He pulled his left wrist in and examined the luminous hands of the wrist altimeter. Three thousand feet still to fall!
How many seconds?
The math was too much. He waited, noting the absence of muzzle flashes. Maybe they had achieved surprise!
Toad’s eyes were slits, staring at the lights rushing up at him. He reached for and grasped the manual ripcord. And waited.
The runways were plainly visible, and the hangar. There was a plane!
How high was he? Still a couple—
The opening of the chute almost tore his boots off.
Toad took off the oxygen mask and threw it away, then began checking his equipment. He still had it. All right! He got the submachine gun unslung and checked the magazine.
Still no muzzle flashes on the airfield directly below. Please God, let them be asleep!
Jack Yocke was chanting again, some mindless sound he repeated over and over as he fell toward the lights on the earth below.
The air was warmer here. In one corner of his mind he took note of that fact, but the flashing, twinkling lights embedded in the velvet, Stygian blackness claimed the rest of his attention. The lights were coming closer, growing larger. He could even hear muffled explosions. They were having a war down there, and he was falling into it at two miles per minute.
He caught himself fumbling for the ripcord. No. No! No!
The lights were rushing toward him now, faster and faster and fast — a tremendous jolt jerked his head up and tore at his crotch.
He yelled. Into the oxygen mask.
And he was hanging by the harness, the fierce wind now a zephyr. He tore at the oxygen mask and succeeded in freeing one side of it.
He was drifting. Where? What was that lighted complex there?
The city! God, he was coming down into the city of Samarra, not the airfield, which was over there to the right. Buildings below, streets…
He pulled on the left side of the parachute risers and felt himself slowly turn in the air. Now he was going toward a street. Good! He looked up, trying to see the parachute. He could just make out its vague, winglike shape. Where are those cords that you use to steer it? He fumbled, trying now to find them. Oh well, he was coming down into that street—
Something tore at his feet and he tumbled forward all in a heap, the wind knocked out of him.
He rolled over on his back, gasping.
Alive! Thank God!
Something tugged at his shoulders. The chute was on the ground, tugging in the gentle breeze. Clumsily he got to his feet and fumbled in the darkness for the Koch fittings that held the parachute on. He got them released. The chute began to move away.
He let it go as he stood there staring all about him at the buildings, the windows, the empty street lit by the occasional streetlight. No one about. No Iraqis, which was wonderful, but no SEALs either.
In the pregnant gloom of an Arab street his euphoria gave way to fear.
He scuttled to the doorway of a building and stood sheltered there, looking and listening as the sounds of battle echoed off the buildings. The swelling, fading, then swelling sound of jet engines set his teeth on edge. His hands were shaking, he realized, and he was biting his lip.
Which way was the airfield?
He had no idea. It had been on his right as he descended but he had hit the street and tumbled and lost all sense of direction, so now he gazed upward at the three- and four-story buildings, trying to decide in which direction the airfield lay as the fear congealed into a lump of ice in his chest.
He found that he had the submachine gun in his hands. The hard coolness of the plastic and metal should have comforted him somewhat, but if it did he didn’t feel the effect.
As he tried to remember what the map had looked like when he studied it several hours ago surrounded by SEALs — in his former life, before he leaped through that extraordinary threshold from the airplane into the void — he drew a total blank. He had absolutely no idea where in the city he was or in which direction the airfield lay.
He stood paralyzed. He was panting and he was desperately afraid, a freezing, numbing fear that left him unable to think, unable to move.
The parachute finally brought him out of it. The white silk had draped itself around a car and fluttered ever so gently in the wind. Anyone looking out a window would see it. Anyone who came along, anyone who—
Jack Yocke stepped from the safety of the doorway and started along the sidewalk. His steps quickened. He ran.
He had gone several blocks and just crossed a fairly wide street at a hell-bent gallop when he heard the truck. The noise of a big engine at full throttle boomed off the buildings and penetrated his fear-soaked brain. He dove into a doorway as a large army truck thundered across the intersection he had just crossed.
Follow it! Yes. It must be going toward the base.
He waited until the engine noise died away, then willed his legs to move.
He was in the middle of the street when a jet streaked overhead just above the housetops — the thunder of its engines arrived all at once and temporarily deafened Yocke. The glass in several windows broke and fell to the sidewalk. The roar faded almost as fast as it came and left a terrifying silence in its wake.
Someone was looking out a window. He caught a glimpse of a face. He kept going. His pace was slower now, more sure. He wiped the sweat from his face with his right hand, then grasped his weapon again. He held it in front of him, ready.
He had walked for five minutes or so when he heard the first rifle shots. Single shots, then the staccato ripping of an automatic weapon. The reports seemed loud.
When Jake Grafton’s chute opened, he bounced once in the harness and breathed a tremendous sigh of relief.
He quickly took off the oxygen mask and grabbed for the steering cords on the parachute risers. He was directly over a big hangar. He didn’t have a lot of options, so he steered for the dark area behind it. He seemed to be covering ground quickly. Going downwind. There was no help for it.
The breeze carried him well clear of the hangar. He tried to make out the terrain where he would be coming down. Vague shapes — was that a truck? Then his feet struck something and he took a vicious rap on the left shin. He smacked into something else, then was on the ground with a thump.
Opening his eyes, he found he was in a parking lot. He had bounced off two trucks before he got to the ground. His shin felt like it was on fire.
He rolled over and tried to get up. His leg took his weight but the pain brought tears into his eyes. Holy—!
He pulled the chute down with the risers. Only then did he unfasten his Koch fittings.
Aagh, his shin! He sat down heavily and felt his left leg. It was swelling rapidly and maybe bleeding, but it didn’t seem to be broken.
He got the goggles off, the helmet off, then donned the infrared night vision goggles. He found the switch and adjusted the sensitivity. After replacing his helmet, he wiggled out of the parachute harness and the unopened backup chute. Now for the silenced submachine gun. He tilted the goggles up and made sure it was loaded, with the safety on.
Massaging his shin, he sat there trying to recall where the truck parking area was on the field.
Yes, the hangar he wanted was that big one he had floated over, that one over there.
Jake Grafton got to his feet and gingerly hobbled to the gate. It wasn’t locked. He stood there scanning with the goggles.
He could see figures moving out beyond the hangars. These blobs of red stayed low, moving swiftly and surely, then stopped to reconnoiter. SEALs! But closer in…there! A sentry by a guard shack, looking out into the darkness. Even as he watched, the sentry contorted and collapsed onto the concrete. Jake scanned. The shooter who had drilled the sentry with a silenced weapon from almost a hundred feet away began to creep along the side of the hangar toward the door.