by Young, Tom
Parson told Cantrell what he was about to do, that he wouldn’t wander far. He saw that the forest continued along the ridgetop, and because of the trees it didn’t take him long to lose sight of the camp. Now Parson felt even more exposed when he considered he no longer wore a flak vest.
The ridgeline came to an abrupt end and the ground sloped downhill sharply. The evergreens gave way to scrubby brush enveloped in snow, so that in the distance the vegetation appeared only as white lumps.
Parson kneeled under the last tree on the ridge, looked down into the ravine. No drop zone here. Across the ravine, another ridge sloped so sharply you could almost call it a cliff. Parson figured a creek must flow through the bottom. It would have taken fast-moving water to cut such a gap. Not that he saw any water. Though the ridge was in the early, dark stages of dawn, full night remained down in the ravine. A primitive man standing here, Parson thought, might have imagined this as some portal to Hades, the way darkness ponded like floodwater. True daylight would not come to this place until noon.
He emerged from the tree line and walked downhill to the nearest mound in the snow. Up close, the bush looked a lot like the mesquite in the southwest United States. He stopped beside it for what little cover it provided, and surveyed his surroundings. Perfect quiet, no tracks. Yet he felt he was being watched. From where, he could not say. Just your nerves, he told himself. If the Taliban saw you out here, you’d know it. Just keep it together a little longer.
Irregular drifts and knolls appeared on the incline below him like a rock-strewn moonscape blanketed by snow. As Parson advanced, he found that some were indeed boulders instead of brush. He leaned beside one skirted by wiry grass gone brown with winter.
Parson still felt eyes on him. He couldn’t shake that feeling no matter how far he looked without seeing anyone. As he moved forward toward the next rock, his boots sank deeper into the snow with each step downhill. Old snow, he realized. This ravine gets so little direct light, there’s not much melting. I’m stepping through snow dropped in this blizzard and the one before that, Parson thought, and maybe the one before that. Some drifts came up to his hips, making quick movement impossible.
In the dim light, he discerned the black ribbon of the stream at the bottom of the cut, a faint gurgling rising from the water. Across the creek he saw the same landscape through which he’d just descended: icy rocks the size of Humvees, brush swaddled in white, trees up above.
Parson believed he saw movement behind one of the boulders, and he froze. Now you’ve done it, he thought. Some raghead is going to cap your ass, and the rest of the team will have to abandon their mission to find you. Then there’s no hope for Gold.
He expected to see the end of a rifle barrel, perhaps the distinctive post of an AK-47’s front sight. Nothing. But there it was again. Not black metal. A bit of clothing, perhaps. Then it flicked above the rock again, a swatch of dirty yellow fur.
A paw of the same color appeared from behind the base of the rock. Parson realized he’d seen the tip of some animal’s tail. Then the paws appeared on top of the boulder, and the creature raised its head to stare at Parson with orange eyes the size of half dollars.
A snow leopard.
For an instant, Parson forgot the war and marveled at the big cat, its mouth parted slightly, pink tongue between white teeth. Its tail, mottled with black spots and nearly as long as its body, twitched left and right as if the animal were devising a plan. Perhaps trying to decide whether Parson was prey.
He reached down and unclipped his boot knife, just in case. He’d fight back if he had to.
The leopard made a chuffing sound and glided onto the boulder. A powdering of snow dusted its whiskers and back. Then the animal ascended toward the trees, its movements like butterscotch flowing among the rocks.
So I’m a little too big for a snack, thought Parson. He would have enjoyed seeing the leopard if he didn’t have so much on his mind. Something good in this god-awful place. Parson felt for the cat, a hunter too often hunted.
When the cat melted away, Parson stepped across the cascading water, found it only a few inches deep. In the riffles, overlapping layers of ice curled around smooth stones like braided steel. He followed the animal’s tracks uphill, stopped to admire its paw prints atop the rock where it had stood. The leopard had disappeared into a copse of birches, and Parson kneeled and waited. He didn’t want to crowd the cat, but he did want to see what kind of terrain lay beyond that copse. The mist made it hard to tell, but Parson thought the ridge flattened into a plateau. If it ran like that for long enough, he could put the airdrop there. Not a good place to drop paratroopers anywhere near here. Even in the level spots, these rocks would break legs and ankles. But it might do for one pallet of supplies.
Parson watched and listened for a few minutes, then rose and brushed powder from the knees of his flight suit. He climbed slowly, and it took him maybe twenty minutes to reach the stand of birch trees. When he got next to them, their white bark looked like peeling parchment etched with frost script. The leopard had vanished as if dissolved. Parson could not even find its tracks. But he did find level ground that stretched several hundred yards before yielding to the next rise. No trees, just an open field of undulating drifts, granules so fine and dry that Parson thought of walking through sifted flour.
He pulled his GPS receiver from his coat pocket and turned it on. His flight glove now showed so much wear that the leather thumb pad had pulled away from the cloth. When the receiver initialized and displayed coordinates for present position, Parson did not need to remove his glove to press STORE with a bare thumb.
Good a spot as any, he decided. The navigator who couldn’t hit this field with a precision rig probably couldn’t hit Afghanistan. If this weren’t an emergency and I had time to write a proper mission plan, Parson thought, I’d name the drop zone DZ Leopard. Parson felt like himself for the first time since the shootdown. He was out of place among these Special Forces snake-eaters; his job made him more technician than tactician. But he knew special operators fought smart as well as hard, and they’d welcome any know-how he could provide.
When Parson returned to the camp, he found Cantrell rolling the satphone battery between his bare hands. Najib sat writing on a notepad.
“Find a good place?” Cantrell asked.
“It’ll work,” Parson said. He gave Cantrell the drop zone’s coordinates. Cantrell snapped the battery into the satphone and handed the phone to Parson.
Najib gave Parson the notepad. Parson paused, took the pad. He thought of Marwan, writing a war crimes confession for him.
“We are making a list of things we need,” Najib said. “Can you think of anything else?”
Parson skimmed the list. MREs, water, an M-4 carbine and ammo. Night-vision goggles, snow camo parkas. Pistol and some rounds. Winter sleeping bags. Medical kit. A Hook-112 radio and several kinds of batteries.
“That’s good,” Parson said, “but I’m also going to ask for a weapon that will reach out and touch someone.”
“All right,” Cantrell said. “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets.”
“Exactly,” Parson said. He wanted to hurt someone.
Parson turned on the satphone and punched in the number for the Air Operations Center.
“Bagram AOC,” answered a duty officer.
“This is Major Michael Parson. Flash Two-Four Charlie. Do you understand?”
“Parson?” the officer said. “Yes! Thank God. Where are you?”
“This phone is going to die any minute. Get a pen and paper and take notes. You ready?”
“Go.”
“I’m with a Special Forces ODA. I no longer have my cargo and passenger Gold, but I believe they are still alive. I have a priority Alpha request. Emergency airdrop. The zone’s a little narrow, and you’re going to need a Firefly rig.”
Parson gave the coordinates for his DZ Leopard, and he read the list of supplies.
“I also
need a rifle,” he said. “An M-40 or an M-25 maybe. Anything with a scope. But don’t delay the drop for any one item.”
“Got it,” the duty officer said. “There are some serious-looking civilians here who say to give you whatever you need.”
“We’ve lost some of our comm gear,” Parson said, “and what we do have is low on batteries. I may not be able to give drop clearance when the aircraft gets overhead. They’re just going to have to drop anyway. When can we expect it?”
Parson heard discussion in the AOC, then the duty officer came back and said, “Twenty-four hours.”
“Can you do it sooner?” Parson asked. A beeping interrupted him. Parson took the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. A flashing message read: LOW BATT.
CHAPTER TEN
Parson huddled in a snowdrift at the drop zone, burrowed in for concealment and a little warmth. Najib and Cantrell lay nearby, also hidden. Beyond them, some of the Special Forces troops ringed the DZ for security. Parson did not see any of them, but he felt better knowing they were there.
He listened for the sound of an airplane, but he heard only the thump of his pulse. That, and a faint electronic hiss from the earpiece in his left ear. Cantrell had loaned him an MBITR, and Parson kept it tuned to 243.0. He knew no other frequency to monitor, because the satphone had died before he could discuss details with the Air Operations Center. The emergency channel would have to do, and he hoped the flight crew would make the same guess. And he hoped they’d received the word to drop without clearance, because Parson thought the radio’s hiss was growing fainter as its battery drained.
Assuming there was a flight crew and a plane at all. The drop was late. Every passing minute made it seem more likely this operation was a fool’s errand. Too much had to go right.
Parson thought about an old joke he’d heard about complicated missions: There’s always one more idiot than you planned for. Sure as hell wasn’t funny now. And without resupply, Parson thought, Gold is dead.
He saw Cantrell whisper into his own radio, but Parson couldn’t hear it. He knew Cantrell transmitted on a different frequency, remaining in touch with his men out on the perimeter. Maybe this was normal ops for these snake-eaters. On the back side of the world, out of food and almost beyond the reach of command.
Parson heard what sounded like warble in the static from the radio. He turned up the volume and heard nothing. Probably just interference, Parson thought, sunspots or atmospheric disturbances or bleedthrough from Radio Uzbekistan. Just in case, he turned the volume up to the stop. He barely made out the words.
“Flash Two-Four Charlie, Reach Six-Eight-Three.”
Parson pressed the talk button so hard the radio shook. “Reach Six-Eight-Three,” he called, “Flash Two-Four Charlie. You are cleared to drop. Winds light and variable at the surface.”
More hiss. Then: “Flash Two-Four Charlie, Reach Six-Eight-Three. Do you read?”
Parson answered again, heard nothing back. He called once more. Nothing.
He gripped a fistful of snow. The tools he needed to do this thing, to recover Sergeant Gold, to carry out his aircraft commander’s last order, were up there somewhere. Without them, he saw little chance of survival, let alone success.
He heard the faint thrum of turboprops. Way up. Cantrell looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“They sound high,” Cantrell whispered.
The engine noise faded to silence. Cantrell frowned.
“Are they gone?” he asked.
Parson placed his index finger to his lips and strained to listen. Overhead, he heard the shushing ripple of nylon in the wind.
“No,” Parson said.
A metal cylinder like a coffee can with an antenna on one end dropped from the clouds, trailing a small drag chute. Despite the chute, the object punched through the snow and hit the ground hard enough for Parson to hear the impact.
“What is that device?” Najib whispered.
“Windsonde,” Parson said. He told Najib how it transmitted wind data as it fell through the column of air. The data would be fed to the aircraft as the navigator set up a release point.
That navigator better be as good as me, Parson thought.
The sky grew silent again. Parson heard only a bird’s single chirp. Najib and Cantrell looked at him. He circled his thumb and forefinger in an “okay” sign. Just wait, he thought. Give them time to start their run-in. Hope they got wind modeling data for these mountains.
The airplane noise returned. Faint. Growing louder. Parson pursed his lips and nodded, imagined himself on board. Preslowdown checks, complete, navigator. Slowdown, slowdown now. Five, four, three, two, one. Green light.
The engine thrum began fading. Now or not at all, then.
More nylon ripple, along with clicks and whirs. Parson knew that meant inertial reels pulling on parachute risers, making minute adjustments in course.
The chute appeared from the murk overhead as if the clouds themselves had formed it. Beneath the billowing rectangle of cloth, a pallet hung from the risers, several boxes covered in cargo netting.
Parson heard the whump when the load hit the ground. The chute collapsed and settled like a blanket.
“It’s down,” Cantrell radioed. “Hold your positions.” Cantrell looked over the barrel of his rifle.
They waited to see if the airdrop had drawn the attention of bad guys. That wasn’t likely. The clouds hung so low that the chute would have been visible for only three or four seconds before it landed.
Cantrell gave Parson a thumbs-up. Parson, Najib, and Cantrell trotted over to the pallet. Parson scanned the tree line even though he knew the troops had the perimeter. For a change, he was glad the weather sucked. If it can’t be good enough for a chopper landing, he thought, let it be bad enough to cover us while we break down this pallet.
Parson gathered up the folds of the parachute and placed the chute beside the load. He tried to detach the cargo netting. His hands were so cold he fumbled with the clips, so he gave up on working the hardware. Instead, he drew his boot knife and cut away the netting.
“Let’s get this stuff into the trees,” Parson said.
The supplies had come in black Pelican cases, except the ammunition in wooden crates and food in cardboard cartons. With his good hand, Parson took the handle of a long box—a rifle, he hoped. He picked up another case with his right hand, but that hurt too much and he put it back down. He carried the long box into the woods. Najib and Cantrell brought the rest.
Parson opened the case. On the black foam padding inside, he found an M-40 rifle with a Schmidt & Bender scope. Noise suppressor at the end of the barrel. The weapon, a military version of the Remington 700, smelled of gun oil. Parson lifted the rifle and felt its familiar heft. He had once owned a 700, though not of this caliber. His own Remington chambered for .243 had taken its share of deer. But for the work ahead of him, he was glad for the heavier 7.62-millimeter. The case also contained a handwritten note: This rifle is zeroed to five hundred yards. USMC Precision Weapons Section. Semper Fi.
All right, thought Parson. Somebody has my back. Actually, a lot of people do for this drop to have happened.
The load included a laser range-finder, night-vision goggles, and a Hook-112 survival radio. Batteries for everything. Two parkas in winter camo. Snowshoes. Not the traditional type with wooden frames and rawhide decking, but modern ones of stainless steel and Nytex.
“You must have been good this year,” Cantrell said.
“Can’t believe they pulled this together so fast,” Parson said.
The snow fell in tiny motes, settled like sediment. Parson put some of the gear in his pack. He and Cantrell handed out food, ammunition, and batteries to the American and ANA soldiers. Parson placed the radio in an empty pocket of his survival vest. He buckled on a set of snowshoes and gave the other pairs to the troops. Then he took off his filthy desert parka and donned a snow camo coat. He laced a cold-weather sleeping bag to his pack.
P
arson opened another box and found a handgun. Not the usual Air Force nine-millimeter, but a .45 Colt. The model 1911 issued to his father and about three generations of GIs. The weapon felt substantial in his hand, solid as a bar of lead.
He picked up a magazine. Cartridges nearly the size of the end joint of his thumb. He placed the magazine into the Colt’s grip, slammed it home with the heel of his good hand. Racked the slide to chamber a round. That hurt and felt good at the same time. Parson put the sidearm in the empty holster on his survival vest, and he picked up the rifle by the sling. With one fluid motion, he let the M-40 ride over his arm to rest across his shoulders.
“All right,” Parson said. “Let’s go get her.”
Najib led the team into some evergreens at the far end of the drop zone. The trees were too sparse to provide much cover. Soon they gave way to scrub and boulders, all with a white coating. Mist floated through the clearing, and through its translucence Parson saw an incline close to vertical.
“Have you the strength for a climb?” Najib whispered.
“Yeah,” Parson said. Don’t ask me if I feel like it, he thought. For God’s sake let’s keep moving. Will we get there one minute after they cut her head off?
“There is a village on the opposite slope,” Najib said. “I know it from childhood. Men on horseback would have approached it through the far valley.”
“So you have us coming from a different direction,” Parson said.
“Precisely,” Najib said. “This Marwan is a cobra. Cold-blooded and deadly. We must become shrewd like the mongoose.”
Parson liked the mongoose comparison. A scrappy creature, all teeth and claws. Permanently pissed off. Mad enough to ignore fangs and venom. Let’s get our mongoose asses up this mountain, thought Parson.
The morphine had worn off and his wrist hurt like hell, but it felt good to be moving with some kind of plan. The slope offered no cover at all, just low brush and big rocks. Stalking across such exposed terrain went against everything Parson had learned in survival school. But now he wasn’t just evading; he was pursuing. And for the moment, the mist provided what the landscape did not. He guessed the visibility at a matter of yards.