From here on it was a simple freefall and parachute exercise. He tucked to roll, and spread his arms and legs to flatten out and stabilize. The bridge was still only a line of white over the blue-black river. Was it really the right bridge—really the zero bridge?

Yes—he could spot the tiny speck of a guard shack nearby and make out lines of defense and sandbag emplacements. And he couldn't have fallen so far wrong as to traverse a third of the chamber's arc. . . . He was right on, too close in fact—he would have to drift away some.

The wind hummed mildly past his helmet now. He checked his laser and Kalashnikov and made quick surveys of his equipment belt.

Chute release had to be gauged purely by eye. There was no sense counting from the axis, since everyone would fall at a different rate. He held out his thumb. It covered the length of the bridge.

He pulled the rip cord and the chute leaped away, billowed, collapsed and billowed again, spreading wide in the shape of a package of small sausages.

Mirsky jerked and dangled and gathered his guidelines in both hands, pulling one, then the other, spilling a little air from one side of the chute to move in one direction, then from the other side.

He saw with relief that he would land some five kilometers from the objective. Unless they had far more men than reported—and radar-aimed automatic guns within the chambers, which their informant had told them they did not—they would probably not bring him down.

He saw others coming down beside him and above him, only a few below. In all, hundreds of them.

Mirsky tried to hold back tears and could not.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Where's Patricia?" Carrolson looked around the mess.

"I don't know," Farley said. "She was here a few minutes ago."

"We should go find her."

"I'll go," Carrolson said. She had to get outside anyway; she wasn't sure she could stand the scene in the cafeteria any longer.

She stepped out under the tubelight and looked back and forth across the compound. Her eyes fixed on something astonishing. Against the dark gray southern cap, tiny points of white were falling like snow—dozens, then hundreds of them. A marine ran by carrying two Apples. "Look!" she cried, pointing and turning a half-circle. No one paid her any attention. The marine jumped onto the tailgate of one of the fully loaded troop trucks rumbling out of the compound.

Carrolson shook her head to clear it. She was drunk with grief and anger; any solid thought seemed to be vomited away by a nauseated mind. She couldn't afford such a handicap now. She had to think clearly and she had to find Vasquez.