by Cap Daniels
Skipper called at exactly one hour. “There’s an abandoned airfield just north of the town of Jelgava. Do you know where that is?”
“I don’t even know what country that’s in,” I said.
I asked Clark, “Have you ever heard of Jelgava?”
He shook his head, but Pierre spoke up. “Certainly. I know Jelgava. It is just southwest of Riga.”
“Okay, Pierre knows where it is,” I said into the handset.
“Be there at sunrise, and make sure there’s nothing on the runway that would ruin the day for the crew of a cargo plane.”
“Outstanding,” I said. “How about the trigger-pullers and equipment?”
Ginger came on the line. “You can handpick your squad. Clark probably knows some of them. They’re all Brinkwater Security guys, and they’re just itching to help.”
“I’m pretty sure I love you, Ginger.”
“Don’t say that. There’s a tall blonde here who’d kill me in my sleep if she heard you professing your undying love to me.”
“Come on, Ginger. I’m not sure I can put much stock in you calling someone tall. Everybody’s tall compared to you.”
“Oh, is that how it is? Now we’re doing little people jokes?”
“No, not at all. I’m just celebrating the fact that you’re not short. You’re fun-sized.”
“I’ll show you fun-sized. You just wait.”
“Okay, Ginger. I’m sorry. Tell that tall, beautiful woman I love her and I’ll be home in a few days.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that coming-home-in-a-few-days business. Your travel agent may not be tall enough to see over the keyboard to book your flight.”
I hung up and turned to Pierre. “So, where’s this Jelgava?”
“It’s about seventy-five miles south of here. We used that airfield for training when I was a legionnaire.”
“Can you get us there before daybreak in the chopper?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
I didn’t speak French, but I knew what a yes sounded like.
* * *
That night, we slept as well as possible with one’s blood congealing from the cold. An hour before daylight, we lifted off from the Ruhnu airport, in Pierre’s new helicopter, and headed out over the Gulf of Riga.
The abandoned airfield came into sight just as the sun was starting to brighten the eastern horizon. There was no question the site had once been a serious airport. Norikova was back in her chains for safekeeping, but we allowed her to change from her Israeli blues into the cold-weather gear Ginger and Skipper provided. When I cuffed her, her skin felt hot to the touch. Pierre may have been right about her condition.
A slow hover taxi down the runway revealed nothing more than snow and dead foliage. We believed a cargo plane could’ve easily made use of the formerly grand runway.
We landed at the upwind end of the airfield, well clear of the runway, and watched for Brinkwater’s finest to descend from the heavens. The long shadows on the pearly white snow shortened as the sun rose higher into the morning sky, and I questioned whether anyone was actually coming.
Clark put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. They may be late, but they’ll be here.”
Norikova’s chains rattled ever-so-slightly, and despite her cold-weather gear, she was shivering on the seat of the helicopter.
Before I realized the words had come out of my mouth, I said, “Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “No. I am badly sick. I have terrible fever.”
She’s playing a game with you, Chase. Don’t get sucked in. She’ll make you regret it.
That’s what I told myself, but as usual, I didn’t listen. I pulled off my glove. “If you move, I’ll end your suffering right here, even if I have to clean up the blood. Do you understand?”
She nodded, and I placed the back of my hand against her forehead. She wasn’t pretending.
“If I feed you, will you eat?”
She nodded.
“If I give you antibiotics, will you take them?”
Again, a nod.
I rearranged the chains so she could reach her mouth and handed her a canteen of water and a horse-pill antibiotic. She swallowed the pill with a drink of water and motioned the canteen back toward me.
“Keep it,” I said. “You’ll need it.” I handed her crackers with peanut butter smeared on top that I’d scavenged from an MRE.
“Spasibo. I am sorry. I mean to say thank you.”
“Just don’t die,” I said, trying to sound harsher than I felt.
“Tallyho!” Clark yelled, and I turned to see a C-130 Hercules rolling out on final approach for the snow-covered runway. The silhouette of the airplane against the morning sun was a welcome sight.
A billowing cloud of snow churned up around the plane as it roared down the runway and came to a stop abeam our position. The rear opened, and a pair of mercenaries in full battle rattle with M-4s strapped across their chests strolled down the ramp.
“Well, I’ll be damned if it ain’t Baby Face Johnson,” said an enormous man as he approached.
Clark grinned and embraced the giant. “Look at you, all dressed up like a real soldier. It’s good to see you, Mongo.”
Clark turned to me. “Chase, meet Marvin Mongo Malloy. This dude and I jumped into Panama together the first time I went down there.”
I stuck out my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mongo.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Chase. They told us you had a prisoner. Where is he?”
I pointed toward the chopper. “She is chained to the back seat of the four-twelve over there.”
“She?”
“Yeah, she. And she’s a lot more dangerous than most he’s I know. She’s an SVR captain.”
“Holy shit, man. They didn’t tell us that.” He glanced toward the helicopter. “Well, I guess it don’t matter much. Let’s get her onboard.”
I unchained Norikova from the helicopter and watched the two commandos march her up the ramp and chain her to a seat near the front of the plane.
I shook Pierre’s hand and thanked him for his work.
“I saw what you did back there,” he said. “Be careful, young Chase. That soft heart of yours makes a big target.”
With that, he climbed aboard his helicopter and disappeared over the treetops.
Clark and I humped our gear up the ramp and sat where we could stretch out for the long ride to Kazakhstan.
In the center of the cargo bay were pallets of tactical gear rigged with parachutes. At the rear of the plane, on pallets all their own, sat a pair of Chenowth Desert Patrol Vehicles, virtually indestructible tactical dune buggies that are commonly referred to as DPVs. There were nine warriors aboard the plane, and each of them looked eerily similar to the others, with full beards, the highest quality gear, and the look of men who understood what it was like to stand in front of an enemy and say, “Not on my watch, you won’t.”
These guys were the Clark Johnsons of the world. They weren’t afraid of wading through hell and would stand in line to take turns trying to kick the devil’s ass. My plan to play chess was coming together quite nicely.
Over the noise of the engines, I yelled to Clark. “How many of these guys do you know?”
“Just Mongo, but I’m sure they’re all tier-one operators like him.”
A tier-one operator is a soldier who is trained to the highest standards, pushed beyond the limits any sane human could survive both mentally and physically, and has proven himself under fire. For Clark to express that measure of faith in these men gave me an excellent feeling about what was to come.
The ramp closed, and the plane began its takeoff roll. I soon felt us leave the ground and heard the landing gear clang into their wells.
“I’ve never been to Kazakhstan,” I said. “Where do you think we’ll land?”
Clark pointed to a pallet of parachutes. “Wherever those put us.”
With the ramp closed, the interior of the C-130 was much qu
ieter and even had heat. That was a welcome change.
“I’d better go check on Kat,” I said, standing from my seat.
Clark grabbed my arm and spun me around. “Look at me. She’s not Kat. She’s Captain Ekaterina Norikova of the Russian SVR, and she’s not remotely our friend. You got me?”
“I got you.” I appreciated his willingness to get my mind right when I started to stray.
Norikova was barely conscious and still had a fever. I pulled a med kit from the bulkhead, found Tylenol, and got four pills down her throat. “This should help your fever. Do you want me to take you out of that coat?”
“Thank you, but no. I am very cold.”
I turned to head back to my seat, but she stopped me. “Mr. Fulton. Even when you want to be cruel, you are a good man. A weak man can be cruel, but compassion comes from strength. I am not sorry for doing what my country demands of me, but I am sorry for you being hurt in this thing.”
I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to know what her life had been like, but I kept hearing Pierre’s words ringing in my head: That soft heart of yours makes a big target. Without another word, I returned to my seat.
“Is she okay?” Clark asked.
“No, she’s burning up with fever. I gave her some Tylenol and antibiotics. Maybe that’ll help.”
“She’s not Anya, Chase. Don’t forget that.”
For the remainder of the flight, we talked with the operators to get a feel for their individual skillsets. They were all battle-hardened and anxious to do it again. We selected four of them: Snake, Smoke, Singer, and Mongo, the big, retired, Green Beret who looked like he could snap a wing off an airplane. Snake could get into and out of holes and crevasses like no one else. Smoke had turned down a division-one football scholarship as the fastest running back in America, choosing instead to join the Marines, and ended up in Force Recon. He didn’t want to talk about why he wasn’t a marine anymore, but I didn’t care. His speed on foot was more than enough incentive for me to want him on the team. Singer, a scout sniper and devout Southern Baptist, had the voice of an angel and the skill of a surgeon behind a long gun. As for Mongo, well, I wanted him in case I need to tear a tree out of the ground.
My ears popped as we started our descent, and the plane became a beehive of activity. The soldiers who weren’t going with us began double-checking the rigging on the parachutes for the gear, while the rest of us strapped on chutes of our own. Clark wore a tandem rig with clips in the front so he could carry Norikova to the ground.
“What is happening?” she said in a weak voice that could have been Anya’s if I’d closed my eyes.
Clark held up the nylon harness in front of Norikova. “We’re taking you home. You’ve got two choices. You can ride with me or step out and take your chances without a parachute.”
She weakly held her arms away from her body so he could fit the tandem harness on her, and then he walked her toward the back of the plane. “Have you ever done this?”
She tugged at her harness. “Never like this”—she motioned toward the rest of us in our conventional parachute rigs—“but many times like that.”
“Well, then,” he said. “This should be fun, ’cause it’s my first time, too.” Clark clipped Norikova’s harness to his, and they shuffled toward the edge of the ramp.
The jumpmaster peered out the back of the plane and into the Kazakh wilderness. He turned back and yelled, “Stand clear!”
Three seconds later, the pallet carrying the first DPV slid toward the ramp and disappeared out the back. Immediately, the second DPV was sliding rearward. A pallet containing our gear followed, and then Clark and Norikova stepped off the ramp. The remaining four operators leaning out the back disappeared.
I stepped from the ramp and allowed gravity to draw me from the relative comfort of the cargo plane and into the frigid air. I felt my chute deploy, and I looked up to see a beautifully formed canopy above my head, slowing my descent rate to a survivable speed. Between my feet were three huge canopies above the DPVs and the equipment pallet, and five other parachutes carrying my team toward the Kazakh mountains below.
Chapter 26
Traditions
Clark’s oversized parachute slowed his descent, and I soon caught up with them. Soaring through the crisp, early afternoon air, and the sensation of descending to the earth beneath a billowing canopy was one of the most exhilarating and peaceful experiences I’d ever known.
I glanced over to see Norikova’s body hanging limply in front of Clark’s. His hands were perched above his head, grasping the toggles to control the chute, but hers draped lifelessly. I pointed toward Norikova and then flashed the signal asking if she was okay. He peeked over her shoulder, and then back at me, and turned both palms skyward in the universal I-don’t-know signal.
If she was unconscious, the landing could be disastrous for her. Clark would find a way to protect her as much as possible, but he wouldn’t sacrifice his safety for hers.
The rugged terrain below was rapidly ascending. The DPVs landed with a cloud of brown sand billowing up in all directions and made an excellent windsock, allowing us to gauge the wind speed and direction accurately. The equipment pallet landed on a downslope and tumbled end over end, tangling the parachute rigging and coming to rest upside down on the edge of a ravine. Mongo was next to land, and he stirred up almost as much dust as the DPVs. Snake and Smoke touched down like ballerinas and gathered their chutes before they hit the ground. I was next, and I turned into the wind to slow both my forward motion as well as my descent rate. Just above the rocky terrain, I pulled the toggles to my knees, causing the outside cells of my ram-air parachute to curl downward, essentially acting as brakes. My landing wasn’t as graceful as the others, but I stayed on my feet and managed to wrangle my chute under control before it sent me tumbling down the slope like the equipment pallet. As the chaos of the landing gave way to silence, I thought I heard a choir. I looked up to see Singer drifting to earth, serenading us with his rendition of “Amazing Grace,” that to me sounded a lot like “House of the Rising Sun,” and that was just wrong. He landed as gracefully as the others and immediately broke into “I’ll Fly Away,” and that somehow seemed appropriate.
Clark and Norikova were approaching from the northeast with her body still lifeless in front of him. I watched him shake her several times and even reach around and force her head up once. She showed no reaction, and I could see the frustration building on his face. Her height, coupled with the orientation of the harnesses, left Norikova’s feet dangling a least a foot below Clark’s. Landing like that would fold her legs between his and send both of them careening into the dirt face-first.
Regardless of the outcome, it was going to be an interesting show. The rest of the operators had noticed the predicament as well, and were all looking skyward with great anticipation. Singer bowed his head either to pray or simply to avoid watching the inevitable train wreck that was about to occur.
I watched Clark squirm and twist until both of his legs were pressed firmly behind Norikova’s. He flexed his legs twice as practice for what he was about to attempt. A few feet above the rocky, ragged ground, Clark pulled the toggles downward with all of his strength and raised his legs simultaneously. Norikova’s legs rode atop Clark’s and lifted into the air in front of them. Clark winced as his butt hit the ground, and the two slid across a surface no one wants to slide across.
The cloud of dust they stirred up soon dissipated, and I heard Clark say, “You’re really turning into a pain in my ass, lady.”
Weak and taken by her fever, Norikova tried to look up. “I am sorry,” she said.
“Yeah, well, it’s like I tell College Boy. Don’t be sorry. Be better.”
Singer helped disconnect the harnesses and lifted Norikova to her feet. Snake and Smoke were unstrapping the DPVs from their pallets and stowing the parachutes. Singer stayed with Norikova. In addition to being one of the best long-range snipers on the planet, he’d also been to the comba
t medic’s course at Fort Sam Houston. That made him the logical choice to guard her and keep her alive as long as possible.
The engines of the two DPVs fired up, and Snake and Smoke pulled the combat dune buggies onto a relatively level spot where we could load Norikova. Clark, Singer, Smoke, and Norikova mounted vehicle number one. I climbed in with Snake, and we headed for the overturned equipment pallet. When we arrived, Mongo was bracing off between an enormous rock and the pallet. I had planned to pull the pallet upright with one of the DPVs, but Mongo clearly had the situation under control. He grunted, and I watched as the pallet stood upright and then fell perfectly positioned as if the hand of God had placed it there.
We dismounted the vehicles and loaded our equipment aboard.
“The Russian border is less than ten clicks to the north,” Smoke said. “I didn’t see any living thing between us and the border on the jump. Did any of you?”
Everyone shook their heads, and we were soon headed north, leaving a huge trail of dust and sand in our wake.
Snake was at the wheel, and Mongo was in the front because he couldn’t fit anywhere else. That left the back seat for me. As we descended toward the border, the terrain changed dramatically. The rocky, arid earth gave way to vegetation that I imagined would be lush and green in July. We came to the edge of a slow-moving river, and both vehicles stopped.
“I’m just wondering . . .”—Snake placed his hand on the dash and turned around—“is this going to be the first illegal Russian border crossing for anyone?”
The Brinkwater team laughed and shook their heads.
Clark scoffed. “This won’t even be our first illegal Russian border crossing this week.”
Norikova’s voice cracked. “It will be first time for me.”
Everyone froze in silence, unsure what to make of her involvement in the banter. And then she chuckled.
Smoke shook his finger at her. “Oh, now that’s funny, Miss Spy Lady. That’s funny.”
“You’re not going to make her do it, are you?” Singer asked.
“Do what?” Norikova said, her voice still weak.
None of the operators would look at her, but I was just as curious as she was.