Ethan leaned forward and switched on the pitot heat to avoid icing inside the aircraft’s sensitive instruments as he sought to maintain a track on the river far below. ‘There’s not a road in sight out here,’ Lopez said. ‘If we can’t take off again, we’ll be stuck out here for days.’ ‘We need to be quick,’ Ethan agreed. ‘Once it heats up in the jungle the air won’t have enough density to get airborne again. I hope they’re ready for us down there.’ A dense swathe of cloud drifted by below them, and then Ethan glimpsed the river winding like a silvery serpent beneath the jungle canopy toward a deep chasm between two terrific mountain ranges cloaked in thick tropical forest. ‘Down there,’ he said and pointed ahead. As they closed in on what looked like a fairly open stretch of water they glimpsed a sudden burst of what looked like blood spilling into the air. Ethan recognized the red stain for what it was, a smoke grenade marking the landing zone for him, something he’d seen many times in his service years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
