The Kill List

Chapter 14

Deserts can be furnace hot by day yet freezing at night, but Djibouti is on the warm Gulf of Aden and remains balmy. The Tracker was met at the foot of the steps of the parked Grumman by a USAF colonel sent by the base commander to welcome him to the command. He was in light, tropical-weight desert camouflage, and the Tracker was surprised by the balminess of the night as he followed the colonel across the tarmac to the two rooms in the operations block that had been set aside for him.

The base commander had been told very little by Air Force HQ in the U.S. except that this was a J-SOC black operation and that he was to offer every cooperation to the TOSA officer, whom he would only know as Colonel Jamie Jackson. It was the name the Tracker had elected to use because he had all the supporting paperwork.

They passed the British RAF C-130 Hercules. It had the standard roundels on the tail fin but no other insignia. Tracker knew it came from the 47th Squadron of the Special Forces Wing. There was a glimmer of light from the flight deck, where the crew had elected to stay onboard and brew up real tea rather than the American version of it.

They walked under the wing, past a hangar buzzing with ground crew and into the ops building. Part of the “every cooperation” instruction included welcoming the six scruffy-looking British free fallers who were gathered inside, staring at an array of still pictures on the wall.

A rather relieved-looking American master sergeant, whose shoulder flash indicated he was a comms specialist, turned and threw up a salute. He returned it.

The first thing the Tracker noticed of the six Brits was that they were in desert cammo, but without either rank or unit insignia. They were deeply suntanned on their faces and hands, stubbled around the jaw and with tousled hair, except for the one who was bald as a billiard ball.

One of them, the Tracker knew, must be the junior officer commanding the unit. He thought it better to cut straight to the matter in hand.

“Gentlemen, I am Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Jackson of the U.S. Marine Corps. Your government, in the form of your Prime Minister, has been kind enough to allow me to borrow you and your services for this night. Which of you is in command?”

If he thought the mention of the Prime Minister was going to start any genuflecting, he had the wrong unit. One of the six stepped forward. When he spoke, the Tracker recognized the kind of voice derived from years at a private boarding school that the British, with their talent for saying the opposite, call public school.

“That’s me, Colonel. I am a captain, name of David. In our unit we never use surnames or ranks, or throw salutes. Except to the Queen, of course.”

The Tracker recognized that he was never going to match the white-haired Queen, so he just said, “OK, so long as you can do what is required this night. And my name is Jamie. Would you introduce me, David?”

Among the other five were two sergeants, two corporals and a trooper, although the Pathfinders rank is never mentioned. Each had a specialty. Pete was a sergeant and the medic, with skills way beyond mere first aid. Barry was the other sergeant, expert in weapons of all kinds. He looked like the product of a loving union between a rhino and a battle tank. He was huge, and it was all very hard. The corporals were Dai, the Welsh Wizard, who was in charge of communications and would carry the various pieces of wizardry that would enable the Pathfinders, once on the ground, to remain in touch with Djibouti and Tampa, and provide the video downlink that would enable them to see what the drone overhead could see. The bald one, of course, was Curly, who was a vehicle mechanic of near-genius level.

The youngest, in age and rank, was Tim, who had started in the Logistics Corps and has trained in explosives of all kinds, along with bomb dismantlement.

The Tracker turned to the American master sergeant.

“Talk me through it,” he said, gesturing at the wall display.

There was a large screen showing exactly what the drone controller in MacDill Air Force Base outside Tampa was seeing. He passed the Tracker an earpiece with a mic attached.

“This is Colonel Jackson in Djibouti base,” he said. “Is that Tampa?”

On the flight down, he had been in constant contact with Tampa, and the speaker had been M.Sgt. Orde. But the shift had changed eight time zones to the west. The voice was female, a Deep South drawl, molasses over cane sugar.

“Tampa here, sir. Specialist Jane Allbright on the control stick.”

“What have we got, Jane?”

“Just before the sun went down, the target vehicle arrived at a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere. We counted the occupants climbing out. Five from the open back, including one in a red baseball cap. And three from the front cab.

“Their leader was greeted by some kind of village headman, then the light faded and human shapes went to heat blobs on infrared.

“But at the very last light, two more open-backed pickups arrived from a northern direction. They provided eight bodies, of which one was being half dragged by two others. The prisoner seemed to have blond hair. Darkness came in seconds, and one of the men from the south joined the northern group. The blond prisoner stayed with the northern group.

“Judging by the red heat signals, they were housed in two of the residences either side of the central clearing, where the three vehicles are parked. The engine heat faded, and they are now in darkness. No one seems to have emerged from either house. The only heat signals remaining are from a goat pen to one side of the open square and a few smaller, wandering ones we believe to be dogs.”

The Tracker thanked her and went to the display wall. The village, in real time, was being studied by a new-on-shift Global Hawk. This RQ-4 would have thirty-five hours of endurance, more than enough, and with its synthetic-aperture radar and electro-optical infrared camera would see anything move down there.

The Tracker spent some minutes watching the red blobs of the pye-dogs, ranging between the dark squares of the houses.

“Do you have anything for alarm dogs, David?”

“We shoot ’em.”

“Too noisy.”

“We don’t miss.”

“One squeal and the rest will scatter, barking.”

He turned to the master sergeant.

“Will you send someone to the med center? Ask for the strongest and fastest-acting edible anesthetic they have. And from the commissary, some packs of raw beefsteak.”

The sergeant got on the phone. The Pathfinders exchanged glances. Tracker moved to the still photos, the last taken in natural daylight.

The hamlet was so crusted with desert sand that, being built of local sandstone the same color, it had virtually disappeared. There were a number of scrubby trees around it, and in the center of the square, its life-source: a well.

The shadows were long and black, thrown from west to east by the setting sun. The three technicals were still clear, parked next to one another near the well. There were figures around them, but not sixteen. Some must have gone straight inside. There were eight photos from different angles, but they all told the same story. What was of most use was to learn the angle from which the attack should come — the south.

The house to which the Marka party had gone was on that side, and there was an alley that led from it into the desert. He moved to the large-scale map pinned to the wall beside the photos. Someone had helpfully marked with a small red cross the speck in the desert on which they would be dropping. He gathered the six Pathfinders around him and spent thirty minutes pointing out what he had deduced. They had seen most of it for themselves before he arrived.

But he realized they would all have to sandwich into three hours the sort of detail absorption that could take days of study. He glanced at his watch. It was nine p.m. Wheels-up time could not be delayed beyond midnight.

“I advise we aim to drop five clicks due south of the target and tab the rest.”

He knew enough to use British army slang: click for “kilometer” and tab for “forced march.” The captain raised an eyebrow.

“You said ‘we,’ Jamie.”

“That’s right. I did not fly down here just to brief you. The leadership is yours, but I’m jumping with you.”

“We don’t usually jump with passengers. Unless, of course, the passenger is in tandem, strapped to Barry here.”

Tracker glanced at the giant towering over him. He did not fancy plunging five miles through freezing blackness harnessed to this human mastodon.

“David, I am not a passenger. I am a U.S. Recon Marine. I have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have done deep-dive scuba and free falling. You can put me where you like in the stick, but I’ll go in with my own canopy. Are we clear?”

“Clear.”

“How high do you want to exit the plane?”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

It made sense. At that height, the four roaring Allison turboprops would be almost inaudible, and to any alert listener it would still sound like a passing airliner. Half that height might sound alarm bells. He had only ever dived from 15,000 feet, and there was a difference. At fifteen, you do not need thermal clothing or an oxygen bottle; at twenty-five, you do.

“Well, that’s all right, then,” he said.

David asked the youngest, Tim, to go to the Hercules outside and come back with various pieces of extra kit. They always carried spare equipment, and because they were returning home from a fortnight in Oman, the hull of the Hercules was stacked with things that might otherwise remain on the ground. A few minutes later, Tim came back with three extra men in army fatigue overalls; one of them was carrying a spare BT80, the French-made canopy the Pathfinders always insisted on using. Like all British Special Forces, they had the privilege of picking their own stuff on a worldwide spectrum.

In this manner, apart from a French chute, they chose the American M4 assault rifle, the Belgian Browning thirteen-shot sidearm and the British SAS combat knife, the K-bar.

Dai, the comms man, would be packing the American PRC-152 TacSat (tactical satellite) handheld radio and the British FireStorm video-downlink optical sensor.

Two hours to wheels up. In the operations room, the seven men dressed themselves, piece by piece, in the equipment that would finally leave them, like medieval knights in armor, hardly able to move unaided.

A pair of jump boots were found for the Tracker. Fortunately, he was of medium build, and the rest of the clothing fit without a problem. Then came the Bergen haversack that would contain night vision goggles, water, ammunition, sidearm and more.

They were assisted in this, and most of all the Tracker, by the three new men, the PDs, or parachute dispatchers. These, like squires in the days of old, would escort their Pathfinders to the very edge of the ramp, locked to tether lines in case they slipped, and see them launch into the void.

In dummy runs, they pulled on both BT80 and Bergen, one on the back side, the other on the chest, and tightened the straps of both until they hurt. Then the carbines, muzzle pointing downward, gloves, oxygen bottles and helmets. The Tracker was surprised to see how similar to his motorcycle helmet was the Pathfinder’s, except that this version had a black rubber oxygen mask dangling beneath it, and the goggles were more like the scuba version. Then they undressed again.

It was ten-thirty. Wheels up could be no later than midnight, for there were almost exactly five hundred miles to cover between Djibouti and the speck in the Somali desert that they intended to attack. Two hours’ flying time, the Tracker had calculated, and two hours’ tab to target. Going in at four a.m. ought to catch their enemies at the deepest depth of sleep and at slowest reaction time. He gave his six companions the last mission briefing.

“This man is the target,” he said and handed around a postcard-sized portrait. They all studied the face, memorizing it, aware that in six hours it might show up in the glow of their night vision goggles inside a stinking Somali shack. The face staring out of the postcard was that of Tony Suárez, presumably enjoying the Californian sun eleven time zones to the west. But it was as good as they were going to get.

“He is a very high-value al-Qaeda target, a practiced murderer with a passionate hatred of both our countries.”

He moved over to the photos on the wall.

“He arrived from Marka in the south, al-Shabaab territory, in a single pickup truck, or technical. This one. He had with him seven men, including a guide who went off to rejoin his own group — of that, more later. That leaves seven in the target’s party. But one won’t fight. Inside the bastard’s group is a foreign agent working for us. He looks like this.”

He produced another photo, bigger, a blowup, of the face of Opal in the Marka compound, gazing up at the sky, straight into the Hawk’s camera lens. He wore the red baseball cap.

“With luck, he will hear the shooting and dive for cover, and, hopefully, he will think to pull on the red cap you see here. He will not fight us. Under no circumstances shoot him. That leaves six in all and they will fight.”

The Pathfinders stared at the black Ethiopian face and memorized it.

“What about the other group, boss?” asked the shaven Curly, the motor vehicles man.

“Right. The drone watched our target and his team billeted in this house here, on the south side of the village square. Across the square is the group they came to meet. These are pirates from the north. They are all of the Sacad clan and fight like hell. They have brought with them a hostage in the person of a young Swedish merchant marine cadet. This one.”

The Tracker produced his last photo. He had got it from Adrian Herbert of the SIS, who had obtained it from Mrs. Bulstrode. It was taken from his merchant marine ID card application form, delivered by his father Harry Andersson. It showed a handsome blond boy in a company uniform, staring innocently at the camera.

“What’s he doing there?” asked David.

“He is the bait that lured the target to this spot. He wants to buy the kid and has brought with him a million dollars for the purchase. They may have made the swap already, in which case the boy will be in the target’s house and the million dollars across the square. Or the swap may be scheduled for the morning before departure. Whatever, keep all eyes peeled for a blond head and do not shoot.”

“What does the target want with a Swedish cadet?” It was Barry, the giant. The Tracker framed his answer carefully. No need to lie, just observe the rule of need to know.

“The Sacads from the north who captured him at sea some weeks ago have been told the target intends to hack his head off on camera. A treat for us in the West.”

The room went very quiet.

“And these pirates, they’ll fight as well?” David, the captain, again.

“Absolutely. But I figure when they are woken by shooting, they will be bleary from the aftereffects of a gut full of khat. We know it makes them dopey or ultra-violent.

“If we can put a long stream of bullets through their windows, they will presume not that some free fallers have arrived from the West but that they are under attack from their business partners, trying to get the boy for free or their money back. I would like them to charge across the open square.”

“How many, boss? The pirates?”

“We counted eight climbing out of these two technicals just before sundown.”

“So fourteen hostiles in all?”

“Yes, and I’d like half of them dead before they are vertical. And no prisoners.”

The six Brits gathered around the photos and maps. There was a murmured conference. The Tracker heard phrases like “shaped charge” and “frag.” He knew enough to know the first referred to a device to blow off a stout door lock and the second to a high-fragmentation grenade. Fingers tapped various points on the blown-up photo of the village by last daylight. After ten minutes, they broke up, and the young captain came over with a grin.

“It’s a go,” he said. “Let’s kit up.”

The Tracker realized they had been agreeing to proceed with an operation that had been requested by the President of the United States and authorized by their own Prime Minister.

“Great,” was all he could think to say. They left the operations room and went outside, where the air was still balmy. While they had been studying the mission, the three PDs had been busy. Bathed in the light from the open door of the hangar were seven piles of kit in a line. This was the line (in reverse) in which they would march into the belly of the Hercules and the order in which they would hurl themselves into the night at 25,000 feet.

Assisted by the PDs, they began to climb into their equipment. The senior PD, a veteran sergeant known only as Jonah, paid special attention to the Tracker.

The Tracker, who had arrived in the tropical-weight uniform of a U.S. Marine colonel, into which he had changed in the Grumman, was instructed to pull on the spare desert cammo jumpsuit that the other six already wore. Then came the weight, burden by burden.

Jonah hoisted the thirty kilos of parachute onto his back and buckled the array of broad canvas straps that keep it in place. When he had the straps in place, he tightened them until the Tracker felt he was being crushed. Two of them went around each side of the groin.

“Just keep the nuts free of these, sir,” Jonah murmured. A faller with his family furniture inside these straps will find life very unfunny when the chute jerks open.

“I surely will,” he said, feeling down below to make sure nothing was trapped behind the straps.

Next came the Bergen haversack, hung on the chest. This was forty kilos and pulled him into a forward stoop. The straps of this were also tightened to chest-crushing levels. But from his U.S. Marine parachuting school, he knew there was a point to all this.

With the Bergen on the front, the faller would have to be diving chest first. When the chute finally streamed, it would be out the back and away above him. A faller on his back could go straight through his opening chute, which would literally wrap around him like a shroud as he died on the ground below.

The Bergen’s weight was mainly made up of food, water and ammunition — the latter being extra clips for his carbine and for grenades. But also in there was his personal sidearm and night vision goggles. It was out of the question to wear these while diving; they would be ripped away by the slipstream.

Jonah attached his oxygen canister and the array of hoses that would bring the life-giving gas to the mask on his face.

Finally, he was given his helmet and tight-fitting visor that would protect his eyes from being blasted out by the 150 mph airstream he would experience in the dive. Then they took off the Bergens until jump time.

The seven men had been transformed into extraterrestrials from the special effects department. They did not walk; they waddled, slowly and carefully. On a nod from the captain, David, they made their way across the concrete pan to the gaping rear of the Hercules, which waited, doors open and ramp down.

The captain had decreed the order of jumps. First out would be Barry, the giant, simply because he was the most experienced among them. Then would come the Tracker, and right behind him the captain. Of the remaining four, the last man out would be one of the corporals, Curly, also a veteran, because he would have no one to watch his back.

One by one, the seven jumpers, helped by the three PDs, stumbled up the ramp and into the hull of the C-130. Twenty to midnight.

They sat in a line of red canvas seats along one side of the hull while the PDs continued to run through the various tests. Jonah took personal care of the captain and the Tracker.

He noticed it was now much darker inside the aircraft, with only reflected lights from the arcs above the hangar doors, and he knew when the ramp came up, they would be seated in utter blackness. He also noted crates of the unit’s other equipment lashed down for the journey back home to England and two shadowy figures up near the wall between the cargo and the flight deck. These were the two parachute packers who traveled with the unit wherever they went, packing and repacking the chutes. The Tracker hoped that the fellow who had packed what he now wore on his back knew exactly what he was doing. There is an old adage among free fallers: Never quarrel with your packer.

Jonah reached over him and flipped up the top of his para rucksack to check that the two wires in red cotton were present and correct. Seals unbroken. The veteran RAF sergeant clipped his oxygen mask into the aircraft supply and nodded. The Tracker checked his mask was a snug and airtight fit, and took a breath.

A rush of near-pure oxygen. They would be breathing this all the way to altitude to flush the last traces of nitrogen out of the blood. This prevents diver’s bends (nitrogen bubbling in the blood) when they hurtled back down through the pressure zones. Jonah switched off the oxygen and moved on to the captain to do the same for him.

From outside came a high-pitched whine, as the four Allisons turned on starter motor and then coughed to life. Jonah stepped forward and buckled the safety strap across the Tracker’s knees. The last thing he did for him was to plug the oxygen mask into the C-130’s onboard supply.

The engine noise increased to a roar as the rear ramp rose to shut out the last of the lights of Djibouti air base and closed with a clunk as the air seal locked in. It was now pitch-dark inside the hull. Jonah broke out Cyalume light sticks to help him and his two fellow PDs take their seats, backs to the wall, as the Herc began to roll.

The seated men, leaning back into their chute packs, forty-kilo Bergens on their laps, seemed to be slumbering in a nightmare of pounding noise, plus the whine of hydraulics, as the aircrew tested the flaps, and the scream of fuel injectors.

They could not see, but only feel, as the four-engined workhorse turned onto the main runway, paused, crouched, then leapt forward. Despite its deceptive bulk, the Herc accelerated fast, tilted its nose up and left the tarmac after five hundred yards. Then it climbed steeply.

The most frills-free airliner cannot compare with the rear of a C-130. No soundproofing, no heating, no pressurization and certainly no beverage service. The Tracker knew it would never get quieter, but it would become savagely cold as the air thinned. Nor is the rear leakproof. Despite the oxygen-delivering mask on his face, the place was by now redolent with the odors of aviation gas and oil.

Beside him, the captain unhooked his helmet, took it off and pulled a pair of earphones over his head. There was a spare pair hanging from the same socket, and he offered them to the Tracker.

Jonah, up against the forward wall, was already on earphones. He needed to listen to the cockpit to learn when to start preparing for P-hour—P for “parachute”—the jump time. The Tracker and the captain could hear the commentary from the cockpit, the voice of the British squadron leader, a veteran of the 47th Squadron, who had flown and landed his “bird” into some of the roughest and most dangerous airstrips on Earth.

“Climbing through ten thousand,” he said, then “P-hour minus one hundred.” One hour and forty minutes to jump. Later came: “Leveling at twenty-five thousand.” Eighty minutes passed.

The headphones helped muffle the engine roar, but the temperature had dropped to near zero. Jonah unbelted himself and came over, holding on to a rail running down the side of the hull. There was no chance of conversation; everything was hand signals.

In front of the face of each of the seven, he went through his pantomime. Right hand high, forefinger and thumb forming an O. Like scuba divers. You OK? The Pathfinders replied in kind. Hand held up, fist clenched, then a puff from the lips to blow the fingers open, then five raised fingers. Wind speed at touchdown point, estimated five knots. Finally, fist held high with five fingers splayed, four times. Twenty minutes to P-hour.

Before he finished his odyssey, David grabbed his arm and thrust into his hand a flat packet. Jonah nodded and grinned. He took the packet and disappeared into the flight-deck area. When he came back, he was still grinning in the darkness and resumed his seat.

Ten minutes later, he was back. This time, ten fingers held up in front of each of the seven men. Seven nods. All seven rose with their Bergens, turned and placed the haversacks on the seats. Then they hefted the forty-kilo burdens onto their chests and tightened the straps.

Jonah came forward to help the Tracker, then tightened the straps until the American thought his chest was being crushed. But the speed in the dive would be up to 150 mph, and nothing must shift by even an inch. Then the switch from the onboard oxygen to personal canister.

At this moment, the Tracker heard a new noise. Over the roar of engines, the aircraft’s speaker system was booming out music, fortissimo. The Tracker realized what David had given to Jonah to be passed to the flight deck. It was a CD. The cavernous hull of the C-130 was being drowned in the pounding clamor of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” The start of his personal chant was the signal: three minutes to P-hour.

The seven men were standing along the starboard side of the fuselage when the dull clunk of a breaking seal meant the ramp was coming down. Jonah and his two assistant PDs had attached their tether lines to ensure they could not slide out.

As the sinking ramp revealed a barn-door-sized opening to the sky, an icy blast of wind roared in, accompanied by the stench of aviation fuel and burning oil.

The Tracker, standing second in line behind Barry, the giant, looked past the lead jumper toward the void. Nothing out there, just swirling darkness, freezing cold, pounding noise, and inside the fuselage the raging brass of the Valkyries on their insane ride to Valhalla.

There was one last check. The Tracker saw Jonah’s mouth open but heard not a word. Down the line, Curly, the last out, checked Tim, the trooper, in front of him to ensure his chute and oxygen had no tangles. Then he shouted, “Seven OK.”

Jonah must have heard it because he nodded at Tim, who then did the same for Pete, the medic, in front of him. The mutual checking rippled down the line. The Tracker felt the clap on his shoulder and did the same for Barry in front of him.

Jonah was standing in front of the giant, facing him. He nodded as the Tracker made the last check and stepped aside. There was nothing left to do. After all the pushing and shoving and grunting, the seven free fallers could only hurl themselves into the night five miles above the Somali desert.

Barry took one step forward, lowered his torso into a dive and was gone. The reason for the line being tightly bunched was that wide separation in the air could be disastrous. A three-second gap in the blackness, and two fallers could be so far apart they would never see or find each other. As briefed, the Tracker went out within a second of Barry’s heels disappearing.

The sensations were immediate. In half a second, the noise was gone; the roar of the C-130’s four Allisons, the Wagner — all gone, to be replaced by the silence of the night, broken only by a gentle and rising wind hiss as his falling body accelerated past 100 mph.

He felt the slipstream of the departing Hercules try to flip him over, ankles above head, then onto his back, and fought against it. Though there was no moon, the desert stars, hard and bright, cold and constant, unmarred by any pollution for two thousand miles, gave a low illumination to the sky.

Looking down, he saw a dark shape far below. He knew that close behind his shoulder would be the para captain, David, with the other four strung out upward to the sky.

David appeared beside him, arms by his sides, adopting the arrow position to increase speed and close up on Barry. The Tracker did the same. Slowly the big black form ahead came closer. Barry was in the starfish shape, gloved fists clenched ahead of him, arms and legs half spread, to slow the fall to 120 mph. When they came level with him, the Tracker and the captain did the same.

They fell in a rough echelon formation, joined one by one by the other four. He saw the captain check his wrist altimeter, adjusted for the ambient air pressure above the desert.

Although he could not see it, the altimeter said the troop was passing through 15,000 feet. They would open chutes at 5,000. As the lead jumper, it was Barry’s job to ease ahead and, using experience and the dim light of the stars, try to pick a landing zone as smooth and rock-free as possible. The Tracker’s concern was to stay with the para captain and do whatever he did.

Even from 25,000 feet, the free fall only lasted ninety seconds. Barry was by now slightly below the other six, scanning the ground rushing toward him. The others gently moved into staggered line formation, never losing eye contact with each other.

The Tracker reached for the pocket in his chute pack to make sure he had contact with the chute release mechanism. Pathfinders do not use the D ring rip to open the chute. They can opt for aneroid pressure-triggered release, but things mechanical can and do go wrong. Coming down at 120 mph is no time to discover the gizmo has not worked. David and the rest preferred manual release.

This is what the Tracker was reaching for. It is a parachute-shaped piece of cloth attached to a twine and stored in an easy-access pocket on the top. When thrown into the slipstream, it will pull the entire BT80 out of its pack and deploy it.

Below him, the Tracker saw Barry hit the 5,000-foot mark and the flash of the canopy, gray in the surrounding blackness. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw David toss his release drogue into the air and then disappear upward.

The Tracker did the same and almost instantaneously felt the jerk of the huge chute pulling him backward and upward — or so it seemed. It was, in fact, simply slowing him down. The sensation was of driving a car fast into a wall and the air bag going off. But it lasted just three seconds; then he was floating.

The BT80 is nothing like the domed parachutes of paratroopers jumping on a military exercise. It is a colossal oblong of silk, mattress-shaped, a flying wing that, on a high-altitude opening, can let the trooper glide mile after mile behind the enemy lines unseen by radar or the human eye.

The Pathfinders liked it for that, and another reason. It opens silently as opposed to the whip-crack of others, which can alert a sentry below.

At 800 feet, the para captain released his Bergen, which dropped on its lanyard to hang twelve feet beneath him. The Tracker did the same. A few feet above them, the remaining four followed suit.

The U.S. Marine watched the ground, now clear in the starlight, rushing toward him, heard the plop of the Bergen hitting the sand and performed the final braking maneuver. He reached upward, grabbing the two toggles controlling the canopy, and pulled down. The chute flared and slowed, permitting him to hit the deck at a brisk run. Then the chute lost its shape, folded and flopped to the ground as a tangled mess of silk and nylon cords. He unclipped the chest and leg harnesses, and the remainder of the para pack fell to the sand. It had served its purpose. All around him, six Pathfinders were doing the same.

He checked his watch. Four minutes after two a.m. Good scheduling. But it took time to clear up and form a line of march.

The seven chutes had to be collected, along with the no-further-use helmets and oxygen masks, plus the oxygen canisters. They were all piled together, and three Pathfinders covered them with rocks.

Out of the Bergens came the sidearms and night vision goggles, the NVGs. There was enough starlight for them not to be needed on the march, but they would certainly give an unmatchable edge when attacking the village, turning pitch-black night into green and watery day.

Dai, the Welsh Wizard, was poring over his equipment. Thanks to modern technology, their task was simpler than it would have been before the drone.

Somewhere high above them was a Global Hawk RQ-4, operated by J-SOC out of MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa. It was gazing down at them, and at the village, and could see them both. It could also detect any living creature by body heat, showing up as a pale blob of light on the landscape.

J-SOC headquarters had patched through an image of everything Tampa saw to the communications room at Djibouti, with sound and picture. Dai was setting up and testing his direct radio link with Djibouti, which could tell him exactly where he was, where the village was, the line of march between the two and whether there was any activity in the target area.

After a murmured conversation with Djibouti, Dai reported to the rest. Both controllers could see them as seven pale blobs on the desert. The village was motionless, seemingly fast asleep. There were no human beings outside the cluster of houses, inside which they could not be detected. But all the village’s wealth, a flock of goats, four donkeys and two camels, was in a corral or tethered out in the open and showed up clearly.

There were a few smaller blobs that moved about — the pye-dogs. The distance was 4.8 kilometers and the optimum line of march on a compass heading of 020 true.

The para captain had his own Silva compass and his own SOPHIE thermal imaging system. Despite the assurances of Tampa, he switched it on and ran its beam in a circle around them. They froze when a small blob showed up on top of a ridge along the edge of the sandy basin Barry had chosen as a good place to land.

Too small for a human but big enough for a watching head. Then it gave a low whine and disappeared. A desert jackal. At 02.22, they set off in Indian file to the north.