JT stared at him hard. “Regs say we don’t fly without a copilot. You better get on that radio.”
“I’ve got him logged as flight crew anyway, so we’re good.” The pilot looked flustered. JT had that effect on most people. “Cut him some slack. Brass doesn’t need to know he isn’t aboard, or he’s looking at a disciplinary.”
DiMarco’s voice cut the air. “Let it go, Corporal. Let it go.”
• • •
“They stand there looking at you…” Sanchez leaned forward, a hand on his helmet. The beat of the rotors made him hard to hear. “You’re there helping ‘em, right? Fixing the village’s water, treating the sick, talking to the elders, and whatnot. Winning hearts and minds—all that shit. And you know. You just know.”
JT watched the dark tree line of the Abas Ghar ridge slide by outside in the dim gray half-light. The kid was right, but so what? This was the new face of war. Get used to it.
Across from him, Collins nodded. “You see it in their eyes,” he said. “The ones hanging in back of the crowd. But you can’t do a goddamn thing about it. And then you’re heading back to base, you’re thinking,
sniper? IED? Or full-on ambush this time?
”
The deck of the copter bounced under their feet.
“Stop your bitching,” JT said. “This is a holiday, after Iraq.”
DiMarco laughed. “At least these Taliban run away when you return fire. And they fall down when you hit ‘em.”
JT leaned forward to slap Sanchez on the knee. “Fucking Fallujah was different. It was like
Dawn of the Dead
. Muj there were true believers, not like these sorry-asses. You’d blow their arms and legs off, they’d keep coming at you.”
“An IED took out a U.S. medical convoy,” DiMarco said. “The mujahideen got a huge stockpile of drugs off it. That’s what we were up against.”
JT nodded. “Muj were jacked on amphetamines, shooting up epinephrine—pure medical adrenaline. Word came down: head shots only. Waste of time shooting them anywhere else. I saw a guy get hosed by a SAW, musta’ been hit fifteen, twenty times. Didn’t even slow him down. I shot him five or six times myself. Nothing. Fucker was just laughing at us, shooting back. DiMarco had to take him out with an RPG.”
DiMarco leaned forward and bumped his own fist against JT’s dark knuckles. “Listen to the man. You guys are on vacation here. Relax.”
“What the hell?” The surprise in the pilot’s voice was alarming.
JT looked down at the valley floor. Shadows moved amid the cedar trees. Men and vehicles. A lot of them.
“That’s not right,” he said.
He reached over to smack DiMarco’s shoulder, but DiMarco had already seen them. He stared back at JT in confusion.
“Those aren’t—”
The Chinook lurched, and something wet sprayed the side of JT’s face. He whipped his head around to see the pilot slump sideways. A red fan spread across the ceiling above him.
“Shit,” Collins yelled. “We’re hit!”
JT’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed DiMarco’s tac vest, pulled him close, and leaned into his face.
“Let it go, DiMarco?
Let it go?
” He spoke very slowly, holding DiMarco’s eyes with his own. “No copilot now, motherfucker.”
“The IFF. Get the IFF on.” DiMarco’s voice was hoarse. “That’s an order, Corporal.”
JT shoved him away and unbuckled. The Chinook tilted sideways and nosed down, bouncing and shaking like a truck riding on cross ties. Bracing himself against the ceiling, the muscles of his arms bulging, he worked his way toward the cockpit.
Sparks drizzled from the overhead switch panel. Black smoke filled the cabin. JT could hear Sanchez behind him, speaking rapid Spanish. Praying. The air stank of sweat and fear.
The pilot was dead, no question about that. JT shoved him aside, and yanked back on the cyclic. The Chinook failed to respond. Through the canopy, the ridgeline slipped by beneath them, dropping away into the next valley. Enemy territory. He grabbed the radio handset.
“Mayday. Mayday.”
The radio was dead.
JT scanned the control board, locating the IFF beacon that DiMarco wanted. It would signal their location to friendlies. He flipped the switch, and a red light came on, blinking with a steady rhythm. Outside the glass canopy, the tree-dotted far wall of the valley filled his view, looming larger with every passing second.
Mounting a rescue operation would take hours, he knew—the enemy owned this valley. But first, he had to survive the crash, and they were coming down hard. He levered himself up and scrambled out of the cockpit, dragging the dead pilot behind him. Pulling himself up into his seat one-handed, he raced to buckle his harness and tighten his straps. He looked at Sanchez. The kid was mumbling, staring at the floor, face contorted with terror.
JT felt trickles of sweat rolling down his shaved head. He pulled the pilot up off the deck and draped the limp body over Sanchez’s lap and his own.
Sanchez jerked his head up and stared at JT rabbit eyed. He tried to shove the dead pilot off his knees.
JT pushed down with an elbow, holding the pilot in place.
“Crash padding,” he said.
He stretched his other arm past DiMarco, pulled the canvas first aid kit free, and hugged it to his chest, forcing it under his harness straps.
The Chinook tilted the other way, the whine of the rotors rising in pitch. The airframe shuddered, and JT heard the shriek of metal rending above them.
A rotor blade tore through the cabin, six feet from him, and DiMarco grunted. DiMarco’s lower body and legs darkened, drenched with blood. He stared at JT in shock.
JT looked at the injury and shook his head at DiMarco. Game over.
Disintegrating blades from the aft rotor slashed through the cabin walls, coming closer and closer. The Chinook’s tail slewed as the heavy craft autorotated on its remaining forward rotor. Liquid misted JT’s face, stinging his eyes. The smell of aviation fuel filled the air.
Collins coughed. “We’re fucked.”
The Chinook plunged beneath their feet.
Sanchez’s breath was coming in gasps. JT reached out and grabbed Sanchez’s hand. Sanchez looked at him, and the fear in his eyes gave way to gratitude. He matched JT’s solid grip with his own panicky one.
With his other hand, JT reached for Collins and held him steady.
Wind whipped through the cabin, blowing from the widening gap next to DiMarco.
JT’s gaze was drawn to the light of the IFF beacon. It blinked steadily, the red rhythm slow, almost lazy, as the wall of the valley grew larger and larger in the windscreen behind it. The beacon looked like a red eye winking at him.
Then the world shredded apart in a chaos of noise, motion, rock, and flying metal.
Lauren
August 6, 2007
Trango Tower, Karakoram Range, Pakistan
T
he metal piton whistled past, nearly hitting Lauren King in the head. She looked over her shoulder and watched it fall away. The four-inch angled steel spike drifted down alongside the planet’s tallest vertical rock face, shrinking until it was lost from sight, invisible against the white ice of the Baltoro Glacier six thousand feet below.
Reflexively, Lauren hugged the granite tighter. She glanced up at her companions, and her eyes narrowed.
God damn it, Terry.
After five days on the wall, all three of them were tired and clumsy, but Terry was coming apart now. He was going too fast, fumbling and dropping gear.
Trango’s summit, a fang of orange rock, rose far above them. Too far. Lauren took a deep breath and turned to stare out at the ice-laden peaks around them, lit by dawn’s pink rays: Uli Biaho, K2, Gasherbrum IV, Cathedral. Across the empty gulf of thin air, the neighboring spires looked close enough to touch. A cascade of fog poured through Cathedral’s saddle like a silent waterfall, dissipating in midair a thousand feet down. They were on the roof of the world. No room for mistakes up here.
Her eyes dropped again to the glacier, over a mile below. Straight down. Terry shouldn’t be leading this pitch—or
any
pitch on Trango. She’d seen him get in trouble trying to solo the Nose on El Cap. Dumb-ass was going to earn himself a Darwin Award, trying to climb five-fourteen. Why hadn’t he said no to this trip?
Lauren knew damn well why Terry had come, though. She had caught his puppy-dog glances all summer in Yosemite’s Camp 4. She’d noticed the way his voice changed whenever he talked to her.
Christ, Terry, it was never going to happen.
She wasn’t sure what it was about her that attracted men, but even back in her suburban Danville high school, she had been a source of fascination for many. Maybe it was her mixed heritage—the contrast between her half-Chinese features and the long, muscular limbs that let her do more pull-ups than the male jocks she routinely humiliated. Or maybe the
go-to-hell
look in her eyes was a challenge they just couldn’t ignore. But whatever the reason, she knew Terry would have said yes to any trip she was going on, no matter where.
She gritted her teeth and let go with one hand, shaking her fingers to loosen them. By touch, she double-checked the figure-eight knot that tied the safety line into her harness loop, then slid her hand up the rope. Her fingers traced it past her belly, chest and shoulder, gauging the slack. A hundred thirty feet of 10.8-millimeter red and gold bi-pattern rope connected her climbing harness to Matt, who had led the pitch above her as they simulclimbed, and was now belaying both her and Terry above him.
Her gaze followed the line up the wall, counting Matt’s pro—his protection: the chocks, cams, and pins that he had set into the rock every twenty feet and tied into. Hardware secured the rope at four spots between Matt and Lauren, ready to catch Matt if he fell.
Far above her, Matt met her eyes. He shook his head, pointing up at the top of their line, where Terry clung eighty feet above him.
Lauren turned away.
Don’t look at me, cowboy. This wasn’t my idea.
She dipped her fingers into the bag of climbing chalk hanging from the back of her waist harness, and reached for the next hold: a narrow flake of orange granite two feet above her head.
She looked at her hands, gripping the rock. Those large, square, unfeminine hands, with their knobby knuckles and strong fingers, were her deadbeat father’s. As a child, she had been ashamed of her hands. When Lauren was twelve, her mom had laid a dainty hand atop the back of Lauren’s own and nicknamed her “Mi-Go,” which meant “yeti”—the abominable snowman.
Those hands had gotten her in trouble, too—suspended in her sophomore year for breaking Sarah Calloway’s nose in the locker room. But Lauren wasn’t going to let a fucking cheerleader call her “Sasquatch” behind her back. Not after “Mi-Go.”
It had been a revelation to discover that her hands were perfectly designed for gripping and pinching and jamming invisible routes on rock that defied all other challengers. Her hands were the only thing she had ever been able to count on; people always disappointed her, sooner or later.
Lauren shifted a foot, smearing the smooth rubber of her climbing shoe against a granite nub, and pushed herself higher to bring her face level with Matt’s first piece of pro.
Her eyes widened.
The piton Matt had clipped their rope into was a dull, tarnished gray instead of green-painted chrome-moly steel like the ones dangling from Lauren’s own harness. She knew what that meant. Matt and Terry were both rushing. They were reusing old pro, tying into hardware the last team of climbers had left behind five years ago, instead of placing their own. Her chest tightened.
You know better than this, Matt. You taught me, remember?
After five seasons of water melting and freezing in the rock, expanding and contracting in all the little fissures, the old pro couldn’t be trusted.
Lauren braced herself against the rock face. She grabbed the carabiner clipping their rope to the piton’s eyehole, looped two fingers through the three-inch aluminum D-ring, and yanked. To her horror, the old pin pulled free from the crack, grating in the silence.
The piton dangled from her fingers, trailing the arc of limp rope. Three more pieces of hardware dotted the rock between her and Matt, and four between Matt and Terry. Lauren grimaced, knowing the rest of the pro above her was probably no good, either.
Nice going, team.
She looked up. High above her, Terry’s leg slipped, and her stomach clenched. He was losing it, which didn’t surprise her, but the bad pro meant that if he fell now, he would zipper the rope off the wall and take Matt with him. They would both drop, ripping out all seven pieces above her, and then the rope tied to Lauren’s harness would be the only thing connecting Matt and Terry to the face.
Her heart accelerated, thudding wildly in her chest. They would pull
her
off the wall, too.
Matt waved an arm, calling instructions down to her. His voice was bright with urgency, the words just senseless noise to her ears. Lauren shut him out and pressed her cheek against the cold orange rock. She could feel her teammates’ jerky movements vibrating down the rope. It felt like the first gentle trickles of snow that signaled the coming avalanche.
The moment she’d been dreading for days was finally here. But maybe they still had a chance of surviving this.
Matt had been impatient with her all morning, saying she was taking too long to clean the route and pull the gear behind them. What Lauren hadn’t told him was that she was trailing a second rope, looped through a Petzl GriGri as a self-belay. She was taking the time to sink her own anchors, sacrificing gear as they went. She was violating every principle of clean climbing because she had seen something like this coming.
But how much pro had she left in place below her right now?
Her eyes followed her self-belay rope down the granite wall. The loop dangled from her harness, hanging loosely for fifty feet to where she had threaded it through cams she’d placed in the rock. Another forty feet below that, the loop’s end was tied through angle pins she had worked into a Y-shaped crack. That was it. That was all of her pro, the climber’s protection supposed to catch her if she fell.