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descended. Flaherty could make out a landing strip next to a small town. There were numerous black painted OV-1, OV-2 and OV-10 spotter aircraft and various helicopters parked on the landing strip along with propeller driven fighter aircraft. Air America. Long Tiem as Dane had predicted.
    The chopper touched down and a man on the steel grating waved for them to get off. The man wore tiger stripe pants, a black t-shirt and dark sunglasses. A pistol was strapped to his waist and a knife to his right calf. He had long, shiny blond hair and looked like he belonged on a college football field rather than in the middle of a secret war.
    “This way!” he yelled, then turned his back and headed off. RT Kansas shouldered their packs and followed him into a building with walls of plywood and a corrugated tin roof.
    “My name's Castle,” the man said, sitting on a small field table while the team dropped its rucks and settled down into folding chairs. “I'll be leading this mission.”
    “And I'm Foreman,” a voice came from the shadows to the left front. An older man, somewhere in his late forties, stepped forward. The most distinguishing feature that caught everyone's attention was his hair. It was pure white and combed straight back in thick waves. His face was like a hatchet, with two steely eyes set on either side of the blade of his nose. “I'm in charge of this operation.”
    Flaherty introduced the team but Foreman didn't seem to care what their names were. He turned to the maps mounted on the wall behind him. “Your mission is to accompany Mister Castle on a recovery mission to this location.” A thin finger touched the map in northeast Cambodia, along the Mekong River. “You will take all orders from Mister Castle. Infiltration and exfiltration will be handled by air assets from this location. All communications will be to me.”
    Flaherty and the other men were still staring at the map. “That's Cambodia, sir,” Flaherty said.
    Foreman didn't answer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out several peanuts and began cracking the shells, throwing the contents in his mouth as soon as he had one open. He dropped the empty shells to the floor.
    Castle cleared his throat. “I have all call signs and frequencies. It will be a simple mission. Straight in to a landing zone, move a couple of klicks to our objective and do the recovery, then a few more klicks to a pick up zone.”
    “What about air cover?” Flaherty asked.
    “None,” Foreman said, cracking another shell. “As you've noticed,” he said without a trace of sarcasm, “you are going into Cambodia. Although that theater of operations will be legalized before long, it isn't legal now.” Foreman shrugged. “Closer to the border, yes, we could bring in some fast-movers and claim they misread their maps, but you're going in somewhat deeper.”
    “What are we supposed to be recovering?” Dane asked. Flaherty was surprised as Dane rarely spoke or asked questions during mission briefings.
    “An SR-71 spy plane went down over Cambodia last week,” Foreman said. “Mister Castle's job is to go in and retrieve certain pieces of classified equipment from the wreckage. Castle's been fully briefed. You are simply to provide him security.”
    “How did the plane go down?” Flaherty asked.
    “You don't have a need to know that,” Foreman said.
    “What about the pilot and recon officer?” Thomas asked.
    “The crew is assumed to be dead,” Foreman answered.
    “Did they make any radio contact prior to going down?” Flaherty wanted to know.
    Foreman's answer was abrupt. “No.”
    “How did it go down?”
    “We don’t know,” Foreman said. “That’s why you’re going there. To get its black box.”
    “You say it went down last week. Why have we waited this long?” Flaherty asked.
    “Because that's the way it worked out,” Foreman said. His dead stare indicated he wanted no further questions.
    “How accurate is the plot of the wreckage?”