The interior of the plane had been heavily modified, although the bulk of the cabin was outfitted for passengers. A special bulkhead cut off the main cabin about halfway back. Behind the door was a pressurized cargo compartment where specially sized pallets of equipment could be stored. These were loaded through a special hatchway at the underside of the fuselage. The hatchway could be opened in flight, allowing an automated system to disgorge the pallets at the pilot’s command. Targeted by a GPS system, the pallets were then “flown” to the landing zone either by an onboard steering system or by the copilot, who communicated with them via satellite.
The same hatchway was used by CIA paramilitary officers to make high altitude jumps. Fully deployed, the hatchway sheltered the jumpers from the nasty slipstream encircling the Dreamliner’s body and wings. The ramp and the aircraft had been designed to minimize any radar echoes that might give away the plane’s purpose. If the situation warranted, special parachutes could be used that minimized their signature as well.
The system was not without its limitations. The more gear and people involved in the drop, the harder it was to coordinate and get everyone down in the same place. The crates had to go out first. The jumpers then had only a few seconds to work their way down the ramp and jump. Traveling at 35,000 feet at about 400 knots, with the wind howling around you — it was a lot harder in real life than it sounded during the briefing.
While all four of the new Whiplash team members making the jump were parachute-qualified, only one had used the plane before. That made Hera Scokas the team jumpmaster.
Her role as scold came naturally.
“Yo, get moving,” she barked as the last of the three crates began sliding down the ramp. “Come on, Shugee.”
“My name ain’t ‘Shugee,’ honey,” snapped Clar “Sugar” Keeb, who was going out first. Like Hera, Sugar was a CIA paramilitary officer. A black woman raised in Detroit, she’d served in the Army for eight years before joining the Agency. At five-ten and 200 pounds, she had more than a half foot advantage over Scokas, and would have decked her had she been nearby.
She didn’t mind being called Sugar. Everybody used it. Clar’s nickname had been applied by an aunt because of how sweet she liked to make her Rice Krispies when she was two, and she’d lived with it ever since. Shugee, though, was out of bounds.
Sugar put her gloved hand against her oxygen mask, making sure it was tight. Then she unhooked her safety belt and stepped off the ramp, pushing her body forward to fall in a frog position.
The sky ate her up. Night jumps at 35,000 feet were not Sugar’s idea of fun. The wind seemed to sense that, and crushed the top of her helmet against her head. She slid hard to the left, off-balance. A large arrow appeared in the middle of her visor, pointing to roughly two o’clock.
“Yeah, no kidding,” she mumbled, tilting her body back to get on course.
Ten meters above her, John “Flash” Gordon felt the baloney sandwich he’d eaten just before the flight pushing back up through his esophagus. In the six years he’d been in the Army Special Forces, he’d never had a baloney sandwich. He’d also never eaten before a jump, not since an unfortunate experience during an early qualifying jump, where his stomach had revolted at 7,000 feet.
His change in routine had been as inexplicable as it was unfortunate.
Flash clamped his mouth shut and concentrated on the arrow in his helmet. He was right on course.
Hera, meanwhile, was in the plane, waiting for the fourth member of the team to unhook his safety harness so she could jump after him.
The man she was waiting for, Carl McGowan, was experiencing one of the downsides of the safety strap — the snap on the hook was difficult to manipulate while wearing gloves.
“Yo, Tailgunner, we jumping today? Or next week?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep your bra on,” muttered McGowan.
The lever finally gave way. McGowan pushed off the side and took a running leap down the ramp, flying forward into the air as if he were diving into a pool.
As he fell away from the plane, it occurred to him that he would much prefer that Hera took her bra off. She had an A-1 body, even if she was meaner than the bastards who’d worked him through SEAL Hell Week a decade and a half before.
Down on the ground, Boston scanned the desert with his night glasses, making sure that neither Red Henri nor any of his competitors were approaching. A CIA Global Hawk had been detailed into the area for the night, but he trusted his own eyes more than any high-tech sensor. The fact that he was using a high-tech sensor to greatly magnify what his eyes could see didn’t change his opinion.
Danny checked his watch. The Voice had announced the launching of each crate and Whiplash crew member, along with its estimated time of landing. If he wanted, he could listen to updates on where each was going to land. But he didn’t feel much like listening to a play-by-play, so he told the Voice to alert him only if any of the jumpers or crates was going off course by more than twenty-five yards.
Fifty years before, falling within twenty-five yards of a target would have been considered a reasonable performance, perhaps even an outstanding one. World War II paratroopers struggled with barely steerable parachutes and air crews who often found themselves navigating mostly by instinct. Now the technology was so advanced that packages could be practically delivered to a front door.
Not that skill and human error were completely removed from the equation. The team members had hit a heavy crosswind after deploying their chutes, and struggled to remain on course as they dropped over the last 5,000 feet. Danny, monitoring the team communications channel through the Voice, heard the jumpers cursing and complaining as they coped with the wind. Even with the night vision screens built into their jump helmets, the darkness hampered their depth perception.
“Sounds like they’ve been working together for a while,” he told Boston.
The first cargo chute came down about five yards off target, its winglike canopy making a loud hush as it fell. The second and third hit precisely on their crosshairs, each twelve and a half yards progressively north, each thumping against their protective bottoms with a satisfying cru-ump.
Then came the team members.
Sugar hit first, landing about five yards to the east of her target. Then came Flash, who hit exactly on his target mark, and within.03 seconds of the computed time for landing originally calculated when he left the plane. McGowan came down twenty-two yards from his target, directly due north of Hera’s landing spot. This meant Hera had to steer away to avoid a collision. Her corrections sent her roughly fifty yards off the mark, making her jump the worst of the group.
“Hey jumpmaster,” said Sugar, “looks like you kinda missed, huh?”
“Whoa,” said Flash. “You ain’t telling me the jumpmaster with, like, five hundred years of experience, blew her jump so badly she just about landed in the Atlantic.”
“All right, let’s get moving,” barked Boston. “We have to get these crates unwrapped and packed into the bus.”
Hera folded her parachute, angry but knowing that explaining why she’d had to go so far off course was only going to bring greater derision.
The crates were designed to be broken down quickly. Still, it took over three hours for the team to get everything onto the bus. They fashioned a rack out of the cargo containers for the roof, giving Abul fits as he worried about the lines breaking the frames on the bus’s windows.
“I don’t think the motorcycle will fit in the bus,” said Boston as they finished. “Maybe we should drive it back.”