Brett said, “You’re shitting me.”
I said, “I shit you not. You remember in Brazil, when you told me this bird was equipped for in-extremis free-fall operations? And I was the one who had to exit the bird? Now it’s your turn.”
He shook his head and said, “This is borderline crazy. You want me and Knuckles to free fall into Syria based on a grid from the NSA?”
I said, “I do. The smuggler was taking them to meet Hezbollah members for some sort of attack in Israel. I thought it would be in Lebanon, but it’s not. The Croatian guys are going to use whatever they find with the Hezbollah men to start a war. If they’re Katyusha rockets targeted at an Israeli city, it’ll be a bridge too far. I’m pretty sure they’ve already killed the Hezbollah contacts. We don’t know the target, but we do know where they’re being launched from. Stop them.”
Brett said, “You’re going to really owe me for this.”
I slapped his shoulder and he went to the back of the plane. He unscrewed two panels in the wall of the aircraft and started pulling out the free-fall rigs from their hiding place, Javelin parachutes that were extremely precise under canopy.
Knuckles said, “So we can get in, but what about exfiltration? How are we getting out?”
I said, “I honestly don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.”
He grinned and said, “You damn well better.”
I said, “There’s a lot of special mission unit activity in Syria now. Old friends. I’ll leverage them. You get this done, and I’ll get you a linkup to exfiltrate to Jordan. Just get in, kill them, and start your escape and evasion.”
He went back to the rear of the aircraft saying, “This is seriously seat-of-the-pants shit here.”
Unlike every other SEAL I knew, where a half of a plan was better than wasting time developing a whole one, Knuckles always preferred an operation to be wired tight before execution. This was probably driving him nuts, but I knew he was better than just about anyone in a fluid situation.
Jennifer came back and said, “Twenty minutes out.”
The time was speeding up, like it always did before a mission, with the seconds seeming to fly by faster and faster. Aaron and Shoshana helped the two with their parachute containers and rucksacks, Knuckles and Brett cramming in anything they could think of for the mission.
Knuckles loaded a GPS with the coordinates from the NSA phone track, then did the same for Brett’s GPS, both of them mounted on a board affixed to their waists. Knuckles said, “How high are we?”
I said, “Seventeen thousand feet. We can’t go any lower because of air defenses. Do you want O2?”
He said, “No. No time for that. If we get out quickly, it won’t be a problem. People go up Everest without oxygen, so I guess we can fall without it for a few seconds.”
At eight minutes out, acting as a jumpmaster, I helped them put on the harnesses, then cinched their SIG MCX weapons to their sides, finally clipping the small rucksacks between each of their legs.
I said, “Did you remember any food?”
Knuckles looked at Brett, and he shook his head. Knuckles said, “We’re going hungry if you don’t get us out.”
Jennifer ripped open an overhead bin, grabbed a bunch of PowerBars, and shoved them into their blouses, first Knuckles, then Brett, saying, “In case you have to eat on the run.”
I heard the pilot shout up front and glanced that way. He had on an oxygen mask, telling me he was going to depressurize the aircraft. I gave him a thumbs-up, felt my ears pop, and tapped Brett on the shoulder. He bent down and cranked a small handle at the back of the aircraft, retracting a plate on the floor, the wind racing through the cabin like a banshee and starting to buffet inside the plane.
The aircraft itself wasn’t built for free-fall operations, and only had a hatch for use in extreme conditions, which this qualified. Instead of leaping out in a grand exit like a regular airplane, the jumper had to inch himself into the hole, then fall forward into space. It wasn’t elegant, as the jumper would basically squeeze himself into the hatch and then drop like he was doing a cannonball at a community swimming pool, but once in the wind, it would be like any other exit.
I knew, because I’d done it once.
I sent Jennifer to the cockpit for the countdown, then positioned Knuckles in the hole, the wind whipping into the aircraft, the land a far, far distance away. At seventeen thousand feet, we couldn’t do this for very long because of the lack of oxygen, but we could do it long enough.
Knuckles clamped a pair of night vision goggles to his helmet, and I heard Jennifer shout. I slapped his shoulder. He gave me a thumbs-up, then shouted at Brett, saying, “Ten thousand. Open at ten.”
Brett nodded, and Knuckles disappeared like he’d been flushed down a toilet, disappearing into the blackness of the night. Brett snapped on his own NVGs and then struggled to follow him, every second giving distance between the two of them. He flopped into the hole, wrapped his arms around his chest, and dropped out of the plane.
I began cranking the hatch closed, screaming, “Jumpers away, jumpers away! Pressure, pressure, pressure!”
The air stilled in the plane and I took a seat, exhaling. Shoshana sat next to me and said, “When we get to Israel, can we just land?”
Chapter 66
Knuckles hit the aircraft’s slipstream and began to tumble, the wind pulling him behind the plane as he fell. It wasn’t a surprise. He expected the turbulence, knowing it was going to happen, and rode it out until he was in clean air, the aircraft disappearing in the distance. On his back falling to earth, he threw out his arms and legs, then twisted until he was flat and stable, facing the ground.
It didn’t feel like falling. There was no sense of gravity, like he’d jumped off a high diving board or a cliff. Honestly, it felt more like standing up in the bed of a pickup truck speeding down the road, the wind trying to knock him over.
He gained control of his body, his hands and legs now acting like little stabilizers, each flick of his palm working unconsciously, just knowing what to do, like a person riding a bike, the shifting of weight without conscious thought coming naturally from many previous rides.
He glanced at his altimeter, saw he was passing through fifteen thousand feet, and rotated, doing a circle in the air looking for Brett. He saw nothing in the darkness, but that also wasn’t unexpected. He glanced at his altimeter again, saw he was passing through ten thousand feet, and reached for the ball at the base of his parachute container. He pulled it out, felt the satisfying, lifesaving blossom of his canopy, and he was suddenly in a quiet place, the wind gone, the adrenaline retreating.
He pulled down the handles to his risers, took a look at the GPS on his waist, and turned the canopy, aiming toward the location it highlighted.
In that moment, Knuckles felt free. Floating to earth, high above the land, he was doing what he loved. He lowered his night vision goggles over his eyes and scanned the horizon for Brett, knowing he could be up to a mile away. He saw a blip in the distance, a blinking on and off. He raised his NVGs, and the blip of light was gone, telling him it was infrared.
He pulled the NVGs down again, and definitely saw the light. It was Brett, but he was a long way off. He didn’t think that would be a problem, simply happy his teammate was under canopy. Brett would do the same thing he was—flying to the grid on the GPS. They’d eventually link up, either in the air or on the ground.