“Good. Time to fire?”
Tereshkova went to work on the keyboard. “Three minutes, ten seconds.”
Strakelov secured himself to his seat and reached for the radio.
“Baikonur Control, Mir complex.”
“Go ahead, Nikolai. You are coming through clear.”
“Less than three minutes to ignition. Using vernier rockets to rotate complex one hundred eighty degrees.”
“Rotation confirmed, Nikolai.”
Strakelov used Mir’s small vernier rockets to rotate the complex gently so that Progress VII’s engine faced forward. The original intent of Progress VII’s engine was to boost Mir into a higher, more stable orbit, but due to the change of plans, the same engine was going to be used to get the space station down to a lower orbit.
Strakelov completed the maneuver and fired the verniers in the opposite direction to stop the rotation.
“Rotation complete. One minute to ignition. Current orbit three hundred thirty kilometers. Target orbit two hundred thirty-three kilometers. One-minute burn for initial slow-down. Seven hours, twenty minutes for second ignition. Estimated five ignitions for a total of three minutes. Thirty-five seconds to ignition of Progress VII’s main engine.”
“Acknowledged, Nikolai.”
Strakelov turned to Tereshkova. She kept her pressurized pen hanging off the side of her mouth as she quickly typed commands for a last-second check prior to ignition. She placed the keyboard onto the Velcro patch on the console in front of her, removed the pen from her mouth, placed it in a sidearm pocket, and then shifted her gaze toward Strakelov.
“All systems nominal.”
Strakelov nodded. “Ten seconds to ignition, six… five… four… three… two…” He reached for the ignitions button. “Ignition started!”
Progress VII’s engine kicked to life, providing nearly thirty thousand pounds of thrust, rapidly decelerating Mir. Since they faced the front of the complex, both jerked forward against their restraining harness as their bodies were exposed to a force of two Gs.
“Twenty seconds. Speed reduced to thirty-three thousand one hundred kilometers per hour. Orbital altitude three hundred eighteen kilometers,” Tereshkova read from the computer display.
Strakelov kept his eyes on the digital counter in front of him while his finger lightly pressed the engine shut-off button.
“One minute burn completed. All systems nominal. Speed thirty-one thousand. Will achieve stable orbit of two hundred eighty-nine kilometers in seven hours. Second burn in seven hours, eighteen minutes.”
“Excellent, Nikolai. The spirit of the Rodinalives in your flying and that of your flight engineer.”
Strakelov smiled and looked at Tereshkova. She was smiling, too. The smile quickly vanished from her face as his own face hardened at the thought of Lightning’s crew slowly asphyxiating in their vessel. Up here there are no countries, Strakelov reflected. It didn’t matter whether one was called an astronaut or a cosmonaut; in Strakelov’s mind they were all human beings living in outer space. They belonged to the same race, the human race. National boundaries were insignificant, or at least so it seemed while Strakelov cruised at thousands of kilometers per hour over a fragile-looking Earth. Earth was simply Earth, and not a conglomerate of countries trying to coexist. Strakelov had a new mission. A rescue mission. He was determined to succeed, but then again, he thought, he had never failed at anything he had attempted to do in his life.
The paratrooper door of the C-141 StarLifter opened and the sound that followed was intimidating. The powerful thunder of the four Pratt & Whitney turbofans, unleashing nearly twenty thousand pounds of thrust each, rumbled through the cargo area, deafening Ortiz and the rest of Mambo. As soon as the paratrooper door opened, the rear cargo door lowered. Each man now kept his right hand firmly gripping one of numerous handholds built in on the side walls. Ortiz was second in line right behind Zimmer.
He squinted as the setting sun made its way past the huge opening in the aft fuselage under the tail section. He could feel the vibrations induced by the increased drag from the lowered cargo door. It made the aluminum-framed floor tremble.
Ortiz felt the adrenaline kick in as he stared at the red light over the paratrooper door. Although he had over one hundred jumps to his credit, it never got any easier. The risk of a tangled parachute was always present. He placed his hand over the reserve chute strapped to his stomach, his only insurance should the main canopy fail to deploy.
As before every jump, memories from his first jump vividly flashed in front of Ortiz’s eyes. That first jump had come after spending two weeks performing simulated jumps from a seventy-foot-high tower. After getting the essentials down, the real thing came. Ortiz and a group of rookies jumped from an altitude of nine hundred feet. Their parachutes were automatically opened by a static line fixed to the aircraft. That first jump had not been as terrifying as his second. After that initial jump, Ortiz knew exactly what he was going to experience, including urine-drenched fatigues by the time he reached the ground. It took a lot of nerve and almost a kick to the rear for him to jump again after that terrorizing first time. After that it got a little easier, Ortiz thought as the light above the door turned yellow.
“All right. It’s time!” Ortiz heard Siegel scream over the noise from the wind and the engines.
With time Ortiz’s confidence had slowly built up until he joined the ranks of the free-fall parachutist, a separate tribe within the Special Forces.
Zimmer turned around and smiled. “See ya down there, Tito!” Ortiz put on the goggles that hung loose from his neck. He was ready.
The light turned green.
“Go, go, go!”
Ortiz watched Zimmer rush out through the door. He inhaled, made the sign of the cross as his feet left the aluminum floor, and jumped into the abyss.
He felt the initial windblast as he extended his arms and legs in classic free-falling position. His Colt Commando submachine gun was safely strapped along the left side. Zimmer, roughly twenty feet ahead of him, moved toward The Bundle — the five-hundred-pound supply container that had slid off the rear cargo door. They would get close to The Bundle, but not too close. An aerodynamically unpredictable beast, The Bundle could easily make a U-turn and rush back at them across the sky. Ortiz moved his right arm inward while keeping his left extended. That had the effect of slowly moving him to the right. He eyed the small altimeter mounted over the reserve chute.
Thirteen thousand feet.
He checked the chronometer on his watch. Eleven seconds had elapsed since he’d jumped off the StarLifter. He had dropped two thousand feet in eleven seconds. Right on the money, Ortiz thought, as he plummeted at a rate of 125 miles per hour, or 183 feet per second.
Zimmer got within a hundred or so feet of The Bundle and arched his upper body to stop his momentum and maintain the safe distance. Ortiz continued his right-hand turn until he had maneuvered himself thirty feet from Zimmer and also about a hundred feet from The Bundle.
Eight thousand feet. Thirty-eight seconds.
He watched the rest of the platoon assume their position around The Bundle. Almost like clockwork, Ortiz decided, as the altimeter scurried below six thousand feet and the chronometer showed fifty seconds had elapsed.