On my way.
She came out of the doorway looking like any teenager out to meet friends.
CHAPTER 18
Kadan glanced at his watch. It was 02:30. “Suit up. Check your oxygen. We’re thirty minutes out. Double-check each other’s gear.” He did the same and waited for Sam to nod that he’d made certain Kadan’s gear was good to go.
At 02:50 Kadan signaled the men. “Make final in-oxygen check. We’ll depressurize in five minutes.”
Sam nudged Jonas with his foot. “Wake up there, circus man. Your snoring has been keeping me awake.”
Jonas opened one sleepy eye and glared at Sam.
“In-oxygen check,” Sam said. “Get on it.”
“On it,” Jonas conceded.
Kadan said, “02:55. Depressurizing mask up.”
Sam kept his eye on Jonas. He appeared to be asleep again, but he obediently put his mask in place.
At 02:59 Kadan was on his feet. “One minute … thirty seconds. First jumper in the door.”
Sam took a breath and looked out into the night. It was a damn dark, moonless night. The engines roared as the wind clawed at him, trying to jerk him out of the plane. Adrenaline poured into his body along with that familiar tug of fear. The cold bit at him, the temperature at that elevation was about minus fifteen. He could smell the jet fuel and felt the sting of the wind on his face. The aircraft was traveling around a hundred and fifty knots and he was about to fling himself into that night sky.
“Go!”
At the command, he dove, and in a flash everything changed. The wind hit him hard, buffeting him, pulling at him, and he fought for control. He was carrying two hundred pounds of gear. His rucksack hung between his legs, straining his movements. Then, just like that, there it was. He realized the roar of the engines was gone and he was soaring through the sky, freefalling, the feeling euphoric, his heart racing with the love of the jump.
Sam pulled his chute and abruptly went from one hundred and twenty miles an hour to about twenty. The opening shock hit his body and then he was flying, the wind rushing by, his helmet muffling the sound so that he was flying in a peaceful, surreal world. For a few moments there was freedom and absolute peace as he dropped through darkness in silence. He was very aware he was suspended by a sheet of silk in a commercial air traffic space, and the thought of splattering on the window of a passing jet was there in the back of his mind.
He went in and out of the clouds, a bad fog, and then he could see the ground rushing at him. The jungle appeared nothing more than a green sea spreading out in front of him. Jumping without a strobe was always a tricky business. He could tell the difference between trees and grass by the shades of green. Thirty feet out he flared his chute, slowing him down.
He landed with a light jolt, much like jumping off a single step, reeling in his chute fast. He had the same reaction he often did—thankful to be in one piece, and ready to go again. He glanced at his watch. 03:02. Everyone should be down.
Kadan was a few feet from him. Nico a meter away. Jonas had his back to Sam and was pulling in his chute as fast as possible.
“Get coms up, Jonas; bury the chutes, Sam; and, Nico, you’re on security,” Kadan said.
“Chutes are good, Bishop,” Sam replied to Kadan.
“Okay,” Kadan said. “Let’s get the hell out of this clearing. GPS has us thirteen klicks southeast of Kinshasa. This will be our RP if we get separated.”
The rally point was a good one—plenty of cover but easily found should they need it.
Jonas spoke into the radio. “Valhalla … Valhalla, this is Reaper One. Do you copy? … Over.”
Fort Bragg command answered immediately. “This is Valhalla, Reaper One. We have you five by five, over.” A five by five was a signal report, telling the team how well they could be heard on a scale of one to five of strength and one to five of clarity.
Jonas responded. “Valhalla, Reaper One. We are up and on the hunt. Reaper One out.”
“Let’s recon,” Kadan said. “We’ll make a four-leaf clover pattern working counterclockwise. Be back here in fifteen minutes. If one of us doesn’t make it back in fifteen, the others will wait five. If they’re still not back and we can’t make radio contact, we’ll start looking for you. I have 03:30. Any questions?” When they all shook their heads, Kadan gave the go signal.
The jungle was hot and oppressive. The forest was made up of several layers, trees bursting toward the sky—the emergent level—anywhere from seventy to two hundred and fifty feet high. The canopy was sixty to ninety feet above him. If necessary, Sam could go up and run along those twisted branches that formed a highway far above the forest floor. Most of the birds and wildlife resided in the canopy. Flowers wound their way up the tree trunks toward the light, and moss and lichen crawled up the bark and over branches as well. Great ropes of tough vines dropped like snakes from above and hung in tangled twists and turns of grooves and crevices and elaborate loops.
A large snake wrapped around a branch above his head moved slightly to take a look at him. Monkeys clung to the branches and watched him in silence as he passed by. The air was heavy with moisture and rang with the steady drone of crickets and cicadas. Mosses and vines hung heavily over ribbons of water. Tangled ferns grew almost as tall as small trees, and on the floor thousands of insects moved rotting leaves and vegetation. The understory was an impenetrable, inky blackness. Tree frogs called to one another, hundreds of different sounds as various species vied for space on the airwaves.
Sam mapped out his assigned area in his mind, keeping an eye on the time. He made it back to the designated spot to find Kadan emerging from tall ferns. Nico was already waiting, but there was no sign of Jonas.
“There’s a slight depression about twenty meters to the southeast, but other than that, it’s all the same, trees, bugs, monkeys, and snakes,” Sam reported.
“I’ve got the same shit,” Nico said.
Kadan looked around him, clearly concerned that Jonas wasn’t there. “It’s the same to the north. There are a couple of small hills, that’s it. We’ll see what Jonas found and go from there, but from what I see on the map, I think that the depression would make a good hide site. We can use it for our patrol base. It’s 03:50.” He looked around again, and swore under his breath. “Where the hell is Jonas?”
Sam’s heart dropped when only silence answered the question.
“Jonas, Jonas, this is Bishop, you copy? Jonas, do you copy?” Kadan spoke into the com.