Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (15 page)

P
arson realized something was wrong as soon as the STU phones lit up. The ringing of one secure telephone unit might mean routine communication. But when all three secure lines rang nearly at once, as computers pinged with flash traffic and the VHF and UHF radios buzzed, you knew you had a problem. The noise level in the ops center rose. Two duty officers, both of them captains, answered the first two calls; each held a receiver to one ear while using a fingertip to close the opposite ear. Parson did the same when he grabbed the third call.

“Kingfish ops,” he said. “Colonel Parson.”

“Sir, this is Captain Adam Privett. I'm in the TACLOG of the USS
Tarawa
. We just lost a helicopter at Objective Thomas Jefferson.”

Parson scanned a room full of junior officers and NCOs. The worst had happened, the Marines needed help, and the lives of a lot of good men might depend on what happened in this operations center in the next few minutes.

“I got pararescue on Alpha Alert,” Parson said.

“We'll take whatever you got, sir.”

“Gimme your nine-line.”

Parson slid a pen from the sleeve of his flight suit. Flipped open a writing pad to take notes on the nine standard elements of information for a rescue. He already knew the coordinates of the site, as well as the frequencies and call signs of the aircraft involved. But when Privett came to line four, Parson knew this was no ordinary rescue. As the Marine officer spoke, Parson jotted on his pad:

4) Special equip—MOPP gear

5) Number patients—unknown

6) Site security—unknown

The worst news came at line nine, for nuclear-biological-chemical contamination.

9) Chemical contamination confirmed

Parson had never faced anything quite like this: ordering crews into a mission so bad that rockets and bullets were the least of their problems. Suit up, boys; you're flying into a cloud of poison. He had no time to agonize over it. He cradled the phone on his shoulder and called out to one of his captains.

“Tell Pedro they're alerted,” Parson said. “I want 'em in here in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within ninety seconds, two Pave Hawk rescue helicopter crews—call signs Pedro One-One and Pedro One-Two—showed up for a quick mission brief. Four pilots, six pararescuemen, two flight engineers, and two aerial gunners awaited orders. The pararescuemen—also known as PJs—lugged medical rucks and wore kneepads over the legs of their flight suits. All the crew members carried M4 carbines, the weapons' rails bristling with optics, flashlights, and forward hand grips. The men also carried M9 pistols in thigh holsters.

Everyone seemed alert but not tense. One crewman had a tin of Skoal stuffed behind a pair of medical shears on his tactical vest. None of them sat down. They crowded around Parson to listen for instructions, arms folded across pouches bulging with spare magazines and handheld radios.

“Guys, you gotta go in MOPP Four,” Parson said. “Alarm Black at the crash site.”

“We're ready to suit up, sir,” one of the pilots said.

Like all his crewmates, the pilot looked to be in his late twenties. He wore a black patch on his sleeve that read
PEDRO 66
. Parson recognized that call sign; the flier wore the patch in honor of five members of a rescue crew killed in a 2010 crash in Afghanistan.

“Two Marine CH-53s assaulted the objective,” Parson went on. “Musket One-One and Musket One-Two. Musket One-Two got shot down. One picked up all the survivors they could carry. They had to abort the mission, and they did confirm the presence of chemical weapons.”

“Enemy personnel still at the site?” another pilot asked.

“Unknown,” Parson said.

Parson printed out a weather sheet for the pilots while the enlisted crew members ran to their aircraft. Setting up to fly with chem gear would delay takeoff for a few minutes, but that couldn't be helped. At least the weather cooperated, sort of. No cloud ceiling, visibility four miles in dust. Not ideal, but the Pave Hawks could look for survivors with infrared imaging as well as night vision goggles. A man on the desert floor—at least a living man—would appear as a warm object contrasted against a cooler background. Much of the night remained, so the crews still had the advantage of operating in darkness.

The pilots jogged across the ramp to their waiting Pave Hawks. Parson stayed close to his computer, radios, and secure phones, but he stepped outside for a moment to see the helicopters take off. The ramp's floodlights gave off a glow softened by the dust in the air. A few of the brightest stars burned through, and in the haze, they glittered with the uncharacteristic colors of amethyst and garnet. The evening seemed almost pleasant, as if nature itself beckoned crews into the night, only to suck them into a toxic trap.

The Pave Hawk fliers had already suited up with helmets, gloves, and masks. The hoses of their chem gear snaked from the masks to electric blowers that supplied the men with scrubbed air to breathe. They closed their doors, manned their guns, and taxied across the
tarmac, rotors kicking up grit, strobe lights flashing underneath the tail booms. At the departure end of the runway, the Pave Hawks levitated into the darkness.

As soon as Parson got back to his desk, a call came over the UHF radio. He recognized the call sign of the AWACS plane monitoring the battle space and coordinating all the air assets.

“Kingfish, Kingfish,” the voice said. “This is Monticello.”

A master sergeant on Parson's staff lifted the hand mike of the Thales radio. Thumbed the transmit button and said, “Monticello, Kingfish. Go ahead.” The sergeant was talking to an AIO, an airborne intelligence officer aboard Monticello. The secure-voice radio lent a warbling sound to the AIO's words as the system decrypted the signal.

“Kingfish, be advised the Marines report four missing. The French Foreign Legion reports two paratroopers missing. Names to follow.”

Six missing? Parson wondered what the hell was going on out there. He slid his notepad closer, took out his pen.

“Kingfish ready to copy,” the sergeant said.

Parson wrote down the names as the AIO spoke.

“Missing personnel are as follows: Legionnaire First Class Ivan Turgenev, Adjutant José Escarra, Corporal Tony Fender, Corporal Mark Grayson, Sergeant Daniel Farmer, Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount.”

Parson stopped writing after scribbling
Farmer
. Had he heard that last name right?

Please don't let it be him, Parson thought. No, that's not the right attitude, he told himself. No matter who it is, he's somebody's son or father. But please don't let it be Blount. The big Marine with the big heart had gone through enough already. Parson had seen Blount's great compassion for Afghan orphans. He'd also witnessed Blount's wrath unleashed on a terrorist in Afghanistan—one of the most frightening things Parson had ever beheld. He remembered thinking
it was a damn good thing that kind of strength got tempered by Marine Corps discipline and a strong moral compass.

“Ask him that last name again,” Parson said.

The sergeant relayed the question.

“Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount,” came the answer.

Parson held his pen over the page, as if not writing it down would stop it from coming true. He knew Blount had a family, and he thought he'd even heard something about Blount getting out of the military. Why did this have to happen now?

He closed his eyes for a second, wrote down the name.

B
lount was riding.

His mind, passing in and out of consciousness, registered that he was rolling along, lying on the ridged bed of a pickup truck. He knew little else with certainty. In a muddled state of awareness, he could not distinguish between reality, dream, and memory. The metal furrows of the truck bed made it hard to find a comfortable position, but in his fatigue he did not care.

The ride felt familiar, and he thought he recognized his situation. Exhausted from pulling ground leaves, he had fallen asleep in the back of his grandfather's truck on the way from the tobacco field. They'd get back to the house in a few minutes. He'd need to use Gojo to scrub the tobacco gum from his hands, because Grandpa wouldn't let him sit at the supper table until he'd washed up. The gritty pumice of the hand cleaner would grind off the black gum, but only time would remove the stains. If he was this tired, he must have earned his meal of hoecakes, butter beans, stewed tomatoes, string beans, and peach pie.

He started to raise up to see if Digger was in the truck with him. Why was it dark out?

A boot slammed him in the chest and knocked him back down onto the truck bed.

Voices shouted in Arabic. Through his squinted eyes Blount made out indistinct figures leaning over him in the night, spitting and yelling. He felt so weak. Not from work but from sickness. His weapon was gone. But maybe he had enough strength . . .

He let instinct and muscle memory take over. Glow from inside the cab gave him enough light to see. When the nearest enemy leaned a little too close, Blount sprang to a sitting position. He grabbed the man by the shirt, yanked him down. The man twisted as he fell and landed with his back against Blount's chest. Blount slid his right arm under the man's chin, encircling the neck. To create a choke hold, Blount grabbed his own left bicep with his right hand. Great ropes of muscle now locked the terrorist's throat. Blount leaned forward, squeezed hard. Let out a long growl as he clamped down, his arms functioning as a vise. The death embrace seemed almost intimate. The odor of the man's sweat filled Blount's nostrils. Up close, Blount noticed acne underneath the man's beard, the rat-like tilt of his nose.

The man began to gurgle and kick, as blood no longer flowed to his brain and air no longer reached his lungs. And if Blount could get the angle right, maybe he could send this son of a bitch to hell a little faster by breaking his neck.

“You wanna be a martyr, Rat Face?” Blount hissed. Clamped tighter.

The butt of an AK-47 smacked the side of Blount's head. A foot stomped his leg. Still he held on to his prey, squeezing the life out of it. The man gurgled louder. His tongue lolled from his mouth. His eyes bulged.

“I ain't playing,” Blount growled. “You going over the river with me.”

The rifle butt struck Blount again and again. He felt his jaw crack.

He also felt his prey start to go limp. When you get where you're going, boy, you tell Satan to kiss my ass.

So tired. So very tired. God, that AK stock hurt when it hit.

Blount let go.

The terrorist scrambled away from Blount, buried himself in the far corner of the truck bed. Placed his hands around his neck, coughed and jabbered in Arabic. Blount savored his victim's look of fear for just a moment.

You and me ain't finished, Blount thought.

Another boot kicked him in the chest.

A wave of nausea hit him. Bile came up in his throat, probably the last fluid in his stomach. He rolled onto his side and vomited. He heard distant laughter, though it came from only feet away. His fingers found a sticky substance. Blood and spit. He rolled onto his back.

Only then did he realize other men lay in the back of the truck. Two remained motionless, and two jerked their legs in a spasmodic pattern. Dying from nerve gas, maybe.

In the starlight, Blount could make out a plume of dust rising from behind the vehicle. More dust swirled beside the pickup, and Blount realized he was riding in one of at least two trucks speeding across the desert. Why hadn't they just killed him? And where were they taking him?

Please, Jesus, just give me my strength back, Blount thought.

He clenched his fists, waited for another opening. Normally he could deliver a hammerfist hard enough to break bones. But now he felt so weak. Weak as a cat, like the old folks used to say. But at least a cat could leap from this pickup and outrun everybody. Blount lacked the energy to sit up again, much less run.

If I can't fight, he thought, just let me die. Don't want to let them make me do or say something I don't want to, then slaughter me like a hog.

He put his hand to his face, opened his mouth, worked his jaw. Cracked but not broken. Hurting something awful.

Through the fog in his mind he became aware of another pain. Why did his legs hurt so bad? Oh yeah, puncture wounds from the heavy-gauge spring-loaded needles. A skilled nurse or corpsman could slide a hypodermic into a vein with hardly any sting at all. But those auto-injectors had punched into his muscles like the spikes of an iron maiden.

No wonder I feel awful, Blount thought. Got hit with poison so vile the only thing that could save me was another kind of poison.
Maybe the Good Lord kept me alive for a reason, he reckoned. And these dirtbags are keeping me alive for a different reason.

Blount knew from his training that now presented his best chance for escape. The deeper the enemy took you into his system for holding prisoners, the harder to get away. Best to make a break while they moved you. But at the moment, chemical warfare raged inside Blount at the cellular level. Compounds worked against toxins; other medicine worked against the compounds' side effects.

Providence had blessed him with a strong body that he kept fit and healthy. But now, healing required all his strength and will. He'd just spent all his reserves trying to choke one bad guy. Nothing else remained.

One of the dirtbags hoisted a camera and took a photo. The flash blinded Blount. He wanted to slap the camera out of the dirtbag's hands, but he lacked the strength. As he lay in the bed of the truck, he felt himself slip away into unconsciousness.

P
arson looked around the ops room. This wasn't the glittering command center depicted in the movies: banks of computers, walls lined with video screens, the president and the joint chiefs at the other end of a red phone. This deployed operations center consisted of plywood and sandbags, a dozen folding chairs, eight laptops, some telephones and radios, stacks of bottled water, extension cords crisscrossing the dusty plank floor, and a couple of mice nobody could catch. But it was what he had, and by God, he'd use it all to get Blount and those boys back. Assuming they were still alive.

He considered what else his resources at Mitiga could contribute. No other crews had been placed on an official alert status to launch at a moment's notice. But if the French could get airborne in their Mirages, they could help look for the missing. He called Chartier's cell phone.

“Sorry to wake you, Frenchie,” Parson said, “but we got a situation.” He told Chartier about the loss of Musket One-Two and the missing Marines.

“Zut alors,”
Chartier said. “That is not good. I will call my crews and see what we can do.”

“Thanks, Frenchie. I owe you one. We'll call to get a frag order cut for you by the time you get here.”

“Bon
.
”

An overall NATO air tasking order assigned the Mirages to the expeditionary air wing at Mitiga. Parson called AFRICOM air ops to request a frag—a fragmentary order appended to the larger tasking
order—directing the French jets to assist the search in any way possible. Even in the direst of emergencies, the military required its paperwork.

As Parson clicked a computer mouse a few minutes later to print out the frag, he heard the door swing open. He turned to see Chartier, Sniper, and two other French fliers come in. A beard shadow darkened Sniper's face. Chartier wore no T-shirt under his flight suit. The other Mirage crew—Diderot and Valois, according to their name tags—had the same look of fliers roused unexpectedly from their cots. Diderot had not yet zipped on his G suit. He carried the suit over his shoulder, its pneumatic connection dangling. Valois toted a helmet bag too stuffed to close. In addition to his helmet, the bag contained a pair of flight gloves, a kneepad for scribbling notes in the cockpit, and a bottle of water. Like Sniper, the man wore a growth of stubble. Parson knew they could be in for an uncomfortable flight. An oxygen mask chafed a lot less when you had a fresh shave. He printed out two more copies of the weather sheet, then rose to greet the Mirage crews.

“I know this is a little out of the ordinary,” Parson said. “I appreciate your help. We have six personnel missing. Two are Legionnaires. Four are Marines.”

“Tonight,” Chartier said, “they are all our brothers.”

“Damn straight, Frenchie. Here's your weather.” Parson handed Chartier the papers. “I really don't have much else for you. Their last known position was Objective Thomas Jefferson. We got two Pave Hawks en route. Check in with AWACS once you get airborne. Their call sign is Monticello.”

Chartier gave a thin smile.

“What?” Parson asked.

“Someone has a sense of history. And it so happens Jefferson was once your minister to France.”

“Cool,” Parson said. He held up his right fist, and Chartier bumped it with his own fist. “Now, get your asses in the air.”

“Oui, mon colonel
.
”

Outside, sleepy French ground personnel in camo shorts and combat boots pulled away boarding ladders after the Mirage fliers climbed into their cockpits. The ground crewmen stood fire guard during engine start, and the jets' turbines whined to life. Parson saw the helmeted aviators run through their before-taxi checklists, and then both fighters began rolling.

Kick some ass, Parson thought. Find our guys and kick some ass.

On the runway, the Mirages lined up for takeoff and held in position for a moment. Dappled with shadows thrown by runway edge lights, the fighters looked even more intimidating—sharp angles poised to launch, laden with fuel and fire, the ultimate expression of potential energy. In the lead jet, Chartier pushed up his power. He released brakes and began hurtling down the strip. The afterburner kicked in with the sound of a sustained explosion, a continuous blast of burning kerosene. A few seconds later, number two began rolling. Both fighters sliced into the night, the thunder of their engines pealing across the desert, spikes of flame blazing from their tailpipes.

Parson's staff maintained a listening watch by the radios as the night wore on. He knew they could do their jobs, and he should have tried to get some sleep. But he could not bring himself to leave the ops center and go to bed. He kept himself awake by sipping Red Bull and bitter instant coffee made with packets scrounged from MREs. The caffeine left a rank taste in his mouth but did little for his alertness. As he grew more tired, he found himself forcing thoughts through his mind like an aircraft pump forcing oil through a clogged filter. High pressure, low results.

He considered what else he could do for Blount and the other missing servicemen. Not much at the moment, but once the sun came up the Marines would probably fly out to the crash scene and look for clues. A call to Captain Privett in the
Tarawa
's
TACLOG confirmed his hunch.

“Yes, sir,” Privett said. “We plan to fly out there when it gets light.”

“You can refuel here at Mitiga if you like,” Parson said.

“Thank you, Colonel. We'll see you then.”

Parson hung up the phone, tried to think of any base he'd not covered. An old flight instructor had once told him that in an airplane, if you're not doing
something
, you're probably screwing up, even during a long cruise. You could always give the gauges an extra scan, recalculate fuel burn, call for updated weather. Stay on top of everything; don't just sit there.

So, what else could he do? Well, Sophia would want to know about Blount. Maybe she could keep her ear to the ground for any information about missing Americans. Parson logged on to an unclassified computer to send her an e-mail. He would need to write around any sensitive information, which for now included even the names of the missing. But she would know who he meant. He began tapping at his keyboard:

SOPHIA,

BY THE TIME U READ THIS YOU'LL PROBLY KNOW ABOUT CRASH OF THE MARINE HELO. I'M SORRY TO TELL U OUR BIG FRIEND IS MIA. WILL KEEP U ADVISED.

Parson paused a moment, blinked his eyes to make the letters on the screen get a little less blurry. Then he added:

PLZ B CAREFUL.

MP

For a moment, he debated whether he should share this information so soon with someone not in the chain of command. Finally he
clicked
SEND
. Sophia was no longer in the active-duty Army, but her knowledge—and her current location—made her an intelligence asset. Who knew what she might pick up? The more she remained in the loop, the more she could help. And Parson felt he owed Blount every ounce of help he could muster.

As dawn approached, Parson's wired-and-tired exhaustion grew. Despite all the caffeine, he found himself drowsing. A call on the radio woke him from microsleep.

“Kingfish, Dagger flight. Do you read?” Chartier's voice.

Parson shook his head as if that would throw off the cobwebs. He listened as one of the duty officers picked up the mike.

“Dagger flight, Kingfish has you five-by-five.”

“Kingfish, be advised we are ten minutes out. Code one, no maintenance required. Request parking.”

“Uh, Dagger flight, use hardstands Delta and Echo.”

Parson heard the jets streak overhead as they rolled into the break for landing. A while later, Chartier and the other Frenchmen came into the operations center. Parson could tell from their expressions they had no good news for him.

“Any contact at all with the missing guys?” he asked.

“Rien,”
Chartier said. “No voice. No beacon. How do you say? Not a peep.” He ran his fingers through his black hair, left matted and sweaty by his helmet.

“Damn it,” Parson said. Blount would have made emergency calls at prebriefed intervals if he could have done so. No contact meant he and the others were dead, badly hurt, or captured. One of their radios could have broken, but not all of them.

“Nothing visual, either,” Chartier added. “No strobe or glint tape.” The French pilot slumped into a chair, rubbed his eyes, and unzipped the constrictive bands of his G suit from around the legs of his flight suit.

“You guys look beat,” Parson said. “You should visit that masseuse of yours and then take a nap.”

“Maybe,” Chartier said. He showed no mirth over the possibility of a back rub.

He's as upset about this as I am, Parson thought. Good.

Parson needed rest, too, but he would not allow himself that luxury, at least not until the Pave Hawks returned. The Mirage crews went to their quarters, and a new shift came to work in the operations center, but Parson stayed on duty. When the sun lightened the horizon it only deepened his fatigue. He ordered a cot brought into ops. Before settling on it to nap, he left instructions for someone to wake him if anything happened.

He got twenty minutes of sleep, and then a sergeant shook him.

“Choppers coming back, sir,” the sergeant said. “They just checked in with the tower.”

When Parson sat up, he heard the distant thumping that signaled the approach of the rescue helicopters. The lead chopper called the ops center on UHF.

“Kingfish, Pedro One-One and One-Two inbound. ETA five minutes.”

“I'll talk to 'em,” Parson said. He groaned as he rose from his cot and went to the radio. He lifted the mike, pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, spoke with his eyes closed: “Pedro flight, expect parking on alert ramp.”

“Roger that, Kingfish. Be advised both aircraft are Alpha Four, we will need the CCA, and we have two Hotel Romeos.”

Parson's muddled mind processed the codes and acronyms. Hotel Romeo?

A new kind of tired came over him, more like a feeling of defeat. Hotel Romeo meant human remains. Damn it to hell. And the crews wanted the contamination control area. That meant they'd been exposed—or thought they'd been exposed—to chemical agents. Alpha Four meant the helicopters themselves were contaminated. Maintenance crews in full MOPP gear would have to scrub down the aircraft. What a fucking mess.

“Kingfish copies all,” Parson transmitted. Then he called out an order to a duty officer. “Get Mortuary Affairs out to the flight line, and tell Emergency Management to man the CCA. And nobody gets near those helicopters except in MOPP Four.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parson watched the helicopters return in the morning light. He wore no chem gear, so he kept a safe distance. Both HH-60s swung low over the field, descended toward the ramp. They settled to the pavement and began to taxi, their rotors pulsing counter to each other like the drumming of a tribal dirge.

Once on the alert ramp, their turbines hushed and their rotors slowed, replaced by the whine of auxiliary power units. Eventually even the APUs fell silent, leaving only the scrapes, thuds, and muffled curses of suited crew members dismounting their machines.

A van from Mortuary Affairs pulled up next to the helicopters. Two men in chem gear emerged from the vehicle. A pair of crewmen in the first helicopter lifted something from the aircraft's cabin. One of the pilots—still swathed in helmet, hoses, and blower—stepped down from the cockpit. He stood very still. Slowly, with as much formality as his equipment would allow, he rendered a salute. Parson saluted, as well. The crewmen carried a body bag from the aircraft and placed it in the van.

In the same way, with the same salute, another body bag came out of the second helicopter. The Mortuary Affairs men drove away. The bodies would have to suffer the indignity of decontamination before being processed for burial. Parson did not know what that entailed, and he did not want to know.

The Pave Hawk crews walked across the ramp to a row of three large tents set up two hundred yards from any other tents or buildings. The tents were open at each end, and inside them, a half dozen Emergency Management troops prepared to receive the fliers. The aviators lined up and waited for instructions. Parson noted that a few
of them wore ground MOPP uniforms with arms and legs encircled by M9 tape. The brown tape would change color to indicate exposure to certain toxins.

One of the EM guys pointed to an open box outside the first tent. The box, about four feet square, contained a dry substance that looked a lot like cat litter. The box also held a long-handled scrub brush.

“Step into the shuffle box, sir, and scrub down your boots.”

The first crewman took his place in the shuffle box as the others waited behind him. When he'd cleaned his boots to the satisfaction of the EM troop, he stepped out of the box and moved over to a trash barrel. The crewman removed his outer gloves and dropped them into the trash.

Parson longed to ask them what they'd seen and if they knew the identities of the dead. But he had to leave the men alone as they decontaminated.

In stages, the fliers went through the processing lines in the tents. At each stop they removed another piece of gear or clothing, taking care not to touch bare skin to anything exposed to poison. They hung blowers and hoses on racks, doffed helmets, peeled off flight suits. At the end they wore only their underwear, and an EM troop directed them to a shower. While the men showered, Parson talked to an EM sergeant.

“Did they get slimed real bad?” Parson asked.

“Looks like it, sir,” the sergeant said. “I checked the M9 tape on one of the pararescue guys. It had green specks all over it.”

A positive test for nerve gas. Thank God I told them to suit up, Parson thought. At least I've made one good call today—or last night, or whenever the hell it was.