“And three, two, one!” cried Grim.
Bracing himself, Fisher reached back, deployed the drogue chute, then, three, two, one, boom! The main chute deployed, ripping him upward and swinging him sideways for a few seconds until he took control of the toggles and began to steer himself down, once more falling into Briggs’s path.
Relief warmed his gut like a good scotch, although at the moment, he’d rather have the scotch. During his SEAL days he used to joke that his uncle was the navy’s greatest parachute packer: no operator ever came back to complain that the chute didn’t open.
“Nice work, gentlemen. Continue on track,” Grim reported. “Radio blackout now.”
Fisher wanted to tell Briggs how impressed he was with the man’s jump, but that could wait until later. They floated at a painfully slow rate now, drifting in toward the smoke directly ahead, and as they descended to within a thousand feet, Fisher’s chest tightened.
His reservations were voiced by Briggs, who’d suddenly broken radio silence: “Dense canopy down there, Sam. I can’t… I can’t find a good opening.”
“You’ll need to call it at the last second. We’re on our own here.”
“Shit, the wind’s knocking me all over the place.”
Fisher grimaced. “Just get off the channel and focus. You own this landing.”
“Roger that.” Briggs cursed again and then, out ahead of Fisher, with the smoke about a quarter klick north of them, Briggs was swallowed by the canopy.
Even as Fisher was tugging his lines, buffeted hard by the wind and fighting for a spot between two giant pines, a long string of curses erupted from Briggs, followed by a breathy groan… and then… silence.
“Briggs, you all right?” Fisher cried, just as he came slicing between the trees, his seven-cell canopy missing the branches by only inches before he thumped down hard on some patches of snow and beds of pine needles. He ejected his parachute and pack, then turned back and gathered up the chute. “Briggs, you there?”
No reply. Shit.
He unbuckled his helmet and oxygen gear and buried them in a pile of snow, then did likewise with his chute and pack. Holstered at his right hip was his FN Five-seveN, which he immediately drew, and on his left hip he’d packed a secondary weapon, one equally impressive and having a lot of sentimental value: his SIG SAUER P226 semiautomatic 9mm pistol, the one he’d carried as a Navy SEAL. The gun was now known as the P226 MK25 and was one of the most reliable firearms in the world.
Fisher’s updated OPSAT, or operational satellite uplink, was strapped to his left wrist, facing inward. The full-color screen, which could also be set to dim green stealth mode, glowed and provided real-time data integration with field intel collection. Fourth Echelon comms and onboard access to the SMI analytics engine up on Paladin were newer additions to the software. The OPSAT was like having a powerful computer, a satellite phone, and a smartphone in one device. It even offered ambient sound readings to check his own movements, along with light and temperature measurements. As its name implied, the OPSAT also linked Fisher to Keyhole spy satellites and drones like the Hummingbird wheeling overhead. He was capable of downloading data directly from them and from Grim on Paladin. The device even offered a rudimentary alarm system in the form of a T-shaped rod that nudged his wrist.
Willing himself into a moment of calm, Fisher worked the touchscreen, keying in on Briggs’s GPS location. A satellite map with glowing grid overlay marked each man’s position. He sprinted off in the direction of Briggs’s landing zone, with the OPSAT serving as navigator, muttering course corrections to him via his subdermal.
The OPSAT screen flashed with an encrypted message from Grim, and Fisher slowed to read it:
No RF jamming of those enemy birds yet. As soon as we begin jamming, they’ll be onto us. I’ve plotted your course to Briggs. Keep heading straight. I’ve told him to shut down his beacon, so if you lose it, just stay on the coordinates of his last signal. Then you shut down yours. Total blackout now.
Fisher raced around a pair of trees, spun, then checked his OPSAT while trying to catch his breath in the much thinner air of the mountains. The beacon was gone, meaning Briggs had to be conscious. However, Fisher was on top of his last signal. He moved around the largest of two pines, then spotted the man’s helmet off to his right. He winced and looked up. “Aw, shit.”
Briggs was dangling nearly ten meters above the forest floor between a pair of thick, snow-covered limbs, his lines caught in the web of smaller branches. He was trying to swing himself back toward the nearest tree, but he was too far out.
Fisher sent Grim a three-word status report: Briggs in tree. Then he holstered his pistol, took a deep breath, and began hauling himself up and across the sticky bark, wrapping his legs around the tree trunk until he reached the nearest branch. After that, he ascended much more quickly, reaching Briggs within a handful of seconds.
He immediately got to work, digging into a pouch on his belt near his spare magazines to produce a twenty-yard length of 550 paracord. He unraveled the cord, broke off a small branch, then tied the rope around the branch so it would serve as a weight or small anchor. He reared back and tossed the branch to Briggs, who caught it on the first try and reeled in some line.
Fisher ascended even higher into the tree, drawing the rope with him. Once he neared the branch on which Briggs’s chute had become tangled, he began drawing in the rope, then wrapped it over another, thicker branch to serve as a winch. Bracing himself, he began hauling Briggs back up toward the limb above.
With both of them gasping and grunting, Briggs finally got his hand wrapped around the branch, and then, with his free hand, he triggered his quick release, breaking free from the chute.
Coaxed by Fisher, he swung his legs up and did an inverted log crawl toward the trunk. Fisher hauled him to safety on the supporting limb, and Briggs took a deep breath. “Thank you, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Fisher nodded. “We need to move.” He glanced at his OPSAT. Grim reported the launch of two Mil Mi-8 transport choppers/gunships from the new Russian military base in Tskhinvali, Georgia, 120 kilometers southwest of the crash site. Their ETA was approximately eight minutes.
They descended the tree, and once on solid ground, Fisher helped Briggs remove and hide his jump gear.
As the sun disappeared behind the ice-slick canopy and their breaths turned heavy on the air, they tugged down their trifocal goggles with high-frequency sonar detection and sprinted for the crash site.
7
As part of the team’s investigation into Kasperov’s disappearance, Fisher had reviewed a lengthy catalog of the software giant’s personal assets — jets, yachts, vacation properties, and even an automobile collection that rivaled talk show host Jay Leno’s. In regard to planes, Kasperov had a fleet of seven private aircraft that ran the gamut from smaller luxury jets to a giant Airbus A380 fit for an Arab sheik. Two years prior, Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer S.A. had constructed for Kasperov a Legacy 650 they described as an airborne palace and state-of-the-art mobile business suite. The plane had a crew of two with optional flight attendant and total capacity of thirteen passengers plus one in the cockpit jump seat. The 650 was eighty-six feet long, with a wingspan of sixty-eight feet, and was powered by two Rolls-Royce AE 3007/A1P turbofans. Her max speed was 518 mph, with a service ceiling of 41,000 feet.
The price tag? A whopping thirty-one million dollars.