on my TV screen. When something surfaces that hurts, let it hurt. For once, just
He fell silent, studying the brawny shoulder of Mount Hamilton through the window.
The silence lasted awhile.
At last Gordian unfolded his arms, lifted them off the desk, and reclined in his chair so slowly Nordstrum could hear every creak of its burnished leather as a separate and distinct sound.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Nordstrum checked his watch. “Don’t let another news cycle go by without a statement to the media. There’s still time to put one out before the end of the business day. And before the six- thirty network broadcasts.”
Gordian smiled a little.
“Hell of a mouthful,” he said. “Just like the old days.”
“The sole difference being,” Nordstrum said, “that in the old days I got handsomely compensated.”
Their insertion technique highly modem, their means of delivery an airborne relic, the twelve HAHO jumpers vaulted from a blacked-out DC-3 that had carried Allied troops on missions of liberation during World War II.
This was a very different sort of mission, plotted by men with very different objectives.
The propeller-driven transport had flown from a hidden airstrip in the Pantanal, a sprawling wetlands in central Brazil, to within a dozen miles of their drop zone outside the frontier city of Cuiaba. While a traditional parachute jump might have occurred at an altitude of three thousand feet, they were ten times that distance from the ground when they exited the plane. It was a height at which the atmosphere was too thin to support human life and where, even in the tropics, the extreme cold could damage the flesh and freeze the eyelids shut.
Survival for the high-altitude-high-opening team therefore hinged upon specialized equipment. Oxygen canisters rigged to their jumpsuits made it possible for them to breathe. Protective goggles allowed them to keep their eyes open in the frigid, lashing wind. Pullover face masks and thermal gloves offered insulation against the worst effects of exposure.
Free fall through the moonlit sky was brief. Their airfoil-shaped chutes released moments after they jumped, unfolding front to back, then from the middle out to the stabilizer edges — a sequence that checked their deployment until they were just below the backwash of the props, reducing the opening shock.
Their canopies filled with air, hands on their steering toggles, the jumpers descended at an initial rate of about eighteen feet per second, passing through a high layer of cirrocumulus clouds composed of supercooled water and ice. Fastened to their harness saddles, the bags containing their assault weapons doubled as seats that helped distribute their weight and compensate for drag.
The lead jumper was a man who had gone by many names in the past, and presently chose to be called Manuel. He snatched a glance down at the altimeter atop his reserve chute, checked his GPS chest pack unit for his current position, and then signaled the HAHO team to form up in a crescent around him. He wore a small, glowing blue phosphorous marker on his back, as did three of the other jumpers. Another four had orange markers, the remaining four yellow ones. The colored markers would allow them to maintain close formation as they glided through the inky darkness, and provide easy identification when they broke off into separate groups on the ground.
For now, however, it was vital that they stay together through their long cross-country flight, silently riding the night wind, sweeping down and down toward their target like winged, malicious angels of death.
THREE
FROM AN ASSOCIATED PRESS BULLETIN:
Asked about the composition of this fact-finding team — and apparently mindful of the widespread criticisms leveled upon NASA in the wake of
According to the prepared text of the statement, Mr. Gordian will take a “personal role in the probe,” and “see that it includes a top-to-bottom review of safety procedures at his ISS production site in Brazil,” where the station’s components are being manufactured under UpLink’s overall management.
Gordian’s assurance is viewed as a sign that he intends to avoid the divisive, public finger-pointing in which NASA and its contractors engaged after
When Nimec and Megan spotted the police cruiser, it was parked at the gravel shoulder of the road, about a car length behind a red Toyota pickup, its roof racks throwing off circus strobes of light.
The two officers, who had obviously arrived at the scene in it, were scuffling with a third man outside the pickup.
One of the lawmen was fortyish and burly and wore a Hancock County deputy’s uniform and badge. The other was perhaps twenty years younger and forty pounds leaner and wore a State of Maine warden’s uniform and badge. The civilian, a tall, dark-haired man in a green chamois shirt, tan goose-down vest, jeans, and hiking boots, was standing out on the road with his back pressed up against the driver’s door of his truck. The warden was jammed halfway inside the door, his head under the steering column, his body bent across the front seat, his backside sticking almost comically out of the cab. The deputy had the pickup driver’s collar bunched in his fist and was attempting to wrestle him away from the door, but he was putting up a hard fight, shoving the deputy back with one hand, throwing punches at his face and neck with the other. The cop had an open cut below his right eye. A pair of mirrored sunglasses lay on the blacktop near his feet, one lens popped out of the wire frame. He was shouting furiously in the pickup driver’s face, but neither Pete nor Megan could make out what he was saying through the windows of their Chevy.
“What in the world’s going on up there?” she asked, peering out her side of the windshield.
Nimec breathed deeply and slowed the car.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you see the guy in the green shirt?”
She glanced over at him, reading his face. “Pete, don’t tell me.”
Nimec breathed again.
“Tom Ricci,” he said.
She looked outside again, rolling down her window to try and hear what the shouting was about.
Unable to pry him away from the truck, the thickset deputy had switched tactics and moved in on Ricci, throwing his greater weight against him, getting him in a clinch. Standing his ground, Ricci caught him on the cheek with two quick overhand punches, then followed through with a right uppercut to the jaw. The deputy rocked backward on his heels, breaking his hold, his Smokey the Bear hat sailing off his head to the ground, where it flipped over once and then landed beside the broken sunglasses.
“You crazy son of a
