The loadmaster leaned over Turcotte’s shoulder and stuck an index finger in his face. Turcotte looked at the team and screamed: “One minute!”
“Hang tough,” Turcotte yelled in Nabinger’s ear. “We’re almost there.”
Ten seconds later Turcotte felt his knees buckle as the plane rapidly climbed the two hundred and fifty feet up to the minimum safe drop altitude. The noise level increased abruptly as a crack appeared in the ramp and grew larger as the gaping mouth drew wide open. As the ramp leveled off open, Turcotte stared out into the dark night. The wind was swirling through the back of the plane, the sound layered on top of the roar of the engines.
Turcotte got to his knees. Grabbing the hydraulic arm on the left side of the ramp, he peered around the edge of the aircraft looking forward, blinking in the fierce wind. It took a few seconds to get oriented, but there it was in the moonlight. Only about twenty seconds away a lake loomed. It had the right shape. He could see a large mountain, it had to be the Qian-Ling, to the left of the lake. Despite himself Turcotte was impressed. Over four hours of low-level flying and they were right on target.
Turcotte stood up and yelled over his shoulder as he shuffled out to within three feet of the edge of the ramp. “Stand by!” He made sure Nabinger was right behind him. He could see that the professor’s eyes were wide open.
Turcotte stared at the red light burning above the top of the ramp. Now that he knew that they were on track for the right drop zone, as soon as the light turned green they’d go.
Turcotte edged a few inches closer to the edge. Looking down he could see the leading shore of the lake below.
The green light flashed.
Turcotte yelled “GO!” over his shoulder and was gone.
The team moved forward. Nabinger hesitated but the pressure of the six men behind him tumbled him off the edge into the swirling air.
Jumping at five hundred feet left little time for anything other than landing. Turcotte was only two hundred and fifty feet above the water of the lake when his main parachute finished deploying. He checked for Nabinger but the impact of the water quickly regained his attention as he went under. The natural buoyancy of the air trapped under his dry suit popped him back to the surface after a brief dunking.
The parachute settled into the water away from him where the wind had blown it. As the pull of his two weight belts tried to draw him back under, Turcotte quickly pulled his fins out from under his waistband and put them on to tread water. Rapidly he worked on getting out of the parachute harness. Unhooking his leg straps, he then pulled the quick release on his waistband. He pulled out the parachute kit bag that had been folded flat under those straps and held on to it while he shrugged out of the shoulder straps.
With the harness off Turcotte pulled in on the lines to his parachute. Holding one handle of the kit bag with his teeth, he used his hands to stuff large bellows of wet parachute into the bag. After a minute of struggling Turcotte succeeded in getting the chute inside and the kit bag snapped shut. Turcotte took off the second weight belt he wore and, attaching it to the handles of the kit bag, let it go. The water-logged chute and kit bag disappeared into the dark depths.
Allowing his rucksack to drag behind him on a short five-foot line, Turcotte turned to swim in the direction he believed the aircraft had been heading, where Nabinger should be. As he lay on his back and started finning, he checked his wrist compass to confirm the direction, straight along the azimuth the aircraft had flown over the DZ. Soon he heard muffled splashing ahead, which verified that he was heading in the right direction.
When Nabinger popped to the surface after landing, he found his parachute descending on top of him and covering him in the water. The two weight belts he wore gave him an almost neutral buoyancy, and without his fins on, he found it difficult to keep his head above water as the nylon of his parachute descended around him. When Nabinger reached up with his arms to push the nylon away so he could breathe, the movement caused his head to slip underwater. With the chute bearing down on him, Nabinger quickly panicked.
Two feet below the surface of the water he was momentarily trapped. In his fear Nabinger started struggling that much harder and got himself more entangled. He stroked vigorously and broke surface underneath the canopy. Taking a gulp of air, Nabinger sank back underwater and wrestled with his parachute, which was becoming waterlogged. Nabinger remembered Turcotte had told him that a parachute would stay afloat for only about ten minutes before becoming completely soaked and sinking. He estimated he had been in the water over five minutes now, using only his one free leg to get him to the surface to grab quick breaths.
Nabinger was tiring and the chute was starting to press down on him like a cold, wet blanket.
Turcotte saw the blue chem light come on ahead. It was then that he came across Nabinger desperately treading water in the middle of a half-submerged parachute. Turcotte grabbed the apex of the chute and pulled it off the professor.
Nabinger spit a mouthful of water out. “I’m never doing that again!”
“Can you make it to shore?” Turcotte asked.
“Hell, yes,” Nabinger said.
“Drop your weight belts and hang on to me. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna leave you. We got plenty of time.”
Turcotte hooked himself to Nabinger with his buddy line. Together they swam toward the blue chem light.
When Turcotte arrived at Harker’s position he found the entire team accounted for. They quickly swam for the nearby shore, the bulk of Qian-Ling rising up in the sky ahead of them, a darker form against the night sky. After only a minute of swimming the team got to where the bottom came up to meet them. They quickly discovered that the shore was not solid, as the lake melted into a bamboo swamp. They stood up and trudged through the swamp for two hundred meters until they hit a patch of firm ground. The men then formed a circular perimeter. One man started taking his dry suit off while the other readied his weapon and provided security. Turcotte helped Nabinger with his gear, peeling off the dry suit, knowing that time was of the essence.
“Let’s go.” Harker gave hand and arm signals and the team fanned out, moving forward, sliding night vision goggles over their eyes. Turcotte slid his own pair down and turned them on. The night gave way to a bright green field of vision. He helped Nabinger adjust his set and then they quickly followed the team.
“Stay right with me,” he whispered to the professor.
CHAPTER 22
Che Lu could see nothing. It was pitch black, even right next to the shaft to the outside world. She could hear a few snores and the nervous fidgeting of others who were too wound up to sleep. She could feel the hard stone floor under her as she lay on her side, her eyes open to the darkness. She’d slept under worse conditions but she’d been younger then. Now it was just uncomfortable and irritating.
The Russians had pointed their small satellite dish directly up the shaft and sent out a message earlier. Kostanov had explained to her that they could send, but they would not get a reply for a while according to some sort of schedule he had, and he wasn’t even sure if they could pick up a reply through the narrow opening.
She didn’t know how much good that would do. She doubted that the Russians would be so flagrant as to send in a force to rescue Kostanov and his men now that the PLA knew they were in here and were waiting outside. She also wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having Russians inside the tomb or even outside of it.