“What were you doing there?”
“What paratroopers are trained to do—put foot to ass for the US of A.”
In that moment he forgot all about the Marines.
Five months later, Hayes was walking out of the pack shed at Lawson Army Airfield in Fort Benning, Georgia, a freshly minted second lieutenant—the only thing standing between him and a posting at the 82nd Airborne five jumps from a high-performance aircraft.
“On your feet, chalk two,” one of the airborne instructors yelled.
Hayes got to his feet and shuffled toward the door, the straps from the T-10 Delta digging into his thighs, his stomach in knots at the sight of the C-130s idling on the tarmac.
He was almost to the door when a second instructor, sensing his apprehension, stepped into his face. “Just remember, young lieutenant,” the man yelled over the roar of the C-130’s engines, “paratroopers don’t die, we go to hell to regroup.”
These guys are fucking crazy.
But it was too late to turn back, too late to do anything but follow his chalk out the door and up the ramp of a C-130—the prop blast on his face hot as an oven.
* * *
—
But that felt like a lifetime ago. Now, inside the Provider’s cargo area, Hayes secured the chest harness and started aft, each step sure and measured despite the rise and fall of the plane beneath his feet. He unlocked the brakes of the first pallet and, using the rollers bolted to the floor, scooted it toward the ramp. Once in position, Hayes threw the brake and double-checked the webbing stretched tight over the pump motor and the deployment chute on the top. When he was sure that everything was secure, he snapped his static line into the metal cable that ran the length of the plane and reached up for the ramp control panel and pulled the lever down.
The latch disengaged with a metallic thunk and the hydraulics whined. A rectangle of blue sky appeared as the ramp yawned open. Hayes felt the humid rush of the African air fill the cargo hold, the humidity so thick he felt that he could take a bite of it.
He made sure the ramp was locked and the rollers clear before moving to the back side of the pallet, Vlad giving him the “one minute” call over the radio.
At the “thirty seconds” call, Hayes popped the brake and retrieved the orange drogue chute that was attached to the pallet by a yellow cord. He snapped the retaining band free from the beach ball–sized chute and, holding it closed in his hand, moved back to the edge of the ramp where he stood, wind clawing at his clothes, the roar of the engines deafening despite the headset over his ears—eyes locked on the amber light attached to the strut.
He waited as the light turned green and then he tossed the drogue chute from the plane.
The chute caught air and the yellow line jerked tight, pulling the main chute from the pack tray. The chute snaked free of the Provider and blossomed in the slipstream, the sudden resistance yanking the pallet from the back of the plane.
“Cargo away!” he shouted into the radio, staying on the ramp long enough to watch the pallet float gracefully toward the waiting trucks before slapping the plunger and heading forward.
The flight time to the second drop was less than fifteen minutes, so Hayes didn’t bother taking off the chute. He moved back to the cockpit and stood there, eyes locked on the map in its holder. There was something about Vlad’s flight plan that wasn’t sitting right, that kept itching at the back of his mind like a splinter beneath the skin.
But what the hell was it?
The resupply drop at Ouagadougou went off without a hitch, and Hayes was back in the cockpit, staring out the windscreen when Vlad banked toward Camp Four.
For the most part, northern Burkina Faso was arid and perfectly flat thanks to centuries of erosion, but as they flew south, the terrain began to shift, the scrubby lowlands giving way to sandstone massifs, brushy shea trees, and picturesque stretches of lime-green savannah.
From fifteen thousand feet it was beautiful country, but Hayes wasn’t fooled, because he’d been on the ground. He’d seen firsthand the hell on earth the rebels from Mali had created. How they’d load up in their dusty Toyota pickups and speed into a village, machine-gun the men before dismounting to rape the women. The thought of it made him sick with rage, but he forced himself to clear his mind and turn his attention to the task at hand.
Mainly getting Vlad’s head in the game.
Besides having to worry about getting shot out of the air, Hayes knew that if he dropped the bundle anywhere but inside the camp walls the sick and dying would never get it.
He wasn’t worried about getting the bundle on target, but what had him concerned was that the success or failure of the drop depended entirely on Vlad following his instructions, and while the moody Russian was difficult to predict in the best of times, the fact that he was still pissed off made it all but impossible to know what the man would do.
Just tell him you’re sorry, the voice suggested.
It was the last thing Hayes wanted to do. In fact, throughout most of the flight it had taken a considerable amount of willpower not to throw the man out of the plane. But after all Hayes had gone through to get this far, he couldn’t risk the Russian screwing things up just out of spite.
“Listen, I know you are still pissed about last night, but I need you to get over it.”
The Russian ignored him, and Hayes realized he was going to have to try harder.
“What I’m trying to say is that . . . I’m . . . I’m . . . ” He stopped, the words like ash in his mouth.
“You’re what?” Vlad demanded, eyes cold and enshrouded in smoke from the cigarette dangling between his lips.
“I’m trying to apologize for what happened back at the Sky Bar.”
“I tell you what,” the Russian began, “there is a package waiting in Korhogo . . .”
“Nothing illegal, or anything that would break your precious code,” Vlad added hastily, “but it would allow me to pay back some of the money that I owe.”
He brings this up now? Before the drop?
“How about we focus on the drop and then talk about this Korhogo thing?”
“Fine, whatever,” Vlad said.
Hayes left the cockpit armed with the realization that no matter what he did, it would never be enough to please the Russian.
“The hell with him,” he said, focusing on the task at hand. Unlike the other two drops, where they’d used a pallet, this time he’d chosen a speedball—a double-reinforced canvas drop bag that looked like an overstuffed football. He snapped the static line to the cable and inched the bundle to the end of the ramp.
He set the bag down and glanced back to the cockpit, the lemon-yellow glare of the sun through the bug-spattered windscreen starring his vision.