“That’s one use for the spray,” said Walden. “But I think you’ll find other uses.”
“If you’ve finished with the chemistry lesson, Professor Science,” teased Diosa. “We need to go shopping.”
“Food. Right. The refrigerator is empty as well as the pantry,” Walden agreed.
“Primarily, we’re shopping for a parafoil parachute,” she corrected. “I guess we can find time for groceries, afterward.”
Chapter – 23 Not So Subtle Influence
“You can see the theater building. It’s lit up like a carnival,” Walden informed Diosa. “The museum is an issue. It’s a black hole along the coast. Between them are the red warning lights on the Katrijn headquarters.”
“It’s going to take instinct to judge when to open and, a little luck to hit the roof,” Diosa replied. “At least they’re on the bay so I don’t have to pick the headquarters out in the center of the city.”
“You’ll have a breeze off the bay gusting to thirty-two kilometers per hour,” Walden reminded her. “You can’t be too low or you won’t make the adjustments.”
“Or too high and fly right by it,” she added. “I’m going to take a nap. Call me on the way down.”
“Affirmative, Master Sergeant,” Walden acknowledged before triggering his radio. “Uno Orbital Flight Control, this is Talon One on a parabolic flight for pressure testing.”
“We have your flight area cleared, Talon One,” the voice replied. “Be safe.”
“Thank you, Control,” Walden said leaning back and enjoying the stars out of the forward screen.
***
“Warlock. Last vortex,” Walden called back to the seating area. “We’ve tipped over the top and are headed back towards the bay.”
“You sure know how to sweet talk a girl,” Diosa said confirming she was awake. “Time to jump?”
“We’ll be at two seven kilometers in twelve minutes,” he replied.
“I’m saddling up,” she informed him.
Warlock slung the straps for the big parachute over her shoulders and hooked up the crotch strap. Then she tugged all the buckles tight enough to make it hard to breathe. Moving stiffly, she hooked on the bag with her burglary tools and felt for the combat knife next to it. Finally, she pulled her pistol, checked the weapon and holstered it.
“Five minutes,” Walden called back.
“Five,” Warlock repeated as she pulled on her headset and her helmet. Then calmly announced. “Hatch breach.”
“Breach, breach, breach, breach,” Walden shouted.
“Poet. I can hear you over the radio,” Warlock advised him. “And it’s me going out the doorway, not you.”
“I copy,” the pilot replied. “It’s still upsets me.”
No one jumped from a shuttle for two reasons. It didn’t have wings and didn’t glide. There was nothing Walden could do about the ground speed. Also, hulls were designed to allow ions to flow down the sides hugging the shuttle. If the Marine jumped directly from the hatch, the wind would follow the design and slam her back against the hull. While the speed was unsolvable, there was something Poet could do about the configuration of the fuselage: change the jump point.
Warlock pulled the hatch open and slid it back along the bulkhead. Then she shoved Walden’s odd frame of piping out the opening until the stop brackets hit the hatch frame. The flimsy looking jump platform vibrated violently in the wind. It was constructed with a wind guard in the front, an opening on the side and bars for her feet and hands on the back.
“One minute,” Walden alerted her.
The bucking didn’t lessen under the Marine’s weight as she stepped out on the heaving frame. It continued to shake and surge up and down in the wind. As Diosa began a count, the solid sheet to the front began to buckle and the pipe joints twisted threatening to come apart in her hands.
A meter might not seem like much but, the frame placed her that much further from the exterior skin of the shuttle. Warlock clung tightly until she counted fifty-nine. Then, she leaped off the jump frame and was swept away by the hurricane force wind.
***
“Orbital Flight Control, be advised Talon One is dropping out of your flight pattern,” Walden called.
“Talon One is leaving Orbital, understand,” Control replied. “Contact Uno Air Traffic Control for flight clearance.”
“Thank you, Orbital,” the pilot responded before he shoved the controls forward and nosedived the shuttle towards the water. While the spacecraft nosed over and dove, he reached for the transponder knob and changed the settings. “Uno Air Traffic Control, this is Talon Poet passing through your pattern to one-five-five altitude.”
“Talon Poet, advise as to your type of aircraft and destination,” requested ATC.
“Rotary wing,” lied Walden. “I’m on the way to a residential vertiport.”
“All right, we have you on the board. Maintain a floor of one-five-two,” the Air Traffic Controller replied.
“Understood, minimum altitude of one-five-two,” Walden said. “Thank you and have a nice evening.”
“You as well, Talon Poet.”
Walden leveled out then banked eastward heading towards the southern edge of the city. Once at level flight, he switched to another frequency.
“Poet to Warlock. Poet to Warlock,” he called. “Come in Warlock.”
There was no answer. The lights of the coast came into view briefly as the shuttle shot over the buildings on the boardwalk. Walden backed off power and the shuttle began to settle. In the last moments of flight control, he increased the internal gravity, banked hard and dove for the ground.
Planet Uno pushed back against the heavy artificial gravity of the shuttle. Unable to merge, the gravities repelled each other allowing the shuttle to hovered two meters above the grassy field.
Walden rotated the shuttle and guided it to the north end of the field just shy of the tree line. There he spun it to face the length of the open area. Cutting the artificial gravity let the skids drop to the grass. He grabbed a portable radio and a telescoping antenna. At the hatch, he jerked the jump frame out of his way and vaulted to the grass. In less than a minute, the antenna was thrust up into the branches of a tree and the pilot rested the radio on a picnic table.
“Poet to Warlock, status?” he radioed. When she didn’t answer, he called again. “Poet to Warlock. Warlock? Warlock? Warlock? Warlock?”
His hands shook as worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind. Her planned freefall to one-point-four kilometers should give her a half hour to reach the roof patio. They were in the time frame and yet she hadn’t responded. As with all support teams, even a team of one, while the warriors were in physical danger, the team suffered mental anguish. Walden doubled over as his stomach cramped from stress.
“Poet. You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Warlock radioed. “What a rush.”
“Warlock. Warlock,” Walden repeated. “Oh, ah, status?”
“Relax Poet. The boardwalk is beautiful from up here,” Warlock reported. “How is our timing for Katrijn being out of the condo?”
“He doesn’t do the keynote speech for another two hours,” replied Walden as he sat down heavily on the bench seat. “The venue is a half hour from the target.”
“Plenty of time for some vandalism,” Warlock stated.
***
While keeping her left eye on the lights along the shoreline, Warlock let her parafoil drift back and forth in the wind. This allowed her to search for the Katrijn building and eat distance, placing her at the proper angle to reach the target building.
After speaking with Poet, Warlock un-arched her back, brought her arms down, spread her legs and used her body to cup the air. Her speed increased but her rate of fall slowed as she tracked. The lights of the theater separated from the row of illumination. After estimating the distance, she relaxed and let the wind carry the parachute towards the edge of the bay.
The headquarters building’s roof enlarged. Not
much, based on the speed she carried, but enough for her to pick out the round dark circles. Pulling her left riser rotated the chute and she lifted her legs and dumped air. Like having a chair pulled out from under her, Warlock’s butt hit the edge of the thatched umbrella cover.
Artificial palms crunched but held enough for her to slide off the edge and land on her feet. Quickly, she gathered the parachute to stop it from dragging her across the rooftop patio.
Warlock carried the chute to the east edge of the roof. After pulling two chaise lounges over, she tipped them on their sides. Next, she spread out the parafoil and used the loungers to hold down the edges. After untangling the nine nylon lines on one wing, she straightened the other side. As a last step, she spread the straps open and pulled her combat knife.
“Poet. Time?” Warlock asked.
“You are fifteen minutes early,” Walden replied. “Didn’t finishing school teach you the quality of being fashionably late?”
“It’s not as if I arrived on a regularly scheduled flight,” she reminded him. “I’m going to recon the deck.”
The planter that hid the elevator came loose on the first tug. Setting it aside, Warlock leaned over the edge and felt for the top of the car. As Walden guessed, it was an arm’s length down. Sitting back, she called her pilot.
“Poet. I can reach the top of the elevator,” she reported. “Good call.”
“I try,” he replied. “Check the stairs for lights. He should be gone by now.”
The circular staircase was dark. No illumination from the condo filtered up through the glass risers. Creeping down, Warlock reached a glass door. Seeing no lights or movement, she rapped softly on the door. It rang solid and didn’t yield when she pushed it.
“The door is locked,” Warlock advised Poet as she climbed the stairs. “Back to plan A.”
“Was there a plan B?” inquired Walden.
“Sure. Blow the door,” Warlock informed him.
“Let’s try it the way we planned it first,” suggested Walden.
“Working on it,” Warlock said as she lowered herself into the elevator hole.
She stabbed the metal top and rocked her combat knife backward and forward. As it moved, the metal parted. After cutting a half circle, she used the blade to pry back a section. With two fingers, she reached in the hole, located a latch and unsnapped it. Then Warlock climbed out of the hole, reached back in and pulled the maintenance hatch at top of the elevator open.
***
Walden proved correct. For safety reasons, the glass door of the elevator didn’t lock. Although there was little ambient light, Warlock easily located the library as she walked down the marble steps. Pulling her bottle of fluorescent marker, she sprayed one side of the shelving as she approached.
Lifting the goggle, Warlock scanned the wood. Nothing glowed. Moving on, she administered the dye to the first column of books. Again, nothing lit up. On the next column, two books glowed blue. Further down, she identified another book.
“Poet. Three books show heavy usage. Any suggestions?” Warlock inquired. “They form a right triangle. If that’s any help.”
“If the lowest book to the highest is a line rising right, practically slide each book out in that order,” Walden advised. “For a business person, it represents a line on a growth chart.”
Warlock eased out the book on the left, the higher book and lastly the lowest book on the right. A pop of a clasp snapping open came from the left column of books. With her fingers grasping the edge of the bookcase, she pulled open a hidden door.
“You are three for three, Poet,” Warlock whispered as she peered at an upward facing safe. “Right up to the safe.”
“What kind of safe?” responded Walden.
“Top door about two meters long and a meter wide,” she described. “I’m spraying the keypad.”
“Fingerprints don’t glow under UV light. However, there usually is enough DNA material to outline them,” advised Walden.
“I’ve got blue glowing seven, two and three,” reported Warlock.
“Not enough numbers. Some of them must be repeated,” complained Walden. “There’s no way to figure the code. Time for your plan B.”
“Finally. I get to blow something up. I thought you’d never come around to my way of thinking,” admitted Warlock. “Time for some subtle influence on Jordy Katrijn.”
“Bar the front door first,” suggested Walden.
“I wish I had enough to open the safe,” Warlock complained as she crossed the condo. Taking a chair, she shoved it under the doors’ handles. Then she strolled back to the safe.
She dropped her marker bottle in the pouch and lifted out a square of explosives. The blasting cap came from her breast pocket because only an idiot kept the cap and the explosive material together. After packing the material around the keypad, she inserted the timer and set it for five minutes.
“Five minutes,” she announced.
“Get out of there,” urged Walden.
“Moving,” Warlock said. She stepped into the elevator and climbed to the roof.
***
“Temperature?” she demanded.
“Down a few degrees,” Walden replied. “Winds gusting to fifty-one.”
“It’ll have to be enough,” Warlock said as she lay down in the parachute harness.
The winds blew onshore in the evening as the land cooled. While Warlock would have preferred out going breezes and a landing in the bay, that would have required a daylight raid. This ran through her mind as she exhaled as she strapped into the parachute.
Rolling to one side, she pushed the lounger off the chute and repeated the motion on the other side. With her arms extended, she grasped the ends of the parafoil and stood holding the chute over her head.
“Come on breeze,” she begged as she placed a foot on the portable wall. It now laid flat over the lap pool. Another correct observation from Walden. “Give me a strong gust of wind.”
Just the opposite happened. The wind died and Warlock’s heart sank. Time was ticking away and she didn’t want to be on the roof when the explosives went off.
The chute required wind to inflate the airfoils by ramming air into the cells. Without a stiff breeze, the center of the material dipped to her head while the ends were held aloft. Not the stiff rectangle, she needed to jump off the roof.
“Three minutes,” Walden warned her.
“And then what?” she asked.
“Nothing good,” Walden replied.
***
Nature hates a void. The calm at the boardwalk, on the roof and over the city qualified. It stretched out to a low-pressure mass at the center of the bay. Where the waters had given up the heat of the day quickly, the ground inland still leeched the warmth. The cooler, heavier air began to tumble towards the void left by the rising warmer air.
The wind caused by the mass of air cascading towards the city would deliver the wind gust as forecasted. Far out beyond the mouth of the bay, an enormous weather system rotated clockwise. Unseen by the weather service, a limb of the system lashed out and slapped the bay. When the wind from the system slammed into the backside of the eastward moving mass, the air accelerated like an avalanche rolling down a mountain.
The lull at the top of the Katrijn Headquarters building ended as the leading edge of the air mass reached the shoreline. At sea level, the gust toppled beach umbrellas, and unsecured benches. Two hundred meters up, the full force swept across the rooftop.
“Alert, Mother Nature,” screamed Warlock as her parafoil inflated and snapped open. The wind drove her back until her knees hit and, the parachute began to drag her over the retaining wall. A quick tug on the risers lowered the front edge, letting the air flow over the chute, preventing an uncontrolled fall to the street below. “Wind Poet, wind!”
Muffled by the roar of the air, her helmet and the roof decking, the sound of the explosion reached Warlock as the shattering of a floor to ceiling window. Ignoring the wailing of the security syste
m alarms, the Striker ran down the hard wood of the pool cover, kicked off the west wall, and leaped into the night.
***
The Marine expected to fall before the parafoil caught air. But the air streaming in from the bay at sea level collided with the building creating an updraft. Rather than loosing elevation, the parachute shot two meters into the sky. Breathless from the tightening of the straps on her body, Warlock fought off the shock and tugged on her right riser. One wing of the parachute dipped and she carved a nice one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
What goes up must come down and, once out of the thermal from the building, the chute began to lose altitude. There was no updraft from the theater building. In fact, air rolled over the low structure and fell down the other side. Warlock felt the drop as the bottom of the air mass arched down to street level.
Directly east, there were six blocks of three and four-story buildings. She needed a wind tunnel effect and that meant steering towards the northeast and taller structures. With a tug on her left riser, she flew in the opposite direction of the park, Walden, and the shuttle.
Two blocks from the Katrijn building, the chute assumed a downward glide path. Angles, tricks with her body and manipulations of the grommets only slowed the inevitable street landing. A normal sports parachutist would be questioned by the police, fined and released. Explaining the tactical vest, the combat knife and the GCMC pistol would create an entirely different scenario.
From the height of sixty-four stories, she entered the canyon of office buildings at about the twenty-story level. The structures channeled the wind, increasing the velocity and giving the chute lift. At each cross street, she was buffeted and jostled around by converging currents of air.
Looking up the boulevard, Warlock spotted the second tallest building in the city. As a tourist destination, it displayed bright multicolored lights. Dumping air, she dropped to fifteen stories as she flew towards the intersection. Below the soaring Striker, cars, busses and pedestrians traveled the street and sidewalks unaware of her passing.
Ninety degrees in swirling wind whipped her sideways and the chute almost folded against the corner of the illuminated building. Involuntarily the parafoil lost lift and Warlock flew downwards.
Op File Treason Page 21