Flynn took a quick pass through the accessory pouches attached to his body armor. Extra magazines for his carbine and Glock 19 sidearm. Check. His Panasonic Toughbook tablet field computer was ready to go with a full battery. So were his pocket laser range finder and multiband tactical radio. He was set.

In the pair of seats behind him, Zalewski and Camarillo were doing the same thing with their personal weapons and trauma kits. Satisfied with those, the PJs went rapidly through the array of compact cutting and lifting tools packed in their individual rucksacks.

“Two minutes,” Kasper called. “Radar’s picking up objects on the ground about six miles out, at our twelve o’clock.”

“I don’t see any smoke,” Dykstra commented matter-of-factly. “Any fires must have burned out by now.”

Flynn leaned back in his seat, craning his head sharply to look through the helicopter’s forward cockpit canopy. With all the heat haze, it was difficult to make out many details. But there was definitely a blackened scar stretching across the orangish desert sand. At one end of the scar, he could see a big, crumpled gray cylinder partially buried nose-first in a large dune. A debris field of torn and bent pieces of blackened metal—scorched wing panels, twisted propellers, and shattered engine mounts—stretched away for hundreds of feet on both sides of the wreck.

Dykstra whistled softly. “Looks like that Herky Bird slammed in almost horizontally. The wings ripped off, but the fuselage seems mostly intact.” He tweaked the cyclic, pedals, and collective to reduce their airspeed as the Jolly Green II swung through a gentle, level turn to come in behind the downed C-130.

Abruptly, as they came out of the turn, Flynn spotted a twin-turbine helicopter, a Russian-manufactured Mi-17 medium transport, sitting parked on the sand not more than a hundred yards from the Super Hercules’s torn fuselage. Oddly, its desert camouflage paint scheme showed no obvious national markings or other identifiers. Several Western-looking men in civilian clothing were visible around the helicopter and the C-130 wreckage. Some carried a mix of small arms and wore military-grade body armor.

“Son of a bitch,” Kasper muttered. “We’ve got company.”

A new voice crackled over the helicopter’s ARC-210 communications system. “Wizard One-One, this is Rocking Horse Six. Suggest you land on the other side of the wreck. We’ll confer further once you’re down.”

“Copy that, Rocking Horse,” Kasper acknowledged tightly. Her fingers danced across her multifunction display, inputting the call sign they’d been given. She switched back to the intercom. “The computer confirms that ‘Rocking Horse’ is legit. But that call sign belongs to an OGA.”

Flynn snorted. OGA was military jargon for “Other Government Agency.” In practice, that usually meant the CIA’s clandestine service and its paramilitary contractors.

“You know anything about these guys or what they’re up to out here, Nick?” Dykstra asked, making small adjustments to the helicopter controls to veer off and circle back around toward the suggested landing site. “Wearing your other hat, I mean?” That was a not-so-subtle reference to Flynn’s covert status as an Air Force intelligence officer.