Retribution

The jumbo cargo jet dropped several hundred feet at once, leaving Moncrief feeling much as if the cables suspending an elevator had been suddenly cut. Kevin Moncrief grabbed on to one of the rails, holding on as the loose cargo rose up in the air, suspended for a moment in a zero-gravity state. It seemed to hit bottom, and as it did the airplane jerked up just as quickly.

Moncrief sucked down the pure oxygen from his mask. He could hear his own deep, rapid breathing as he looked out through the face mask.

Calm down.

He didn’t need to hyperventilate. Between the pure, cool oxygen and the go pills, Moncrief smiled in his mask.

“Hey, Gunny!”

Moncrief could hear the entire team through the helmet’s headset.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Villegas.”

One of the men, fully suited up, raised his thumb up to signal he was Villegas.

“You going to make it, old man?”

Moncrief smiled again.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, kemosabe? You look like a big, black sack of high-grade shit.”

“Oh, shit, we got a Lee Ermey.”

“We are jolly green giants walking the earth with guns.” The voice was different, in an intentional low, booming tone.

“Now you got Frix going. He’s gonna go with Full Metal Jacket for the rest of this operation.”

“Stand by to break off.” Furlong’s stern voice interrupted the conversation.

The Globemaster continued to jump up and down like a roller-coaster ride at the beach. The only problem was that Moncrief was riding it standing up—and with a hundred pounds of gear strapped on.

“Break off in ten!”

Each of the team members gave the thumbs-up signal.

“Five, four, three, two, one . . . break.”

Moncrief twisted the air hose and disconnected from the Globemaster’s oxygen supply. He immediately switched to his own tank, causing colder air to flow into the mask.

The aircraft’s loadmaster started to drop the C-17’s ramp, causing a roar of noise to overwhelm the cargo bay. Even with the helmet, Moncrief felt like he was standing next to the vortex of a tornado. His face mask lit up into a heads-up display of red and green.

“Is everyone up?” Furlong’s voice overrode the background noise.

“Yes.” Moncrief chimed in with the others. He could feel the cold sweat on the palms of his hands in the gloves. The jet was well above the solid cloud cover, but still passed through a broken cloud as it bounced back and forth across the mountain range.

“Gunny, you got the heads-up guide?”

Moncrief saw a small triangle in a box in his face mask’s display. As he looked out to the rear of the jet, a map overlay showed the hills and valleys behind their path. He held up his thumb. The Plexiglas visor was a computer screen full of information.

“Out the door in ten.” Furlong turned and shuttled up to the edge. The loadmaster walked by the line and pushed the FireFly up to the edge. The team split in half, with some on the left and others on the right of the cargo.

“Five, four, three, two, one, out the door.”

The team shuffled to the edge of the ramp.

Moncrief stepped over the edge.

“Boogity, boogity, boogity!” Villegas yelled into the mike. “Let’s rip it!”

His use of the NASCAR announcer Darrell Wal-trip’s phrase seemed appropriate. They were going from a dead stop to over a hundred miles an hour in one step.

Moncrief saw the shape of Villegas to his right, and then he was gone. And then Moncrief was alone in this wind tunnel of mist.

God, I hope I’m sealed up.

Flying at more than a hundred miles an hour in temps approaching thirty degrees below zero, the frigid air would be like a blowtorch, burning any exposed skin in an instant. It didn’t matter now.

“Gunny, you got me?”

“Yeah.”

“All team, winds are cutting at sixty knots out of the northwest. I’ll lead the way!”

Moncrief hit the wall of clouds. The display showed airspeed of 122 knots. The altimeter was spinning down, the numbers dropping.

“Deploying in five, four, three, two, one . . . mark!”

Moncrief pulled the ripcord as twenty-four thousand feet showed on the altimeter in his heads-up display. He saw the triangle jump on the display as Furlong’s parachute caused the captain suddenly to slow.

The clouds and darkness completely blinded the gunny’s visibility. He looked down toward his feet and could see nothing beyond his waist. Looking up, his parachute lines went above his head into the dark mist. The parachute was not visible. Moncrief held his hand up to his face. He could barely make out its shape.

In the darkness and cloud cover, the heads-up display was comforting. He continued to follow the track as Furlong headed north for a short distance, into the wind, and then cut back to the south.

The map showed them passing through a valley opening. Moncrief looked to his left, where a mountaintop was supposed to be. He could see nothing in the dark, but sensed the pelting of his face mask with water and snow droplets. He felt the continued flow of oxygen in his mask.

Somewhere out there, I just passed between two enormous peaks.

Suddenly, they broke through the bottom of the clouds. Moncrief started, pulling on his toggle that controlled the steering line, as he realized how close he was to the rock wall on his right.

Shit!

The ram chute slipped hard to the left and then settled down. Moncrief pulled on the opposite toggle, causing him to settle in like a glider, behind the red triangle.

The team said nothing as it continued to glide down to the valley’s floor. The gunny imagined the convoy of parachutes, led by the FireFly, trailing one another to the ground.

Moncrief looked to the east, down the valley, seeing the light of a vehicle off several miles. The map on the heads-up display showed a name of Durba Khel. A highway was marked, extending from the far right to the far left.

“Down!”

Moncrief felt the last-minute surge of panic as the ground suddenly started to rise up toward him. The altimeter was sinking fast. He pulled on the toggles, following the triangle that now seemed fixed just to the south.

“Come on, baby.” He didn’t need a broken leg or torn-up knee. Moncrief pulled hard on both toggles, bending his legs, feeling the wing of the parachute as it started to break.

“Come on, come on.”

He was lucky. The impact was on soft dirt and sand, perhaps the bottom of some creek bed. His boots hit, and as they did, he felt the rush of blood in his feet. Just as suddenly, the gunny felt his weight as he stood up. The parachute lost its wind and collapsed behind him.

“Hell, another one!” Kevin Moncrief counted every successful jump as another one.

Furlong was standing beside him, already out of the jumpsuit and dressed in the brown kurta and pakol. He had baggy, thick brown linen pants. The only part of the garb that stood out was his sandy-brown pair of Danner boots and an M4 rifle with a silencer on its barrel. It was wrapped with a brown camouflage tape to break up its black metallic outline.

The captain grabbed Moncrief’s parachute and helped gather it up in a tight ball as the gunny pulled off his suit and quickly changed into similar clothes. Moncrief quietly chambered a round in his .45-caliber pistol after tightening the silencer on its end. He carried it in a shoulder holster, which he covered with a cotton jacket, also brown, that he wore over his kurta. The gunny then went through the same process, chambering a round in the silenced M4.

“The FireFly is just beyond that outcrop of rocks.” Furlong pointed farther up the valley. As he spoke, the remaining members of the team passed by, silently checking in and then spreading out in a 360-degree pattern. They now spoke only in the hand signals, their private language, silent as they moved, like actors in a well-rehearsed play, each knowing his role.

“We will put your man’s tent there, just above the first rocks.” Furlong pointed to the base of the ridgeline due south of their position. “And then we will move well back up the ridgeline and into the mountains.”

The mention of the tent and “your man” brought Kevin Moncrief’s thoughts back to the reason why they were there. The FireFly had more than ammo and solar panels. It also had carried in a small, specially modified Hilleberg Atlas tent. Like a chameleon, the high-tech tent would match the surrounding shades of sand and rock, becoming effectively invisible. The FireFly also carried a cooler that Frix had iced down with several plasma bags loaded with antibiotics. The tent was also armed, per Will Parker’s instructions, with a Windrunner and an automatic pistol.

“If he makes it to the entrance of the valley, he should easily see the flash of the light.”

The tent would be next to a large rock. The rock would serve as a reference point.

“Did you see them coming in?” Furlong was whispering in Moncrief’s ear.

“No.”

Furlong pointed to the other side of the ridgeline. “Three trucks, parked up the other valley, near some mud huts.”

“So we guessed right?”

“I hope.”