The pods were slightly larger than telephone booths, doped in radar-absorbing composite material and formed in angular shapes to deflect incoming radar. Using the same global positioning satellite system that gave American bombs such precision, an onboard computer steered the MMU-22 as it fell. At a predetermined height, usually the minimum safe distance above the ground, the parachute would be deployed. Booker Sykes claimed accuracy of within twenty feet even in a crosswind of up to thirty knots.
Inside the pod, a Special Forces soldier was provided with enough room to stretch out, storage for combat harnesses, packs, equipment and the weapons necessary for their mission. While confining, the monkey bombs were lined with high-tech memory foam that made them relatively comfortable, provided the person inside didn’t suffer from claustrophobia. As Sykes had mentioned, there was a relief tube for a soldier to empty his bladder as well as a closed-circuit television attached to a camera at the bottom of the pod to give a view of the landing site during the descent.
Sykes loosened his safety straps and leaned over to Mercer. “Little more intimidating now that we’re here, huh?”
The B-2 resembled a black manta ray, its partially buried engine nacelles being the gills to feed the four General Electric F-118 turbofans, the bulbous cockpit the creature’s eyes. Even resting at its hard stand, the aircraft radiated menace. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Ten minutes later they were sweating on the tarmac. A steady breeze carried the iodine taste of the sea but provided no relief from the humidity. The ramp at the back of the C-17 was down and the aircraft’s loadmaster was coordinating a fleet of forklifts to remove the MMUs from the plane’s hold. Despite the tight security at Area 51 and here at Diego Garcia, the pods were crated in containers labeled MACHINE PARTS and wouldn’t be unpacked until they were in the hangar and the doors closed. There were eight MMUs in total, seven for Sykes and his Delta Force team and one for Mercer.
The six men, hand selected by Sykes, were perhaps the best-trained soldiers the United States had ever produced. They all came from the army and had excelled from their first days of basic training and in their extensive training since. Specialists in all forms of combat, they’d also learned to operate with initiative and flexibility. They were tighter knit than brothers, hard men who had trained through the human instinct of self-preservation to put their lives in the hands of the others. In Kosovo and Afghanistan and Iraq and a dozen other hot spots around the globe their bonds had been tempered by combat.
Because the occupant of the monkey bomb was virtually powerless once the weapon was loaded into the B-2, Mercer’s two days of orientation in Nevada was more for the Delta operators to assess him for themselves. New members seconded to the team, soldiers who’d already proved they belonged through years in the military, still needed months of initiation and indoctrination before they were accepted.
It wasn’t enough for the men that Sykes had said Mercer was all right. He had to prove it himself. In the thirty hours he’d spent with just the men, not Sykes, he was forced on two five-mile runs, endured numerous timed sprints through an impromptu obstacle course, expended about a thousand rounds of ammunition on a firing range and went on three static line parachute jumps (the jump master had explained why he wanted to see three jumps by telling Mercer anyone can fall from an airplane once, only a few will try it a second time and only damned fools go back for thirds and those were the kind he wanted).
In the end, the team’s senior noncom, Angel Lopez, a streetwise Honduran immigrant who went by the nickname Grumpy, had pronounced Mercer just marginally more fit than a week-old corpse. In keeping with the sequence of names the men chose for each other — Sykes being Doc, the son of a preacher who struck out consistently with women getting called Bashful, the team’s jokester going by Dopey, and so on — Mercer was given the ignominious name of Snow White.
Mercer and Sykes strolled past the hangar. In the background they could hear Grumpy snarling at the men. “H’okay people, we got twenty hours until we launch and twenty-four hours of work. I want a full weapons check, equipment breakdown and ammo load distribution in twenty mikes.”
At the edge of the aircraft ramp, beach sand blew across the asphalt in airy streaks. The wind had kicked up, a steady beat that flattened their clothes. Sykes hunkered down to a squatting position and took up a stick to draw random shapes in the dirt.
“What’s on your mind?” Mercer asked after a moment.
Sykes kept his eyes on his drawings as he spoke, his voice solemn. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since Dreamland. I just want you to know that Grumpy says you did okay back there. That’s a hell of a compliment coming from him.”
“So I gathered.” Mercer sensed this wasn’t what Sykes wanted to say.
“The boys are calling you Snow White.”
Mercer grinned wryly. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Yeah, I bet. Anyway, I’ve been with Delta for eight years now. I’ve lost a few men during that time. A good guy named Tom Hazen in Colombia, a heck of a sharpshooter in Pakistan, a gunny who got killed when his chute didn’t open at Bragg. A couple of others.
“These guys died doing their job. It’s part of the risk we take. But the thing is we take that risk. It isn’t given to us. Some ugly pops an ambush we’re too stupid to see, we deserve to get killed. That gunny packed his parachute wrong, he deserved not to have it open. You following me?”
Mercer knew where Booker was headed, but remained silent, knowing it needed to be said.
“Admiral Lasko tells me you’ve been in some real hairballs over the past few years and with some pretty good operators too. SEALs in Alaska, Force Recon in Africa. Some army spec dogs down in Panama last year. Don’t take this the wrong way, hell, there ain’t no right way, I guess, but I don’t want you thinking all that earned you a place here.”
“I never thought it did,” Mercer replied softly.
“I like you. I think you’ll do okay up there, but you have to understand my mission is about getting certain information back to the admiral. It’s not about protecting Miss Nguyen and it’s not about protecting you. If at some point you become a liability to that mission, or if you put one of my men at risk, don’t think I won’t drop you myself.”
“I’m taking this in the spirit it’s given. It’s not personal, I know.”
“It’s not, but this whole thing has my hackles up. We’ve never had a Snow White tagging along with the team before and that has me spooked.”
“You love them, don’t you?”
In the distance Grumpy was chewing out Sleepy, the marginally laziest man on the team. “Not them as individuals,” Sykes answered, “but the ideal of what they are. Faces come and go, but the team is still the same. Am I making any sense?”
“It’s the old saying about hating the president but loving the presidency. Only you’re talking about respect and honor, much truer feelings, ones that are harder to develop and sustain. You’ve felt this way for years now. It’s as much a part of you as the color of your skin. I’m not a member of your team, never could be, and you’re afraid that my going in with you will affect the balance somehow.”
Sykes nodded. “Something like that, I guess. I don’t mind being dropped out of a bomber in nothing more than a high-tech coffin or facing overwhelming enemy forces. I just like to know everyone who’s at my back.”