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Dumond finally came back on. “If he turns pretty much right now, he might make it. But it’s going to be tight. We go from having a forty-minute cushion to more like a three-minute cushion.”
“Mitch,” Mason said over his headset, “keep in mind that if I take that detour, I won’t have enough fuel to get back to base.”
“Then you’ll have to do a little walking.”
“Have I mentioned my ditching fee?”
Rapp picked up the laptop and held it out to Bazzi. “This is your op now, Captain. Do you understand your responsibilities?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re certain? Because if you don’t, you better hope I never make it back.”
The young Saudi officer nodded convincingly. “Wasem was an arrogant fool. Your strategy is the only logical one.”
Rapp leaned back in his seat again, more or less satisfied. The kid was a little green but he wasn’t stupid. And he seemed anxious to stay inside the chopper.
“What’s the story?” Mason said over Rapp’s headset. “You getting out or not?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“You charge extra.”
“Goes without saying. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What is?”
“I can land this bird, but with the wind I can’t guarantee that I’ll ever be able to get her back up again.”
“Do we have rappelling gear?”
“That’s a negative.”
“So I’m jumping?”
“Yeah.”
“How far?”
“Well, the way—”
“How far, Fred?”
“I can probably get you to within thirty feet. You know. Roughly.”
Rapp unstrapped from his seat and moved to the chopper’s open door. Dangling his legs out the side, he squinted at the desert floor flashing by. The temperature was hovering at just over a hundred, and he could feel the sun burning into the thin fabric covering his legs. There was a one-liter water bottle strapped to the side of the seat next to him and he started chugging it.
This part of the operation had always been a long shot. The hope was that he could get to the abandoned oil facility in time to neutralize ISIS’s command structure before the Saudi aircraft attacked. It would significantly reduce the chances of a detonation, but it wasn’t as simple as taking out a couple of guys driving through the open desert. The facility was immense, complicated, and hiding a force of unknown strength. Now he was going to have to cover a lot of ground on foot with no practical way to carry water and armed only with a Glock that might or might not shoot straight.
Fred Mason’s voice came over the comm as they slowed to an unsteady hover above the southern face of a massive dune. “This is about the best I can do, Mitch.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What are you complaining about? I don’t see any rocks.”
Rapp removed his headset and put his feet onto the skids, leaning out over the desert. A gust caused the helicopter’s nose to dip and he let go, falling for what felt like way too long before hitting the sand and plummeting down the slope. He didn’t fight it, staying relaxed and letting gravity do its work until he bogged down twenty feet from the bottom.
