“And what about return clearance?” asked the copilot.
“We will not be coming back,” said Nimrodi. “At least not this way. And I will need you to execute some more fancy landings.”
“Some?” The copilot checked the altimeter and looked at a chart board strapped to his left thigh.
“Yes. Is that all right?”
“Well, I’d rather be in bed,” the pilot complained. He pronounced it “bid,” as South Africans do.
“Liar,” Nimrodi accused. The Dakota bucked hard as it entered a white wall of cloud, and then the peaks appeared again, closer.
“Those first ones are the Atlases,” said the pilot as he pointed. “The big one beyond is Jbel Sarhro. It’ll feel rough, but it’s an easy go.” He leaned toward his left-hand window and pointed down. “We just follow the road to Ouarzazate and then again to Zagora. After that it’s a straight run over dunes to the border.”
“And you will stay low till then?”
“We’ll give the Bedouins a fright,” said the copilot.
Nimrodi rubbed his hands together. “So where are my provisions?”
“In the left heating vent and behind the right panel in the loo,” said the pilot. “Your suppliers looked like Barbary pirates.”
“They are.”
“There’s a drill in the navigator’s box. And hurry up so we can get some heat going again.”
Nimrodi turned to go, then stopped. “By the way,” he said. “Can either of you fly a corporate jet?”
The pilot and his partner looked at each other, then back at the colonel. “We can fly anything with wings and an engine,” said the South African.
“Good.” Nimrodi slapped the doorframe.
“Baba?” the copilot called.
“Yes?”
“B’atslacha,” he offered in Hebrew. “Good luck.”
Nimrodi bugged his eyes in mock surprise. “Ma? Atah yehudi? What? You’re Jewish?” The pilots laughed as he went out.
Below the folding navigator’s table there was a large metal toolbox, and Nimrodi extracted a battery-powered screwdriver from it. He walked back into the cargo compartment, grinned at Benni Baum and pointed up at the ceiling. A pair of boxy aluminum air ducts ran the length of the cabin, and Baum, Eckstein, and Nabbe rose from the bench and pressed their palms against the left carrier. Nimrodi hopped up on the bench, quickly extracting screws and dropping them into his jacket pocket. Then he gently peeled away one side of the duct, reached inside, and removed a long package of burlap closed with twine. He tossed it across the cabin to O’Donovan, who immediately began to tear at it like an orphan who had never experienced Christmas.
By the time the duct was empty and Nimrodi had begun to reset the screws, the cabin floor was strewn with strips of burlap and twine. The men were huddled around four CAR-15 Colt Commandos—the collapsible versions of the M-16 assault rifle—and one mini Uzi with a wire stock, and Schneller, grinning at Nimrodi and shaking his head, held a British Parker-Hale M85 sniper rifle and was obviously unconcerned that jumping with the long-barreled weapon might prove a dangerous undertaking.
The Dakota’s engines were still running flat out, and the Atlas winds slapped the undercarriage, so O’Donovan had to yell.
“That’s only six, Baba.”
“And mags, baby,” Binder added as he stuck a thumb up the empty magazine well of one of the CARs.
“Ammunition would also be très désirable,” said Nabbe.
Nimrodi ignored them, making his way back to the lavatory. He squeezed inside and quickly removed the right fuselage panel with the power tool. Between the ribs, cardboard boxes of 5.56 mm, 9 mm, and 7.62 NATO rounds, both standard and tracer, were stacked up to his waist. Above them, piles of black magazines were laid in like brickwork. And finally, three FN Browning High-Power pistols in Cordura holsters were duct-taped to the wall. Nimrodi motioned to Horse, whose facial color was resembling the olive hue of the cabin, and the little man staggered to him, forming the head of a chain as Nimrodi passed the ammunition.
Had the men been idle passengers, the turbulent motion of the Dakota would have begun to take its toll by now. Had they been sport skydivers, or even regular paratroops on a long jump run, that strange phenomenon called jumper’s slumber might have come into play, where the brain realizes that the body is about to perform an extremely unnatural act and suddenly anesthetizes its host, slumping him into a sleep of denial. But they were overburdened with equipment problems, and they welcomed them in an adrenal frenzy.
All of them were wearing military-style jump boots, for you could not quick-march over dunes in a skydiving sneaker. Even Binder had instinctively packed his Vietnam jungle boots. They also wore various types of fatigue trousers: some standard IDF with the markings blotted out, some old-style American jungle cargoes. They removed their footwear, pulled thick rubber bands over their ankles, and bloused the cuffs to deny the cold winds at altitude. They opened their trousers, pushed them down to expose their thermal underwear, and passed around one of Didi’s rigger blades, cutting short slices in the waistbands and cuffs of the thermals. The extra layer would be essential during the drop, but once they began to march, the heat would quickly build and choke them. Upon landing, they would now be able to quickly drop their fatigues and shred off the thermals without removing their boots.
Each man was wearing a heavy sweater, some of which had been dyed darker during the last day in Marrakesh, and over those were the dark mountain anoraks in which they had convened in Casablanca. Binder, having loaned his white alpine to Horse, had bought an old U.S. M-52 field jacket from a rack in the souk.
They bound their cuffs down to their forearms with electrical tape, then used another length to affix the penlights to the backs of their left wrists and checked the bulbs. They pulled black balaclavas onto their heads, then slipped their goggles over to hang around their necks. Didi and Amir had the lightweight Kroops they always traveled with, while Mustaffa had come up with rubber-coated industrial models for everyone else. Sadeen had drilled small holes in all the lens tops to prevent fogging.
Baum and Eckstein oversaw a weapons preparation session, working their way along the cabin. The CAR-15s were not new, but they were very clean and their actions seemed fine. The men field-stripped them and inspected the firing pins. Out of habit, precaution, or superstition, they took out their cleaning kits and worked on the barrels. Nabbe, who was a world-class pistolero, gladly accepted one of the High-Powers, as did Lapkin. Baum, who was a very mediocre shot with any weapon, took the third. The mini Uzi happened to be Didi’s favorite, and he had snatched it up like a possessive toddler.
“Standard night loads,” Baum said to Sadeen, who passed it on throughout the cabin.
“What’s ‘standard’ for you guys?” O’Donovan asked Eckstein. It was not a challenge. Both he and Binder appreciated the need for continuity.
“In the thirty-round mags,” said Eckstein, “load only twenty-nine.” The Israelis were wary of overloading magazine springs. “First two in should be tracer, so you’ll know when you’re out. Then three regular and one tracer all the way through.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Binder. The CARs had come with only seven magazines apiece. He would have preferred ten, but he was happy not to have been handed a crossbow.
“How am I going to accurize this thing?” Schneller was looking over the Parker-Hale. It was fitted with a 4>10x Pecar scope, but there was no way to know if it was correctly mounted.
“It has just been used at three hundred meters,” Nimrodi called to him. “At that range or closer, you will be all right, my friend.”
Schneller raised an eyebrow. What had Baba been doing in Mauritania? Hunting wild boar? No matter. His word was clearly gold.
With their magazines fully loaded, the men stood up and held on to the pitching fuselage as they worked out how they would carry them in their pockets without rattling. Horse, whose fear was undiminished, as he could not participate in these dist
ractions, suddenly decided that the litter of burlap and ammo boxes was unseemly, and he took a steel vomit bucket from beneath a bench, got down on all fours, and began to collect the mess.
Didi came off his bench by the cargo door and straddled the cabin floor. “All right,” he called. “You can put one mag in your trouser side pocket. The rest go back in the rucks.”
The men sat down and reluctantly parted with their ammunition. Lerner crossed to O’Donovan and stood him up to use as a mannequin. The CAR-15 was equipped with a web sling, which he pulled to its full length and draped over O’Donovan’s right shoulder and diagonally across his back, so that the weapon rested horizontally just below his crotch, barrel to the left and away from where the throw-out pilot chute would deploy. He knelt and flipped the American’s camel ruck around so that the flap was away from him, helped him step through the shoulder straps, slid the ruck up his legs, opened the flap, rebuckled it around the CAR, then tightened up the rifle sling until the pack was covering his groin and the weapon lay across his pelvis.
Now he opened O’Donovan’s parachute bag, lifted out a purple Telesis container, and freed the harness straps. He helped him into the rig, then spun him around, threaded the leg webs through the camel-ruck straps, clipped them, and cinched them up until the detective groaned. As he closed the chest band, he could feel O’Donovan’s heart pounding, which was just fine, as only a robot or a psychopath would have reacted indifferently to the procedure.
He held O’Donovan by the shoulders and looked him over.
“I think it’s good, Mike,” said Didi, for the first time addressing O’Donovan by his Christian name. “Don’t you?”
“Feels okay.” The American hopped up and down to check the slack in the rig. It was solid, and as all the rucks had been very carefully packed, nothing banged or rattled. “But a quick release would be better.” When a military jumper went out with equipment, it was usually in a special bag snapped onto D rings on the harness. After his chute opened, he released the bag, and it would fall to dangle below him on a five-meter rope. This method had added benefits at night because you could hear the bag hit first and know that your landing was imminent.
“Don’t like ’em with ram airs,” said Didi as he turned O’Donovan and inspected him from the back. “The pendulum screws up maneuverability, especially near the ground when you need it. Spread your legs.” O’Donovan obeyed and Didi reached through, pulling on the ruck to see if it might obstruct the main deployment. “Don’t try a stand-up landing, but avoid a PLF if you can. Just come in and sit down, like you’re sliding into home plate. Better to take off a piece of your arse than bust up your legs or ribs.”
Binder reached up from his seat and tugged at Didi’s elbow. “Hey, boss. Why don’t we just sling the weapons barrel down and under our harnesses?”
Although Didi smiled, it was clear that he considered the jumpmaster’s decisions inviolate. “Because I don’t know you, mate, so I don’t trust you. You get a malfunction at night, you’ll be scrambling for the cutaway and wind up hauling on the bloody trigger grip, wondering why the fuck your reserve won’t deploy.”
Binder raised his hands. “No más, no más.”
Didi turned to look at Lapkin and Nimrodi, who were seated back near the cargo door. Both men shot him a thumbs-up. He stepped to the front of the cabin and turned aft, raising his palms. The Dakota had ceased its constant pattern of banks and turns, and having passed over Jbel Sarhro, it was descending more gently toward the lower plateaus of Kem Kem. The men stood and began slinging their weapons as Didi had done to O’Donovan.
Nimrodi and Lapkin worked from the back of the plane, while Didi rigged from the front. Baum and Nabbe were easy, as their High-Powers fit inside their closed rucks. Binder was given the stretcher, which Didi had designed to be no larger than a quartet of poster tubes, and it was added to his ruck flap below his CAR. Schneller was a real challenge, until Nimrodi and Lapkin decided to tape the long Parker-Hale to his left thigh with ripstop, beneath the leg strap and barrel up, with the sling wound around his trunk. They cut a swath from a parachute bag and enshrouded the scope using electrical tape, then urged him to try for a dead man’s PLF onto his right leg when he hit.
At last the three riggers stood scratching their chins over Sadeen. They all wished now that they had vetoed his crazy moped idea, for there were too many ways in which the bulky package could kill him. Didi had initially thought to tie the moped frame to two harness points, with a third umbilical of climbing rope from it to the leg straps. Sadeen would cut the joiners and let the bike dangle below him. But now the Australian hesitated. He knew that as Sadeen jumped, the moped’s carpet would immediately catch the wind, and he would somersault. It might flip up and smash his chest or his jaw. He could not picture a proper attitude with which Sadeen could exit the aircraft.
“Let’s can the whole fucking thing,” Didi said bitterly.
“You can’t,” Lapkin argued in his ear. “It’ll throw off the plan, kill everyone’s morale.”
“It’ll kill him if we do it,” Didi snapped.
“He is correct,” said Nimrodi. “We must find another way.”
Sadeen looked up at them, having lost a measure of cockiness, awaiting their verdict. “And there is this too,” he said, holding up his ruck and the CAR-15.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.”
Didi and Amir parted to admit Horse’s pale face. The analyst had been listening to the discussion, and since no options seemed to present themselves, he shyly offered a suggestion.
“Sadeen is wearing the big parachute, with the rip cord. No?”
“Yeah,” said Didi. “I gave him the Cloud. So?”
“And he will be the first one out. Correct?”
“Yeah? Yeah?” Didi was exasperated by Horse’s diffidence.
“Say it out, Soos.” Baum had waddled over to the group.
Horse pushed his glasses up onto his nose. “Well, why don’t you have him jump like the Americans do from helicopters? Rig the backpack and the weapon as you wanted, then the moped over that, then seat him in the doorway with his hand on the rip cord. He can just roll forward, fall straight down, and pull. No?”
No one said anything at all for a moment, then Nimrodi grabbed Horse and kissed him on both cheeks like de Gaulle presenting the Croix de Guerre. Didi slapped Horse on the back and cried, “You brilliant little wanker! I’m gonna buy you a crate of Foster’s!”
Horse grinned sheepishly, privately recoiling at the nauseating notion of so much beer.
“That’s why he gets the big salary,” Baum said proudly as he struggled away under the weight of his gear.
The heavy drone of the Dakota’s engines changed to a lower thrum, and Nimrodi crouched at a window. For a moment, he saw nothing but the swirl of close cloud, and then the curtain shifted instantly to black as they broke through the ceiling. They had cleared the High Atlas, passed over Zagora and Jbel Tadrart, and were still dropping lower. The vast wastes of Kem Kem and beyond that the Hamada du Guir stretched to the horizon, undisturbed by a single beacon of light. This tract of desert was a coarse quilt of hard plateaus and wadis. The night sky was moonless but full of stars, and their light washed the floor in hues of brown and purple, a sun- and wind-battered flesh lined with jagged black veins. The landscape moved quickly past the wingtip as the pilots flew a modest nap of the earth at two hundred meters.
Nimrodi moved back past the cargo door and donned the jumpmaster’s headset. He spoke to the pilots and then caught the attention of the men in the cabin, tapped his watch, raised an index finger, and made a single circling motion with the digit.
One hour to go.
The overhead cabin lights went out and were replaced by the ghostly red glow of mission bulbs, which had the effect of subduing everyone. Benni scanned the cabin. An hour was an eon for men en route to such a venture, too much time to think.
They had spent most of the day paired off, reviewing procedures with their partners,
getting to know each other’s habits. I shoot from the shoulder as I move. I will yell “Magazine!” when I’m empty and reloading. If you’re shooting prone and I want to pass you close, I’ll tap you on the head on the way, so hold your fire. They were seated in those pairs now, Baum with Eckstein, O’Donovan and Binder across the cabin. Schneller could no longer sit properly with the Parker-Hale strapped to his leg like a splint, so he half reclined on the starboard bench, while Nabbe sat across the way.
Didi and Lapkin worked over Sadeen, who was seated on the floor with his back against the starboard aft fuselage. His legs were spread and his ruck and rifle lay between them. The riggers had inverted two vomit buckets and set them on either side of his legs, then laid the cocooned moped across so it applied no pressure. They cut holes through the rug and tied the frame to his harness, then taped a hook knife into the palm of his left glove. The drop line was a length of 11 mm climbing rope, which Didi now coiled with a packing band.
In a field operation, it would have been the time for Benni, as mission commander, to stand up and speak, issue words of encouragement, God and country and all that. But this brief respite had the effect of allowing his exhaustion to bloom, and the weight of his equipment was doubled by the measure of his doubts. Unlike the other men, he was not visited by the natural apprehension over the trustworthiness of his parachute. If he did not survive the jump, then at least he would not have to face the horror of losing Ruth. But he somehow knew that he would survive it, and he mustered some strength with the oath that if he was to die, it would be at his daughter’s feet and no less than that.
“Eytan,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Tell them to review again with their partners and blacken their faces.”
“Right.”
“And remind them that anyone who gets lost is to go for the nearest road and dump everything but his passport. No weapons. Bury it all.”
“Got it.”
“And one more thing.”
“What?”
Benni squinted off into an undefined distance. “Thank them for me.”
The Nylon Hand of God Page 55