“Keep your mask on,” Parson said. “Don’t start over on my account.”
Gold nodded, tried to shout hello. Her verbal communication couldn’t go much beyond that, so she debated what gestures were appropriate. Settled on a thumbs-up.
“Everything’s good on our end,” Parson said. “Rashid’s ready to launch with some Afghan troops, and I’m flying with him. Blount and his Marines are coming in the Osprey.”
He paused, as if he wanted to say more but could not find the words. Finally, he spoke again.
“Be careful, Sophia,” he said. “You’ve done a lot of good work on this deployment. Maybe too good. If anything happens to you now, I’m going to be really, really pissed off.”
Gold smiled inside her mask, realized he couldn’t see that. Then Parson did a surprising thing: He lifted her hand off her right knee, held it in both of his—all three hands gloved in Nomex and leather.
“Give ’em hell, Sergeant Major,” he said.
He squeezed her hand slightly and released it. Stood up and walked down the ramp, silhouetted in the severe light of halogen lamps. Tonight, his limp was hardly noticeable, more like a rolling gait.
A loadmaster flipped a switch, and a hydraulic pump began whining. The man wore a flight helmet and oxygen mask as he worked, trailing a long extension hose. He moved a lever, and the ramp groaned closed. Thunks echoed from underneath as the ramp locks engaged.
The lights in the cargo compartment dimmed. Gold listened to the sounds of an aircraft preparing for engine start: the whooshes of bleed air and the hum of electronics. Outside, a propeller began to turn. It occurred to Gold that if she survived the next several hours, the Form 1307, her parachutist’s record, would carry all kinds of notations for this jump: N for night, L for HALO, O for oxygen use, F for free fall. And C for combat.
Parson watched the Talon lift off into the night. The aircraft flew with all its lights off, so darkness swallowed it immediately. The rumble of turboprops continued long after the plane had vanished. The disembodied engine noise gave Parson a vague unease that did not square with his knowledge of tactics. The aircrew and jump team were safer, of course, if bad guys couldn’t see them; Parson had done a hundred such blacked-out departures himself. But he’d seldom seen one from the ground, and the effect unsettled him.
His anxiety, he knew, had more to do with who was on board than anything else. He didn’t know if he could handle losing any more friends, especially Sophia. The rational part of his mind recognized emotion worming its way into his judgment, or at least his assessment of risk.
The Air Force’s psychologists and grief counselors might call it a form of delayed stress. But so what if it was? Parson still had a job to do. He didn’t have time to sit around talking about his feelings; he had time only to suck it up and press on.
Inside the Air Operations Center, he found Blount and a Marine captain watching the video downlink. Parson guessed the captain was a commander from Blount’s unit, trying to glean any last-minute intel. Blount had grabbed some food from the midnight chow line. He sipped from a half-pint carton of milk and chewed on a fried potato cake. His rifle hung from a sling around his shoulder. Unfamiliar shapes bulged from his web gear: canisters and cylinders. Nonlethal weapons, Parson assumed. Tear gas and flash-bangs the team hoped to use to incapacitate rather than destroy.
On the screen, an image of the target zone streamed from the sensors of the Predator orbiting on station. Two figures, ghostlike on infrared, moved about the ruins and masonry structures outside the bunker complex. With nothing for size comparison, Parson couldn’t determine their height with any accuracy, but he took them for grown men. They moved like adults, held their rifles in a manner that suggested long practice. Sentries, maybe. If those sentries stayed put, Parson imagined, they probably had about an hour to live.
Blount studied them without comment. His eyes betrayed no emotion as he watched the feed, but Parson could guess what he was thinking. The big Marine had made clear how he felt about Black Crescent and its abductions.
I’d hate to have this guy coming after me, Parson thought.
The sound of jet engines rose from the flight line, drowned out the routine chatter on the Predator feed. From the throaty rumble of the turbines, Parson figured it was the pair of A-10 Warthogs supporting this mission. The relatively slow ground attack planes had a sound distinct from the higher scream of supersonic fighters. Parson wondered what they’d sound like from the ground if they strafed you. He was glad they were on his side. A lucky break that repairs by civil engineers had opened enough runway for Warthogs to land and take off at Mazar.
“There goes our air support package,” Parson said.
“Yes, sir,” Blount said. “But I doubt they’ll do us any good.”
“Maybe not,” Parson said. In truth, almost certainly not. This mission’s entire concept turned on minimizing casualties. Otherwise, the Reaper could have done the job the other night. But it made Parson feel a little better to hear the A-10s take off on time. All the parts were clicking into place.
When the twin roar of the attack jets died away, the Predator crew and their mission commander were talking again:
“Give me a wider angle, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
The lens zoomed out to show a broader view of the target area. Slewed left and right. Parson thought he saw something. Apparently, so did the sensor operator. The camera slewed again. It revealed a pickup truck heading for the bunker complex.
“What have we here?” Parson said to no one in particular.
“At least we’ll know they’re home,” Blount said.
Another vehicle followed the pickup. A bigger, commercial truck, maybe. Parson wondered if it was one of the jingle trucks he’d seen all over Afghanistan’s roads.
Another truck appeared, the same size. Then another, and another. Now Parson was worried. Jingle trucks didn’t usually run in convoys. But military-style vehicles did. Especially if they were carrying arms or reinforcements.
“What the hell are they doing?” Parson asked. “Did somebody warn them we were coming?”
“Unlikely, sir,” the Marine captain said.
“If they knew we were coming, they’d just move,” Blount said. “I’ve seen insurgents do that three times at least. Tipped off by the Pakistani ISI or some traitor on the take in the Afghan government.”
“Just bad timing, then?” Parson said.
“Just timing,” Blount said. He didn’t seem fazed at the prospect of hitting a stronger target than expected. But Parson didn’t like it at all. What were Sophia and the others jumping into?
“The weather’s great tonight,” the Marine captain said. “If the conditions are good for us to run an operation, conditions are good for them to move around.”
To move around four extra truckloads of… what? Kids? Rocket-propelled grenades? Battle-hardened jihadists? Sophia and the Special Tactics Team would be over the drop zone pretty soon. But it wasn’t too late to abort.
“Let’s see what JSOC wants us to do,” Parson said. Please let them call it off, he thought. He’d never shied from a tough mission, but Sophia wasn’t supposed to be in the middle of a damned firefight to begin with. Let alone one where the odds had suddenly gone south. She was a linguist, for God’s sake.
“I’m on it,” the captain said. Dialed a secure phone.