"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Right now, anything your little heart desires, Roger. What's on your mind?"

"With all respect, sir, you don't look like one of us. When you take off the balaclava, you'll look like Al Jolson."

"Oh, and I tried so hard," Colonel Davenport said with a feminine lisp as he put his hand on his hip. "You've just ruined my whole day, Roger."

Stevenson smiled but went on.

"One look at you, Colonel, and the sure to be unfriendly natives are going to say, 'Who dat skinny white man wit all dat black grease on his face?' Or words to that effect."

"I think you're trying to tell me something, Roger."

"Sir, I respectfully suggest (a) that we're prepared to do this job by ourselves and (b) your presence is therefore not necessary and (c) if anybody sees you:"

"That has been considered by General McNab," Davenport said. "Who has ordered me to go. It doesn't mean that either General McNab or I think you couldn't handle what has to be done. You should know better than that by now."

"Did the general, sir, share his thinking with you? Can you share it with me?"

"He used the phrase 'If there's a change in the orders, I want you there.' I think he thinks we may be ordered to take out the airplane. If it's there."

"I know how to do that, sir."

"I know you do. What I think he was really saying was that if the circumstances look like it's the thing to do, we should take the airplane out without orders. And he wants me to make that decision. You shouldn't be put in a spot like that. If there's a flap, all they can do is retire me; I've got my twenty years. You don't. And Gray Fox needs you, Roger. I'm actually getting a little too old for this sort of thing."

"I'll take my chances with a flap, sir."

"You just proved, Captain, the wisdom of General McNab's reasoning," Davenport said, and now there was an edge in his voice. "Think that over as we float silently through the African sky. Now, go see to your men."

For a moment, it looked as if Stevenson was going to say something else but all that came over the earphones was, "Yes, sir."

Stevenson walked toward the rear of the aircraft where four other men in black tights were checking-again, for the fourth or fifth time-their gear. With their balaclavas and helmets in place, it was hard to tell by looking but two of them were African American, one was a dark-skinned Latin, and the fourth Caucasian.

When the latter two took off their masks, as they almost certainly would do sometime during the reconnaissance phase of this operation, they would also look like Al Jolson about to sing "Mammy" in the world's first talking movie, Captain Stevenson thought.

One of the modifications to the aircraft had been the installation of an airtight interior door about halfway down the passenger compartment. This permitted the rear section of the fuselage to be depressurized at altitude while leaving the forward section pressurized.

The seats had been removed from the rear section. The walls held racks for weapons, radios, parachutes, and other equipment, as well as an array of large bottles of oxygen.

The rear stair door had been extensively-and expensively-modified. It had come from the factory with fixed steps, for the on- and off-loading of passengers. They had been designed to be opened when the aircraft was on the ground and not moving.

Metal workers had spent long hours modifying the steps and their opening mechanisms. Three-quarters of the stairs-the part that had been designed to come into contact with the ground-had been rehinged near the foot and fitted with a opening mechanism that, when activated, allowed the steps to be raised into the fuselage.

The original opening/closing mechanism had been modified to handle what was now a four-step doorstep. The lowering mechanism now had enough power to force open the door into the air flowing past the fuselage at 170 or more miles per hour. It had also been necessary to reinforce the door itself to stand up against the force of the slipstream, and everything on the step that could possibly snag equipment had been faired over.

The parachutes the jumpers would use were essentially modified sports parachutes. That is, when deployed they looked more like the wings of an ultralight aircraft than an umbrella. And they could be "flown." Instead of falling more or less straight downward as a parachutist using a conventional canopy does, the "wing chutes" could, by manipulation, exchange downward velocity for forward movement. They could travel as much as thirty miles horizontally after exiting the aircraft.

The parachutes-the wings-were larger than civilian sports parachutes because they had to carry more weight. The jumpers would take with them a large assortment of equipment, including weapons, radios, rations, water, and what they all hoped would turn out to be authentic-looking clothing as worn by native Chadians.

Each jumper would carry with him a Global Positioning System satellite receiver connected to him by a strong nylon cord. The coordinates of the field at Abeche were known within feet. A position one hundred yards off the north end of the runway had been fed to the device. The GPS device had two modes. Mode I showed a map of the area and the present position of the GPS receiver-the jumper-with regard to the selected destination. Mode II showed, with an arrow, the direction to the selected position and the distance in kilometers and meters. In Mode II, the GPS device also combined GPS position, GPS altitude, and topographical mapping to give the jumpers a remarkably clear picture of the terrain onto which they were dropping.

All of this data would be shown on the face mask of their helmets in a "heads-up" display very similar to that which is provided to pilots of high-performance fighter aircraft and advanced helicopters.

Although each man on the team had been allowed to select his own weaponry for the mission-Colonel Davenport didn't think he should superimpose his notions of ideal weaponry on men who were almost as highly skilled and experienced in keeping themselves and their teammates alive as he was-when he had inspected the weaponry just before takeoff he saw that they had all chosen just about the same gear.

Everyone had a 5.56mm M-4 carbine, which was a cut-down and otherwise modified version of the standard M16A2 Army rifle. These carbines had had another modification: Special Warfare Center armorers had installed "suppressors." They didn't actually silence the sound of firing but the sound was substantially reduced, as was the muzzle flash.

Each man had elected to carry from eight to a dozen spare thirty-round magazines. Everybody, too, had chosen to take eight to a dozen minigrenades. They weren't anywhere near as lethal as the standard grenades because of their small size. But they were lethal up close, and they were noisy. They came in handy to encourage a pursuer to pursue slowly and to confuse him about the direction you were taking.

A relatively new, very small and light-about two pounds-antipersonnel mine also served as a fine tool to discourage pursuers. When activated, the mines threw out a very fine, very hard to see wire in five directions. Detonation came as a great surprise to anyone who stepped on any of the wires.

Colonel Davenport's inspection had turned up twenty-four of the miniature mines among the team's weaponry-in addition to the four he would jump with himself. He was also carrying a silenced (as opposed to suppressed). 22 caliber pistol in case it was necessary to take someone out silently. Davenport knew that Captain Stevenson was similarly armed, and, although he hadn't seen any during the inspection at Pope AFB, he supposed that there were two-or more-silenced. 22s in the team's gear.

There was also a variety of knives strapped to boots, harnesses, or in pockets. Colonel Davenport personally was not much of a fan of the knife as a lethal weapon. He had been known to comment that if you were close enough to cut someone's throat with a knife, you were also close enough to put a. 22 bullet in his ear, and that was a lot less messy.