Free Mad Dogs by James Grady

new thing called a Global Positioning Scanner programmed to guide them to where the CIA predicted jungle phone lines. Canvas bags held five days’ rations, one canteen, water purification tablets, two anti-personnel grenades, a purple smoke grenade, a folding stock Russian AK-47 assault rifle and three mags of ammo.
    Only Jodrey and Zane carried special 14-shot 9mm automatics with silencers.
    Only they carried the paperback book sized Flash Code Transponders that were the new delight of the CIA. Pushing keys on the FCTs created a text message the FCT ‘remembered’ with something called a ‘chip.’ When you pushed TRANSMIT, your message zapped up to a satellite, then back down to CIA headquarters and Da Nang.
    Steel groaned and whined. Wind rushed in through the bomb bay doors swinging open beneath the racks of coffin-sized cylinders below Zane’s dangling feet.
    Zane’s stomach fell as the B-52 jumped starward with its release of explosive tonnage. By the time the plane stabilized and Zane looked down at the black sky flowing below his boots, the bombs were halfway to explosions 10 miles behind the plane.
    We’ll never even see them flash. Hear the boom. Trick or treat.
    Bomb bay doors clunked shut.
    Intercom crackle filled Zane’s ears: “This is the pilot. Be advised turbulence and wind shifts require altering course. We factor a 20 minute delay.”
    Ride it out. Something always goes wrong. We’re lucky it’s only time. Mojo .
    Blue lights snapped on.
    Zane’s team switched from the plane’s air to their own oxygen tanks.
    Yellow lights snapped on.
    The team unbuckled themselves from the bomb bay shelf. Huddled as close together as they could in a line on top of the juncture for the swing-open bomb bay doors.
    Red lights flashed like a sprinter’s heartbeat.
    Zane, Jodrey, and the four Hmongs all closed their eyes.
    Bomb bay doors swung open. Six men plummeted from the belly of a B-52 in Zane’s inspiration: history’s first bombing run/HALO intell combat insertion.
    HALO: High Altitude, Low Opening.
    Eight miles high and gliding like eagles. Zane and his team spotted their helmet beacons flashing in the dark sky and surfed their bodies closer together. Followed their pop-up GPS screens toward the drop zone, gliding down, covering 20 horizontal miles in their long starry night descent that weather made 30 minutes late so they popped their parachutes in the mist of near-dawn.
    An emerald sea of jungle canopy rushed up towards Zane’s pressed-together boots. Leaves, branches, vines slammed him as he crashed through them. Birds screamed. Tree branches grabbed his parachute canopy. He bounced like a yo-yo until his boots dangled fifty feet off the ground; he could see through a dappled netting of leaves.
    Hung up! I’m hanging in a tree!
    Through the leaves that screened him, Zane saw the ground, saw another parachutist who’d landed in a clearing, saw him bundling his black chute.
    Zane pushed off his fishbowl helmet, tore off the two hoods that helped keep him from freezing to death during the freefall through –40 degrees high altitude night sky. His teeth and fingers ripped off his outer right glove as the steam heat in the jungle treetops grew cooler than the heat trapped inside his jumpsuit. Hot like Hell .
    Zane licked his lips to call to the Hmong paratrooper on the ground.
    Machinegun fire ripped the Hmong’s black costume to red shreds and he fell.
    A second machinegun chattered somewhere far off in the jungle below. Shouts.
    Zane dangled fifty feet above the ground. Made himself go still. Silent. He swayed like a pendulum. The soles of his boots brushed a lacework of leaves.
    A tiny figure wearing black pajamas and a conical peasant straw hat glided over the jungle floor to prod the dead Hmong with the barrel of a machinegun.
    Still! Zane ordered himself. Stay absolutely still. His boots brushed the screen of leaves. Sweat