He slipped down behind a rock to take himself out of the gusting wind. He settled in to nurse himself through the coldness that lay ahead. But it would not be a problem, he knew. He had beaten that one a long time ago.
The dark of the plane was serene, cocoon like Swagger was geared up. He wore jump boots, some kind of super tight jumpsuit and was struggling to get his chute straps tightened. He was quite calm. It was Bonson who was nervous.
'We're getting close,' Bonson said.
'Altitude is thirty-six thousand feet. The computers have pinpointed a dropping point that should put you down in the flat just northwest of the Mackay Reservoir, about a mile or so from the location of the house. If you carry farther you'll go into the Lost River Mountains, see, here.'
He pointed to the map, which clearly showed the Thousand Springs Valley that ran northwest by southeast through central Idaho, cut by the Big Lost River between the Lost River range and the White Knob Mountains.
'The chute will deploy at five hundred feet and you should land softly enough. You'll just have to make it across the flatlands under the cover of dark, get into the house, warn the targets, and if you have to, engage him.'
'If I get the shot, I'll take it.'
'That's fine. Our priority here is your wife. She's the target of this mission, so thwarting him is what counts. As soon as it's flyable, I've got a squad of air policemen heloing in from Mountain Home to set up a defensive perimeter, and park rangers and Idaho State Policemen ready to go into the mountains after this guy. If you get the shot, take it. But, man, if we could get him alive and her alive, we'd have--' 'Forget it,' Swagger said.
'He's a professional. He killed two people already. He won't be taken alive. The rest of his life in a federal prison is no life for this guy.
He'd take the L-pill, laughing at you as he checked out.'
'Maybe so,' said Bonson.
Swagger finished with the parachute, it seemed okay, with the preset altitude-sensitive deployment device.
That was the tricky part. The altitude sensor read altitude from ,a predetermined height above sea level so that it was set to pop the chute five hundred feet over the flatland, if he drifted into the mountains, the chute might not pop at all before he hit some gigantic vertical chunk of planet. The Air Force people had explained this to him, and told him that, more than anything, was why this was so foolhardy. The computers could read the wind tendencies, compute his weight, the math of his acceleration, add in the C-130's airspeed and determine a spot where the trajectory would be right, navigate the bird to that spot and tell him when it was time to go. But the jump wouldn't be in a computer, it would be in the real world, unpredictable and unknowable, a gust of tailwind, some tiny imperfection, and he'd be dead and what good would that do?
The plane was making about 320 miles an hour, after a government Lear jet had zoomed them from Andrews to Mountain Home in less than five hours, during which time he and Bonson had been on the radio with various experts trying to work out the details.
They landed at Mountain Home and were airborne again in ten minutes.
Bob checked his electronics and other gear, all secured in a jump bag that was tethered to his ankle. In it, a cold weather arctic-pattern camouflaged Gore-Tex parka and leggings had been folded. He also had a new Motorola radio, MTX-810 Dual Mode portable, with microprocessor and digitized, a tenth the weight of the old PRC-77 and with three times the range, which would keep him in contact with a network, it was linked to his belt, and secured to his head by a throat mike, sound-sensitive, so all he had to do was talk and he was on the net. He also had a Magellan uplink device to read the Global Positioning System satellites, which orbited overhead broadcasting a mesh of ultra-accurate signals, similarly digitized and microprocessor-driven, which could enable him to chart his position in milliseconds if he should wander off track.
He had night-vision gear, the latest things, M912A nightvision goggles from Litton with two 18mm Gen II Plus image-intensifier assemblies, which provided three times the system gain of the standard AN/PVS-5A.
He had a Beretta 92 in a shoulder holster under his left arm, a 9mm mouse gun shooting a lot (sixteen) of little cartridges not worth a damn, but nobody had .45s anymore, goddamn their souls.
And he had a rifle.
Taken from the Agency's sterile weapons inventory, it appeared to be some Third World assassination kit of which the rifle was but one part. The rifle lay encased in a foam-lined aluminum case, the Remington M40A1, Marine-issue, in .308, with its fiberglass stock, its free floated barrel, its Unerti 10X scope. It would shoot an inch at one hundred yards, no problem, and two boxes of Federal Premium 168-grain Match King boat tailed hollowpoints.
He'd examined it closely and saw that the proprietary shooter had taped a legend to the butt stock.
'Zeroed at 100 Yards,' it said. And under that: '200 yards: 9 klicks up, 300 yards: 12 klicks up, 400 yards: 35 klicks up, 500 yards: 53 klicks up.'
'Okay,' said Bonson, leaning close, 'let's check commo.'
'Just a goddamn second,' said Bob, trying to guess the range he'd be shooting at.
What the fuck, he thought, and started clicking, fifty three times.
'Come on, let's check commo,' said Bonson again.
Clearly the tools of the trade at this basic level did not much interest Bonson, they may even have frightened him. But there were other devices cut into the padded foam of the case, one was an SOG knife in a kydex sheath, a dark and deadly thing, another was leather encased sap, just the thing for thumping sentries as you got to your hide, and still another, so discreet in its green canvas M7 bandoleer and therefore complete with firing device and wiring, was the M18A1 anti-personnel mine known as the Claymore, so familiar from Vietnam and just the thing for flank security on some kind of assassination mission outside Djakarta.
He had a moment when he wondered if he should have junked all this shit, but as it was all going into the para pack and would be tethered to his leg, he decided not to worry about it. He locked the case up.
'Come on,' said Bonson for a third time, 'let's check commo.'
