BRAINRUSH, a Thriller

by Bard, Richard

  Marshall stood back up, a snicker in his voice. “Hell, man. That sounds like a five-star adventure of a lifetime. Wish I could join you!”

  Jake couldn’t hold back his chuckle. “Ha, you’re right. No biggy.”

  “You’re all over it, man. No worries.” Marshall grinned and opened his bandaged palm at his side. “Down low.”

  “Never slow,” Jake said, slapping air when Marshall quickly withdrew his offered palm.

  They both laughed and Marshall walked back to his seat next to Lacey and Ahmed. Leave it to Marsh to lighten things up.

  Tark and Willie were prepping their kits at the back of the plane.

  Jake rested his head back in the seat. He needed to take his mind off the task in front of him. Closing his eyes, he visualized the photos they had found in Battista’s office. A twenty-five-thousand-year-old obelisk, its highly polished surface engraved with images and glyphs that were so detailed they could have been burned in with a laser. How the hell was that possible?

  As easily as pulling files off a hard drive, he scrolled through the images in his mind, rotating them and changing their order, looking for a pattern. There was something there, something he was missing.

  Chapter 34

  Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

  2:00 am

  Deep within the mountain complex, the radar technician had trouble keeping his eyes open. It was two in the morning, his shift only half over. He slurped the last bit of strong tea out of the bottom of his cup, anxious for the temporary lift it would give him.

  A chirp from the radar screen snapped his attention to the luminescent green display. He waited anxiously for the rotating wand to complete another circuit on the screen. There it was again. The target was thirty miles east at twenty-five thousand feet. A slow mover, but too fast for a helicopter. He reached for the alert phone, but hesitated. On its present course, the bogey would pass no closer than twenty-two miles east of the mountain. The sheikh would not like to be awakened for nothing. The tech decided to wait, monitoring the blip closely. As long as it continued on course, it was no threat.

  **

  Twenty-five thousand feet over Afghanistan

  Tark checked his watch.

  Two minutes to go.

  He and Willie looked like two fat Michelin men, stuffed and ready to pop. They were in the rear of the cabin completing the final checks on their equipment and weapons. In addition to their camo Dragon Skin body armor and standard combat pack and weapons, they each carried an additional ninety-pound butt pack that held a five-hundred-meter length of workhorse climbing rope, plus a variety of short black aluminum tubes. Add to that the unusually large parachute pack and standing up was a challenge. Underneath the gear, like the rest of the team, they wore the SPIES black digital camo, made from highly durable, flexible textile embedded with protective pads for elbow and knee protection; and a built-in, load-carrying chassis designed to distribute the fighting load evenly and provide unconstrained movement.

  The two men had been pre-breathing 100% dry oxygen for the past thirty minutes, prepping for their HAHO jump. Willie’s voice squawked through Tark’s helmet comm system. “Good thing we’re not walking. I feel like an overloaded pack mule.”

  Tark double-checked the cinches on Willie’s chute pack. Assured that everything was good, he said, “Tell me about it. Your scope good?”

  “Triple-checked.”

  They needed to take out the sentries from above—not an easy task when maneuvering to land on a narrow ledge on the top of a cliff. At night. Each of them carried a silenced HK416 assault rifle with the Raptor Gen 3 night vision weapon sight.

  Donning his Nomex flight gloves, Tark slapped Willie’s shoulder. “Time to earn our keep.”

  They lowered the polycarbonate visors on their helmets. Tark notified the cockpit they were ready. He glanced over his shoulder and checked the rest of the team. Their faces were illuminated by dim, red cabin lighting designed to protect their night vision. They were strapped in along the two rows of inward-facing seats. Each wore a portable oxygen mask in preparation for cabin decompression. All heads were turned Tark’s way, waiting for the rear door to drop open.

  Tark nodded to the copilot, Kenny, who stood behind him by the cargo ramp switch. Kenny hit the ready button next to the door and the lights went out in the cabin, replaced by a solid red light over the door. There was a steady hiss as the air pressure in the cabin was balanced to match the thin, cold air outside.

  They were cruising at their maximum ceiling of twenty-five thousand feet at a speed of one hundred seventy-five knots. When they jumped, they would be twenty-three miles east of their target, with a twenty-knot tailwind to help their glide.

  Both men braced themselves when the red light started to flash. The upsloping rear wall of the cabin split open at the ceiling and descended downward on two thick hydraulic pistons, stopping when it created a descending ramp into nothingness. A wave of frigid air rushed in and swirled around them, instantly dropping the temperature in the cabin to below zero. The roar of the Osprey’s twin turboshaft engines invaded the space. Tark focused on the small set of four colored lenses above the door, three yellow and one green.

  The first yellow lens flashed, then the second, third—then green. He ran forward and tumbled into the abyss. Willie was right behind him.

  To make sure they had good separation, Tark waited two seconds after Willie popped his chute before pulling his own D-ring. The huge canopy snapped into place with a loud thump, his body bouncing from the yank on his harness. He craned his neck backward. The welcome sight of the charcoal span of rip-stop nylon was spread neatly above him. He’d jumped with lots of different systems, but this PARIS/Hi-Glide ram-air parachute was by far the biggest. It had a six-to-one glide ratio, greater than any other chute in the world.

  After confirming that Willie was in trail position above and behind him, he switched on the conformal navigation pod attached to his helmet. His heads-up display, or HUD, flashed on and he scanned the data: twenty-three miles to target with a twenty-knot quartering tailwind. He pulled down on the starboard riser handle to adjust his heading.

  Tark settled in for the long glide, thankful for the polypropylene knit undergarment that would ward off frostbite. The temperature at the target may be a reasonable forty-five degrees, but at twenty-five thousand feet, the below-zero air would bite through his skin.

  Twenty minutes later they approached the target from the east, riding the crest of the windward currents down the spine of the mountains. From this altitude, the landing zone was the size of a book of matches. Twenty yards to either side of the target and they’d either miss the cliff entirely or become a dark splat on the mountain.

  Switching his HUD to infrared, Tark spotted the heat signatures of three sentries, one of them close enough to the landing zone to pose an immediate threat. The other two were inland to the north, positioned around what appeared to be the camouflaged radar array.

  He spoke into his mask. “Mark three tangos.”

  “Confirm three,” Willie said.

  “Ignore the two to the north until after we’re down. I’m on tango one.”

  “Roger.”

  Now came the tricky part, Tark thought—maneuvering for the landing and taking out the sentry at the same time. After an adjustment on his riser, he brought the silenced HK up with his right hand and sighted through the magnified Raptor scope. The dark shadows of the LZ were washed away under the green hues of the night-vision optics. The sentry sat on a flattened boulder near the cliff’s edge, his silhouette growing larger with each second. He faced the sprawling valley below, an AK-47 at his side. A brief firefly of light from a struck match illuminated his face.

  Tark used his left hand on the risers to make minor adjustments to his glide path, keeping the tango in sight on his scope. He couldn’t fire too soon, because a miss would alert the guard. But he also couldn’t wait too long because he had to release the HK to use both hands to properly f
lare the chute at landing. At that point he’d be a sitting duck for the guard’s AK.

  A bead of nervous perspiration ran down the perimeter of Tark’s goggles. The image of the tango danced and jiggled in the scope as Tark’s chute was buffeted by the air rising up the cliff face. Tark waited for the wind to settle, his gloved finger on the trigger.

  A sudden gust jerked him off his glide path and out beyond the cliff, his body pendulumed to one side. He’d need to adjust his heading in the next second or two, or he’d miss the ledge.

  The tango’s image jumped up and down in his crosshairs.

  Time’s up.

  Tark squeezed off a muffled four-round burst. Dropping the HK to dangle from its shoulder harness, he whipped both hands up to the starboard riser. He yanked downward with everything he had, dipping the right side of the sail violently toward the cliff.

  The rock face rushed towards him. With a final grunt of effort, he pulled his knees up to his chest in order to clear the ledge.

  His toes didn’t make it.

  Tark landed hard, face first, his feet dangling over the edge. Frantic, he dug his fingers and elbows into the dirt, scrambling to pull his body forward. A fierce backward tug from his chute spun his torso one hundred eighty degrees around, dragging his helmeted face across the rocky surface toward the abyss. He pulled the quick releases on his harness just as another gust filled the canopy. The huge chute collapsed into itself and disappeared into the darkness with a whistle of silk.

  He flipped onto his back, sat up, and stopped cold.

  The sentry stood five feet away with his AK-47 leveled at his head. The tango pulled a radio from his waist and raised it to his mouth.

  If he called for help—

  The sentry jerked spasmodically and flew backward as three silenced rounds from Willie’s HK stitched him from groin to clavicle. Tark was on his feet, his own weapon leveled at the prone body.

  No need; he was dead.

  He looked back to see Willie flaring for a perfect landing in the center of the LZ.

  Tark removed his oxygen mask, raised his visor, and went to work emptying the contents of his heavy butt pack. His hands moved with trained efficiency as he assembled several dark aluminum tubes into a short triangular frame with a telescoping extension that had a pulley at its end. He set the frame near the edge of the cliff.

  The hollowed interior of each frame leg held a small charge that was capable of driving a piton deep into bedrock, anchoring it to the mountain. Tark pulled a thick rubberized sleeve from the pack and wrapped it around the base of the first tube to muffle the sound. He pressed the triggering device at the top of the tube and the frame jumped under his grip with a dull thud. He did the same with the other two legs, fixing it into the rock.

  He threaded one end of the climbing rope through the pulley and secured it to the frame. Then he extended the boom to its four-foot length out over the cliff. With a grunt he flung the seventy-five-pound coil of rope over the edge.

  The first team elevator was ready. The APEX portable mini-crane was capable of handling loads up to fourteen hundred pounds, or four soldiers with full gear.

  Tark moved over to help Willie finish setting up the second APEX. They worked like moving parts in a finely tuned watch, each one dependent on the other, each movement fluid and sure. When the second APEX was assembled, Tark said, “You saved my ass back there.”

  “Yep, it’s your turn to buy the beers.”

  They shared a look that after ten years of fighting side by side spoke volumes. The former SEALs wouldn’t talk about it again. They never did.

  Tark checked his watch. “We’ve got twelve minutes.”

  They shoved the tango’s body over the cliff.

  Hoisting their weapons to their shoulders, the duo weaved through the rocks toward the radar array and the remaining two sentries.

  Chapter 35

  Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

  2:55 am

  The sheer cliff wall rose above Jake like a massive hundred-story skyscraper. Twin green ropes climbed up the rock face, disappearing into the darkness above. It would take hours to scale this cliff the old fashioned way, and only then with the help of a rope dropped from fifteen hundred feet above. But the battery–operated, Atlas Rope Ascender attached to Jake’s chest harness would get him to the top in less than three minutes.

  Jake watched Snake and Ripper vanish above him. The rest of the team was either already up, or on their way above them, along with the special equipment. Jake and Tony waited for the go signal from above.

  Except for the gusting wind growing more intense by the second, so far everything had gone smoothly. Tark and Willie had taken out the two guards at the radar array and broken through the locks on the equipment shack. Once in, they’d spliced into the cables and attached a small processor that allowed them to hack into the system and create a narrow cone of silence in the radar’s coverage area. To the technician deep in the cavern, everything would appear normal. But any inbound flights on a vector between 180 and 184 degrees would be invisible.

  The V-22 had made a low-level approach down the center of that cone, landing undetected at the base of the mountain. It was parked nearby in a shallow ravine. Cal, Kenny, Lacey, Marshall, and Ahmed remained on board.

  Kenny had just launched the Raven recon drone. Jake heard its high-pitched whine fade as it made its spiraling climb to the ledge above. In a few minutes, it would be two thousand feet above the ledge, out of sight and sound range, its powerful lenses and sensors providing real time images and data to the team.

  Unlike the rest of the team, Jake’s and Tony’s disguises didn’t offer them the benefit of a helmet-mounted HUD and comm system. Instead, they each wore a three-inch wrist display under the long sleeve of their dishdashahs, giving them a digital interface with the battlefield. Earbuds and embedded microphones linked them into the comm-net. The Raven’s infrared sensors sorted through the heat signatures on the ground and transmitted the overhead images to the small screens. Friend or hostile designations were represented by flashing green dots for the team and solid red dots for everyone else.

  Tony was strapped to the second rope on Jake’s left, staring at his wrist screen; his face shimmered from the reflected light of the LED display. Jake caught an intensity in the big man’s eyes that was absolute. Tony was back in his element.

  As if sensing his stare, Tony looked over and said, “You ready for this?”

  Jake hesitated, recalling the unbelievable chain of events that had brought him to this point. It occurred to him that he had crammed more adventure and pure living into the past seven days than most people did in their entire lives. For a guy who had been diagnosed with less than a few months to live, that wasn’t bad. He smiled back at Tony. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life.”

  Tony grinned. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I love this shit!” He flipped the Velcro cover back over his wrist screen and looked up the rope to the darkness that awaited them.

  Jake was anxious to get going. The wind was picking up speed at an alarming pace, gathering a thickening wall of sand in its wake. The region was notorious for its sudden sky-darkening sandstorms, and it looked like they were going to be caught in the throat of a big one.

  A huge gust lifted a whirlwind of sand past Jake, bringing on a sneezing fit as he fought to clear his nose. He pursed his lips closed, rubbed his eyes with his gloved fingers, and slipped on his protective goggles. Following Tony’s lead, Jake wrapped the tail of his keffiyeh over his mouth and nose, tucking it in at his ear.

  Tark’s voice came over his earbud, “Team Three—go!”

  Jake squinted at Tony through his goggles. Bits of sand lodged in the corner of his eyelids caused him to tear up. Tony gave him a thumbs-up and they started their ascent, the rope corkscrewing through the threaded APEX gear at an impressive ten feet per second.

  By the time they were halfway up, the whistling wind sounded like an army of banshees.
Gusting waves of stinging sand screamed past them up the cliff face, jostling them dangerously close to the rocky wall.

  Jake glanced to his left. Tony’s back was to him, his body swinging from the last gust.

  A fluttering shadow above Tony drew Jake’s attention.

  An immense wraith of darkness seemed to peel itself from the cliff wall above them, its black wings blotting out the stars as it swooped down and engulfed Tony in its deadly grasp, abruptly arresting his climb.

  Jake smashed the stop button on his APEX. Where Tony had once been there was now an undulating black cocoon wrapped tightly around the rope, twisting and swaying in the torrent of flying sand.

  “Tony!”

  There was a faint reply, but the howling wind sucked it away. Tony’s voice didn’t register in Jake’s earbud.

  “Tony, do you read me?”

  Kenny’s voice answered him. “Read you five by five, Jake. What’s wrong?”

  “Tony’s tangled in something and his mike must be messed up. Stand by.”

  The wind-borne sand grew sharper, blurring the view through Jake’s goggles. He cupped his gloved hands around his eyes like binoculars to keep the sand from the lens, trying to discern exactly what was happening.

  A sprawling swirl of black silky fabric and nylon cords flapped against the cliff face behind Tony. It appeared to be one of the SEAL team’s parachutes, caught on an outcropping of rock. Stirred to a whipping frenzy by the sudden wind, one corner of the chute must have snagged on the spinning gears of Tony’s APEX, twisting violently around him and pinning his limbs. Tony’s struggles only aggravated the situation.