“Come here, you bastard,” one of the men shouted, grabbing Hayes by the legs and yanking him into the backseat, power-slamming him onto the floorboards, Zoe screaming in his ear.
“Heeelp meeee!”
Then the man was all over him, holding him by the throat with one hand and trying to beat his face in with the other.
Hayes ate the first punch, but when the man reared back for a second one, Hayes shrimped onto his side and coiled a leg around his torso. Grabbing the man’s forearm with his hand and pushing with his leg, he was able to shove him off balance. The move created just enough space for Hayes to hit him with an elbow to the temple.
The man sagged, and Hayes shoved him into his dazed teammate, turned onto his stomach, and scrambled for the door handle.
“Zoe, we have to jump!” he yelled, shoving the door open.
“I—I can’t!” she screamed.
She was terrified, the fear in her eyes palpable, but it was the only way.
“You can do it,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulder and inching her toward the door.
“Noooo . . . I—I can’t . . .” she wailed.
“Yes, you can,” he said, turning her to the open door.
For a moment he thought he had her, but then she looked down, saw the blurring asphalt outside the Excursion, and in the next instant she was clawing at his face, twisting against his grip like a cat over running water.
Just hit her and throw her ass out, the voice snapped.
He knew it was the right call, but growing up in the South, Hayes had been taught from an early age that there was nothing worse than a man who put his hands on a woman. And even now, with both of their lives hanging in the balance, he found himself unable to do what needed to be done.
“Just close your eyes and—”
The words were cut off by the slam of something hard against the back of his skull, followed by a pair of rough hands grabbing him by the belt. A man kicked him in the arm, breaking Hayes’s grip on Zoe’s shoulders, and then lifted him off the floor.
“You want to jump . . . then have at it,” the voice said, and then he flung Hayes out the open door.
34
LIBREVILLE, GABON
It was hot on the tarmac and Cyrus Vandal was sweating, the clothes he wore beneath the insulated flight suit wet against his skin. He dug out the tube of amphetamines he’d been issued before leaving the States thirteen hours before and popped the orange pill into his mouth, chasing it with a long gulp from the bottle of water. Only then did he start walking toward the MC-130 Talon that was idling in the darkness.
Vandal waddled up the ramp, weighed down by the rucksack hanging upside down between his legs and the bulky cargo bag in his hand.
Inside the Talon’s cargo hold, the Special Operations jumpmaster assigned to the insertion double-checked the connections on the MC-4 Ram Air parachute strapped to his back and the gear strapped to his body. It was a job he’d done thousands of times. He worked in silence, tapping each connector, tugging on each strap, his face blank in the muted glow of the red light that illuminated the cargo hold.
When he was satisfied, the jumpmaster disconnected the hose connected to the bail-out bottle on his hip and clipped the end into the Talon’s onboard O2. Vandal tested the flow and gave him a thumbs-up before lowering himself onto the nylon bench.
“Good to go. We’ll be airborne shortly,” the jumpmaster yelled over the roar of the engines.
Vandal nodded, and while the crew chief closed and secured the ramp, he leaned back and rested his helmet against the bulkhead, staring up at the exposed wires and cables that ran the length of the cargo hold.
Thirty seconds after the crew chief buckled in, the Talon was rolling, shaking like a washing machine on meth as it raced down the runway and leapt into the air.
Vandal had been up for twenty-four hours and was exhausted. His eyes were hot from lack of sleep and his throat dry as a bone from the combination of dehydration that accompanied the long flight and the flow of pure oxygen from his mask.
Just going to close my eyes for a second.
The relief was immediate, and while he waited for the chem to kick in, his mind worked to play catchup—digest the flurry of information that had consumed the previous day.
As a Marine Raider, Vandal was well aware of Special Operation Command’s long reach. Their ability to find the nation’s enemies, fix them in place, and then send in teams to finish them was unparalleled. But he was still marveling at how the techs at the Signals Intercept and Analysis Lab had been able to not only locate his target but track him during the fifteen hundred miles to Luanda.
But they had, and now the rest was up to him.
The chems kicked in shortly after takeoff and the initial dump of amphetamines hit his flagging nervous system like kerosene to a fire. One second Vandal could barely open his eyes and in the next instant he was wide awake and focused—ready to take on the world.
* * *
—
Fifty minutes later he was standing at the open ramp, watching the horizon pitch through the night-vision goggles attached to his helmet as the pilot rolled the Talon into its final approach. Vandal braced himself against the strut, the weight of his gear threatening to bend him double, the wind cutting at him like an icy flail.
At thirty thousand feet the air was negative forty degrees and even with the insulated jumpsuit and the speed rushing through his blood, Vandal was shivering. His hands were numb inside his Gore-Tex gloves.
He pushed all the discomfort from his mind and turned his attention to the red jump light and began counting the seconds in his head until it was go time.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. Now.
Right on time, the light blinked green and Vandal took three steps forward and flung himself into the abyss. He locked his body into position—arched his back, held his arms and legs tight while ducking his head, and was soon falling at one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Rocketing through the slate-gray clouds like a demon cast down from heaven.
Four seconds after exiting the aircraft, his chute deployed and caught air, jerking him to a halt. He looked up, checked the canopy for holes, and grabbed the steering toggles, before checking the compass on his tac board.
Seeing that he was off his azimuth, Vandal pulled down on the toggle, steered back on course, and after using the GPS strapped to his wrist to check his ground speed, settled in for the ride.
At four thousand feet he came out of the clouds and got his first glimpse of the ground: the Bondo-gray earth to his front and the India ink shimmer of the Atlantic Ocean off to his right. He activated the remote infrared beacon that had been inserted before him and spent the next twenty seconds searching the mass of green ahead.