by Matt Rogers
King gulped back apprehension as he stepped into the space.
The floor consisted of the two bay doors, pressed together seamlessly along the centre line of the empty space. When they parted, it would expose the thirty thousand feet of sky between the Lancer and the mountainous Russian terrain.
A long way to fall, he thought.
The bay was dimly illuminated by several lengths of weak artificial lighting dotting the ceiling. Thick olive wires snaked along the steel walls, arranged neatly into rows. The air felt artificial and stank of aviation fuel and grime.
The space where the payload usually rested lay empty — save for a rudimentary plank that had been stretched across the bay at chest height.
‘What’s that for?’ King said.
‘That’s where you sit.’
‘Great.’
He walked tentatively across the bay floor, acutely aware that it would only take one flick of a switch to send the doors dropping away beneath him.
It would be a long and terrifying fall to his death.
He followed Isla to the plank, where an array of gear was sprawled across the metal underneath. He cast his eyes over HALO jump gear, an oxygen mask, distress flares, an M4A1 carbine assault rifle, and finally a thick all-weather pack designed to strap on one’s front during a skydive. The pack seemed loaded to the brim, likely filled with all kinds of survival gear in case King got caught in the middle of nowhere without viable backup.
He gestured to the duffel pack. ‘What’s in that?’
‘Thought you might ask,’ Isla said. ‘A few changes of clothes — all top-of-the-line gear. Ration packs and water in case you get trapped in the middle of nowhere. And a Glock-22 — for good measure.’
King ran his hands over the M4A1 carbine.
‘That rifle is standard,’ she said. ‘Three modes. Safe, semi-automatic, fully-automatic. But you knew that already. I heard it’s your favourite.’
‘Been a while since I’ve used one.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You didn’t get the chance in Egypt. Lord knows what would have happened if you were fully armed.’
‘You know there’s likely nothing down there, right?’
She nodded. ‘This is all just precautionary.’
With one hand, she reached back and extracted a small syringe — capped for protection — from her jacket pocket. She slid the plastic cap off and flicked the thin needle twice.
‘Hold out your arm,’ she said.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘I’m not a doctor,’ she said. ‘I was told to give it to you. It’ll act as a temporary barrier against a group of diseases. They were treating tuberculosis, remember.’
‘Great.’
He rolled up his shirt and offered his arm. Isla sunk the needle into his skin — just above his bicep — and injected him with the contents of the syringe.
‘Not targeting a vein?’ King said through clenched teeth.
‘Intramuscular injection is what I’ve been told,’ Isla said. ‘Once again — I’m not a doctor. Just following instructions.’
‘Neither am I, so I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, rolling his sleeve back down. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Get dressed,’ Isla said. ‘Obviously I can’t be in the bay when we hit our destination. The green light above the door we came through will turn on, and three seconds later the floor will open up. Then you drop.’
King suddenly felt a sharp wave of vertigo wash over him. It reminded him that the ground he stood on was really just a thin metal door, ready to thrust him into below freezing temperatures.
Isla handed him a thin chrome earpiece.
‘Stick that to the inside of your ear,’ she said. ‘It’s basically a miniature satellite phone. Contact me at any time by touching a finger to it. Got it?’
King nodded and wedged the device into his ear canal. It felt odd for a minute, but he soon acclimatised. It lent him an air of security. He had backup on standby at any moment. ‘Anything else?’
Isla shrugged. ‘Good luck. But I know you won’t need it. I assume you know how to get this gear on?’
He cocked his head. ‘I think I can handle it, Isla.’
Before she left, her expression changed.
King noticed it only for a split second, but it was enough to understand that she hadn’t revealed everything to him. The facade of grittiness fell away and she looked at him like he hadn’t ever seen before. There was vulnerability in her eyes.
‘King,’ she said, her tone wavering. ‘Please find them.’
Then she turned on her heel and strode out of the bay before he had a chance to quiz her on the odd statement.
Alone in the empty bay, he set himself into a methodical trance-like state, checking and re-checking his weapon and gear until he was certain that everything would work. He undressed, shivering in the freezing air, and donned the tactical gear Isla had provided.
First came a layer of skin-tight thermal compression wear. Next he slipped on thick navy khakis, heavy black combat boots, several layers of dark upper-body protective clothing and finally a bulletproof vest made of Spectra instead of Kevlar. King had long been a fan of Spectra for operations such as these, where he was inserted into unknown territory and forced to carry all his gear with him. The material was lighter and more efficient than its better-known counterpart.
He secured the all-weather pack to the front of his torso, limiting his movement. When he hit solid ground, he would shed the parachute and its container — freeing him of the majority of the weight. Black Force had the budget to spare a parachute.
He stepped into the harness at his feet and shimmied it up his legs, tightening the leather straps around his thighs. He reached back and shrugged on the main container, heavy to compensate for his bulk. Next came the oxygen mask, which he slipped over his face and secured tight.
The visor dropped down over his eyes, tinting his vision. He connected the mask to the small oxygen bottle fixed into the side of his chute and checked the gauge.
Full.
He waited until the oxygen began to flow from the tank before breathing a sigh of relief. The last thing he wanted was a desperate scramble for the exit as he realised there was a malfunction, just as the floor fell away…
Finally he knotted the M4A1 to the pack pressed against his chest and stomach. The sheer amount of gear attached to him weighed him down, causing his quads and hamstrings to activate.
With a grunt of exertion, he heaved himself onto the plank, scrambling against the cold metal until he dropped onto the thin surface on his rear.
Then he waited.
He felt a pang of claustrophobia deep in his chest, listening to the sound of his own heavy breathing as oxygen flowed from the tank into his mouth. It tasted sterile.
The visor dulled his surroundings, to the point where they felt artificial. He experienced a certain disconnect from his reality, like the jump wasn’t actually about to happen.
Five minutes later, the warning light above the exit door blinked on.
King stared at it.
Here we go.
He soaked in the relative silence while he had the chance.
The doors parted and unrelenting wind howled in, circling around the empty bay, pummelling his clothing, threatening to throw him off the ledge.
He gripped a nearby column tight. Below, gargantuan storm clouds roiled across a dark sky.
The ground was so far below that he couldn’t see an inch of it.
He gulped once, tightened his gut, and fell forward.
Carried by the momentum of all the weight strapped to his chest, he toppled off the ledge and dropped like a deadweight away from the bomber.
9
Chaos.
King entered an uncontrollable spin the second he fell into thin air.
Only a couple of seconds after dropping from the bomb bay, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the B-1 Lancer far overhead, nothing but a speck in the distance. Then
the massive storm clouds swallowed him up, and he lost all sight of the aircraft.
He arched his back and splayed his limbs, maximising his surface area, but it proved futile. Carrying this much weight was disastrous. His vision blurred as he tore through hundreds of feet of thick grey clouds in the blink of an eye.
He twisted and spun in the air.
He knew that from thirty thousand feet, free fall was supposed to last a full two minutes.
He had one-hundred-and-twenty seconds to right himself, or he would fail to deploy his chute and hit the mountains at terminal velocity.
Still surrounded by cloud, his vision proved useless.
The ground was invisible.
He forced himself not to panic. With his senses overloading, any kind of descent into full-blown terror would inhibit his fine motor skills and cause him to sink deeper into the spin. He ignored his heart, pounding so hard against his chest wall that he thought it might burst.
He focused on the factors he could control.
Maintaining the arched back was paramount. He spread his arms and legs as wide as they could go, but the weight of the gear strapped across his body wrenched him downward at an incredible speed.
He needed to slow himself.
The drogue chute, you idiot.
Scolding himself for such foolishness, he reached back and yanked the drogue parachute out of its holster. The small stretch of canvas acted as a stabiliser to trail behind heavy skydivers and slow their descent by a few dozen miles per hour. It was often utilised by tandem skydivers to control the novice strapped to their front.
King had completely forgotten of its existence.
It had been a while.
He didn’t see the drogue chute open, but he felt its effect. Almost instantly, the rapid spin corrected itself. It still felt like he was hurtling to the ground at terminal velocity — which he was — but the slightly reduced speed allowed him to stabilise more effectively.
Slowly, his vision came back to him.
Darkness. All around. Freefalling at night into enemy territory never failed to instil terror in even the most hardened veterans. The surrounding black conjured all kinds of imaginings in the mind.
He checked the altimeter strapped to his wrist.
Fifteen thousand feet.
He would pull the main parachute at three thousand feet. An incredibly low opening by normal safety standards, but the last thing he wanted was to open too high and find himself spotted by…
By who?
By a party of international relief workers, in all likelihood. Probably wondering why a Special Forces operative armed to the teeth had been sent to confirm their wellbeing.
You and me both, he thought.
At eight thousand feet he burst through the lowest layer of clouds and the Russian Far East revealed itself far below. Through his visor, he stared out at sweeping plains and massive volcanoes sprawled across the barren land. From this height, they looked like pimples on the surface of the Earth.
There was just enough moonlight to make out the features of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Without it, King wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. He noted the complete absence of artificial light below. The region was almost entirely uninhabited.
Powering toward the peninsula at one-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour, King felt a chill arc down his spine. Decent infrastructure didn’t exist out here. Barely populated, the Kamchatka Peninsula was effectively lawless. He wondered if there really was something sinister lurking amongst the volcanoes.
The altimeter’s needle passed below four thousand feet. On either side of him, the mountains loomed.
King reached back and tugged the pilot chute free.
It took a couple of seconds to halt his descent. For a fleeting moment he thought there had been a malfunction and his stomach twisted. He reached instinctively for the handle that activated the reserve chute.
Then the straps under his armpits and around his thighs constricted, yanked up by the wind catching the vast canopy above his head.
The pack against his chest slammed into him, knocking the breath from his lungs. He hadn’t secured it as tightly as he would have hoped. He checked the M4A1 carbine hadn’t dislodged in the process.
Satisfied, he peeled off his oxygen mask before reaching up and taking hold of the toggles on either side of his head.
The darkness enveloped him. He didn’t dare light a flare or use the LED light attached to the underside of the rifle against his stomach. He had undertaken enough skydives in his lifetime to know the correct manoeuvres like they were second nature.
Any kind of artificial light would only attract the attention of undesirables.
If they existed.
He scrutinised the landing area — at least, the parts he could see from this height. Below his feet lay a relatively flat section of the peninsula, complete with great swathes of forested area and snowy plains stretching toward the horizon.
If he peered hard enough, he could make out a smattering of thin unkempt roads twisting and turning through the desolate land. It was the first sign of any kind of civilisation he had seen since exiting the Lancer. Other than that, it felt as if he were landing on an alien planet.
Gazing around, he realised that if he had exited the bomber a dozen miles in any other direction he would have landed among steep and dangerous terrain. He spotted ravines running between sheer cliff-faces and unimaginably steep mountainsides dipping into tree-covered valleys. A layer of snow covered everything in sight.
Carter and his co-pilot had certainly done their homework on the ideal drop zone.
The ground rushed up to meet him, deceptively fast. He gently guided the canopy toward the patch of land covered in the least amount of snow. It was best to avoid any area where the depth wasn’t ascertainable.
He flared the parachute periodically, expertly guiding his bulk onto a field of dead undergrowth. As his boots hit the rocky ground he let the tension go from his knees, folding with the impact. With so much weight strapped to his upper body, it would prove disastrous to land awkwardly on an ankle and tear ligaments.
He rolled along his back, skirting to a stop just a few feet from where he first hit the rock. The empty parachute container absorbed most of the impact, but it was still jarring.
Unfazed, he loosened the leg straps, unbuckled the chest strap, shrugged off the container and rose to his feet.
Surrounded by uninhabited terrain.
He took a moment to compose himself, then touched a finger to the small device inside his ear canal. Only a second or two later, a voice crackled to life.
‘King?’ Isla sounded like she was standing across from him.
‘I’m on the ground. Don’t think anyone spotted me. At least, not yet.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you know where I am?’
A pause. ‘Yeah. We’ve got you.’
King peered up at the gloomy night sky. The sweeping cumulonimbus cloud he had passed through moments earlier rumbled overhead, like something out of an apocalyptic science-fiction movie. There was no sign of the B-1 Lancer, cruising at high altitude far above. ‘How?’
‘State-of-the-art GPS at the bottom of your pack.’
King glanced at the thick duffel strapped to his front. ‘Glad to know I’ve got eyes on me at all times.’
‘I hope you understand that we don’t have back-up easily available. This situation came out of nowhere. For now, you’re on your own.’
‘You know,’ King said, his breath misting in front of his face as the cold began to seep into his gear, ‘I never did ask. How’s the hunt for new recruits going?’
‘It’s painstaking,’ Isla said. ‘The two men you killed in Egypt were our hottest prospects. But that’s none of your concern. Your sole focus right now is on the WHO workers.’
‘Got it.’
‘You landed exactly where we intended. If our planning is accurate, then you’re roughly two miles from the village. See that road behind you?
’
King looked out over sloping plains of tundra, devoid of forest. The land was covered in thick shrubs, craggy rock formations and brilliant white snow. He turned around to see a long expanse of deciduous trees trailing away in either direction. The Russian Far East had a number of different biomes, apparently.
Beyond the trees, King narrowed his eyes and made out a shoddy dirt road, barely illuminated by the faint moonlight. Even from this distance, the track clearly hadn’t been tended to in over a decade. He struggled to comprehend how an ordinary vehicle could traverse the roads around here and remain in one piece.
‘I’d say that barely qualifies as a road,’ he said quietly.
‘Good thing you’re not driving on it,’ Isla said. ‘Get onto it and turn right. You’ll hit the village before long. Stay low, stay quiet. Do your best not to get spotted. The town hall is at the far end. Check if it’s populated.’
‘And if it’s not?’
Silence. ‘We’ll worry about that when you get there.’
King undid the two thick straps tying the duffel bag to his front and slung it onto his back, replacing the parachute container which now lay discarded on the rocky ground. He left the container and its ejected canopy where they rested, and made for the road.
Somewhere in the distance — miles away from his location — an ominous rumble whispered across the plains. King stopped in his tracks and listened intently, his heart rate increasing involuntarily. He activated his earpiece once again.
‘Isla.’
‘Yes?’
‘Is this region prone to earthquakes?’
‘Not that I know of. Why?’
‘I heard something…’
‘There’s over a hundred volcanoes along the peninsula,’ Isla said. ‘Some of them are still active. You’ll probably hear a lot of the effects of volcanic phenomena.’
King shrugged off a slight tremor in his hands. ‘That’s reassuring.’
‘Just ignore it. You’re not close enough to any particular volcano to get hit by a freak eruption.’
‘Great.’
He pressed on.