The plane was making about 320 miles an hour, after a government Lear jet had zoomed them from Andrews to Mountain Home in less than five hours, during which time he and Bonson had been on the radio with various experts trying to work out the details.
They landed at Mountain Home and were airborne again in ten minutes.
Bob checked his electronics and other gear, all secured in a jump bag that was tethered to his ankle. In it, a cold-weather arctic-pattern camouflaged Gore-Tex parka and leggings had been folded. He also had a new Motorola radio, MTX-810 Dual Mode portable, with microprocessor and digitized, a tenth the weight of the old PRC-77 and with three times the range, which would keep him in contact with a network; it was linked to his belt, and secured to his head by a throat mike, sound-sensitive, so all he had to do was talk and he was on the net. He also had a Magellan uplink device to read the Global Positioning System satellites, which orbited overhead broadcasting a mesh of ultra-accurate signals, similarly digitized and microprocessor-driven, which could enable him to chart his position in milliseconds if he should wander off track. He had night-vision gear, the latest things; M912A night-vision goggles from Litton with two 18mm Gen II Plus image-intensifier assemblies, which provided three times the system gain of the standard AN/PVS-5A.
He had a Beretta 92 in a shoulder holster under his left arm, a 9mm mouse gun shooting a lot (sixteen) of little cartridges not worth a damn, but nobody had .45s anymore, goddamn their souls.
And he had a rifle.
Taken from the Agency’s sterile weapons inventory, it appeared to be some Third World assassination kit of which the rifle was but one part. The rifle lay encased in a foam-lined aluminum case, the Remington M40A1, Marine-issue, in .308, with its fiberglass stock, its free-floated barrel, its Unertl 10X scope. It would shoot an inch at one hundred yards, no problem; and two boxes of Federal Premium 168-grain MatchKing boattailed hollowpoints.
He’d examined it closely and saw that the proprietary shooter had taped a legend to the butt stock.
“Zeroed at 100 Yards,” it said. And under that: “200 yards: 9 klicks up; 300 yards: 12 klicks up; 400 yards: 35 klicks up; 500 yards: 53 klicks up.”
“Okay,” said Bonson, leaning close, “let’s check commo.”
“Just a goddamn second,” said Bob, trying to guess the range he’d be shooting at.
What the fuck, he thought, and started clicking, fifty-three times.
“Come on, let’s check commo,” said Bonson again. Clearly the tools of the trade at this basic level did not much interest Bonson; they may even have frightened him. But there were other devices cut into the padded foam of the case; one was an SOG knife in a kydex sheath, a dark and deadly thing; another was leather-encased sap, just the thing for thumping sentries as you got to your hide; and still another, so discreet in its green canvas M7 bandoleer and therefore complete with firing device and wiring, was the M18A1 anti-personnel mine known as the Claymore, so familiar from Vietnam and just the thing for flank security on some kind of assassination mission outside Djakarta.
He had a moment when he wondered if he should have junked all this shit, but as it was all going into the parapack, and would be tethered to his leg, he decided not to worry about it. He locked the case up.
“Come on,” said Bonson for a third time, “let’s check commo.”
“We just checked commo.”
“Yeah, I’m nervous. You okay?”
“I’m fine, Commander.”
“Okay, I’m going to run up to the cockpit and check with the pilots.”
“Got you.”
He turned and walked up the big ship’s dark bay to the cabin, cracked a door and leaned in.
Back here it was dark, with a few red safety lamps lit, and the subtle roar of the big engines chewing through air on the other side of the fuselage. It felt very World War II, very we-jump-tonight, strangely melodramatic.
Here I am again, he thought.
Here I go. Face some other motherfucker with a rifle. Been here before.
But he did not feel lucky tonight. He felt scared, tense, rattled, keeping it hidden only because poor Bonson was so much more rattled.
He looked at the end of the bay, where the big ramp was cranked up. In a few minutes, it would yawn open into a platform and he would get a signal and he would step out, and gravity would take him. He’d fall for two minutes. Maybe the chute would work and maybe it wouldn’t. He wouldn’t know until it happened.
He tried to exile his feelings. If you get mad, you get excited, you get careless, you get dead. Don’t think about all that shit. You just do what has to be done, calmly, professionally, with a commitment to mission and survival. Don’t think about the other man. It’s what has to be done. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
He tried not to think of Julie or of the man who’d come across time and space to kill her for what she didn’t even know she knew. He tried not to think of his ancient enemy and all the things that had been taken from him by the man. He tried not to think of larger meanings, of the geopolitics of it all, of the systems opposed to each other, and himself and the other, as mere surrogates. He exiled all that.
“Sarge?”
He turned; it was a young air crewman, a tech sarge who looked about fifteen.
“Yeah?”
“You got your parachute on upside down.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Bob.
“You haven’t been to jump school, have you?”
“Saw a guy parachute in a movie once. Ain’t it the same thing?”
The kid smiled.
“Not quite. Here, let me help you.”
It took just a few seconds for the young NCO to have him geared up correctly.
Yeah, that made sense. It felt much better; now it fit right, it was okay.
“You need oxygen, too, you know. There’s no air to breathe this high.”
“Yeah, they told me.”
The kid had a helmet for him, a jet pilot thing with a plastic face shield, an oxygen mask and a small green tank. The tank was yet another weight on the belt over his jumpsuit, and the tube ran up to the helmet, which fit close around his skull and supported it in plastic webbing.
“I feel like a goddamned astronaut,” Swagger said.
It was nearly time.
Bonson came back.
Behind them, with a shriek of frigid wind, the ramp door of the Hercules opened. It settled downward with an electrical grind, and outside the dark sky swirled by.
Bonson hooked himself up to a guy wire so he wouldn’t be sucked out. The tech sarge gave Bob a last go-round, pronounced him fit and wished him well. With the ramp down, there was no oxygen and so they were all on oxygen. He felt the gush of air into his lungs from the clammy rubber mask around his mouth, under the face plate. He tasted rubber.
Bob and Bonson edged down the walkway to the yawning rear of the aircraft. The wind rose, howled and buffeted them; the temperature dropped. Bob felt the straps of the chute, the weight of the jump bag tethered to his ankle, the warmth of the jump helmet. Outside he could see nothingness with a sense of commotion.
“You cool?” said Bonson over the radio.