Joint Task Force #4: Africa (14 page)

“That’s true. You also have another arriving tomorrow to relieve this one. We are committed to giving you all the bases you want. Now, I can’t say that whoever the people elect to take my place will feel the same.”

“So, how does this General Ojo defeat the Jihadists? Win the hearts and minds of the people like you have?”

Before Thomaston could reply, several sharp raps on the door leading into the compartment from the passageway interrupted them. Holman opened his mouth to say, “ enter,” but it opened abruptly and Captain Leo Upmann stepped inside.

“Admiral, General,” he said, nodding slightly at both, before looking directly at Holman. “Admiral, our aircraft has taken a missile hit.”

“Which aircraft?” They had two helicopters airborne enroute to the Seabees at Harper and several helicopters off-loading the Marines at their encampment north of Monrovia. Every one of those CH-53 Super Stallions had been launched before they entered the port of Monrovia.

“The EP-3E.”

Holman and Thomaston stood.

“And their status?” Dick asked as he headed toward the door. He looked back at Thomaston. “General, my apologies, but duty calls.”

“Admiral, if my government can be of any assistance—”

“Thanks, we may need it.” Dick said as he stepped through the doorway and hurried quickly down the passageway, heading toward Combat Information Center.

Behind him, Thomaston motioned his aide into the
room. He picked up the remaining two pastries, wrapped them in a napkin, and quickly left. “What’s happening?” he asked the younger man.

“Seems a SAM has hit the American reconnaissance aircraft while it was on track north of our border.”

Thomaston nodded as they stepped into the passageway and the two of them started toward the exit. “We need to see what we can find out as to whether there are any survivors or not.”

“From what I gathered, the aircraft hasn’t crashed.”

“Yet. Aircraft with missiles through them tend to crash. Where did the missile hit?”

“We don’t know yet, Admiral. All we have is their mayday, and last update is they’re heading back to homeplate.”

“That’s Monrovia. Let’s hope they make it back. Get me my vehicle. We’re going to the airport.”

CHAPTER 6

THE WIND WHIPPED HIS FLIGHT SUIT AGAINST HIS BODY,
the cloth beating painlessly against the back of his legs. Razi spread his arms and legs as far as he could, emulating the style he had seen on television, but never, ever thought he’d do it himself. By God, who in their right mind would jump out of a perfectly good aircraft? Granted, the aircraft had been on fire. They probably canceled the bailout because the engine fire had been controlled.

A part of his terrified mind was pleased to see the maneuver steady him in midair. Where were the cheering crowds when he needed them? He was face down hurling toward the green carpet of African jungle beneath him, a carpet that stretched as far as he could see. The bright African sun lit up the green canopy below him. The colors seemed so vivid to him. Maybe that was because he was heading—what was the max speed of a falling body? One hundred and eighteen miles per hour was max speed. No
way he could calculate when he’d hit the trees. Shit! His wife balanced the checkbook. His parachute! Where in the hell was it. The panic hit and vanished in a second. His parachute was on his back, strapped tight, waiting for him to pull the ripcord.

Razi raised his head. To the right and below about a mile away floated the three parachutes of his aircrewmen, descending toward the jungle. They were together. That’s one thing in his favor. He didn’t relish the idea of being alone in the jungle.

He should have connected the static line to the bailout rail before he jumped like those lucky sons of bitches! Razi pulled his right hand toward the ripcord located top-right on his chest. His body tilted to the right, he quickly pulled the left hand inward to correct the balance. Thought,
This is way too easy.
Razi’s right hand gripped the handle just as his body arched forward and sent Razi into a headlong rush toward the earth. Damn! The screaming that was disturbing him was coming from his own throat. He jerked the handle—thirty-five pounds of pressure opened it. The handle end appeared in his hand, startling him for moment before he recalled that was supposed to happen. He dropped the handle, the wire on the end whipping his legs as it fell earthward.

Behind Razi, the parachute opened. The pilot parachute rippled out first, a small caricature of the main parachute. The small pilot anchored itself in the airstream, pulling the main canopy from the parachute assembly. The 28-foot, flat canopy immediately followed the pilot parachute, unfolding rapidly, a snapping blossom as the canopy grabbed and trapped the wind beneath it, jerking the chief petty officer upward at sixty miles an hour and away from his headlong fall. His screams picked up in intensity as he shot upward, and he made several promises to God such as
giving up beer, quit wasting prayers on the Washington Redskins, and stop having eyeball-orgies when out with his wife. The parachute fully unfolded. Razi reached the crest of the upward jerk and fell downward; the suspension lines running from his harness to the main canopy brought him up short, and Razi came to a swinging stop beneath the parachute. His breath came in rapid, short gasps while his lips continued to mouth “Thank you, God; thank you, God; thank you, God.” Everything was dark. Somewhere in the past few seconds Razi had clamped his eyes so tightly shut, it took another several seconds for him to will them open. When he did, the trees seemed closer.

He forced his attention away from his own fall, looking in the direction where he thought the other parachutes should be. Nothing. He turned his head side to side and Rockdale, MacGammon, and Carson were nowhere to be seen. Where in the hell where they? They couldn’t have landed yet. He had a brief feeling of anxiety, wondering how in the hell he was going to land near them if he didn’t know where they were?

Razi reached up, pulled the right suspension line, and congratulated himself when he turned. His breathing was slowing as the shock of bailing out was replaced by self-congratulations on how well he was doing. Man, oh man, he was great with this. Wait until happy hours at the Rota chief’s club.
Line those drinks up, me laddies, and let me tell you about when I bailed out of Ranger 20.

A slight movement caught his attention. There they were. During his own fall and riding the opening of his parachute, Razi had came out of the parachute opening with his back to the three other parachutes. His three aircrewmen, as he thought of them, seemed to be the same distance as when he first spotted them. He looked up at the parachute canopy. Now, how did he go about playing with
the suspension lines to maneuver his parachute toward them? One thing he did recall from bailout training, which consisted of twenty hours of classroom and jumping off a ten-foot-high ramp to ride a cable down to the ground, was that you could, by manipulating the suspension lines, cause the air inside the parachute to tilt out one side or the other, thereby changing your direction and, with luck, push yourself into a safe landing zone. This was very handy when you violated certain well-known, but unwritten rules such as never bailing out over a place you’ve just bombed or strafed. In this instance, that specific rule applied here. Someone down below had fired that missile.

Another thing he recalled about bailout, as his stomach muscles started to relax from the mind-numbing, fear-filled worry of whether the parachute was going to open or not, was the warning echoing in his mind that if he pulled the suspension line too hard, it could cause the wind to spill out too fast, collapsing the parachute, and sending him hurling toward the ground and slamming into it like a dull dart off of a brick wall. Only bodies don’t bounce when they hit the earth. If they do, Razi was sure it’d be a sloshing sound slapping the earth the second time. His stomach tightened again. He brought his hand down from the suspension cord without pulling it. A second later he gripped it again. The harness may hold you to the line that held you to the parachute, but something in the human psyche made him want to hold on. He glanced down at the leg straps: Those crisscrossed three-inch-wide canvas straps capable of turning him into an alto.

He lifted his head, watching the three parachutes descending together.
Why in the hell did I do this?
he thought.
I know what I said sounded good, and, it’s going to sound even better when I have a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other, but I’m not a mutter-frigging SEAL or trained
killer. I’m a cryptologic technician. I operate electronic and reconnaissance equipment. I make love, not war. And, I don’t bail out of aircraft because
—
Shit! I did this to myself! Who’s leadership book was I believing when I bailed out? My own? Remind me to kick the shit out of myself when—when, hell
—
if I get back.

He reached up and without thinking about the dangers, jerked the suspension line downward. His stomach tensed. Damn, his waistline was getting a hell of a workout. At the same instant he jerked the suspension cord, Razi glanced at the three aircrewmen and thought they seemed farther away.
They need me more than I need them right now,
he told himself,
and unless I get to them before
—

Wind spilled out of the parachute spinning Razi farther to the right. Now the three aircrewmen were to his left, but the bearing drift was in the same direction.

—
before! Damn, we’re going to have more problems when we finish this airborne ride. The NRL bunch said they detected two groups of people down there. The smaller group was probably the terrorist bunch, about twenty, I recall them saying. The other group numbered in the hundreds. That’d be those African National Army wanna-be soldiers. Christ! I hate soldiers.

Razi reached up and pulled the left suspension line. He swung slowly to the left. He squinted his eyes. Was the distance increasing between them? The altitude disparity seemed the same. He shut one eye and tried to get a drift-bearing on the three. If he watched them, in a measuring sort of way, and they weren’t moving left or right or up and down as he watched, then they would be on a constant bearing. Constant bearing meant you had a damn good chance of running into each other.

They were drifting slowly to the right. Not much, but enough to add distance between him and them when they
landed. He reached up and pulled the right suspension line again. He was getting good at this, he told himself, as he swung to the right. The next sighting showed them drifting to the left. For the next minute or two, Razi alternated pulls on the suspension lines, eventually realizing that each new course turn was causing the bearing-drift to lessen. It wasn’t that Razi believed himself out of control of the situation. It wasn’t in his character to believe there was anything he wasn’t capable of doing. Razi had preached for years the rhetoric of the omnipotence of a chief petty officer; for so long that he believed whatever he did was preordained as correct. When he did something and it turned out right, Razi never got over-excited because as a chief petty officer it was bound to be right. The important thing was to make sure his bosses knew it. He should have been a senior chief petty officer three years ago, but the Navy . . .

When something unexpected panned out good, but differently than what he planned or expected, he reconciled himself with the knowledge it turned out right for no other reason than he was a chief petty officer.

He tugged on the left suspension line. His arms were growing tired from the exertion. He tried a couple of more attempts to fine-tune his direction of fall. Suddenly, after several more back-and-forth attempts to change his direction, he discovered himself lined up with the descent of the others. Razi was neither surprised nor elated. It was just one more proof that there was nothing a chief petty officer couldn’t do when he or she decided to do something. Those three young men should fall to the ground, bow down, and thank me when I reach them. Where would sailors and junior officers be, if it wasn’t for us chief petty officers? They’d still be changing their diapers.

Razi gripped the two suspension lines running from his parachute harness to the 28-foot nylon canopy above him.
He glanced up, a brief chill raced through him. Such a flimsy piece of cloth between him and death.

He looked toward the three other parachutes and as he watched, they winked out one after the other as the aircrewmen crashed through the jungle green and disappeared from sight.

”SHE’S RIGHT, SIR,” PITS CONAR SAID. THE FLIGHT ENGINEER
reached up and tapped the extinguisher readout. “The second extinguisher is gone, Lieutenant—kaput! If that engine flames up again, we can’t even spit on it.”

“Put her in a left-hand turn and let’s take Ranger 20 up—quick.”

The curtain snapped apart and Lieutenant Commander Chuck Peeters stuck his head inside the cockpit. “We’ve got crewmen outside!”

“Outside? How can anyone be outside?”

“They bailed out before you turned off the fucking alarm.”

Gregory leaned forward and glanced at the altimeter. “We’ve no choice, Chuck. There’s not a damn thing a four-engine aircraft can do to help those who bailed out. Right now, we’ve a bigger problem than them. They’ll be rescued. We need altitude and that’s where I’m taking this bucket of bolts.” He nodded to the right. “If that engine reflames, the only chance we’ll have to put it out is a steep dive. I want as much altitude as possible between us and the ground if we have to do this.”

Peeters nodded. “The radioman has already sent Sitrep follow-ups to Sixth Fleet, Amphibious Group Two, and our detachment at Monrovia.”

“Rota?”

“VQ-2 was one of the action addees. They should have it at the same time as the others.”

“This isn’t going to make Crazy Harry happy,” Babs said.

“Don’t call the skipper ‘Crazy Harry,’” Peeters admonished, his voice shaking. “Damn it, Lieutenant Gregory, we’ve got people below us.”

“There’s nothing I can do, but what you’ve done already, Lieutenant Commander Peeters, and that’s send a position report and an updated Sitrep. You’ve done both. My job is to get this aircraft back to Monrovia with the remaining souls onboard.” The aircraft shook violently as Gregory and Babs pulled together on the yoke, bringing the nose of the EP-3E up. “Besides, as long as we’re gaining altitude, there’s little chance of us flying through them.”

Several seconds passed as the two pilots fought the aircraft into a spiral ascent. “There is one other thing we can do,” Peeters said suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“We can drop a life raft.”

“What the hell—” Gregory started.

“The radio beacon,” Pits Conar interrupted. “The search-and-rescue beacon will start automatically when the life raft inflates. It’ll inflate on the way down, giving the beacon longer range.”

“Plus,” Peeters added as he turned, the curtains closing behind him as he hurried away. “It’ll mark the spot where we’ll need to start our search when we return!”

“What did he say?” Babs asked.

“He said he was going to mark the bailout spot so we’ll know where to start our search when we return.”

“If we return,” Babs added softly.

“Babs, help me keep the aircraft in a left-hand turn as we ascend. This will keep the right engine on the outside of the spiral where higher wind speeds will hit it.”