His stomach twitched again. Devil One ought to be right in front of him, but it wasn’t.
CHAPTER 28
Captain Wong stood at the edge of the MC-130 ramp, waiting in front of the open doorway. He had his arms linked with the two Delta troopers who were jumping with him, not wanting to take even the slightest chance of mistiming the jump. The combat transport dipped suddenly, turning and rising so sharply that the sergeant on his right slipped toward the opening. Wong tightened his arm, pulling the man back.
“Not yet,” he said, though it was unlikely the sergeant could hear him.
Red flashes began sifting through the sky behind the plane, followed by violent greenish-yellow sprays.
Good, thought Wong.
In the next second, the jump light flickered and Wong stepped forward into the rushing air. He spread his arms and in the same instant, the ripcord pulled. The chute of his low-altitude rig popped open as Wong pushed his arms back into his chest. They’d gone out below five hundred feet, even lower than planned — Wong barely got himself situated when his rucksack hit the dirt behind him. He got his legs ready, the ground coming up hard; as he hit the ground he rolled to his right, turning his body into a shock absorber. He sprang up, undoing the harness that had held his rucksack below him on the jump. As he furled his chute, he noted a group of convenient rocks; he was able to stow the darkly colored chute beneath one of them.
The two troopers came down within a few yards of him. They gathered their chutes silently, shouldering their gear and then joining Wong near the rocks to hide their chutes as he checked their location on his GPS.
They had landed ten feet off the mark. The inaccuracy irked Wong, but was within the acceptable margin of error for the mission.
“I’m jumping at 32,000 feet from now on,” grouched Salt. “We couldn’t have been over a hundred fuckin’ feet. Fuckin’ pilot shoulda warned us.”
“I believe we were lower than planned,” agreed Wong. “But nonetheless we were on target. Your knee?”
“Ain’t nothing,” said the sergeant. “I ain’t no fuckin’ pussy.”
“Wrap it as a precaution,” said Wong. He reached into his belt and removed a piece of ace bandage he kept handy for precisely such contingencies. Salt frowned but took the bandage, diligently winding it around his knee. He continued cursing, apparently unable to go more than thirty seconds without using at least one expletive.
In the meantime, Davis unfolded his AN-PRC-119 and its keyboard to transmit a short, coded message indicating that they were on the ground in the proper location. Though bulky, the unit ensured that the transmission could not be intercepted and give their presence away.
Transmission sent, the sergeant repacked his equipment. As he shouldered his rucksack, the earth shook with a violent explosion, undoubtedly a fresh secondary from the attack that had been launched as the Hercules approached the drop point. A gush of red lit the sky to the northwest, throwing a pinkish shadow in the direction of the hills surrounding Kajuk, which lay to its right. Both Delta troopers turned toward it.
“Sergeants, no one admires a good explosion more than I, but our task lies this way,” said Wong, pointing to the east. “And I would prefer to reach the highway before the trucks.”
“What trucks?” asked Davis.
“You’ll hear them presently,” said Wong, starting off.
CHAPTER 29
Lars felt the Herk hop upwards as the rear door snapped shut. He hit the transmit button, radioing Wolf that their passengers had disembarked, then held on as the pilot began a sharp bank west, at the same time pushing the nose to get back close to the terrain. Besides the heavy flak vest, he was wearing a full helmet and night vision gear; their weight seemed to triple the effect of the g’s the plane pulled as it whipped through its finely choreographed paces. They had popped up to five hundred feet to make the drop, lower than they had planned when a blip of the radar detector forced a last-second deviation in the game plan. But the strike aircraft had done their job well, for the MC-130E’s sophisticated equipment gave no indication that they were being tracked.
No radars were active as they descended, flying toward the earth’s nap. They had more to fear from bullets than missiles — antiaircraft fire cascaded into the sky to the north and east as the Herk banked to turn southwards. Lars’s hands began to shake as the pilot continued to descend.
“Turbulence,” remarked the pilot.
Lars grunted. He tightened his grip on Herky Bird’s control yoke, trying to will his hands steady. Anyone with a rifle on the ground could hit them, even with his eyes closed.
Lars pushed his helmet to the side, trying to scratch an itch without removing it or the night goggles, which magnified the outside starlight enough so he could see. He felt his head growing woozy, and took a breath. The hum of the plane and the dampened, surreal glow of the cockpit’s instrument panel pummeled his senses, trying to convince him he was in a dream, not reality.
“We made the drop too low,” said DiRiggio.
No one answered. They hadn’t been off by that much, thought Lars, and besides, the commandos could handle it. He read their present altitude — falling through 300 feet above ground level. The terrain-following radar showed a clear, unobstructed flight path — nothing to run into.
He looked toward the FLIR screen on the left near the pilot, then jerked his head to the left to glance through the pilot’s side window. An immense fireball shot into the sky from the direction of the SAM battery that had been hit to darken the alley for their drop. The yellow-white flames turned inside out, blackness erupting from the inside as the fire burned through its fuel.
“Wow,” he heard himself say.
“Got to be the missiles frying,” said DiRiggio. “How’s that temp?” he asked the flight engineer, who was perched like a wise man in a seat directly behind the two pilots. The seat was elevated, ostensibly to give him a better view, though a few wags thought for sure the men who had designed the flight deck had been former sergeants intent on telling pilots who really ran the Air Force.
“Green,” replied Kelly, the engineer. They’d seen some spikes in the temp on two earlier in the flight, and three’s oil pressure had flickered just before the airdrop. “Gauge was flaky a second, I think. We’re fine.”
Lars managed a long, slow breath, lowering his eyes to the horizon indicator. His heart began to slow. He checked the altimeter clock again, still gathering himself, then pulled himself back up in his seat, helping the pilot with a crosswind correction as they hung tight on their course.
They were safe now, out of the radars’ detection area. A few more minutes of flying time at low altitude and they’d be free to climb — they were entering a dark zone in the Iraqi radar coverage.
The worst was over, for now at least. Granted, they had nearly three hours to kill before the extraction — and that was going to be sheer hell — but for now things were fairly easy. All they had to do now was orbit in the dead zone and wait.