Once more able to control his chute Ski dumped air and spiraled down the side of the prison, landing hard in the sand piled against the foundation. He lay stunned for a moment as the chute billowed and whipped across the desert floor, relieved that he hadn’t blown the mission. And then he saw the stake thrust into the ground thirty feet in front of him. On top of the wooden post was a piece of solid-state electronics, and he knew immediately it was a motion sensor pointing outward to warn the kidnappers of anyone approaching the prison. The nylon canopy was already under the sensor and a slight breeze would inflate it and trigger the alarm.

He grabbed at the riser lines and frantically pulled the chute toward him in a hand-over-hand motion that puddled nylon behind him. But it seemed no matter how much material he gathered he still couldn’t get the section under the sensor to withdraw.

The wind shifted, and like a child’s balloon, the parachute began to fill with air. Ski leapt to his feet and raced for the sensor, diving headlong so his body flattened the chute just before it blocked the motion sensor’s electronic eye. He slid on the slick nylon and would have crashed right into the pole if he hadn’t snapped his body over. He ended up on his back, his hip mere inches from the sensor.

Ski could see three dark silhouettes peering over the top of the fortress and, careful so as not to trigger the alarm, he gave them a thumbs-up.

He carefully retrieved his chute, bundling it in his arms like so much laundry. At the base of the prison he used the molded plastic insert from the pack to bury his entire rig in a shallow hole. He noticed that there were vent holes along the bottom of the foundation and recalled from the mission briefing that there were a series of tunnels under the prison designed so the prevailing wind would scour away waste from the latrines. When he finished with his chute he climbed the rope that Linc had unfurled.

“Well, that was fun,” he whispered when he reached the top and was helped over by Eddie and Mike.

“No harm, no foul,” Eddie replied.

For the next two hours they watched the prison from various points along its roof. The guards were dark-skinned, which surprised them. They’d expected the environmentally motivated kidnappers to be white Europeans or Americans, but they didn’t discount the idea that the kidnappers had hired African mercenaries. Two of the men stationed at the gate circled the perimeter every hour on the hour while the third guarded the open portal until their return.