advised.

  ‘I’m aware of that, Mr Lockhart,’ replied the captain. ‘But the Met forecast is for increasingly deteriorating conditions in the next few hours. If we don’t take delivery of the Herc’s load now, they’ll have to turn around and fly back to Diego Garcia. That will put Operation Pink Elephant at least twenty-four hours behind schedule, if not longer. What do you think, XO? Do we warn them off?’

  The ship’s executive officer and second-in-command, Commander Darren Shipley, came over to stand beside his captain. Five years younger than Rixon and balding, Shipley looked at the tip of the flight deck forward. Sea spray flew up from the bow and rained down on the deck. Again, the ship juddered faintly from end to end. ‘The flight deck looks pretty stable to me, sir.’

  ‘And to me,’ Rixon agreed. ‘Sea State 5 for air ops is a theoretical limit. This working-up cruise is supposed to test this ship’s theoretical limits, and the flight deck is barely moving in these seas. Unless conditions worsen dramatically – and rapidly – we’ll proceed as planned.’ He turned to the air division commander and barked three instructions in rapid succession. ‘Launch heelo. Clear the flight deck. And prepare to recover parachutists.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Lieutenant Commander Lockhart spoke into his microphone. ‘Launch heelo! Launch heelo! Launch heelo!’

  Within moments, the Seahawk rose up from the deck and banked to the left. Flitting away from the big warship, it headed southwest before flying in an arc that quickly brought it astern of Canberra. Once there, it took up station following the LHD’s white wake. A hundred metres above the swells, it crept forward, keeping pace with the ship as it pushed through the waves at its cruising speed of nineteen knots.

  Meanwhile, the air division commander issued orders into his microphone. ‘Clear the flight deck! Prepare to recover parachutists!’

  ‘Message from Blue Orchid, sir,’ reported a communications rating. ‘Message reads: Are you ready to receive me?’

  ‘Advise Blue Orchid that Canberra is ready and waiting,’ the captain responded. ‘Currently Sea State 5. And a
dvise them of our new course.’

  ‘Roger. Advising now, sir.’

  In the spacious cockpit of Blue Orchid, pilot O’Shay was throttling back the four engines of the big plane, easing down from a cruising speed of 640 kilometres per hour to the much slower speed required for parachute drops.

  In the rear of the Hercules, most members of the UN team were on their feet and helping each other strap on lifejackets, then parachutes, and finally equipment packs which sat on their chests or dangled from their belts. The only team member not receiving any special equipment was Caesar. Ben was carrying both their needs in his packs. And when they jumped, they would jump together, with Caesar strapped to Ben.

  As the passengers prepared, the Herc’s RAAF loadmaster pressed a button, and the plane’s rear ramp lowered electronically. Slowly coming down to the horizontal, the ramp created a massive opening, revealing a grey sky and, flitting by 1500 feet below, an equally grey Indian Ocean topped with whitecaps.

  ‘Sea State 5,’ Major Jinko said to Ben, mouthing the words so that he could be understood above the increased engine noise now that the ramp was down.

  Ben nodded and gave a thumbs up. Dropping to one knee beside Caesar, he pulled his partner in close. ‘We can handle Sea State 5, can’t we, mate? And we’re ready for a swim.’

  Caesar’s response was a lick on the cheek. At the mention of the word ‘swim’, the labrador’s tail had begun to wag furiously. After parachute jumps – especially freefall parachute jumps that sent the slipstream rapidly coursing over his nose – Caesar loved swimming the most. Like all labradors, his slightly webbed feet made him a strong swimmer. But it was the fun of being in the water that excited him. Yet he hated bath time! Taking a bath was not Caesar’s idea of a water sport.

  Just a few metres from Ben and Caesar, Charlie was talking into an intercom headset connected to the fuselage by a long black cable. Despite the fact that Major Jinko outranked him, it was Charlie, as on-the-ground team leader for Operation Pink Elephant, who was in charge of the jump. And he wanted to satisfy himself that the pilot knew what she was doing. Life and limb were at risk in a hazardous jump such as this one. ‘Wind speed and direction, please, ma’am?’ he asked Squadron Leader O’Shay.