photons strike the surface gets trapped — if for only a split second — but enough to diffuse them. Bottom line: You stand still in a shadow, you’re virtually part of the shadow.”
“And the pouches and harness points? Everything’s moved. It looks… lumpy.”
“Disruptive patterning. We’ve resized and rearranged them to break up your form.”
Mother Nature abhors straight lines. In low-light conditions the human eye tends to seek out movement, color difference, and geometric form. Of the three, movement was the easiest to address: stand still. Color difference was also easy: Black gives the eye little to draw from the background. Form, however, was problematic. The human body is a unique collection of angles and lines easily discernible to the human eye. By rearranging the pouches to various spots on the suit, the familiar outline of the body becomes fuzzy.
Fisher took the suit from Redding and examined it. He nodded. “I like it. One question.”
“What?”
“Where do I put my car keys?”
“Okay, one more item,” Redding said. “An add-on to the SC-20. Again, I’ll spare you the technical stuff. We’ve nicknamed it Cottonball.” He handed Fisher two items: what looked like a standard shotgun shell, and a spiked soft rubber ball roughly the size of marble. “The basic firing mechanism is the same as the sticky shocker and ring airfoil, but with a big difference. Once it’s out of the barrel, the sabot breakes away, leaving only the Cottonball. When it strikes a hard object, an inner pod of aerosol tranquilizer is released. The cloud radius is three feet. Anyone inside that will be unconscious in three or four seconds.”
“Impressive. Duration?”
“For a hundred-eighty-pound man, a waist-up strike will give you about twenty minutes.”
“Accuracy?”
“Plus or minus six inches over fifty feet.”
Bird’s voice came over the intercom: “Hey, boys, incoming transmission for you.”
Fisher tapped his subdermal. “Go ahead,” Fisher said.
Lambert’s voice: “Your target’s gone mobile, Fisher. The
“Destination?”
“Working on it, but we’ve confirmed she took on provisions the day before, including fuel.”
“Probably not a day trip, then. So we either wait for her to put in somewhere, or intercept her under way.”
On headphones, Redding said, “Uh, Colonel, we’ve got a full load-out onboard. I was thinking…”
“Skipjack?”
“Skipjack.”
Fisher groaned. “Ah, man, I hate the Skipjack.”
11
“Seven minutes to target,” Fisher heard Bird say in his subdermal. “Descending to five thousand.”
“Roger. Give me the ramp, Bird.”
“Ramp descending.”
With a mechanical groan, a gap appeared along the curved upper lip of the ramp, revealing a slice of dark night sky. Fisher felt a slight vacuum sensation as the pressure equalized. After a few seconds, the ramp was down level with the deck. Through the opening Fisher could see nothing but a carpet of black water and the distant twinkling lights of the Bahamian mainland.
“Ramp down and locked,” Bird called.
At the bulkhead control panel, Redding checked the gauges and nodded confirmation.
“Surface conditions?” Fisher asked.
“Sea state one, low chop. Winds five to seven knots from the northeast.”
“Give me a two-minute warning.”
“Will do.”
Redding’s voice came over his earpiece: “So, tell me again, Sam: Why do you hate this thing?”
The “thing” in question was a covert insertion vehicle known as a Skipjack. Essentially a one-man IKS (Inflatable Kayak, Small) equipped with a silent electric motor, the Skipjack was enclosed in a bullet-shaped shell of reinforced fiberglass designed to make the IKS aerodynamic, allowing it to be launched from aircraft and skip along the surface at sixty knots before the shell peeled away from the IKS and sank to the bottom.
Insertion is often the diciest part of any mission, especially an airdrop of any kind. Most enemy radar stations, while immediately suspicious of low-flying unidentified aircraft, don’t push the panic button until the target dramatically slows down and/or drops from radar for thirty seconds or more, which could, for example, indicate troops fast-roping from a helicopter.
The Osprey, traveling at 125 knots, could drop off radar without reducing speed, eject the Skipjack, and climb back to altitude within twenty seconds. To radar operators that appeared as nothing more than an inexperienced Cessna pilot who’d lost some altitude before correcting.
There were few things Fisher feared, and none of them involved work. His problem with the Skipjack was the seemingly endless twenty or thirty seconds after it was disgorged from the plane. Being strapped like a piece of luggage inside the IKS and unable to control his fate went against his every instinct.
“I don’t hate it,” Fisher replied. “It’s just not my favorite ride.”
“Sam, can you hear me?” Lambert’s voice.
“Go ahead.”
“The FBI’s on to the
“How much time do I have?”
“They’ll probably intercept within seventy minutes. You need to get aboard, get some answers, and get out before then. Remember, you don’t exist—”
“—and we’re not doing this. I know. I’ll be in touch.”
Fisher climbed into the Skipjack, which was locked to the deck by four ratchet straps, and strapped himself in.
Bird called, “Descending through five hundred feet. Target on radar. One minute to drop.”
Fisher felt the Osprey bank again as Bird bled off altitude. The drone of the engines changed pitch. Strapped into the IKS with the Skipjack’s shell around him, Fisher could only see the outside world through a small Plexiglas view port.
“Where’s my target?” he asked.
“We’re coming in astern and close to shore. When you hit the water, they’ll be a mile off your port bow. Current heading, three-two-zero; speed, eight knots. We’re passing through two hundred feet. Hold tight. Go on green.”
“Roger, go on green,” Fisher replied.
Redding knelt beside the Skipjack, patted Fisher once on the shoulder, then sealed Skipjack’s roof over his head. The Osprey’s engines went to half volume.
“Eighty feet,” Bird called. “Ten seconds.”
The Osprey began trembling as its own prop wash reacted with the ocean’s surface. Through the port Fisher could see mist swirling around the end of the ramp.
“Five seconds.”
Above Fisher’s head, the bulb turned yellow.
Then green.
In his peripheral vision he saw Redding pull the master release toggle. Fisher felt himself sliding forward.
