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Cosima was screaming.
"Dammit! Shit, dammit," she yelled, flinging her cup to shatter against the wall and standing so abruptly that her chair slammed to the ground.
Scott's head immediately poked through the door.
"Cosima?"
"They're coming for her," she turned to tell him, hands in her hair, voice rough and thick. "They're coming for her, and her set's turned off, and I…"
Tears sprung to her lashes. Her lips trembled in an open silence of shock.
Scott crossed the room in a heartbeat, putting his hands on her shoulders.
"Cosima, what can we do? What can I do for you?"
Her eyes roamed the room wildly for a moment before his look of concern drew her in, and she met his gaze.
"We have to find her," she told him. "I have to get her out of there."
Scott nodded. "We can tell the SIS…"
"You can tell them," she cut him off, "you see to that, I trust you with the message. But I've got to get out there…"
Scott's eyes widened. He examined his supervisor's, his friend's face, and he straightened, his jaw firming.
"Whatever it is you intend to do, Cosima," he told her, " I support you, and don't fight me, because I'm going with you."
Scott tried to pretend there wasn't bile welling at the back of his throat.
He had been in airplanes before, sure, and he had trained for emergency situations, but he was still serving mainly based on his brain power, not a hardy constitution or physical prowess. Cosima must be having it worse. Her training had been even more rudimentary than his. Then again, Cosima was much better at just throwing herself into things and winging it…
Throw herself… wing it… his mind repeated to him, and he closed his eyes and swallowed, the ghost of nervous laughter briefly agitating his stomach. He opened his eyes and looked down at her, so small laden with all those packs and kits. At first glance, she didn't seem capable of what they were about to do , but when she came at the authorities with her fast talk and determination, then literally picked Scott up on her back and carried him around them, it was clear she was going to get her way. It didn't hurt her case that one of the pathfinder soldiers had suddenly come down with something that looked suspiciously like food poisoning ("nothing serious, he'll be fine," Cosima reassured Scott, sotto voce, as he wished momentarily for short-term amnesia,) and it was patently clear that she had more than enough knowledge of transmitters for the job. Of course, there was an officer who owed her something, who believed in her, who listened to her rant about how many female civilian spies had been deployed and realized that to deny her could possibly lead to her instigating all sorts of trouble. So, they weren't stowaways, exactly. But that didn't mean that this was all on the up-and-up, nor that it wasn't one of the worst ideas of all time.
Scott looked down the lines of men on both benches. In the semi-dark, with their faces smeared with camouflage paint, their eyes shone through, a little wider with adrenaline, a little wearier with waiting. They were mostly silent. One near the end joked a bit with two others, and another two had actually brought out a deck of cards from somewhere, and were playing something basic with more concentration than it required. The benches shook and dipped a little, but nobody but Scott seemed to notice.
The lieutenant stood in the doorway of the cockpit, consulting with the pilot. Scott couldn't hear or see much of them, and the glimpses out the window showed only darkness. It's gotta be almost two hours, Scott told himself, his inner voice with rising tension almost as much as he was sure his real voice would if he had spoken.
There was a sudden rumble, and the C-47 shook again with turbulence, this time harder. Scott's and Cosima's eyes met. Hers were also wide, and he could see the determined flare of her nostrils as she controlled her breath. The trooper next to her gave her a sideways glance, teeth clamped on his lit cigar. He gave a short shake of his head, but said nothing, and only looked back toward the nose of the plane again.
"Alright, men, a little change of plans, here," the lieutenant yelled over the engine noise, turning around to face them. "We've got some low cloud cover, and are changing altitude for visibility."
There was another lurch and the slight sensation of acceleration and rising. Fragments of curses came from the cockpit and the officer stuck his head back in to check in again. After a few moments, he turned back to address his men. And his woman, Scott thought.
"Okay, listen up. We've got no visual on our other planes or the ground, due to the cloud cover. We're gonna circle to find our drop location and—"
There was a loud, whirring crack and a whoosh as small hole was punched in the side of the plane, metal flying, and the percussive sounds of bullets hitting the wing rang out. Flashes of light illuminated the hole, and the men grabbed quick hand-holds as the plane took a steep bank.
"We've got flak incoming, and tracers," the pilot yelled, and this time Scott heard him.
The lieutenant braced himself in the doorway.
"Alright, keep it together, guys, you've trained for this," he yelled over the noise of another bang near the tail of the plane, shards of hot metal shrapnel briefly illuminating the shadows and a fragment lodging into the wall scant inches from the last private on the line. "Drop positions!"
Scott's whole body flashed cold, and his own heartbeat seemed to shake him. The door in the side of the plane was open, wind roaring, and flashes of light went by in the darkness. The trooper with the cigar was leaning out the doorway, peering, the lieutenant now beside him, yelling commands Scott couldn't quite process. He realized they were all standing, and Cosima's hand flashed up, arm straining, as she hooked her chute pull to the cable line. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, then at his arm, and his hand shot up, attaching his chute to the line, as well. Her eyes met his, and she turned toward the door.
The lieutenant was yelling. The trooper at the door tucked and disappeared, and before Scott knew it, Cosima was hustling forward. Scott felt a push at his back and followed her, as she seemed to take a breath in slow motion, and then rolled out the door into… he couldn't even think about it. He was at the door himself, chest tightening, legs pumping to keep himself from rearing backwards, and he was out, wind rushing up at him, noise, the sudden tug of the harness as his chute opened, forcing out his breath.
The night was dark, but all around and below him tracers bloomed like flaming chandeliers, streaks of blazing light in fanning paths, deadly fireworks everywhere. He could see the silhouettes of parachutes below and ahead of him. The closest must be Cosima, he thought, trying to keep it in sight, but there was a fluttering sound and a ripple of air beside him as something, someone went plunging down, chute tangled, twisted, body out of his sight almost before he could register it, although he was sure it was branded somewhere behind his retinas, behind conscious thought. I hope he's already dead, his mind groaned at him, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. There was nothing he could do, now. Nothing to speed or slow, change or direct his descent, avoid bullets or landing in water, against rock, drowning or breaking his neck.
Cosima, he reminded himself. You promised to help her. And his eyes opened with the whine of gunfire close, too close to his ears, and the ground welling up beneath him, strobing in the scattered flashes. He saw rough textures and smears, not trees, but some kind of grass and scrub, hard to tell. He realized his body was tight, too tight as the world beneath his feet rushed and reared faster up at him, so he let his knees bend, go lax, and took a hard breath. That breath was pushed out of him as his feet made contact, firmly, but softer than he expected, and he remembered to fall to the side, rolling contact up from his ankles to his calves, up his now-tucked legs and torso, arms pulled in, neck bent. For a moment he felt more still than he ever had in his life, nothing but the expansion of his chest sucking in air moving. And then he registered the wet muck rising to cover his eye, his hips sinking, muddy water slopping into his mouth.
He flailed and struggled, realizing the ground was enfolding him, his left side heavy and sticky with mud as the straps of his harness and belts dug into him, the weight of his heavy equipment nearly pinning him down. His arms spread like wings, grasping to find purchase, fingers sinking too far and then, thank God, hitting a solid layer a few inches below the watery surface. A swamp, or a marsh, he acknowledged, and then coiled, gathering his strength, and pushed himself up into a sitting position.
The tracer fire was streaking lights up above him now, but the area just around him seemed quiet. For a moment he saw the spread of another parachute high above him, and then it jerked and bloomed into flame from the touch of a tracer bullet. There was a scream and splash/thump, but nothing after that. Scott didn't know how far away it was, and he knew he didn't have time to find out. He reached for the release for his parachute.
By the time he was standing he was running. Jogging, rather, weighed down by his packs and the mud that stuck to him and sucked at his boots like a natural death trap. There was a blacker shade of darkness, a small copse of trees at his ten o'clock, and he made for it, squelching and wheezing, for what seemed way too long. But no bullets or bodies emerged from the spaces around him, and he made it to the cover, ducking in and behind the trunk of a good-sized willow that had seen better days, half of its branches reaching bare and dead into the sky.
He leaned, then, shoulder to the bark and pulling in oxygen, boots on more solid ground, then scrabbled for his flashlight, his map and compass. He fumbled for a minute, then thought twice about his flashlight, grabbing his Zippo instead. He stopped a moment, thinking, is it too risky to flash a light at all? But I've got to check my position, then tried to wrap his body around the lighter to shield it from sight, the other side blocked by the tree trunk. He grabbed a quick read, and wished he could see the stars. It was going to take some calculations and either a change in the weather or sunrise to get his bearings, and a bunch of Jerries could come by from any direction. Maybe they'll avoid the mud, he tried to reassure himself, and then thought, stupid.
Then there was a sound from the darkness. A familiar sound of a metal click. It wasn't the sound of a handgun cocking or the clack of a rifle bolt, but the flick of a brass or steel "cricket" signal clicker, and Scott breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled out his own cricket and pressed it with his thumb, clicking twice back.
"Scott?" came a harsh whisper, straight ahead.
He crept forward as quickly as he could without bumping into anything or tripping.
"Cosima?"
"Yeah," came the answer, still ahead, but strangely… above him?
There was the quick flicker of a Zippo cupped in a hand, and Scott looked up. Cosima was hanging by her parachute lines from a tree limb, about ten feet off the ground, swaying lightly. He caught the glint of metal on dirt before him and looked down. It was a standard-issue trench knife, clearly dropped from above, blade point-down and half in the earth. Cosima sighed above him.
"A little help, here?"