Through the dust at the landing zone beyond the splintered palm tree, Quinn caught sight of Thibodaux loading his brother Marines into the Huey amid flashing lights and rotor wash. Two Apache gunships circled overhead, patrolling for any bad guys who might want to crash the evacuation party. Thankfully, their engine noise drowned out most of Fargo’s tirade.
As two Navy corpsmen took custody of Diaz’s stretcher, the corporal pushed himself up on one elbow. Quinn watched as he tugged on Thibodaux’s arm, then pointed back across the street, directly at him.
“… putting you on report, mister!” Fargo’s threats jerked Quinn’s attention back. “Captain, are you hearing me?”
Quinn decided he’d had a gut full. “I am, sir, loud and clear. Your wife’s sister is the President’s dishwasher’s nephew’s nanny, and you plan to use these connections to get me kicked out of the Air Force.”
Fargo snorted. “Laugh it up now, bucko. You think you’re some kind of hero, but that kid got his foot blown off because of your stupidity. The Marines will want your hide- if, and that’s a big if, bucko-there’s anything left after I’m through with you. I had tactical command on this operation and you disobeyed my direct order. You are done!” Fargo started to poke him in the chest with a finger, but luckily for both of them, had enough brains to decide against it at the last moment.
Quinn turned away, shrugging off the encounter before he did something that would really get him in trouble. It was impossible to take seriously anyone who used bucko twice in the same breath.
As Fargo stomped off, Gunny Thibodaux rattled Quinn’s fillings with a smack between the shoulder blades. The two men stood together, shielding their faces from flying sand as the Huey spooled up and leapt into the black night. It disappeared quickly, flying lights-out to confuse RPG shooters among the rooftops and mosques.
“Chin up, Captain.” Thibodaux grinned. It was no small thing that he’d elected not to call Quinn “Chair Force.” “Forget about that sand-crab son of a bitch. We saved two American lives today. That’s gotta count for somethin’. How you gettin’ back to your base?”
Quinn nodded toward the wispy boughs of a haggard tamarisk bush across the street. “My bike’s stashed over there where you snuck up on me. It’s a piece of crap, but I’ll ride it back. I think more clearly when I’m in the wind.” He glanced up at the giant Marine. “How’s Diaz?”
“He’ll make it.”
“And his foot?”
“The foot’s DRT, beb.” Thibodaux gave a somber grin. “That dumb-ass Puerto Rican, he’s worried ’bout you. He asked me to pass you a message.”
“Yeah?”
“Hell yes, he did.” Thibodaux shook his head in disbelief. “‘Gunny,’ he says to me, ‘you tell Chair Force not to worry none. I’d give my left nut to save another Marine. A foot-well, that ain’t nothin’.”
CHAPTER 5
Paris
By the time Ian Grant cleared security and reached his gate an hour later, his neck was incredibly stiff. He shrugged off the pain as a side effect to the collision with the big Algerian and made a mental note to go see a chiropractor once he made it home to Iowa City.
Northwest Flight 2 began to board forty-five minutes later, just before 10:00 P.M.
Ian’s seat was 61E, near the back, so he was called early in the process. His passport was checked for the sixth time by a sneering gate attendant who seemed eager to add one last layer of bureaucracy before his victims got out of France.
Finally on board, Ian found the loud behavior of the American crew disconcerting after so many months among the quieter people of West Africa. A smiling flight attendant with blond hair piled high and a gold tag that said her name was Samantha, helped him find his seat-which happened to be crammed between two gray-haired women from New Jersey.
“Are you all right, young man?” the woman on the aisle said, as she gathered up her knitting to let Ian slip into his seat. “You look green at the gills.” The lines on her smiling face said sixty was a distant memory.
“I’m fine,” Ian lied through a halfhearted smile. He kept his neck locked in place as he lowered himself into his seat.
The old woman reminded him of his Aunt Ellen back in Iowa City. If the resemblance went any further than physical this was going to be a long eight hours to New York.
Aunt Ellen leaned forward to talk to her traveling companion, who turned out to be her sister, Theresa. “He look a little peaked to you?”
Theresa lowered her paperback bodice-ripper and put the back of a veiny hand on Ian’s forehead. “Feverish, indeed.” She peered across gold-rimmed granny glasses that were chained to her neck. “I trust you’re not contagious.” She looked and sounded very much like Ian’s seventh-grade English teacher. A more humorless woman, he’d never met.
He tried to shake his head, but had to make do with shifting his eyes. He was beginning to worry that he’d broken something. “Touch of malaria.” He swallowed. Razor blades suddenly appeared in the back of his throat.
“Malaria’s not catchy,” Aunt Ellen said, settling back in with her knitting for a moment, and then suddenly leaned to look across Ian. “It’s not, is it, Theresa?”
“Not unless we happen to share mosquitoes,” Theresa mumbled, engrossed again in her pulp romance. “But he’ll likely get sweat all over us.”
Roughly three hours after Ian’s collision with the Algerian, Samantha and a flight attendant named Liz brought the beverage cart to a rattling stop beside row sixty-one.
Samantha leaned across Aunt Ellen to give Ian a napkin. “Can I offer you a turkey sandwich and something to drink?” She put a wrist to his forehead. “Are you okay? You look feverish.”
“Malaria.” Aunt Ellen looked up, a twist of sky-blue yarn wrapped around her boney index finger. “It’s not catchy.”
“Just water,” Ian croaked, surprised at how raspy his voice had become.
He sucked a piece of ice, hoping it would soothe his throat, but it only made the pain worse. He spit the cube back in his glass and sank against his seat, exhausted. His entire body was on fire.
Aunt Ellen raised an eyebrow and clucked like a mother hen. “You poor thing.” She dabbed at Ian’s forehead with her napkin, between bites of her turkey sandwich.
The boy in row sixty popped up and down like a redheaded Whac-A-Mole target, gawking at Ian and his two elderly seatmates. His name was Drew and he found it extremely entertaining to throw his pretzels one at a time, backward over the seat while his mother was in the restroom.
Theresa scolded the boy, going so far as to smack him over the head with her paperback. Drew retaliated by tossing more pretzels, one of which landed in Ian’s water. Theresa fished it out with a wink and threw it back at the boy. The boy poked his freckled face above the headrest with the soggy pretzel between his teeth. He swallowed it with a devilish giggle just as his mother returned to her seat.
Fifteen minutes later, Theresa and Drew began to cough.
Two hours into the flight Ian awoke with his stomach on the verge of eruption. He had just enough time to grab an airsick bag from the seat pocket.
Theresa rolled her eyes behind her book. Aunt Ellen rubbed her belly. “I’ve always been a sympathetic vomiter.” She dropped her knitting on the floor and waddled up the aisle toward the restrooms.
Samantha Rogers heard the boy in 61E retch as if he was about to lose his entire stomach. Airline policy dictated she put on latex gloves immediately, but she usually just carried them until she checked out the situation. People upchucked all the time on these long flights, but they usually made it to the airsick bag or the restroom. She’d gotten a new manicure at the Hotel Meurice during her layover and wasn’t about to wreck her nails if she
