“We’re where?”
“On top of the mountain. Sun should be coming up in a few minutes. The operation is now officially yours. I got you here. The rest is up to you.”
They got out of the Jeep. The temperature was at least twenty degrees colder than at the base of the mountain. They shivered as they unloaded the heavy duty plastic storage box from the luggage rack. Calvin opened the box and handed out a CAR-15 with extra ammo clips, pistol, knife and other first line gear.
Hawkins checked his altimeter and compass. “We’re at ten thousand feet,” he said. “The point should be about a hundred feet in that direction.”
Calvin swept his flashlight at the soupy mists.
“What if it isn’t?”
“Simple. We fall off the mountain.”
“Good thing I know when you’re joking.” Pause. “You are joking?”
“Sure, Cal. I’m joking.”
They lugged the first bag fifty feet or so, set it down and went back for the other. Abby dropped light sticks to create a path through the fog. After a couple of trips back and forth the gear was stacked and ready to go.
A silvery glow came to the mists as the new sun reflected off thousands of droplets of moisture. They moved through the pre-dawn gloom like ghosts. As the fog thinned, the mountain top materialized and they could see that they were near the edge of the domed summit.
Hawkins and Calvin walked onto a ledge, which stuck out like a huge diving platform. The vertical wall of gray rock under the ledge dropped a few hundred feet to where the mountain flared out at a forty-five degree angle.
Valley fog was pooling in a wooly layer of dark gray clouds that obscured the base of the mountain. Hawkins extended his hand and felt the air current rising up the sheer face.
“Good air flow. Should give us a nice ridge lift.”
Abby’s plan to jump off the top of the mountain and fly down to the Kurtz camp on hang-gliders had seemed crazy when she proposed it. But it seemed slightly less insane after she showed off a 3-D image she had created on her IPad with a GPS link to Google Earth. Abby pointed to the ledge.
“Here’s your diving board. Mountain elevation is around two thousand feet. Follow the flight line I’ve charted to this clearing near the camp, and with the sun behind you, you should make it to the ground without being seen.”
“Not bad. What about extraction?” Calvin said.
“I’m still working that out.”
After Hawkins studied the maps and photos he said, “I’ve done enough hang-gliding to be comfortable with the flight. What about you, Cal?”
“I’ve tried it a few times. Can’t be any worse than fast-roping from a chopper onto the deck of a ship. Let’s do it.”
The answer didn’t surprise Hawkins. Calvin would jump into a volcano if Hawkins asked him to, and he’d do the same for his friend.
Returning to their stockpile, they unpacked the bags and assembled the gliders. The cargo box yielded camouflage one-piece jumpsuits, helmets with built-in radios that could be operated with a finger switch, and protective goggles. In addition to their weapons and ammunition, they each had a wristwatch that contained an altimeter and compass, and a helmet-mounted variometer that would track the climb and descent rate and warn the pilot with a beeping sound if the glider was in danger of stalling. Hawkins had a wrist GPS as well.
“Time, gentlemen,” Abby said with a glance at her watch.
“Ready?” Hawkins asked Calvin.
“Ready.”
Hawkins strapped himself into the harness, grabbed the sides of the control bar, and lifted the sixty-five pound glider over his head.
Calvin hoisted his glider, teetering as he tried to balance the assembly.
“Looking good, Cal,” Hawk lied.
“Let’s see if I got this right, Hawk. Push the bar down to go fast, pull it to slow down. Shift my weight to make a turn.”
“You’ve got it. The launch is easy. Just run down the slope, jump off, and when you feel surge from the wind in the sail, drop your hands from the sides of the bar down to the horizontal bar.”
“Like this?”
Calvin trotted down the ledge, keeping the wing level, and jumped off into space. The glider dipped, as the force of gravity pulled it down and forward, but the wing caught the air being deflected up the face of the mountain, and rose higher, delicately balancing on an updraft.
Calvin soared away from the mountain and over the fog-shrouded valley in a straight line. He tucked his legs into the cocoon-like bag that extended from the harness, straightened his body, rolled the wing to one side and then the other, and straightened out into a dive to gain speed, climbing in an aerobatic loop that had him flying upside down, then back again.
He lowered his left wingtip, a maneuver that brought him into a rolling turn back toward the ledge. Calvin’s voice crackled over Hawkins’ earphones.
“What’s wrong, hawk man? Forgotten how to fly?”
Hawkins pressed the radio switch. “You said you had only flown couple of times.”
“That’s right, man. Liked it so much I bought my own glider.”
“I didn’t know bald eagles grew so big,” Hawkins said, referring to his friend’s shaved scalp.
“Best you can do man? Flap your wings instead of your mouth and get up here in the sky with the big birds.”
Abby’s voice cut into their conversation.
“It’s getting light. If you two eagles don’t get to the ground in a couple of minutes you’ll be sitting ducks.”
“Lady’s got a point,” Calvin said.
“So she does.”
Hawk started off at a brisk walk that accelerated into a run. He leapt off the ledge and felt the surge as the sail caught the wind, arresting his downward motion. The glider lifted him higher and he headed out in a straight line, keeping his wing more or less level. It had been a while since the last time he had flown in a hang glider, and he reminded himself that his moves had to be gentle.
Within moments, he was soaring over the valley, kept aloft by the wave of air upwelling from the ground far below. Calvin had come around and was pacing him on the right side. Hawkins glanced at his wrist GPS, shifted his body weight to adjust his course, and as he neared the target, pulled back on the bar. The front of the wing tipped down, and he began to gain speed. Several times he got going too fast, or had to correct for current variability, so that the descent was more like that of a falling leaf than a bird.
Near the top of the cloud layer he looked as his altimeter. The ceiling was low, which would keep them invisible until the last few moments of flight, but the ground would come up fast.
He jerked his thumb downward, and Calvin gave him the OK sign.
Abby watched Hawkins’ torturous descent from the top of the mountain. She was wondering if she’d been overconfident in coming up with this crazy plan and breathed a sigh of relief as the pair of large birds slipped out of sight in the gray clouds. She lowered the binoculars and looked around at the shreds of fog that lingered on the bleak, rocky summit.
And all at once, she felt very much alone.
She took a last glance into the chasm, muttered a quick prayer to the gods that look over mortals who have more courage than good sense, and hurried back to the Jeep.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Marzak watched Cait get into her Honda and he started the engine of his rental car. He was parked across the street from her Alexandria apartment. His Washington Redskins baseball hat was pulled down low over his platinum hair and aviator sunglasses shielded his eyes.
He pulled out behind Cait, keeping back a couple of car-lengths. He followed her out to the Beltway, then toward Washington, expecting her to head for Georgetown, but she bypassed the city, and drove over the Bay Bridge, then south on the eastern shore of Maryland.