Free The Devil's Waters by David L. Robbins Page B

Mouse, the smallest PJ in the unit, who claimed that back home he had an Oakland Raiders cheerleader for a girlfriend. After four years of playing, Mouse could not say the last time he’d beaten LB.
    “Dude,” Mouse called after him. “You quit, I win.”
    “I don’t quit. We start over later. There’s a mission.”
    Mouse clapped down his paddle.
    Everyone around the big table and on bar stools watched Wally Bloom stride to the phone. Jamie held it out with excitement for this first call from the Personnel Recovery Coordination Cell since they’d arrived in Lemonnier three weeks ago.
    Wally took the receiver. Jamie backed away, but not enough. Wally shooed him off a few more steps before answering.
    “Bloom here.” Wally listenedonly for a moment before responding, “On our way, ma’am,” then returning the receiver to the eager Jamie.
    “LB,” Wally called, “Major Torres wants me and you at the JOC, stat. Let’s roll.”
    “What’ve we got?”
    Wally headed for the Barn’s door with LB trailing. He used his length to take long strides and put LB in a semi-jog.
    “Dunno yet.”
    This first mission had come two weeks into their deployment in Horn of Africa. The unit from Long Island they’d replaced had waited two months for their first call. In combat theaters, the action ran in a more steady current, sometimes a mission a week. For years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States had kept plenty of aircraft going, plus long-range patrols in remote, inhospitable, and denied terrain, tangling with an insurgent enemy, advising and supporting the local militaries in remote locations. Isolated personnel included downed air crews, troops cut off by severe weather, and small covert actions behind enemy lines; all these kept the phones ringing.
    Here in HOA, the IPs were very different, the rescues quieter and more infrequent. The American military presence in Africa was primarily threat assessment. The United States needed to catch the next hot spots in the world while they were just sparks, and chances were good they were smoldering somewhere in Africa. Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Libya, Egypt, down to Uganda—LB could throw a dart at a map of the eastern half of the giant continent and hit something or someone America was keeping an eye on. The PJs’ rescue missions were most often ODA teams, CIA, Special Forces, SEALs, direct action commandos, or any covert operative engaged in recon and intel, counterterrorism, or unconventional warfare. When these black operatives found themselves in sudden need of rescue from a blown cover, unexpected resistance, wounds, dangerous weather, even fatigue, they called for the PJs.
    In their two previous toursin HOA, LB and Wally had effected rescues in deserts, mountains, plains, and jungles. They’d dropped in fast and silent, bringing teams with enough muscle to fend off an enemy and extract their isolated personnel. If the IPs were hurt, the PJs stabilized them. If they couldn’t run anymore, the PJs carried them. They’d exfilled wounded enemies, recovered the bodies of American battle dead, plucked natives off hills ahead of floodwaters and contractors off roofs ahead of mobs.
    When the phone rang in HOA, the mission could be anything.

    LB hadn’t been inside the Joint Operations Center since his last stint at Lemonnier three years ago. Outwardly, little had changed. A wall of video screens, banks of computers, a windowless intensity, and icebox air conditioning greeted him and Wally. Across wall monitors, the Falcon View program displayed a rolling map pinpointing the target’s location, distance, and weather.
    Major Torres stepped forward with hand outstretched. Black hair in a bun, dark eyes over a smile, she was the warmest thing in the JOC. LB had sat with her and Wally at a few meals in the Bob Hope mess. He found the PRCC smart and focused. Here, in her electronic element, she looked even crisper, prettier. She shook Wally’s hand first.
    “That was