Clear and Present Danger

For another hour they continued their futile search for Team BANNER, then they headed back to Panama. That flight took two hours and fifteen minutes, during which Clark didn't say word and Larson was afraid to. The pilot taxied the aircraft right into the hangar with the Pave Low, and the doors closed behind him. Ryan and Johns were waiting for them.

"Well?" Jack asked.

"We made contact with OMEN and FEATURE," Clark said. "Come on." He led them into an office with a table. There he spread out his map.

"What about the others?" Jack asked. Colonel Johns didn't have to. He already knew part of it from the look on Clark's face.

"OMEN will be right here tomorrow night. FEATURE will be here," Clark said, indicating two places marked on the map.

"Okay, we can handle that," Johns said.

"Goddammit!" Ryan growled. "What about the others?"

"We never made contact with BANNER. We watched the bad guys overrun KNIFE. Most of it," Clark corrected himself. "At least one man got away. I'm going in after him, on the ground." Clark turned to the pilot. "Larson, you'd better get a few hours. I need you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in six hours."

"What about the weather?" he asked PJ.

"That fucking storm's jinking around like a Weasel on a SAM hunt. Nobody knows where the hell it's going, but it ain't there yet, and I've flown in weather before," Colonel Johns replied.

"Okay." The pilot walked off. There were some cots set in the next room. He landed on one and was asleep in a minute.

"Going in on the ground?" Ryan asked.

"What do you expect me to do - leave them there? Ain't we done enough of that?" Clark looked away. His eyes were red, and only PJ knew that it wasn't from strain and lack of sleep. "Sorry, Jack. There's some of our people there. I have to try. They'd try for me. It's cool, man. I know how to do it."

"How?" PJ asked.

"Larson and I'll fly in around noon, get a car and drive down. I told Chavez - that's the kid I talked to - to get around them and head east, down the mountain. We'll try to pick them up, drive 'em to the airport, and just fly them out."

"Just like that?" Ryan asked incredulously.

"Sure. Why not?"

"There's a difference between being brave and being an idiot," Ryan said.

"Who gives a fuck about being brave? It's my job." Clark walked off to get some sleep.

"You know what you're really afraid of?" Johns said when he'd left. "You're afraid of remembering the times that you could have done it and didn't. I can give you a play-by-play of every failure I've had in twenty-some years." The colonel was wearing his blue shirt with command wings and all the ribbons. He had quite a few.

Jack's eyes fixed on one, pale blue with five white stars. "But you..."

"It's a nice thing to wear, and it's nice to have four-stars salute me first and treat me like I'm something special. But you know what matters? Those two guys I got out. One's a general now. The other one flies for Delta. They're both alive. They both have families. That's what matters, Mr. Ryan. The ones I didn't get out, they matter, too. Some of them are still there, because I wasn't good enough or fast enough or lucky enough. Or they weren't. Or something. I should have gotten them out. That's the job," Johns said quietly. "That's what I do."

We sent them in there , Jack told himself. My agency sent them in there. And some of them are dead now, and we let somebody tell us not to do anything about it. And I'm supposed to be ...

"Might be dangerous going in tonight."

"Possible. Looks that way."

"You have three minis aboard your chopper," Ryan said after a moment. "You only have two gunners."

"I couldn't whistle another one up this fast and -"

"I'm a pretty fair shot," Jack told him.

28. Accounting

CORTEZ SAT AT the table, doing his sums. The Americans had done marvelously well. Nearly two hundred Cartel men had gone up the mountain. Ninety-six had returned alive, sixteen of those wounded. They'd even brought a live American down with them. He was badly hurt, still bleeding from four wounds, and he hadn't been well handled by the Colombian gunmen. The man was young and brave, biting off his screams, shaking with the effort to control himself. Such a courageous young man, this Green Beret. Cortez would not insult his bravery with questions. Besides, he was incoherent, and Cortez had other things to do.