Stephen laughed, fueling Winslow’s rage. Stephen, who’d invented a time release for the pills that made overactive children go limp. “I hope your lab equipment is newer than that laptop.”
It was old. Under the bright light of the chandelier he could see a fading sticker for John Kerry, buried underneath a couple of band stickers. His real guests, not the students who were too young, hadn’t voted for Kerry. When a person got into houses like this, no matter what they’d chanted in their youth, most tended to change, as they had too much money. Which was funny because he’d met Lilith at a rally for liberals and he remembered what his own postdoc supervisor had told him at the time: everyone’s a liberal until they buy their first sofa. Students and liberals bought couches. For a moment, through the alcohol fog, he tried to tally how many sofas were in his house, but realized it was futile because there were rooms he’d only been in during the Realtor tour.
He heard Lilith give that girlish laugh, which meant she was now more inclined toward oral sex than evisceration and lamenting, but it was directed at Stephen, whose right arm was angled toward Lilith, under the cover of the table, which helped explain the sudden shift. He realized he’d zoned out, caught again by the golden glow.
Lilith was calling his name and he let the counting and memories go. “Yes, dear Lilith?”
“Are you going to show the rest of us?” Lilith was pointing at the laptop, the charm bracelet that she adorned with a new trinket every year, like a soldier accrued battle ribbons, dangling from her wrist.
Winslow turned the computer so that they could all see why he’d be standing on that dais in Stockholm. Everyone stared back blankly.
“Cool screen saver,” a less-than-quick grad student complimented.
“I can’t believe you got that old screen to be so bright,” another noted, as if that was what he was working on. “Did you figure out how to increase the refresh rate?”
“You fucking idiots,” Winslow said. “Don’t you see? And Lilith, why don’t you just blow Stephen right here under the table?”
The mainframe now glowed. Ivar stared at it, trying to figure out what label he could put on it. He dropped the labeler and hit the enter key for the dampener again and again.
Nothing.
The glow was expanding, covering the entire table.
Even though he had no clue what Doctor Winslow’s experiment was, Ivar had a bad feeling about the golden glow. If he screwed this experiment up, Winslow might derail his PhD.
They’d topped off once from a KC-135 tanker, somewhere over the emptiness of middle Kansas. Eagle had kept the Snake in lockstep with the bigger plane as the boom from the tanker descended in front of them, sucking in the precious fuel.
There was no discussion about who was going to jump first. Roland rigged, as Eagle began a descent when they crossed the Smoky Mountains, down into breathable air, and started depressurizing.
Moms held up an iPad from the copilot seat as Mac passed leg straps between Roland’s massive thighs. “We’ve got it pinpointed from the Japanese and Russians. Outside Chapel Hill.”
Nada took the iPad and passed it back to Roland, who paused in rigging. He checked the Google maps display, searching for landmarks he could reference on the way down. Jordan Lake was a great one for the FRP — far recognition point — that he could spot as soon as he exited the aircraft.
Then he zoomed, searching for an IRP — immediate reference point — to lock down his landing spot. Roland frowned. It looked like the target was inside a compound. “What kind of place is this?” Roland asked. “Some sort of secure research facility?”
“It’s a gated community,” Moms said.
“A what?” Roland asked.
“Bunch of houses surrounded by a fence, with a guard at the gate,” Moms said. “Sort of like Fort Bragg, except it doesn’t have the soldiers or the training areas.”
“It will have a golf course,” Eagle said.
Roland ran his finger over the screen. “It does have a golf course. You could land an entire stick of jumpers from a 141 on it.”
“I want everyone to rig,” Moms said. “We’re all going in via drop, even you, Doc. Mac, set his automatic opening device at one thousand AGL just in case. But please pull earlier, Doc, like you were trained, and follow us down. Eagle, you’re going to Wall the community’s perimeter. Put in probes to block any Firefly from getting out of that place.” She checked the time. “It’s going to be tight, but we can contain this and we have to go in quiet for concealment. Roland, right on the house, top-down, go in fast. HALO,” she added, meaning he would free-fall for most of the drop, then pull at the last minute to keep from crashing through the roof. “The rest of us are going out HAHO, right after you. So you don’t have much time on your recon before we land, because gravity rules.”
“Roger that, Moms.” Roland squatted and cinched his leg straps tight. A loose leg strap on opening shock would be literally ball-busting. Ready, he scooted out of the way as Moms climbed between the seats — careful not to hit any of Eagle’s controls — to join the rest in rigging and then inspecting each other. There were elbows, knees, parachutes, and weapons all over the place, but every member of the team had done in-flight rigging — not approved for amateurs — many times.
Doc looked very unhappy, having been forced to go through parachute training when he became a Nightstalker, but never liking it. Moms never had him jump if she could help it, but this was the exception that made the rule for the training. And it was the price he was willing to pay to be on the inside.
By the time the Snake crossed over the Uwharrie National Forest where several of them had conducted their Robin Sage graduation exercise for the Special Forces Qualification Course, the Nightstalkers were rigged, passing the iPad around, memorizing this unique target.
Winslow wiped the Champers off his face. His guests were making their excuses, scurrying to the door, eager to get away from the coming debacle. He pressed his special card into Mary’s hand and leaned close. “Call my private number in a bit.”
Mary blinked, glanced over her shoulder at his wife, and let the card drop to the floor.
Winslow was impressed. Smarter than she’d appeared. “Winslow.”
Doctor Winslow turned. A colleague, albeit from Duke. “Yes?”
“That isn’t right, is it?” And with that, the colleague was gone with the rest of them.
At first Winslow thought it was about his wife and the Champers and his telling her to go blow Stephen in front of everyone, but then he saw it. The screen of the laptop was going crazy. The gold field was writhing; that was the only way he could describe it.
Well, of course it was, he realized just as quickly.
It was working.
But why weren’t the dampeners kicking in?
“Opening ramp,” Eagle announced.
Roland walked forward, carrying parachute and reserve, a machine gun, a flamer, body armor, ammunition, and a bunch of other gear that added over 160 pounds to his body weight.
“I’m going to give green directly above the LZ,” Eagle said. “So if you don’t pull, you’ll go through the roof, but be on target.”
“Funny guy,” Roland said.
Mac started humming and the team joined in, and then, surprisingly, it was Moms who began chanting: “Roland was a warrior from the land of the Midnight Sun.”
A couple of those in the know joined in.
“With a Thompson gun for hire.”
The ramp cracked open and air swirled in. The rest of the team joined in for the next line.
“Fighting to be done.”