Once he reached the bottom of the ramp, Mohammad Mboso removed a flashlight from his dirty vest, pointing it into the darkness. Mud, water and dead things squished beneath his boots. The stench inside the tunnel was ghastly, but no one noticed. The gunfire back at camp seemed to be getting louder. Mboso considered this time the Special Forces had been sent to free the women. There was the possibility they had penetrated the perimeter’s defenses. Mboso was not worried because the tunnel ran for more than 200 meters through the dense jungle. It emerged a half-kilometer from the river, and in less than five minutes — after Mboso made a call on his Sat phone — a powered river barge would arrive to take Mboso, his fighters, and their captives to another camp downriver. That is unless the Nigerian Special Forces had men stationed at the river.
After getting settled, the process of bargaining for the women with the new Nigerian president would resume. But this time, the prices would be much higher because their government would pay dearly for the lives of every jihadi killed in battle. Mboso had no idea if his leader was still alive, but he would soon find out. Mboso’s one and only job was to get the women safely out of camp and transported to another camp.
But now it was time for the younger jihadis to do the hard-core fighting. Mboso had already earned his badge of courage. Ever since he was a teenager, he could not recall a time when an assault rifle wasn’t within arm’s reach. He had fought in so many battles he could not remember them. Now, ten years later, he was high enough on the Boko Haram food chain to avoid being the last man out. These days, he found his ass seated in a chair more often than diving into a foxhole. He was as close to management as one could get in an organization focused on raining death and terror on the infidels. Only their current leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, had served more time as the “Islamic caliphate” of Nigeria.
Ahead, Mboso’s flashlight found the earth slanting upward toward the forest. Now that there was a considerable amount of distance between the attacking forces and his group, the women were beginning to quiet down. Mboso held up his hand, stopped, signaling the line behind him to follow suit. One of the Boko Haram fighters pushed his way to the front of the line and met up with Mboso.
Mboso told the young man, “Keep everyone here and keep them quiet. I will go to make sure the coast is clear.”
The younger man nodded in understanding, and Mboso continued walking up the incline.
As he neared the top of the muddy ramp, the jihadi stuck his head out of the tunnel to take a quick look around. Off in the distance the sounds of gunfire had died down. The forest around him was very still. It seemed every living creature had been scared into silence. Except for the sound of the rushing river in the distance, the forest swallowed the usual nocturnal noises of insects, birds, breaking of deadfall, and animals walking along paths through thick underbrush to forage. The immensity of the silence was unnerving and eerily unnatural.
Cautiously, Mboso emerged from the tunnel into a clearing. The area had been trampled by a modern machine that had excavated dirt from the trench. He was hesitant to use his flashlight. Instead, he stood quietly in the darkness, listening and looking for others that meant him harm.
Nothing. No light. No sounds. Even the racket from the gun battle had now died down to an occasional muted pop.
Mboso heard a voice behind him. It was that of his leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi. Behind him dozens of the Boko Haram fighters had caught up with his group. The men exited the tunnel and quickly drew up beside Mboso forming a tight defensive line with their guns pointed at unseen threats.
Abu Musab al-Barnawi asked Mohammad, “Is it safe to leave from here?” His leader was breathing hard. Sweat on his dark skin gleamed in the moonlight, and it looked like he was made from finely polished onyx.
Mboso had only begun to assess the security of the current location, but remaining standing out in the open was clearly not an option. As if he sensed the same predicament, even before Mboso could answer, al-Barnawi ordered, “Let’s move out.”
Several of the younger jihadis went out on point, followed by al-Barnawi and then Mboso with the women trailing along behind him. They had walked almost the full half-kilometer toward the river when Mboso suddenly stopped. Since leaving the tunnel and entering the strangely quiet forest, he had heard the first sounds the forest had to offer. Yet the sound was neither insect nor animal. This noise was manmade. It started out as a whisper, as if someone was delicately tearing paper. The noise became increasingly louder, finally cutting through the thick night air with an unholy screech. Once Mohammad identified what was making the sound, he panicked. He turned toward the women yelling, “Go back. Go back!”
The women did not have to be told twice. They began running to the safety the tunnels provided. The low-flying jet may have no intention other than innocently flying over them, but Mboso was taking no chances tonight.
Far back in the woods, Mboso watched as the trees lit up — it looked like Allah was throwing streams of hellfire down to earth. Long lines of red, blue and orange death dropped from the heavens. A million suns had descended upon him
The skin on the back of his neck, arms and hands began forming blisters. His greasy black hair rolled into tiny curls, burned off and then fluttered away in singed clumps. Prior to passing out, Mohammed realized in disbelief what the dropped substance was — it was napalm.
Sea of Japan
Lt. Commander Foster Nolan was crazy. As he floated on his tiny life raft in the middle of the dark ocean, he realized anyone in his line of work had to be crazy. No sane person would volunteer to climb into a lightning-fast jet venturing into foreign lands with very little chance of coming out unscathed — either physically or emotionally. Yet he volunteered to jump into a jet and had flown a single sortie over the mainland of North Korea. That pegged the frickin’ needle on the crazy meter, and he understood how lucky he was to be alive. If he had pulled the ejection handle on his F-35 just one second later, he would be floating in the Sea of Japan in the form of shark chum.
Moments after his aircraft had been blown from the sky by one of the North Korean pilots flying the Chengdu J-20 jet fighters, the lieutenant commander initially was surprised to be alive. There were so many things that could have gone wrong when he yanked the ejection handle going 1200 miles per hour.
In flight school, Nolan had learned that deploying the ejection seat in a modern jet operates in a two-stage system. First, the canopy is blown away, then the seat is launched. When the ejection handle under the seat is pulled, the ejection process is activated. Once the clear canopy was blown away, the pilot’s seat was ejected from the fuselage. Nolan had escaped the first deadly problem that could have occurred. The canopy might not have released properly and shot him directly through the tough acrylic dome which would have broken his neck, instantly. Thankfully, all had gone well, and Foster Nolan had found himself clear of the aircraft. Under his seat a series of little white tubes with nozzle ends ignited. The solid rocket fuel burned in one quick, ferocious burst, lasting less than a second, propelling both himself and his chair an additional 100 feet away from the aircraft. After the burn sequence had taken place, a tiny drogue parachute popped out from the top of Nolan’s pilot seat.
Initially, the chute stabilized his seat and prevented it from tumbling out of control. Since the lieutenant commander had ejected under 10,000 feet, the drogue chute had yanked out his larger main parachute. The instant the main chute deployed, Nolan felt his pilot chair release from beneath his butt. He looked down to watch the chair tumble toward the black water below. Nolan found himself hanging under his main chute as he slowly descended toward the unknown. He looked down to verify his survival kit — or ditch bag — as referred to by pilot was