by Richard Bard
The two men had been pre-breathing 100 percent dry oxygen for the past thirty minutes, prepping for their HAHO jump. Willie’s voice squawked through Tark’s helmet comm system. “Good thing we’re not walking. I feel like an overloaded pack mule.”
Tark double-checked the cinches on Willie’s chute pack. Assured that everything was good, he said, “Tell me about it. Your scope good?”
“Triple-checked.”
They needed to take out the sentries from above—not an easy task when maneuvering to land on a narrow ledge on the top of a cliff. At night. Each of them carried a silenced HK416 assault rifle with the Raptor Gen 3 night vision weapon sight.
Donning his Nomex flight gloves, Tark slapped Willie’s shoulder. “Time to earn our keep.”
They lowered the polycarbonate visors on their helmets. Tark notified the cockpit they were ready. He glanced over his shoulder and checked the rest of the team. Their faces were illuminated by dim red cabin lighting designed to protect their night vision. They were strapped in along the two rows of inward-facing seats. Each wore a portable oxygen mask in preparation for cabin decompression. All heads were turned Tark’s way, waiting for the rear door to drop open.
Tark nodded to the copilot, Kenny, who stood behind him by the cargo ramp switch. Kenny hit the ready button next to the door, and the lights went out in the cabin, replaced by a solid red light over the door. There was a steady hiss as the air pressure in the cabin was balanced to match the thin, cold air outside.
They were cruising at their maximum ceiling of twenty-five thousand feet at a speed of one hundred seventy-five knots. When they jumped, they would be twenty-three miles east of their target, with a twenty-knot tailwind to help their glide.
Both men braced themselves when the red light started to flash. The up-sloping rear wall of the cabin split open at the ceiling and descended downward on two thick hydraulic pistons, stopping when it created a descending ramp into nothingness. A wave of frigid air rushed in and swirled around them, instantly dropping the temperature in the cabin to below zero. The roar of the Osprey’s twin turboshaft engines invaded the space. Tark focused on the small set of four colored lenses above the door, three yellow and one green.
The first yellow lens flashed, then the second, third—then green. He ran forward and tumbled into the abyss. Willie was right behind him.
To make sure they had good separation, Tark waited two seconds after Willie popped his chute before pulling his own D-ring. The huge canopy snapped into place with a loud thump, his body bouncing from the yank on his harness. He craned his neck backward. The welcome sight of the charcoal span of rip-stop nylon was spread neatly above him. He’d jumped with lots of different systems, but this PARIS/Hi-Glide ram-air parachute was by far the biggest. It had a six-to-one glide ratio, greater than any other chute in the world.
After confirming that Willie was in trail position above and behind him, he switched on the conformal navigation pod attached to his helmet. His heads-up display, or HUD, flashed on and he scanned the data: twenty-three miles to target with a twenty-knot quartering tailwind. He pulled down on the starboard riser handle to adjust his heading.
Tark settled in for the long glide, thankful for the polypropylene knit undergarment that would ward off frostbite. The temperature at the target might be a reasonable forty-five degrees, but at twenty-five thousand feet, the below-zero air would bite through his skin.
Twenty minutes later they approached the target from the east, riding the crest of the windward currents down the spine of the mountains. From this altitude, the landing zone was the size of a book of matches. Twenty yards to either side of the target and they’d either miss the cliff entirely or become a dark splat on the mountain.
Switching his HUD to infrared, Tark spotted the heat signatures of three sentries, one of them close enough to the landing zone to pose an immediate threat. The other two were inland to the north, positioned around what appeared to be the camouflaged radar array.
He spoke into his mask. “Mark three tangos.”
“Confirm three,” Willie said.
“Ignore the two to the north until after we’re down. I’m on tango one.”
“Roger.”
Now came the tricky part, Tark thought—maneuvering for the landing and taking out the sentry at the same time. After an adjustment on his riser, he brought the silenced HK up with his right hand and sighted through the magnified Raptor scope. The dark shadows of the LZ were washed away under the green hues of the night-vision optics. The sentry sat on a flattened boulder near the cliff’s edge, his silhouette growing larger with each second. He faced the sprawling valley below, an AK-47 at his side. A brief firefly of light from a struck match illuminated his face.
Tark used his left hand on the risers to make minor adjustments to his glide path, keeping the tango in sight on his scope. He couldn’t fire too soon, because a miss would alert the guard. But he also couldn’t wait too long because he had to release the HK to use both hands to properly flare the chute at landing. At that point he’d be a sitting duck for the guard’s AK.
A bead of nervous perspiration ran down the perimeter of Tark’s goggles. The image of the tango danced and jiggled in the scope as Tark’s chute was buffeted by the air rising up the cliff face. Tark waited for the wind to settle, his gloved finger on the trigger.
A sudden gust jerked him off his glide path and out beyond the cliff, his body pendulumed to one side. He’d need to adjust his heading in the next second or two, or he’d miss the ledge.
The tango’s image jumped up and down in his crosshairs.
Time’s up.
Tark squeezed off a muffled four-round burst. Dropping the HK to dangle from its shoulder harness, he whipped both hands up to the starboard riser. He yanked downward with everything he had, dipping the right side of the sail violently toward the cliff.
The rock face rushed toward him. With a final grunt of effort, he pulled his knees up to his chest in order to clear the ledge.
His toes didn’t make it.
Tark landed hard, face first, his feet dangling over the edge. Frantic, he dug his fingers and elbows into the dirt, scrambling to pull his body forward. A fierce backward tug from his chute spun his torso 180 degrees around, dragging his helmeted face across the rocky surface toward the abyss. He pulled the quick releases on his harness just as another gust filled the canopy. The huge chute collapsed into itself and disappeared into the darkness with a whistle of silk.
He flipped onto his back, sat up, and stopped cold.
The sentry stood five feet away with his AK-47 leveled at his head. The tango pulled a radio from his waist and raised it to his mouth.
If he called for help—
The sentry jerked spasmodically and flew backward as three silenced rounds from Willie’s HK stitched him from groin to clavicle. Tark was on his feet, his own weapon leveled at the prone body.
No need; he was dead.
He looked back to see Willie flaring for a perfect landing in the center of the LZ.
Tark removed his oxygen mask, raised his visor, and went to work emptying the contents of his heavy butt pack. His hands moved with trained efficiency as he assembled several dark aluminum tubes into a short triangular frame with a telescoping extension that had a pulley at its end. He set the frame near the edge of the cliff.
The hollowed interior of each frame leg held a small charge that was capable of driving a piton deep into bedrock, anchoring it to the mountain. Tark pulled a thick rubberized sleeve from the pack and wrapped it around the base of the first tube to muffle the sound. He pressed the triggering device at the top of the tube, and the frame jumped under his grip with a dull thud. He did the same with the other two legs, fixing it into the rock.
He threaded one end of the climbing rope through the pulley and secured it to the frame. Then he extended the boom to its four-foot length out over the cliff. With a grunt he flung the seventy-five-pound coil of rope over the edg
e.
The first team elevator was ready. The APEX portable mini-crane was capable of handling loads up to fourteen hundred pounds, or four soldiers with full gear.
Tark moved over to help Willie finish setting up the second APEX. They worked like moving parts in a finely tuned watch, each one dependent on the other, each movement fluid and sure. When the second APEX was assembled, Tark said, “You saved my ass back there.”
“Yep, it’s your turn to buy the beers.”
They shared a look that after ten years of fighting side by side spoke volumes. The former SEALs wouldn’t talk about it again. They never did.
Tark checked his watch. “We’ve got twelve minutes.”
They shoved the tango’s body over the cliff.
Hoisting their weapons to their shoulders, the duo weaved through the rocks toward the radar array and the remaining two sentries.
Chapter 35
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan - 2:55 a.m.
THE SHEER CLIFF WALL rose above Jake like a massive hundred-story skyscraper. Twin green ropes climbed up the rock face, disappearing into the darkness above. It would take hours to scale this cliff the old-fashioned way, and only then with the help of a rope dropped from fifteen hundred feet above. But the battery-operated Atlas Rope Ascender attached to Jake’s chest harness would get him to the top in less than three minutes.
Jake watched Snake and Ripper vanish above him. The rest of the team was either already up or on their way above them, along with the special equipment. Jake and Tony waited for the go signal from above.
Except for the gusting wind growing more intense by the second, so far everything had gone smoothly. Tark and Willie had taken out the two guards at the radar array and broken through the locks on the equipment shack. Once in, they’d spliced into the cables and attached a small processor that allowed them to hack into the system and create a narrow cone of silence in the radar’s coverage area. To the technician deep in the cavern, everything would appear normal. But any inbound flights on a vector between 180 and 184 degrees would be invisible.
The V-22 had made a low-level approach down the center of that cone, landing undetected at the base of the mountain. It was parked nearby in a shallow ravine. Cal, Kenny, Lacey, Marshall, and Ahmed remained on board.
Kenny had just launched the Raven recon drone. Jake heard its high-pitched whine fade as it made its spiraling climb to the ledge above. In a few minutes, it would be two thousand feet above the ledge, out of sight and sound range, its powerful lenses and sensors providing real-time images and data to the team.
Unlike the rest of the team, Jake’s and Tony’s disguises didn’t offer them the benefit of a helmet-mounted HUD and comm system. Instead, they each wore a three-inch wrist display under the long sleeve of their dishdashahs, giving them a digital interface with the battlefield. Earbuds and embedded microphones linked them into the comm-net. The Raven’s infrared sensors sorted through the heat signatures on the ground and transmitted the overhead images to the small screens. Friend or hostile designations were represented by flashing green dots for the team and solid red dots for everyone else.
Tony was strapped to the second rope on Jake’s left, staring at his wrist screen; his face shimmered from the reflected light of the LED display. Jake caught an intensity in the big man’s eyes that was absolute. Tony was back in his element.
As if sensing his stare, Tony looked over and said, “You ready for this?”
Jake hesitated, recalling the unbelievable chain of events that had brought him to this point. It occurred to him that he had crammed more adventure and pure living into the past seven days than most people did in their entire lives. For a guy who had been told he had less than a few months to live, that wasn’t bad. He smiled back at Tony. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life.”
Tony grinned. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I love this shit!” He flipped the Velcro cover back over his wrist screen and looked up the rope to the darkness that awaited them.
Jake was anxious to get going. The wind was picking up speed at an alarming pace, gathering a thickening wall of sand in its wake. The region was notorious for its sudden, sky-darkening sandstorms, and it looked like they were going to be caught in the throat of a big one.
A huge gust lifted a whirlwind of sand past Jake, bringing on a sneezing fit as he fought to clear his nose. He pursed his lips closed, rubbed his eyes with his gloved fingers, and slipped on his protective goggles. Following Tony’s lead, Jake wrapped the tail of his keffiyeh over his mouth and nose, tucking it in at his ear.
Tark’s voice came over his earbud: “Team Three—go!”
Jake squinted at Tony through his goggles. Bits of sand lodged in the corners of his eyelids caused him to tear up. Tony gave him a thumbs-up, and they started their ascent, the rope corkscrewing through the threaded APEX gear at an impressive ten feet per second.
By the time they were halfway up, the whistling wind sounded like an army of banshees. Gusting waves of stinging sand screamed past them up the cliff face, jostling them dangerously close to the rocky wall.
Jake glanced to his left. Tony’s back was to him, his body swinging from the last gust.
A fluttering shadow above Tony drew Jake’s attention.
An immense wraith of darkness seemed to peel itself from the cliff wall above them, its black wings blotting out the stars as it swooped down and engulfed Tony in its deadly grasp, abruptly arresting his climb.
Jake smashed the stop button on his APEX. Where Tony had once been, there was now an undulating black cocoon wrapped tightly around the rope, twisting and swaying in the torrent of flying sand.
“Tony!”
There was a faint reply, but the howling wind sucked it away. Tony’s voice didn’t register in Jake’s earbud.
“Tony, do you read me?”
Kenny’s voice answered him. “Read you five by five, Jake. What’s wrong?”
“Tony’s tangled in something, and his mike must be messed up. Stand by.”
The wind-borne sand grew sharper, blurring the view through Jake’s goggles. He cupped his gloved hands around his eyes like binoculars to keep the sand from the lenses, trying to discern exactly what was happening.
A sprawling swirl of silky black fabric and nylon cords flapped against the cliff face behind Tony. It appeared to be one of the SEAL team’s parachutes, caught on an outcropping of rock. Stirred to a whipping frenzy by the sudden wind, one corner of the chute must have snagged on the spinning gears of Tony’s APEX, twisting violently around him and pinning his limbs. Tony’s struggles only aggravated the situation.
In between wind gusts, Jake yelled, “Stay still. I’m coming over!”
There was a muffled reply, and the cocoon settled down.
A stiff gust whipped past Jake, lifting the tucked end of his turban loose from around his face. It flew up, snapping into the wind above his head. Sand encrusted Jake’s nose and the corners of his lips. He spit to clear his mouth and rewrapped his face.
Using the rope as a fulcrum Jake swung his legs toward the wall and then tucked them and reversed the process. He pendulumed several times, each swing bringing him nearer to the wall. When he was close enough, he levered his legs into a fierce shove off the rock that angled him toward Tony. His first swing wasn’t wide enough, so he swung back and repeated the process, springing off the rock each time to increase his arc. On the fourth try he reached out and grabbed hold of the rope above the tangled canopy. His feet slammed into Tony’s head under the fabric.
There was an angry grumble beneath the shroud.
Jake shouted over the wind, “You okay under there?”
“Yeah, but the APEX is jammed to hell. I’m so trussed up I can’t even get to my KA-BAR.”
“Stay still and I’ll cut you loose.”
“Hey, Jake.”
“What?”
“Don’t cut the rope!”
“Shut up and don’t move!”
/> Kenny broke in over the radio. “Jake, what’s going on?”
“I’m on it. Stand by.”
Jake used a carabineer to clamp himself to the rope above Tony’s tangle. He pulled out his pilot’s survival switchblade and snapped it open. The razor-sharp edge made easy work of the chute. He used the knife’s secondary hook blade to slice through several of the twisted shroud lines. The chute snapped up and away in the fierce wind, its other end still hooked on the outcropping, the fabric whipping against the rock.
“Clip on,” Jake yelled.
Tony hooked himself to Jake’s rig. Once he was securely tethered, they unclipped from Tony’s ruined APEX and swung away together on Jake’s rope.
“Hope it holds,” Tony yelled under his scarf.
Jake switched the APEX to its spare battery pack and they restarted their ascent up the mountain. The cracks and snaps of the flapping parachute faded into the distance beneath them.
They were three hundred feet from the top when a hollow, deep-throated whistle rose over the howl of the wind. The whistle grew louder as they climbed closer to its source, its intensity rising and falling on the waves of each gust. It emanated from a dark smudge in the rock above and to their left.
Beneath the eerie sound, Jake sensed an undercurrent of vibration coming from the mountain. It seemed to resonate deep inside his head, tugging at him. When they were abreast of the dark patch in the rock and the vibration was at its peak, Jake stopped their ascent.
Tony’s eyebrows creased above his goggles. Still yelling over the wind, he said, “Why’d you stop? We gotta get up there!”
“I’ve got to check out that vibration first.” Jake pointed at the deep shadow. “Grab the flashlight out of my pack.”
