Thirty seconds to target zone. The voice from the cockpit sounded just as the bomb bay doors whined open. A blast of sub zero air screamed in. Beyond the doors, there was nothing but a dark void.

“Form up.” Behind Alex, the huge form of Sam and the muscular Casey got into line, waiting.

Five, four, three, two, one … drop.

Alex walked forward and without hesitating, dived. Neither Sam nor Casey flinched before following. Yet both probably remembered one of the things that Major Jack Hammerson had told them many years before – HAWCs rarely died of old age.

The outside atmosphere at forty thousand feet was a staggering sixty degrees below zero with little oxygen. Their suits would provide air and thermal protection, but only for a while. As they fell, short wings emerged from their packs, and they accelerated quickly. Within a minute they were traveling at two hundred miles per hour.

Alex and his small team moved into an arrowhead formation, hands back by their sides and feet only slightly spread. The ground was still just patches of yellow and brown with a huge mountain range to the north. It was a strange sensation and one Alex never stopped being thrilled by, being at such a height, free falling, and looking down onto snow-capped mountains. The sun was just peaking over the horizon, but they would outpace it, and when they reached landfall, there would still be predawn darkness.

In the distance Alex could see Mosul, their target, perhaps another fifty miles to the north-north east, and just below them was the much smaller town of Jurn, where they were to meet an old friend. Alex smiled in his helmet at the thought of the encounter.

He dropped his shoulder by about an inch, causing his body to bank. Casey and Sam banked with him. They needed to land on the outskirts of the township, and nowhere near any houses or people. The entire area was under control of the terrorists now, and though the people might not have been sympathizers, they were in such fear of the butchers that they might inform on the HAWCs, just to try and buy some safety for their families.

Together the human gliders in the sky corkscrewed down in a two-mile wide loop. They passed through the five-thousand-foot barrier, and Alex’s eyes moved over the landscape, searching for anything that could hint at danger while they were vulnerable in the air. They were still traveling too fast for any snipers to pick up, but he certainly didn’t want helicopters following them to earth.

“Begin our slow.” Alex said to his team, then spread his arms and legs. “Brace.”