Taylor asked, “Are you prepared for… the unknowns of this extraction?”
Brodie assured her, “I’m always ready for anything, but prepared for nothing.”
“That should be your personal motto.”
“It is.”
Mercer said, “It would be ironic if you got this far and were killed by friendly fire.”
Brodie suggested, “Shut up.”
“Untie me. Let me run. I’d rather die in the jungle than be killed here.”
Neither Brodie nor Taylor responded.
Mercer said, “If I’m not with you, you have a much better chance of getting on that aircraft and getting out of here.”
“Kyle,” said Brodie, “you’re getting yourself worked up. And you may have been in the same state of mind when you thought Colonel Worleywas going to drop-kick you out of that helicopter. You don’t even know if he was on that helicopter. The real irony is that you ran from something that you imagined, and ran into the hands of something real—the Taliban. And now you think history is going to repeat itself—but it’s a false history.”
“If I believed that, I would have killed myself in the Taliban camp. It was the thought of killing Worley that kept me alive.”
“Right. When you’re in Leavenworth, try God. Or maybe yoga.”
“Untie me.”
“I will. As soon as I get a pair of handcuffs.”
Taylor leaned toward Brodie and whispered, “You don’t believe his story?”
Brodie actually did, but he was not above tormenting a difficult prisoner, especially Kyle Mercer. He said to Taylor, “The only thing I care about now is that the boss has our backs.”
She nodded, but said, “Desperate men do desperate things.”
They waited in silence, sitting at the edge of the airstrip with the jungle at their backs. The only sound was the sat phone, whose beeping was getting on Brodie’s nerves. He said to Taylor, “If the phone dies, we go out to the middle of the airstrip, and if we see the Otter, we wave like hell.”
Taylor replied, “I’ll wave my bra and T-shirt. He’ll be on the ground in record time.”
Brodie smiled. She was feeling better.
They listened for the sound of an aircraft, but the only things in the air making any noise were the birds.
The sat phone rang, and Brodie answered.
A voice said, “Lucky Duck, this is Otter One.”
Brodie replied, “Lucky Duck here.”
“All right, sir, I am about two minutes from your location. I will be coming in from the south and my rollout will take me to the north end of the landing strip where I will turn and meet you. Confirm that and confirm number of passengers.”
Brodie looked at Mercer, who seemed resigned to his fate, or who was going to make a break at the last second. Or put his head in the propeller. Desperate men do desperate things.
“Sir?”
“Roger north end. Three passengers.” Brodie asked, “Who’s onboard?”
“A security detail.”
He glanced at Taylor. “Water?”
