by Young, Tom
Only then did he realize other men lay in the back of the truck. Two remained motionless, and two jerked their legs in a spasmodic pattern. Dying from nerve gas, maybe.
In the starlight, Blount could make out a plume of dust rising from behind the vehicle. More dust swirled beside the pickup, and Blount realized he was riding in one of at least two trucks speeding across the desert. Why hadn’t they just killed him? And where were they taking him?
Please, Jesus, just give me my strength back, Blount thought.
He clenched his fists, waited for another opening. Normally he could deliver a hammerfist hard enough to break bones. But now he felt so weak. Weak as a cat, like the old folks used to say. But at least a cat could leap from this pickup and outrun everybody. Blount lacked the energy to sit up again, much less run.
If I can’t fight, he thought, just let me die. Don’t want to let them make me do or say something I don’t want to, then slaughter me like a hog.
He put his hand to his face, opened his mouth, worked his jaw. Cracked but not broken. Hurting something awful.
Through the fog in his mind he became aware of another pain. Why did his legs hurt so bad? Oh yeah, puncture wounds from the heavy-gauge spring-loaded needles. A skilled nurse or corpsman could slide a hypodermic into a vein with hardly any sting at all. But those auto-injectors had punched into his muscles like the spikes of an iron maiden.
No wonder I feel awful, Blount thought. Got hit with poison so vile the only thing that could save me was another kind of poison. Maybe the Good Lord kept me alive for a reason, he reckoned. And these dirtbags are keeping me alive for a different reason.
Blount knew from his training that now presented his best chance for escape. The deeper the enemy took you into his system for holding prisoners, the harder to get away. Best to make a break while they moved you. But at the moment, chemical warfare raged inside Blount at the cellular level. Compounds worked against toxins; other medicine worked against the compounds’ side effects.
Providence had blessed him with a strong body that he kept fit and healthy. But now, healing required all his strength and will. He’d just spent all his reserves trying to choke one bad guy. Nothing else remained.
One of the dirtbags hoisted a camera and took a photo. The flash blinded Blount. He wanted to slap the camera out of the dirtbag’s hands, but he lacked the strength. As he lay in the bed of the truck, he felt himself slip away into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 16
Parson looked around the ops room. This wasn’t the glittering command center depicted in the movies: banks of computers, walls lined with video screens, the president and the joint chiefs at the other end of a red phone. This deployed operations center consisted of plywood and sandbags, a dozen folding chairs, eight laptops, some telephones and radios, stacks of bottled water, extension cords crisscrossing the dusty plank floor, and a couple of mice nobody could catch. But it was what he had, and by God, he’d use it all to get Blount and those boys back. Assuming they were still alive.
He considered what else his resources at Mitiga could contribute. No other crews had been placed on an official alert status to launch at a moment’s notice. But if the French could get airborne in their Mirages, they could help look for the missing. He called Chartier’s cell phone.
“Sorry to wake you, Frenchie,” Parson said, “but we got a situation.” He told Chartier about the loss of Musket One-Two and the missing Marines.
“Zut alors,” Chartier said. “That is not good. I will call my crews and see what we can do.”
“Thanks, Frenchie. I owe you one. We’ll call to get a frag order cut for you by the time you get here.”
“Bon.”
An overall NATO air tasking order assigned the Mirages to the expeditionary air wing at Mitiga. Parson called AFRICOM air ops to request a frag—a fragmentary order appended to the larger tasking order—directing the French jets to assist the search in any way possible. Even in the direst of emergencies, the military required its paperwork.
As Parson clicked a computer mouse a few minutes later to print out the frag, he heard the door swing open. He turned to see Chartier, Sniper, and two other French fliers come in. A beard shadow darkened Sniper’s face. Chartier wore no T-shirt under his flight suit. The other Mirage crew—Diderot and Valois, according to their name tags—had the same look of fliers roused unexpectedly from their cots. Diderot had not yet zipped on his G suit. He carried the suit over his shoulder, its pneumatic connection dangling. Valois toted a helmet bag too stuffed to close. In addition to his helmet, the bag contained a pair of flight gloves, a kneepad for scribbling notes in the cockpit, and a bottle of water. Like Sniper, the man wore a growth of stubble. Parson knew they could be in for an uncomfortable flight. An oxygen mask chafed a lot less when you had a fresh shave. He printed out two more copies of the weather sheet, then rose to greet the Mirage crews.
“I know this is a little out of the ordinary,” Parson said. “I appreciate your help. We have six personnel missing. Two are Legionnaires. Four are Marines.”
“Tonight,” Chartier said, “they are all our brothers.”
“Damn straight, Frenchie. Here’s your weather.” Parson handed Chartier the papers. “I really don’t have much else for you. Their last known position was Objective Thomas Jefferson. We got two Pave Hawks en route. Check in with AWACS once you get airborne. Their call sign is Monticello.”
Chartier gave a thin smile.
“What?” Parson asked.
“Someone has a sense of history. And it so happens Jefferson was once your minister to France.”
“Cool,” Parson said. He held up his right fist, and Chartier bumped it with his own fist. “Now, get your asses in the air.”
“Oui, mon colonel.”
Outside, sleepy French ground personnel in camo shorts and combat boots pulled away boarding ladders after the Mirage fliers climbed into their cockpits. The ground crewmen stood fire guard during engine start, and the jets’ turbines whined to life. Parson saw the helmeted aviators run through their before-taxi checklists, and then both fighters began rolling.
Kick some ass, Parson thought. Find our guys and kick some ass.
On the runway, the Mirages lined up for takeoff and held in position for a moment. Dappled with shadows thrown by runway edge lights, the fighters looked even more intimidating—sharp angles poised to launch, laden with fuel and fire, the ultimate expression of potential energy. In the lead jet, Chartier pushed up his power. He released brakes and began hurtling down the strip. The afterburner kicked in with the sound of a sustained explosion, a continuous blast of burning kerosene. A few seconds later, number two began rolling. Both fighters sliced into the night, the thunder of their engines pealing across the desert, spikes of flame blazing from their tailpipes.
Parson’s staff maintained a listening watch by the radios as the night wore on. He knew they could do their jobs, and he should have tried to get some sleep. But he could not bring himself to leave the ops center and go to bed. He kept himself awake by sipping Red Bull and bitter instant coffee made with packets scrounged from MREs. The caffeine left a rank taste in his mouth but did little for his alertness. As he grew more tired, he found himself forcing thoughts through his mind like an aircraft pump forcing oil through a clogged filter. High pressure, low results.
He considered what else he could do for Blount and the other missing servicemen. Not much at the moment, but once the sun came up the Marines would probably fly out to the crash scene and look for clues. A call to Captain Privett in the Tarawa’s TACLOG confirmed his hunch.
“Yes, sir,” Privett said. “We plan to fly out there when it gets light.”
“You can refuel here at Mitiga if you like,” Parson said.
“Thank you, Colonel. We’ll see you then.”
Parson hung up the phone, tried to think of any base he’d not covered.
An old flight instructor had once told him that in an airplane, if you’re not doing something, you’re probably screwing up, even during a long cruise. You could always give the gauges an extra scan, recalculate fuel burn, call for updated weather. Stay on top of everything; don’t just sit there.
So, what else could he do? Well, Sophia would want to know about Blount. Maybe she could keep her ear to the ground for any information about missing Americans. Parson logged on to an unclassified computer to send her an e-mail. He would need to write around any sensitive information, which for now included even the names of the missing. But she would know who he meant. He began tapping at his keyboard:
SOPHIA,
BY THE TIME U READ THIS YOU’LL PROBLY KNOW ABOUT CRASH OF THE MARINE HELO. I’M SORRY TO TELL U OUR BIG FRIEND IS MIA. WILL KEEP U ADVISED.
Parson paused a moment, blinked his eyes to make the letters on the screen get a little less blurry. Then he added:
PLZ B CAREFUL.
MP
For a moment, he debated whether he should share this information so soon with someone not in the chain of command. Finally he clicked SEND. Sophia was no longer in the active-duty Army, but her knowledge—and her current location—made her an intelligence asset. Who knew what she might pick up? The more she remained in the loop, the more she could help. And Parson felt he owed Blount every ounce of help he could muster.
As dawn approached, Parson’s wired-and-tired exhaustion grew. Despite all the caffeine, he found himself drowsing. A call on the radio woke him from microsleep.
“Kingfish, Dagger flight. Do you read?” Chartier’s voice.
Parson shook his head as if that would throw off the cobwebs. He listened as one of the duty officers picked up the mike.
“Dagger flight, Kingfish has you five-by-five.”
“Kingfish, be advised we are ten minutes out. Code one, no maintenance required. Request parking.”
“Uh, Dagger flight, use hardstands Delta and Echo.”
Parson heard the jets streak overhead as they rolled into the break for landing. A while later, Chartier and the other Frenchmen came into the operations center. Parson could tell from their expressions they had no good news for him.
“Any contact at all with the missing guys?” he asked.
“Rien,” Chartier said. “No voice. No beacon. How do you say? Not a peep.” He ran his fingers through his black hair, left matted and sweaty by his helmet.
“Damn it,” Parson said. Blount would have made emergency calls at prebriefed intervals if he could have done so. No contact meant he and the others were dead, badly hurt, or captured. One of their radios could have broken, but not all of them.
“Nothing visual, either,” Chartier added. “No strobe or glint tape.” The French pilot slumped into a chair, rubbed his eyes, and unzipped the constrictive bands of his G suit from around the legs of his flight suit.
“You guys look beat,” Parson said. “You should visit that masseuse of yours and then take a nap.”
“Maybe,” Chartier said. He showed no mirth over the possibility of a back rub.
He’s as upset about this as I am, Parson thought. Good.
Parson needed rest, too, but he would not allow himself that luxury, at least not until the Pave Hawks returned. The Mirage crews went to their quarters, and a new shift came to work in the operations center, but Parson stayed on duty. When the sun lightened the horizon it only deepened his fatigue. He ordered a cot brought into ops. Before settling on it to nap, he left instructions for someone to wake him if anything happened.
He got twenty minutes of sleep, and then a sergeant shook him.
“Choppers coming back, sir,” the sergeant said. “They just checked in with the tower.”
When Parson sat up, he heard the distant thumping that signaled the approach of the rescue helicopters. The lead chopper called the ops center on UHF.
“Kingfish, Pedro One-One and One-Two inbound. ETA five minutes.”
“I’ll talk to ’em,” Parson said. He groaned as he rose from his cot and went to the radio. He lifted the mike, pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, spoke with his eyes closed: “Pedro flight, expect parking on alert ramp.”
“Roger that, Kingfish. Be advised both aircraft are Alpha Four, we will need the CCA, and we have two Hotel Romeos.”
Parson’s muddled mind processed the codes and acronyms. Hotel Romeo?
A new kind of tired came over him, more like a feeling of defeat. Hotel Romeo meant human remains. Damn it to hell. And the crews wanted the contamination control area. That meant they’d been exposed—or thought they’d been exposed—to chemical agents. Alpha Four meant the helicopters themselves were contaminated. Maintenance crews in full MOPP gear would have to scrub down the aircraft. What a fucking mess.
“Kingfish copies all,” Parson transmitted. Then he called out an order to a duty officer. “Get Mortuary Affairs out to the flight line, and tell Emergency Management to man the CCA. And nobody gets near those helicopters except in MOPP Four.”
“Yes, sir.”
Parson watched the helicopters return in the morning light. He wore no chem gear, so he kept a safe distance. Both HH-60s swung low over the field, descended toward the ramp. They settled to the pavement and began to taxi, their rotors pulsing counter to each other like the drumming of a tribal dirge.
Once on the alert ramp, their turbines hushed and their rotors slowed, replaced by the whine of auxiliary power units. Eventually even the APUs fell silent, leaving only the scrapes, thuds, and muffled curses of suited crew members dismounting their machines.
A van from Mortuary Affairs pulled up next to the helicopters. Two men in chem gear emerged from the vehicle. A pair of crewmen in the first helicopter lifted something from the aircraft’s cabin. One of the pilots—still swathed in helmet, hoses, and blower—stepped down from the cockpit. He stood very still. Slowly, with as much formality as his equipment would allow, he rendered a salute. Parson saluted, as well. The crewmen carried a body bag from the aircraft and placed it in the van.
In the same way, with the same salute, another body bag came out of the second helicopter. The Mortuary Affairs men drove away. The bodies would have to suffer the indignity of decontamination before being processed for burial. Parson did not know what that entailed, and he did not want to know.
The Pave Hawk crews walked across the ramp to a row of three large tents set up two hundred yards from any other tents or buildings. The tents were open at each end, and inside them, a half dozen Emergency Management troops prepared to receive the fliers. The aviators lined up and waited for instructions. Parson noted that a few of them wore ground MOPP uniforms with arms and legs encircled by M9 tape. The brown tape would change color to indicate exposure to certain toxins.
One of the EM guys pointed to an open box outside the first tent. The box, about four feet square, contained a dry substance that looked a lot like cat litter. The box also held a long-handled scrub brush.
“Step into the shuffle box, sir, and scrub down your boots.”
The first crewman took his place in the shuffle box as the others waited behind him. When he’d cleaned his boots to the satisfaction of the EM troop, he stepped out of the box and moved over to a trash barrel. The crewman removed his outer gloves and dropped them into the trash.
Parson longed to ask them what they’d seen and if they knew the identities of the dead. But he had to leave the men alone as they decontaminated.
In stages, the fliers went through the processing lines in the tents. At each stop they removed another piece of gear or clothing, taking care not to touch bare skin to anything exposed to poison. They hung blowers and hoses on racks, doffed helmets, peeled off flight suits. At the end they wore only their underwear, and an EM troop directed them to a shower. While the men showered, Parson talked to an EM sergeant.
“D
id they get slimed real bad?” Parson asked.
“Looks like it, sir,” the sergeant said. “I checked the M9 tape on one of the pararescue guys. It had green specks all over it.”
A positive test for nerve gas. Thank God I told them to suit up, Parson thought. At least I’ve made one good call today—or last night, or whenever the hell it was.
Air Force fliers routinely practiced flying and working in chem gear, and every few years they got tested on those procedures in operational readiness inspections. Many crew members despised ORIs as having little to do with real-world combat. In recent years, at least, more service members had passed out from heat exhaustion in MOPP suits than had ever been hurt by chemicals.
But now, because of Sadiq Kassam getting his hands on some of Muammar Gadhafi’s and Bashar al-Assad’s hand-me-downs, ORI scenarios were coming true.
Parson didn’t consider himself a brilliant tactician or a masterful leader of men. Instead, he thought of himself as a crew dog who got promoted high enough to get stuck with heavy responsibilities. So he tried simply to make decisions that would keep guys safe while they did their jobs. Take care of the people, he believed, and as long as they’re good people, they’ll take care of the mission.
The Pave Hawk crews emerged from the showers in clean but ill-fitting flight suits, and Parson finally got to pose the question that nagged at him most.
“Did you get an ID on the bodies you found?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” a pararescueman said. “One was a Legionnaire, and one was a Marine corporal.”
“Thanks for all you did, guys. I know this mission sucked. Get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
Parson didn’t know how to feel about what he’d just learned. He couldn’t let himself take any relief from the news. Two families back home were about to receive that knock on the door they’d always dreaded. But Parson’s old friend Blount was still out there. Somewhere.
