Nelson Demille: Rendezvous

Dawson was visibly shaken for the first time since I’d known him. He kept saying, “Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

I said, “Quiet.”

He sank cross-legged on the ground, then began rocking back and forth, mumbling something.

I said softly, “Get it together, Sergeant. Get it together now.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, then suddenly he brightened and said, “We got her. I know we got her. I saw her fall. We wasted that bitch.”

I didn’t think so, but it was a nice thought.

I said, “Get up.”

He stood.

“Follow me.”

I led us a hundred meters away, found another thicket of brush and said, “We stay here until midnight, then we move toward our rendezvous. Understand?”

He nodded.

We sat very still until dark, then drank some water and ate a few cookies from home that we’d found on Landon’s body.

Sergeant Dawson had gotten himself under control and to make up for the lapse of cool, he said, “Let’s go out and get her. You got the starlight scope. She don’t have a nightscope. Right? We can see in the dark, she can’t.”

I listened, as though I was considering this insanity, then I replied thoughtfully, “I think our best course of action is to stay put for now. I think I can find Alpha from here even in the dark. If we go out after her, we’ll get disoriented and miss our rendezvous. What do you think?”

He pretended to think about this, then nodded. “Yeah. We need to get back and report what happened. They need to get some antisnipers on this bitch.”

“Right. Let the pros handle it.”

“Yeah…”

“We can go along and give them some tips.”

He didn’t reply for a while, then said quietly, “We’re not going to make it, Lieutenant. You understand? She’s too good. She’s not gonna let us make it.”

I stayed silent for a while, then gave him some good news and some bad news that I knew I’d be sharing with him eventually. I said, “One of us is going to make it. She wants one of us, the patrol leader, me, or the patrol sergeant, you, to go back and tell them about her. Otherwise, all her fucking bullshit was for nothing. She could have wasted all of us at any point since day one, but she didn’t. She made us piss our pants, tighten our assholes, sweat cold and run hot. She risked her own life to wow the shit out of us, and she didn’t do that for a totally dead audience. One of us-you or me-is going to get on that chopper at dawn. And if it’s you, I want you to report very accurately and very professionally what happened here. And you make sure you make the dead look good and bring honor on them. Then you-or me-volunteers to come back here and settle the score. Understand?”

He didn’t reply for a long time, then said, “I understand.”

“Good.” I put out my hand, and we shook.

We moved through the night, and I navigated as best I could, using my compass and keeping track of our paces.

An hour before dawn, the land sloped steeply downward, and I knew we were in the vicinity of Rendezvous Alpha, which was a bowl-shaped depression about a kilometer across, thick with elephant grass.

We had less than twenty minutes to get to the approximate center of this place, and it should be easy, if we just kept going downhill until we started going uphill. Very simple, said Royal Duck. How can you miss the bottom of a bowl, even in the dark?

I looked at the luminescent glow of my watch. It was a few minutes to 0600 hours, and I didn’t hear a chopper, and I didn’t know if I was at the very bottom of this depression.

Normally, it wouldn’t matter if we were even a hundred meters off because we could use a signaling mirror, or pop a smoke canister as a last resort. But the geniuses who picked this place hadn’t taken into account the morning ground mist that had settled in the depression. The good news was that the lady with the gun, if she was anywhere on the rim of this depression, couldn’t see us. We might both make it out.

Somewhere above the mist, the sun was rising and from the air, the terrain would be light enough for the choppers to find this bowl of pea soup.

Dawson and I decided we’d gotten to a place where the terrain was rising on all sides, so we stopped and listened for the beating chopper blades, which we hoped we could hear over our heavy breathing.

We waited. It was ten minutes after rendezvous time, but that wasn’t a worry. The chopper pilots were always wary about these pickups in the middle of nowhere, and they tended to dally and recon a lot. There would be two Hueys to pick up ten men, though there were only two of us, and there’d be two or more Cobra gunships flying cover. If they drew fire, they’d try to suppress the fire, and sometimes they’d come in under fire. But not always.

It was now fifteen minutes past rendezvous time, and Dawson said, “They’re not coming. They didn’t hear from us, so they’re not coming.”

I replied, “We’re here at the prearranged spot because they didn’t hear from us.”

“Yeah, but-”

“They’re not going to leave us.”

“Yeah, I know … but … maybe we’re in the wrong place.”

“I can read a fucking map.”

“Yeah? Let me see the map.”

I gave him the map, and he looked at it intently. Sergeant Dawson had a lot of good skills, but land navigation was not one of them.

He said, “Maybe we should go on to Bravo.”

“Why?”

“Maybe the choppers saw gooks on the ground.”

“Unless they’re getting shot at, they’re coming in. Take it easy.”

We waited. Dawson asked, “You think she’s out there?”

“We’ll find out.”

We waited and we listened. At 0630 hours, we heard the distinct beating of helicopter blades against the cool morning air. We looked at each other, and for the first time in a long time, we managed a smile.

We could hear the choppers get closer, and I knew the pilots were worried about putting down in a mist-shrouded area where they couldn’t see the ground. But they’d been briefed that it was elephant grass, easy landing, and the downdraft would clear the mist for them. Still, we had no radio contact so they wouldn’t know who was waiting for them on the ground. I thought about popping a green smoke canister, which meant all clear, or a yellow that meant caution. That would tell them we were waiting, although it would also announce our presence to people who didn’t need to know we were there.

Dawson said, “I’m gonna pop smoke. Pick a flavor.”

“Wait. They need to get closer. They don’t want more than three minutes between smoke and pickup, or they get pissed off and go home.”

I listened to the approaching choppers, counted to sixty, then popped a yellow smoke canister. The billowy plume sat on the ground in the damp, windless air, then began to rise into the mist. At some point, it must have broken through the top of the gray fog because very quickly the sound of the choppers got very loud. A few seconds later, I could see a huge shadow overhead, and the mist started swirling like a tornado was coming through.

The first chopper was twenty meters away looking very ghostly in the gray mist as it settled toward the earth. The second was about twenty meters farther.

Dawson and I sprinted toward the first chopper, making hand signals toward the crew to make them understand there were only two of us, and waving the other chopper off. Someone understood because the second chopper lifted off before we reached the closest one. Our chopper hovered five feet off the ground, and I slapped Dawson’s ass indicating he was first. He reached up and grabbed the hand of the crew chief. His feet found the chopper skid, and he was in the cabin in about two seconds. I was right behind him, and I think I actually high-jumped into the cabin, calling out above the noise of the blades and engine, “Only two! Eight dead! Go! Go!”