February 16
[SIZE=1]0606 Hours, 16°21'S by 67°56'W[/SIZE]
High above the Bolivian mountains the towing aircraft, another Spartan Vanquish-IIM, dropped the tow cable and Captain Munroe listened to the whisper of air over the glider's wings. "Turning west," Pilot Officer Agosin muttered quietly under his breath.
Munroe glanced out the window. The waxing moon had set the previous night and wouldn't rise until 1100 hours, but the sky was clear and the stars shone. The sun was not yet up, but was starting to light the eastern horizon in gray half-light.
"Four minutes," Agosin said, glancing at the lights on the ground.
"Can you see if the other gliders are with us?" Munroe asked anxiously.
"If you don't mind, sir, I'm concentrating on not flying us into the mountain, so please shut up," Agosin said. "You can bust me on the ground."
Munroe snorted, but said nothing in response. The glider abruptly shivvered as it hit a blast of wind from the mountains, and the pilot grunted as he wrestled with the control stick. "You can also start praying," the pilot snapped. "No go-arounds here..."
Munroe gripped his wood-slat seat as the turbulence bounced them around. Munroe could fly the glider - it was why he was sitting in the front, after all - and he had known to expect the turbulence, which was why he insisted upon only four gliders in the assault force, and handpicked the best glider pilots. Of course Teniente Coronel Salazar had insisted upon commanding the bare-bones platoon of volunteers Munroe had chosen.
"There's the glacier," the pilot said. "Too high, too fast. Flaps."
Munroe hauled on the flaps while the pilot pushed the stick forward; the VEP-11 nosed towards the ground and Agosin frantically worked the few controls the VEP-11 boasted. The glider cleared an rocky arête and Munroe got his first good look at the target zone. The glacial valley, with the road running along it to the ski lodge, was snow-covered and probably the flattest bit of earth close by. The lights in the lodge had been turned on, casting the only good illumination on the landing zone.
"Brace for landing!" Munroe roared, and five seconds later the VEP-11's wooden keel crunched into the snow. The tiller jerked out of Agosin's hands and smacked him in the chest, and the glider slid wildly until coming to a stop.
"Door," Munroe ordered, unbuckling his retraints and picking up his rifle. The Blue Berets had just received a shipment of Tokarev rifles the day before, and even two of the rifles equipped with three-power sniper scopes. Munroe had his reservations about deploying with a new rifle which had never seen active service, but had accepted for his part a carbine-length Tokarev.
The paras piled out into the ankle-deep snow, with the command squad's machine-gunner instinctively hitting the ground and unfolding the bipod on his BAR. All that greeted them was silence.
"Where's the rest of us?" someone whispered.
"No idea," Munroe replied. "Let's move away from the glider before somebody sees us and sounds the alarm."
Munroe's squad quickly fanned out. They were less than a hundred yards from the lodge - Surely someone heard us?
A quiet cough suddenly broke the silence, close by to Munroe's right. "Carlos, is that you?" a man asked loudly. "What are you... Halt! Who goes-" The crack of a Tokarev rifle rang across the glacier, echoing loudly from the mountains, fading into the choked cry of the wounded Bolivian sentry.
"Oh sh!$, where are the other gliders?" Munroe growled. Several Bolivian guards at the machine-gun post on his right flank were already slewing their Colt 1895 around to deal with the shocking appearance of enemies, even if they didn't understand who was attacking them.
Munroe's squad opened fire even as they hit the dirt, only Munroe staying on his feet as the Potato Digger rattled a short burst out, one round snapping through his jacket and leaving a neat hole. But the machine-gun fire drowned out the hiss of a second glider sliding in the snow, and a second VEP-11 materialized out of the growing light and crashed straight through the Bolivian machine-gun post, silencing the gun and scattering the surviving crew, who had not a clue as to what in the world had hit them - but they wanted none of it.
"Get up, men, and follow me!" Munroe shouted. The paras immediately followed, and converged on the front entrance to the ski resort. The door opened before they even got to it, and a bleary-eyed Bolivian People's Brigade soldier looked out. Seeing gleaming bayonets and the greased faces of the Paras, he tossed his rifle in the air and fled as fast as his feet could carry him.
Munroe knew from his briefing that Stiles was imprisoned in an upstairs room. Hoping he had not been too slow, he and two men ran up the central staircase, taking the steps two at a time, and ran headlong into a man in a Bolivian colonel's uniform, who made the mistake of wielding a pocket pistol in the paras' faces. Munroe simply brought up the butt of his rifle into the Bolivian colonel's stomach, and as the colonel folded up like a wet newspaper, Munroe shoved him aside and moved down the hall to one of the grand suites. The People's Brigade sentry - a frightened-looking youth who's knees were visibly knocking - squeaked "Who are you?"
"Old enough to be your daddy," Munroe snarled. "Drop your gun!"
The kid squeaked in fright and immediately did as he was ordered; Munroe stepped into the suite and found the Bolivian president blinking sleep from his eyes. "What in the world..."
"Boinas Azules, Ejercito de Chile. I am Capitan Munroe, Mr. President. We are here to rescue you."
Stiles sighed in relief. "Thank God, Capitan."
"Get dressed," Munroe said. "We have to get down the mountain to the lake. Are you capable of a short march?"
Stiles looked offended. "I may be an old man, Capitan, but I'm perfectly capable of-"
"I'll take that as a 'yes' then, Sir," Munroe replied, grinning to show his mood. "Private Encina, please help the Presidente with whatever he needs."
Munroe hurried back out into the ski resort's main room, coming face to face with Teniente Coronel Salazar. "Report," the lieutenant colonel barked.
"The President is safe and will soon be ready to go," Munroe reported.
"Good," Salazar said. "The grounds are secure; these People's Brigade soldiers would rather run away than shoot at us. But that could change. Who's that?" he demanded, looking off to one side where one of Munroe's squad runners was sitting on the Bolivian colonel. "My God, is that Munoz?" Salazar said.
Stiles, just entering the room in the borrowed jacket of a Chilean para, heard and replied to the comment. "Yes, that is Colonel Munoz, head of the La Paz People's Brigade!"
"You Chilean dogs!" Munoz spat. "My men will regroup and avenge me for the everlasting glory of Boliv-" Munoz was abruptly silenced as one of the paras planted his rifle-butt in the Bolivian colonel's teeth, leaving him with several fewer than when he started talking.
"Enough of this," Salazar said. "Presidente Stiles, if you're ready, we need to move out at once. Our rides are here ten minutes after dawn. Corporal, bind Colonel Munoz's hands and bring him with us: if he resists, shoot him."
The Blue Berets quickly moved out into the pale pink morning light. A few paras set the wooden gliders alight, and the wood-and-fabric craft went up like kindling. The road ran downhill towards another flat space; this one was longer than the glacial valley the gliders used for landing. A few shots rang out from the surrounding ridges: untrained People's Brigade riflemen, who had scattered and fled with barely a fight, taking potshots at anything which startled them. The Chileans occasionally fired back if the range was right or if the riflemen were shooting too close, but there were no obvious casualties on either side.
Precisely on time, a buzz was heard to the west and a quartet of Valdivia Twin Condors, painted white and equipped with skis, swept down to land on the snow-covered field. Munroe knew from his briefing that the field had occasionally been used before for just this purpose. Overhead a flight of twin-engine Cutlass fighter-bombers prowled, ready to bounce any fighters which dared intervene, or strafe any ground targets that might oppose the Paras, but they were out of work for this day.
The Twin Condors left their engines idling and the loadmaster threw open the siding side doors. The Blue Berets retained their professional deployment even as they ran to get aboard the planes; move, cover, move, cover, repeat.
As the Blue Berets piled into their rides home, Munroe did a quick head count, giving a quick caper of glee when he found all of his men accounted for. Teniente Coronel Salazar was the last man to board, and the Condor pilots advanced their throttles.
As the Twin Condors clawed for altitude, Munroe turned to the men in his plane. "Good job, men!" he shouted in the exhilaration of success. "Viva the Blue Berets!"
-------------------------------------------------------------
February 16
This news just in! Bolivian acting-president Stiles was snatched to safety this morning from the custody of Bolivian People's Brigade troops. A dawn assault by unknown forces [Note 1], presumed to be Bolivian Colorados Regulares loyal to Stiles, assaulted the ski chalet of Huayna Potosi where the President was being held. Several People's Brigade commanders admitted that Stiles had escaped but insisted the attackers had lost "nearly two hundred men" in the assault, with only two dozen Bolivian dead and wounded. [Note 2]
In related news, Colonel Alfredo Munoz has apparently disappeared.
[Note 1] The Chilean government never admitted its role in the Huayna Potosi assault until 1949, after the retirement of President Stiles from Bolivian politics. However, it was widely acknowledged within weeks of the operation's end that the Chilean army, and not the Bolivian Army, had carried off the operation. When interviewed in 1950 about the assault and its success, then-Colonel Munroe simply commented "What can I say? The stars aligned."
[Note 2] For once, the Bolivians got accurate casualty figures for their own side. Upon later reconstruction of the events of Huayna Potosi, it was determined that at the sound of the assault, between forty and fifty Bolivian People's Brigade troops bolted without firing a shot. One machine-gunner was killed when he was run over by a Chilean assault glider, and three more men were wounded by rifle fire; the rest of the casualties occurred nearly two hours later due to a friendly-fire accident when the BPB troops returned to the ski resort, and two different parties fired on each other for over an hour.
This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Brockpaine" (Jan 13th 2009, 8:09am)