Roger.

Roger, copy, PJ said to the MC-130. Aircraft commander to crew: we have a possible firefight at the next LZ. We may have a hot pickup. At that moment something changed. The aircraft settled a touch and slowed. Buck, what is that?

Uh-oh, the flight engineer said. I think we have a P3 leak here. Possible pressure bleed leak, maybe a bad valve, number-two engine. Im losing some Nf speed and some Ng, sir. T5 is coming up a little. Ten feet over the flight engineers head, a spring had broken, opening a valve wider than it was supposed to be. It released bleed air supposed to recirculate within the turboshaft engine. That reduced combustion in the engine, and was manifested in reduced Nf or free-power turbine speed, also in Ng power from the gas-producer turbine, and finally the loss of air volume resulted in increased tailpipe temperature, called T5. Johns and Willis could see all this from their instruments, but they really depended on Sergeant Zimmer to tell them what the problem was. The engines belonged to him.

Talk to me, Buck, Johns ordered.

We just lost twenty-six-percent power in Number Two, sir. Cant fix it. Bad valve, shouldnt get much worse, though. Tailpipe temp ought to stabilize short of max-sustainable . . . maybe. Aint an emergency yet, PJ. Ill keep an eye on it.

Fine, the pilot growled. At the valve, not at Zimmer. This was not good news. Things had gone well tonight, too well. Like most combat veterans, Paul Johns was a suspicious man. What his mind went over now were power and weight considerations. He had to climb over those goddamned mountains in order to tank and fly back to Panama. . . .

But first he had a pickup to make.

Give me a time.

Four minutes, Captain Willis answered. Well be able to see it over that next ridge. Starting to mush on us, sir.

Yeah, I can tell. Johns looked at his instruments. Number One was at 104 percent rated power. Number Two was just over 73 percent. Since they could accomplish their next segment of the mission despite the problem, it went onto the back burner for now. PJ dialed some more altitude into his autopilot. Climbing ridges would be getting harder now with greater weight on the airframe and less power to drag it around.

Its a real fight, all right, Johns said a minute later. His night-vision systems showed lots of activity on the ground. Johns keyed his radio. FEATURE, this is CAESAR, over. No answer.

FEATURE, this is CAESAR, over. It took two more tries.

CAESAR this is FEATURE, we are under attack.

Roger, FEATURE, I can see that, son. I make your position about three hundred meters down from the LZ. Get up the hill, we can cover. Say again, we can cover.

We have close contact, CAESAR.

Run for it. I repeat, run for it, we can cover you, PJ told him calmly. Come on, kid. Ive been here before. I know the drill. . . . Break contact now!

Roger. FEATURE, this is Six, head for the LZ. I repeat, head for the LZ now! they heard him say. PJ keyed his intercom.

Buck, lets go hot. Gunners to stations, we have a hot LZ here. There are friendlies on the ground. I say again: there are friendlies on the ground, people. So lets be goddamned careful with those fucking guns!

Johns had wished a hundred times that hed had one of these over Laos. The Pave Low carried over a thousand pounds of titanium armor which went, of course, over the engines, fuel cells, and transmission. The flight crew was protected by less effective Kevlar. The rest of the aircraft was less fortunatea child could push a screwdriver through the aluminum skinbut those were the breaks. He orbited the LZ, a thousand feet higher and two thousand yards out, traveling in a clockwise circle to get a feel for things. Things didnt feel good.

I dont like this, PJ, Zimmer told him over intercom. Sergeant Bean on the ramp gun felt the same way but didnt say anything. Ryan, who hadnt seen anything at any of the landing zones, also kept his mouth shut.

Theyre moving, Buck.

Looks like it.

Okay, Im spiraling in. AC to crew, were heading in for a closer look. You may return fire directed at us, but nothing else until I say otherwise. I want to hear acknowledgments.

Zimmer, acknowledge.

Bean, acknowledge.

Ryan, okay. I cant see anything to shoot at anyway.

It was worse than it looked. The attackers from the Cartel had chosen to approach the primary LZ from an unexpected direction. This took them right through the alternate extraction site selected by FEATURE, and the team had not had the time needed to prepare a full defensive network. Worst of all, some of the attackers were those who had survived the fight against KNIFE, and had learned a few things, like the way in which caution was sometimes improved by a speedy advance, not diminished by it. They also knew of the helicopter, but not enough. Had they known of its armament, the battle might have ended then and there, but they expected the rescue chopper to be unarmed because they had never really encountered any other sort. As usual in battle, the contest was defined by purpose and error, knowledge and ignorance. FEATURE was pulling back rapidly, leaving behind hastily arranged booby traps and claymores, but, as before, the casualties were less a warning to the attackers than a goad, and the Cartels veterans of Ninja Hill were learning. Now they split into three distinct groups and began to envelop the hilltop LZ.

I got a strobe, Willis said.

FEATURE, this is CAESAR, confirm your LZ.

CAESAR, FEATURE, do you have our strobe?

Thats affirm. Coming in now. Get all your people in the open. I say again, get all your people where we can see them.

We have three down were bringing in. Were doing our best.

Thirty seconds out, PJ told him.

Well be ready.

As before, the gunners heard half of the conversation, followed by their instructions: AC to crew, Ive ordered all friendlies into the open. Once we get a good count, I want you to hose down the area. Anything you can see is probably friendly. I want everything else suppressed hard. Ryan, that means beat the shit out of it.

Roger, Jack replied.

Fifteen seconds. Lets look sharp, people.

It came without warning. No one saw where it originated. The Pave Low was spiraling in steeply, but it could not wholly avoid flying over enemy troops. Six of them heard it approach and saw the black mass moving against the background of clouds. Simultaneously they aimed at the sky and let loose. The 7.62mm rounds lanced right through the floor of the helicopter. The sound was distinctive, like hail on a tin roof, and everyone who heard it knew immediately what it was. A scream confirmed it for the slow. Someone had been hit.

PJ, were taking fire, Zimmer said over the intercom circuit. As he said so, he trained his gun down and loosed a brief burst. Again the airframe vibrated. The line of tracers told the whole world what and where the Pave Low was, and more fire came in.

Jesus! Rounds hit the armored windshield. They didnt penetrate, but they left nicks, and their impacts sparked like fireflies. On instinct, Johns jinked to the right, away from the fire. That unmasked the left side of the aircraft.

Ryan was as scared as he had ever been. It seemed that there were a hundred, two hundred, a thousand muzzle flashes down there, all aimed straight at him. He wanted to cringe, but knew that his safest place was behind the thousand-plus-pound gun mount. The gun didnt really have much of a sight. He looked down the rotating barrels toward a particularly tight knot of flashes and depressed the trigger switch.

It felt like he was holding a jackhammer in his hands and sounded like a giant was ripping a canvas sail to bits. A gout of flame six feet long and three across erupted before his eyes, so bright that he could barely see through it, but the tight cylinder of tracers was impossible to miss, and it walked right into the flashes that were still sparkling on the ground. But not for long. He waved the gun around, assisted in the effort by the gyrations of the helicopter and the incredible vibration of the gun. The line of tracers wiggled and wavered over the target area for several seconds. By the time his thumbs came up, the sparkling of muzzle flashes had stopped.

Son of a bitch, he said to himself, so surprised that he momentarily forgot about the danger. That wasnt the only incoming fire. Ryan selected another area and went to work, this time holding to short bursts, only a few hundred rounds each. Then the chopper turned fully away and he had no more targets.

On the flight deck, Willis and Johns scanned their instruments. Theyd allowed themselves to be surprised. There was no critical damage to the aircraft. The flight controls, also protected by armor, engines, transmission, and fuel cells were impervious to rifle fire. Or supposed to be.

We got some people hurt back here, Zimmer reported. Lets get it over with, PJ.

Okay, Buck, I hear you. PJ brought the chopper back around, looping to the left now. FEATURE, this is CAESAR, were going to try that again. Even his voice had lost its icy calm. Combat hadnt changed very much, but hed grown older.

Theyre closing in. Move your ass, mister! Were all here, were all here.

Twenty seconds, son. AC to crew, were going back in. Twenty seconds.

The helicopter stopped and pivoted in the air, not continuing its majestic sweep, and Johns hoped that those who were watching would be unprepared for that. He twisted the throttle control to max power and lowered his nose to dive in hard on the LZ. Two hundred meters out he brought the nose up and yanked the collective to slow down. It was his usual perfect maneuver. The Pave Low lost forward airspeed exactly at the right placeand dropped hard on the ground because of the reduced power from Number Two. Johns cringed when he felt it, half expecting it to set off a booby trap, but that didnt happen and he left it there.

It seemed to take forever. Minds and bodies pumped up with adrenaline have their own time, the sort that stops the ticking of watches. Ryan thought that he could see the rotor blades spinning individually at the top of his peripheral vision. He wanted to look aft, wanted to see if the team had gotten aboard yet, but his area of responsibility was out the left-side gunners door. He realized at once that he wasnt being paid to bring ammunition home. As soon as he was sure that there were no friendlies in front of him, he punched the gun switch and hosed down the treeline, sweeping his fire about a foot off the ground in a wide arc. On the other side, Zimmer was doing the same.

Aft, Clark was looking out the back door. Bean was on his minigun, and he couldnt shoot. This was where the friendlies were, and they moved toward the chopper, their legs pumping in what had to be a run, but seeming to be slow-motion. That was when the fire started from the trees.

Forward, Ryan was amazed that anyone could be alive in the area that hed just hosed, but there it was. He saw a spark on the doorframe and knew it had to have been a bullet aimed right at him. Jack didnt cringe. There was no place to hide, and he knew that the side of the aircraft was getting hit far worse. He took an instant to look and see where the shooting was coming from, then trained on it and fired again. It seemed that the blast from the gun must push the aircraft sideways. The exhaust flames from the gun bored a hole through the dust kicked up by the spinning rotor, but still there were flashes of fire from the treeline.

Clark heard the screams inside and out over the low howl of the miniguns. He could feel the rounds hitting the side of the aircraft, and then saw two men fall just at the tail rotor of the helicopter while others were racing aboard.

Shit! He leapt to his feet and ran out the door, joined by Chavez and Vega. Clark lifted one of the fallen soldiers and dragged him toward the ramp. Chavez and Vega got the other. There was dust kicking up at their feet from the fire. Vega fell five feet from the ramp, taking his burden down with him. Clark tossed his soldier into the waiting hands of his team members and turned to assist. First he took the team member. When he turned, Chavez was struggling with Vega. Clark grabbed the mans shoulders and pushed backward, landing on the edge of the ramp. Ding grabbed Osos feet and swung them around, leaping over them to grab the base of the minigun as the helicopter started lifting off. Fire came straight through the door, but Bean now had a clear field for his weapon and swept it across the area.

It was slow getting off. The helicopter had several tons of new weight, was at over five thousand feet of altitude, and trying to fly with reduced power. Forward, PJ cursed the balky machine. The Pave Low struggled up a few feet, still taking fire.

On the ground around them the attackers were enraged that the men whom they wanted to kill were escaping, and ran for one last attempt to prevent it. They saw the helicopter as a trophy, some horrible apparition that had robbed them of success and their comrades of their lives, and each of them determined that this should not be. Over a hundred rifles were trained on the aircraft as it wavered, halfway between ground and flight.

Ryan felt the passage of several roundsthey were coming right through his door, going he knew not where, aiming for him and his gun. He was past fear. The flashes of rifle fire were places to aim, and that he did. One at a time he selected a target and touched his trigger, shifting rapidly from one to another. Safety, what there was of it, lay in eliminating the danger. There was no place to run, and he knew that the ability to respond was a luxury that everyone aboard the aircraft wanted, but only three of them had. He couldnt let them down. He moved the gun left to right and back again in a series of seconds that stretched out into hours, and he thought that he could hear each individual round the minigun spat out. His head jerked back when something hit his helmet, but he yanked it back and held the trigger down, spraying the area in one continuous blast of fire that changed as he realized that he had to bring his hands up and the muzzles down because the targets were dropping away. For one brief contradictory instant it seemed as if they and not he were getting away. Then it was over. For a moment, his hands wouldnt come off the gun. He tried to take a step back, but his hands wouldnt let go until he willed them to. Then they dropped to his side. Ryan shook his head to clear it. He was deafened by the noise from the minigun, and it took a few seconds before he started hearing the higher-frequency screams of wounded men. He looked around to see that the body of the aircraft was filled with the acidic smoke of the guns, but the rapidly increasing slipstream from forward flight was clearing it out. His eyes were still suffering from the gun flashes, and his legs were wobbly from the sudden fatigue that comes after violent action. He wanted to sit down, to go to sleep, to wake up in another place.

One of the screams was close by. It was Zimmer, only a few feet away, lying on his back and rolling around with his arms across his chest. Ryan went to see what the problem was.

Zimmer had taken three rounds in the chest. He was aspirating blood. It sprayed in a pink cloud from his mouth and nose. One round had shattered his right shoulder, but the serious ones were through the lungs. The man was bleeding to death before his eyes, Ryan knew at once. Was there a medic here? Might he do something?

This is Ryan, he said over the intercom line. Sergeant Zimmer is down. Hes hit pretty bad.

Buck! PJ responded at once. Buck, are you all right?

Zimmer tried to answer but couldnt. His intercom line had been shot away. He shouted something Ryan couldnt understand, and Jack turned and screamed as loudly as he could at the rest of them, the others who didnt seem to care or know what the problem here was.

Medic! Corpsman! he added, not knowing what it was that Army troops said. Clark heard him and started heading that way.

Come on, Zimmer, youre going to be all right, Jack told him. He remembered that much from his brief few months in the Marine Corps. Give them a reason to live. Were going to fix this up and youre going to be all right. Hang in there, Sargeit hurts, but youre going to be all right.

Clark was there a moment later. He stripped off the flight engineers flak jacket, oblivious to the screech of pain that it caused from the wrecked shoulder. For Clark, too, it was too much a return to years past and things half-remembered. Somehow hed forgotten just how scary, how awful this sort of thing was, and while he was recovering his senses more rapidly than most, the horror of having been helpless under fire and helpless with its aftermath had nearly overpowered him. And he was helpless now. He could see that from the placement of the wounds. Clark looked up at Ryan and shook his head.

My kids! Zimmer screamed. The sergeant had a reason to live, but the reason wasnt enough.

Tell me about your kids, Ryan said. Talk to me about your kids.

SevenI got seven kidsI gotta, I cant die! My kidsmy kids need me.

Hang in there, Sarge, were going to get you out of here. Youre going to make it, Ryan told him, tears clouding in his eyes at the shame of lying to a dying man.

They need me! His voice was weaker now as the blood was filling his throat and lungs.

Ryan looked up at Clark, hoping that there was something to be said. Some hope. Something. Clark just stared into Jacks face. He looked back down at Zimmer and took his hand, the uninjured one.

Seven kids? Jack asked.

They need me, Zimmer whimpered, knowing now that he wouldnt be there, wouldnt see them grow and marry and have their own children, wouldnt be there to guide them, to protect them. He had failed to do what a father must do.

Ill tell you something about your kids that you dont know, Zimmer, Ryan said to the dying man.

Huh? What? He looked confused, looked to Ryan for the answer to the great question of life. Jack didnt have that one, but told him what he could.

Theyre all going to college, man. Ryan squeezed the hand as hard as he could. You got my word, Zimmer, all your kidsll go to college. I will take care of that for you. Swear to God, man, Ill do it.

The sergeants face changed a bit at that, but before Ryan could decide what emotion he beheld, the face changed again, and there was no emotion left. Ryan hit the intercom switch. Zimmers dead, Colonel.

Roger. Ryan was offended by the coldness of the acknowledgment. He didnt hear what Johns was thinking: God, oh God, what do I tell Carol and the kids?

Ryan had Zimmers head cradled on his lap. He disengaged himself slowly, resting the head down on the metal floor of the helicopter. Clark wrapped his burly arms around the younger man.

Im going to do it, Jack told him in a choking voice. That wasnt a fucking lie. I am going to do it!

I know. He knew it too. He really did.

You sure? The tears had started, and it was hard for Jack to repeat the most important question of his life. Are you really sure?

He knew what you said, Jack, and he believed you. What you did, doc, that was pretty good. Clark embraced Ryan in the way that men do only with their wives, their children, and those with whom they had faced death.

In the right-front seat, Colonel Johns put his grief away into a locked compartment that he would later open and experience to the full. But for now he had a mission to fly. Buck would surely understand that.

Cutters jet arrived at Hurlburt Field well after dark. He was met by a car which took him to Wing Operations. Hed arrived entirely without warning, and strode into the Operations office like an evil spirit.

Who the hells in charge here?

The sergeant at the desk recognized the Presidents National Security Adviser immediately from seeing him on television. Right through that door, sir.

Cutter found a young captain dozing in his swivel chair. His eyes had cracked open just as the door did, and the twenty-nine-year-old officer jumped to his feet quite unsteadily.

I want to know where Colonel Johns is, Vice Admiral Cutter told him quietly.

Sir, that is information which I am not able to You know who the hell I am?

Yes, sir.

Are you trying to say no to me, Captain?

Sir, I have my orders.

Captain, I am countermanding all of your orders. Now, you answer my question and you do it right now. Cutters voice was a few decibels higher now.

Sir, I dont know where the Then you find somebody who does, and you get him here.

The captain was frightened enough that he took the route of least resistance. He called a major, who lived on post and was in the office in under eight minutes.

What the hell is this? the major said on the way through the door.

Major, I am whats going on here, Cutter told him. I want to know where Colonel Johns is. Hes the goddamned CO of this outfit, isnt he?

Yessir! What the hell is this . . . ?

Are you telling me that the people of this unit dont know where their CO is? Cutter was sufficiently amazed that his authority hadnt generated immediate compliance with his orders that he allowed himself to bluster off on a tangent.