The helos settled beside Justin’s Chinook helicopter, Calamity Jane. The Jane had flown in ahead of them and parked deep in the desert to set up a FARP, a forward area refueling-rearming point—a mobile gas station for short-range helicopters like the Little Birds. Claudia flexed her hands after she shut down the Maven. In moments, a crew swarmed them from the MH-47G Chinook with long fuel hoses that connected back to a massive rubber bladder of fuel in the Jane’s cargo bay. The big Black Hawks could refuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker in flight, but the Little Birds couldn’t waste their limited weight-carrying ability on a heavy refueling probe. And tonight they needed to start the operation with full tanks. Even freshly fueled, they’d have little left over for unpredicted problems along the way. Eastern Kenya wasn’t Claudia’s Arizona desert. It was too flat, white instead of red, the trees were all the wrong shapes.
