The Hunters

by Tom Young

  “He’s the commander down there,” Gold said. “A lieutenant colonel now.”

  “Hell, why didn’t you say so?”

  Now all of Parson’s instincts said go. Despite the Somali president’s unusual request—and the downright recklessness of taking an antique plane into a combat zone—Parson thought mainly of a friend in need. The crew dog in him strained at the leash; this was what tactical airlift was all about. And it had been a long time since he’d landed on a dirt strip to help fellow troops. Earlier in his career, as a C-130 navigator, he’d flown with crews that landed on “unimproved” runways in Afghanistan. Unimproved sometimes meant no runway at all, just dirt and rocks.

  Parson turned to Chartier and said, “Frenchie, what do you think? Ongondo needs our help.”

  “Absolument, we help him,” Chartier said, “but what do we do about our VIP?”

  “Oh, I’m not a VIP,” Stewart said. “Think of me as an embedded reporter. Well, filmmaker. And I feel safer staying with you, Alain. And with Colonel Parson and Ms. Gold.”

  Then you don’t know our luck very well, Parson thought. He found it brave of her to want to go, and Parson respected courage—even if it was what fliers called “Kodak courage,” the urge to do something stupid for good photos. But you couldn’t let Kodak courage make your decisions.

  “I appreciate your confidence, Carolyn,” Parson said. “But for a combat mission like this, the protocol is minimum crew.” So you kill the least number of people if something goes wrong, Parson thought. Minimum crew didn’t include documentary-shooting VIP actresses. Minimum crew didn’t even include Gold.

  “Michael,” Gold said, “I’d rather not leave her anywhere in Somalia without security. If we do this, let’s do it together.”

  Gold really wanted this mission to go; Parson could see that clearly. Did she miss the action, too? Or could she just not turn her back on someone in need?

  “Sounds like you’re growing fangs, Sophia,” Parson said. An old Air Force expression. It meant you’d become so focused on the mission that you’d abandoned prudent caution. Officially discouraged—but not always looked down upon.

  “This isn’t necessarily a combat mission,” Gold said. “AMISOM should have cleared the area if they’re calling for resupply. Technically, the flight’s still a humanitarian mission.”

  And that made it legal under the WRA charter, Parson knew. WRA didn’t take orders from the Somali government—or any government. The president had made a request, not a directive. Parson would have to check with flight ops in London, but as pilot-in-command, he had final authority. He felt his own fangs growing a little sharper.

  “So are we all on board with this?” Parson asked Chartier and Geedi.

  “You bet,” Geedi said.

  “Oui.”

  “All right, then,” Parson said. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with the operations desk.” Stewart clapped like an excited schoolgirl. Parson turned to Gold. “Can I use your sat phone? I’ll call home to mom.”

  “Sure.”

  She gave that half smile he loved so well. Yep, Parson realized, she got her way again. And made it look like it was his idea.

  Gold dug the phone from her backpack, and Parson dialed the number for World Relief Airlift. At the ops desk in London, a kindred spirit answered the phone: a retired group captain who had flown C-130s in Britain’s Royal Air Force.

  “Hey, Simon,” Parson said. “I’m on the ramp in Mogadishu. You ain’t gonna believe what they want me to do.”

  “What’s that, mate?”

  Parson explained the situation.

  “Wow,” Simon said. “Are you game?”

  “I’ve landed bigger planes in smaller places.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem, mate, but if you think you can manage, I think it’s legal. Just make sure all the cargo is medical. Not one round of ammunition. You don’t have any ammunition, do you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Good. And you’re sure the old bird can handle it?”

  “Oh, yeah. She was built for this stuff.” So was I, Parson thought.

  Parson terminated the call, then took Gold’s phone into the airplane. He sat down in the pilot’s seat and opened a cockpit window to let in some breeze. Reached into his flight bag and pulled out a tablet computer. He kept most of his charts and flight publications digitally now. Saved a lot of weight and paper.

  When the tablet booted up, he opened a VFR chart that included southern Somalia. He noted the land elevations around Ras Kamboni. Close to sea level, naturally. No real obstacles—certainly no big buildings, not even any power lines or antennas. No hills and valleys that would require fancy gear like terrain-following radar. As tactical airlift went, this looked easy.

  Except for the presence of al-Shabaab.

  Parson leaned out the cockpit window and called, “Hey, Sophia. Did they give you Ongondo’s sat-phone number?”

  “I’ll bring it to you.”

  While he waited, Parson felt his pulse quicken. He hated like hell to hear the good guys were getting chewed up, but he felt excitement at a chance to help. The situation demanded his greatest strengths—and robbed him of his best tools. The prospect of an assault landing with a DC-3 made him feel like an expert modern sniper sent into battle with a Kentucky long rifle.

  Even his emergency equipment came from another era. A survival vest hung from the back of his pilot’s seat, but not one as well stocked as the Air Force would have issued. This vest Parson had put together himself. From an online supplier, he’d bought a sage-green mesh-type vest from the Vietnam War. It had arrived with empty pouches. He’d filled the pouches with odds and ends ordered from U.S. Cavalry and Brigade Quartermaster: camo face paint, a signal mirror, a lensatic compass, a pocket first-aid kit, water purification tablets, and other items. A handheld GPS receiver had set him back five hundred bucks—and he hoped never to use it. The unit was made for land navigation, which Parson would need only if shot down. He’d special-ordered topographical data for Somalia and loaded it into the GPS with an SD card.

  Did I really need all this stuff? Parson asked himself. Chartier had shown up with nothing except an overnight bag and a big gun. But Parson was an old navigator, and he had a navigator’s love of gadgets.

  Among all the other gear, almost as an afterthought, he’d picked up a bracelet made of braided parachute cord, which he wore on his right wrist. In a pinch, he could unbraid the cord for ten feet of emergency line.

  In addition to his first-aid kit, he’d also bought a more complete medical bag—a small rucksack filled with bandages, tourniquets, and other gear. He kept the medical ruck stowed behind the pilot’s seat.

  Parson couldn’t get his hands on a state-of-the-art military survival radio, so he’d substituted a handheld pilot’s nav/com radio ordered from Sporty’s Pilot Shop. If necessary, he’d use that radio to speak with other aircraft and perhaps to military units. In a lower leg pocket of his flight suit, he had another radio, as well—a little Midland civilian radio used by hikers and hunters for short-range communication. He’d given Chartier an identical radio in case something happened and they got separated on the ground.

  Parson’s survival vest also carried a folding knife and a multi-tool, and—as always—he wore his boot knife on his left boot, a finely crafted weapon made from Damascus steel. He’d put together all this gear in case an emergency forced him to the ground: “Dress to egress,” as they said in the Air Force.

  Gold entered the cockpit and sat down beside Parson in the copilot’s seat. She handed him a scrap of paper from a waterproof field notebook. The specially treated paper felt rougher than regular writing paper, and it had a number written on it.

  Parson had always felt he owed his friend Ongondo a case of beer, at a minimum. Looked like the debt might get paid with a case of blood plasma instead. Parson diale
d the number. The phone rang several times before anyone answered.

  “Ongondo here,” a voice finally said.

  Parson thought he heard gunfire in the background. Hadn’t the area been cleared? Didn’t matter. An old friend was on the phone, and Parson had made his decision.

  “Lieutenant Colonel,” Parson said, “this is Michael Parson. Remember me?”

  Ongondo paused. Then he said, “Yes, sir, I do. To what do I owe this honor?”

  “No ‘sirs’ today, buddy. I’m working as a civilian at the moment. I know you got your hands full, so I’ll be brief. I’m flying an old DC-3 for an NGO. I’m in Mogadishu, and they tell me you need a rush delivery.”

  “I certainly do, sir. I have many wounded.”

  “You got a landing zone set up?”

  “I do.” Ongondo read off the coordinates.

  “What you got for comms?”

  “Can you call me on UHF, frequency two-four-three?”

  “Negative. Civilian airplane. All I got is VHF.”

  Parson heard Ongondo put his hand over the receiver and confer with some of his men. When Ongondo came back on the line, he said, “We can talk to you on one-two-one-point-five. We have smoke flares, too. We’ll give you green for a good LZ, red if anything goes wrong. My call sign is Spear Alpha.”

  “That’ll work. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  “Bless you, Colonel.”

  “Forget it. I still owe you.”

  As Parson terminated the phone call, he hoped he wasn’t letting loyalty supersede his judgment. But he found it hard to say no to a friend in trouble. There were worse reasons to get yourself killed.

  14.

  Before takeoff, Parson tried to think of anything he could do to improve the odds of success. Ideally, an op like this would involve hours of mission planning. With people bleeding in the field, however, he didn’t have the luxury of time. He leaned out the cockpit window and called to Chartier and Geedi.

  “Hey, guys,” Parson said. “Can you see if you can scrounge some body armor for us? Maybe there’s some lying around these military hangars.”

  “You got it, sir,” Geedi said.

  “If you can’t find any in about fifteen minutes, don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay,” Chartier said.

  Gold took back her phone and called her contacts with the Somali government. When she told them the mission was a go, a flatbed truck rolled out to the DC-3. The truck carried Igloo coolers containing blood and blood plasma. Cardboard boxes and wooden cartons of bandages and dressings. QuikClot and morphine. Cases of bottled water. None of the cargo had been palletized or packaged for air shipment. Parson, Gold, and Stewart—along with the Somali truck driver—began loading the boxes directly onto the floor of the aircraft. For once, Stewart wasn’t taking photos; there was too much else to do.

  “Let’s put the heavier stuff toward the front of the cargo compartment,” Parson said. “Geedi will check the weight and balance when he gets back.”

  “What does that mean?” Stewart asked.

  Parson explained to the actress that you couldn’t put cargo just anywhere in an airplane. The load had to balance. He knew she wouldn’t understand tech talk like “leading edge of mean aerodynamic chord,” so he kept his explanation simple.

  “Imagine if you tape a lead weight to the tail of a toy glider,” Parson said. “If you throw that glider, it won’t go anywhere but down. But if you tape the weight to the right spot in the middle of the glider, it’ll fly just fine.”

  “I had no idea,” Stewart said as she put down a cooler of blood plasma. She took her smartphone from her pocket. “Hey, can you take a picture of me helping?” Passed the phone to him.

  Parson had to check himself to keep from rolling his eyes. Loading boxes hadn’t kept her busy for long, after all. He aimed the phone, eager to get the silly task out of the way. Without worrying about framing the shot, he tapped with his finger to snap the photo. Caught an image of Carolyn Stewart standing amid the medical supplies, untied red hair spilling over the shoulders of her safari jacket. A little blurry. Stewart stood motionless, apparently expecting Parson to take more pictures, but he ignored her. Passed the camera back to her. Stewart helped load a few more boxes, then took video of Parson and Gold at work.

  On Parson’s last trip down the steps to load cargo, he saw Chartier and Geedi return with body armor. Geedi carried two sets, and Chartier had three. Not the newer lightweight flak jackets the Air Force issued, but the Ranger Body Armor vests from the 1990s. With the ceramic plates installed, those things weighed about twenty-five pounds. Not very comfortable, especially in this climate, but a hell of a lot better than nothing.

  “Excellent,” Parson said. “Who gave you those?”

  “Uh, we found them at the back of a hangar,” Geedi said. “We couldn’t find anybody to ask, so we just sort of liberated them.”

  Parson chuckled. Too bad to borrow without permission, but he’d bring back the vests in a matter of hours. “That’ll work,” he said. “Hey, we just put all the cargo on board. We tried not to dork up your weight and balance too bad.”

  “I’ll check it and strap everything down, sir.”

  “Good man.”

  Chartier filed a new flight plan, and twenty minutes later Parson eased back on the yoke to lift the DC-3 into a bright East African sky. Below, combers rolled in from the ocean and sprayed white spume across rocks and coral. Parson intended to follow the coastline down to Ras Kamboni on a VFR flight plan. No established IFR airway could take him to his destination; airways went to real airports. Gold sat in the cargo compartment. Stewart stood behind Geedi’s jump seat, wearing a headset and peering outside through her Dior sunglasses.

  “A little more than you bargained for?” Parson asked her on interphone.

  “Oh, this is terrific,” the actress said.

  Brave or stupid, one or the other, Parson thought. Or both. At least she didn’t mind a little manual labor when the airplane needed loading.

  Once Parson leveled the plane at altitude and put it on autopilot, he considered how he could graft his old combat procedures onto this weird, half-civilian, half-military mission. As he neared Ras Kamboni, he’d have everybody put on body armor, just as if he were running a combat entry checklist. He’d stay high until he flew over the landing zone, and then he’d do a random steep approach: put down the gear and flaps, chop the power, and spiral down over the LZ. That would keep the airplane over a supposedly secure area during descent.

  Just like dropping a C-130 into Baghdad or Kandahar. Except a C-130 would have armor, a missile warning system, and defensive countermeasures. Parson had none of that now. Just a defenseless piston-driven airplane full of highly explosive aviation gasoline, avgas, instead of relatively stable jet fuel.

  The terrain scrolling beneath the aircraft gave little indication of renewed combat. Parson knew that could be deceptive. Sometimes battles on the ground made themselves obvious: smoke rising, fires raging, tracers flashing. At other times, battles hid themselves—at least from aviators. You could glide down final approach thinking everybody on the ground was singing “Kumbaya,” then get out of the airplane and find bullet holes in the tail.

  Sparse traffic moved along a coastal highway. The few cars and trucks looked fairly normal. In addition, two military personnel carriers, probably belonging to AMISOM, sped south. But that could happen on any day in Somalia.

  About a hundred miles from Ras Kamboni, Parson decided to run his makeshift combat entry checks, such as they were. He asked Chartier to switch the fuel selectors from the aux tank to the mains. That meant fuel flowing through shorter plumbing, with less chance of gasoline meeting a high-velocity round. He also switched off the external lights, mainly out of habit from flying night missions in war zones. He knew bad guys couldn’t miss a shiny DC-3 flying overhead in daytime,
lights on or off. Finally, he told everyone to put on their body armor.

  Parson unbuckled his harness, unzipped his flight suit, and removed the Beretta and its bellyband holster. He zipped the suit up again, hoisted his body armor, and donned it. Closed the fasteners on the front of the armor and put on his survival vest over it. Removed the Beretta from the bellyband and secured it in the holster sewn into the survival vest. Now anyone could see he was armed, but he didn’t care.

  From the corner of his eye, Parson saw Gold in the cargo compartment, helping Stewart don her vest. Gold glanced toward the cockpit, frowned, and said on interphone, “Michael, we’re not supposed to be armed.”

  “We’re not supposed to be doing tactical approaches into hostile fire zones, either,” Parson said. He smiled at Gold and raised his eyebrows, just to take the edge off his retort.

  Parson figured she couldn’t really be surprised to see him with a gun. If he bent the rules under military authority, he sure wouldn’t hesitate to break them as a civilian. What would World Relief Airlift do about it? Fire him from a job that paid nothing? Send him to Somalia?

  After twenty more minutes of flying, Parson began to make out the anvil-shaped peninsula of Ras Kamboni. From the airplane’s GPS moving map display, he could see that Ongondo had given him coordinates not for the peninsula itself but for a landing zone a mile or two inland. That suited Parson. The LZ lay well outside the town, in open country.

  “Hey, Frenchie,” Parson said. “Let’s give ’em a call and see if their invitation still stands. You got the comm info I gave you?”

  Chartier nodded and dialed in 121.5, the emergency frequency, on the VHF radio. Pressed his transmit switch and said, “Spear Alpha, World Relief Eight-Niner inbound your position.” He checked the GPS screen. “We’re about fifteen minutes out.”

  Ongondo answered immediately. “World Relief, Spear Alpha,” he said. “Have you five by five. The LZ is cold. We will pop smoke when we have you in sight.”