Just a few minutes after Lee vanished, Donald was at the entrance to the tunnel. He didn't wait, figuring that if Lee had had a weapon he'd have used it back in the field. Folding the knife into a pocket and dropping to his knees, Donald grabbed the hemp line and lowered himself along the passage, bumping his back repeatedly as he tried to walk himself down. He reached bottom, nearly exhausted, and listened. There were shuffling and clawing sounds somewhere up ahead. He struck a match, saw the tunnel, and knew where Lee had gone.

If something happened to him, he wanted Schneider to know where he'd gone. Turning and setting the hemp line on fire, he dropped to his belly as thick smoke filled the passageway. He crawled into the tunnel, hoping that the General would see the smoke and flames. He also hoped that he himself could reach the other side before he choked to death and getting there, that he could find Lee before he was able to realize his insane vision.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Wednesday, 7:48 A.M., the Diamond Mountains

A parachute jump is nothing like what most first-timers expect. The air is remarkably full and solid: free-falling through it is like riding a wave at the beach. During the daytime, there's very little sense of depth since objects are so flat and far away; at night, there's no sense of depth at all.

Though the other men had all gone first, Mike Rodgers was surprised at how alone he felt: he saw nothing, felt only the resistance of the wind, could barely hear his own voice as he counted out twenty seconds before pulling the ripcord. Then the pounding of the wind was reduced to a gentle gust, and everything else was silent.

They had jumped from only five thousand feet up, and the ground came up quickly, as the copilot had warned them it would. Rodgers had picked out a landmark as soon as he pulled his ripcord, a high treetop aglow in the early morning light. He watched it as he descended. That was the only yardstick he had as to how high he was, and when he was level with it he prepared himself for landing. His legs were bent slightly, and when his feet hit ground he cushioned his landing by bending farther, then dropping and rolling. When he was on his side, he released his parachute, stood quickly, and bundled the fabric into his arms. He was only a bit sore where his Achilles tendons had stretched on landing; the spirit was willing, but the flesh wasn't as elastic as it had once been.

Bass Moore was already running toward him, followed by Johnny Puckett and his TAG SAT radio.

"How'd we do?" Rodgers asked Moore softly.

"Everyone's down and okay."

Puckett was unfolding the parabolic antenna and had fixed the uplink before the rest of the team arrived. While Moore took Rodgers's parachute and jogged to a nearby lake to sink it, Squires reached Rodgers's side.