they were on the last mission of
the day, skittering swiftly across the jungle canopy in lengthening shadows of
the sun’s final glare, when the plane in front of them just dropped out of the
sky. One moment the Thrush was making a smooth sweep over a large field of coca
and in the next, as it rose and began its upward arc over the trees beyond, it
lurched, dipped, and was swallowed whole by the jungle.
Perched in the
open door of a Bell 212, strapped in but mostly hanging out, Jake Tyler saw it
happen and swept his 7.62mm Galil back and forth, looking for telltale signs of
a ground-to-air assault. But the only things that seemed to be stirring as
their helicopter passed overhead were the treetops, giant prehistoric-looking
evergreens whose dense crowns undulated in the aerial downdraft.
“Son of a
bitch!” the pilot barked into his headset. “Son of a bitch!” he screamed again,
leaning forward over the instrument panel to scan the jungle terrain below, as
were the other six occupants from their various vantage points in the chopper.
The pilot spent the next several minutes trying to establish radio contact with
the Thrush. He got nothing but dead air.
“Shit,” Jake
muttered, hesitating only a second. “Okay, let’s go. Take her down now,” he
said, raising a fist in the air and hooking a thumb toward the floorboards.
The man seated
beside him said, “Not so fast, Jake. We need to get some intel, see what’s down
there.”
“No, Alberto,”
Jake responded. “We don’t have time to wait on intel. I’m going down. Get my
medical bag and gear.”
Alberto
Hernandez, a former Special Forces vet from the Vietnam era, cast him a tight
look, but Jake was already reaching for his gear, additional weapons and
ammunition. Hernandez knew him well enough to know it was futile to dissuade
Jake once his mind was made up. And truthfully, by the time they got any solid
intelligence radioed from their base, the embassy, army, or police, it would be
too late. They all knew it could already be too late.
Behind
Hernandez, their mission commander spoke up. He, too, was former Special Forces
with a similar background as that of Hernandez, the only difference being in his
rank and stature; where Hernandez was slim and slight of build with short dark
hair and a trim mustache, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Traynor was a tall and husky
man with a full head of silver hair and beard to match. “Okay, Jake,” Traynor
responded, “but one of us is coming with you.”
“No, let me go,”
Jake said, glancing dubiously at the junglas aboard. “I’ll let you know
the situation as soon as I get down there.”
While the pilot,
Haskell Delaney, made circuitous sweeps over the area where the plane had gone
down, the copilot radioed the search and rescue in to their base commander and
Hernandez helped Jake prepare for his drop. The junglas, a pair of
Colombians manning the opposite door, were armed with slightly heavier
firepower—an M60 machine gun and M79 grenade launcher between them—and Traynor
took Jake’s place with an M4. The copilot could be heard communicating with the
Huey gunships in their fleet.
“Reaper One,
Two, Three, this is Rescue. We have a flyboy down…I say again, flyboy down.
SAR medic going in. Take overwatch positions and standby for further, over.”
Delaney had
maneuvered the Bell to a semi-cleared spot near the tree line, hovering about
seventy-five feet over a thatch of brush to provide Jake some cover.
Moments later,
Jake flexed his knees and sprung backward from the helicopter, tethered by the
rope running smoothly and swiftly through his hands as he descended to the
ground five to ten feet at a time. While the maneuver was as effortless and
fundamental to him as zipping up a jacket or twisting off a bottle cap, the
dexterity and precision with which it was executed could only be mastered by
many dozens of drills and even more actual operations. His feet were together,
legs straight, body bent at the waist in perfect L formation. The second his
boots touched the ground, he unclipped the snap link and disengaged, flipped the
safety off his rifle, and radioed back to the crew.
He stood
stock-still for several moments, watching and listening as the helicopter pulled
up to about two hundred feet, backing off just enough to allow him to hear but
hovering close enough to lay down suppressive fire if necessary. Clad in
camouflage fatigues, a faded khaki head wrap worn like a do-rag, and sunglasses,
Jake easily blended with the bush as he moved toward the tree line. He was
composed and clear-headed, characteristics that served him well during special
ops, but he could also feel the undercurrent of adrenaline beginning a steady
drumline to his heart. His movements fell in cadence with his pulse, slower but
on beat, eyes constantly moving as his mind worked the possible scenarios.
Removing his Wiley X shades, he slipped further into the shadowy jungle rim.
This was strange, he thought. Earlier, they had swept the
area thoroughly, which was part of what they did on these missions, and declared
it secure. But he knew with the number of guerrilla forces in the area that
could change very quickly. He’d been doing counternarcotics work in Colombia
for several months now as part of a private government contract, and today’s
five flights were the last scheduled for his current stint. As one of the more
experienced Special Forces operatives, Jake had been recruited to work CSAR—combat
search and rescue—in a dual security and medical role. This was not his first
time working counternarcotics; he’d
completed a contract in the late nineties, vowing
at the time it was not something he would be doing again. Funny how life had a
way of boomeranging on you—there had been a lot of things he said he’d never do
again. Like stalking through a Colombian jungle in narcoguerrilla territory.
Not more than an
hour ago their Bell, as part of a four-chopper escort team for a pair of Turbo
Thrushes, had taken the lead in securing the area to be sprayed.
Normally, as the
SAR bird, they would be hovering high overhead and above it all, out of play,
but they were training the Colombians and therefore leading by example. Flying
low and fast at treetop level, they were close enough to spot any movement
below and if, after several passes, they had not drawn any ground fire, the
Thrushes would begin their dive-and-dump of herbicide. The four choppers then
lined up at the corners of the field and began an intricate do-si-do, nearly
rotor tip to rotor tip, one pair flying high and the other low, alternating
positions. They would make a continual circuit until the planes had completed
overlapping swaths and roared off, returning to base.
But something
had obviously gone wrong here. Whether from a mechanical malfunction or a
guerrilla strike, one plane would not be returning tonight. Jake just hoped its
pilot would be.
THIRTY-FIVE
MINUTES INTO his search, dark smoke and the distinctively alcoholic vapors of
burnt or burning JP4 drew Jake to the downed plane—or what was left of it. It
lay smoldering in its own heat, seared and twisted metal in a pit of severed
tree limbs, stripped bare and disfigured by a combination of the crash and human
pillage. Either natives of a nearby village had gone foraging or, more likely,
guerrillas had. Checking a handheld GPS, Jake verified his position and radioed
the coordinates to his team. Then, after a quick look in all directions,
listening for any movement around him, he picked through the wreckage. Several
yards from the debris field, he found the pilot.
He felt a knot
of emotion in his throat as he looked down at the skinny middle-aged man, clad
in an olive drab flight suit with a University of Iowa t-shirt visible beneath.
Wayne Gilby was a crop-duster, as were most of the civilian pilots recruited for
counter-narcotic eradication missions; they had the specialized flying skills
needed for coca fumigation. Jake knew this had been Gilby’s last pass on the
last day of his last mission, and it was a job the man had never wanted. From a
conversation he’d had with Gilby, Jake learned that the Iowan had accepted the
contract as a last resort because jobs were scarce in the farm-belt. He had a
wife and five children to provide for, and in taking the counternarcotics
contract he had been given assurances that the next non-combat job would be
his. Earlier today, Jake had seen him high-five one of his fellow pilots,
probably already thinking about a fishing trip with his kids or catching a movie
with his wife, looking forward to going home.
A cursory
inspection revealed that, like the plane, Gilby had been stripped of his
equipment: weapons, radio, survival gear. It was impossible to tell if he’d
been alive after the crash, but from the pulverized body parts, Jake doubted
it. At least he hoped the crash had killed Gilby, and quick; the pilot’s throat
gaped open from the slash of a broad blade, the gelatinous glob of blood still
sticky. Now, gazing down at the gruesome remains of Wayne Gilby, Jake’s
thoughts turned to getting his body back to the chopper.
Surveying the
dense woods around him, listening even more intently now that he knew others had
been here, Jake could hear the distant drone of the helicopters but little
else. From indeterminate depths of the jungle, branches creaked and palm fronds
swished with the play of monkeys and other small creatures. That was a good
sign as it gave indications of nature undisturbed. But then he picked up
something from another direction that tripped the hair-trigger on his internal
warning system, something that simultaneously sent a bevy of large-winged birds
fluttering noisily off toward a skylight in the tree canopy. That deep green
ceiling had darkened appreciably since he’d last looked up; day was tilting
toward dusk, and in the Amazon the sun could show its dark side with jarringly
sudden stealth. Like the outline of an assassin caught in a passing shadow.
Now he could clearly hear sounds he recognized, a mashing of spongy bog
alternated with crunching thatch—boots marching across and through brush, many
pairs of boots.
