by Harper Steen
“Hello, beautiful ladies! Do you still recognize me?” Jeff added his greeting.
“What are you doing there?” Liz was flabbergasted. “These assignments are secret, Gray! Outsiders don’t belong here. You know that!”
“Jeff isn’t an outsider. He does the same you two do, and he’s one of the other ten in your little outfit.”
“Thanks for telling us,” Jennifer said sarcastically. “Now I suppose you’ll tell us you’re on the team, too!”
“Not really, but you aren’t far off, dear.” Chris laughed softly. “Before we transferred to monitoring and administration, we had the same jobs you do.”
The women’s expressions of disbelief provoked serious laughter in the central command room, but the men quickly grew serious again. “You’ve received the particulars?” Gray asked.
“Yes. We’re supposed to extricate and safely bring out four people who were working as volunteers at a church-based re-socialization project for former gang members. The people are the vice-president’s fourth cousin, his wife and their two grown sons. As always, we’re supposed to avoid trouble, not cause a stir, and prevent direct confrontation if at all possible. Sound about right?” Liz sounded bored.
“Sounds like you’ve got the gist of it. We’ve reviewed the information and it looks like the previously abandoned camp is, in fact, being used again—and, judging by the weapons they’re carrying, not just by a group of boy scouts. The coordinates are accurate. We see 34 heat signatures, so there are 34 people in the camp, including the four hostages. Have you got it all so far?”
“Yes. Understood. Perfectly,” Jennifer said.
“We’ll set the target coordinates on the visors of your helmets via GPS. But this time, forget Plan S, or you’ll get into a lot of trouble with us. That’s not a threat; it’s a promise.” Gray was emphatic. “Do you understand that, too?”
“We’re aware of your promises. We understand,” Jennifer said. “Perfectly.” She gave a grimace of irritation.
“I saw that!”
“Then stay at home in the future, if you don’t like it, Chris!”
“Men!” Liz mouthed the word and Jennifer nodded back.
And I saw that, Liz,” Gray said. “How’s your equipment? Do you have everything you need?”
“Oh for crying out loud. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this. Of course we have everything! More than we need. Now we’re going to disconnect for a while. You’re getting on my nerves.”
“You better not! Do you hear me? Liz!” But she had already severed the connection.
“Shit!” Chris and Gray both said.
“They’ll check in again,” Jeff tried to reassure them. “When they have to jump, at the latest.”
***
“Did you know about that, Jenny?”
“Did I look like I’d had any idea that they were going to do this job themselves?” Jennifer raised her eyebrows at Liz.
“No. I didn’t, either. I knew there were twelve people in the unit, so six sets of partners, but I don’t know the other ten because we’ve never had an assignment with them,” she said. Then she corrected herself, “I mean, didn’t know. We know one of them now. And it’s my loopy brother-in-law, of all people. Now at least I know how they were able to take us by surprise and how Gray got ahold of those stupid monitoring bracelets.”
Just then the pilot checked in from the cockpit by radio. “Blackwood? Robbins? There are two extremely pissed off men in management who want you to reactivate the radio connection that you terminated—immediately.”
“They can wait patiently for another minute. We’re enjoying our peace and quiet,” Jennifer answered.
“Should I really tell them that?”
“Go ahead!” She grinned and began to test her equipment one last time.
“Ladies?” the pilot said a minute later. “Your husbands insist that you report in, or they will abort the mission.” He spoke more emphatically this time. Reluctantly the women established radio contact again.
“Damn it! What were the two of you thinking by doing that?” Gray roared into the microphone. The women cried out and pulled the headsets away from their ears.
“Are you crazy?” Liz said back into the microphone. “You just about burst my eardrum. I didn’t invite you to monitor this mission. Switch jobs if you don’t like it!” Liz, looked into Jennifer’s camera as they put the headsets back on.
“If you did what I told you to do, I wouldn’t need to scream,” he said. More quietly he added, “You’re almost at the area where you’ll jump. Get ready!”
“Already there!” Liz and Jennifer removed the small IRC-NG cameras from their clothing and the headsets from their heads and stowed them in their backpacks for later use. Then they put on their gear, which weighed around ninety pounds, and strapped on their parachutes over that.
They checked each other’s readiness one last time and put on their special pilot helmets with the visor displays that would direct them via GPS through the drop zone to the landing zone. The audio units in their helmets allowed them to communicate with one another. They activated the Standard IRHC Infra-Red Helmet Cameras, which were somewhat larger than the IRC-NG and were secured laterally on their head protection. Gloves, oxygen bottles and oxygen masks rounded out their gear. After they’d checked the functionality of the altimeter they positioned themselves in front of the loading ramp in the rear of the OSPREY, which opened slowly and gave them a clear view of the black night. They could feel the airspeed decrease as the pilot tilted the rotors slightly, a hint that they would soon receive the signal to jump. At last, the light on the signal lamp changed from red to green; the sign that they were over the target area.
Liz and Jennifer jumped one after the other into the black night. They planned to use the HAHO parachuting technique, which involved jumping from a high altitude and opening the chute at a high altitude in order to glide longer toward their target. After just fifteen seconds of stabilized free fall, Liz opened her main chute and looked around for Jennifer. Startled, she saw that Jennifer had gotten tangled up in the lines of her parachute. She was tied up like a package und the chute fluttered uselessly on her back in the wind like a superhero’s cape. “Jenny?” she said, establishing radio contact. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes. I don’t know what happened! I can’t get loose from the damned lines!” Panic rose in her voice as she tried to free herself from the jumble of lines—something that was impossible to do in the air. Without help, she would never get out of this difficult situation.
Gray, Chris and Jeff grew pale as they watched the scene unfold. Mesmerized, they stared at the monitor, which showed the images being transmitted by Liz’s camera. Before their eyes, Jennifer disappeared into the darkness and hurtled relentlessly towards the ground.
“I’m coming!” With a powerful jerk, Liz pulled the cut-away handle of her parachute, which was connected to the two harness straps by two release cables. As her main chute flew off, she found herself in free fall again. Shifting her body position in mid-air, she pressed her arms against her sides and closed her legs to reduce resistance and sped like an arrow toward her friend. Just before she reached Jennifer, she spread out her arms and legs to increase resistance and, in doing so, managed to slowly get closer to her friend.
“Air ambulance to the rescue!” Liz said, but Jennifer didn’t answer. She continued to struggle with the lines that had wrapped around her body like an octopus’s tentacles.
With one hand, Liz seized one of her partner’s legs and pulled her, bit-by-bit, toward her. She worked quickly and soon had released the tangled lines. The main chute was severely knotted and no longer able to serve its purpose, so Liz pulled on the cut-away handle and the useless chute fluttered away. They separated from each another in the air and each pulled on the reserve canopy handle at the left side of her chest to release her reserve chute. At last, they were both gliding slowly toward the ground. Liz laughed softly in relief. “You owe me o
ne now, Jenny!”
“As far as I’m concerned, I owe you a hundred. That was close!”
Looking as white as chalk, Chris leaned back in his chair and stared straight ahead.
Gray turned down his microphone and looked at Chris. “Are you okay?” Chris just shook his head and raised a trembling hand as proof of how he was doing. “Why don’t you get some fresh air and grab some coffee to calm down? They have things under control now.”
Chris nodded and quickly disappeared out of the control room.
“That was really close. Good thing Liz kept a cool head,” Jeff said in a raw voice. Even he sounded disturbed by what he’d just seen.
Gray cleared his throat and turned up the microphone again.
“Well done, you two. How are you?”
“Great! We should have little adventures like that more often. That was an adrenalin rush. What do you say, Jenny?”
“I think I’ll pass.”
Chris walked back into the room with a little more color in his face and put three cups of coffee on the table between Gray’s and his workstation. He sat down and drew a deep breath. “Are you okay, Jenny?” he asked softly over the microphone.
“A-OK. Luckily, I went to the little girls’ room before we left, or that would have been taken care of too.” Chris shook his head, a slight smile on his lips. In silence, they followed the women’s landing.
Liz and Jennifer even managed to keep to the designated landing area—an extraordinary accomplishment, given their struggles mid-air. They came down with perfect precision in a small clearing in the middle of unspoiled trees and underbrush. It was a textbook landing.
Liz slipped the parachute straps from her shoulders, gathered up the material and crammed it into a hole in the ground. Then she covered the area with extra leaves and branches so the parachute wouldn’t be discovered and betray their presence.
Jennifer pushed up her helmet’s visor and pulled impatiently on the straps to release the parachute from her back. When she wasn’t able to accomplish this right away, she tugged even harder, took a step back and tripped over a tree root jutting out of the ground. With a soft squeak and with arms flailing, she fell backwards between two bushes and landed on her bottom in a pile of leaves. Liz watched her, dumbfounded, and then laughed.
“I don’t think we have time to play hide and seek!”
“Very funny!” Swearing, Jennifer struggled out of the undergrowth and glared at Liz while she brushed twigs off of her clothes. Liz ignored the angry look and helped Jennifer get rid of the parachute.
“When you two are done goofing around, we can point you in the right direction,” Gray said, trying to hide the sound of his laughter.
It had really been funny to watch Jennifer disappear into the overgrowth and flail her arms and legs in the air like a beetle on its back. Chris jabbed him in the side for laughing, but he was already smiling again, too, as was Jeff.
The women removed their backpacks, hooked their helmets to them and spread dark camouflage paint on their faces. Liz ran some of the paint through her hair to tone down its color. They put on their wireless headsets and Generation IV night vision goggles, which enabled them to find their way around their surroundings. Finally they secured the small IRC-NG cameras to their clothes again and reestablished radio contact.
“All right, boys! We’re all freshened up again. Where are we off to?”
“The camp is just eight miles northeast of your current position. You’ll have a maximum of four hours to fulfill your assignment tonight, before the sun comes up. If you can’t accomplish your objective within this time, take cover and wait until tomorrow night. It’s too risky to act during the day. The deadline they set is in twenty-nine hours, so even if you can’t free the hostages tonight, you still have time to try tomorrow.”
“I didn’t come here for vacation, so we’ll get this thing done today. Any objections, Liz?”
“None!”
“So, let’s go.” They shouldered their backpacks and started walking at a quick pace, despite the rough terrain. Chris informed them when ten of the kidnappers left the camp in two SUVs. “Too bad,” Liz mumbled. “Now there are only ten for each of us.” Chris and Gray rolled their eyes toward the ceiling while Jeff doubled over in laughter. A warning glance from Chris silenced him immediately.
After one and a half hours, they reached the camp and searched for shelter from which to evaluate the situation.
“Can you give us any helpful info from the satellites?” Liz asked.
“Outside of the camp there aren’t any recognizable heat signatures, so guards are expected inside the camp only. We aren’t able to get any electronic signals either, so there probably aren’t any electronic monitoring devices, either. But err on the side of caution. Above all: be careful!”
“We’ve heard that from you guys before.”
“Well, we can’t say it to you two often enough.”
The women removed their night vision goggles and put them away, then pulled their binoculars out of their backpacks, put them on night vision mode, and surveyed their surroundings.
“Hey, Jenny. Looks like they’ve built up quite a nice arsenal of toys,” Liz said.
"I just noticed that. I assume the hostages are over in that shed—probably crouching on the ground, crowded closely together.”
Liz examined her findings and looked at Jennifer with her eyebrows raised. “There are more than four.”
“I figured that out, too.”
“Gray? Are you sure that only four people were kidnapped?”
“Absolutely sure. If there’s anyone else there, they’re locals and don’t concern you.”
“But what if they aren’t locals? Other people could have been abducted since the first ones. Maybe there just hasn’t been a ransom demand yet.”
“They’re of no interest to us. Your assignment only concerns the vice-president’s four relatives. None of the others are important!”
How could he suggest such a thing? Liz took a deep breath to calm herself. She wouldn’t allow there to be a discussion about this. If there were people in danger, then she and Jennifer would help them—whether Gray approved or not. She looked Jennifer in the eye and could tell that similar thoughts were going through her head. They grinned and confirmed Gray’s order together.
“Understood!”
“Going in now!”
Using caution, they snuck closer to the camp, being careful not to trigger any alarms or fall into a trap. Fortunately, the shed where the hostages were being held was located on the outer edge of the camp. Under cover of darkness they moved quickly and crouched down behind it. Carefully Liz reached through the weather-beaten wooden slats and touched one of the men inside lightly on the shoulder.
“Quiet. Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “We’re here to get you out.” When the man nodded slightly to show that he had understood, she continued. “Are the four Americans inside here?” She got another nod. “Are the others locals?”
“Yes.”
“How many of you are there altogether?”
“Eight. One child and seven adults.”
“All right. We’ll get you out. But you have to do what we tell you.”
“Please help my wife. They hauled her out of here a while ago and took her away. Please help her!” The man spoke urgently in a heavy Spanish accent. His voice sounded choked, as if he were close to tears.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Liz turned to Jennifer, who had squatted with her back to Liz and was vigilantly surveying the surrounding area. Without a word, she opened her backpack and took out three packs of C4 explosives and the corresponding electronic time fuse.
“You get the people out and head toward the meeting point we decided on back in the helicopter. I’ll be there soon. I have to take care of something first.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
“Aren’t I always?” Liz turned around, crouched low and headed into the darkness.
While she attached the explosive devices to the large crates that were filled with various types of weapons, Gray checked in. “What are you doing? Jennifer has the family already. You need to pull back before they discover you.”
“I’m just creating a little atmosphere. It’s such a dull party.” Liz snickered quietly. “Anyway, I’m just doing someone a little favor.”
“Liz! You know the orders. Pull back!”
“I will soon. Quiet down or you’ll spoil my surprise,” she whispered while she was busy affixing the fuses to the explosive devices.
Gray was tempted to read her the riot act over the radio, but then as he watched what she was doing he pursed his lips and acknowledged to himself that she was right.
“They don’t come any more headstrong than that,” Jeff said.
“Or more reckless,” added Chris. This earned him an angry sideways glance from Gray. Wisely, he held his tongue after that and watched the images coming from Jennifer’s video camera. His wife distanced herself from the camp followed by the captives. Cautiously they pushed their way through the dense woods as Jennifer remained vigilant, looking in every direction for potential pursuers.
“Liz? Where are you?” Jennifer asked over the radio.
“Keep going! I’ll be there soon,” came Liz’s gruff, whispered reply.
Wordlessly, Jennifer shooed the people on.
***
Moving quickly and being careful to stay concealed, Liz moved through the camp to the noisy wooden barrack where a small party was taking place. She took cover behind the side wall and peered through the opening that served as a window. Twelve dangerous-looking men sat inside, pressed tightly around an old wooden table and drinking together. The woman Liz was looking for was serving them drinks. Fear was written all over her face. One of the men stood up and tore her blouse. The men roared loudly at that and banged their mugs on the table.
