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  The plane’s passengers comply. One by one they leap out of the

  gunship’s aft door. Their jump packs explode open, unleashing a sea of colorful inflated parachutes. As they descend, a quartet of Apache helicopters surrounds them. The attacking helicopters fire their weapons, piercing the escaping passengers’ parachutes. The evacuees begin hurtling down into the Paraguayan jungle. Through all this chaos Conrad communicates to the team via her radio earpiece.

  “Arrowhawk, Fighting Bull, and Morrison, I want you to cover our men.

  Blankenchip and I’ll take care of the attackers.”

  Fighting Bull disengages her parachute and streamlines her body to increase her speed of descent. She radios Arrowhawk.

  “John, I’m going to grab the men closest to me. Can you catch us?”

  “I’ll try,” Arrowhawk replies as he continues to tumble through the air at a dizzying speed.

  “Try hard,” Fighting Bull admonishes, “because here we come.” She rushes into the midst of three of the marines, grabbing two of them by their collars. The last one continues to descend faster than she can get to him. She pulls the two other marines close to her and taps a button on her belt buckle, which releases multiple thin titanium filaments that entangle the marines like a spider’s web. This particular device was an extra gift, courtesy of Winston Jordan. A small cord extends from 81

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  Fighting Bull’s belt to the entangled marines, allowing her to tow the men in with her as she descends.

  The last marine is even further away from her. She pulls a grappling gun from the side compartment of her belt and aims for his midsection.

  Her shot hits the mark; the grappling hook snags the marine by the top portion of his flak jacket. Fighting Bull attaches the handle of the gun to the left side of her belt, flips the retraction switch on the gun, and reels in the marine as they continue plummeting to the ground.

  Arrowhawk has the toughest task of all his teammates. He not

  only has to contend with the falling marines closest to him, but also the debris from the damaged gunship as it rains down on them. Pieces of the fuselage and rear rotors come close to slicing through the rest of the evacuees, but thankfully Arrowhawk is able to create a solid energy cocoon around this contingent. They tumble to the jungle floor, crashing into the foliage but protected by the cocoon. The marines are unharmed, and Arrowhawk takes a few seconds to gather his bearings.

  But no sooner does he get his feet under him than Fighting Bull radios him.

  “John.”

  “Yeah,” Arrowhawk responds.

  “Look up.”

  As soon as he raises his head he sees Fighting Bull and the three entangled marines tearing through the sky towards him. He has maybe ten seconds before the quartet will hit the ground. He immediately expands the energy cocoon outward for Fighting Bull and her rescued marines to land safely in. The impact of their landing is a strain on Arrowhawk, but he’s able to sustain the integrity of his energy cocoon.

  As he gently lowers the cocoon with Fighting Bull and her men in it, Morrison disengages his parachute straps and alters his molecular 82

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  density to iron. He then uses the parachute as a makeshift net to gather in three falling marines. As they continue falling a piece of the gunship’s wing rotor slices through the parachute. Morrison grasps the remaining pieces of the parachute and wraps them tightly around two of the marines. He then alters his molecular density to liquid metal and stretches his hand to grab the last marine. Morrison radios Arrowhawk.

  “Can you grab us too?”

  “I guess I can do the impossible twice.”

  The strain on Arrowhawk’s system is almost unbearable, but he

  nonetheless grits his teeth and does what he’s asked. He expands the energy field outward in a concave fashion to provide added cushion for their fall. Morrison and the rest of the marines land safely in Arrowhawk’s energy field.

  While all this is happening on the ground, there is another conflict playing out in the air. Conrad and Blankenchip trade gunfire with the helicopters.

  Conrad—with Vásquez strapped in front of her—fires her pistol

  repeatedly at the lead helicopter. With her parachute still unopened, she manages to clip the sides of the attacking aircraft. The attackers continue shooting at them with their on-board machine guns. Many of the bullets miss their targets, but some are able to find them.

  “AAGCK!” Conrad winces at the sharp pain in her right shoulder.

  “You’re hit?!” Vásquez says.

  “I’m all right,” Conrad responds. “They got me in my body armor.

  On my word I want you to yank the parachute cords as hard as you can.”

  “A-all right,” Vásquez replies.

  The Apache helicopter moves in, its propeller blades hovering ever so close to them.

  “Now!” Conrad shouts.

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  Vásquez pulls the cords and the parachute explodes out of the jump pack. The pair is forcefully thrust upward as the parachute inflates, positioning them right above the pursuing helicopter. Conrad then shoots out the rear rotor of the pursuing helicopter. The pilot loses navigational control, and the helicopter begins spiraling down to the jungle floor.

  The helicopter to her left fires more rounds in their direction; bullets whiz past her ears. She immediately trains her pistol on the helicopter and fires two bullets into the cockpit, both of which crash through the windshield and hit their target, wounding the pilot in the shoulder. The pilot hits the eject button as his helicopter starts losing altitude, just narrowly avoiding the ensuing crash.

  “You OK, Mr. Vásquez?” Conrad asks.

  Vásquez can barely comport himself. But somehow he finds the

  words to answer. “I guess so.”

  “Bet you never expected so much excitement on a simple

  humanitarian aid mission.”

  “No.”

  The remaining two helicopters fire on Blankenchip relentlessly. Most of the bullets deflect off of his exoskeletal armor. He fires two rounds from his assault rifle at the gas tank of the helicopter to his right. Aiming his weapon is essentially child’s play for Blankenchip, thanks in part to the integrated targeting system built into his helmet. So even though he is twisting and turning through the air at a dizzying speed, he has no trouble hitting his target with the highest level of accuracy.

  He follows the salvo of bullets with a flare burst released from his right forearm gauntlet. The flare ignites the leaking gas, causing the helicopter to explode. Fortunately for the pilot and the gunner, they bail out before the explosion.

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  A schematic of the last helicopter’s weak points pops up on

  Blankenchip’s heads-up display. The targeting system selects the structural points that will disable the helicopter most effectively. The chopper blades are the broadest and easiest ones for Blankenchip. He fires a round at one of the blades. Immediately the helicopter starts spinning out of control and plunges to the ground. With all of the resistance eliminated, Blankenchip deploys his parachute and has no problem the rest of the way down.

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  Chapter Fifteen

  The Real Truth

  Two hours later

  Paraguayan Jungle

  The UN contingent sustains minimal injuries considering that they had a mid-air firefight with multiple Apache helicopters. The UN marines and Vigil do their best to gather and interrogate their prisoners. None of them carry standard identification and they are wearing nondescript army fatigues, making it difficult to identify them. Conrad gets a status report from one of the marines.

  “There were no sustained casualties, and about seven wounded or injured. The medics are taking care of them now. We’ve captured about ten of the combatants. All of the others were either killed, ran off or weren’t within our perimeter locus, ma’am.”

&nbs
p; “Good, keep me up to speed on any new developments.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Conrad walks toward Blankenchip, who’s trying his best to

  interrogate one of the opposition force’s squad leaders, but there’s an obvious language barrier.

  “How’s it going, Aaron?” she asks.

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  Blankenchip turns to her. “This is making my ass tired. The guy knows no English and the extent of my Spanish is ‘ como estas’ and ‘ muy caliente. ’ You handle it.”

  “Don’t you have a translator program built into that thing?” Conrad asks, tapping Blankenchip’s armor.

  “No, Rosetta Stone wasn’t part of the upgrade package.” He strokes the chest plate of his armor. “This thing was built for fighting, not a foreign relations summit.”

  Conrad smiles. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Blankenchip steps back to give her room. She kneels down to eye level with the captive.

  Although her Spanish is a bit rusty, she can still manage decent conversation; well, enough to get what she wants. “Who are you?” she asks.

  “My name is Antonio Guillermo Esposito. I am a second lieutenant in the counter-narcotics division of the Paraguayan Naval Marines.”

  He unbuttons his shirt collar to produce an I.D. tag tucked

  underneath his Kevlar vest to verify his identity.

  After looking at it, she asks, “Why did you attack us?”

  “We gathered intelligence from one of our sources that there would be a shipment of powder cocaine smuggled through Cuidad Del Este by way of military convoy.”

  “Your intelligence was wrong,” Conrad protests adamantly.

  “Impossible! Our source came directly from within the US

  government.”

  “That makes no sense. We are from the US government. This

  humanitarian aid mission was cleared through the Paraguayan

  authorities—”

  Esposito interrupts her in mid-sentence. “Who is your envoy?”

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  “Emmanuel Vásquez, why?”

  Esposito lets out a boisterous laugh. “You have been severely

  misinformed. Emmanuel Vásquez is the head of one of the largest drug trafficking cartels in Paraguay. He is probably on his way to meet a buyer right now.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “There’s been an ongoing internal investigation of corrupt

  government officials for the past year and Vásquez has long been suspected of being a high-level drug lord. We’ve been monitoring him for over a year.”

  “No,” Conrad responds in disbelief.

  “Yes,” Esposito says bluntly. “He’s been trading drugs for weapons with groups such as Hezbollah and the FARC.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Esposito leans in closer to her. “Let me ask you this: have you actually seen what is inside those crates you are escorting?”

  Confused and upset, she leaves Esposito. Conrad runs to the remains of the gunship, which is still smoldering from the missile attack. She enters the cargo area, pulls out the Beretta from her flak jacket and shoots the locks off of one of the damaged crates. Upon lifting the lid, she sees standard UN dehydrated food rations on the surface. Digging deeper through the top layer, she finds large quantities of packaged powder cocaine. She slits a bag open with her Swiss army knife, and dips her small finger in to taste the powder. It’s exactly as Esposito stated.

  Looking at the amount of crates, she does the rough math in her head and estimates the amount of cocaine.

  Conrad walks out of the cargo bay and heads towards the makeshift camp. Vásquez is sitting around a campfire with some of the marines and members of the team, drinking coffee and telling jokes.

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  “Would you like to explain this?” Conrad asks angrily.

  She throws a bag of the powdered cocaine at Vásquez’s feet. He picks up the bag and looks at it intently. His realization of the inevitable starts to sink in.

  “Can you explain how an aid mission got turned into a drug-running operation?!” Conrad grabs him up by his shirt collar and slams him into the side of the tree he was sitting under. Those gathered around are shocked at what they hear.

  “I want answers, Vásquez,” she says, her grip tightening around his neck. “Who are you? What’s going on? And why were we carrying over 10,000 kilos of powder cocaine on our plane?!”

  Vásquez knows full well that he has no other recourse but to give Conrad what she wants: the truth. Without any hint of hesitation, he responds. “I had hoped that it wouldn’t have come down to this. Captain, your mission, your team, your whole entire purpose is a lie!”

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  Document Outline

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