closer to the drop zone.
In theory.
In reality, he was an equipment-laden commando who, beneath his flight suit, had
forty pounds of gear hooked to his combat vest. In reality, he was a
forty-nine-year-old man whose joints were stiffening in the subzero air that
blasted its way through his flight suit. A max track required him to maintain
perfect form, and it was not clear how long his skeletal muscles would permit
him to do so.
In reality, every glimpse he took at his altimeter and GPS unit violated that
perfect form he was depending on. And yet without them he was truly flying
blind.
He cleared his mind, swept from it all anxieties; for the time being, he would
have to be a machine, an automaton, devoted to nothing other than the execution
of a flight trajectory.
He stole another glance at his wrist-worn instruments.
He was heading off course, he saw from the blinking of the GPS device. How far
off course? Four degrees, maybe five. He angled both hands in parallel, at
forty-five degrees, slightly deforming the cushion of air that surrounded him,
and was rewarded with a slow turn.
The GPS device stopped blinking, and he felt suffused with a heedless,
unthinking sense of hope.
He was tracking, soaring through the inky skies, an air cushion conserving his
altitude as he tracked toward his destination. He was black, the sky was black,
he was at one with the currents. The wind was in his face, but it was also
keeping him aloft, like the hand of an angel. He was alive.
A vibration at his wrist. The altimeter alarm.
A warning that he was reaching the vertical point of no return—the height below
which the only sure thing was death on impact. The manuals put it in less
dramatic words: they referred to the “minimum altitude for parachute
deployment.” A high-altitude, low-opening jump established only the rough
parameters: if the opening was too low, the ground would hit him like a
tractor-trailer in the passing lane of the autobahn.
And yet he was farther away from the DZ than he’d planned to be at this point.
He had imagined that he would be in the immediate vicinity of the compound when
he opened the chute. For one thing, the difficulties in maneuvering amid
shifting currents were immensely greater with an open canopy. For another,
slowly drifting downward over the Stone Palace brought with it a greater danger
of detection. A man plummeting at 160 miles per hour was harder to see than a
man slowly drifting beneath a large rectangular parachute.
There were risks either way. He had to make a decision. Now.
He craned his head around, trying to see something, anything, in the thick
blackness. What he felt was, in free flight, an entirely unaccustomed sensation:
claustrophobia.
And that decided him: there would be fog. He and his black canopy would not
stand out against the starless night. He arched himself into a vertical
position, reached for the rip-cord handle, and tugged. There was a brief flutter
as the tightly packed chute spread itself in the air and the lines stretched out
fully. He felt the familiar jolt, the sense of being gripped at his shoulders
and seat. And the noise of the wind ceased, as if a mute button had been
pressed.
He tossed the rip-cord handle away and peered up to make sure the black nylon
canopy was properly flared. He himself had a difficult time making out its
outlines in the night sky, just fifteen feet above him. On another occasion,
that might have been unsettling; tonight it was reassuring.
Abruptly, he felt himself pushed sideways by another gusting crosscurrent, and
there was something almost corporeal about the sensation, as though he were
being tackled. He would have to control the rig carefully; if he oversteered, it
would be nearly impossible to return to the DZ. He was also acutely conscious of
the trade-off between steering and speed: the canopy was at its top forward
speed when the steering lines were up all the way and undeployed.
Now his GPS indicator showed that he had drifted significantly off course.
Oh Christ, no!
Even as he floundered in the turbulent air, he as well as Katsaris knew that
what lay ahead would be even more difficult: they would have to make a silent,
unobserved landing in an enclosed courtyard. An error made by either of them
would imperil them both. And even if they executed their task flawlessly, any
one of a thousand unpredictable complications could be lethal. If a soldier
happened to be in the vicinity of the central courtyard—and no law ordained
otherwise—they would be dead. The mission would be aborted. And, in all
likelihood, the object of the mission would be summarily killed. That much was
standard operating procedure for their terrorist friends. One responded to an
in-progress rescue mission by destroying the object of rescue—posthaste.
Now he pulled his right steering line down far and fast. He would need to make a
fast turn, before another gust sent him beyond the point of recovery. The effect
of the pull was almost instantaneous: he found himself swinging out from under
the canopy, arcing wildly. And the large, round altimeter told him what he could
feel: that his speed of descent had just increased considerably.
Not good. He was closer to the ground than he should be. Still, he had to assume
that he had returned to the proper angle of flight, and he raised the steering
lines again, allowing the canopy to yawn out to its full 250 square feet and
maximize its vertical drag. He was adept at maneuvering around wind cones, but
the very unpredictability of the air currents made ordinary calculations
irrelevant. All he knew was that he was off the wind line; crabbing across it
was the only way to return to it. As he had done hundreds of times before, he
fidgeted with the toggles to establish the direction of the prevalent winds;
finally, he found that he was able to make gentle S-turns astride the wind line,
holding and running every time he drifted off it. The process required complete
concentration, especially because the sea was sending up thermals at random, or
so it seemed. The Anuran sky was like a horse that did not want to be broken.
His pulse quickened. Like the mast of a ghost ship, battlements and embrasures
were becoming visible through the fog, the ancient white limestone reflecting
the faintest light seeping through the cloud cover. The vista came as something
of a shock; it was the first thing he had seen since the jump. Quickly, he cast
off his gloves and flight cap. Now he mentally rehearsed the landing maneuver.
Crosswind leg. Downwind leg. Base leg. Final approach.
To minimize landing velocity, it was crucial to approach the destination from
upwind. The crosswind jaunt took him a thousand feet to the right. Then he
drifted downwind for another five hundred feet, deliberately overshooting the
target. He would be traveling 250 feet into the wind for the final approach. It
was an elaborate but necessary maneuver. He could slow his forward movement by
pulling in the corners of the canopy with both toggles, but the effect would be
to increase his rate of descent to an unacceptable speed. He would therefore
have to rely upon the wind itself to reduce his horizontal velocity.
He prayed that no sudden turn would be necessary to position himself over the
central region of the courtyard, for a fast turn, too, would dangerously hasten
his descent. The last fifteen seconds had to be perfect. There was no margin for
error; the compound’s high walls’ made a low, shallow approach impossible.
He was suddenly aware how hot and moist the air was—it was as if he had moved
from a meat locker into a steam bath. Water was actually condensing on his
chilly extremities. His fingers were wet as he reached for the toggles, and he
felt a pang of adrenaline; he could not afford for them to slip.
With the toggles fully up and the canopy therefore fully extended, he glided
toward the center of the courtyard, which was visible to him only as a play of
black hues. As soon as his hands were free, he deactivated his wrist
instruments, lest their glow give his presence away.
His heart started to beat hard: he was almost there—if he could only manage,
with his wet, slick fingers, the final landing fall.
Choosing the right second was crucial. Now? His boots were fifteen feet above
the ground; he could tell because the ground and the canopy seemed just about
the same distance from him. No. Even within the walls of the compound, the gusts
were too unpredictable. He would wait until he was half that distance from the
ground.
Now.
He brought both toggles down to shoulder level, and then, in one fluid motion,