But it was the one that Mike could get, in a hurry, cash on the barrel, no questions asked. So it was what he had to work with.
The system consisted of a catwalk that led to a wide platform. The catwalk and platform were supported twenty feet in the air. Under the platform was a heavy duty fan, a wind generator. Around the platform, which was heavily padded, was a steel cage in case the “flyer” got lifted to high or off to the side. In the middle of the platform area was a ten foot hole through which the wind entered.
The whole thing, fortunately, had fit in an Russian Antonov heavy lift aircraft. Mike had had to rent time on the private aircraft for the lift, which was hardly cheap. But with the generator he could speed up the training of the insertion team to the point that they’d be marginally qualified for one hairy damned mission in time.
Besides Vanner, he’d chosen Julia Makanee and Olga Shaynav, two of his best radio operators. To backstop them there were four Keldara “hitters” from Team Sawn. The seven were his charges for the next week. He had exactly seven days to get them not only HALO qualified but comfortable with the idea. The standard military course was five weeks, not one. And on any conceivable mission that the US military would send green HALO jumpers on, they’d be accompanied by trained and experienced personnel. In this case, the entire team would be green jumpers.
Given that a few people always balked at actually jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, that was going to be interesting. He’d considered picking a few stand-bys, just in case one of the group was absolutely unwilling to actually jump or couldn’t handle the training. But he really didn’t have anyone to spare.
He’d used the three days to advantage, giving classes in freefall maneuvers, having everyone practice body positions while lying on their stomachs and going over the theory of freefall, steerable parachutes and HALO. The classes had run from early morning until he could tell everyone but Vanner’s brains were cooking.
Now it was time to start working on freefall techniques. He wanted all seven to be comfortable with that before their first jumps; he just didn’t have the time for tandem training.
Everyone was wearing jump coveralls, which were easier to train in. The coveralls were loose but Mike had to admit that Oleg and Julia still looked hot. Mike looked around at the group, grinned and then jumped into the rushing wind.
The enormous force of the wind picked him up out of his leap and lofted him up to about head-height. He hung there in a box man position, arms and legs spread, then used his fingers to carefully spin in place, without moving out of the wind. He was pretty rusty — his last freefall was more than two years ago — but the moves were coming back pretty quick.
“What’s this position, Largo?” Mike shouted.
“Box man, Kildar!” the shooter replied.
“Exactly, full box man,” Mike said. “Now, if I pull my arms and legs in… ” he said, matching actions with words, “I sink. That will mean you fall faster. Olga! Why would you want to do that?”
“I’m lighter than the men,” the girl shouted back. “I might have to speed up to maintain formation!”
“Right!” Mike yelled then assumed another position, the quickly snapped out of it as he started to fly out of the windstream. “What was that position, Jeseph?”
“Delta!” Jeseph shouted back. “Useful for dropping fast and short, fast, maneuvers.”
“Got it!” Mike yelled then got back in the box man position, but with his hands out of position. Suddenly he started moving away from them, slowly. “Julia! What’s happening? What’s happening?!” he shouted as if panicked.
“Kildar!” the girl shouted back, nervously, then stopped, grinned and shook her head. “Slide? Yes? You try to scare me!”
“Slide,” Mike said, reconfiguring to get back in the middle of the windstream. “When you use this at first, you’re going to slide! I’ll be shouting instructions at you on how to stop slideing. But you’ll go back and forth, side to side,” Mike said, adding motions to the explanation. “But even if you get thrown all the way out!” He moved his arms outward and was suddenly thrown backwards out of the wind-stream, hitting the padding hard and then rolling to his feet. It was an effort, but he needed to demonstrate. “You’ll be fine! That’s what the padding is for! Besides, when you start you’ll have on a harness,” he added with a grin. “Vanner! You’re up.”
“Urrah!” the Marine shouted. “Let’s do this!”
Chapter Fourteen
“Master Chief?” Greznya said as Adams was walking out of the shoot house. He looked ragged and she wasn’t sure if now was the best time but the intel was very hot.
“Go,” Adams said, stripping off his balaclava and taking a deep breath. “Christ. I swear shoot houses take a year off your life every time you go in one. If it’s not the propellant fumes it’s the gaseous lead.”
“Yes, Master Chief,” the girl said, dimpling prettily. “We have a new download from Washington. They’ve gotten ground penetrating shots of the buildings in /// as well as the two buildings near the agreed meeting place. There is no guarantee that Marina is in any of them, but… ”
“But it’s good intel,” Adams said, rubbing a bright red mark on his cheek that looked something like the imprint of a gun-barrel. Greznya could tell that it was fresh and couldn’t imagine where he’d gotten it. “Can you convert… ?”
“I’ve already converted the shots into two dimensional maps of each of the buildings that are probable for holding the hostage,” Greznya said. “However, Creata has an interesting idea. She is pretty sure that she can create 3-d imagery for Unreal for some of the buildings. That will give an internal map of the building that we can load into the game packages. We could even run scenarios with it. Perhaps when we find where Marina is, if Katya can… ”
“We’re looking at nearly a week for insertion,” Adams said, rubbing his chin. “Do it if you have time. Good work. I need to look at those maps as soon as I’m done with reviewing this exercise.”
“Very good, Master Chief,” Greznya said. “I’ll have them in your office by the time you get back.”
“Okay, now let me go speak to the children,” he said, turning back to the entry team. “SHOTA, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING? FIVE! FIVE, FIVE, FIVE! NOT FUCKING ONE!”
“Okay, Julia, hold that,” Mike yelled over the wind noise.
A couple of day’s hard training and while the group weren’t exactly masters of the air, but they had the basic moves. They’d all managed to learn to hold position in a box-man, maneuver slightly from that position and work in a delta, with the arms tucked in for more rapid descent and maneuvering.
Now it was on to tougher processes.
“Bring your arms in in front of your face, carefully,” Mike said. “Now, check your direction and distance.”
At least Mike had managed to get top line equipment. Each of the team was outfitted with a GPS based navigation system. Punch in a GPS coordinate and it would give them current altitude and a direction and distance to the target.
Julia slowly brought her arms in front of her face and then glanced at the GPS.
“That way,” Julia said, gesturing to her right with her chin. “I’m at ten thousand AGL.” She referred to Above Ground Level. Height above sea level doesn’t matter to a parachutist; the only thing that matters is height above what you’re going to smack into.