Primary Valor, Jack Mars [black female authors .txt] 📗

They dropped. Then everythingchanged. They were moving fast, the plane rattling, shaking. Luke couldn’t moveat all. There was sound everywhere, the sound of metal ripping metal. It wasLOUD, so LOUD he couldn’t hear the pilot screaming.

The girl squeezed his hand.

He turned to look but she wasn’tthere. Luke could not see. All around him was total darkness.

They dropped through… something. Theplane was falling apart. They were still moving. Luke was thrown forward. Itwas so violent, his face hit his knees.

Everything went black.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

10:40 p.m. Central Standard Time (11:40 p.m. EasternStandard Time)

Airbase Amistad

Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve

Honduras

“Lock those coordinates,” EdNewsam said.

He was standing inside acorrugated aluminum shack in what amounted to a fenced in, glorified clearingin the middle of a vast wilderness, ten clicks north of Nicaragua.

There was a man who sat insidethis shack, monitoring an array of electronic equipment while smokingcigarettes. He took the smokes back to back. He had a lit one in his hand rightnow, and there was a pile of dead ones in a tin tray at his elbow.

He had a pile of newspapers andmagazines at his other elbow. Forbes, Fortune, Kiplinger’s, The Wall StreetJournal. Apparently, he was managing his stock portfolio while listening tothe chatter from communists in Nicaragua and drug traffickers everywhere else.

The man said he worked for the “StateDepartment.” He said it just like that. He put little crow’s feet around thewords with his fingers. He wore civilian clothes. He had on a loose-fitting,button-down white shirt, a pair of khaki shorts, and sandals. His feet werebig, almost grotesquely so. He was a little overweight and wore glasses. Hisglasses kept fogging up. It was steamy around here.

The man hadn’t bothered tointroduce himself. Either that, or he had made a point of not doing it. It washard to say.

Until a moment ago, he had beenshowing them the radar position of a small jet plane that had left Darwin King’sisland. He had also been showing them the radar positions of fighter jetsconverging on the plane.

There appeared to have been anattack. Now the first plane was gone, off radar, and the fighter jets weremoving to the south at full speed.

“I need to get in there,” Ed said.

He looked back at Rachel andJacob. They said nothing. Ed already knew what they were thinking. There was anold Black Hawk helicopter outside. If it could still take off, they couldcertainly fly it.

“That’s a hairy place to get into,”the man said. “This whole area is hairy. Steep hills. Dense jungle. Illegallogging operations. You’ll find a bunch of clear cuts and burns out there. Youcan see them from the air. Insects… Jesus. They’re as big as your hand. Theworst bugs I’ve ever seen. They give me nightmares. Hostile locals. Cocainesmugglers. The national police. The military. It’s hard to say who the worst ofthe bunch are. Suffice to say, if you run into anyone out there, it’s someonebad.”

“Buddy,” Ed said. “Look at me asecond, will you?”

The guy had almost not evenglanced at Ed the entire time he’d been here. They had landed twenty-five minutesago, a mysterious beat up plane appearing out of nowhere, and Ed Newsam hadclimbed out of it, strapped with guns. The guy barely noticed. That’s how jadedhe was. He’d been out here too long.

Now he did look at Ed. His eyeswent from the top of Ed’s head, down to his feet, and back up again.

He nodded. “Okay. You’re as bad asthey are. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I am worse than they will everbe.”

The man shook his head. “Somehow Idoubt that.”

Ed gestured at the door. “I needthat chopper out there.”

The man shrugged. “If you can flyit, take it. It’s a piece of junk. And we’re in between pilots right now.”

“We’ll fly it,” Rachel said.

“Okay, but don’t hurt it. Junk ornot, I’m going to need a helicopter, if only to say I have one. There’s a lineof rain squalls coming across the country from the west. You should know that. Whenit rains here, it really rains, you know what I’m saying?”

“I need some men,” Ed said. He waspressed for time, and this guy was talking way too much. “Men who have donehelicopter drops into combat zones before.”

The man turned all the way aroundin his chair and faced Ed. Ed normally sensed the way he intimidated people,and sometimes he used that to his advantage. He didn’t intimidate this man atall.

“Absolutely not,” the man said.

“Our people were aboard thatairplane,” Ed said. “You’ve got soldiers out there. I need some.”

It was true. There were four guardtowers along the perimeter fencing. They were manned, two armed men to a tower.There was a cluster of Quonset huts set back from the runway, about a quartermile from here. There were almost certainly more soldiers, currently off duty,in there.

The man shook his head. “This is alistening station. It’s not a combat post. We don’t get attacked because theHondurans, and the Nicaraguans, know better than to attack the United States. Youknow what kind of soldiers I get here? Since the wars started in Iraq andAfghanistan, I get National Guardsmen. The guys I have now are from Vermont. They’rean armory unit from Burlington. They man an armory. In Vermont. Theyalso have a motor pool. None of them have seen combat, except one guy who is fortyand was in Desert Storm fifteen years ago. He has high cholesterol. It runs inhis family. He had a stent put in last August. Half of the kids don’t evenbelieve in war, they’re just in this for the college tuition.”

Ed stared at him.

“Their orders are to hold the linearound this patch of mud. Their orders don’t include jumping out of ahelicopter at the site of a plane crash on a wet hillside in a Central Americanjungle in the middle of the night, potentially under enemy fire. Sorry,Charlie. I’m a civilian and I don’t have the power to modify their orders. Frankly,even if I could, I wouldn’t be all that interested in putting them in harm’sway.”

He took a drag from his cigarette,then seemed to wave Ed, and Rachel, and Jacob, away. “But take the