The man next to him slapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the rear. One of the Delta men was on his feet and yelling something, the sound lost in the roar of the engines. However, he also had both hands extended, fingers spread, so Yakov assumed they were ten minutes out from the drop. The interior of the plane was dimly lit with red lights. A violent cut to the right by the pilot slammed the jumpmaster against the side of the plane. The man regained his balance, wrapping both hands around the static line cable.
Yakov swallowed, tasting bile, but he smiled broadly as the man next to him passed the time warning. He tested the straps of his parachute once more, making sure they were snug. All he wanted was to get out of the plane. He didn’t care if there was a division of Turkish soldiers on the drop zone. His stomach was pressed downward as the plane’s nose went up.
The jumpmaster was holding up six fingers. He then pantomimed more jump commands and Yakov simply did what the man next to him did, getting to his feet and hooking his static line to the cable. His knees buckled as the plane once more made a violent maneuver.
The roar inside increased as a sliver of daylight appeared in the rear of the plane. The rear ramp slowly went down until it was level, the upper half ascending into the tail of the plane. The nose of the plane was angled up about forty degrees and getting steeper as they ascended the side of Mount Ararat. Looking out the rear, Yakov could see the mountainside less than three hundred feet below. Looking to the side, Yakov blinked in disbelief. They were going up a narrow gorge with the sides above the aircraft and less than ten feet from either wing. He trusted that the pilots knew what they were doing. He was slammed against the side of the aircraft as the MC-130 banked hard right, angling the wings so that they passed through a narrow spot in the gorge.
The man in front of Yakov slammed a fist into his chest to get his attention. Yakov looked to the rear. The jumpmaster had a single finger extended. One minute. Yakov realized he was hyperventilating and fought to control his breathing. Both his large hands were wrapped around the static line, using it to keep his balance. The man in front of him moved and Yakov edged closer toward the rear of the plane. He glanced up, noting the red light above the ramp. It went out and a green light flashed on.
The jumpmaster was gone, stepping off the ramp. Yakov shuffled forward as the commandos went, and before he was ready was at the edge of the ramp. At that moment the plane banked hard and Yakov stumbled to his knees, then pitched forward off the ramp into the air. The static line unraveled on his back to its full length, then ripped the parachute out of its casing.
Yakov was knocked breathless as he went from a free fall to a controlled descent. He barely had time to take a couple of breaths before his feet hit the ground hard. He collapsed to his right, doing a parachute-landing fall as he’d been taught in the Russian army’s airborne school so many years previously. The trip wasn’t over, though, as he slid down a steep ice- and rock-strewn slope while scrambling with his feet to stop his descent. He came to an abrupt halt as he tumbled into a boulder, the wind getting knocked out of him for the second time.
Yakov lay still on the ground for several moments, savoring the experience of facing death and living. He tried to get his breath back, then slowly got to his feet and looked around. They had planned to drop right next to the location Che Lu had plotted. He was high up on the side of the mountain, the peak less than a half mile away to the southwest. He saw why the plane had made such an abrupt maneuver, as an almost vertical wall was less than a quarter mile away. The ground sloped steeply down in the opposite direction and he was flanked by two steep ridges. The surface nearby was a jumble of boulders, ice, snow, and rock face.
He could see parachutes scattered about the area as he unbuckled his harness. He untied the MP-5 submachine gun from above his reserve and pulled the bolt back, putting a round in the chamber. He threw his rucksack over his large shoulders and pulled out his ground-positioning receiver, checking his location and finding the assembly point. He was less than eighty meters from the spot they had designated for the team to rally.
Yakov carefully made his way to the point, at times having to use his hands to keep himself from falling. Sixteen of the eighteen Delta men were assembled when he arrived.
“Where are the other two?” he asked.
“We’ve got an injured man,” one of the commandos replied, pointing to the right. “Broken leg. One of our medics is working on him.”
Yakov nodded, but his mind was already racing ahead. This was the place, but all he could see was rock, ice, and mountain. He realized he was breathing hard, his lungs straining for oxygen, as he was at about sixteen thousand feet in altitude. The coordinates that Che Lu had come up with were toward the peak, inside the vertical wall. The sun was low and darkness would descend soon. Yakov pointed toward the wall. “Let’s go and find our keyhole.”
Turcotte kicked the toe of his crampons into the ice wall and edged up another ten inches. Looking up, he could barely see Morris ten feet above him. It was getting dark and visibility was rapidly decreasing. The top of the ridge was still over a hundred and fifty feet above. Glancing down and following the rope he was hooked into, he could see Mualama’s form. The bouncer had faded into the darkness although Turcotte knew they were less than a hundred and fifty feet above it.
Turcotte felt as if he had entered a surreal existence. His entire world seemed to consist of this ice wall. He could hear every breath he took as the regulator added oxygen with each intake. Morris had set the flow on what he said was the minimum they needed. Figuring they would have to spend the night on the mountain and each carried only three cylinders in his pack, he estimated they would have just enough to get to the site and return to the bouncer. Despite the additional oxygen and the blood packing, Turcotte felt as if he was suffocating, his lungs straining. He had a pounding headache, worse than any he had ever experienced.
Still he kept moving, one foot up, kicking in, putting his weight on it, then the other foot. Creeping up the side of Everest.
Just on the other side of the ridge Turcotte and his companions were climbing up, “Popeye” McGraw and Olivetti had stopped for the evening in a small divot along the ridgeline. They slid into their sleeping bags and immediately fell asleep, their modified lungs allowing them to breathe relatively easily without any additional oxygen.
Their sleep, though, was not so easy, as their sleeping minds were troubled with the battle between memories of self and the part of the mind subordinated to the nanovirus and guardian programming. Both men moaned and kicked in their sleep, but the nanovirus and guide programming remained firmly in control.
On the northeast ridge, Lexina collapsed to the ground as Aksu called a halt. His men quickly set up tents and rigged stoves, brewing hot soup. She couldn’t even drag up the energy to speak, gratefully accepting a steaming cup from Aksu. Despite the additional lung capacity from being part Airlia and the beneficial effect of the half-Airlia blood, the climb had been a strain.
The climbing leader pointed in the darkness. “We must start climbing in six hours. Three o’clock. I will wake you and your companions prior to that so you will be ready. We must make your location just after dawn so we can be down before tomorrow evening. Do you understand?”