The whop-whop of the main rotor thudded harder as the blade angle changed. The helicopter began descending, and the Afghans below started sprinting toward the landing zone. Two men carried children who must have been hurt in the quake.
The power lines came so close now, they swayed from the wind blast. Below them, some of the locals used scarves or bare hands to shield their faces from flying grit.
“What are we doing?” Parson asked the interpreter.
“The colonel wants to pick up some patients.”
Was the colonel nuts? With no support, no plan, just drop into a city full of desperate people?
Up and down the street, buildings lay in ruins. More locals gathered as dust billowed underneath the helicopter. Some limped alone; others leaned on assistants. Still others seemed uninjured, but they waved their arms and shouted. Parson supposed they wanted help for relatives trapped in rubble. And every one of them, he thought, wants to get on this helicopter. His heart pounded faster.
Dust enveloped the aircraft. Parson could see nothing in the brownout as Rashid touched down. How those rotorhead chopper drivers kept from getting vertigo, Parson would never understand. Dust poured in through the open door, and the interpreter coughed and squinted. He turned his face as if looking for clear air, but there was no escape from the blowing grit.
Parson felt a bump, and the dust cleared as Rashid throttled back to idle. The crew chief kicked the door ladder into place. Locals began running toward the aircraft. Under his breath Parson muttered, “Oh, shit. Stay away from the tail. Stay away from the tail.” Landing was a bad idea.
A man holding a little girl with a crushed leg reached the helicopter first. He came so close to the tail rotor that wind from its spinning blades tousled the girl’s hair. The man seemed not to notice. We’re committed now, Parson thought. Might as well help who we can. He and the crew chief pulled the man and daughter aboard. The child’s blood dripped from a yellow blanket and spattered onto the floor. She held on tightly to her father’s shirt, tiny handfuls of fabric clutched in her fists.
The crowd surged around the aircraft, and people began to try to climb inside. The crew chief and interpreter shouted to them and to each other. An apparently unhurt man pulled himself through the doorway, and the crew chief shoved him back out. A woman with burns across her face stumbled against the side and started up the crew steps. The interpreter grabbed her by the arms and yanked her aboard.
The colonel forced his way down the three steps. Then he lifted two more kids into the chopper. He let two men come with them, presumably the fathers. Then he pulled aboard several more patients until the cabin was full.
“No more,” the interpreter yelled. “Captain Rashid says we have room for no more.”
The colonel tried to climb back inside. Some of the locals also tried to get aboard, and they got in his way. The colonel pushed back at them, then began waving his Walther P1. Parson thought he looked like a martinet, brandishing that German pistol. You shouldn’t pull a weapon if you weren’t prepared to fire it.
When the colonel made it back inside, Parson pressed his talk switch and said, “Go.” He knew Rashid understood that much.
The noise of the engines and rotors rose, and the Mi-17 began lifting off. A man started climbing through the doorway, and the crew chief punched him. The man dropped outside and fell three feet to the ground.
A boy hung on to the lip of the doorway. His feet dangled in midair, and the crew chief tried to push him off by the shoulders, but the kid wouldn’t let go.
The helicopter was about nine feet off the ground and climbing. Parson feared the child would fall to his death if he didn’t let go before the aircraft got higher.
“No more,” the interpreter shouted. “Rashid says we are too full.” The aircraft yawed to the right, settled, then yawed left.
Seeing no other options, Parson kneeled and pried loose the kid’s fingers. Despised himself for doing it. The boy yowled in protest, kicked his sneaker-clad feet, dropped into the dust cloud. When he hit the ground, he got back up and gestured with his thumbs. Parson met his eyes for a moment before losing sight of him in the dust. The boy seemed unhurt, but with a look on his face that said the Americans had just made a new enemy.
Parson hated to think why that kid wanted to get on board so badly. Was he trying to get help for a trapped mother? An injured sister? Parson had used force before; he had killed when necessary. He’d never lost a night of sleep over it, either. Those terrorists deserved what they got.
But this boy hadn’t done anything wrong. Parson was glad Sophia wasn’t here to see what he’d done. But then he wished he could talk to her about it.
Half a world away from Afghanistan, Sergeant Major Sophia Gold stood on the open ramp of a C-130 Hercules as it flew at twenty-five thousand feet. The slipstream whipped at the sleeves of her uniform. Beneath her stretched an expanse of evergreen forests and tobacco fields, and the brown S-turns of a river called the Cape Fear. She took a breath from her oxygen bottle, then launched herself into the void. The growl of turboprops surrendered to the pure white rush of wind. Gold arched her back, spread her arms and legs, and flew.
That’s what free fall felt like: not a sickening plunge, but flight. In fact, at Fort Bragg’s Military Free-fall Simulator—essentially a vertical wind tunnel—her instructors had spoken of “flying your body.” In her arched position, she controlled her center of gravity so she wouldn’t tumble and cause her chute to tangle when she opened it.
But she didn’t have to open it yet. She glanced at the altimeter on her left wrist the way a civilian might check a watch. The needle unwound through twenty thousand feet as she dropped toward the world at about one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. Gold wished she could freeze this moment, live in it for longer. The wind and the speed swept away all worries about the future and despair over the past.
Slightly above and to her right she saw one of her five partners on this high altitude/low opening jump. All five were men: four Special Forces troops and an Air Force pararescueman. Gold was one of very few HALO-qualified women.
The sun glinted in her visor and reflected against the cumulus beneath her. Cool mist enveloped her as she fell through a cloud. For an instant she felt stationary as the grayness took away all visual references, and then FLASH: The trees and ponds and roads of eastern North Carolina reappeared, larger now. Green loblolly pines stood among the orange and yellow of sweet gums and maples. Brilliant scarlet encircled a few of the trunks: the odd beauty of poison ivy at the height of autumn color. Lush hues and flatland varied in all respects from the stark mountains of Southwest Asia.
Her altimeter rolled through ten thousand feet. The terrain beneath her expanded by the second, and she knew this nirvana must end soon. The altimeter needle crept toward the red. She hated to do it, but knew she must. As she passed through four thousand feet, she brought in both arms, put her gloved fingers on the D ring, and yanked the rip cord.
There came that luffing sound. Then a giant hand yanked her from her reverie. The harness dug at her armpits and legs. The earth stopped rushing at her. Her feet swung in her paratrooper boots. The opening shock made her think of an animal running free until it reached the end of a long leash. She noticed a slight pain in her mouth: She’d bitten the inside of her lip. This sudden and violent deceleration always hurt just a little, but this time something else felt wrong.