No one did. Max left without speaking to the others and headed directly to the Black Hawk to check the medical supplies. This would be her one and only chance to be certain she had what she needed in the field. This bird was not a medevac helicopter like the ones she usually rode in when picking up wounded. This bird wasn’t marked with the identifiable red cross of a noncombatant helicopter, although in this war the neutrality of medics and their machines, on the ground or in the air, had been ignored to such an extent that many medevac birds now carried defensive armaments. Medics carried assault rifles and sidearms too in case they needed to defend themselves or their wounded. This bird wasn’t going to have the full complement of medical equipment, and she planned to supplement what was there with her individual first aid kit. She relied more on her IFAK when treating injured anyhow—she always knew what she had on hand and could find it in the dark. She was going through the IV bags, checking labels and drugs, when Grif spoke from behind her.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Max glanced over her shoulder. “Guess you heard, huh?”
He shrugged, his big oval face with its dusting of freckles calm as usual. “Got tapped for a ride along. Not much else to know. Sorry your nap got trashed.”
“No problem. Too hot to sleep anyhow.” Max grinned, the adrenaline anticipation of the upcoming mission having burned off the lingering melancholy and dulling effects of the alcohol. Nothing put the brakes on guilt and self-recrimination like the imminent threat of mortal danger. “At least we’ll be cool up there.”
“Need a hand?” Grif climbed into the belly of the Black Hawk.
“Yeah, now that you’re here, can you check the med boxes for me and stock as much extra antibiotics and IV opiates as you can find room for in your IFAK? Field bandages too.”
“Sure thing. Expecting trouble?”
Max smiled faintly. “Always.”
When she was satisfied they had the bird set for their mission, she told Grif to go get some sleep and headed back to her CLU. CLUville was quiet, or as quiet as it ever got in the middle of the night. The streets were never empty, but most of the admin buildings were dark, the DFAC was dark—late-night suppertime having come and gone. Anyone who wanted food now would have to make do with whatever they could find in the vending machines scattered around the base until the dining facility opened again at zero five hundred. Just about when most troops were sitting down to eggs and bacon, she’d be dropping out of a Black Hawk onto the jungle floor.
The photo of Rachel Winslow flashed through her mind. Whoever she was, she wasn’t just a Red Cross worker. Someone wanted her out of harm’s way and had enough power to make it happen. Max wondered what was really happening in the Juba jungle that these aid workers needed to be pulled out now. They’d been there for a while, so what had changed? She didn’t need to know, any more than she needed to know what had brought Rachel Winslow to the darkest part of a lost land even God had forgotten.
Max detoured to the communal showers and stood under the hot water for a long time, letting her mind empty. When she set out on this mission she wanted her reactions to be sharp and nothing in her head but the objective. Back in her CLU she changed into clean field camos, checked her gear, weapons, and IFAK. When she was satisfied she was prepared, she set her watch and stretched out on her cot in the dark to wait.
*
The night was never silent. After the humans settled into their tents for the night, the animals ruled. The susurrus of insect wings on canvas, the hacking cough of a hyena, the deep-throated roar of a lion. And always, beneath it all, the soughing of the canopy overhead that sheltered them from the sun during the day and shrouded them in shadow at night. At first Rachel had had a hard time getting used to the perpetual shade on the jungle floor, but she soon came to appreciate the protection the dense foliage provided from the relentless heat. Tonight, though, she felt as if the jungle were closing in, isolating them from the rest of the world. She wasn’t naïve. She knew the dangers, environmental and civil, of this mission. She’d always been cautious and careful, but until tonight, she’d never been afraid.
She prided herself on choosing her own path, controlling her own destiny, and now she waited in the dark while events she didn’t understand and couldn’t control unfolded around her. Distant thunder boomed, then boomed again, closer this time. Rachel sat up.
Not thunder. Explosions.
Chapter Four
The Black Hawks crossed into Somalia at 2,000 feet, flying at an average cruise speed of 170 miles per hour. Max rode in the open left rear door, her legs hanging out as she watched the undulating contours of the slowly changing landscape. As the minutes passed, vast expanses of desert and low scrubland slowly gave way to the denser ground cover of the jungle. Reconnaissance images she’d seen taken in daylight showed sparse smatterings of small villages comprising no more than a few ramshackle huts, a parched acre or two of struggling crops, and scraggly goats running through twisting rutted paths; nomadic tribespeople in tent camps ringed by camels; and the ever-increasing masses of displaced natives sleeping on the ground next to their bundles of belongings. Now all was dark except for the reflection of the moon off the few streams traversing the high ground like silver ribbons. The deprivation and desperation of the land and its people were hidden in a shroud of shadows.
The second Black Hawk trailed behind them, gunners on both sides and six Hellfire missiles mounted underneath. Neither bird held a full crew. Besides Swampfox and his copilot, she, Grif, Ollie, and the second crew chief and gunner, Bucky Burns, were the only occupants of their bird. The other Black Hawk carried only four. With luck, they’d be able to transport everyone out, including patients. She understood their orders and that Rachel Winslow was their priority, but leaving anyone behind went against everything she believed in. Wounded or dead, no one was left behind, and those civilians were now her responsibility, just like the troops who ventured outside the wire on a mission. Everybody came home. No matter what.
Burns and Ollie scanned out the doors for signs of enemy activity with long-range night-vision scopes. The rebel forces had no airpower, but a vigorous pipeline of arms and ammunition from Yemen provided them with automatic weapons capable of firing rounds that could penetrate the bird’s fuselage or windshield. Word had it that 400 surface-to-air missiles powerful enough to take out an airliner had been stolen by al-Qaeda forces during a recent attack on Benghazi. The rebels were mobile, at home in the jungle, and skilled after decades of strife. And a Black Hawk was a big target. Rumor had it there was a bounty on Black Hawks.
The wind, as dry and empty as the land, whipped her face below her goggles, an arid slap reminding her she did not belong in this country, but here she was. Here they all were, bound by duty and ideology and, some would say, trapped by the same. She didn’t feel trapped or tricked or coerced into fighting this war whose goals had long since morphed into something far different than they had been a decade before. She and her fellow troops weren’t even in the same country where it had all begun. In Africa, war was a way of life. Entire generations were born into it, lived in it, and died in it without ever knowing anything else.
She’d known when she’d signed up for the Navy to subsidize her medical training she might one day be sent to a place like this for reasons that were not hers to question. That was the way of war. She didn’t regret her decision to get her medical training on the Navy’s dime—she wouldn’t have been able to afford it any other way, and she was willing to pay up on her obligation in any way the Navy demanded. She only regretted the consequences of the war for those she had pledged to serve.
The rhythmic drone of the engines and the whir of the rotors were hypnotic, oddly soothing, and all too conducive to introspection. Out here, where bursts of adrenalized excitement and fear alternated with hours and days of boredom while waiting for the next call, introspection was an all-too-familiar companion. Tonight, Max could do without the solitary voice of her own thoughts.
They’d been in the air almost two hours, with no sign of activity below, and she wasn’t sure at first she’d actually seen the quick flare of orange that winked out almost as soon as it appeared. Max blinked, clearing her vision. Another flicker of light shot across her visual field. A trick of sight, brought on by fatigue or distraction. When it came again, she touched the radio mic at her throat. “Swampfox, did you see that? Ten o’clock. Light flares.”
Roger that. Standby.
Fox would be calling in to base for a situation update. Max’s skin prickled. Nothing was worse than heading into enemy fire, even though by now she should be used to it. Fox’s voice crackled in her headphones.
Rocket fire in the vicinity of the LZ. Heads up.
Burns and Ollie shifted the machine guns into position and half leaned out the open doorways. Grif moved back out of the way. Max stayed put. She could use a weapon if she had to, but for now she’d just act as lookout. She flipped down her night-vision goggles, and the area of heavy vegetation off to her left where she’d first seen the momentary flare lit up with green fluorescent puffs of smoke that plumed and fractured, then drifted away like thin strands of seaweed undulating below the surface of a quiet pond.
The sight would have been eerily beautiful if it hadn’t meant death had come calling.
*
Rachel jumped up and pushed her feet into her boots. Across from her, Amina was hastily doing the same.
“What is it?” Amina asked in a high thin whisper.
“I don’t know.” Rachel answered automatically, but what else could it be? Unless some storm had unexpectedly blown up without warning, those thunderous booms were coming from a battle, and judging by their loudness, the fight was on its way to them. Whatever was happening, she did not intend to be trapped in her tent, blind and helpless. “I’m going to find Dacar.”
“I’m coming with you,” Amina said.
Rachel unzipped the tent flap, stepped out, and grabbed Amina’s hand. The solar lights that usually lit the encampment were gone. A man with a rifle—one of Dacar’s Somali security guards?—poured water on the fire. The camp plunged into darkness except for the dim glow of the propane-powered lights inside the hospital tent that burned day and night. Muffled shouts came from everywhere. Rachel couldn’t recognize the voices or the words, only the tenor of fear and urgency. She thought she heard Dacar calling orders, but she couldn’t be certain. Another volley of explosions lit up the sky like perverted Fourth of July fireworks. Red and orange starbursts—bombs, not festivity.
The headquarters tent was at the opposite end of the camp, and Rachel saw only blackness in that direction. She’d long ago conquered her fear of the dark, or so she’d thought, but tonight the distant terrors of childhood crept back to taunt her. She didn’t want to venture very far from the only bit of light and safety she could see, no matter how false the sense of security might be.
“Let’s try the hospital.” Rachel had to trust that Dacar and the other guards were looking after their safety, and she would be of no help to them in that. But she could help with the patients. She and Amina ran hand in hand over the familiar ground, made strange and somehow dangerous by the inky dark, to the big hospital tent. Inside, cots lined one side and stacks of supplies the other. A second smaller room in the rear, behind a canvas flap, served as an operating and treatment room. Maribel, Jean-Claude, and Robert moved among the cots, comforting the crying children and trying to calm the anxious adults. Amina instantly joined them, translating for those who did not understand and soothing those who were too terrified to listen.
Rachel smelled smoke, acrid and sharp. More shouts, closer now. Gunfire, rapid staccato cracks like hammer blows on steel. Her heart pounded so quickly she couldn’t think. But she had to—the drills they’d practiced in case of emergency evacuation replayed in her mind. No drill had prepared her for this. The noise alone was disorienting. She forced her mind to focus. Gather necessary supplies—medicine, food, drinking water. Communication devices, flashlights. Weapons. God, they didn’t have weapons. They were noncombatants. Neutral. Humanitarian. Did those words mean anything to whoever was out there, shooting? She feared they might not. Her stomach knotted. The overwhelming urge to run built inside her like pressure rising in a geyser. Sweat broke over her skin in a cold, sick wash of terror.
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