Or was that the flares?
Fuck it. If the chute was screwed up he’d be tear — assing downward. And he didn’t seem to be.
Dixon actually felt himself relax a little. Now that the chute was open, all he had to do was steer to his landing spot.
Which wasn’t necessarily impossible. Hell, all he really had to do was land. Let the commandos worry about finding him.
They would, wouldn’t they?
Dixon reached up for the steering togs in place on the rig above each of his hands. He was so surprised to find them that he pulled down a hell of a lot harder than he intended.
His chute flared, exactly as the tug told it to. Unfortunately, since the still-deploying chute hadn’t had enough time to adequately slow his momentum, and since he was swaying besides, the canopy began to wrap.
Which, in layman’s terms, meant things were starting to get pretty screwed up. Dixon was in danger of becoming a QPO — a quickly plummeting object.
Whether it was the shock of the spin, instinct, or his long-forgotten skydiving lessons, Dixon managed to ease back and open the ram-air chute enough to stabilize. But before he did every muscle in his upper body went ballistic; his arms got more rigid than a corpse’s. There was no way was ever going to steer the rig like that.
He tried relaxing by thinking relaxing thoughts. But all he could think of was how pissed Colonel Knowlington was going to be if he pancaked into the Iraqi countryside.
Somehow, the image of Knowlington’s furling lips relaxed his muscles— or scared them into pliability. Dixon began to feel almost comfortable in his parachute rig, finally confident that he was gliding and not falling. He turned his head to read the night-glo altimeter strapped to his left wrist.
Instead, his attention was grabbed by the dark shadow of a large parachute just beyond his arm, close enough for him to touch.
Dixon held his breath and tried to keep his arms relaxed, worried that anything he did to steer away would only take him closer. He lifted his legs, remembering at the last second to keep them together, so he wouldn’t change his momentum abruptly.
Gradually, the distance between him and the shadow opened. The other parachute slipped three, four, then five yards away, barely visible. It seemed to hang there, as if kept close by magnetic attraction.
Dixon was too damn close for safety in the dark.
On the other hand, it probably meant he wouldn’t be lost when he landed.
Dixon was supposed to yank off his oxygen mask at twelve thousand feet. He looked again at the altimeter, but couldn’t make out the reading. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he could see the dial.
What he could see were green-yellow streaks off to his right.
Pretty things. Delicate and thin, flares in the night.
Tracers.
Guns being fired at someone or something.
Maybe even him.
The colors told him who was firing. NATO guns almost uniformly packed red tracers.
Russian-made weapons carried green.
Green means bad, red means good.
Oh shit.
Actually, it wasn’t that hard to steer the chute, once his arms flexed and he got used to it. And Dixon finally figured he wasn’t going to suffocate if he just went ahead and yanked off the oxygen mask, no matter how high or low he was.
Granted, it was pitch black, he had no idea where the ground might be, and he was colder than an icicle on a polar bear’s nose. But the lieutenant even managed to put a few more yards between him and whoever was piloting the nearby chute, while still staying close enough to make it out in the dark.
All he had to do was land and this nightmare would be over. He finally realized that his altimeter had somehow gotten twisted around on his arm during the jump, and somehow wouldn’t stay put where he could see it without gyrating contortions. But he knew he was getting close to the ground. He figured he’d see something when the time came.
If nothing else, his rucksack— hanging off his rig below his feet— would hit the desert a second or so before him. That was probably all the cue he needed, or wanted.
Dixon knew how to land. That was easy. You relaxed and you walked, as if you were coming off the last step of an escalator.
No, that was the way the pros did it. He was still a newbie. Newbies relaxed and walked and rolled. The roll took all the energy out of the jump. You went down easy so you didn’t break something.
Yeah, right. What about the rucksack tied to his butt? What if it bounced and smacked him in the head?
Serve him right, that.
Dixon looked over and realized that he had lost the other parachute. He saw a much longer shadow, a blanket almost, in its place.
The ground. Must be.
He pushed his left tog down, starting to turn into the wind. Then he realized he’d set it too hard and backed off, but not before his body and the parachute had pitched sharply to the right. Trying to straighten himself out he flared the chute hard, once again hitting the brakes in midair. His legs whipped forward unexpectedly, and he felt like a kid about to fall out of a swing.
Dixon knew that nine-tenths of what he had to do was just relax his arms and shoulders, but his muscles weren’t cooperating. The parachute suddenly seemed to have a mind of its own. His neck felt as if it had a steel boxcar spring wrapped around it.
Somehow he got his arms loose enough to regain some control over the parachute. And then he saw that the sky in front of him wasn’t moving any more.
The ruck hit behind him. His left leg hit the ground. The next thing he knew he was twisting his face in the dirt.
Dixon’s first thought was that he had broken every bone in his body from the neck down.
His next thought was: Hot damn! I made it.
He rolled his legs under him, then released the parachute. He got to his knees and nearly fell over, as dizzy as an out-of-control carousel.
He was still dizzy when a short man with a very large gun materialized directly in front of him. The gun barrel poked into his shoulder.
“Hey, Lieutenant, shit, why didn’t you land into the wind?”
It was Sergeant Winston.
Dixon’s head finally stopped spinning. He stood slowly. His ribs felt crushed but not quite broken. There was a stitch in his lungs, and his left knee felt wobbly, but nothing had been damaged too badly.
“Were you trying to show off?” asked the sergeant.
“Show off?”
“Trying to beat everybody to the ground?”
“No.”
Winston obviously didn’t believe him, and made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Well, you did. And you scored a perfect bull’s-eye. Come on, let’s round up the rest of the team and get our butts in gear,” added the sergeant, helping Dixon pull in his parachute. “I thought I saw something moving on the highway just before we landed.” He shook his head. “Shit. I figured you’d be off a mile at least. Fucking Hog pilots. You probably think jumping out of a plane in the dark’s fun, huh?”
CHAPTER 5
“The kill boxes are here,” Knowlington told Doberman, A-Bomb and Wong, pointing to a map on an easel in Cineplex, Devil Squadron’s multipurpose ready room, hangout space and briefing area. It was called Cineplex because there was a large-screen TV with a satellite hookup on one end, courtesy of Chief Master Sergeant Alan Clyston and his unending supply line.
“You’re pointing at the Euphrates,” said Doberman.
“I know,” said Knowlington.
“Pretty damn far for us to be flying in daylight,” Doberman told him. “Going to drain time on target to nothing. Be there for what, ten minutes, then have to go home?”