Next came the weapons and guidance equipment. First off, the sergeant strapped a gauntlet to Kurt's arm. It had a curved, low-light screen on it. "Standard GPS, moving map display," he said. "It will illuminate with less than one candlepower. You'll be able to read it with your night vision goggles on, but no one else will. Remember, this is military GPS, so it's good to within three feet."

From there they moved to a rifle rack.

Connors handed them matching weapons. Once again they were like nothing Kurt had ever fired. Considering how much he knew about guns, that was surprising.

"Are these phasers?" Joe asked. "I've always wanted one."

Connors chuckled. "Electromagnetic railguns," he said. "Completely silent. Accurate up to a thousand yards. They fire ferrous projectiles-in other words, the bullets are made of iron, not lead, so they're more lethal in terms of penetrating anything they encounter. Also, since they don't require gunpowder, your standard-sized magazine carries fifty projectiles. You have a second magazine in your packs."

Kurt held the weapon up, testing the weight and feel. It had a long barrel and was definitely nose-heavy.

"How does it work?" Joe asked.

"Superconducting magnets along the barrel and a high- potency battery pack. Pull the trigger and they accelerate the projectiles to a thousand feet per second in the blink of an eye."

Joe nodded approvingly.

"Why are there two triggers?" Kurt asked.

"Since they are already equipped with a substantial power source, someone got the great idea to add a long-range Taser to the bottom rail. The lower trigger fires it. You can hit someone accurately up to fifty feet or simply hold the tip of the barrel against them and give a half pull to zap them manually."

"So we don't have to kill everything we see," Joe mentioned.

The sergeant nodded.

A red light went on at the far end of the aircraft and they could feel the plane begin a rather steep descent.

"We're approaching the drop zone," the sergeant said. "Any questions?"

Joe raised a hand. "You said 'drop zone,' but we don't seem to have parachutes."

"You won't need them," Connors said. "You'll be going out in the Hummer."

"Does it fly?"

"Nope. But it can be put on a pallet and tossed out the back from an alt.i.tude of no more than twenty feet."

Joe turned to Kurt. "You said we'd be using parachutes."

"LAPES," Kurt said. "Low alt.i.tude parachute extraction system. It's all right there in the acronym."

Joe shrugged, secured his weapon, and made his way toward the Humvee. "Why not? I'm open to new things, different experiences, novel ways of risking my neck in the name of science, why not try driving an SUV off an airplane moving at a hundred fifty knots? Somebody's got to do it."

Both Kurt and the sergeant laughed.

"Good luck," Connors said.

Kurt nodded. "You want us to bring you anything back? T-shirt? Postcard? Puka sh.e.l.l necklace?"

The sergeant grinned. "I prefer a shot gla.s.s that says 'We came, we saw, we conquered.' "

Kurt returned the smile. "I'll see what I can do."

Thirty minutes later, Kurt and Joe sat belted into a Humvee that was secured to a st.u.r.dy wooden pallet and a harness that would deploy two large drogue chutes. Joe was harnessed in at the wheel, though he wouldn't actually do any driving during the insertion, as the danger of the wheels turning sideways and getting ripped off was far too great. Instead, the Humvee would use the pallet beneath it as a sled while the parachutes trailing out behind them would both slow the vehicle down and keep them from nosing over.

Kurt made one last check of his equipment. Out of an abundance of caution and a certain sense of nostalgia, he had added an additional weapon to his a.r.s.enal. Hidden in his pack was the Colt revolver that Mohammed El Din had given him. He doubted he'd need it. But if the recent past had taught them anything, it was that modern technology was vulnerable to tampering or failing at precisely the wrong moment. That being the case, having a backup weapon from a bygone era didn't sound all that bad. He kept it zipped up in a front pocket that ran diagonally across the vest.

For less logical reasons he'd brought the pictures of Calista's family and the lifeboat they attempted to escape in. After searching for the truth so painfully himself, some part of him thought she deserved to know hers.

The light on the wall turned yellow and Sergeant Connors pressed a switch that opened the ramp at the tail end of the C-17.

They were descending through two thousand feet into utter darkness. The sea was below them for a moment and then sand as they flew over the beach.

As they flew lower and slower, the howl of the airstream whipping past the open door took on a different tone. With full flaps and its gear down, the C-17 could move incredibly slowly for such a huge machine. But the wake turbulence caused by flying at a high angle of attack in such a "dirty" condition created a buffeting and whining sound that seemed to trail behind the plane as if banshees were chasing it.

On the map, the drop zone was labeled Antsalova Airport. Joe seemed concerned about that. "You think the people at this airport are going to be surprised when we drop out of the sky and drive off without stopping at customs?"

"It's not much of an airport," Kurt said, "more of a dirt strip with a gra.s.s hut at the far end. We're only coming here because we need a flat surface to slide on. But there are no planes. No rental-car desks. No white courtesy telephone."

"No Admirals Club?" Joe said, looking perturbed. Kurt shook his head. "Sorry, buddy."

Joe sighed. "I really have to talk to my travel agent. This trip is getting worse all the time."

As Kurt and Joe waited for the light to go green, the pilots up front were easing the huge aircraft down over the trees. A crosswind coming down off the slope of the island was making it difficult and they were actually flying sideways, a tactic pilots call crabbing. The problem was that they couldn't drop the Humvee in that alignment or it would land sideways and flip, killing the occupants instantly.

The copilot was on the instruments while the pilot flew with night vision goggles on.

"Ninety feet AGL," the copilot said.

"Can't get any lower until the trees clear," the pilot replied.

"We should be over the site in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . ."

The trees finally dropped away from under them and the pilot saw the dirt strip stretching out before him in a long thin line. He corrected to the left and brought the C-17 almost to the surface, stomping on the rudder to straighten the huge bird out.

The C-17 was now thirty feet off the dirt strip, screaming at full power and headed for the trees five thousand feet ahead.

In a chair behind them the loadmaster hit a switch, changing the jump light in the rear of the aircraft from yellow to green. "Release the payload," he said into the intercom.

For what seemed like an interminable length of time but was, in fact, only a few seconds, nothing happened except the trees ahead looming larger. Then the pilot felt the plane rise as the five-thousand-pound payload was pulled out the back.

At almost the same instant, Sgt. Connors's voice came over the intercom. "They're away. Payload clear. I repeat, payload clear."

In a synchronized move, the pilot jammed the throttles to full as the copilot retracted the gear to reduce the plane's drag coefficient.

"Positive rate," the copilot called out, seeing the altimeter begin to move.

The pilot heard but did not reply. The dirt strip was only a mile long. The trees at the far end were no more than a few hundred yards away. It was a very tight window.

"Climb, baby, climb," he whispered to the plane.

With its engines screaming and its nose pointed skyward, the gargantuan aircraft clawed for alt.i.tude. It crossed the end of the dirt strip and pulled just clear of the trees, close enough that the mechanics who inspected her later would find streaks of green chlorophyll all across the underside of the fuselage.

Clear of the danger, the pilot leveled off, picked up airspeed, and then turned to the southwest. In short order, they were out over the Mozambique Channel. Only now did the pilot consider the fate of the men they'd just dropped, wondering if they would live out the night.

For their part, Kurt and Joe had wondered if they would survive the drop itself. It felt as if the plane was maneuvering desperately the last thirty seconds or so. As the light went green, Connors had pressed a red deploy b.u.t.ton and shouted "Go," or something along those lines.

Neither Kurt nor Joe truly heard him as the sound of the drogue chutes deploying and the sudden whiplash of being pulled backward out of the aircraft snapped their heads forward and commanded all their attention.

The Humvee was yanked out of the aircraft and in free fall for all of two seconds. Kurt distinctly remembered the sight of the aircraft pulling up and banking to the right as the vehicle skidded across the dirt on the pallet like a toboggan out of control on an icy slope. The first sensation was like skipping like a stone on a lake. And then they decelerated as the pallet maintained contact with the packed dirt of the runway. The last forty or fifty feet seemed smoother. And then suddenly they lurched to a stop.

Up ahead the C-17 just barely cleared the trees, and Kurt was certain he saw brief fires in the treetops where the heat of the engines singed them.

At that moment just being alive was a thrill. Kurt looked over at Joe and saw him grinning from ear to ear. "Okay, I'd do that again," he said giddily. "I'd even pay for another ride."

Kurt had to agree, but duty called. He opened the door and released the lock that connected them to the parachute and another lock that held them to the pallet. Joe performed the same task on the driver's side and then climbed back inside, turned the key, and brought the Humvee's 6.2-liter fuel-injected diesel to life.

In a moment they were speeding across the last hundred yards of the runway and onto a dirt road that led them south.

"Hope you've got the map ready," Joe said, " 'cause I'm not from around here."

"Just stay on this road," Kurt said. "We've got seven miles to go."

With their infiltration suits switched off and well-worn robes covering them, Kurt and Joe raced along the dirt road in the Humvee. The landscape flying past in the dark was hard to see, but this section of Madagascar was made up of wide gra.s.sy fields, occasional copses of small trees, and plenty of sky.

So far, they hadn't pa.s.sed a single hut or another vehicle. Joe let off the gas to negotiate a bend in the dirt road and they began to drift sideways as the rutted ground gave way beneath them. But with a slight punch of the throttle, the k.n.o.bby tires bit a little deeper into the soil and the four-wheeldrive Humvee snapped back into a straight line and continued forward.

Kurt was in the pa.s.senger's seat, holding on to the roll bar with one hand and checking the GPS with his other. "You always drive like this?"

"You should see me at rush hour."

"Something tells me I'd rather not."

"First time I've ever been late for a meeting and not ended up in traffic," Joe said.

"This section of Madagascar is pretty spa.r.s.ely populated," Kurt said. "According to the map, the biggest town in a fiftymile radius is a place called Masoarivo and it's only eight thousand people."

"Lucky for us," Joe said. "Doubt we'll see another car out here."

Kurt agreed, but livestock was another story. In sections where the rainwater had pooled, they'd pa.s.sed grazing cattle and sheep. "Watch out for cows," he said. "As I recall, you hit one in the Azores and had to fight for the town's honor as part of your community service."

"I was exonerated," Joe insisted. "A court inquiry ruled the cow to be at fault and fined her for grazing without a license."

"We don't have time to go to court," Kurt replied, laughing at the memory, "nor do we have a replacement front end handy. So just be careful."

Joe promised he would do just that as they raced onto a straightaway and he stomped the gas pedal to the floor once again.

A mile and a half from the Brevard property they slowed. In place of blazing headlights, Joe and Kurt pulled on their night vision goggles. The Humvee became a growling beast of the night, hidden in the darkness.

"I can see the fence up ahead," Kurt said. "Pull off the road here. We can hide the vehicle behind those trees."

Joe allowed the Hummer to slow on its own, he manhandled the wheel and took them off the dirt road and onto the soft ground with its waist-high gra.s.ses.

They came to a stop behind some low-lying brush and the wide trunk of a strange-looking tree that grew straight up like a concrete pillar. The only branches on the tree sprouted seventy feet above at the very top. It looked more like a giant stalk of broccoli than a tree. Several more of the odd trees grew close by.

"I feel like I'm in a Dr. Seuss book," Joe said.

"Baobab trees," Kurt said.

"Trees like this won't give us a lot of cover."

"We shouldn't need it with the suits," Kurt replied as he pulled off the oversize cotton tunic and rolled it into a ball.

As Joe did the same, Kurt removed the night vision goggles and clipped the breathing regulator onto a notch at the shoulder. The small tank of compressed air that would be used to cool his breath was strapped to his side.

He scanned the fence. It was rusted old barbwire, already broken in places. There was no sign of anything more modern protecting the land at this point, but Kurt didn't want to chance it.

"According to the GPS, it's about half a mile from here to the compound, over this low dirge and then up a long slope," Kurt said. "We need to cover that ground in no more than ten minutes. That'll give us fifteen minutes of thermal invisibility once we reach the compound walls."

Joe nodded and slipped the satphone into a zippered pocket of the infiltration suit. Into another pocket he slid the extra clip for the railgun. "I figure we travel as light as possible and leave the rest of this stuff behind."

"Couldn't agree more," Kurt said. "Let's go."

They switched on their suits, pulled the hoods over their heads, and readjusted the night vision goggles. Kurt took point crossing the road, heading into the tall gra.s.s on the other side and moving quickly to a break in the fence.

Joe followed, staying close. "I'll give them this, these suits work as advertised," he said. "I'm ten feet behind you and really have to work just to see you. Even through these goggles you're more of a shadow than anything else."

"I'm going to head straight for the point on this ridge," Kurt said. "Stick close. If you get lost, give me a birdcall or something."

"The only birdcalls I know are Woody Woodp.e.c.k.e.r and Daffy Duck."

"That's despicable," Kurt said, lisping the words in his best imitation of the cartoon duck. "Let's go."

With that, Kurt was off. Joe followed, finding he could track Kurt more easily by the sound of his feet scuffing through the brush and gra.s.s and over the dusty soil of the higher ridge. They came down the other side of the ridge and onto a sloping field that ran all the way up to the granite formations behind the compound. At the base of those rocks the lights of the plantation house were clearly visible.

Kurt checked his watch. "We have thirty minutes to confirm that the hostages are there and radio in. Any later and the Marines will be turning around."

Joe nodded and Kurt began to move again. They couldn't run full out, but a brisk jog would do the trick. Halfway up they encountered a small heard of zebu, the horned cattle seeming skittish at the approach of something they could smell but not see.

They p.r.i.c.ked up their ears, grunting and making strange gurgling noises deep in their throats. A few of them shuffled off, unnerved by the intrusion, but Kurt and Joe were long past them by that point, just shadows moving through the dark.

As he continued up the slope, Kurt felt the ache in his shoulder from the bullet wound and the weight of the heavy railgun. He ignored it and continued on.

Three-quarters of the way up the slope they came within sight of the compound walls. A quiet whistle got Joe's attention. They huddled together.

"What do you think?" Kurt asked.

"The wall looks rough, unfinished."