Fallout

Outside, over the roar of the engines, he could hear the hail-like splatter of rain on the fuselage. “Weather report, Sandy?”

“True winds light, three to five from the northwest; relative winds between us and the target’s deck, fifteen to seventeen knots; heavy and steady rain; temperature forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.”

“All in all,” Bird added, “a downright lovely day.”

“I’m sure they’ve got coffee aboard,” Fisher replied. “I’ll see if I can scare up a cup.”

“Altitude, four hundred ninety-one. Ramp down in thirty seconds. We’re slaved to the target. As soon as you’re out the door, steering and cable slack on your command.”

The cabin lights blinked out, then glowed back to life in night-vision-friendly red.

“Roger,” Fisher said, and pulled up the hood on his tac suit and settled his goggles over his eyes. A thought occurred to him. He leaned closer to Franco, who was buckling into a safety rig on the bulkhead, and said, “The fairing—”

“Freshly coated in DARPA’s own version of Rain-X. Water should bead up and roll away.”

“Right.”

“Ramp coming down.”

A moment later Fisher heard the whirring of the ramp’s motors. Accompanied by a sucking whoosh of cold air, the ramp’s lip parted from the curved edge of the fuselage’s tail, and a slice of black sky appeared. The ramp continued descending, then stopped, fully open. Outside, Fisher could see skeins of clouds whipping past the opening and, in the breaks between the clouds, the distant twinkling of lights; the ships moving up and down the St. Lawrence showing up as individual specks, the cities and highways along the Seaway as threads and clusters.

Franco patted him on the shoulder again and called into his ear, “Whenever you’re ready.”

Fisher nodded, performed a final check of his rigging, then turned around so he was facing forward, then back-stepped up to the edge of the ramp until his heels were dangling in space, then coiled his legs and launched himself backward.

Per the plan, Franco let out an immediate four hundred feet of cable, which brought Fisher to a halt a hundred feet above the Gosselin’s mainmast, still unseen in the darkness. Though the true wind speed was negligible, Fisher’s relative speed through space was almost eighteen miles an hour, which was enough to turn the otherwise vertical rain into a diagonal, slashing deluge that peppered the fairing like blown sand. True to Franco’s prediction, however, the water beaded up and sluiced away before it could obscure Fisher’s vision. Through his harness he could feel the cable thrumming with the tension, like a plucked guitar string.

“Cable stopped and locked,” Bird said in his ear. “On you now, Sam.”

“Roger.”

Fisher powered up his NV goggles and heard, very faintly in his ear, the familiar hum. His vision went to gray green. And directly below his feet, not more than a third of a football field away, he could now see the top of the Gosselin ’s mast and the crescent-shaped dish of the navigation radar making its slow rotation.

Fisher pushed a button on the LTD pod on his wrist and then extended his index finger, aiming it at the ship’s afterdeck. He’d chosen this spot for his insertion primarily because of the weather. In this rain, if a stern lookout was posted, he or she would have likely withdrawn to the overhanging awning on the second-level aft superstructure. Same for anyone taking a smoke break. He switched his goggles to IR and scanned the afterdeck and superstructure for human-shaped thermal signatures. He saw none. God bless bad weather, he thought and switched back to NV.

“Reading your LTD clearly,” Sandy said. “Confirm designated aim point as afterdeck, midline, twenty feet forward of stern.”

“Confirmed,” Fisher replied. “Give me sixty of cable.”

“Sixty feet of cable,” Franco repeated. “Spooling now.”

Fisher felt himself dropping through the air. He was now aft of the mainmast. The cross-girdered tower, partially obscured by the rain, appeared before his eyes, seemingly rising disembodied from the darkness. He was forty feet above the afterdeck and twenty above the superstructure, almost dead center on the ship’s midline.

Fisher felt himself bump to a stop.

“Cable stopped,” Franco called.

“Confirm cable stopped,” Fisher replied.

Again he scanned the superstructure and afterdeck and again saw neither movement nor heat signatures. He knew better than to do an EM scan; this close to the Gosselin’s navigation radar, all he would see is a blinding swirl of electromagnetic waves that would leave him with a three-day headache. He switched back to NV. Down the length of the superstructure he could see the faint yellow glow of light escaping from the pilothouse’s port and starboard bridge wing doors — and cast in shadow on either wing a lone figure standing at the railing. Port and starboard look-outs. Not a concern right now. Their attention would be focused forward.

Fisher said, “Give me thirty of—” He stopped. On the afterdeck, a door opened on the superstructure, revealing a rectangle of red light. Standing in the rectangle was a man-shaped shadow. “Disregard my last. Hold cable.”

“Holding cable.”

The figure stood still for a second, then lifted its cupped hands to its face. Fisher saw the flare of a lighter. The hands dropped away, revealing the glowing tip of a cigarette.

Fisher said, “Stand by. Got a crewman on a smoke break.”

Fisher dangled in space, swaying slightly in the wind, which was partially blocked by the ship’s superstructure, for another five minutes until finally the crewman finished his cigarette and then leaned forward and swung the door shut.

“Clear,” Fisher radioed. “Preparing to deploy.”

He heard the double squelch of “Roger” from Franco in his ear.

He scanned the afterdeck for a clean drop zone. There. A patch of open deck bracketed by a barrel-size bollard near the port rail and the raised, glassed-in control cabin for the stern winch. Fisher pointed his LTD at the spot.

“Read distance to deck.”

Sandy replied, “Thirty-eight feet. Stand by. Calculating vertical variance.”

In the cockpit, Sandy would be using the flight computer to read the rise and fall of the Gosselin’s deck on the waves. Nothing got your attention or tended to break ankles like landing on a deck that was bucking up to meet you. It was like stepping off what you thought was the second-to- last step on a stairway only to find one more beneath your foot — only much worse.

“Variance of two feet, Sam.”

Four feet in either direction, Fisher thought.

He said, “On my mark, give me a sharp drop — thirty-four feet.”

“Roger,” Franco said. “Sharp drop of thirty-four on your mark.”

Fisher watched the deck heave and drop below his feet. In the corners of his eyes, beyond the port and starboard deck railing, he could see the roiling, curled white edges of the waves. For a fraction of a moment he felt a wave of vertigo; he focused on the deck and blocked out the peripheries.

Wait for it… wait…

The deck heaved upward, paused, then dropped again.

“Mark.”

He felt his belly lurch into his throat as Franco quick-spooled the cable. Half a second later Fisher jerked to a stop. He hit the rig’s quick release, felt himself dropping, then hit the deck on the balls of his feet, dropped his shoulder, and rolled right, behind the bollard.

“Down, safe, and clear.”

“Retrieving cable.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Fisher said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to shake the tree.”

“At your service, boss,” Bird said.

Fisher did a quick NV/IR scan of the deck around him, then sprinted, hunched over, to the superstructure, where he flattened himself against it. Palms pressed against the aluminum bulkhead, he sidestepped until his