“No,” she said. “This will be my first time in Iran.”
“Worried?”
She smiled. “Fear accompanies only the possibility of death.”
The 727 was swiftly approaching Gil’s high-altitude release point (HARP) some thirty miles north of his DZ. The plane couldn’t deviate any farther south for fear of tipping off the Iranians to Turkish involvement, should they ever come to suspect the assassination of Al-Nazari to be the work of American forces, rather than the result of civil unrest.
Gil was rigged up and nearly ready to jump. He had the SVD slung barrel-down on his left side with the stock jutting up behind his left shoulder. The rest of his gear was stowed in a kit bag hanging in front of him, and the 106ci portable oxygen system was attached to his right side. Both his main and reserve parachutes were RAPS (Ram Air Parachute System), which would allow him to travel up to forty miles under canopy during his high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump.
All that remained for him to do was don his Pro-tec helmet and oxygen mask.
The phone on the wall buzzed, and Melisa answered it, speaking briefly with the pilot and checking her watch. She hung up and looked at Gil. “We go on oxygen in two minutes. We lower the stairs in three.”
“Roger that.” Gil checked his own watch, then pulled on his helmet and buckled the oxygen mask into place. Two minutes later he and Melisa were both on oxygen, and the cabin pressure was beginning to drop. Kamile was in the cockpit with the pilots, all of them on oxygen as well. As luck would have it, most of the passengers were already asleep, and those who remained awake were unaware of a problem until moments before they were blacking out.
Melisa lowered the stairs, and the outside air rushed into the cabin in a great gust, forcing them to steady themselves against the bulkhead until the pressure equalized a few seconds later. Gil gave her a thumbs-up. He walked down the staircase and stepped off the bottom, tucking himself into as tight a ball as he could manage. The instant the turbulence struck him, he was reminded of the raging surf at Waikiki, only this was about ten times as bad. He was spun so furiously about that he felt like a rag doll. The oxygen mask was nearly ripped from his face, and for a moment it felt as though even his boots might be ripped off.
Then it was over, almost as quickly as it started. He was in free fall.
He waited for the automatic rip cord release to activate at thirty thousand feet. When it did, he felt the familiar tug at the harness, but something was wrong. He looked up to check his canopy. There was no moon, but he was still above the cloud layer, and the stars provided enough of a backlight for him to see that he was in deep trouble. The severe turbulence must have damaged either the RAPS or the automatic release system, because his reserve had deployed along with the main chute, and neither one could properly deploy. He was falling dangerously fast.
Finding his cutaway knife, he quickly began cutting away the cords of the main chute. The reserve was of the same ram air configuration and would still allow him to travel under canopy to the DZ, but only if he could cut away the main fast enough to leave him with sufficient air time. He cut the last cord, and the main slipped away into the night, allowing the reserve to deploy fully. Now he could dig out the Chinese GPS system and make corrections to his direction of travel. The fact that the unfamiliar unit was having trouble holding a satellite signal did not exactly surprise him. He put it away and dug out the Delta prototype, careful to keep the lanyard looped tightly around his wrist. He switched it on, and the satellite signal was instantly acquired. Within ninety seconds, he knew exactly where he was.
Taking hold of the steering toggles hanging at his waist, he corrected his course. Doing the math in his head, he was pretty sure that he could get himself to the intended DZ. According to the GPS system, he was traveling at nearly twenty miles an hour. If that kept up, he would be arriving in roughly an hour and forty minutes. For now, there was nothing to do but settle in for the ride. He checked his watch. It was 00:20 hours. There was plenty of time. He wouldn’t be engaging his target until 11:30 hours the next day.
CHAPTER 14
Agent Lerher and his staff sat gathered in a conference room with Captain Glen Metcalf, USN. Metcalf was the senior DEVGRU officer inside the ATO. He had personally chosen Gil for the Al-Nazari hit the moment he learned of his arrival in theater. Now, everyone in the room was viewing Gil’s descent via an infrared satellite feed visible on a wide-screen plasma television mounted to the wall.
Captain Metcalf watched with veiled apprehension as Gil’s canopy descended into the cloud layer and disappeared from view.
“Well, that was anticlimactic as hell,” announced a bored-sounding analyst from Lerher’s team. He stood from his chair against the wall, taking a sip from a Styrofoam coffee cup as he attempted to appear widely experienced beyond his years. He was a Harvard grad, not a day over twenty-five, a child of the PlayStation generation who seemed to regard what they had just witnessed with the same emotional commitment of a teenager playing a game of SOCOM: US Navy SEALs.
Metcalf’s heart had been in his throat during Gil’s struggle to cut loose of the main canopy. No one else in the room had understood what was taking place beneath the flaring death shrouds until he explained to them what was going on. Now he resented not only the young analyst’s presence, but his attitude as well. There was no reason for these kids with no understanding of combat — beyond the aspect of a video game — even to be in the room. True, they had done a fine job of gathering the intelligence required to put the op together, but they were well paid for their efforts, and so were not necessarily entitled to be in on the kill, as Lerher had put it. But the military existed to serve the civilian population, and Metcalf was an extension of that arm, so there wasn’t much he could do but grit his teeth. However, he knew of no rule against a captain of the United States Navy asking a pointed question from time to time.
“What would you have preferred to see, son? A brave man plummet to his death?”
“Me?” said the analyst, startled to have been called on the carpet for his inane remark. He glanced at Lerher, who only stared back at him. “No, sir. I was just saying that… well, what I meant was that he handled that like a real professional.”
“I’m sure that Master Chief Shannon would be glad of your approval,” Lerher remarked, jerking his head toward the door in abrupt dismissal.
The analyst paled and exited the room, leaving his counterparts with their eyes lowered.
Feeling mollified, Metcalf allowed his gaze to fall charitably upon the rest. “So far, so good, ladies and gentlemen. Our man dodged a bullet tonight. Now, let’s hope that cloud layer lifts soon so we can see what hell’s going on down there. Any news from meteorology, Agent Lerher?”
Lerher shrugged. “It’s not good, I’m afraid. We’re hoping the ceiling will be high enough tomorrow for a predator to drop down and sneak a peek now and then, but it’s going to be touch and go.” He addressed his staff. “That’s all for tonight, people. Try and get some sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Donaldson, I want you on duty in Operations with the Air Force people all night. If anything develops, anything at all, you wake my ass up. Understood?”
“Understood,” replied a blonde woman who wore her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.
The room cleared, leaving Lerher alone with Captain Metcalf.
“I’m sorry about the idiot,” Lerher said. He didn’t personally care about his analysts making stupid remarks. They were assets to him, nothing more, and their personal feelings were beneath his consideration. They were expected, however, to know when to keep their mouths shut, an expectation the analyst in question obviously hadn’t understood, so he would be rotated stateside on the next available flight.