Easy Day for the Dead (5 page)

Pancho, John, and Danny joined Alex in pre-breathing.

After thirty minutes, the C-130 rose above ten thousand feet over Afghanistan. For each one thousand feet the plane ascended, the temperature dropped 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Alex put on overgloves, which covered his tactical gloves so his hands wouldn't freeze off.

As they reached eighteen thousand feet, a physiology technician monitored the SEALs and aircrew for signs of altitude sickness.

The plane rose higher and higher. Soon the loadmaster called out, “Thirty minutes!”

Alex's bladder had stretched tight from all the water he'd been drinking, so he relieved himself in a piss tube in the bulkhead.

“Ten minutes!” They were approaching the point of no return. Once they took that step off the plane, there'd be no getting back on.

“Five minutes!” The C-130's ramp lowered. Although there was no moon, there was still more light outside the plane than inside. The light entered the plane. The guys disconnected their breathing lines from the C-130's large oxygen tanks and connected the lines to their small individual tanks. Each SEAL checked and double-checked his oxygen bottle pressure and connections. They had duct-taped their masks onto their helmets so when they jumped, the wind wouldn't
blast the masks off their faces. Alex also made a quick check of Pancho, John, and Danny. The PT watched them for signs of hypoxia. Burdened with his green oxygen tank on his left, rifle on his right, and more than a hundred pounds of gear in his backpack, Alex waddled behind the others, who also waddled to the ramp.

“Three minutes!” With all the wind blasting into the plane, Alex couldn't hear the loadmaster call out the time interval, but Alex recognized the man's three-finger sign and relayed it to his Teammates in case they hadn't seen it. Alex dropped to his stomach and slithered onto the ramp. He peeked over the edge and all he could see were clouds. He hoped the ground matched the aerial images the Colonel had shown them.

“One minute!” Alex slithered back away from the ramp and stood. He hoped the pilot and crew were on target.

“Thirty seconds!”

The light on the ramp switched from red to green. Pancho and John looked to Alex for the “okay.” Alex pointed off the ramp:
go
. John was the lightest and would take the longest to reach the ground, so he jumped first. Danny went next. Pancho was heavier than Alex, but Alex had to make sure everyone got off the plane okay before he jumped. The three SEALs had distributed their gear so Alex carried more weight.

Alex brought up the rear, and stepped off the plane at twenty-six thousand feet above Afghanistan. It was the Superman feeling, mixed with fear and ecstasy. He longed to just fall through space, but the whole point to a high-altitude, high-opening jump was to deploy your chute right after jumping. Even more crucial, if he waited too long to pull his chute, he'd blast through Pancho's canopy below him and they'd both die.

A mere four seconds after stepping off the plane, Alex pulled his rip cord. He tensed up, even though he had done this hundreds of times before. Would the chute deploy? It was amazing to realize that your life literally hung from a bunch of string.

After what seemed an eternity, the chute opened at twenty-six thousand feet. The force was so abrupt and violent that Alex was certain he cracked a vertebra. Tensing really didn't help. He looked up and did a 360-degree check of his high glide ratio canopy to make sure it hadn't folded over itself like a giant brassiere.
So far, so good
—it had deployed properly and everything checked out fine. He suddenly wondered if, like so much else sold in the United States these days, the chutes had been made by a bunch of kids in a Chinese factory. They could take out a battalion of paratroopers just by skipping a few stitches.

“Damn it!” The temperature was 45 degrees below zero. He really didn't like HAHO jumps. You froze your damn ass off long before anyone got a chance to shoot it off.

He double-checked the canopy. Satisfied it was in full working order, he loosened the straps on his ruck hanging from his chest and let the ruck drop to the top of his boots to distribute the weight more evenly.

Floating while freezing, he began searching for the other jumpers in the night sky. With shaking hands he pulled down his night optical device (NOD) so that it rested in front of his eyes. Infrared (IR) chemlights glowed on the back of each man's helmet. Although invisible to the naked eye, the IR chemlights could be seen through the NODs. The Outcasts stacked up. John glided at the bottom and a large blob that was clearly Pancho was just below Alex. The large black space between them should have been Danny, but he wasn't there.
Where's his chemlight?

Shit, shit, shit!

Alex looked harder at the empty space between John and Pancho.
Shit!
Danny drifted between them, his chute partially deployed and flapping in the wind! He was already too far away for Alex to tell if he was unconscious or not.

John spun his body and looked up to check his chute. Alex willed John to lunge after Danny and grab him, but he had already fallen
past and was picking up speed. Alex did a quick calculation and tore at the release tab of his main chute. It detached and he was suddenly flying again, straight down. He angled his body into a high dive and blew past Pancho and John.

A cloud base at fifteen thousand feet rushed up to meet him. If he didn't get to Danny before then, he'd lose him. Alex was having a hard time maintaining the angle of his dive and realized his ruck was causing the problem. There was no way to cut it loose now. He strained and kept his dive. The wind ripped at his mask, trying to pry it off his face. The distance between him and Danny closed.

Five hundred feet. He started working out what he would do when he caught up to Danny. He'd try to get the unconscious man in a leg lock and bear hug. Then he'd pull his reserve and hope like hell.

Three hundred seventy-five feet. Danny must be unconscious. He was on his back, his arms flailing about in the wind. Grabbing him wasn't going to be easy.

Two hundred twenty feet. The top of the cloud base was looming close. This was going to be tight. Alex turned his focus back on Danny.

One hundred feet.

Forty-five feet. Alex reached out his gloved hands. He'd grab Danny first, pull him in tight, then wrap his legs around him.

Twenty feet. A piece of canopy from Danny's chute ripped loose and flew up into Alex's face. He desperately clawed at the cloth with his left hand while still reaching out with his right. He pulled the cloth away and was in the clouds.

Danny was gone!

Alex looked around, but he couldn't see anything. He had no choice. He pulled the D-ring for his reserve chute and a moment later felt the reassuring jerk as the harness straps bit into his body. No point looking up; he wouldn't be able to see a damn thing.

He tried to calculate how far off course he'd be when he landed. He was still ten thousand feet up, so he should be able to steer close
to their original drop zone. If John and Pancho saw his chemlight they'd fly toward him. Alex said a silent goodbye to Danny. Murphy's law was a bastard.

Most of the buddies Alex lost, like Jabberwocky, he knew better than Danny. Some Alex didn't know as well. Experiencing so much death rubbed calluses onto his soul, but it didn't stop him from feeling—seeing a widow and fatherless children at a funeral always hurt him to the core, but now, Alex didn't have the luxury of mourning, feeling, or belly-button gazing. He had a mission to accomplish—a mission that could potentially save many lives. Now Alex was responsible for keeping Pancho and John alive.

Alex broke through the cloud layer and his vision cleared. It was nautical twilight, his favorite time to make magical mayhem. He saw shapes on the ground, the horizon, and stars in the sky to the east, where the cloud cover was broken up. Alex looked down at the tritium sighted glow-in-the-dark Silva Ranger compass mounted on his chest strap. He was off course.
No kidding
. Alex's shivering hands reached up to his parachute toggles and corrected course. Quickly he stuffed his hands under his armpits to protect them from the cold. The cold made his brain slow down. Thinking became difficult.

He spent the next thirty-seven minutes gliding and checking the sky above him for signs of Pancho and John. When he thought his head would fall off his neck from all the twisting he spotted a black shape a thousand yards above him.
Pancho!
He looked around and was amazed to see a chemlight just seventy-five yards below him, off to his left.
John!
They'd found him. The sense of relief was incredible. He wouldn't tell them, but a tear came to his eye. He checked his GPS and saw they'd traveled forty-nine miles from initial jump to their current altitude and position; 2,220 feet and forty-nine miles. Alex couldn't feel his hands or feet. He was ready to land in a volcano if it would warm him up.

John landed first—fortunately, his atomic backpack didn't explode into a giant mushroom cloud and take all of them with it. John
was the fastest gun, but even he looked like his frozen body was moving in slow motion. Gradually he brought about his AKMS assault rifle and crouched into a covering position as Alex and Pancho came in to land.

Alex hit hard, the soles of his feet stinging as if they'd just slammed against an iceberg. He pitched forward awkwardly, ramming one knee into the dirt then the other as he did his best to roll and absorb the landing. He lay flat on the ground for several seconds, gulping for breath.

A loud thump a few yards away told him Pancho was on the ground. Alex picked himself up and without a word went about policing up their landing site, burying their parachutes and oxygen tanks and readying their gear. No one said a word about Danny. Alex hoped the enemy didn't hit them now because his fingers were so numb, he didn't think he could pull the trigger. Minutes later, they were ready, and Alex signaled Pancho to lead them out.

Pancho patrolled at the point, watching 180 degrees in front of them. His position was the most exhausting—trying to sense everything before it sensed them. Alex followed in the middle, wiping the frozen tears off his face, then alternating between covering the left and the right with his eyes and AKMS. John secured the rear by stopping occasionally to turn and check the 180 degrees behind them.

The desert evening was cold. During the day, the heat caused water to evaporate into the atmosphere, creating a barrier that trapped long-wave infrared radiation near the ground. As a result, the area became dry and clouds scarce. At night, when the sun disappeared, there was nothing to block the heat from escaping earth. After the heat fled, the desert became cold.

It felt good to be moving on patrol. Gradually, sensation returned to Alex's legs and arms. After three kilometers, the cold pain in his hands wore off, and he felt he had a fighting chance at being able to shoot someone. Two kilometers later, the patrol weaved around the
bases of sandy dunes and rock formations. They came across a goat path and followed it toward the village.

After two kilometers on the goat path, Alex noticed something to his left. He couldn't tell if it was a bush or a human. As his eyes strained to see better, he almost ran into Pancho, who had stopped and crouched down. Alex stopped and crouched down, too. John did the same. Pancho pointed ahead to his left. Alex saw movement and aimed his AKMS in the direction of the movement. Pancho and John were aiming in the same direction. Whoever it was, they crouched low as they walked. The figure came closer until Alex recognized it—a goat.

Alex had to keep from laughing out loud. He was sure Pancho and John wanted to laugh, too. Keeping their silence, they resumed their patrol to the village. As they passed around a berm, the indistinct outline of the village came into view.

Continuing forward, they reached another berm—this one was just one hundred yards east of the village. Alex signaled for Pancho and John to stay behind while he went in to rendezvous with Leila. He left his cumbersome backpack with them so he could move more freely.

Alex kept low until he neared the edge of the village and dropped to a low crawl, which he continued until he reached Leila's house. A neighborhood dog barked. It was times like this that Alex hated dogs. Alex peered through Leila's back window—the curtain was closed and he couldn't see inside. He gave the coded knock: two knocks. No answer.
Is she asleep? Is she even here? Is this a trap?
He gave the coded knock again. Two knocks came back. He knocked four times. Now the window opened, and he recognized her. Leila looked even better than her picture.

He crawled through the window. Inside, he began searching the house.

“There is no one else here,” Leila said quietly.

Alex continued with the search. He didn't know her well enough
to take her word for it. It was a small, modestly furnished two-bedroom house. After clearing the house, rather than make noise by speaking, he broke squelch on his radio once, notifying Pancho and John that it was clear for them to come in. Alex stood guard, watching both the inside and outside of the house.

“Where is Danny?” she asked.

Alex hesitated. “He couldn't make it.”

“But he said he was coming.”

“He wanted to,” Alex said.

“Something terrible happened?”

Alex wasn't sure what to say. He hadn't seen Danny die, but he knew he was dead. Alex didn't know how close Leila was to Danny. The only words that came out were “I'm sorry.”

She turned her head away.

Pancho and John arrived. Alex let them in through the front door. With the three large men in the small house, the place became even smaller. Alex looked at his watch—it was already morning. Leila took them into a vacant room. “You can keep your things here and sleep today,” she said quietly. “There is not enough dark left for me to take you to the chemical weapons lab now, but when evening comes again, I will take you.”