If, at the end of the jump, they were off the destination point by a mere twenty feet, the result could be disastrous. And the same cloud cover that conferred invisibility also made a precision landing immeasurably more difficult. Normally, a paratrooper would land on a well-marked DZ—tracer flares were standard practice—using his vision as he tried to direct himself with the rig toggles. To an experienced sky diver, this became a matter of instinct. But those instincts would be little help in this case. By the time they were close enough to the ground to see much of anything, it could very well be too late. Instead of instinct, they would be forced to rely upon global positioning system devices strapped to their cuffs and, in effect, play an electronic game of Marco Polo.

Thirty-five seconds. The window was closing: he had to get into delta position as soon as possible.

Janson swept his arms back and steered himself with his shoulders and hands. No good: a walloping, gale-level crosscurrent struck Janson and pulled him into an overly steep flight path. He immediately realized what had gone wrong. He was consuming altitude swiftly. Too swiftly.

Could anything be done about it?

His only chance was to increase his drag. Yet he had to progress toward the compound as fast as possible if he had any chance of reaching it. To do both would be impossible.

Had he destroyed the mission only seconds into it?

It could not be.

But it could.

Lashed by icy winds, Janson found the quiet commands of expertise competing with a din of internal recrimination. You knew this wouldn’t work; it couldn’t work. Too many unknowns, too many uncontrollable variables. Why did you accept the mission in the first place? Pride? Pride in your professionalism? Pride was the enemy of professionalism: Alan Demarest had always said so, and here he spoke the truth. Pride gets you killed. There never was a reasonable chance of success. No sane person or responsible military branch would accept it. That’s why they turned to you.

A quieter voice penetrated the din. Max track.

He had to move into track position. It was his own voice he heard, from decades back, when he was training new recruits to a special SEAL team. Maximum track.

Could he do it? He had not attempted the maneuver in many years. And he had certainly never tracked on a GPS-directed jump. Tracking meant turning one’s body into an airfoil, with the humped profile of an airplane’s wing, so that one actually acquired some lift. For several seconds, Janson accelerated, with his head down and his limbs spread out slightly. He bent his arms and waist slightly, and rolled his shoulders forward, as if preparing to kowtow; he cupped his hands. Finally, he pulled his head back as he put his legs together, pointing his toes like a ballet dancer.

Nothing happened. He was not tracking.