by Young, Tom
“Hey, Grayson,” Blount said, “where’d you get that IFAK?”
“Found it under a chair just as we left. Sorry I didn’t see it when you were working on that Russian guy.”
“That’s all right. I don’t think it would have helped him anyway. I think that IFAK’s mine, though.”
“Sorry, Gunny. Here, let me give it back.” Grayson began to take the IFAK off his rig.
“No, keep it,” Blount said. “But look in it and see if you find any CAT tourniquets.”
Blount always carried his own extra tourniquets. He knew from bitter experience that if you got in a firefight or hit with an IED, you could never have too many.
Grayson unzipped the IFAK and looked inside. Poked through the contents.
“Yeah, Gunny. You got six.”
Grayson lifted a handful of the CATs, made of black webbing and Velcro, neatly folded and secured with rubber bands. Each included a plastic rod for use as a windlass to tighten the tourniquet. Each also bore a white tag marked TIME, for recording when the tourniquet was applied.
“Pass ’em out.”
Grayson held out a pair toward Blount.
“Nah,” Blount said. “Give ’em to everybody else. Six is enough for the three of you to put one on each arm. Y’all put ’em loose over your upper arms. If you get hit, you can tighten it right quick. Saves enough time to maybe save your life. We used to wear ’em like that on patrol in Iraq. If we hadn’t been wearing MOPP suits, I’d have made everybody put on CATs when we launched off the ship.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
Grayson handed tourniquets to Fender and Escarra. The two young Marines slipped the CATs over their arms and showed Escarra how to don his own. The Spanish Legionnaire looked a little puzzled at first.
“Yeah, I know,” Fender said. “Seems pretty hard-core. But combat’s hard-core, dude.”
“Gracias,” Escarra said.
“Anybody need more water?” Grayson asked. He held up the tube from his CamelBak.
“Yeah, I’ll take a sip,” Blount said. He put the tube in his mouth, took one long swallow. Fought the temptation to drink more.
As Blount handed the tube back to Grayson, Fender held up his hand.
“You hear that?” Fender asked.
Blount and the other men stopped walking. Listened. Sure enough, the low, continuous whoosh of a jet sounded in the distance. Blount shaded his eyes with his hand, saw nothing. Reached for his radio. The PRC-148 was a line-of-sight radio, and the line of sight here in the Sahara stretched pretty far. Even farther when talking to airplanes.
“Any station,” he called, “Havoc Two Bravo, Mayday. Any station, do you read?”
Blount’s idea of paradise took many forms. Maybe it would be something like his wedding day. Or perhaps the days his daughters were born. Or maybe that time during his childhood when he found a good fishing spot under a catalpa tree by a farm pond. The tree’s leaves practically dripped with catalpa caterpillars. Young Blount fished all day with unlimited bait right over his head, not a single care on his mind.
But at the moment, heaven came as an answer on the radio. In a French accent.
“Havoc Two Bravo, Dagger One-Seven. Read you Lima Charlie. Please advise.”
Blount grinned at the others. Pressed his transmit button.
“Havoc Two Bravo requests emergency extraction for four personnel.” Blount read off his coordinates from his DAGR.
“Dagger One-Seven copies all. Very good to hear from you, mon ami. Will relay to search-and-rescue.”
“Roger that,” Blount replied. “Be advised we will keep walking on a northerly heading. Need to get some distance from hostiles.” Blount released his talk switch, waited for a response.
“Understood. Maintain a listening watch on this frequency.”
“Yes, sir,” Blount said. “What type aircraft are you?”
“Dagger is a flight of two Mirages. Ah, stand by for a closer look.”
At first Blount wondered what the pilot meant. But as the jet noise grew louder, he realized the French aviator intended a flyover. Not tactically necessary, but one heck of a morale boost for isolated personnel. Blount and his comrades craned their necks, gazed into the azure expanse. At first he saw nothing. But then Grayson pointed to the northeast and said, “There.”
Two specks moved in unison across the sky, locked into formation as if connected by an iron bar. When they came nearer, both took on the pointed shape of fighter planes. One began to descend; the other stayed high.
The descending jet grew larger, banked toward Blount’s position. The engine noise rent the sky, filled the desert. In a steep bank angle, the Mirage’s triangular form become more apparent, gray exhaust and heat waves trailing from the tailpipe.
Blount raised his arm, began to wave. Swung his hand in wide arcs. Grayson, Fender, and Escarra waved, too. The aircraft dropped to what would have been treetop height if there had been any trees. The jet blast rose to deafening levels, and the Mirage streaked low overhead with the finesse of a flying ax blade. Blount noted the weapons mounted on pylons, and the roundel of the French air force. The jet rocked its wings.
“Heavy metal, baby,” Fender shouted as the Mirage pulled up into a nearly vertical climb.
“Whoo-hoo!” Grayson yelled. “Find them fuckers and blow ’em up.”
The jet burned its way back up to altitude. The men stood silently for a few minutes and watched the Mirage join up with its wingman. The airplanes turned back to the north.
“Okay, boys,” Blount said. “This is real good, but don’t let your guard down. Look at that dust storm back there.” Blount pointed behind him. The rust-colored mass on the horizon grew by the second. “That’s gon’ be on us pretty soon,” he continued. “I don’t know if a helicopter can fly in that or not. This day is far from over.”
Blount checked his DAGR, tried to lead his team north on as straight a heading as possible. What seemed a simple task turned out to be harder than he expected. Land navigation usually involved setting a course, noting a landmark on that course, then moving toward the landmark. You’d count paces along the way to figure distance. Once you reached the building, tree, ditch, or boulder, you’d take another reading, choose another landmark, and so on. Even in most desert environments you could find a bush or a gulley somewhere along your course.
But here, Blount found only ripples in the sand, each one indistinguishable from another. He’d lead the team a hundred paces and find himself ten degrees off his heading. Not necessarily a problem; he didn’t expect to travel far enough on foot to make a difference to a helicopter. But he didn’t want to get sloppy and start angling all over Creation. He glanced at the DAGR screen, noted the latest error.
“Let’s head a few degrees to the right,” Blount said.
“Should we change direction to make it harder for the bad guys to track us down?” Fender asked.
“I don’t think it would help,” Blount said. “If that dust storm covers our tracks, heading won’t matter. And if the storm doesn’t cover our tracks, they’ll find us easy no matter what we do.”
“I wonder if they’re coming for us already,” Grayson said.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Blount said.
Blount knew even if Kassam could not pick up a trail, the terrorist leader could still find them if he had enough four-wheel-drive vehicles. Just send the trucks out from the hell house in ever-widening circles. Run down tired escapees on foot in no time.
The men trudged through the sand for another half hour. Blount’s tactical vest began to chafe. The weight of the flintlock pistol in his pocket started to tug at uncomfortable angles. He shifted his rifle, rested the M16 in the crook of his elbow. Listened closely for the sound of a helo, but heard only breeze, footsteps, and the hiss of his radio. How long could it take to launch a chopper? If it didn’t get
here pretty soon, that storm might make a rescue impossible.
Now the reddish-brown haze covered half the sky. Blount felt the wind rising. Wisps of fine sand were already lifting from underfoot and ghosting across the ground.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, he’d seen dust storms take different forms. Sometimes gales flung grit like a sandblaster and made walking—let alone flying—impossible. Other times dust hung in the air like fog, lifted by distant winds long played out. You almost didn’t notice the dust except for the discolored sky. And when you cleaned your face with a baby wipe, the wipe came away muddy. Blount had heard pilots say landing in that stuff depended on how thick it was and how low it hung.
The storm’s approach made Blount impatient. He decided to try a radio call, maybe get an update.
“Dagger One-Seven, Havoc Two Bravo,” he transmitted. “You still up?”
No answer.
“Any station, Havoc Two Bravo.”
Still nothing.
With only static on the radio, Blount could imagine himself and his men marooned on a waterless planet, pleas for help bouncing through an ionosphere absent of any other human voice. Because he’d made contact with the Mirage, he knew someone would come for them sooner or later. But the vastness of the desert made his team seem utterly, completely alone.
Apparently the others were thinking the same thing.
“Sure would suck to get out of there and then just die of thirst out here,” Fender said. “Dry up and leave nothing but bones.”
“Why haven’t they got to us yet?” Grayson asked.
“Quit talking like that,” Blount ordered. “You’re on patrol. Act like it.” Blount realized he was speaking to himself as much as the others.
Something began to irritate his eyes. It reminded him of cutting onions or peppers, except his eyes didn’t tear as much. Blount blinked twice, forced his eyes to water. That brought a little relief. With his index finger, he wiped the notch of his right eye where the tear duct lay. The finger came away smudged with what looked like ground mustard. Almost imperceptibly, the sky had turned darker shades of that color in all directions.
“All right, boys,” Blount said. “The dust is about to get thicker. Y’all keep a sharp eye out while you can, ’cause I don’t know what we’ll have for visibility.”
“Aye, aye, Gunny,” Fender said.
Blount checked the DAGR again, pointed to correct the team’s heading a few degrees. Dust collected in the folds of the men’s clothing and gear; the horizon no longer existed. The ground melded with the sky as if the earth and its atmosphere were made of thicker or lighter measures of the same stuff. Swirls in the air seemed to grow solid, then dissipate. The men turned as they walked, checked behind them and on their flanks.
Fender pointed at something to the south.
“Do you see that?” he asked.
Blount pivoted to look. At first the dust in that direction appeared much the same. But after a moment he noticed a thickening along the ground.
He would have dismissed it if not for the way it moved. The wisps and swirls did not dissipate like all the others. A plume traversed the desert at a constant speed, going east to west. No gust of wind ever blew that steady.
“That’s a truck,” Blount said.
CHAPTER 32
Parson forced himself to concentrate on his job as he fought back a range of emotions. The news of Chartier’s contact with Blount elated him, of course. But now he worried whether the rescue choppers he’d just alerted could get there in time; they would launch at any minute. Parson glanced down at the VFR charts on the ops counter, noted their brown depictions of vast expanses of wasteland. The problem would come down to technology versus the weather and the enemy. Could the Pave Hawks pluck four men from the back side of nowhere before the storm or jihadists overtook them?
The next couple hours would tell. The forecast called for winds at ten knots gusting to thirty, starting during this hour. Blowing dust, visibility down to a mile or less.
The ops center door swung open and the four chopper pilots rushed inside. The pilots’ flying gear bulged with pouches for radios, flares, and other survival equipment. Their M9 pistols hung in holsters, along with extra magazines. Their enlisted personnel—the flight engineers, gunners, and pararescuemen—were already at the helicopters. He showed the pilots the weather forecast.
“Wish I had better news,” Parson said.
“We’ll push it hard as we can,” one of the pilots replied. “Worst case, we’ll just set her down in the desert if we have to.”
“Hope it doesn’t come to that,” Parson said.
“Yeah, me, too,” another pilot offered. “Let’s get this done.”
The pilots stuffed weather sheets into the lower leg pockets of their flight suits and rushed out the door. As they left, Parson heard a familiar sound, the engine start sequence of a C-130. In this case it was an HC-130 Combat King, specially modified to refuel the Pave Hawks in flight. If the helicopters needed extra gas to reach the survivors, they could join up with the Combat King on a predetermined refueling track.
He followed the pilots outside to see them take off. The air had already taken on a strange translucence, softening the edges of distant objects. The effect came as a result of dust lifted high from miles away, now drifting back down to earth. Just a foretaste of what was to come.
Saint-Ex had faced the same kind of weather, Parson knew, with much more primitive aircraft and less reliable forecasts. Parson recalled a description written by his new favorite author: . . . desert storms that turn the sky into a yellow furnace and wipe out hills, towns, and river-banks, drowning earth and sky in one great conflagration. Well, Saint-Ex, Parson thought, here we go again.
The crews climbed aboard the two waiting Pave Hawks. Beyond the choppers, the Combat King sat with propellers spinning and red strobes flashing like an all-capable mother ship. The Pave Hawks’ rotors began turning, at first languidly, then faster.
Above the noise of rotors and turboprops, Parson heard the whistling sound of jet engines throttled back. He looked up and saw a pair of Mirages on downwind. One entered the break, banked hard to the left, lowered its landing gear. The other extended downwind for several seconds, then turned onto the base leg just as the first jet touched down. A few moments later both fighters rolled along the taxiway, canopies lifted open on their actuators. Parson could see Chartier and Sniper in the lead aircraft, helmets turning side to side as they scanned for ground traffic, oxygen hoses extending from their masks.
Now that the missing men had been located, the mission changed from search to recovery. That meant the Mirages could taxi into parking and let the Pave Hawks and their support aircraft take over.
The helicopters’ main rotors came up to speed, spinning in blurred discs. The pulse and thump grew deeper as the blades changed pitch, and the choppers lifted off. The helos flew a few yards above the ground in a slightly nose-low attitude, then began to climb and turn to the south. At the same time, the HC-130 started taxiing toward the runway.
The movement of all these aircraft made it seem invincible forces had gathered themselves, that some inevitable reckoning would soon play out. But Parson knew all too well the frailty of the machines, the fallibility of the people inside them, and the unpredictability of fate.
By the time the HC-130 growled into the sky, visibility dropped further. Buildings on the far side of the airport grew indistinct, as if viewed through translucent glass stained the color of bourbon. Parson waved to Chartier as the Mirages taxied into parking. Then he went back inside to check the weather again and see if the data confirmed his suspicion. Sure enough, a new observation had popped up on his computer:
SPECI HLLM 231700Z 21015KT R29/1500D PO NSC 20/28 Q1020
The first part of the coded observation carried the identifier for Mitiga and a date/time stamp. It was a special observati
on because it differed significantly from the last one. The rest brought no good news: Winds from the southeast at fifteen knots. The runway visual range along Runway 29 had fallen to fifteen hundred meters and was still going down. No significant clouds, but that wasn’t the trouble; PO was the international code for dust or sand whirls. Temperature, 20 degrees Celsius. Dewpoint, 28 degrees. Altimeter setting, 1020 hectopascals.
The captain working the shift with Parson glanced over and said, “How’s it looking?”
Parson simplified the codes and data:
“Weather’s going to dog shit.”
“Great.”
Parson worried about visibility, of course, but his concerns extended beyond that. Unlike fog, dust could actually damage aircraft. Dust clogged filters, pitted rotors and propellers, scoured turbine blades. The C-130 flight manual even called for crews not to operate the air-conditioning system on the ground in a desert environment—despite the sweaty misery—to avoid sucking sand into the ducts. The book also said to keep flaps up until ready for takeoff so dust wouldn’t foul jackscrews and actuators.
But in flight, crews could do little to minimize damage except minimize time in the air. Normally, you’d just postpone missions until the storm passed. But not this time.
More radio traffic caught Parson’s attention. The traffic came on the ops frequency, with the call sign of Gold’s C-130 flight from Algeria.
“Kingfish, Reach Two Four X-ray.”
The captain at the ops desk lifted the hand mike and answered.
“Reach Two Four X-ray, Kingfish. Go ahead.”
“Kingfish, be advised we are fifteen minutes out. We have a patient on board who needs immediate medical attention. Gunshot wounds to the lower arm.”
Parson twisted in his seat toward the radio. Had something happened to Sophia? Damn, did she have to get shot on every mission?