Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Wahl spoke briefly into the intercom mike attached to his flight helmet, checking in with the cockpit crew. He nodded sharply at what they told him and then looked back at the waiting paratroopers. “Hook up!”
Flynn grabbed his static line and snapped its hook over the anchor cable stretched above his head. Behind him, the others in his stick did the same. Those to his right followed suit, hooking onto another anchor cable running down that side of the aircraft.
Wahl moved down the line of heavily burdened soldiers and airmen, watching closely as they checked their static lines and equipment and then did the same for the man in front of them. Satisfied by what he saw, he nodded to Flynn. Then he moved around to the side of the equipment pallet loaded with their two snow machines, sleds, and other heavy gear. The jumpmaster clipped his own safety line to a bracket. “We’re opening the rear ramp now! Get set!”
Flynn and the others shuffled carefully into position several feet behind the pallet.
The tail section of the HC-130J split in two, with the top half elevating out of the way as the big rear ramp whirred down and locked in position. The whole process took just twenty seconds. Immediately, the noise level ratcheted up to an almost unimaginable level. Between the suddenly magnified roar of the huge Rolls-Royce turboprops and the howling ice-cold wind gusts whipping down the length of the compartment, it was now virtually impossible to hear anything.
Crouched beside the equipment pallet, Wahl signaled the waiting men to stand by. They were ten seconds out from the drop zone. Abruptly, he yanked a restraining cord away. Freed, the pallet rolled smoothly down the ramp, tipped over, and vanished into thin air.
Given the “go” signal by Wahl the moment the ramp was clear, Flynn didn’t hesitate. He moved forward down the ramp and stepped off into space.
Instantly hurled away from the HC-130J by its freezing prop blast, Flynn tumbled through the night sky like a gale-borne leaf . . . until his parachute snapped open with a tooth-rattling jolt. Jesus, he thought dazedly, that hurt. Dangling under the chute’s billowing canopy, he slid downwind at a dizzying pace. Looking down past his boots, he saw a darkened landscape lit silver in places by moonlight spilling through fissures in the cloud layer overhead. Steep-sided hills and ridges rose on all sides of the snow-covered valley below. And the boulder-strewn slopes lining its southern edge were growing ever-larger with alarming speed.
Flynn held tight to his risers and twisted around, trying to find the rest of his team as they jumped behind him. He had time to catch only a brief glimpse of other moonlit parachutes scattering across the sky on the wind.
Everything after that happened very fast. The silvery snowpack below him took on shape and definition with horrifying swiftness. Hurriedly, he released his rucksack and weapons case, bent his knees, tucked his chin, and—