CHAPTER 63
Madaket, Nantucket
During the ten-minute drive south toward the beach, I dialed Tristan on the mobile and told him we needed immediate extraction. Then I told him where we’d be waiting. This was going to be a shit show of an operation, but surprise was on our side.
I coasted to a stop along the road about fifty yards from the sand. Oliver walked up to my window for last-minute instructions. Not that he needed them. He knew what must be done way before I began to dream up this plan.
“Good call on everything, Nat. But one thing: I sure the fuck am not doing that human-lighthouse thing. That ship sailed a long time ago.”
I couldn’t disagree.
“Si,” we both said at the same time. And then, “Jinx.”
It was an unenviable job, but tough shit, someone had to do it.
After we cleared the immediate landing zone of any bad guys, whoever had drawn the short straw would wait on the beach with a flashlight until we heard the rotors of the approaching helicopters.
Then that unlucky bastard would turn on his flashlight and wave it in a circle over his head until the birds landed, all while being sandblasted with millions of sharp grains of sand.
My phone buzzed. After the proper authentication, the voice on the other end confirmed our location as best we could identify it.
As he ran down the details of the sophisticated LZ marking plan, he told me About twenty minutes from the west, which in my mind meant the exfil was coming from Long Island or Connecticut.
I assumed it would be flown by Team Falcon, but now that we’d launched Rocket’s Red Glare, it was anybody’s guess.
I could be on my deathbed and still recognize the approach of a Chinook. The lumbering, tandem-rotor helicopter was unmistakable both in sight and sound. Even in limited visibility, even blindfolded, anyone from the special-operations community could differentiate it from any other aircraft.
All kinds of helicopters are available on the commercial market, but the Chinook was reserved for military use. The fact that one was about to pick us up from a preppy island in the North Atlantic was a fact for Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
How had Tristan managed to get his hands on the fucking thing?
I could make out Oliver’s silhouette, and he turned toward me in a way that made me certain he was having the same realization about the Chinook. Welcome to Rocket’s Red Glare.
Two additional Little Birds, similar to the ones we’d used in the search for Senator Harrison, were escorting the behemoth toward our location. Poor Si was about to get a baptism by sand that he’d never forget.
The rest of Team Rhino were positioned next to my truck, kneeling in a line, left hand holding the left shoulder of the person in front of them. I watched the Little Birds break formation while the Chinook flared, did a one-eighty, and hovered about twenty feet above the sand.
The pilot skillfully eased the bird down to the makeshift landing zone.
I waited until the rear wheels of the aircraft settled on the soft sand before I started our movement toward the ramp and into the belly of the beast.
I did a quick head count—Team Rhino including Si, plus Rowan and Elise Courville—then tapped my head and gave the crew chief a thumbs-up. He confirmed my hand signal with a nod and a thumbs-up of his own as the MH-47 lifted off to the west just as quickly as it had arrived.
The feeling of leaving a battlefield is almost impossible to describe.
Relief is an understatement. At least for me, it was as if every sense and emotion vacated my body at the same time, ninety mph to zero in seconds.
Fear, lifted. Adrenaline, faded. Cottonmouth, gone.
The last forty-eight hours had been a bear, and I was feeling certain that this would be our tempo for the foreseeable future.
The rhythm of the aircraft flying west over the ocean was almost enough to put me fast asleep. Fighting the urge, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, only to notice that everyone else had already conked out on the hard floor of the Chinook.
Everyone, that is, except Rowan.
As much as I wanted to talk to her, conversation was impossible inside the noisy helicopter. I welled up with empathy as she sat expressionless. She looked to be in a state of near-shock. I’d seen those thousand-yard stares too many times on too many people, and it never got any easier.
I couldn’t read her thoughts, and I didn’t know her well enough to guess, but experience told me she was probably feeling incredibly sad and scared. And survivor’s guilt must be close to the top of the shitty list of trauma reactions.
Her principal had died on her watch.
The gods of the Secret Service were about to decide Rowan Anderson’s fate.