Soar

by John Weisman

  Masland shouted something, but his voice was lost in the roar of wind and turbine scream inside the plane. The vibration increased now, keeping them all off balance, as if the plane were driving on cobblestones. Masland reached back, waved at his comrade, then reached for the leading edge of the metal sluice and pulled it aft. As Masland pulled, Curtis Hansen pushed. The pair of them muscled the sluice onto the top end of the extended folding stairway. Then, with the Kazakh’s help, they forced the concave sheet into the blackness, covering the treads of the descending stairway with a smooth slide. Only the wide flanged end of the slide prevented the whole apparatus from slipping past the top banister of the stairway railing and falling.

  The Yak shuddered once more as Shingis banked the plane ninety degrees to the left, turning from south to east.

  The unsecured metal slide shifted by twenty-five degrees and rolled in the same direction as the plane. Doc Masland lurched aft and grabbed the top-end flange. For a few seconds he seemed to have lost his grip, but he finally managed to regain control of the unwieldy slide. Without waiting for the aircraft to recover, the American ripped a Velcro strap from his coveralls, slid it through a handle welded just below the flange, turned the slide straight, wrapped the strap twice around the top banister of the stairway, and attached it to itself. Then he stepped across the aisle, knelt, and repeated the action on the opposite side.

  Masland crossed back to the plane’s starboard side. He tapped Talgat’s chest with a gloved index finger, as if to say, You …

  The Kazakh tapped him back, then pointed at himself.

  “Iye—yes.” Masland mimed ripping the Velcro off.

  Umarov gave him an “okay.”

  Then Masland showed the Kazakh how to twist the slide so the flange wasn’t restrained by the banisters, and when Umarov indicated he’d got what the medic was trying to show him, Masland aimed a mock kick at the upper end of the slide and pantomimed the slide tumbling down.

  The Kazakh indicated he understood.

  Masland pointed at the exit door, swung his arm as if he were pushing it closed, and mimed securing the lock.

  Umarov’s hand made a fist. His thumb stuck straight up.

  Doc returned the gesture, steadying himself as Shingis deployed the flaps to slow the aircraft down.

  Rowdy Yates made his way up to the rearmost row of seats. His right arm extended fully straight out from the shoulder, then bent smartly, his fingers touching his helmet as if he were saluting—the silent signal for “Move to the rear.”

  The medic unhooked his safety strap, swiveled, and faced forward. Curtis Hansen waddled up directly behind him and squeezed Masland’s right shoulder. Gene Shepard followed, squeezing Hansen’s right shoulder when he’d reached his position. He was followed by Mickey D, Ty Weaver, Goose Guzman, and Bill Sandman. Ritzik and Wei-Liu came next. Ritzik nudged Wei-Liu, bent down, and crushed the chem-sticks on her legs. Then he stood, reached around her, and squeezed Sandman’s shoulder. Wei-Liu squirmed out of Ritzik’s grasp and craned her neck. Joey Tuzzolino stood in back of them; Barber Sweeney brought up the rear. Tuzz grinned behind his O2 mask and wriggled his eyebrows at Wei-Liu. She tried to smile back.

  From his position, Rowdy Yates exaggeratedly tapped his ears. One by one the Soldiers mimicked him, then turned thumbs up, signing that their comms were tuned to the insertion element’s secure net and signaling to confirm they were working.

  2024. “Stand by.” Rowdy Yates held his right arm high above his head. Wei-Liu peered forward and stretched onto her toes so she could see what was happening. She watched as Doc Masland quickly lowered his legs over the edge of the slide and grabbed the exit-stairway banisters. Then she was shoved against Bill Sandman’s parachute as the jumpers scrunched together as tightly as they could, and she lost sight of Masland altogether.

  The no-smoking, seat-belt, and exit lights flashed on and off three times. Rowdy’s right hand swung downward, pointing toward the exit. And then the jumpers began to move up the aisle. The stick’s progress was far faster than Wei-Liu had thought it would be. In fact, the constant movement gave her very little time to think about what she was about to do, because it was enough of a challenge simply to put one boot in front of the other without tripping over all the gear. She tried to remember all the things Ritzik had told her, all the things Rowdy had told her, but her mind had suddenly turned to mush.

  And then Ritzik’s voice burst into her brain. “Goggles secure?”

  Her head bobbed up and down. There was a red chem-light jammed into the seat on her right. “Gloves on?”

  She wiggled her fingers at him. She saw a second chem-light jammed into a left-hand seat cushion.

  “Remember—?? control us immediately after we exit the aircraft. As soon as we’re facedown, extend into the Frog position.”

  She raised her right thumb.

  “Do what I do.”

  And then Bill Sandman vaulted feetfirst onto the slide, shoved himself forward, grabbed the two thin aluminum banister rails at the top of the stairway, launched himself down the slide, and vanished into the darkness. And there was nothing between her and the void but the open doorway.

  All of a sudden Wei-Liu felt an enormous measure of fear; a visceral, instinctive, primeval animal terror she had never before experienced.

  She pulled up short like a horse refusing a jump. “Michael, don’t let me die.”

  Ritzik’s voice exploded inside her brain. “Tracy—sit.”

  She did as she was told. She felt Ritzik’s body up against hers; felt his legs on her hips, her back against his chest. Well, okay, against his reserve chute. He wouldn’t let her die.

  “Tracy, let go of the banisters.”

  She hadn’t realized she was holding on to them; holding on for dear life. She tried to let go, but her hands wouldn’t budge.

  Ritzik’s gloved hands pried her fingers open one by one. “Make fists,” he commanded.

  She obeyed the voice in her brain, cursing her damnable instinctive compliance. And then his hands grasped the banister, and he was tight against her and he was pushing and pushing and all the while her legs were pumping, too, except she was trying to go backward, not forward. And then his arms were wrapped around her so tight she couldn’t budge and all of a sudden they were traveling down the slide going faster and faster and even though there was a huge amount of noise in her ears she could hear her heart pounding even louder than the wind and it was freezing cold and the mask lens began to fog and she started to see spots in front of her eyes and then and then and then Oh … My … God she shot off the end of the slide into the abyss.

  14

  27,220 Feet Above Artu, China.

  2024 Hours Local Time.

  “DON’T HYPERVENTILATE.” That was Mike Ritzik’s voice in her head. He was still there. She was, too.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” She struggled to keep her breathing under control.

  “Frog position, Tracy—Frog. Help me. Help me.”

  Wei-Liu’s scrambled brain searched for input and finally achieved a rough synapsis. She arched her back, extended her arms, bent her knees, and tried to hold her legs apart.

  “Good girl.”

  Above her, Ritzik’s head turned slightly left so he could read the altimeter dial. He was delighted with how she’d performed, although he wasn’t about to say anything right now. She hadn’t panicked, causing the pair of them to tumble, or worse, go into a flat spin. And although he could feel her trembling under him, she was performing like a trouper—or more to the point, like a trooper. Even in the freezing air he could sense the warmth of her body pressed close up against him.

  He felt Wei-Liu shift slightly. He used his thighs to keep her exactly where she was. Movement was dangerous. They were still well above terminal velocity—the maximum constant miles-per-hour rate for a falling object—because the plane’s forward speed had thrust them into the sky at more than 200 miles an hour. They would have to fall more than 2,500 feet before their airspeed
would drop to 125 miles per hour—180 feet per second—at which point it would be safe to deploy the parachute.

  They’d left the plane at twenty-seven thousand five and would open at twenty-five thousand. That gave them about twelve seconds of total free fall.

  Trying to maintain the arched, Frog stable-flight position, Wei-Liu wasn’t sure she’d live that long.

  Ritzik took a look at his compass. They were still heading due east. “I’m going to turn us to the south.”

  No one had told her how to make turns in free fall. “What do I do?”

  “Hold your position. Don’t change a thing.”

  Above her, Ritzik bent his torso and head to the right, brought his left arm six inches closer to his body, and extended his right arm out by six inches.

  The pair of them glided laterally and to the right for two seconds, and sixty degrees, then Ritzik straightened his body and arms out, resuming the stable free-fall position. “Good.”

  He checked the altimeter again. Twenty-five thousand eight hundred feet. Four seconds until deployment.

  “Steady—we’re ready to deploy.”

  His right arm moved toward the rip-cord handle. Simultaneously, he extended his left arm over his head and drew his legs up farther, in order to keep them from toppling into a head-down position or barrel-rolling to the right. Ritzik peered down to where the main rip-cord handle sat in its pocket, making visual contact. Then he extended his left arm forward, simultaneously reaching his right hand down toward the handle, careful to stay away from the oxygen hose. On Ritzik’s first HAHO night-combat-training jump—from 17,500 feet—he’d been so pumped up he’d reached down without looking, grabbed his O2 hose instead of the rip-cord handle, and yanked the frigging thing right out of its socket. By the time he’d cleared 10,000 feet, he’d damn near had a case of hypoxia.

  His gloved hand closed around the handle, and in one fluid motion he unseated it and pulled it from the rip-cord pocket. Now both his arms were fully extended in a forward position, and he glanced upward, over his right shoulder, to make sure his canopy was deploying.

  When Ritzik pulled the rip cord, it yanked a pin on the chute assembly, releasing a pilot chute bridle, which opened its flaps and launched upward. The bridle’s release extracted the deployment bag from the main container, which in turn unstowed the suspension lines from their retainer bands. When the suspension lines were fully extended, they pulled the main chute from the deployment bag, the sail slider was driven downward toward the risers, and the big Ram Air cells began to inflate.

  This, Wei-Liu thought as the harness cut into her and she jerked upward, must be what a head-on collision feels like. Her downward speed went from terminal velocity—125 miles an hour—to 18 miles an hour in less than four seconds. The G-force was incredible—it was like being dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows. Her head was yanked backward. Her arms flailed helplessly. She closed her eyes tight and screamed into her mask.

  And then, as quickly as it had all happened, it was over. She felt herself dangling, pendulumlike, in the air, the soles of her boots parallel to the ground. Tentatively, she opened her eyes and dared to breathe. She actually pinched herself to make sure she was still alive. Wei-Liu looked up past Ritzik and saw the huge rectangle of the Ram Air chute, its cells filled with air, above her head. “We made it,” she said. “We actually made it.”

  RITZIK’S BODY ACHED in every joint from the big chute’s opening shock. But there was no time to think about pain. He pulled the extended steering toggles from the brake loops and released the control lines. He raised his head and looked at the big canopy above them again, double-checking to ensure it was fully inflated.

  Wei-Liu’s voice was hyperexcited. “Oh, Mike—”

  “Quiet.” Ritzik didn’t want to talk right then. There was too much to do. He was already scanning a three-sixty, as well as up and down, while straining to listen for canopy chatter just in case they’d deployed dangerously close to another jumper.

  It was unlikely. The Yak had been flying at just over two hundred miles an hour. That speed translated to three and a half miles per minute. In a normal HAHO insertion, jumpers would either leave the plane at one-second intervals, or jump as a group, depending on the aircraft type. Tonight, they’d had to use a slide for the covert operation. Moving as quickly as they could, they’d still taken five to six seconds each to jump. It was easy—and depressing—to do the numbers. Twelve jumpers times six seconds exit time per jumper equaled seventy-two seconds. At 210 miles an hour, the Yak was traveling 3.5 miles every sixty seconds, 308 feet per second. A six-second interval would separate each jumper by 1,848 feet. Multiply that by twelve jumpers, and Ritzik’s crew was separated by more than four miles of dark, uncharted sky. Even forming up was going to make for problems.

  He reached up and removed the tape from his night-vision device, flipped it down, and turned it on so he could pick out the infrared flashers on his men’s helmets. He scanned—and saw nothing.

  Ritzik switched the secure radio to the predetermined inflight frequency. “Skyhorse leader. Respond-respond.”

  He listened—and heard nothing but white sound. Not only were they separated by distance and altitude—now the goddamn multimillion-dollar satellite radio system wasn’t working. He cursed silently at the crackling circuitry.

  Then he heard Rowdy’s familiar growl, stepped on by Bill Sandman’s.

  Ritzik used his upwind toggle to turn the canopy in a tight circle. He would repeat this maneuver until the rest of his team assembled around him. As he pulled on the handle, he heard a partial transmission. “Sk—c.”

  Ritzik held steady and broadcast again. “Skyhorse leader—repeat.”

  “Shep confirms.”

  “Goose confirms.”

  “—z confirms.”

  “Skyhorse leader. Repeat-repeat.”

  “Skyhorse leader—Doc confirms.”

  Followed by white sound. Then: “Tuzz confirms.”

  And right on top of that, “Mickey D confirms.”

  That was seven.

  “Curt confirms.”

  Eight.

  The altimeter on Ritzik’s wrist read 25,300 feet. He was moving in a slight updraft. He adjusted his toggles to increase his speed and descend.

  “TV confirms.”

  Nine.

  One to go. “Skyhorse leader—Barber-Barber.”

  SUSPENDED BELOW RITZIK, Wei-Liu saw one, then two other chutes, even though she wasn’t wearing night-vision. They, like she and Ritzik, were circling. And then she felt Ritzik adjust the toggles, and the big sail above their heads swung them around, and she watched as the other parachutes began to adjust their positions.

  She strained to look up at Ritzik. She couldn’t hear him because her headset was tuned to another frequency.

  Ritzik was oblivious to her. “Rowdy—repeat.” He was trying to hear Rowdy Yates, but the frigging transmission kept fading out.

  “Repeat.”

  “ … caught u…”

  Who? What? Where?

  “Repeat.”

  “Stick … came … Un … down.”

  Dammit. “Repeat-repeat-repeat.”

  And then, just as inexplicably as the net had decided to stop working, Rowdy’s voice suddenly blew five-by-five into his headphones. “ … went out just ahead of me. The Yak hit an air pocket—real bad buffeting for five, six seconds, boss. He bounced off the slide into the stairway header—slammed him hard—then he was gone.”

  Ritzik said: “Skyhorse leader. Did you see a chute?”

  “Negative-negative. But I was busy fighting the vibration and turbulence trying to get myself out alive.”

  “You okay?”

  “I got smacked pretty good, but I’ll live.”

  Ritzik knew it was altogether possible that Barber’s automatic rip-cord release had deployed at twenty-five hundred feet even though the man was unconscious. “Skyhorse leader. Anybody see Barber’s chute deploy?” Ritzik waited for an
swers. But deep inside he knew there would be no responses. And to confirm what he knew, all he heard was white noise.

  This was not good. Todd Sweeney was one of the element’s two snipers. He also had been carrying two of the five Chinese claymores they’d brought, along with two spools of firing wire and two firing devices. And six hundred precious rounds of ammunition. Yes, the man had left a wife behind. And parents, both still alive. And two gorgeous kids—Ty Weaver was their godfather. But there’d be time to mourn him later. Right now all Ritzik could think about was how to compensate for one less shooter on the ground. One less weapons system. Fifty percent of the sniping team, and—most critical—the suppressed MSG90 sniper’s rifle. Doc Masland was every bit the shooter Barber Sweeney was. But Sweeney’d been carrying the big HK rifle. That was the other fatal loss.

  In a night ambush, the sniper’s role was critical. They’d pick off the drivers before the bad guys even knew they were being attacked. Ritzik had learned this in Kosovo, where he’d used his sniping team to take down a heavily armed convoy belonging to a group of Serb paramilitary goons known as Arkan’s Tigers. There were ten trucks in the Tiger column. By the time the Serbs realized what was happening, Ritzik’s snipers had already head-shot eight drivers. Two trucks overturned, the Serbs panicked, and Ritzik’s fourteen-man element had been able to take an entire company-sized unit out of action and turn it over to NATO.

  Tonight, Ritzik needed not only to stop the tango convoy, he would require at least three of its vehicles to make his escape. That was the genius of using two snipers with their silenced weapons, as opposed to claymores. But with only one long gun now available, the situation was going to become far more dicey.

  Plus this nasty possibility: given the omnipresence of Mr. Murphy on the op, it was not inconceivable that Barber Sweeney’s body would drop right on top of some effing PLA general. The Chinese could very well know they had visitors hours before Ritzik’s element was even on the ground. That prospect, Ritzik understood all too well, was not good juju.