While she was packing, Malorie mentioned that she considered it ironic that she—as a mechanic and millwright—would take on the responsibility of intelligence analysis, when it was her sister, Megan, who had the more formal training in the craft of intelligence. (All of Malorie’s intel experience had been OJT.) But she reasoned that the resistance mainly needed her skills as a linguist.

With the boys to raise, Megan’s place was clearly at home, but Malorie was willing and able to get involved.

Her weapon was the same M1 Carbine with a replica M1A1 paratrooper folding stock that she had carried since she left Virginia. She had realized from the beginning that it was an underpowered gun. However, it was compact, lightweight, and most important, she was confident and competent shooting it. Malorie was warned by fellow shooters that the carbine shot a pipsqueak pistol-class .30 caliber cartridge that was not a reliable man stopper. But at the time it was all that she could afford and find available from a private-party seller. (Her first choice had been a folding stock Kel-Tec SU-16B .223, but the only ones that she could find were being sold by licensed dealers—and she detested filling out Federal Form 4473s.)

Although she was offered the gift of an “only dropped once” AK-74 by Terry, Malorie thought that the stress of learning to handle, shoot, and field strip another rifle would be one stress too many to add to her already long list. (Her anxiety meter was already pegging, and her departure was in less than twenty-four hours.)

Megan assumed that seeing Malorie board the plane would be too stressful for Jean and Leo, so Malorie made her good-byes at the Gray ranch. Megan told the boys that “Auntie Malorie is going to work on a map board in Canada.” The sisters did their best to appear cheerful and upbeat. Later, Megan let Joshua know her concerns. “Mal is very important to me and the boys. I’ll be praying for her safety, several times a day.”

•   •   •

When Ken and Malorie arrived at the hangar in Jeff Trasel’s pickup, Jerry Hatcher was adjusting cargo tie-down straps and preflighting the plane. A year earlier, the underside of the plane had been spray-painted dark gray and the upper surfaces were painted a mottled green camouflage, giving it a very serious, warlike look. The oversize tires were specifically designed for rough field landings.

Jerry was a slender, balding man of just under average height. Ken and Malorie handed the backpack and dry bag to him. As they did, Ken said, “We were told that we needed to be precise about weight. Together, these weigh in at fifty-seven pounds.”

Jerry nodded and stowed Mal’s gear behind the passenger seat. (The rear passenger seats had been removed, and that area was already crowded with a row of ammo cans beneath duffel bags of various colors.) Jerry turned toward Mal, asking, “How much do you weigh?”

“About one twenty-two. Figure probably another five pounds for my clothes and boots, to be safe.”

Jerry punched some numbers into a JavaScript Weight and Balance calculator program on his iPad. The program was tailored specifically for the Cessna 180G model.

Mal looked interested in what he was doing, so Jerry explained the screen. “You see here that a 180G has fifty-five gallons of fuel capacity, which equates to three hundred thirty pounds. But tonight will be a short trip, so we are flying with just one hundred forty-five pounds of fuel. Here we’ve got weight, arm, and moment for each section of the aircraft. And this is the CG.”

Malorie said, “I understand center of gravity, but ‘arm’ and ‘moment’ are Greek to me.”

“It’s a little complicated and hard to explain. Moment—which is a measure of the tendency of a force to cause a body to rotate about an axis—is calculated by multiplying the weight of an object by its arm. The main thing for us to be concerned with is this little red crosshair in the fat red circle. If it goes outside of this green envelope grid, then we might fall out of the sky, which would not be good. As you can see, at two thousand five hundred forty-five, we are definitely pushing the envelope, since the maximum takeoff weight is two thousand five hundred fifty pounds. So I’ll plan on an extra-long takeoff roll. The weight also pushes our safe maneuvering speed up to one hundred and six miles per hour. With just me in the plane, that will drop to just ninety-six. The stall speed with the flaps extended is, of course, much lower.”

Malorie asked, “I’ve always wondered what ‘pushing the envelope’ meant. Now I know. Cool. And I’ll just skip on getting a grasp on arm and moment. So maneuvering speed is different than stall speed?”

“Yes, higher. But suffice it to say the heavier the plane is, the higher the stall speed, and the lighter the plane, the lower the stall speed. We’ll be staying above the stall speed, which is why we have to calculate where that is, especially during takeoff and landing. It will also vary depending on altitude, temperature, and humidity of the air. I won’t go into the difference it makes whether we are looking at true airspeed versus indicated airspeed for this explanation, but it also matters where the power levers are and how many g’s are on the aircraft. Confused? That’s why we have performance charts.”

Not noticing that Malorie’s eyes were glazing over, Jerry went on, pointing again at the screen. “Now that I’ve added in the weight of you and your gear, you can see we’re still just barely inside the envelope. We’ll drop down farther into the green once I burn off some of the fuel en route, as it will lower the weight and shift the CG in our favor. And of course my return trip will be ‘easy breezy.’”

Malorie nodded. They were scheduled to leave just after sunset.

Ken gave her a hug, and said, “Bon chance, and kick some UNPROFOR butt.”

As she was about to board the Cessna, Malorie balked for a moment. The enormity of what she was about to do struck her. She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “I’m just going to trust God’s providence on this.”

She stepped up into her seat quickly, but then fumbled with the unfamiliar seat belt arrangement.

Jerry noticed her nervousness and asked, “So, ahh, is this your first time in a light plane, or just your first time flying into occupied territory where you’ll face summary execution, if you’re captured?”

That broke the ice, and Malorie burst out laughing. She was still chuckling when she finally got the odd seat belt buckle latched.

Jerry said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through everything that I’m doing. Fact is, as a former instructor pilot, I have a tendency to talk to myself. I’ve flown this same route before, entirely on instruments, in much worse weather than this, and on softer fields. This is a very solid and trustworthy aircraft. It was built in 1964, but it’s been well maintained. As for me, my model year was 1968 and I’ve logged almost thirty-eight hundred hours of flying.”

Jerry put on a dark blue baseball cap with an Alaska Aces hockey team logo, showing a ferocious polar bear taking a swipe. He handed her a pair of pale green Clark headphones with a boom mike, and said, “You can put these on once I start the engine. Press this button here to talk. But don’t push that button, or you’ll be broadcasting on the radio. Not good, under the present circumstances.”

After strapping himself in, but before starting the engine, Jerry mounted his GPS receiver in its cradle and turned it on. He immediately dialed down the brightness of the color screen.

He explained, “This is my cheater. It’s a top-of-the-line Garmin Aera Model 795. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for it a year before the Schumer hit the fan. Now that the GPS ground stations are back online, the accuracy and full coverage of the GPS constellation has been restored, so we no longer have to fly by the seat of our pants. I’ve programmed in waypoints for our entire route—in three dimensions—plus four alternate exfiltration routes.”