16

Col. Zachary Garrett stepped carefully from the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Through night vision goggles and satellite assistance, they had found the crashed Sherpa airplane.

Matt and Kristyana remained on the helicopter as it lifted away, the Black Hawk’s rotors blowing rocks and dust onto Zachary as he knelt in a small crag and protectively closed his eyes. Once the noisy machine merged with the night, Zachary pulled open a small assault pack and plucked out an infrared beacon. He slipped his night vision goggles on and conducted an operations check, noting that the beacon flashed every three seconds or so. Perfect.

He walked carefully about fifty meters from his touchdown point and snapped the lightweight signaling device onto a small sage bush. The piece of plastic didn’t weigh more than a couple of ounces, the battery being the heaviest component. He flipped the on switch and saw it was flashing. Lifting his goggles away from his eyes, he saw nothing. Only someone wearing night vision equipment could detect the infrared pulse.

Returning to the uneven terrain near the stream and the crash site, he scanned through an open gap in the trees. He could make out the fuselage of the aircraft, but that was all. There was no activity near the crash site. Perhaps everyone had survived.

He heard the slightest fluttering of silk and then the soft footfall of two paratroopers landing fifty meters from him and close to the guiding beacon, a paratrooper’s lighthouse. Through his goggles, he watched as Van Dreeves and Hobart, his two most trusted operatives, pulled in their parachutes while simultaneously charging their weapons and adjusting their night vision goggles.

Zachary sent them one infrared blip from his goggles. Hobart or Van Dreeves returned his near recognition signal with two quick infrared bursts. Soon they linked up at Zachary’s position.

“Any word?” Hobart asked.

“Plane’s over there. It crashed. No sign of life.”

They moved quietly through the tall grass and followed the low ground to the streambed. Wading across the pooling water, they soon were stepping up the small bank where the Sherpa had come to rest.

With Zachary in the lead, Hobart and Van Dreeves fanned out to both sides, looking to the periphery and rear for any danger. As they approached the airplane, Zachary felt his heart pounding in his chest, driven by the fear that he might find his daughter dead in the wreckage.

Through his night vision goggles, he could see no signs of life anywhere. Not even a stray predator looking for carrion. That was a good sign, as dead bodies would have attracted scavengers. The tall African acacia trees on either side of the stream bowed slightly with the breeze as he reached toward the open door of the fuselage. The silver moon cast a weak pallor upon the scene as if it were a secondary stage and the main event was occurring elsewhere.

As the three operators approached the aircraft, they stopped. Hobart and Van Dreeves were silent, understanding that the colonel was contemplating the potential loss of his daughter.

“Okay,” Zachary said. “Let’s check this out.”

Hobart entered the port side of the cargo compartment while Van Dreeves moved carefully to the starboard side. Zach entered through the passenger seat in the cockpit.

“Nothing in the cargo hold,” Van Dreeves called out.

“This side, either,” Hobart said.

“Cockpit’s clear, but there’s a lot of blood on the pilot’s side. Any blood back there?”

“Got some in the right rear,” Van Dreeves said. “Seems pooled in one place.”

Zachary stepped down from the cockpit and joined Van Dreeves, who was shining a white lens flashlight on a two-foot-square section of the flooring. The circle of light also made evident some scattered gauze and strips of cloth.

“Someone was doing first aid,” Zachary said.

“Check this shit out,” Hobart remarked. He had joined his two teammates on the starboard side. They were violating their own rules in that no one was securing the team, but Zach felt the fight was elsewhere, and so they were all looking inward toward the aircraft.

Zachary lifted his head when he heard a branch break on the far side of the stream.

“What you got, Hobes?” Zach asked.

“Watch.” Hobart shined his white lens flashlight along the exterior of the rear of the fuselage. “Look inside.”

“I’ll be damned. They were shot down,” Zach said, noticing the white rays of light poking through the skin of the aircraft like lasers.

“Roger that.”

“Van Dreeves, you and Hobes go secure about ten meters out in either direction. I’ll finish the site exploitation. You guys tell me which way you think they went, because either someone came and got them or they walked out on their own,” Zach said.

Both men moved as Zach used his flashlight to more closely inspect the fuselage. He found some picked-over ammunition and a couple of broken AK-47s. He wasn’t sure what to make of that other than the pilot may have been running guns on the side and the crash had opened the container. He leaned through the space between the two cockpit seats and saw beneath the oval of light large black stains that suggested to him that someone had died, most likely the pilot. Certain that Amanda had not been flying the plane, his hope gained traction.

Finding nothing more of use, he jumped out of the port side, found Hobart on one knee, and said, “What do you think?”

“Lots of footprints going this way,” Hobart said, pointing to the east. “And a dead African dude under these rocks here.”

Zach looked at the shallow grave and small pile of rocks.

“Amanda would have had him buried. It looked to me on the plane as if the pilot bought it, so this makes sense. Van Dreeves, come on over.” He pressed a detent button on his sleeve that activated the small microphone in his ear.

“Roger,” Van Dreeves replied.

As Van Dreeves joined them, Zach was pulling out his compass and Global Positioning System. He stood and said to his men, “We’ll follow the tracks as far as we can and then take a general azimuth based upon axis of travel. We have to assume they were moving with a purpose, a destination, perhaps rally point two if they got oriented.”

“Maybe,” Hobart said doubtfully. “Plane crash. Everyone shook up. Don’t know, man.”

“Remember the text I sent you before you jumped in? Two African boys were with them. I’m guessing the boys know their way around.”

All three of the combat veterans looked at the cliff above them when they heard the motors of trucks driving. Spotlights crisscrossed in search of something, perhaps them.

Then a machine gun opened fire.