"Guess nothing's broken," he said. "Least nothing important. Glad to see you got out okay, Munrough… I saw your bird auger in… didn't see your chute."
"I was above you… I saw yours… figured you were toast from the way you were spinning."
"Me too," Troy agreed.
"Where do you suppose we are?" Jenna asked, looking around.
"We're in that desert… Denakil… y'know, where we shot down the MiGs. Do you have your GPS receiver?" "It broke when I landed. Y'all have yours?"
Troy checked his gear and found that his GPS receiver was working, though the information it gave them was of little practical use. They learned that they were fourteen degrees, forty-five minutes north of the equator and thirty-nine degrees, thirty-two minutes east of Greenwich, but that was merely of academic curiosity.
Troy's radio, like all of Jenna's gear, had been crushed on impact, but the transponder with which a rescue team could home in on his position still worked.
They could see on the GPS that they were fifty miles inland from the coast, and that the mountain they could see to the north was called Amba Soira. The GPS told them that there was a road on the other side of the ridge that lay to the west, but they could have discovered that by climbing to the top of the ridge.
"Haven't heard a chopper," Jenna said, looking skyward. "I'm sure that Hal would have reported our position… or they'd be homing in on the transponder."
"There were a lot of people shot down last night. I figure they're pretty busy… you suppose we ought to just hang in here and wait?"
"I really don't think that's a good idea," Jenna said. "Remember where we are and how we got here… we got shot down by Eritreans… this is Eritrea… I sure as hell don't want to be a female POW in Eritrea."
"Point taken," Troy said.
"I'll help you bury your parachute," Jenna offered.
After burying Troy's chute and trying to disguise it as best they could, the two pilots climbed to the top of the ridge to look at the road. It was deserted for as far as they could see, so getting across it without being seen would have been possible. However, it was what lay across it that was the decision maker for them.
"Look at that," Troy said, pointing to the immense desert, stretching into Ethiopia, that separated them from the Sudanese border by hundreds of miles.
"Sure hate to run out of water over there," Jenna said, instinctively glancing at the small flask from her survival kit that she had strapped to her belt.
"Let's head the other way," Troy suggested. "There are U. S. Navy ships in the Red Sea; if they are tracking my transponder, they may be able to get a chopper out from there to pick us up."
"Let's go and get gone before somebody comes to investigate where those two parachutes came down this morning," Jenna agreed.
They hiked for about two hours, suffering from the midday heat and pausing from time to time in the shade of the rock outcroppings that dotted the landscape.
"Gotta conserve water," Jenna said, scolding Troy as he reached for his flask.
"Maybe we oughta wait until dark?" Troy asked rhetorically. "They said in survival school that you shouldn't try to hike in the hottest part of the day."
"You oughta know, you were the one who aced the survival course."
Troy ignored her baiting, feigning distraction as he reached into a crevice in the cliff beneath which they had stopped.
"Whatcha looking for?" Jenna asked.
"I dunno, just thinking there might be some condensation in the dark, deep corners here."
"Well…"
"Baked dry centuries ago."
"Hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Thought I heard a chopper," Jenna said with guarded excitement.
"At last." Troy sighed, as the whup-whup-whup grew louder. "First thing I'm gonna do is get me a shower and a beer, or a beer and a shower."
"Where's he going?" Jenna asked as the whup-whupwhup grew more distant.
"Sounds like he's searching the place where we landed, maybe one of the crash sites?"
"Let's go get us seen," Jenna said, scrambling up a low incline that they had just descended a few minutes earlier.
Troy followed, nearly colliding with her when she stopped abruptly.
"What's the—"
"Oh shit," Jenna exclaimed. "Look at—"
"Oh double shit," Troy whispered.
The helicopter was orbiting the spot where they had come down, but it was not an American Black Hawk. It was a green and tan Mil Mi-8 with the Christmas-treeornament-colored insignia of the Eritrean Air Force.
Without a further word, the two Americans raced back to the cliff and shoved themselves as deep into the shadow as they could.
Jenna's hand went to her Beretta M9, as though merely touching the standard-issue automatic pistol would provide her some consolation. Each of them had two thirty-round magazines, but against an armed helicopter, or even an unarmed helicopter filled with armed troops, the Berettas were scant consolation.
"Maybe we can outshoot 'em." Troy smiled.
"Save the last round for yourself," Jenna replied grimly.
Troy looked at her expression. There was no way that she would allow herself to wind up as a female POW in Eritrea.
Chapter 15
"Maybe we can steal a boat." Troy laughed.
"And sail off into the sunset," Jenna said with a growl of mock sarcasm, her voice raspy from too little water and too much dust.
"Technically, from this coast it would be the sun rising."
The two downed American pilots had been walking for three days in the tortuous heat of the Eritrean desert. Had it been summer, not spring, they could very well have died of heatstroke by now. Had they not pulled some only slightly brackish water from an abandoned well that they had found, they could well have died from dehydration.
No American rescue helicopter had come, despite Troy's transponder broadcasting their position. They had given up trying to figure out why.
Fortunately, they had seen no further Eritrean choppers. They didn't care why. They were just glad.
Troy and Jenna had decided that it would be suicide to try hiking straight back to their base in Sudan. There was too much inhospitable distance, and too many AlQinamah bad guys. Therefore, they had decided to try to reach the Red Sea coastline. They hadn't yet decided what they'd do when they got there — except find a place to get a long, cold drink of water.
"I'm surprised that Hal hasn't tried to find us," Troy said, making conversation. Aside from walking eastward and worrying about water, that was all they had to do. "Like, y'know… you and him… "
"Me and Hal what?"
"Oh come on… I saw your hand on his ass… ""
"So?"
"So I figured there was something going on… figure that on account of that… he'd come flying over this damned place trying to spot us."
"Maybe he did… Maybe he did back where we were… we're a long way from there now."
"Maybe."
"What?" Jenna asked in that "I-know-what-you'rethinking" tone that people have when they think they know what you're thinking.
"Whaddya mean, 'what'?"
"Are you jealous?"
"Well, I guess, y'know," Troy said, groping for words. "I've been listening to you snore every night and it's hard not to think about… when you're sleeping with somebody and all that's happening is that you're trying to sleep…"
"You saying I snore?" Jenna laughed.
"Yeah, but…"
"Okay… since we may never get out of this thing alive…"
"Don't say that," Troy interrupted.
"Okay… since we may never get out of this thing alive," Jenna repeated, "I should admit that I've…. y'know… I've had those kinda thoughts about y'all."
"Really?"
"You're a hunk, Loensch," Jenna said in a matter-of-fact way. "Sometimes you're obnoxious, but you're a hunk and I have had… kind of a thing for y'all."