He broke off from the holding pattern, dropped to fifty thousand feet and engaged the afterburners, placing the Raptor in a steep ascent while arming one of two Sidewinder missiles.
So sorry, pal, he thought as he waited for the heat-seeking head to latch on to the weak but still relatively warmer signature of the crate beneath the balloon, now over ten thousand feet above him, but well within the missile’s range.
He achieved lock a moment later.
“Fox one,” he said as the F22 released the missile from its left bay just as his altimeter indicated sixty thousand feet, watching it ignite and hurtle skyward while he cut power and nudged the stick forward, dropping back down to a safer altitude.
* * *
Jack knew what was coming next, as the Raptor broke off the climb an instant before releasing a missile, which rocketed toward him.
Clutching the M32 grenade launcher, Jack fired two shells in rapid succession, watching them drop beneath him in long arcs, detonating in a burst of flames as their magnesium cores heated the surrounding air to incandescence, creating a much hotter signature for the Sidewinder’s heat-seeking head, drawing it away from him, exploding almost a mile under the crate.
He exhaled in relief as he watched the brief fireworks display, though he wasn’t certain how many more times he would get lucky as he topped seventy thousand feet or twenty-one kilometers, as his oxygen level dropped below seventy percent and battery power was reduced to two thirds.
And I still have another twenty-seven kilometers to go, he thought, for the first time starting to wonder if he was actually going to make it as he watched the F22 circling below him, finally losing sight of it as his altimeter read eighty thousand feet.
* * *
“Patrick, Red Leader. Missile failed. Repeat. Missile failed. He released flares.”
“Flares?”
“Affirmative.”
The channel went silent for a moment.
“Red Leader, engage target with AMRAAMs.”
Kelly checked his altitude and the altitude of the target, before he said, “Ah, target’s above twenty-four kilometers, Base, well above the AMRAAM ceiling. But he eventually has to come back down. Requesting permission again to hold until he does.”
More silence, followed by, “Hold approved, Red Leader.”
* * *
United States Navy Captain Ray Rodriguez, commanding officer (CO) of the USS Roosevelt, an Arleigh-Burke Class Destroyer patrolling the waters south of Daytona Beach, put down the radio after receiving the strangest of orders, which he asked to be confirmed twice, finally getting it directly from Admiral TJ Perry, commander of Task Force 20, which operated in the Atlantic Ocean from the North to South Poles, and from the Eastern United States to Western Europe and Africa.
He glanced over to his executive officer (XO), Lieutenant Commander Tricia Moore, almost ten years his junior, and frowned.
“Pretty fucking strange, sir,” she said.
He almost laughed and shrugged at the number two officer aboard a vessel he had commanded for almost three years. “Like they said in the Charge of the Light Brigade, Commander, ‘theirs not to reason why.’”
Moore relayed the order to the RIM-174A missile operator, arming one of the Roosevelt’s primary strike weapons, a two-stage surface-to-air missile with a flight ceiling well over 110,000 feet and a range of 240 kilometers.
“Range to target?” she asked while Rodriguez observed her in action.
“One hundred and seventy kilometers. Altitude of … one hundred fifteen thousand feet.”
Rodriguez frowned again, shaking his head. “That may be a bridge too far.”
“What happened to ‘theirs but to do and die,’ sir?” she said, smiling.
Now he finally smiled. She was right, of course, even if it meant wasting a five-million-dollar missile.
With a single nod, he gave her the order to fire.
* * *
Jack regulated his breathing as the altimeter climbed above 120,000 feet or thirty-six kilometers, the altitude where he had vanished on the way down over a week ago. OAT had increased to almost negative ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit as he got above the ozone layer, smack in the middle of the stratosphere.
He had already consumed well over half his oxygen and battery power had decreased to forty-five percent as the pumps continued to hold pressure and body temperature.
Jack was in the middle of doing some mental math again when he noticed a flash of light well below him, probably several kilometers, although it was hard to tell this high up, as he could see almost two-thirds of the Earth’s curvature projecting around him.
Now what? he thought, as he spotted a distant speck growing by the southern tip of Florida, followed by another flash, much closer than the first.
And that’s when he understood.
A two-stage rocket.
A missile.
Jack watched it rise up toward him, almost in slow motion, its second-stage booster glowing.
“Fuck me,” he hissed, right hand reaching for the seat belt strap, while his left clutched the hoses tethering him to the crate, ready to disconnect them.
The rocket continued its skyward trajectory, its booster glowing bright orange against the darker surroundings, backdropped by a spectacular view of planet Earth.
But an Earth in which he didn’t belong.
The missile grew in size, probably just a few miles below him.
Jack stopped breathing, tightening his grip on the hoses as the index finger of his bulky Russian glove reached under the seat belt release latch.
But he stopped when the incoming warhead, gray with green stripes, suddenly slowed down, its propellant firing intermittently, before going out.
Jack stared at the missile in disbelief, no more than a thousand feet away, floating in space, before slowly dropping back to Earth.
What are the odds of that? he thought, as he continued rising, passing the forty-kilometer mark or 131,000 feet with 32 percent oxygen left and 30 percent battery power.
He tried to relax, lowering his breathing rate, conserving the cold oxygen hissing inside his faceplate as the balloon began to slow down to around 750 feet per minute, as he watched his digital altimeter inch toward his option altitude, approaching the upper boundary of the stratosphere.
Almost there.
He forced himself to relax, to imagine his fall, the skydiving profile he would need to adopt as he reentered the atmosphere, as he went supersonic, though he had no way to gauge that. He just had to trust the physics that Angela and Layton had worked out.
Kilometer 46
Oxygen level 16%
Battery power at 12%
Ascent rate 550 feet per minute
Jack glanced at the heavens, momentarily surprised at the size of the balloon at the other end of the ropes. It was almost round in shape, massive, the expanded helium stretching the silvery fabric, in sharp contrast with the long and thin shape during launch.
It’s all in the physics, Jack.
He managed a smile.
Jack was definitely going to miss her.
Kilometer 47
Oxygen level 12%
Battery power 9%
Ascent rate 400 feet per minute
Jack unstrapped the seat belt and set the pressurization pump on high, increasing pressure to 6 psi to give himself a safety margin before untethering the hoses providing thermal circulation and pressurization.
From this point on he would rely on the suit’s hermeticity to hold internal pressure and hope the G-forces of the jump didn’t stress the multiple layers to the point of losing pressurization below 3 or 4 psi before he reached a safe altitude. He would also now be at the mercy of the multiple insulation layers to keep his body at a reasonable temperature for the duration of the jump.
He watched the altimeter tick off the last remaining feet before he disconnected the oxygen hose from the crate and turned on the valve of his portable oxygen canister.
And
as the altimeter read exactly forty-eight kilometers—and without hesitation—Jack dove head first into the abyss.
* * *
Pete slammed the phone and stood up, turning his hands into tight fists.
Jack had managed to escape, and the irony was that he did it all under his damned nose, using Pete’s own resources against him.
He closed his eyes, hoping like hell that when Jack jumped from that balloon, somehow he would just fall back the same way he went up, landing in the waiting arms of a dozen helicopters and a pair of circling F22s, not to mention the dozens of soldiers he had deployed to southern Florida to grab him the moment he—
There was a knock on the door.
He turned around and before he got a chance to say he was busy, Pete stared at the bulky figure of General George Hastings standing in the doorway.
“Pete? Do you mind telling me what in the world is going on?”
17
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
It began slowly.
A frozen bank account here, a canceled credit card there.
Then it picked up momentum.
The private accounts of his contractors were hit, tens of millions in funds vanishing overnight.
It became critical when shipments were intercepted by anonymous tips, when his supply chain came under attack, crippling his ability to coordinate his operation, to sustain the production of his suits, when the delicate formula to process salolitite was corrupted, sending Salazar and his team into a tailspin.
Then he lost access to the digital video files, to the real power he held over his people. He thought that those servers were secure, beyond the reach of anyone but him.
But General Hastings had underestimated his enemies.
Standing and walking over to the windows overlooking the peaceful meadow surrounding his salolitite production facility, while Salazar and the rest of his scientists worked feverishly to stabilize the operation, Hastings stared at the eastern skies, at the looming sun breaking the horizon with blinding shafts of orange and gold, staining the indigo sky, washing away the darkness.
A new day.
Hastings thought of those who came before him, of Theodore Hastings, of the legendary GW, of his own father. He would not let them down. He would find a way to survive this attack and continue his legacy.
And I will do so with Dr. Taylor, he thought, after giving the order to Javier and Davis to follow the digital trace that Raj from SkyLeap had detected in the most recent attack.
In their obsession to destroy him, the hackers had gotten careless, leaving behind a path, a trail for his people to follow in the cyberworld, converging on an IP address that would lead them to a physical location.
Hastings watched the rising sun, squinting, momentarily blinded by the piercing light, his mind already at work outlining the required damage control, which albeit more painful than the first strike, was still manageable.
But his coordinated defense would soon be followed by a carefully choreographed offense the instant Raj and his team provided him with an address.
And this time around, as he continued to stare at the amazing sunrise, he would make sure there would be no tricks.
No mistakes.
No decoys.
Only results, including transporting Dr. Taylor, completely unharmed, to his secret compound deep in the mountains of West Virginia.
* * *
Jack didn’t sense downward acceleration for some time, as he seemingly glided in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, like a wing, the nylon and Nomex webbing stretched between his torso and arms and also between his thighs, increasing stability.
But his altimeter told a different story.
He was most certainly falling.
And fast.
Lacking a vertical speed indicator, he did quick mental calculations to determine his speed based on time and lost altitude, determining that it had taken him four seconds to travel one kilometer, meaning he was falling just under the speed of sound.
When he reached kilometer forty-two, Jack assumed a near-vertical profile and sensed a light buffeting in his legs as he closed them, locking the rare-earth magnets Angela had sewn to the sides of his boots.
The buffeting increased, shaking him, forcing him to stiffen his muscles, to keep from tumbling. Jack clenched his jaw, trying to keep it together as he gained speed, finally reaching the sound barrier.
And just like that, the turbulence vanished.
Another calculation confirmed that he had just covered a kilometer in under 2.9 seconds.
I’m supersonic.
He slowly brought his arms to the sides of his suit, controlling his acceleration just as a purple glow materialized around him.
Hello there, he thought, watching it dance about him as solar gamma rays began to charge the glass accelerator embedded in the suit.
Speed increased to the neighborhood of Mach two as he counted seconds in his mind, outside temperature beginning to climb, but not nearly as much as his last jump, when he had reentered the atmosphere at a much faster speed, meaning less energy transfer from vertical speed to heat.
But the air finally heated to incandescence several seconds later, though Jack could no longer tell where he was because it would mean breaking his descent profile to lift his left arm and look at his altimeter.
He frowned at this unfortunate flaw in Angela’s design, unlike the OSS, which had a faceplate display providing him with relevant descent telemetry.
So he did the only thing he could do: continue counting seconds in his mind, working under the assumption that he dove roughly through one kilometer every two and a half seconds.
And with air molecules heating around him, sound returned to his world in the form of the ear-piercing growl of an atmosphere fighting back, slowing his descent, like an invisible shield.
Holding his profile and trusting the physics in Angela’s calculations, he watched the lavender glow increase about him as the pressure from deceleration and the accompanying heat tore into his ablation shields, as he began to feel the temperature rise through the insulation layers.
Damn, he thought, finding it difficult to concentrate, realizing that he wasn’t only pulling multiple Gs but lacked the ability to apply pressure to his legs and force blood back to his upper body.
Somewhere in the following seconds, as his tired mind guessed he had reached the vicinity of kilometer twenty-eight, the blinding purple light around him began to pulsate, slow at first, but with increasing intensity.
Squinting, his facial muscles tight, his jaw locked from concentration, Jack felt the rocketing temperatures permeating beyond the flexible insulation material, reaching his inner layers, beneath the aluminized Mylar and the nylon suit.
He tried to see beyond the glowing sphere of fire surrounding him, trembling with hues of purple, barely able to breathe, to force cool oxygen into his lungs as the pressure on his chest rocketed, as thoughts once again began to drift to the periphery of his mind.
But he couldn’t afford to pass out.
Not now.
He lacked an autopilot, the means to maintain his descent profile during this critical period, where he had to keep the blunt shape of the reinforced carbon-carbon tiles facing the inferno, shielding the rest of his suit from certain incineration as he dropped through the atmosphere like a meteor.
Jack pushed himself, fighting the growing light-headedness, his rising body temperature, his inability to deliver enough oxygen into his bloodstream.
And he persisted, reaching deep into his core, into his training, into the discipline instilled in him by his relentless BUD/S instructors to never give up, to refuse to surrender, to ignore staggering odds and forge ahead, to stare death in the eye and wait for it to blink.
The only easy day was yesterday.
Jack forced the thought into his mind, letting it flash as bright as th
e purple light converging on him, alive with sheet lightning, entrapping him, swallowing him through the incandescence, the heat, and the deafening noise.
He tried to breathe to inhale, but the heaviness on his chest became overpowering, unbearable, gripping him like a scorching vise, squeezing him.
The only … easy day … was yesterday.
Jack summoned all his strength to inhale again, just one more time, holding his breath for as long as he could, knowing that each passing second brought him closer to his goal, his target altitude, and to the harmonic that would magically arrest his fall, cheat the laws of physics currently trying to crush, incinerate, and tear him apart.
He wanted to scream but that would require the oxygen he could no longer deliver to his system as the weight on his chest pressed harder still, as he opened his mouth but couldn’t fill his collapsing lungs, his caving chest.
Lightning gleamed again, bright, violet and green and blue, its ear-piercing thunder crushing the reentry uproar, the billons of air molecules blazing a quarter of an inch from his blunt shields.
The light intensified, blinding him, forking into his helmet through the heat shield and the sun visor, through his eyelids, stabbing his mind.
And then it suddenly stopped.
The pressure, the furnace, the glaring light.
Jack filled his lungs for the first time without effort as he opened his eyes, staring at the vibrating membrane surrounding him, laced with color, writhing with flashes of light, but also soothing, comforting, insulating him from the harsh conflagration of a moment ago.
But he was still falling, once more inside this colorful chute that Angela had managed to calculate with impressive precision.
Jack risked a glance at his altimeter, locked on twelve kilometers as he dropped fast toward the bottom, alive with jagged lightning, its surface rippling, awash with sparks of static energy.
He quickly regained focus, became aware of his surroundings, recalling the last trip down.
The Fall Page 36