Eckstein looked at him, then turned to Nabbe, and Benni’s orders were passed along like a game of “telephone.”
The men came up with tins of shoe polish and began to work on each other’s facial features. The Israelis were not terribly artistic, while Binder and O’Donovan would have made a chameleon proud. Nabbe crossed the cabin and knelt in front of Schneller. He worked on the big German’s forehead for a minute, then motioned for everyone to have a look. He had spelled out the Hebrew word friar, slang for “sucker.”
Didi showed up in front of Baum. He was wearing his rig, including the ruck with the mini Uzi tucked away, but he moved as easily as if he sported only a track suit.
“Change of plans,” he said. “I want Amir to be last out, so he can shepherd anyone who strays.” He turned to Eckstein. “You and me’ll take Benni out. Think you can do that?”
Eckstein was far from being qualified to AFF a novice, but he had been the man in the middle a number of times and knew how it went. This was not the time to demur. “Talk to me,” he said.
“You just take his left side, right hand on his leg strap and left on his upper sleeve. Good grip, don’t let go for shit. We’ll probably flip over, so just give us a good arch until I get us right. When I pull for him, just track away and open. So far?”
Eckstein nodded. He was wearing his gloves, and he took one off and wiped his palm on his fatigues.
“Now, we won’t be in the door for long,” Didi added. “But you’ll have to float.”
Eckstein would have to brace himself outside the aircraft until Didi was ready.
“And don’t pull him, Eytan. I’ll push from the inside.” Didi smiled, pinched Eckstein’s cheek, and walked away.
Nabbe nudged Eckstein and handed him a tin of brown shoe polish. Eckstein took the flat can and stared at it for a moment, thinking of how easily some men could discard their good sense, defy their own survival instinct. Perhaps it was a mutant gene, the same cerebral fissure that drove lemmings over a cliff. That might be true, but a catalyst was also required, and he had no doubt that here that fuel was love, his and Benni’s and O’Donovan’s for Ruth, the rest of the men’s for Baum, and even the feelings that Binder would deny he felt for his NYPD partner. Only that kind of power could allow them to ignore the probabilities of failure, for in truth this mission was like an impossible billiard shot attempted by a talented amateur. If the ball went in the pocket, it would not be due to skill.
He looked up to find Benni’s face turned toward him. They held each other’s gaze as Eytan began to smear the polish across his friend’s wide features, and then Benni closed his eyes.
Didi went to Nimrodi at the cargo door, took the headset from him, and sat down. He slipped the folded CIA map and a small calculator from his pocket and laid them across his knee. He was wearing an illuminated MA3-30 metric altimeter on his left wrist, and he used the light to aid him as he began to rework the ranges.
“Hullo, mate,” he said into the mike. “This is the jumpmaster.”
“Hey, you sound like an Aussie,” the pilot said brightly.
“Was.”
“Late of Johannesburg myself.”
“What’s the range?” Didi asked.
“ ’Bout twenty-two minutes to the border.”
“Winds?”
“At sixteen thousand feet we’ll have eighteen knots from one sixty-three degrees south-southeast. Beni-Abbès is broadcasting twelve knots below ten thousand feet.”
“Meters, if you don’t mind.”
“Divide by three, multiply by point six, mate.”
Didi smiled as he did so. He began to calculate the average forward speed of all the ram-airs, which was about 25 feet or 5.4 meters per second, versus a 10 FPS rate of descent, and taking the split wind speeds and altitudes into account. If they ran with the wind, they would be in the air for twenty-six minutes and cover twenty-three kilometers over ground. Didi had hoped for a north-south wind so they could drop well north of Klump’s lair and pass high over it for a quick survey before landing, but the elements were against them.
“Sorry, mate,” he said to the pilot. “You’re gonna have to go in deep, twenty-three klicks southeast of the target on the wind line.”
“No worries,” the South African assured in mock-Aussie vernacular.
“I’m gonna drop one man early.” Didi peered at the map. “About three kilometers north of Jbel el Akhal. Then the rest of us in one stick.”
“All at sixteen thousand?”
“Right.”
“You’re going to be dizzy,” the pilot warned. That altitude was a borderline oxygen jump.
“We’ll wake up on the way down,” said Didi. “What’s the temperature up there?”
“Are you going to scratch this thing if it’s freezing?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ask, mate.”
Didi grinned and reworked his calculations once more from the beginning.
Rick Nabbe had to pee. He wanted very badly to hold it until he landed, but he knew that he would never make it, and the idea of gliding with a stream of urine frozen to his leg was not appealing. Nimrodi saw him struggling with his ruck and sprang to help him, but the Belgian was still wearing his chute when he squeezed into the lavatory, searched desperately for his penis between the choking leg straps, and finally gasped, “Mon Dieu!”
The Dakota was beginning to climb rapidly again as Nabbe struggled back to his seat and rerigged his ruck. Didi listened in his headset and looked up at the men. He drew an imaginary line with one hand across the floor from right to left, then flew over it and up with the other. They were crossing the border. He beckoned Baum and Eckstein, and they struggled up and came to him. They sat near the door as Lapkin got up and shifted toward the cockpit.
Nimrodi was standing in the aft section, holding on to a cargo strap. He patted the top of his head and pointed to his eyes. The men rolled their balaclavas down over their faces, which suddenly gave them all the appearance of masked bank robbers. They pulled their goggles up and adjusted the straps, then pushed them onto their foreheads.
A heavy bell rang twice inside the cabin, and as is always the case in paratroop transports, it was like a Pavlovian signal that set the men’s hearts to thumping wildly in their chests. Even as the inevitable approached, the body always prayed to be somehow saved from this madness, but the ringing of the warning klaxon extinguished all hope of reason.
Didi stood up, pointed at his watch, and raised ten fingers. The men nodded and checked their gloves, their fatigue cuffs, the jacket closures near their throats. Their movements were jerky, frenetic; they needed to get on with it. Didi pointed to the penlight on his left wrist and switched it on. The men mimicked him. He was wearing a second one on his right wrist, next to his compass, and he turned it on as well, showing both his lights to the men over outstretched fists. I’ll be the one with two lights. They nodded again like a squad of deaf-mutes.
He listened in the headphones for a moment, then made a fluttering motion with one hand. He held up ten fingers, then eight more.
Binder turned to O’Donovan and rolled his eyes. “Christ!” he shouted above the straining engines. “Eighteen-knot wind.”
O’Donovan quickly estimated their forward glide speed. “Don’t forget to turn back into it for the landing,” he shouted back.
“Fuckin’ A.”
Didi lifted his palms twice, and the men struggled to their feet. Lapkin came down the line and herded them to the port side of the cabin, where they huddled close up to each other like frightened cattle. They automatically performed an equipment check, searching each other’s packs for loose closure pins, pilot chutes half out of pockets, a wayward buckle that could snag a suspension line.
Lapkin checked each man over again, running his fingers across their rigs as he reminded them to deploy their chutes five seconds after the exit, no matter their body position. As he approved each man, he slapped him on the head. Goggles came down and we
re pulled tight once more. They were breathing heavily now. The sudden rise to altitude had bathed the cabin in a steel chill. Sweat ran down their rib cages.
Didi slipped off the headset and handed it to Nimrodi, who would be staying with the airplane. He pulled his black hood over his face, set his goggles, and checked his altimeter. He cocked his head at Nimrodi, and together they removed the cargo door.
Horse nearly screamed when the thunder roared into the plane. He backed up on the starboard bench and wrapped his fingers around the seat in a death grip, but he could have yelled his head off and no one would have heard him. The blast of black wind howled through the door, carrying the unfettered engine roar with it. The vomit bucket toppled over, and the cardboard litter went whipping around the cabin like the pranks of a poltergeist. “No! Don’t do it!” he wanted to yell as he saw Didi drop to his knees and stick his head right out the open hatch like some mad gremlin. The jumpmaster stayed there for a moment, looking down into the void, and as the wind tried to suck him out, he stuck one hand back in the cabin and held it like a blade, signaling to Nimrodi.
“Come left,” Nimrodi shouted into the headset.
The Dakota banked gently, though the noise level seemed to rise. Didi signaled again.
“Straight and level,” Nimrodi yelled.
The pilots complied.
The warning beacon by the doorframe glowed red. Didi came back in and duck-walked to Sadeen, who crabbed forward on his hands and heels beneath his ridiculous burden as Nimrodi and Lerner lifted the tires of the encased moped. The contraption was not going to fit straight on through, so Didi kept Sadeen at an angle. The sapper’s boots cleared the forward corner of the hatch, where the slipstream immediately snatched at them, bending his legs and flapping them like a rag doll. Nimrodi, who had donned the team’s spare chute, for there was every chance that he could be dragged out now, was holding Sadeen’s harness and leaning back with everything he had. Didi took Sadeen’s right hand and placed it tightly around the rip cord handle as he bent his mouth to the engineer’s ear and yelled something. The sapper nodded vigorously. The red lamp went out, the green jump light blazed, and then he was gone.
Didi dived to his knees again and looked down. The rest of the men held their breaths, waiting for the verdict. Lerner snapped back inside and shot them a thumbs-up.
They had three minutes now. All the time in the world. He looked at his watch, then motioned Eckstein to come to him.
Eckstein skirted the howling doorway in a wide berth, edging up carefully to the rear frame as Nimrodi gripped his harness. He did not look down but focused back into the cabin as the wind hammered his chest, threatening alternately to knock him back inside or drag him out.
Didi went for Baum, nudging the colonel’s bulk so his rump faced Eckstein and his feet were positioned near the doorstep, one before the other like a surfer. He placed both of Baum’s hands around the forward frame, one atop the other, while he gripped him by the leg strap and checked to see that Eckstein was doing the same. He looked up at Eckstein and lifted his jaw twice.
Very, very carefully now, Eckstein removed his left hand from the doorframe and quickly switched it to the overhead sill, gripping hard with his fingers inside. He edged past Benni’s rump, catching a glimpse of the Dakota’s huge horizontal stabilizer, which would surely impale them all. He set his boot heels to the doorstep and backed out a bit, where the wind immediately tried to take him away. But nothing could make him let go of Baum, and his other fingers clamped the sill with the power of a maniac on angel dust. He could feel his ponytail wagging madly from the back of his woolen hood, and he looked down to see Benni’s black head and goggles pointed forward like those of a crazed motorcyclist. As he stole one glance at the fuselage gleaming under the starlight and the big prop spinning like a demonic blade, he felt his legs begin to quake uncontrollably in the cold. And then something very strange happened. He had the unspeakable urge to laugh. No sound emerged, and the only result was a death’s-head grin as his cheeks were smeared back over his face, but he felt it rise in his chest and wondered what it meant.
He heard someone calling to him and looked down. Didi’s face hovered inside the door above Baum’s head, mouthing, “Moochan?”—“Ready?”—in Hebrew. For much as in lovemaking, in which you usually orgasm in your native tongue, you parachute in the language of instruction.
Eckstein nodded vigorously.
“Echad!” Didi began the count, and the trio leaned out.
“Shtayim!” he shouted, and they leaned back inside.
Whatever he yelled next was lost as he launched them from the door.
Ari Schneller did not hesitate. Even with the restraining bulk of the Parker-Hale, he immediately dove headfirst after the clump of flailing arms and legs. Then Nabbe, Binder, O’Donovan, and Lapkin raced after him like summer swimmers arcing into a warm pond, and Nimrodi dropped into the jumpmaster’s posture, sticking his head out and watching for the chutes until the Dakota banked away.
Baba stood back up, brushed off his hands, and smiled at Horse, who was still collapsed in shock on the bench. Nimrodi pointed down at the discarded cargo door in the aft section.
“Come, my friend!” he yelled. “Give me a hand.”
Horse looked at the door, then at the strangely empty cabin, then up at the black mouth of the hatch, still raging with the wind. He raised a quaking finger to request just a short break, then crawled toward the lavatory, while Nimrodi laughed. . . .
There are parachutists who claim that the act is addictive not because of its thrilling flirtation with death but in fact for quite the opposite reason, that it fulfills a visceral desire for birth in reverse, a return to the womb. A newborn is forced from a weightless world of gentle sensations and muted sounds into a cacophony of sensory assaults that will surround him for the rest of his natural life. Every jump plane is a mirror of that confusing world in microcosm, a crowded, horrendously noisy tube of jostling bodies and multiplied fear, until the jumper dives through a narrow portal and into sudden silence, an unfettered weightlessness in endless space, no need to speak or to be heard, a few minutes of rushing wind and the whispering flutter of fabric.
Eckstein was utterly disoriented by the night, for he could discern no up or down. And he did not care. The relief was upon him, for he had passed into another dimension, and there was only the rush of air and the flapping of cloth, both muted by his woolen falcon’s hood. He suspected that he was on his back, for he had seen the black underbelly of the Dakota pass over his head and disappear between his feet, but he focused only on his hands and the leg strap and sleeve bunched in his gloved fingers. The rest was up to Didi.
The octopus of arms and legs suddenly flipped over, and Eckstein arched harder, knowing he was face to earth now as his head was lifted back on the air column. He released Benni’s sleeve and extended his left hand, still keeping a grip with his right, and he marveled to see Baum stretch his arms in a Superman pose exactly as he had been instructed. He looked for Didi, then saw the jumpmaster’s right-hand penlight across Baum’s shoulders as it lifted briefly. The red light streamed as Lerner brought it in to pull Baum’s rip cord, there was a tearing sound, and Baum was yanked from his hands. Eckstein instantly placed his palms flat along his sides and tracked away as he felt for his pilot chute knob and hoped it would emerge from its pocket.
Schneller’s sniper rifle acted as a stubborn impediment to his grace. He could not arch properly and slowly rolled onto his left side, which was just fine with him as he drew out his pilot chute and watched it race up into the stars, which blurred into sharp stripes of light as his main blossomed hard and beautifully.
Nabbe was on his back. The air had caught the ruck between his legs and rolled him over his head. He made one attempt to flip, but the count was up and he deployed. He saw the pilot chute launch between his legs and he knew what was coming, gritting his teeth as he was spun head over heels and lynched by the opening shock. He shook his addled head and l
ooked up, expecting to see shredded nylon. But it was all there, and he muttered, “Elohim, it’s cold,” as he reached for the web toggles.
Binder arched perfectly, held it as he counted, drew his left hand in to his forehead for balance, reached down with his right, and pulled. The explosion of fabric sounded right, felt good, and he immediately reached up for the toggles and yanked on them until the slider came down the lines and he whispered, “Yessss.”
O’Donovan was spinning like a top. His position had felt all right, but without a horizon, he had not realized that he was in a rapid flat turn to the right. His shroud lines were twisted together like a dishrag. He could not raise his head, assumed a full malfunction, and was just putting both hands to the cutaway when his body suddenly stopped and bounced. He looked up. It was all there.
Lapkin clucked his tongue impatiently. He was hanging beneath his chute at half brakes, trying to count his flock. It was very difficult to pick them out, but as a bank of thin cloud drove across the landscape far below, the square flat mushrooms were thrown briefly into silhouette. They were all over the sky. Someone to the right was making a slow full turn, clearly unable to find his comrades. Another man was heading off due west.
Three hundred meters forward and below, Didi must have realized the confusion, for beneath the small black shape of his canopy, a flashing red X blinked as he crossed his wrists vigorously behind his head. He continued this for a full minute, and gradually, very gradually, the men spotted him and formed up in a ragged staircase of canopies.
“Maybe,” Lapkin whispered in his native Canadian. “Just maybe.” And he released his brakes and flew.
Benni could not believe the cold. With his thick Germanic bulk, it was something that rarely bothered him, but after a few minutes of descent his entire body was quaking. The harness was terribly uncomfortable. His legs were numb, and the wind at his back made his thermal underwear completely ineffectual. For all the layers, his sweater, and his jacket, he might just as well have been wearing cotton pajamas, and he imagined that a slim man such as Eckstein might shatter like an ice statuette when he landed. But Benni’s hands and arms were working, and he followed Didi’s every move like a faithful dog after its master.
The Nylon Hand of God Page 56
