Page 22 of Whisper

When they arrived, the team was loading the squat, fat helicopter that would take them over the Hindu Kush and into Afghanistan. The rotors spun as the soldiers stacked the gear waist-high along the center of the cargo area, strapping everything down in a hodgepodge game of Tetris. Mini mountains of equipment and rucks filled the cargo area, almost butting into the fold-down canvas seats along the bulkheads. Kris searched for his, trying to find the smallest rucksack in the pile of gear.

“Caldera.” Haddad’s deep voice called out to him, barely audible over the roar of the rotors. Haddad beckoned him from near the front of the helo. He had Kris’s ruck on the deck, next to his own.

Haddad’s medic pack made Kris’s ruck look miniscule.

Kris picked his way through as Palmer’s men and his CIA coworkers crammed themselves into too-small seats and shoved their legs around the cargo. There was just enough room for the gear and their bodies if they kept their knees up to their chests.

Around him, the helo rumbled, vibrating like it was trying to shake them all out. He imagined every screw turning loose and falling out, the helo coming apart into a billion pieces on the tarmac and leaving them standing in the center of the rubble. The engines roared, the rotors sounding like the uptown express in Manhattan was rumbling over his head, over and over again.

Haddad passed Kris a headset with padded earphones. He slid them on, careful of his spiked hair. The roar faded, the volume on the world turned down. Kris still felt the vibrations in his bones, felt his organs rumble and pulse, but at least he could hear himself think.

Haddad’s smooth voice came through the headset. “You’re going to want to put on that beanie I gave you. The rear ramp and side doors will be kept open so the door gunners can hold position throughout the entire flight. It’s going to be frigid.”

Kris tugged on Haddad’s beanie and zipped up his fleece. He had his thick outer jacket shoved in the top of his ruck, and he crouched down to grab it. As he did, the helo’s engines turned over, spinning up with a wail. He pitched sideways and then forward, the helicopter shuddering and shaking. He reached for what was closest to brace himself. Both his hands wrapped around Haddad’s thighs, his face mashed into Haddad’s hip.

“Sorry! Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Kris scrambled back, falling on his ass. He’d inadvertently hit on Haddad yesterday, and now this? He could practically feel George and Ryan’s scorn burning into his back, feel the weight of judgment crashing down on him. This wasn’t the time, or the place. He had assholes to prove wrong.

Gently, Haddad helped him up, holding his elbows until he was steady on his feet. Haddad grabbed the helo’s handholds and pulled Kris’s leather gloves and camo poncho liner, a silken, down-filled blanket that had felt like a slice of heaven when Kris had first handled it, out of his ruck. “Put on the gloves, too. And keep the liner near. You’ll probably want to wrap up in it.”

Kris nodded, looking away. Was bone-melting mortification going to be his default setting now, especially around Haddad? He was off to a great start.

He strapped himself into his seat, waiting stiffly as Haddad buckled in next to him. Haddad’s muscles, wrapped up in his own layers of fleece and heavy jacket, pushed against Kris, their bodies pressing together from shoulders to ankles. He tried to shift away as subtly as he could.

Through the headset, he heard Derek talk through their takeoff, their route through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, over the mountains and into Afghanistan. Derek spoke to Tashkent tower, CENTCOM, and CIA CTC directly, bouncing signals off satellites to reach three different places on earth simultaneously. The flight crew, bundled up in cold weather gear, took up positions at the massive machine guns mounted at the side doors and rear ramps as the helo lifted off.

Their mission had officially begun. They were on their way to Afghanistan.

They banked hard and turned south east, flying low and fast toward the border. Tashkent disappeared, turning to sprawling farmland worked over by stooped men with wooden hand tools and mules. They were flying through time, it seemed, gazing down at centuries past. Dirt roads cut between the farms, snaking through untouched steppe and rugged wilderness.

Kris pressed against his seat, pushed back by the force of Derek’s acceleration. Rays of bitter sunlight spilled into the cabin, slipping through the freezing air. He squinted, fumbling for his sunglasses. Haddad, of course, already had his on.

Grassland and steppe faded, replaced by dust and scrub highland. Dirt roads vanished, turning to trails, then rutted tracks only camels could traverse. Part of Kris wanted to lean out and take it all in. These were ancient roads, caravan tracks used by Silk Road travelers, and before that, the first humans to cross the Asian continent. He wanted to revel in it, in history and sights no one had been able to see for years.

But he was too damn cold.

Ten minutes into the flight, he was a Popsicle. He shivered, huddling into his jacket as the temperature kept dropping. He burrowed under the poncho liner and tried to pull his beanie down farther. Tried to tuck his face into his scarf, the top of his jacket. The rest of the team was bundled up as well, but they all had at least a hundred pounds on him to begin with. He was the runt.

As if to spite him, Derek pushed the chopper faster, dropping altitude until they were running full speed down the length of a twisting wadi. There was nothing beneath them, no signs of life. The earth looked like the moon, like the oceans had been drained and they were the last humans on the planet at the end of the world. Ahead, the mountains on the border of Afghanistan soared, scraping the sky with peaks of snow and ice.

He left his stomach behind as the helo rose, a dramatic ascent that pitched them nearly vertical. He was strapped in, but still, he flailed. Haddad reached for him, wrapped his poncho liner tighter around him. The mountains seemed to encircle them, getting closer, closer, until Kris was certain they were going to crash. He flinched, screwing his eyes shut.

Haddad’s hand landed on his thigh and squeezed once.

Kris heard Derek calling out altitude readings. He’d never heard Derek’s voice go that high, that strained. Back at Langley, Derek had walked them through the ball-shriveling terror that was flying over the Hindu Kush. Few Soviets had ever done it and lived. No Americans had ever made the flight. The mathematics and physics alone almost suggested it was next to impossible.

Most helo pilots thought they were hot shit if they flew up to ten thousand feet in altitude. The Hindu Kushstartedat ten thousand feet, and then went straight vertical, as if they held up the sky, poked through the atmosphere and jabbed at the stars.

When he opened his eyes, they had leveled off and were flying between two massive walls of snow-and-ice-coated stone. At fourteen thousand feet, Haddad signaled the team, and everyone reached for the oxygen masks above their heads. Haddad pulled Kris’s down and showed him how to hold it over his face. Cold oxygen flowed, frigid, but welcome. His head, which had started to ache, cleared.

Derek threaded the mountain passes, their rotors buzzing snow flurries off the sides of peaks, close enough that their revolutions whistled against the rock face. He could reach out and brush the mountain, if he wanted, the soaring, jagged peaks of untouched ice. Sunlight pierced the sky, falling through the mountains like samurai swords, like blades from a vengeful god. They and their helo were tiny, insignificant, and as far from humanity, from life as he knew it, as he’d ever been. Were there any humans on the planet more remote than them? If someone had told Kris they were actually on the moon, he would have believed them.

Did time still exist? Kris could hear his own heartbeat, the hiss of the oxygen, and the rumble of the rotors, but other than that, it was like being dropped into someone else’s memory. Each blink lasted a lifetime, the world a smear that passed before his eyes.

Derek continued to call out elevation markers. Sixteen thousand feet. Sixteen-five.

He couldn’t stop shivering. Haddad’s hand on his thigh was the one warm point of contact in his whole body. He wasn’t going to make it to Afghanistan. He was just going to freeze on this flight.

Haddad felt his shivers, he was certain. At 17,200 feet, Haddad pulled out his own poncho liner and a second jacket from his ruck and laid them both on top of Kris. Kris hid his face in his fleece and burrowed into Haddad. Fuck his pride. He needed the warmth.