Abruptly, he felt himself pushed sideways by another gusting crosscurrent, and there was something almost corporeal about the sensation, as though he were being tackled. He would have to control the rig carefully; if he oversteered, it would be nearly impossible to return to the DZ. He was also acutely conscious of the trade-off between steering and speed: the canopy was at its top forward speed when the steering lines were up all the way and undeployed.
Now his GPS indicator showed that he had drifted significantly off course.
Oh Christ, no!
Even as he floundered in the turbulent air, he as well as Katsaris knew that what lay ahead would be even more difficult: they would have to make a silent, unobserved landing in an enclosed courtyard. An error made by either of them would imperil them both. And even if they executed their task flawlessly, any one of a thousand unpredictable complications could be lethal. If a soldier happened to be in the vicinity of the central courtyard—and no law ordained otherwise—they would be dead. The mission would be aborted. And, in all likelihood, the object of the mission would be summarily killed. That much was standard operating procedure for their terrorist friends. One responded to an in-progress rescue mission by destroying the object of rescue—posthaste.
Now he pulled his right steering line down far and fast. He would need to make a fast turn, before another gust sent him beyond the point of recovery. The effect of the pull was almost instantaneous: he found himself swinging out from under the canopy, arcing wildly. And the large, round altimeter told him what he could feel: that his speed of descent had just increased considerably.
Not good. He was closer to the ground than he should be. Still, he had to assume that he had returned to the proper angle of flight, and he raised the steering lines again, allowing the canopy to yawn out to its full 250 square feet and maximize its vertical drag. He was adept at maneuvering around wind cones, but the very unpredictability of the air currents made ordinary calculations irrelevant. All he knew was that he was off the wind line; crabbing across it was the only way to return to it. As he had done hundreds of times before, he fidgeted with the toggles to establish the direction of the prevalent winds; finally, he found that he was able to make gentle S-turns astride the wind line, holding and running every time he drifted off it. The process required complete concentration, especially because the sea was sending up thermals at random, or so it seemed. The Anuran sky was like a horse that did not want to be broken.
His pulse quickened. Like the mast of a ghost ship, battlements and embrasures were becoming visible through the fog, the ancient white limestone reflecting the faintest light seeping through the cloud cover. The vista came as something of a shock; it was the first thing he had seen since the jump. Quickly, he cast off his gloves and flight cap. Now he mentally rehearsed the landing maneuver. Crosswind leg. Downwind leg. Base leg. Final approach.
To minimize landing velocity, it was crucial to approach the destination from upwind. The crosswind jaunt took him a thousand feet to the right. Then he drifted downwind for another five hundred feet, deliberately overshooting the target. He would be traveling 250 feet into the wind for the final approach. It was an elaborate but necessary maneuver. He could slow his forward movement by pulling in the corners of the canopy with both toggles, but the effect would be to increase his rate of descent to an unacceptable speed. He would therefore have to rely upon the wind itself to reduce his horizontal velocity.
He prayed that no sudden turn would be necessary to position himself over the central region of the courtyard, for a fast turn, too, would dangerously hasten his descent. The last fifteen seconds had to be perfect. There was no margin for error; the compound’s high walls made a low, shallow approach impossible.
He was suddenly aware how hot and moist the air was—it was as if he had moved from a meat locker into a steam bath. Water was actually condensing on his chilly extremities. His fingers were wet as he reached for the toggles, and he felt a pang of adrenaline; he could not afford for them to slip.
With the toggles fully up and the canopy therefore fully extended, he glided toward the center of the courtyard, which was visible to him only as a play of black hues. As soon as his hands were free, he deactivated his wrist instruments, lest their glow give his presence away.
His heart started to beat hard: he was almost there—if he could only manage, with his wet, slick fingers, the final landing fall.
Choosing the right second was crucial. Now? His boots were fifteen feet above the ground; he could tell because the ground and the canopy seemed just about the same distance from him. No. Even within the walls of the compound, the gusts were too unpredictable. He would wait until he was half that distance from the ground.
Now.
He brought both toggles down to shoulder level, and then, in one fluid motion, he turned down his wrists and pulled the toggles down between his thighs, bringing his forward motion to a complete stop. As he sank down the remaining few feet, he tensed his leg muscles and rotated his body in the direction of the fall, bending his knees slightly. Two seconds before he hit the ground, he had to decide whether to make a soft-roll landing—knees and feet together—or try for an upright landing, which meant keeping them apart. In for a penny, in for a pound: he’d go for a standing touchdown.
Keeping his leg muscles flexed, he sank to the ground on the soles of his boots. The soft rubber was designed for silence, and it performed as it was meant to. Soundlessly, he bounced on the balls of his feet, preparing to fall. But he did not.
He was standing. On the ground of the courtyard.
He had made it.
He looked around him, and, in the starless night, he could just make out the contours of a vast deserted courtyard, three times as long as it was wide. A large white structure—the old fountain, as the blueprints had specified—loomed several yards away. He was almost exactly in the center of an area that was approximately the size of half a football field and that was eerily quiet. There was, he confirmed, no sign of movement—no sign that his arrival had been observed.
Now he unhooked his rig, removed his flight suit, and quickly gathered the canopy from the cobblestoned courtyard. It would have to be hidden before further action could be taken. Even a starless night was not wholly devoid of illumination. The black nylon, visually protective against the night sky, contrasted with the light gray cobblestone. It couldn’t be allowed to lie on the ground.
But where was Katsaris?
Janson looked around. Had Katsaris overshot the courtyard? Landed on the beach, far below? Or on the hard-packed gravel road that led to the compound? Either mistake could be lethal—to him and to the others involved in the mission.
Dammit! Once again, a small fist of fury and fear gathered strength within him. It was the hubris of the planner that he—he, of all people—had succumbed to: the desk jockey’s error of thinking that what worked on paper would mesh with tactical reality. The tolerances were too small. Every member of the team knew it; the men were simply too much in awe of his record to drive the point home. The jump required something close to perfection, and perfection wasn’t possible in this fallen world. Janson felt a surge of frustration: who knew that better than he did? It was sheer luck that he himself had made it this far.
His thoughts were interrupted by a faint rustle—the sound of the cells of a nylon canopy gently collapsing overhead. Janson looked up into the black sky. It was Katsaris, floating down slowly, as he flared his chute and landed with a gentle, noiseless roll. He scrambled to his feet and came toward Janson.
Now there were two of them.
Two of them. Two highly experienced, highly skilled operatives.
And now they were in place—in the middle of the Stone Palace courtyard. The last place, he had to believe, where anyone would expect visitors.
There were two of them—against an entire battalion of armed guerrillas.
Still, it was a start.
Chapter Six
Now Janson activated th
e communication system and tsked into the filament microphone near his mouth, a click and sibilant. Military protocol.
Katsaris followed his lead: he silently removed his flight suit, then gathered the canopy into a tight bundle.
The two of them packed the nylon fabric of canopy and suit into the dank basin of the grand stone fountain that stood in the center of the courtyard. Once an impressive feat of sculpture—its marble was finely incised—it now gathered rainwater and algae. A lightabsorbing scum adhered to the sides of the wide, circular pool like a black liner. It would do. Black on black: the protective coloration of the night.
Janson’s hands groped over his vest and fatigues, his fingers identifying the key items of equipment. Katsaris, standing nearby, was doing the same; each visually inspected the other’s camouflage and gear, standard procedure for such operations. They had each traveled a long distance in turbulent conditions. A lot could happen in that time. Punched by the slipstream, whipped by crosswinds, a paratrooper could arrive without his full complement of equipment, however securely it had been attached to his combat vest and fatigues. Janson had learned that from his SEAL days; Katsaris had learned it from him.
Janson surveyed his partner. The whites of his eyes were the only beacons from his painted face. Then he saw a patch of pale over his right shoulder. Katsaris’s shirt had been torn during his landing roll, revealing light skin. Janson signaled him to stand still while he pulled out a few inches of black electricial tape from a spool in his fatigues. He taped the seams together, and the light patch disappeared. Tailoring in the drop zone, Janson thought to himself.
And yet such details could make all the difference. Their black garb would help them disappear into the shadows of a deeply shadowed courtyard. By the same token, even a few inches of silvery flesh could spell betrayal in the carelessly roving beam of a guard’s flashlight.
As he had emphasized on Katchall, the rebels would not have high-tech perimeter defenses, but they would have defenses of a sort that technology had not yet equaled: the five senses of vigilant human beings. An ability to detect anomalies in the visual, aural, and olfactory fields that surpassed the capabilities of any computer.
The descent had largely been through subzero winds. But on the ground, even at four o’clock in the morning, it was eighty-five degrees and humid. Janson could feel himself starting to sweat—real sweat, not condensation from the atmosphere—and he knew that in time his body’s own smell could betray him. His dermal proteins, those of a meat-eating Westerner, would be alien to the Anurans, who subsisted largely on vegetables and fish curries. He’d have to trust that the salt breezes would whisk away any olfactory signals of his presence.
Janson unhooked his night-vision glasses from his combat vest and raised them to his eyes; the large courtyard was suddenly bathed in a soft green glow. He made sure that the black rubber ocular cups were pressed firmly against his face before he dialed up the image luminosity: any light spilling from the NV scope could alert a watchful sentry. He had once seen a member of a commando team killed by a patrol who had caught the telltale glint of green and fired almost blindly. Indeed, he had once seen a man perish because of an illuminated watch dial.
Now he and Katsaris stood back-to-back, each conducting an NV sweep of the opposite quadrants.
On the north side of the courtyard were three orange phosphorescent blobs, two leaning toward each other—a sudden white flare emerging between their spectral forms. Janson depowered the scope before lowering it to view the scene with his naked eyes. Even from twenty yards away, he could clearly see the flickering flame. A match had been struck—an old-fashioned fireplace match, it appeared—and two of the guards were lighting their cigarettes with it.
Amateurs, Janson thought. A guard on duty should never provide incidental illumination and should never encumber his most important weapon, his hands.
But then who were these people? There was a vast gap between the Caliph with his top strategists, trained by terror cells in the Middle East, and their followers, typically recruited from villages filled with illiterate peasants.
There would be highly trained sentinels and soldiers in place. But their attention would be directed toward the outside world. They would be at the battlements and in the watchtowers. The ones stationed along the inner courtyard would be charged with the relatively trivial chores of internal discipline, making sure that no ganja-fueled carousing disturbed the sleep of the Caliph or the members of his command.
Though they stood only a few feet away from each other, Katsaris whispered into his filament microphone, his voice amplified in Janson’s earpiece: “One sentry. Southeast corner. Seated.” A beat. “Probably half asleep.”
Janson replied in a sub-whisper, “Three sentries. The north veranda. Very much awake.”
In a hostage exfiltration, as neither had to be reminded, one went where the guards were. Unless an ambush had been laid: the visible guards in one place, the valuables in another, and a further set of guards in wait. Yet there was no room for doubt in this case. The blueprints made it clear that the dungeon was located beneath the northern face of the courtyard.
Janson moved slowly to his left, along the wall, and then beneath the overhang of the western veranda, walking half-crouched beneath the parapet. They could not be overreliant on the darkness: a rod in the human retina could be activated by a single photon. Even in the blackest night, there were shadows. Janson and Katsaris would stay in those shadows as long as possible: they would move along the sides of the courtyard, avoiding the center.
Now, for a few moments, Janson kept perfectly still, not even breathing: just listening. There was the distant, soft roar of the sea, washing at the base of the promontory. A few bird noises—a cormorant, perhaps—and, from the forests to the south, the scraping and buzzing of tropical insects. This was the aural baseline of the night, and they would do well to be aware of it. It was impossible to move with absolute silence: fabric slid against fabric, nylon fibers stretched and contracted around a person’s moving limbs. Soles, even those of thick, soft rubber, registered their impact on the ground; the hard shells of a dead beetle or cicada would crunch with a footfall. The night’s acoustic tapestry would conceal some noises but not others.
He listened for sounds of Katsaris’s movement, straining harder than any sentry would, and heard nothing. Would he be as successful in maintaining silence?
Ten feet, then twenty feet, along the wall. There was a scraping sound, then the burst of a tiny combustion: the third guard was lighting up.
Janson was near enough to watch the motion: a thick, self-lighting match struck against brick, its candlelike flame held under what looked like a thin cigarillo. After twenty seconds, the tobacco smell wafted toward him—it was indeed a cigarillo—and Janson relaxed a little. The flare of the match would constrict the sentries’ irises, temporarily reducing their visual acuity. The tobacco smoke would render their noses all but useless. And the activity of smoking would compromise their ability to respond, in an encounter where a split second was the difference between life and death.
He was now fifteen feet away from the northern veranda. He took in the rusticated limestone and wrought-iron grille. The terra-cotta mission roof tiles were a late addition and sat oddly on a structure that had been built and rebuilt over centuries. Four stories; the grand rooms on the second floor, where the leaded glass, hood moldings, and arched transoms suggested the transformation of a Portuguese fortress into what a Dutch overlord pretentiously dubbed his “palace.” Most of the windows were dark; dim hallway lights seeped through some of them. And where was the Caliph, the architect of death, sleeping tonight? Janson had a pretty good guess.
It would be so easy. A fragmentation grenade, lobbed through the leaded glass. A stinger missile, blasting into the bedroom. And Ahmad Tabari would be dead. No more would remain of his corporeal existence than remained of Helene’s. He batted the thought away. It was a fantasy merely, and one he could not afford to indulg
e. It was inconsistent with the mission objective. Peter Novak was a great man. Not only did Janson owe him his life, but the world might owe him its future survival. The moral and strategic calculus was incontrovertible: the preservation of a great man had to take precedence over the destruction of an evil one.
Janson lowered his gaze from the governor’s suite to the northern veranda.
Fifteen feet away from the nearest sentry, he could see the men’s faces. Broad, peasant faces, unwary and unsophisticated. Younger than he had expected. But then, the forty-nine-year-old operative reflected, these men would not have looked young to him for most of his career as a field agent. They were older than he was when he was running raids behind the Green Line near Cambodia. Older than he was when he killed for the first time, and when he first escaped being killed.
Their hands were visibly chafed, but no doubt from farmwork rather than martial arts. Amateurs, yes, he mused again; but it was not a wholly reassuring thought. The KLF was too well organized to have entrusted so valuable a treasure to the protection of such men as these. They were a first line of defense only. A first line of defense where, logically, no defense at all would have been called for.
And where was Katsaris?
Janson peered across the courtyard, across sixty feet of darkness, and could make out nothing. Katsaris was invisible. Or gone.
He made a quiet tsk into the filament mike, trying to modify the sound to echo the insect and avian noises of the night.
He heard an answering tsk in his earpiece. Katsaris was there, in place, ready.
The accuracy of his first determination would be crucial: Was it safe to take out these men? Were the men themselves decoys—birds on a wire?
Was there a wire?