Whiplash

12

Nuri woke the next morning with a killer headache and an aching midsection. He didn’t mind, figuring the alternative would have been much worse.

Around noon he and Boston went with Abul in the bus to a village about sixty miles south to see what food they might be able to buy, and to add video bugs to the Voice’s network. Danny prepared the camp for the arrival of the rest of his men and the bulk of their supplies.

The original plan called for them to come in via truck convoy from Ethiopia, but that would take several days, and the misadventures with Red Henri convinced Danny that the cover story was less important than reinforcements. He called Breanna on the sat phone around noon, which was six in the morning D.C. time. She was already in the office. Within a half hour Reid called back, telling Danny the drop would be made at midnight.

The hills and trees made the camp difficult to parachute into if the wind kicked up, and not wanting to lose anyone to a broken leg right off the bat, Danny went out and scouted for an easier landing zone. He found a field about three miles to the north that even Ray Rubeo could have jumped into without a problem. The distance from the camp was an asset; if anyone happened to see the drop, it wouldn’t necessarily show them where Base Camp Alpha was.

Danny set up automated beacons there and called in to confirm the drop.

“I’m wondering if you could add a couple of dirt bikes to the supply list,” he asked Reid.

“Are you practicing for the motocross?”

“Red Henri decided he liked ours,” said Danny.

“And you gave it to him?”

“Not exactly.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”

“A few crates of ice cream would be nice.”

“Amusing, Colonel.”

Much to Danny’s surprise, Reid managed to pack some ice cream into the supplies, arranging for a quart of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry to travel in a special thermal box packed with dry ice when the team and supplies jumped from a specially outfitted 787 that night.

From the outside, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner looked exactly like the several hundred of its brethren in service. Its markings indicated that it was operated by Royal Dubai International Airlines. The name sounded familiar, especially given the near monopolization of air traffic over the past few years by airlines from the oil-rich emirates, but the company was entirely fictional, owned and operated by the CIA.

The interior of the plane had been heavily modified, although the bulk of the cabin was outfitted for passengers. A special bulkhead cut off the main cabin about halfway back. Behind the door was a pressurized cargo compartment where specially sized pallets of equipment could be stored. These were loaded through a special hatchway at the underside of the fuselage. The hatchway could be opened in flight, allowing an automated system to disgorge the pallets at the pilot’s command. Targeted by a GPS system, the pallets were then “flown” to the landing zone either by an onboard steering system or by the copilot, who communicated with them via satellite.

The same hatchway was used by CIA paramilitary officers to make high altitude jumps. Fully deployed, the hatchway sheltered the jumpers from the nasty slipstream encircling the Dreamliner’s body and wings. The ramp and the aircraft had been designed to minimize any radar echoes that might give away the plane’s purpose. If the situation warranted, special parachutes could be used that minimized their signature as well.

The system was not without its limitations. The more gear and people involved in the drop, the harder it was to coordinate and get everyone down in the same place. The crates had to go out first. The jumpers then had only a few seconds to work their way down the ramp and jump. Traveling at 35,000 feet at about 400 knots, with the wind howling around you — it was a lot harder in real life than it sounded during the briefing.

While all four of the new Whiplash team members making the jump were parachute-qualified, only one had used the plane before. That made Hera Scokas the team jumpmaster.

Her role as scold came naturally.

“Yo, get moving,” she barked as the last of the three crates began sliding down the ramp. “Come on, Shugee.”

“My name ain’t ‘Shugee,’ honey,” snapped Clar “Sugar” Keeb, who was going out first. Like Hera, Sugar was a CIA paramilitary officer. A black woman raised in Detroit, she’d served in the Army for eight years before joining the Agency. At five-ten and 200 pounds, she had more than a half foot advantage over Scokas, and would have decked her had she been nearby.

She didn’t mind being called Sugar. Everybody used it. Clar’s nickname had been applied by an aunt because of how sweet she liked to make her Rice Krispies when she was two, and she’d lived with it ever since. Shugee, though, was out of bounds.

Sugar put her gloved hand against her oxygen mask, making sure it was tight. Then she unhooked her safety belt and stepped off the ramp, pushing her body forward to fall in a frog position.

The sky ate her up. Night jumps at 35,000 feet were not Sugar’s idea of fun. The wind seemed to sense that, and crushed the top of her helmet against her head. She slid hard to the left, off-balance. A large arrow appeared in the middle of her visor, pointing to roughly two o’clock.

“Yeah, no kidding,” she mumbled, tilting her body back to get on course.

Ten meters above her, John “Flash” Gordon felt the baloney sandwich he’d eaten just before the flight pushing back up through his esophagus. In the six years he’d been in the Army Special Forces, he’d never had a baloney sandwich. He’d also never eaten before a jump, not since an unfortunate experience during an early qualifying jump, where his stomach had revolted at 7,000 feet.

His change in routine had been as inexplicable as it was unfortunate.

Flash clamped his mouth shut and concentrated on the arrow in his helmet. He was right on course.

Hera, meanwhile, was in the plane, waiting for the fourth member of the team to unhook his safety harness so she could jump after him.

The man she was waiting for, Carl McGowan, was experiencing one of the downsides of the safety strap — the snap on the hook was difficult to manipulate while wearing gloves.

“Yo, Tailgunner, we jumping today? Or next week?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep your bra on,” muttered McGowan.

The lever finally gave way. McGowan pushed off the side and took a running leap down the ramp, flying forward into the air as if he were diving into a pool.

As he fell away from the plane, it occurred to him that he would much prefer that Hera took her bra off. She had an A-1 body, even if she was meaner than the bastards who’d worked him through SEAL Hell Week a decade and a half before.

Down on the ground, Boston scanned the desert with his night glasses, making sure that neither Red Henri nor any of his competitors were approaching. A CIA Global Hawk had been detailed into the area for the night, but he trusted his own eyes more than any high-tech sensor. The fact that he was using a high-tech sensor to greatly magnify what his eyes could see didn’t change his opinion.

Danny checked his watch. The Voice had announced the launching of each crate and Whiplash crew member, along with its estimated time of landing. If he wanted, he could listen to updates on where each was going to land. But he didn’t feel much like listening to a play-by-play, so he told the Voice to alert him only if any of the jumpers or crates was going off course by more than twenty-five yards.

Fifty years before, falling within twenty-five yards of a target would have been considered a reasonable performance, perhaps even an outstanding one. World War II paratroopers struggled with barely steerable parachutes and air crews who often found themselves navigating mostly by instinct. Now the technology was so advanced that packages could be practically delivered to a front door.

Not that skill and human error were completely removed from the equation. The team members had hit a heavy crosswind after deploying their chutes, and struggled to remain on course as they dropped over the last 5,000 feet. Danny, monitoring the team communications channel through the Voice, heard the jumpers cursing and complaining as they coped with the wind. Even with the night vision screens built into their jump helmets, the darkness hampered their depth perception.

“Sounds like they’ve been working together for a while,” he told Boston.

The first cargo chute came down about five yards off target, its winglike canopy making a loud hush as it fell. The second and third hit precisely on their crosshairs, each twelve and a half yards progressively north, each thumping against their protective bottoms with a satisfying cru-ump.

Then came the team members.

Sugar hit first, landing about five yards to the east of her target. Then came Flash, who hit exactly on his target mark, and within.03 seconds of the computed time for landing originally calculated when he left the plane. McGowan came down twenty-two yards from his target, directly due north of Hera’s landing spot. This meant Hera had to steer away to avoid a collision. Her corrections sent her roughly fifty yards off the mark, making her jump the worst of the group.

“Hey jumpmaster,” said Sugar, “looks like you kinda missed, huh?”

“Whoa,” said Flash. “You ain’t telling me the jumpmaster with, like, five hundred years of experience, blew her jump so badly she just about landed in the Atlantic.”

“All right, let’s get moving,” barked Boston. “We have to get these crates unwrapped and packed into the bus.”

Hera folded her parachute, angry but knowing that explaining why she’d had to go so far off course was only going to bring greater derision.

The crates were designed to be broken down quickly. Still, it took over three hours for the team to get everything onto the bus. They fashioned a rack out of the cargo containers for the roof, giving Abul fits as he worried about the lines breaking the frames on the bus’s windows.

“I don’t think the motorcycle will fit in the bus,” said Boston as they finished. “Maybe we should drive it back.”

“And who’s going to drive it?” asked Danny.

“Gee, I don’t know.” Boston smiled. “We could draw straws, or just go by rank.”

“Officers excluded?” said Danny.

“Oh yeah. This is strictly an enlisted thing.”

“What about those of us who aren’t in the Army?” asked Sugar.

“Hey, I’m not in the Army,” said McGowan. “So I oughta get dibs.”

“I’ll ride it back,” said Danny, taking the handlebars. “I think Chief Rockland needs a little time to bond with his people.”

“Thanks,” said Boston.

The bike was a Ducati, remade for special operations work under contract to the Technology Office. It had an extra large gas tank, and a heavy duty suspension to accommodate the weight of a soldier with a full complement of gear. It lacked the glossy paint normally associated with Italian motorcycles, and included a few accessories not normally found in street bikes, like a miniature forward-looking infrared radar mounted in the headlight assembly. But it was still a Ducati, and Danny had a blast riding it back to the base, running ahead of the bus. The dirt road was just loose enough to add maneuvering interest as he zipped up the hills.

His fun lasted all of ten minutes, as the Voice announced that a pair of Jeep-sized vehicles were approaching on the road south. The computer calculated that the bus would arrive at the highway within thirty seconds of the Jeeps.

He had the Voice cut into the team radio channel.

“Boston, have Abul stop for a while,” he said. “Two Jeeps are heading our way. I don’t want them to see you.”

“No problem, Cap. How’s the bike?”

“It’s nice. I’m going to get a little closer to the road and have a look at these guys.”

“Roger that.”

Danny leaned on the gas, accelerating so he could get near the road well before the other vehicles. The oversized muffler and heat dissipater turned the trademark Ducati roar into a low moan — a sin, really.

He stopped about a half mile from the road and lay the bike down gently in the dirt. Adjusting the infrared image from the motorcycle, he zeroed in on a rise in the road about a mile to the north and waited.

“Estimate time for the vehicles to pass,” Danny asked the Voice.

“Three minutes, eighteen seconds.”

“Can you identify them?”

“Negative.”

“Are they Sudanese army?”

“The army does not operate Jeeps.”

“They’re real Jeeps?”

“Chrysler Motors, model year 2001.”

“Do these belong to Red Henri?”

“Vehicles are not among types known to be operated by East Sudanese Liberation Crew headed by rebel known as Red Henri.”

The Voice listed three probabilities: two rebel groups that operated to the west, and an aid organization, which was headquartered far to the north. Danny doubted it was the aid group — even do-gooders knew better than to drive out here at night.

The lead Jeep took the hill at about forty miles an hour, cresting into his view. It carried four men; the rear Jeep held two.

They began slowing, and Danny sensed that they were going to turn up the road toward the camp. Sure enough, the lead vehicle stopped abruptly just past the turnoff, then backed up and began climbing the hill. He had the Voice project the image from the Global Hawk into the control unit, watching as the Jeeps continued on the road toward their camp.

“Nuri, you on the line?” Danny asked over the Voice’s communications channel.

“Yeah, I’m looking at them on the laptop.”

“Who are they? Do you know?”

“No idea. I’d guess rebels, but that’s pretty obvious.”

“Maybe you oughta hide up in the rocks.”

“Maybe. Let’s see what happens.”

Back at the bus, the Whiplash team members were developing a shared case of cabin fever. They had spent the better part of the last three days traveling, first to report for the assignment and then to get into position to make the jump. None of them, Boston included, liked the idea that they were sitting and waiting in the desert, as if afraid of a couple of locals in old Jeeps.

Hera pushed her feet against the seat back, trying to keep her muscles from going into spasm.

“Hey Chief — when we are we moving?” she asked.

“Soon as Colonel Freah says we’re good to go.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“It’ll be when it is,” said Boston.

“That’s a line of Plato, isn’t it?” said McGowan.

“Who’s Plato?” asked Boston.

“Plato’s that guy in the Popeye cartoons who ate all the hamburgers,” said Flash.

“No, you’re thinking of Pluto.”

“I know who Plato is, asshole,” snapped Boston, but no one heard him — they were too busy trying to remember the cast of the ancient cartoons.

Because they’d had to scramble to pull the operation together, Flash, McGowan, Hera, and Sugar had joined Whiplash as provisional members. There was no question that they were qualified; all had proven themselves in covert operations in the past.

But impressive résumés didn’t make a good team great. Boston knew all too well that the opposite could be true. The success or failure of a group depended very much on the chemistry between them, whether they were trying for a pennant in baseball or sneaking behind enemy lines in battle. Even if he had personally vetted everyone in the group, he still wouldn’t have been sure how they would all work together in the field.

What he’d seen so far didn’t encourage him. They’d pitched in to help secure the gear well enough. But he could tell they were still checking each other out, deciding whether they wanted to trust each other.

“Brutus was the guy Popeye beat up,” said Boston, in a tone that suggested the conversation should end. “Wally was the hamburger guy.”

“You’re wrong,” said Flash. “It was Bluto.”

“It’s amazing how grown men can argue about cartoons,” said Hera.

“We aren’t arguing. We’re discussing,” said McGowan.

“This is about as intellectual a discussion as those jawbonis can have,” said Sugar.

“Who are you calling a jawboni?” said McGowan. “I’m Scots — I don’t do jawboni.”

“All right,” said Boston. Sensing the animosity level starting to rise behind the joking, he decided it was time to act less like a chief and more like a kindergarten teacher. “Who wants ice cream?”

Danny worked out a plan in his head to ambush the men in the Jeep if they went into the camp. But it wasn’t necessary. The Jeeps continued up the road without turning off, moving through the hills.

They brought the bus into camp twenty minutes later and began unpacking. The gear seemed to have gained about a thousand pounds in the five miles from the drop. The process dragged as they sorted, stored, and installed. Even Danny grew tired. He kept himself going the last hour or so thinking about Reid’s ice cream.

With everything finally squared away a half hour before sunrise, he divided up the watch, then headed to the house and its makeshift kitchen for a prebedtime snack.

Only to find the ice cream gone.

“You always said the troops were the first priority,” Boston said when Danny asked for an explanation.

“From now on, they’re the first priority on everything but ice cream.”