Stoner didn’t know the specifics about the radars he was avoiding or the maneuvers that the craft would take. To him, Alpha was just a very sharp turn down, one that would press his flesh against his bones. He readied himself for the maneuver, slowing his breathing further, until even a yogi would have been envious. The pure oxygen he breathed tasted sweet, as if his lungs were being bathed in light honey. He saw a white triangle in his mind, a cue that told his body to relax. He had worked hard over the past several months to memorize that cue—relaxing was the hardest thing to learn.
“Ten seconds to Alpha,” said the computer.
Physically, Stoner couldn’t move. In his mind he leaned forward, welcoming the plunge.
The craft tipped and spun sharply. Now he was a bullet, plunging to earth. The gauge monitoring the hull temperature appeared on the information screen as the friction spiked. The temperature was yellow, above the safe area.
“Faster,” he whispered, and pushed his thoughts ahead.
“Leveling,” declared the computer a few seconds later.
The pod became an airplane, extending its stubby wings as far as they would go. It was now over central Iran.
Stoner got ready for the next phase of his flight—leaving the pod.
“Countdown to separation beginning in ten seconds,” said the computer.
Stoner started to exhale. As he pushed the last bit of air from his lungs and contracted his diaphragm, the floor below him swung back. He fell immediately, the capsule maneuvering to increase the force pulling him away.
He pulled his arms tight against his body, falling into a sitting position as he descended into the night. He was still relatively high—sixty thousand feet—and had he not been breathing pure oxygen would have passed out. He saw nothing, just blackness.
“Helmet,” he said in as strong a voice as he could manage.
The visor image snapped to a synthetic blue, then flashed and gave way to a panoramic view of the ground he was falling toward. The optical image was captured by one of the stereoscopic cameras embedded in the shell. A small GPS guidance indicator and an altitude ladder appeared at the right. The numbers said he was falling at a rate of 512 knots, not quite supersonic.
Slower than he had in practice.
The sun was brilliant. The cloud cover looked like a tufted blanket below him.
Stoner tucked his head toward his chest like a diver and rolled forward until he was head first, his legs behind and slightly above him. As he pushed them upward and sharpened the angles of his descent, he slowly spread his arms. The thick webbing that had been folded between them and his chest fanned out. Then he extended his legs, stretching the carbon and titanium webbing between them.
Mark Stoner was now a human parachute. Or, as one of his instructors had once quipped, a breathing brick with stubby wings.
He pushed his body around, aiming to get in the general direction of his target. To avoid the long-range radars, he had dropped south and west of his preferred landing zone. Now he needed to move back north. The course change took some time to accomplish.
His landing zone bordered an area well protected by the radar. His smart helmet had radar receiving circuitry—a “fuzz buster” that could detect and alert him to radar waves. Slightly more sophisticated than the latest circuitry in fighter jets, the miniaturized radar detector indicated the closest radar signal was well off to his right.
Stoner shifted his body. The suit he was using had been pioneered by Danny Freah in the 1990s. Working with Freah on the newer version, he’d received quite a number of tips on how to get the most from the lightweight titanium rods and their small motors. Without them, even Stoner’s overmuscled body would have found the fall exhausting.
The visor display highlighted Istgah-E Kuh Pang, the closest named village to his landing target. It was built along a railroad; the only roads were hard-packed dirt and trails through scrub and rolling desert bordering it.
“Locate target subject,” he told the computer.
The screen flashed, put up a map, then zoomed back. The Whiplash locating system showed his position and that of Turk Mako’s. Turk was sixty-seven miles away, across chalky, uneven hills, and several valleys that passed for fertile in this arid land.
Still roughly where he had been earlier.
This will be easy, Stoner thought.
The edge of a radar coverage area was to his right, barely a mile away. The arc extended forward—Stoner maneuvered left to avoid it.
The computer advised him to lower his speed. He pushed his elbows out, increasing the resistance. He had to begin bleeding off speed now if he was to survive the landing without broken bones. He dipped his left arm gently, banking in the direction of an open valley, then dipped in the opposite direction, lining up toward the town. But there was another radar, and then suddenly the display began flashing—he was being picked up by an aircraft, extremely close, flying in the shadows of the mountains.
Stoner pressed his head down, moving a little faster.
“Visual,” he told the computer.
The hills popped into view.
“Eight times magnification,” he told the computer. Stoner wanted to see details of the terrain he was flying over. “Locate aircraft.”
“Aircraft ten miles south,” said the helmet, calculating from the RWR; it was too far for the infrared viewer to pick it up.
“General course?”
“South by southwest.”
Not something to worry about, he decided, moving his arms out farther to slow his descent.
The suit flapped slightly at his shoulder where it was fitted beneath his backpack, but otherwise it was a snug, tight fit. He felt good, in control through 20,000 feet, though still moving a little faster than he should.
Stoner tilted to his left and pushed his legs out, intending to begin a wide spiral to slow his momentum before dropping into the target area. With every second, he got closer to becoming an ordinary flying human.
He turned through the circuit a second time, his altitude passing through 15,000 feet above ground level. The radar warning detector began to bleep urgently. Red blossoms appeared on his screen.
Tracers.
He stared at them. They were red—Russian-made ammunition, slightly different than the orange typically used by Americans and NATO. They looked like fountains, sputtering and then dying.
They thought he was a plane. A line of red appeared in front of him, a slash in the sky revealing blood.
Now great bursts of red pummeled the thin blue around him. Angry fingers groped toward his body.
He was being fired at. And the bullets were coming from the direction he needed to go through to reach his target.
3
Manzariyeh Air Base, Iran
“YOU IDIOTS! I AM AN IRANIAN PLANE! I NEED TO LAND! Stop your idiotic shooting.”
Parsa Vahid screamed into the radio as the antiaircraft batteries continued to fire, seemingly in every conceivable direction. A radar installation near Qom had reported an unexplained contact—very likely Vahid or his wingman—and sounded an alarm that caused every gunner in the western half of the country to see if his weapon worked. At least no one was firing missiles.
Yet.
An ominous fist of black and red reached for his aircraft.
“Controller! I need these guns to stop!” Vahid radioed to the Pasdaran controller at the former Manzariyeh air base.
“We are attempting, Captain. Please stand by.”
Vahid couldn’t stand by: he had only a few pounds of fuel left in his tanks. He lined up with the airfield and held on, just ducking under a fresh wave of flak as his wheels touched the ground.
“The gunfire is being extinguished,” said the controller as the plane rolled out.