Valdez at last reacted. He stumbled out of the cockpit and into the morass of broken crates and rent metal. At the gaping cargo door he paused. "Maitland?" he yelled over the wind's shriek.

Their gazes met, and in that split second, they knew. They both knew. It was the last time they'd see each other alive.

"I'll be out!" Maitland shouted. "Go!"

Valdez backed up a few steps. Then he launched himself out the cargo door.

Maitland didn't glance back to see if Valdez 's parachute had opened; he had other things to worry about.

The plane was sputtering into a dive.

Even as he reached for his harness release, he knew his luck had run out. He had neither the time nor the altitude to struggle into his parachute. He'd never believed in wearing one anyway. Strapping it on was like admitting you didn't trust your skill as a pilot, and Maitland knew-everyone knew-that he was the best.

Calmly he refastened his harness and grasped the controls. Through the shattered cockpit window he watched the jungle floor, lush and green and heartwrenchingly beautiful, swoop up to meet him. Somehow he'd always known it would end this way: the wind whistling through his crippled plane, the ground rushing toward him, his hands gripping the controls. This time he wouldn't be walking away…

It was startling, this sudden recognition of his own mortality. An astonishing thought. I'm going to die.

And astonishment was exactly what he felt as the De-Havilland sliced into the treetops.

Vientiane , Laos

At 1900 hours the report came in that Air America Flight 5078 had vanished.

In the Operations Room of the U.S. Army Liaison, Colonel Joseph Kistner and his colleagues from Central and Defense Intelligence greeted the news with shocked silence. Had their operation, so carefully conceived, so vital to U.S. interests, met with disaster?

Colonel Kistner immediately demanded confirmation.