She liked Wells and appreciated the light squeeze to her shoulder he added in support.
He went on, "Hey, how about we run through the checklist one more time? I want to make sure I have everything."
She nodded.
He started: "Altimeter?"
"Yeah. Um, check."
"AAD?"
"Ready and set."
"Oxygen canister?"
He meant the small tube of air that would become her breathing supply after they unhooked from the console. The changeover between the two was a tricky thing. She did not want any nitrogen slipping back into her bloodstream. That could lead to decompression sickness and that would be very, very bad.
"Yep, got it …"
Her ears wandered away from Wells's checklist. She was thankful for the diversion, but she was interested in what Gant had to say on the radio to Lt. Col. Elizabeth Thunder, their "control" contact half a world away back at the Darwin facility in California. The conversation played over a speaker.
"We are almost on target," Gant reported.
"Understood. Still no transmission since the original Edelweiss call seventeen hours ago."
Stacy knew what the Secret Service's "Edelweiss" code word had meant: the detail faced an unconventional situation. Not terrorists. Not a run-of-the-mill assassination attempt. Something different. Something that would require a team trained to deal with unique situations and adversaries. They were fortunate that an otherwise obscure senator had been assigned one veteran agent.
Gant: "Any other updates?"
Thunder: "Friez called in from the NRO again. They had a second satellite pass just a little while ago."
During their brief stop in Hawaii, Gant had informed her and Wells that the first satellite images of Tioga showed people on the island, seemingly going about their business. That had been hours ago. The sun had long since set over the target area.
Thunder's voice explained, "There are lights on the island, so there's power. Other than the lack of communication and the agent's transmission, there's no reason to believe anything is wrong down there."
"Great," Gant said. "So we could be risking our lives on this jump for nothing."
The colonel transmitted, "Captain Campion is en route to Wake Island to coordinate a more comprehensive response. We should have several naval assets and support personnel available, depending on what you find. So far this is all off the radar. Whatever happened is bottled up tight for now."
Stacy knew that the government was working on an "engine trouble" cover story for Senator Kendal's plane; a story that had already been put into place to some degree as part of the politician's cover for his rendezvous with, no doubt, someone younger than his wife.
As far as she could tell from the short briefings they had received during the trip, this private island in the South Pacific was built for just such clandestine entertainment. Since it was not sovereign territory of any nation, it lay outside the jurisdiction of any country, which made it a rarity among private islands, which almost always belonged to one nation or another. But in this case, no country cared. If not for Senator Kendal's involvement, the United States would not care, either, and she would not be on a plane right now preparing for a high-altitude low-opening jump.
A warning of the need for caution came across in Lieutenant Colonel Thunder's voice despite the otherwise monotone sound from the speaker: "Thom, all of that support is at least a couple of days out. He's not going to be able to get anything there quicker without setting off a lot of alarm bells, and the politicos in D.C. don't want that for a bunch of reasons."
"Same as usual," Major Gant replied. "We will establish a satellite link as soon as we know what we are dealing with. Out."
Stacy thought, assuming whatever is causing satellite phone interference won't also block our transmitter.
The connection ended.
Franco touched the side of his helmet, apparently receiving a transmission in his earpiece from the pilot.
"Two minutes. Better start switching over."
Stacy stood at the edge of the open ramp to stern, on the precipice. The white clouds below resembled a floor, but she knew they were more of a ceiling.
The wind rushed around the now depressurized cargo hold. Major Gant and Jupiter Wells stood on her flanks. A soft red light glowed overhead.
"As soon as we punch through," Gant spoke in a calm but strong voice, "we should see the island below. The only lights for a thousand miles. They mark the center of the resort. We are aiming for the south beach. Remember, you want to hit a little inland where there's nothing but fields. Stray too far east or west and you'll hit jungle or rocks. Too far north and you are either in their downtown or worse. Look, just remember your training, stay cool, and stay on target. Wells and I will end up falling faster, so we will get separated on the way down. Just head for the rendezvous point. Everybody with me?"
Gant asked them both but looked first at her. She nodded with as much confidence as she could muster.
The light turned green.
"Go, go, go!" Gant ordered and then led the trio over the edge.
A gush of turbulence rolled across her body, nearly causing her to tumble. The feeling reminded her of diving below a strong ocean wave off the Jersey shore back east during a childhood trip to Cape May.
Then she felt strangely still. No sensation of anything. As if she hovered up there in the highest reaches of the troposphere.
Above, stars so incredibly clear that they really seemed to sparkle; she could sense the vastness of space; infinity overhead.
Below, a cotton-white matt. No swirls, no puffs, just a carpet of white glowing in the light of the half moon.
That moment of stillness passed as her fall gained speed.
Panic set in. Reality hit home. She was in free fall, and while she had parachuted many times before, including training runs with the Seals, this was different. She fell from thirty thousand feet in the dead of night with the hope of landing on a tiny chunk of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The smallest screwup — from a particle of nitrogen slipping back into her blood to drifting offshore and splashing down in the darkness with the nearest search-and-rescue support a couple thousand miles away — could result in a nasty end.
Annabelle felt her breath quicken, her heart thump like it might explode, sweat drip on her cheeks inside the helmet, and her limbs shake from something more than the extreme cold. The combination of nerves and speed threatened to twist her body out of what little control she maintained and into a frenzied spin that could steal her consciousness and kill her as surely as the chute not opening.
Hold it together, girl! Hold it together!
She rushed toward the white "floor" of clouds. Her mind saw the barrier not as a misty collection of water droplets and aerosols but as a surface as firm as concrete. She instinctively moved her hands toward her face as if to protect from impact … she closed her eyes tight … her mouth opened and a moan turned into a scream …
A flash of white and then she punched through and the whole world lay open before Dr. Annabelle Stacy.
Her eyes adjusted. Yes, she did see lights. Tiny specks below surrounded by a sea of black. She tried to concentrate on the target, but the world stretched out all around her. Dark, yes, but she could still spy the horizon from the moon's faint glow shining through the cloud cover. Just enough to see … just enough to take in the enormity of it all.