Mark Greaney: On target

The choppers were owned by the Colombian police but had been loaned, along with their crews, to the AUC, a semi-right-wing, semi-disbanded defense force that fought from time to time against the FARC and the ELN, Colombia's left-wing rebel groups. The Colombian police had thought the loan was to send this team of twenty commandos to a mountain region to combat the FARC, but in fact the AUC was working for hire over the border in the Amazon jungle.

The pilots would not report the misappropriation of resources; they were being well paid.

Each man in the unit wore green jungle fatigues and a bush hat. Each man had a big HK G3 battle rifle cradled in his arms, and each man had extra magazines for the rifles, grenades, a radio, and a machete strapped to his chest and belted to his waist.

The commander of the unit sat in the lead helicopter, screamed over the Pratt and Whitney turbo shaft engine to the nine soldiers seated with him. "One minute! If you see him, shoot him! If you shoot him, kill him! They don't need him alive!" and then he amended himself. "They don't want him alive!"

A chorus of "Si, comandante!" roared louder than the engine. He delivered the same order into his radio to the men in the second helicopter.

A moment later the helicopters split, the comandante's craft banked hard to the left, dipped its nose toward a small winding river that snaked to the south.

Court shot through the dappled morning light flickering through the canopy above him, certain in his stride. He continued on the jungle trail, his ears tuned to the sound of the rotors behind him. Soon the single beat of the choppers changed to two as the aircraft separated. One landed behind him, probably in the swampy clearing a hundred yards from the dive site. Gentry knew the men would sink knee-deep in the muck, and this would buy him a little time to get away. The other flew on past his position, off to his left, lower than the treetops; certainly it was skimming the river. It would be dropping off dismounts in a blocking maneuver along his path.

So much for the extra time…