Taking Fire Page 4

  The photo of Rachel Winslow flashed through her mind. Whoever she was, she wasn’t just a Red Cross worker. Someone wanted her out of harm’s way and had enough power to make it happen. Max wondered what was really happening in the Juba jungle that these aid workers needed to be pulled out now. They’d been there for a while, so what had changed? She didn’t need to know, any more than she needed to know what had brought Rachel Winslow to the darkest part of a lost land even God had forgotten.

  Max detoured to the communal showers and stood under the hot water for a long time, letting her mind empty. When she set out on this mission she wanted her reactions to be sharp and nothing in her head but the objective. Back in her CLU she changed into clean field camos, checked her gear, weapons, and IFAK. When she was satisfied she was prepared, she set her watch and stretched out on her cot in the dark to wait.

  *

  The night was never silent. After the humans settled into their tents for the night, the animals ruled. The susurrus of insect wings on canvas, the hacking cough of a hyena, the deep-throated roar of a lion. And always, beneath it all, the soughing of the canopy overhead that sheltered them from the sun during the day and shrouded them in shadow at night. At first Rachel had had a hard time getting used to the perpetual shade on the jungle floor, but she soon came to appreciate the protection the dense foliage provided from the relentless heat. Tonight, though, she felt as if the jungle were closing in, isolating them from the rest of the world. She wasn’t naïve. She knew the dangers, environmental and civil, of this mission. She’d always been cautious and careful, but until tonight, she’d never been afraid.

  She prided herself on choosing her own path, controlling her own destiny, and now she waited in the dark while events she didn’t understand and couldn’t control unfolded around her. Distant thunder boomed, then boomed again, closer this time. Rachel sat up.

  Not thunder. Explosions.

  Chapter Four

  The Black Hawks crossed into Somalia at 2,000 feet, flying at an average cruise speed of 170 miles per hour. Max rode in the open left rear door, her legs hanging out as she watched the undulating contours of the slowly changing landscape. As the minutes passed, vast expanses of desert and low scrubland slowly gave way to the denser ground cover of the jungle. Reconnaissance images she’d seen taken in daylight showed sparse smatterings of small villages comprising no more than a few ramshackle huts, a parched acre or two of struggling crops, and scraggly goats running through twisting rutted paths; nomadic tribespeople in tent camps ringed by camels; and the ever-increasing masses of displaced natives sleeping on the ground next to their bundles of belongings. Now all was dark except for the reflection of the moon off the few streams traversing the high ground like silver ribbons. The deprivation and desperation of the land and its people were hidden in a shroud of shadows.

  The second Black Hawk trailed behind them, gunners on both sides and six Hellfire missiles mounted underneath. Neither bird held a full crew. Besides Swampfox and his copilot, she, Grif, Ollie, and the second crew chief and gunner, Bucky Burns, were the only occupants of their bird. The other Black Hawk carried only four. With luck, they’d be able to transport everyone out, including patients. She understood their orders and that Rachel Winslow was their priority, but leaving anyone behind went against everything she believed in. Wounded or dead, no one was left behind, and those civilians were now her responsibility, just like the troops who ventured outside the wire on a mission. Everybody came home. No matter what.

  Burns and Ollie scanned out the doors for signs of enemy activity with long-range night-vision scopes. The rebel forces had no airpower, but a vigorous pipeline of arms and ammunition from Yemen provided them with automatic weapons capable of firing rounds that could penetrate the bird’s fuselage or windshield. Word had it that 400 surface-to-air missiles powerful enough to take out an airliner had been stolen by al-Qaeda forces during a recent attack on Benghazi. The rebels were mobile, at home in the jungle, and skilled after decades of strife. And a Black Hawk was a big target. Rumor had it there was a bounty on Black Hawks.

  The wind, as dry and empty as the land, whipped her face below her goggles, an arid slap reminding her she did not belong in this country, but here she was. Here they all were, bound by duty and ideology and, some would say, trapped by the same. She didn’t feel trapped or tricked or coerced into fighting this war whose goals had long since morphed into something far different than they had been a decade before. She and her fellow troops weren’t even in the same country where it had all begun. In Africa, war was a way of life. Entire generations were born into it, lived in it, and died in it without ever knowing anything else.

  She’d known when she’d signed up for the Navy to subsidize her medical training she might one day be sent to a place like this for reasons that were not hers to question. That was the way of war. She didn’t regret her decision to get her medical training on the Navy’s dime—she wouldn’t have been able to afford it any other way, and she was willing to pay up on her obligation in any way the Navy demanded. She only regretted the consequences of the war for those she had pledged to serve.

  The rhythmic drone of the engines and the whir of the rotors were hypnotic, oddly soothing, and all too conducive to introspection. Out here, where bursts of adrenalized excitement and fear alternated with hours and days of boredom while waiting for the next call, introspection was an all-too-familiar companion. Tonight, Max could do without the solitary voice of her own thoughts.

  They’d been in the air almost two hours, with no sign of activity below, and she wasn’t sure at first she’d actually seen the quick flare of orange that winked out almost as soon as it appeared. Max blinked, clearing her vision. Another flicker of light shot across her visual field. A trick of sight, brought on by fatigue or distraction. When it came again, she touched the radio mic at her throat. “Swampfox, did you see that? Ten o’clock. Light flares.”

  Roger that. Standby.

  Fox would be calling in to base for a situation update. Max’s skin prickled. Nothing was worse than heading into enemy fire, even though by now she should be used to it. Fox’s voice crackled in her headphones.

  Rocket fire in the vicinity of the LZ. Heads up.

  Burns and Ollie shifted the machine guns into position and half leaned out the open doorways. Grif moved back out of the way. Max stayed put. She could use a weapon if she had to, but for now she’d just act as lookout. She flipped down her night-vision goggles, and the area of heavy vegetation off to her left where she’d first seen the momentary flare lit up with green fluorescent puffs of smoke that plumed and fractured, then drifted away like thin strands of seaweed undulating below the surface of a quiet pond.

  The sight would have been eerily beautiful if it hadn’t meant death had come calling.

  *

  Rachel jumped up and pushed her feet into her boots. Across from her, Amina was hastily doing the same.

  “What is it?” Amina asked in a high thin whisper.

  “I don’t know.” Rachel answered automatically, but what else could it be? Unless some storm had unexpectedly blown up without warning, those thunderous booms were coming from a battle, and judging by their loudness, the fight was on its way to them. Whatever was happening, she did not intend to be trapped in her tent, blind and helpless. “I’m going to find Dacar.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Amina said.

  Rachel unzipped the tent flap, stepped out, and grabbed Amina’s hand. The solar lights that usually lit the encampment were gone. A man with a rifle—one of Dacar’s Somali security guards?—poured water on the fire. The camp plunged into darkness except for the dim glow of the propane-powered lights inside the hospital tent that burned day and night. Muffled shouts came from everywhere. Rachel couldn’t recognize the voices or the words, only the tenor of fear and urgency. She thought she heard Dacar calling orders, but she couldn’t be certain. Another volley of explosions lit up the sky like perverted Fourth of July fireworks.
Red and orange starbursts—bombs, not festivity.

  The headquarters tent was at the opposite end of the camp, and Rachel saw only blackness in that direction. She’d long ago conquered her fear of the dark, or so she’d thought, but tonight the distant terrors of childhood crept back to taunt her. She didn’t want to venture very far from the only bit of light and safety she could see, no matter how false the sense of security might be.

  “Let’s try the hospital.” Rachel had to trust that Dacar and the other guards were looking after their safety, and she would be of no help to them in that. But she could help with the patients. She and Amina ran hand in hand over the familiar ground, made strange and somehow dangerous by the inky dark, to the big hospital tent. Inside, cots lined one side and stacks of supplies the other. A second smaller room in the rear, behind a canvas flap, served as an operating and treatment room. Maribel, Jean-Claude, and Robert moved among the cots, comforting the crying children and trying to calm the anxious adults. Amina instantly joined them, translating for those who did not understand and soothing those who were too terrified to listen.

  Rachel smelled smoke, acrid and sharp. More shouts, closer now. Gunfire, rapid staccato cracks like hammer blows on steel. Her heart pounded so quickly she couldn’t think. But she had to—the drills they’d practiced in case of emergency evacuation replayed in her mind. No drill had prepared her for this. The noise alone was disorienting. She forced her mind to focus. Gather necessary supplies—medicine, food, drinking water. Communication devices, flashlights. Weapons. God, they didn’t have weapons. They were noncombatants. Neutral. Humanitarian. Did those words mean anything to whoever was out there, shooting? She feared they might not. Her stomach knotted. The overwhelming urge to run built inside her like pressure rising in a geyser. Sweat broke over her skin in a cold, sick wash of terror.

  Patients panicked. Those who could move jumped from their beds, some of them barefoot in hospital scrubs, and rushed toward the exit, their eyes wide with dread. Several women grabbed children and, despite Amina’s and the medical personnel’s pleading, fled into the night. A pair of elderly patients, too ill or unaware to flee, remained along with a pair of toddlers who cried and cowered in their crib.

  Amina spun around, her eyes stark. “They say it’s the rebels. They say we’ll all be killed.”

  Rachel took a deep breath, Amina’s fear blunting her own. “We’re noncombatants. We’re no threat to them. If they come through here, they’ll be looking for drugs or supplies or weapons. They can take what they want.”

  “Yes,” Amina said, her voice shaking. “I do not think we want to be here when they arrive, but”—she looked at the frail old man with the infected leg and the blind woman with pneumonia and the children with raging fevers from measles—“we have no choice.”

  Rachel held her wrist close to one of the flickering lights. Almost five a.m. She thought of her father’s instructions for her to be ready to leave. Did her father know this was coming? How could he have kept her in the dark and allowed everyone here to be endangered? She couldn’t believe that of him. He was rigid and authoritarian, but he was not so ruthless as to ignore the safety of international aid workers and helpless civilians. Right now, she didn’t care what he knew or what he expected her to do—she wasn’t leaving without her friends and coworkers, and she wasn’t abandoning those who depended on her.

  “I’m going to headquarters. If Dacar isn’t there, I’ll try to radio the center in Mogadishu myself. Will you be all right here?”

  “Yes,” Amina said. “But hurry.”

  “Tell the medical staff to prepare the patients to be transported. You should grab anything you need too. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Rachel hurried toward the exit, paused, and turned back. Amina was staring after her, looking small and vulnerable in khaki pants and a loose white T-shirt. “In case I’m…delayed, there’s a helicopter coming. Get the patients on there and everyone else you can find.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I’ll catch up.” Rachel smiled. “I promise. Just take care of things here.”

  She slipped through the tent flap and quickly took cover in the shadows beyond the glow of the light filtering through the canvas. Keeping close to the edge of the clearing with the jungle at her back, she worked her way around behind the sleeping tents toward headquarters. The gunfire had stopped, and she didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.

  Ten yards in front of her, three men burst out of the jungle. Rachel froze, the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears so loud she couldn’t believe they didn’t hear it. Each wore a scarf around his neck, a tunic-like shirt that came to the tops of his thighs, long loose pants, and boots. Two carried rifles. The third had some kind of tubular weapon about four feet in length balanced on his shoulder and a heavy rucksack strapped to his back. They were laughing. They didn’t look her way.

  Rachel didn’t breathe for so long her vision dimmed and her head spun. When no one else came and the sounds of the men’s voices disappeared, she crept forward again. Where had they gone? Most of the supplies were kept on a wooden platform under a tarp next to headquarters. If they were there, she wouldn’t be able to reach the radio.

  The wind picked up and she took advantage of the rustling to move a little faster. A streak of lightning shot across the clearing. Rachel stumbled and looked up.

  Not lightning. Searchlights. Not wind—rotor wash. A helicopter slid into view like a huge black bird of prey. Rachel’s heart lurched, and relief, so intense she almost cried out, surged through her.

  Gunfire erupted from all around the camp, the sharp cracks making her jump and her legs tremble. Caught halfway between the hospital and headquarters, she had nowhere safe to run. She did the only thing she could. She sprinted into the jungle to hide.

  Chapter Five

  The sky lit up with tracer trails. The rattle of automatic weapons fire penetrated Max’s protective ear coverings, concussive pops beating against her eardrums. Fox’s voice, tight but controlled, announced, “We’re taking fire. Hold on.”

  Max gripped the edge of the open portal. The bird pitched and rolled, an intentional maneuver to give those on the ground an even more difficult moving target. Below her, the jungle vegetation morphed from black into spurts of vibrant green relief as the light from muzzle flashes and rocket flares illuminated their surroundings for brief seconds. The fractured kaleidoscopic images of the trees and earth jumped and flickered as the helicopters descended with their noses and rockets pointed down.

  Dawn was on the horizon. She wouldn’t need the night-vision goggles any longer and was about to toss them aside when an uneasy sixth sense warned her not to count on anything, or to count anything out. She pushed them up, secured them to her helmet, and squinted down at the landing zone. The only place to land appeared to be right in the middle of the encampment—and right in the center of the firefight. A ring of small square tan tents came into view, bordering a clearing about half the size of a football field. Dense jungle vegetation crowded in around the perimeter, providing excellent cover from which to attack. Two larger tents sat at either end of the clearing like chaperones at homecoming, policing the exits. The place looked eerily deserted. Where was everyone? And who the hell was shooting at them?

  In another second, the bird settled lower over the LZ and she had her answer. Three men carrying assault rifles and a grenade launcher knelt and started firing up at them. The pings of bullets ricocheting off the Black Hawk were followed by another round of communication from both birds.

  Verify your targets. We’ve got friendlies down there.

  Those aren’t friendlies lobbing RPGs at us.

  I hear you. Visually verify—rules of engagement.

  They weren’t to fire unless fired upon, but that seemed to be a foregone conclusion now. Beside her, Ollie fired out the side window and rounds kicked up dirt like deadly raindrops racing across the sand.

  Ollie, Burns, stand by on
the ropes, Fox said. We’re going in hot.

  Roger, Ollie said and Burns echoed him.

  Cover fire, Romeo Two Four, Fox requested of the second Black Hawk that hovered above them.

  Roger, Swampfox One.

  Both crew chiefs fired the machine guns nonstop, round after round strafing the border between jungle and the clearing to force the insurgents back into the jungle and away from the LZ. Oil-scented steam rose from their weapons. Coils of three-inch-thick nylon ropes lay by their feet ready to be tossed out for a rapid descent. They would drop down and clear the immediate area so Max and Grif could deploy and find Rachel Winslow.

  Max pushed the image of Winslow from her mind and sighted her weapon on the figures milling about on the ground. She had no idea who they were, and if they weren’t firing directly at the birds, she wasn’t about to fire on them. Some of them could be the Red Cross people they’d come here to protect. Clouds of sand whipped up by the rotors caked her nose and mouth. She tried not to breathe too deeply.

  When they were fifty feet above the ground, a man and a woman carrying a litter made of two poles with sagging canvas strung between them erupted out of one of the large tents and ran awkwardly across the open ground toward them. She keyed her mic. “We’ve got wounded approaching. Get us down.”

  Roger that, Fox grunted. Ollie, Burns. Go! Go!

  The crew chiefs tossed the ropes, pulled off their headphones, and jumped. Max fired toward the jungle, trying to keep her rounds above head height to deter anyone from shooting back, and hoping not to hit a friendly. Ollie and Burns slid down to the ground and crouched in the swirling red-brown dirt, firing at rebels who appeared and disappeared like wisps of smoke.