I said, “And that’s what I’m posing as?”
Iossi said, “Commander Ford, hopefully this evolution will go down so fast and hard, you’re not going to need to pose as anything. But if something goes wrong, if you’re captured or killed, the company can’t be associated with you in any way. SOP-standard operating procedure. If someone asks us who you are, we’ll tell them you’re a gun for hire, you’re a headhunter. Simple as that. You are not with us.”
I nodded. “Killing people to get rich.”
Iossi was walking toward the door. “Killing killers to get rich. Yeah, a couple of our people have made a ton of money.”
The Colombian Anfibios all looked like teenage boys. There were four of them in full camouflage battle dress, faces painted, boonie hats pulled low. All together, they carried an M-16; some kind of stockless, sci-fi looking automatic shotgun; a 60-caliber machine gun; and a Knight’s Armaments sniper rifle, complete with a complicated new generation of Startron night-vision systems that I’d never seen before.
Maybe they had gotten better.
Their commanding officer was Lt. Rafidio Martinez, a very short, squat wrestler type who wasted no time making certain I knew exactly who was in charge.
“Once we locate the facility, Commander, the helicopter will hover, and our team will fast-rope to the ground. You will stay in the stern of the ship, out of our way. We don’t want to risk those lines getting tangled or someone accidentally knocking you out of the ship.
“Once we have secured the facility and taken down any resistance, we will signal the chopper to land. Then and only then can you enter the facility. Questions, sir?”
Nope. No questions. I liked the way the guy took command. In fact, I found it very reassuring.
The Anfibio had gotten better-or so I thought.
They walked me out through the early morning darkness to the helio pad. There I saw what appeared to be a ultramodern Plexiglas bubble attached to a khaki and camo fuselage. The aircraft had a six-bladed main rotor and a canted four-bladed tail rotor. There were infrared sensors in several places on the exterior, rocket tubes, a bristling of antenna and miniguns, plus twin external dismount planks.
I’d seen one of these choppers before. It was a high-tech, special-duty helicopter named Little Bird. Its principal role was to ferry commandos into tight situations. Troops rode on the two planks attached to the aircraft’s sides, enabling them to dismount immediately upon touchdown.
Martinez had told me his crew would be fast-roping in- sliding down woven lines when the chopper was within seventy feet of the ground.
So we didn’t need the planks, but I was inordinately pleased we’d been assigned such a craft. The chopper had to be massively expensive, which meant superiors would entrust the thing only to a first-rate pilot. Also, all the sensory systems suggested to me a level of electronic sophistication that would make certain the pilot was warned if someone opened fire on us with missiles or other guidance-system weaponry.
In other words, we wouldn’t be a fat target as we flew low over the jungle.
There was a reason I was concerned. I hate flying in choppers. I’m not a particularly emotional person, but my fear of them approaches phobia. Maybe it’s because they glide like a rock.
More likely, it’s because I was once in a chopper that was hit with light weapons fire and lost its transmission. The pilot had to put it into an autorotation to get the ship down. It was one of the most sickening, helpless feelings I’ve ever experienced.
I much prefer boats.
As we walked toward the chopper, I told Lieutenant Martinez, “I’m impressed by your equipment. A covert Little Bird. I’ve never flown in one.”
Martinez’s voice had more than a touch of envy when he answered. “Me neither. That one’s assigned to your SEALs. They won’t let us touch it. We’re going to be transported in that piece of shit.”
He gestured toward a hangar. His men were just sliding back the big double doors.
Inside, was an old Bell UH-type Iroquois-“H” as in a Huey slick. It was painted desert yellow-an unlikely color for a country dense with rain forest. Even the main rotor was bright yellow-an old chopper pilot trick so that fighter aircraft overhead wouldn’t accidentally drop a bomb on you.
I walked into the hangar to take a closer look. The place smelled of dust, diesel fuel, and paint. The chopper’s large cargo doors were open, showing khaki bench seats inside and a single M-60 machine gun fixed in its harness on the starboard side.
I walked to the front of the craft and touched my hand to the landing light, knelt, and read the black and gold crest above it:
BUSHRANGER.
I turned and looked at Martinez. “Jesus Christ! This is an old Australian Huey. It’s got to be thirty, forty years old.” I reached for the satellite phone in my pocket-Harrington could certainly find us something safer than this.
The young commando was nodding, not pleased. “I know, I know. Let’s hope we can get the damn thing started this time.”
Above, through the Huey’s open cargo door, the sky was a current of stars. Beneath us was an ocean of blue mist afloat upon canyons of shadow.
We were flying over jungle, the top strata of forest canopy awash in moonlight. The moon was at eye level, through the starboard door. It was huge, pocked by geologic cataclysm, white as winter ice. As we traveled at close to 130 miles an hour, there was the illusion that the moon was sailing along with us, gliding over the rain forest in pursuit, ghostly in its silence.
We had to stop and refuel at a military base near some large city in the mountains-I guessed it to be Bogota. As the aircraft banked away, nose down, and gathered speed in the darkness, flying south, I watched the lights of the city fade, then disappear. After that, there were only small pockets of light: jungle villages, fires burning, the night strongholds of rural people linked by darkness, aglow like incremental pearls, bright and solitary from half a mile high.
In the air a second time, I began to relax a little. Yes, I hated flying in helicopters, but the fact that we had now lifted off safely twice had increased my level of confidence.
Even Lieutenant Martinez seemed to noticed the difference. He slapped me on the shoulder and smiled, “You are not so sick-looking this time, Commander. Not so pale!”
I doubted if he was serious about my coloring-the cabin’s interior was lighted with two overhead red bulbs. Very dim. The human eye contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. Rods do not respond to red light, thus red lights do not alter our night vision.
I didn’t doubt, however, that he and his crew perceived that I was a lot happier on the ground than off. Now, though, in the rare moments I wasn’t worrying about Amelia and what Kazan’s people might be doing to her, I could actually look out onto the jungle and take some small pleasure in the vastness of it, the pure wilderness that it implied.
I knew that we had crossed into the rim of rain forest and rivers that is the beginning of the Amazon Valley, one of the earth’s last remaining wild regions. Below, there were many hundreds-perhaps thousands-of plants, insects, and even fish that had yet to be discovered or described scientifically. People, too-there were still dozens of isolated tribes that had had little or no contact with the outside world.
The thought of doing fieldwork here, of doing a fish count and finding a new species, made me long for my little lab back on Sanibel. I wanted to be back there. I wanted Amelia with me. I liked the image that played in my head: The two of us alone-her doing her work, me doing mine-joined by our proximity, but more than that, too. I liked the idea of the two of us creating our own isolated tribe and reducing our contact with the outside world. Maybe for a couple of months. Maybe a couple of years-or more.