Recall (13 page)

Everyone thought Jim knew Marksman's day job, but he didn't. The man had just showed up once after he'd sent a request up the chain for an operator who spoke Russian. Higher had said use him, but don't ask questions. But could he trust Marksman? His gut was confident, but caution flags were waving in his head.

He turned back to his team. “We're still a go.” He met the gaze of each member in turn. Each gave a thumbs-up, even Carter. “Our intel sources have been confirmed. But keep your eyes open.”

They all glanced up over his shoulder. He turned to see the pilot standing behind him.

“Okay, ladies. We're ten minutes out. It's been a pleasure. Transport for your next leg is warming up. Judging from the wings taking you, I'm glad I'm not going. Don't eat too much before loading. Godspeed.” He looked back at the colonel and muttered, “We're even, shithead.”

The colonel glowered and shot back, “Who's counting?”

A dismissive grunt. The pilot stepped back into his seat and the light glowed red again. The intercom squawked, “Pleasure being your pilot this morning. We know you have a choice in airline travel, so we want you to know we appreciate you choosing us. For the safety of those around you, please secure and recheck all weapons before landing. Your opinion is as important to us as crotch rot, so please fill out a customer survey and drop it in the shitter on your way out.”

* * *

Jim peered through an oval glass pane at streets and white-topped buildings flashing by as the aircraft descended. Weather report had said six inches of fresh powder would welcome them at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Piles of white and gray drifts lined the runway as they made a fast approach, apparently the only way this craft knew how to do it. The Tupolev touched, slowed, and turned off. The team stood and lined behind him at the forward door even before the plane stopped.

Jim ducked through the small opening and stopped on the threshold. An enormous gray hangar stood across the plowed tarmac, with the B-2 waiting out front. An airman leaned out the window of a stair truck, nudging the topmost tread in place below the colonel's feet.

The Tupolev's engines spun down. No other engine noise was apparent above the racket on the tarmac, but heat waves shimmered from the rear of the B-2. He started down the stairs, breathing the familiar scent of JP-8. It took him back to a kerosene heater warming the three-room boardinghouse in the Kentucky highlands where he'd grown up. He sniffed, almost expecting to smell wet grass and horse manure. As a child, he'd decided he'd make enough money to never have to live in a cold house again. He loved the country that had given him that chance and damned any son of a bitch who threatened her.

He jogged down the remaining stairs, then turned toward their new transport. Amid scrambling ground crews he spotted Top, standing in front of the B-2's nose gear, red-faced, earmuff-style comm set over his head, swinging a clipboard, yelling into his mic.

R
ed had never seen a B-2 up close. Their geometric silhouettes had flown over him a few times, but on the ground they looked nothing like the aggressive, athletic shape of the Tupolev, an aircraft thirty years their elder. This B-2 was short, fat, and dumpy as a huge black boomerang. It had a snout only an engineer could love.

Beneath the wing, abreast the portside landing gear, stood at least fifteen crewmen beside what looked like eight torpedoes lying on waist-high stands. “Cloaks,” Marksman said, pointing toward the black capsules.

Top snapped to attention, called the area up, and executed a perfect salute.

The colonel returned the show of respect. “At ease, first sergeant. We're at your disposal. Get us fit and loaded.”

“Yes, sir!” The loadmaster's voice sent a chill across Red's shoulders, reminding him of an instructor for whom he held sincere disdain. It recalled his fiftieth push-up on a salt marsh after an early-morning ocean swim. The instructor was expounding on Red's questionable ancestry and insulting his hygiene in a thunderous voice, while delivering kicks to his midsection. The guy wasn't worried about conditioning. He was trying to wash him out.

“Yes, First Sergeant!” came a few automatic replies down the line, jerking him off the beach and dumping him back under the wing of the ugly B-2.

“Yep,” drawled Marksman.

What had the first sergeant just said? Red needed to stay sharp. Must be the lack of sleep. Everyone was jogging toward the hangar, so he followed.

Inside was a mess line on white plastic tables. Crossing the threshold, Jim shouted, “Last hot chow for a while. You heard Top. Don't eat too much.” An obvious glance at Crawler. “We load in ten minutes.”

Experience said eat when you can, as fast as you can. Red downed a hot turkey sandwich in seconds, but only for the energy. Unexpected hunger like a bear's at spring thaw surged up. He grabbed a second, slurped the gravy from the plate, and shoved half the sandwich in his mouth as they jogged to the latrine. Last call before an op—eat, hit the head, gear check, go.

Sitting across from each other without privacy stalls, the team cracked coarse jokes. Their repertoire hadn't changed, which was strangely reassuring. Then it was back to the hangar, through yet another gear check and out onto the tarmac. The first sergeant directed each man to a specific cloak. One crewman stood at parade rest at the head of each. Red and Sergeant Lanyard were assigned an extra crewman since they'd never been dropped before.

Red ran his palms over the cloak's surface. The tell-tale carbon fiber ridges beneath a charcoal matte coating bristled against his flesh. It was like a fat torpedo, maybe ten feet long and two feet across. At what looked to be the tail it necked down, then bulged back out like a bubble. Against the narrow section were four neatly folded aerofoils, like knives in slots.

The first crewman pushed a small black circle on the top edge and it swung down. A handle. The cloak broke open along its length. The inside was empty. The skin was only a quarter-inch thick, maybe less. “You mean that's
all
that'll be between me and the outside?” Red asked.

“Yes, sir.” The crewman smiled. “You guys are going in low, so these aren't pressurized.” He held out a harness, like for a parachute, only minus the chute. Red slipped it on, maneuvering it around his gear, then lay flat in the cloak. The massive wing of the B-2 blocked the setting sun.

The crewman clipped the harness to a hard point above his head. “That'll hold you upright when you hit water.”

Sergeant Crawler glanced up, sitting in the adjacent cloak adjusting his harness, then returned to the task at hand.

Marksman didn't let it go by, though. “Can you repeat that so I can hear? It's been a while. What happens when you hit the water?”

The crewman started to repeat his instructions. Crawler pointed and yelled, “Shut up or I'll unhook this death trap and shove it up your ass!”

The young airman first-class froze with his mouth open, staring.

Marksman pressed down on Velcro flaps, securing ammo clips inside chest pouches. “Give the kid a break, Crawler. Just a damn joke.”

“And you!” Crawler wiggled his broad backside around to face Marksman. “You started it. If I wasn't strapped in this coffin I'd kick your ass, too, you little prick!”

Red opened his mouth, but Jim beat him to it. “Gentlemen!” His sharp tone made Top sound soft spoken. “Like herding cats with you idiots.” Grins from the ground crew. “Grab-ass time's over. Marksman, quit poking your bodyguard. Sergeant Crawler, stop bragging about how you've got a pair. Grab those marbles, lay down, and shut the hell up!”

Jim could intimidate and motivate in the same breath. A natural, Red noted.

The crewman laid him flat, right arm down, left arm bent at the elbow, hand on chest. “That'll be most comfortable, sir. You can scratch and adjust most things.” He fitted the cloak's earpiece and tucked the controller into Red's hand, then adjusted the harness so it didn't cut off circulation. “You'll be pulling ten G's hitting the water, for a couple seconds.”

He reminded Red several times that his back and neck needed to be as straight as possible when the light in front of his face lit red. “That's when you're about to hit the water. You'll be coming in low on this one, so it'll come on almost immediately after you're dropped.” Since the water wasn't deep, the drag chutes had been switched to a larger model. “Your terminal velocity will be around a hundred fifty miles per hour. That'll mean a softer landing, but a higher chance of being picked up on radar. The pilot will slow a little for the drop. Expect two opening shocks. The first when the drag chute deploys. The second when you hit the water.”

Red frowned. “Won't they hear us hitting?”

The airman shook his head. “Been at some test drops. They're almost silent. The chutes are stealthy, the cloaks make a sound like doing a cannonball into a swimming pool. Unless some hadji's waiting for you, they won't know.”

After they hit, the cloak would rise to about ten feet of the surface, break open, and he could swim away.

“What happens to the cloak after that?”

“Except for the skin, everything's off-the-shelf. It's like riding a GPS-guided bomb into the water. After you swim away, they'll fall to the bottom. There's a charge in the nose and tail, like a grenade. Large enough to do the job but small enough to only make bubbles at the surface. They self-destruct after a couple minutes.”

His crewman glanced at the first sergeant, who was tapping his watch. The rest of the instructions were hasty, more like
Cloak Drops for Dummies
. After that both his crewmen stood next to the aerofoils and snapped to attention. Jim had said there'd be time to get him up to speed, but this would have to do.

Top scanned his crew and sounded off. “Arms check! No chambered rounds allowed on
my
aircraft. Once you're wet, charge your weapon to your bloody heart's content.”

The crewmen instructed the team to remove clips and cycle bolts. The
tink
of ammo hitting tarmac came from everywhere, since Jim required every weapon to be charged once they deployed, going against everything Red had ever heard in a safety-minded military. “Long story,” Jim would say, “but a kid in the Congo taught me the importance of always having a round chambered.”

“Your sidearm,” Crawler's crewman said. He growled, but cycled the slide and removed the chambered round. “Your other sidearm.” Another snarl from Crawler. “Do you have any other weapons with chambered rounds?”

“Yeah, my dick's a flamethrower. You need me to—”

“Crawler!”

He glanced at Jim and pursed his lips, then lifted his leg, pulling a tiny 32 auto from inside the boot. He released the round from the chamber and handed it to his crewman.

Jim pointed at Top. “First sergeant, double-check his buoyancy vest. He's got fifty pounds of demo gear and already pushing reg weight.”

All ammo and grenades were checked to ensure nothing could be dislodged during turbulence or opening shock. There'd be no bending down to pick up something that dropped. Crewmen fit the team with diving masks, clipped weapons to vests, and rechecked communications gear—all with the precision of a drill team, in under five minutes.

The first sergeant yelled, “Lockdown!” The world went dark as the door to Red's cloak hinged closed, like a coffin.

* * *

Red's eyes burned from lack of sleep. Or maybe it was the resinous stink coming off the cloak. He closed them tightly, attempting to make them water. He tried to rub them with his free hand, but only hit his diving mask.

It didn't take long for the air to grow thin and the walls to press in. He'd thought this might happen again. It had in SERE training last time, at the resistance phase, the “R” of the acronym. SERE prepared pilots and crew in case they were downed and captured. He'd been shoved into a crouch, head between his knees, then crammed into a crate and kept there for what seemed like hours. His spine had ached from the unfamiliar hunch. His legs had turned numb, a welcome relief from the throbbing. Once he'd been released, it took effort to stand, all the while taking blows from the guards.

Remembering the sheer misery of that crate helped the walls of the cloak recede. At least here he could move a little. A dim light glowed above his head as his eyes adjusted. It wasn't much, but helped.

The low purr of two munitions loaders reverberated outside, vibrations coming up through the cloak stand. Their tires scrubbed close, then pulled away. He'd be next.

His cloak jolted as the second loader picked it up and rolled underneath the bomb bay. Two men spoke nearby, only a mumble by the time the sound came through the cloak walls. More jolting and clacking, then a final
clunk
as the loader let go and he was suspended in place.

He wriggled down a few inches to take the slack out of the harness. That might keep him from getting snatched unconscious when his cloak hit water. Nothing else left to do. He was done, for now. Everything since Lori had been taken was a blur. Recall, saying good-bye to the kids, op prep, the flight over. Even the sleepless night pacing the hangar was dreamlike. No, nightmarish. He was alone, but without any reassurance that he was getting closer to her recovery.

He wasn't getting out till he was underwater in Iran. It was like his first jump, kneeling in the door of the OV-10, one hand on the floor, the other on the jamb. That unnatural feeling of balancing on the threshold, looking past his nose down to blue-gray landscape from twelve thousand feet. The slipstream slapping his flight suit against his shin, the jump master slapping him on the ass, yelling
Go!
He had leaned into that terrible wind and arched hard. Then seen the shrinking prick waving back and had thought
I just screwed up
. Several hundred jumps later, he could almost sleep on the way down. It was okay. This was his first cloaked drop, and he hoped it would be his last.

Lori knows I'll be coming
. Red couldn't disappoint her.

“
Comm check,
” came through the earpiece. Jim's voice. “
Carter is a go.
” Red pressed the button to confirm the same, along with several others. “
Crawler is a go,
” came through with a marked edge, followed by silence.

“
Marksman, you there?
” Jim asked. A comm clicked on, then the low buzz of snoring. Muffled laughter came through the resinous skin from all directions.

“
Comms are a go,
” Jim continued. “
We've got six hours till drop. I'll call fifteen minutes prior. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Comm out.
” Jim's way of saying get sleep, if you can.

The engines wound higher, and the jet rolled with a lurch. Red sat up and smacked his head against a rib on the back of the cloak door. Resting back, he glanced down his nose and checked the time. They'd deplaned only thirty minutes prior. The carbon fibers in front of his nose made a frozen tapestry. The strands wove, interconnected to form a fabric stronger than any single material could be by itself. Jim knew how to build and hold a team together, each member coming at the same op from different directions, carrying divergent skills. That was his strength, but also the team's greatest weakness.

Wheels up.