The Shroud of Heaven

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The Chinook abruptly lurched, gaining fifteen meters of altitude in a heartbeat, only to plunge back down an instant later. The pilot, an insectoid-looking figure in his bulbous headgear and night vision goggles, tilted his head sideways as if to grin at the helpless passengers clinging to nylon web straps in the rear of the helicopter.

“Sorry, mates. Telephone lines.”

Nick Kismet nodded indifferently, though his stomach was still pitching from the sudden maneuver. Some of the Gurkhas were not as adept at hiding their momentary nausea; the one he knew only as Sergeant Higgins looked positively green despite the liberal coating of camouflage paint that concealed his face. Of course, in the monochrome display of the PV-7 night vision device affixed to his Kevlar helmet, everything looked green.

The swooping flight of the CH47 seemed an appropriate metaphor for Kismet’s life recently. Still trying to overcome the temporary shock of the mobilization orders — a not entirely unexpected event given the escalation of tensions on the Arabian peninsula — he had been further thrown off guard by the strange mission thrust upon him less than a week after his arrival at CENTCOM in Riyadh. Unable to adequately process all of that information, he elected to simply ride it out until things made a little more sense. It was the same philosophy that would, he hoped, get him through this roller coaster insertion.

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