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"Flying time is 70 minutes, Hennessy. They send you that position yet?"
Brooks had to shout into his mic over the maxed-out engines and the whirling rotor blades just above their heads.
The four helicopters clattered east over the desert in the afternoon sun. Each aircraft was packed with a well-drilled intervention team: scouts, trackers, snipers, medical squad, technicians, forty soldiers all told.
Their briefing had been hasty but they had trained for this for two years, only none of them was too sure what to expect in this particular case. Lt. Colonel Brooks hoped it would be at least something worthwhile, and not a false alarm.
"Here it is, sir," hollered Hennessey, passing a clipboard over his shoulder.
It showed a three-sided search area about a mile on each side, over some deep canyons a couple miles from the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis.
Brooks handed the clipboard up to his copilot.
"Gonna be a bitch, Gomez," he hollered.
"Sure is," the copilot nodded, squinting at the map. "Be lucky to find doodly-squat before dark."
The choppers roared on, following Interstate 10 East.
