Andre was paying no attention to the man. He had his own plan. He let a few more inches of rope through his fingers. He was at a forty-five degree angle. He looked up at the turning rotor. Down at the two dangling ropes. Back inside the cabin, the guy who’d been opposite him was unhooking. Another trainee — a woman — was taking the guy’s place at the door. Andre even saw the pilot, twisted around in his seat and looking back at him from undo- his large green helmet and black visor.
The instructor was still yelling. Andre let a few more inches of rope through. His heart was pounding hard. He squinted in the downblast of the rotors, which whirred unseen through the crystal blue sky. When he was reclined almost level with the floor, he realized with a start that he was past the point of no return.
The rope shook. Andre saw the instructor shouting at him. Shooing him away from the aircraft. Across the cabin, he saw the jerky nods of the terrified female soldier as she replied to the shouts of her instructor. She winced at the sound of them as the NCO’s body quaked from its effort.
Andre let a few more inches through his hands… and his feet lost their grip and he fell. He grabbed the ropes hard and stiffened his legs. He stared straight at the wheels — suspended in air. Tentatively he loosed his grip… and down he went. He clamped down again to stop his fall. His rate of descent had been dizzying. He looked back up. His instructor was giving him the thumbs-up sign. The woman’s butt protruded from the opposite door.
Down he went in five- and ten-foot drops. Every gut-wrenching free fall was too fast. Every plummeting descent was stopped by a frantic pinching of the ropes. But by the time he was halfway to the ground it was the easiest thing in the world.
He even hung for a moment — fifty feet below the helicopter, fifty feet above waiting instructors. The helicopter’s engines were still incredibly loud, but it was much more peaceful than the doorway had been. He looked up and saw that the woman was clinging to the rope about even with the wheels.
Andre went on down — a complete master of the process. He even finished with a flourish — zipping the last twenty feet and landing with a springy thud on his feet. He grinned broadly at the instructor.
‘You’re under fire, asshole!’ the man shouted — peppering Andre’s chest with backhanded blows.
Still grinning, Andre acted out his part in the pretend battle. He released the ropes from the ‘D’ ring and ran to the edge of the landing zone. He dropped to the ground, raised his empty M-16, and defended the perimeter. He even lined up an imaginary target — a fire hydrant at the corner of the parking lot
‘You’re under fire, sweetheart!’ Andre heard the instructor shout over the noise from above. He turned to see the female soldier dive to the ground next to Andre with a rustle of fabric from her BDUs. She too raised her rifle to her shoulder. She too had a broad grin on her face.
Andre smiled back. She laughed. ‘That was easy as shit? she said. Andre nodded. ‘Air Assault, buddy!’ she said — raising her hand high to Andre. He slapped it with a flourish — half expecting the instructors to explode in shouts. But the NCOs stood there quietly. They turned their attention to the next to come down.
Major Brian Russell flew the F-117A Nighthawk straight and level. He was ten thousand feet over the sprawling city of Harbin. It was a clear night, but the city lights had been extinguished. But there was no doubt he’d arrived over his target. Global positioning signals were beamed by satellite. They gave him location within five meters of accuracy.
The amber triangle representing his aircraft glowed brightly on his nav/attack screen. It straddled his course line. Up ahead, the line bent. His final turn to target.
Suddenly tracers rose into the air ahead. It took willpower for Russell not to roll the aircraft clear of danger. He stayed the course and watched as balls of fire bloomed in his path.
The Triple A’ — anti-aircraft artillery — was being fired randomly into the night sky from every quarter. They must have heard his twin, non-afterburning turbofans as he passed over the outskirts of the industrial city. But Russell knew there was nothing to gain by giving in to the temptation to maneuver. His course had been carefully plotted. It was along the glowing green line on the screen that he would find the safest route.
But that route took him straight through the bursting clusters. Directly through continually erupting orange fireworks. Criss-crossing his path were streaking white tracers. In between were exploding cannon rounds. Larger artillery rounds burst above and below. It was all fused to different altitudes. All around their exploding centers were jagged spheres of expanding shrapnel.
He had to make a choice. And one thing the F-117A gave you was time to think things over. The indicator on his heads-up display read 460 knots. At such subsonic speeds, there was less reacting and more deliberating. If he’d been flying an F-15E Strike Eagle from his old squadron, he’d have been doing Mach 1.5. That allowed only half the time for decisions — some of them life-or-death. And he’d have been at treetop altitude listening to the blaring tones of threat-warning receivers.
Russell could still hear the radar paints. But their volume had been turned down. They were only a remote threat to the F-117A. Maybe if he passed directly overhead Chinese radar might paint its multi-faceted fuselage, which had a radar cross-section equivalent to a seagull. But even then they couldn’t track him. Nor could their remaining fighter-interceptors. He was practically impossible to kill.
But still guns filled Russell’s windshield with death. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. They must be moving their guns, he thought. Russell’s once clear line of attack had since been filled with several batteries of AAA. The pointed nose led straight into a solid ball of flame.
He knew it was just an illusion. There was nothing solid about the sky in front. It was filled with empty spaces. But he experienced an almost overwhelming desire not to risk it. He was a ‘stick-and-rudder’ man. And it went against every instinct. He could bank clear of the danger and reacquire the target visually. But years of training for just such a mission bound him to the course.
His grip on the stick grew tight as he approached the fireworks. He glanced down again at the screen. The triangle flew straight down the green line. The darkened cockpit lit with strobes of soundless lightning. He looked up through the flat-paned canopy. Tracers rose from the earth all around. Long glowing strings formed a ‘golden BB.’ Russell flew straight into it.
His heart skipped with each burst. He cringed as looping chains of tracers swung by him. The gunners slewed their weapons every which way. They fired with wild abandon. A spotter had presumably heard his engines. They threw a man-made thunderstorm into his path.
He heard nothing but a steady whine and the soft tones of his nav/attack system. They reminded him to begin his descent. To drop to point-blank bombing altitude. Russell cut the throttle and lowered the nose. He made a steady cruising descent while under furious fire from below.
The cockpit was calm. The radio eerily quiet. He was all alone on this mission. Stealth aircraft needed no entourage. No aircraft packages for air defense suppression. No fighter escort. No AWACS controllers with their steady patter of warnings and contacts. Just one plane, one pilot, and two bombs… and a thousand Chinese guns all firing blindly into the air.
Flame shot from the ground to the left of the aircraft. Russell’s heart pounded as the missile rose. Its astonishing speed put it at altitude in three seconds. But it was no more effective than the artillery. The heat-seakers could find no heat. The Nighthawk’s inboard engines, platypus exhausts and twin butterfly tails reduced its infra-red emissions to near zero. Without a target it went ballistic. It kept rising straight as a bullet into the clear night sky. Russell lost interest — noting only the flash thousands of feet overhead.