“… You could freeze to death,” Joe continued, ignoring him. “You could be unable to release the cover or pop your chute. Your feet could get stuck. The airfoils could fail to open correctly.”
Kurt climbed over the rail and into the torpedo-shaped glider, giving up on stopping Joe.
“What about you?” he asked. “You have to stay on this contraption. Did you see the corrosion near the wing root? Did you see that smoke pouring from the number three engine when they all were fired up? I can’t believe this old bird even got up into the air.”
“All part of the Aeroflot experience,” Joe insisted. “Not that I wouldn’t rather be flying American-made, but I think she’s safer than what you’re about to do.”
Kurt wanted to disagree, but he couldn’t. In truth, he believed the transport was safe, even if it shook and rattled and whined like a banshee. But if Joe was going to make him sweat, he was going to return the favor.
“And don’t forget the pilots,” Kurt added. “I think I saw them doing shots of sake kamikaze style right before we took off.”
Joe laughed. “Yeah, in your honor, amigo.”
A yellow light came on. One minute to the jump site.
Kurt locked his feet in, lay down flat, and switched on the video display. As it initialized, he gave the thumbs-up to Joe, who snapped the thin cowling over Kurt’s back, covering him and his specially designed parachute.
A second yellow light came on, and a red light began to flash. Thirty seconds.
Joe moved back out of Kurt’s view and toward the launch control.
A few seconds later Kurt heard Joe counting down— “Tres… Dos… Uno”—and then with great enthusiasm, “¡Vámonos, mi amigo!”
Kurt felt the glider accelerate backward as a powered conveyer belt sped him toward the back end of the plane. And then he dropped, and was slammed back even harder as the torpedo-shaped glider hit the 500-knot airstream.
Seconds later, a tiny drogue chute deployed behind the glider, and the g-forces from the deceleration hit Kurt as hard as a launch from a carrier deck, but in the opposite way.
The restraint harness crushed Kurt’s shoulders as he slid forward. His arms bent, and his hands bore the rest of his weight, and all the while his eyes felt like they might pop out of his head.
It went like that for a good ten seconds before the deceleration slowed.
Once he got his body stabilized, Kurt scanned the heads-up display. “Four hundred,” Kurt called out to no one but himself. A few seconds later, “Three-fifty…”
The glider slowed and dropped, heading toward the waters of the central Atlantic like a giant artillery shell or a manned bomb. Finally, as the speed dropped below 210 knots, Kurt released the chute.
It broke away with a resounding clang, and the descent went from a shaky violent ride to an unnervingly smooth one. The whistling wind was almost completely blocked out by his helmet, and the buffeting was all but gone.
A moment later, as the airspeed hit 190, a pair of stubby wings extended, forced outward by a powered screw jack.
This was the most dangerous moment of the flight, in Kurt’s mind. Prototypes had been lost when the wings did not extend evenly, causing the glider to spin out of control and break apart.
True, he still had a parachute on if that happened, but there was no telling what it might do to his body if the vehicle began to spin out of control or came apart in midair at nearly 200 knots.
The wings locked into place, accompanied by tremendous pressure on Kurt’s chest and stomach, as the glider developed lift and transformed itself from a manned missile on a downward-sloping trajectory to an aircraft pulling up and then flying almost straight and level.
Once Kurt had control, he decided to test the wings to make sure all was working well. He banked right and then left. He put the glider back into a dive and then leveled off, and used its momentum to enter a climb.
All systems were go, and despite the danger ahead and all Joe’s pessimism, Kurt could not remember feeling such exhilaration. It was the closest thing he could imagine to being granted the power of flight, like a great bird.
The little glider responded instantly to his touch, and he found he could turn it by using his weight and leaning this way or that like a motorcyclist racing along an open road.
All was dark around him, save the dim illumination of the heads-up display and the pinpoint lights of the stars.
As he maneuvered, he almost wished it was daylight, to enhance the sensation, but to reach the Onyxunnoticed required a night approach. Recreation would have to wait for another day.
Done playing around, Kurt set himself on course, adjusted the glide slope, and settled in. He was at twenty-seven thousand feet, losing five hundred feet per minute, and cruising at 120 knots. According to the target icon, the Onyxwas seventy miles away.
51
KATARINA LUSKAYA SAT in a chair in a small cabin on the lower level of the accommodations block of the Onyx. She could only guess at the time, but it seemed like evening. It didn’t matter. The light never changed in her windowless cabin.
She tried to stretch but couldn’t. Her hands were tied and her feet shackled. She’d only been given a minimal amount to eat or drink for the past five days.
As she tried unsuccessfully to rest, the cabin door opened. Andras came in. He was alone. He’d come every day, her only visitor, always to regale her with bad news.
The other scientists were gone, dumped in a foreign country and made slaves. She remained here because he wanted her there, but he could change his mind. No one was looking for her, he insisted. He’d told everyone she was dead.
And so it went, every day. At no time did he mention his plans for her, but from the way he leered and almost drooled she doubted they were anything less than horrible.
Normally, she greeted him with absolute silence, refusing to talk or answer questions. The day before that had ended with a slap across the face and his removal of the water bottle she’d been given. Her throat was so parched now, her mouth devoid of saliva, she didn’t know if she even could speak.
Andras stood across from her, carrying a new bottle of water with him, and she found herself staring at it. He set it down just out of her reach, much like the knife with the key tied to it that he’d offered to Kurt.
“Visiting hours already?” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Ah,” he said. “At last the caged bird sings.”
Defiance and silence had done nothing for her. She decided to be more aggressive. “You’ll be the one in the cage soon. If someone doesn’t kill you. The Americans might be interested in arresting you, but my country has a different way of dealing with aggression. We like to teach people lessons.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I’m well aware of that. You are still clinging to the notion that you are a great power. Like a child with bad self-esteem, you resort to bullying in hopes of proving your strength.”
Some of what he said was true. “It doesn’t make you any safer,” she said. “Your people killed Major Komarov, that was one strike. Taking me will be the second. They will have no choice but to cut you to pieces or look weak, whatever you do with me.”
He almost seemed moved. “Interesting that you use the word choice,” he said, pulling up a chair, spinning it around, and taking a seat, “because we all have choices to make.”
He grabbed the water bottle, twisted the top off, and took a sip. Then he put it back down, once again just out of her reach. He leaned toward her, his arms resting on the chair’s back, his face uncomfortably close.
“Your friend Austin, for instance,” he said. “I gave him a choice. He could choose to save himself or he could choose to die with his friend. I offer you the same choice. Live and prosper or die with those who are about to suffer.”