He passed through five thousand feet, still steering the parachute toward the grid on his waist, and felt the speed of his parachute pick up. The Javelin wasn’t something he’d typically want on an infiltration of this type because it was built for sport jumping, with an aspect ratio that required skill to land, something made more complicated in a night landing.
The parachute itself had a forward thrust of nearly thirty miles an hour in zero wind. Meaning if he did nothing at all, he’d hit the ground as fast as if he’d jumped out of a car doing that same speed.
Flying with the wind would exponentially increase his velocity. If he wasn’t careful, he’d slam into the earth at sixty miles an hour. He could, of course, control that speed right before he touched down, and if he did it right, facing the wind to counteract the forward thrust and stalling the chute, he’d touch down like a feather. The problem was he had no idea how the winds were flowing at ground level, and didn’t even know what the ground looked like.
Controlled correctly, the parachute could land on a dime, but at night, flying blind, with no idea which way the wind was blowing, it was decidedly dangerous. The Javelin worked well in daylight, when one was landing on a football field full of cheering fans, but at night, with uneven terrain, it was dangerous as hell. The only good thing was that the aspect ratio of the parachute was one of the best in the world. For every foot he went down, he would go three feet forward, getting closer to the target.
He reached four thousand feet, the usual opening altitude for a HALO jump, and could dimly see the ground below him in his NVGs. He continued forward, letting the canopy fly, wanting to get as close as possible to the grid on the GPS.
He reached two thousand feet and began searching the ground for a landing spot. There were no lights at all, the earth completely dark. He passed one thousand, still letting the canopy do its work. At five hundred feet, he slowed the canopy down, trying to judge the wind.
He felt nothing. He continued to fly, still holding at half speed, and abruptly saw the ground directly beneath him, a hill rising up out of nowhere.
He had a split-second decision of lifting his legs and trying to clear the hilltop at speed, or jerking his risers down and stalling the parachute.
He opted for the latter, having no idea what was beyond the rise of earth. He slammed his handles down, tucked his legs for a landing fall, and met the hill. The parachute slowed, but not nearly enough for a championship landing on a football field. He slammed into the earth, his body pounding into the side of the hill.
He flipped over, landing on his back with the parachute settling behind him. He sat up, took stock of his body, and saw he was okay. The parachute caught the wind, billowing out behind him and trying to jerk him backward. He pulled his cutaway pillow, releasing it to blow away down the hill.
He stood up, checked the grid to the location of the sat phone, and saw it was about ten kilometers away.
He thought, Great spot on that one, Pike.
He pulled off the parachute harness, released his MCX rifle, and shouldered his pack, starting to move to the GPS location, his night vision goggles still over his eyes.
He crested the hill and kept walking, moving slowly, looking left and right for any threat that might appear. He had no idea about any Russian, regime, or Hezbollah patrols, and didn’t want to be surprised. He went down and up one draw after another, resting at the top of each one to see if anyone was close. An hour later, he crested another hill, seeing the land flatten out ahead of him. And also saw movement.
He crouched down, brought up his weapon, and waited. The person was walking across from him, following the small ridgeline of the wadi, and if he continued to do so, he would pass right in front of Knuckles. Through his NVGs, Knuckles drew a bead on the body, seeing a rifle in the man’s hands. And knew who it was.
He let the body come closer and then said, “Flash.”
The man dropped to the ground, rotating his weapon toward the noise, but did not fire. He said, “Thunder.”
Knuckles stood up and said, “That was the most fucked-up parachute insertion I’ve ever been on. Did you see our spot? We’re miles away.”
Brett came up to him and said, “I’m going to kick Pike’s ass for this. How do you let us jump out of a plane with no drop zone, and no way to get out after the mission?”
Knuckles chuckled and said, “He’ll get us out. If there’s anything Pike believes in, it’s his family. And that’s us.”
Brett said, “So what now?”
Knuckles looked at his GPS and said, “Looks like seven klicks that way, but we’re closing in on dawn. We need to get there before first light.”
Brett looked at the terrain around them and said, “That’s going to be hard to do.”
Chapter 67
The rising sun began cresting the mountains to the east, the long shadows finally disappearing from the Syrian desert plain. Raphael struggled with the nose of the first drone while Leonardo lifted the tail section into the back of the pickup truck.
They’d positioned the launch platform in the bed of the truck before the sun hit them, then had taken a break, eating breakfast. In the small building adjacent to the drone storage area, Raphael had pulled the hood off Tariq’s head, saying, “Time to eat.”
Tariq was understandably scared, but he ate what Raphael cooked on a hot plate, scarfing down the food. He said, “What are you going to do?”
“The same thing Hezbollah wanted. Afterward, I’m going to need you to guide us out of the valley and back into Lebanon.”
“When will that be?”
Raphael looked at his watch and said, “About three hours from now.”
“What are you going to do? What crazy thing do you have planned?”
Leonardo said, “Not your concern.”
Raphael wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “Put the hood back on.”
Tariq did so, and Raphael cinched his ankles and wrists with zip ties, saying, “We have to go to work; if you try to escape, you’ll die. Understand?”
Tariq had nodded, the hood jerking up and down.
Raphael had backed the truck up to the drone shed, then he and Leonardo had manhandled one of the drones onto the rack in the bed. Once it was settled in place, Raphael said, “Put in the grid to the building here. All we want to see is if they work.”
“We’ll be wasting one of the drones.”
“We have four. Two will be plenty, and if we don’t know they work, we can’t be sure they’ll accomplish the mission.”
Leonardo jogged to the front door of the building they’d slept in, retrieved a grid from his GPS, then scrambled back into the bed, loading the grid reference into the computer of the drone, including a single waypoint to the east. If the machine worked, it would fly to the waypoint, then turn around and fly home.
Leonardo said, “It’s loaded. Should I start the motor now?”
The Samad 3 drone had a push-piston engine, with the propeller located at the back of the tail, and Leonardo wasn’t sure when to engage it. Raphael said, “Let me get the truck going, then fire it up.”
Leonardo nodded and sat in the back, scrunched by the rack next to the tail, the wings extending out over the bed of the pickup, the nose above the cab. Raphael got behind the wheel, started the truck up, and drove out of the compound. He leaned out the window and said, “I’m going to get it to thirty miles an hour. Start the engine as soon as I gain some speed. I’ll stick my hand out when to release.”