Countdown to Midnight

Thirty-Three

Nick Flynn came drifting down near the aft section of their simulated oil tanker. He tugged gently on the front risers of his rectangular ram-air parachute to alter his course a couple of degrees — just enough to slide past the canvas-covered scaffolding representing one of the catwalks which ran the length of the real ship. A few feet off the ground, he flared the parachute to slow his descent. His landing was so soft that it felt more like stepping off a staircase than finishing a wingsuit jump from twenty thousand feet up and sixteen miles away.

Swiftly, he punched the quick release buckle on his harness to release his chute and let it flutter away across the ground. For this exercise, speed was essential. They’d recover the parachutes later. Still moving fast, he unhooked the mask and oxygen cylinder he’d worn for this high-altitude practice jump and dropped them to the side. Then he hurriedly unzipped his wingsuit and shrugged out of it, kicking his feet loose from the bunched nylon fabric. Now freed of all encumbrances, he darted into the cover offered by the scaffolding “catwalk” and crouched down. Once there, he rummaged quickly through the largest gear bag attached to his assault vest, pulling out and readying his primary weapon — a compact Kel-Tec 7.62mm RFB carbine. He inserted a magazine and pulled back on the charging handle to chamber a round.

“Dragon Lead is down on target portside and ready to move,” Flynn reported over their tactical net.

“Dragon Two in position on starboard side,” Tadeusz Kossak radioed from the other side of the ship.

“Three is same on port side, at your five o’clock, Lead,” Tony McGill called from behind him. Flynn glanced over his shoulder and saw the ever-cheerful ex-SAS sergeant give him a thumbs-up from the corner of one of their mockups of the fake shipping crates positioned along the Gulf Venture’s deck. One by one, the other five men in his assault force — Shannon Cooke, Alain Ricard, Mark Stadler, Cole Hynes, and Wade Vucovich — confirmed that they’d landed safely and were ready to move out. All told, it was scarcely more than ninety seconds from the moment his boots first touched dirt.

He stood up with a grin. “Nice job, guys,” he told them. “Nobody’s in the drink. And nobody bounced into an obstacle. So this one counts as a first phase win.” For the first time ever, all eight members of the Dragon team had managed to land on target, without tangling themselves up in the maze of chalk-drawn piping and other structures cluttering the simulated oil tanker’s hull. Repeated practice jumps and a grueling training schedule had finally paid off in precision. That meant the first part of his assault plan — getting his troops aboard the ship — wasn’t necessarily suicidal.

After that, of course, Flynn reminded himself, all bets were off. At a minimum, they’d be heavily outnumbered by the Iranian crew and any of Voronin’s Raven Syndicate security troops aboard. Once they were safely down, he and the others would be counting on surprise, speed, and sheer guts to act as force multipliers for them in their battle to take the ship. He slung his Kel-Tec bullpup carbine and walked over to scoop up his wingsuit. Out in the pasture, the local teens he’d hired as a ground crew were chasing after some of their parachutes using a golf cart.

Alain Ricard and Mark Stadler came over to join him, followed by the rest of the team. Stadler tapped the stock of his own carbine. “Any chance we can get some more range time with these weapons, Nick?”

Ricard nodded in agreement. “Yes, that would be a good thing.” The former French Marine Commando officer shrugged expressively. “If we are going to fight using these small rifles, I would very much like to test their characteristics further under close to combat conditions.”

Other heads bobbed, indicating most of team felt much the same. They’d chosen the Kel-Tec carbine for its small size — just twenty-six inches from muzzle to butt stock — and the greater hitting and penetration power conferred by the 7.62mm rounds it fired. Compactness was essential, because trying to carry longer firearms outside their wingsuits would screw up their streamlined glide characteristics. But there were downsides as well. While 7.62mm rounds did more damage and could punch through most body armor better than NATO-standard 5.56mm bullets, they were considerably larger and heavier. The Kel-Tec weapon’s standard magazines held only twenty rounds, compared to thirty for a similar rifle firing 5.56mm ammunition. That put a premium on accuracy when using it, since “spraying and praying” would just run a shooter out of ammo that much faster.

Flynn considered the situation. They’d built an improvised assault shooting range in the wooded hills above this pastureland — setting up a mix of pop-up targets, obstacles, and trip-wire pyrotechnics. It couldn’t replicate all of the challenges they’d face fighting aboard a massive ship with its intricate layout of pipelines, stairs, ladders, hatches, and separate compartments, but it was the best they could do with the time and resources available. And running through the range as often as possible definitely gave his team a chance to keep their combat reflexes and shooting skills sharp, while familiarizing themselves with their new weapons. Although he’d originally scheduled one more practice jump that afternoon, the fact that this last one had gone so well gave him room to switch the training schedule around.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” he agreed. “Gather up your jump gear and stow it back at the ranch house, and then we’ll head over to the range for some running and gunning.” He nodded toward Tadeusz Kossak and Tony McGill. “Or in the case of the two terrible T’s here, some slithering and shooting.”

That sparked grins all around. The Polish sniper and former SAS commando had already demonstrated an uncanny ability to blend with any cover available. McGill gravely claimed that he’d been inspired as a child by reruns of the classic Monty Python skit “How Not to Be Seen.”

“Hey, boss! De plane! De plane!” Hynes suddenly yelled in a gravelly falsetto, pointing at the sky over Flynn’s shoulder.

Flynn glanced down at his camouflage-pattern battledress and laughed. He wasn’t exactly wearing the elegant white suit favored by Ricardo Montalbán in another vintage TV show, Fantasy Island. Still shaking his head, he turned around and saw the BushCat coming in for a landing right beside their pretend oil tanker.

The little plane touched down in a puff of dust and taxied closer. It slewed to a stop only fifty yards away. Laura Van Horn scrambled out of her aircraft before its propeller even stopped turning. She loped straight over to him.

“What’s up?” Flynn asked quickly.

She pulled a tablet computer out of her shoulder bag and held it out to him. “This morning’s Pléiades HR-1A pass spotted the Gulf Venture,” she said, sounding breathless.

He took the device and studied the digital image it showed. Although it had been taken by a satellite orbiting more than four hundred miles above the earth’s surface, the details in the enhanced picture were incredibly clear… all the way down to the fake shipping containers that concealed the tanker’s antiaircraft guns and SAM launchers. He looked up at her. “Where was the ship when this picture was taken?” he demanded.

In answer, Van Horn reached over and swiped her hand across the tablet’s screen to bring up the next image. This one was a map, with a cross indicating the position of the Gulf Venture when it was spotted from space.

Flynn whistled softly in relief. He’d guessed right about the ship’s probable destination. When the Pléiades satellite made its pass several hours ago, the Iranian tanker had been in the mid-Atlantic, almost exactly halfway between Guyana on South America’s northeastern coast and the tiny country of Guinea-Bissau on Africa’s western edge.

Then he frowned. The Iranian vessel was currently nearly four thousand miles from the closest point on the U.S. mainland — which put it well out of reach of Four’s assault force and its support units. That was especially true considering that his Dragon team was still based here in Central Texas. He studied the map. If they could stage out of Puerto Rico, that would shave off some of the distance, but not enough. He looked up. “Damn it, we still can’t hit those bastards.”

Van Horn nodded. “Not yet, anyway.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But on the other hand, all the missile gurus Fox has consulted peg the likely range of their rocket at somewhere around two thousand miles, assuming they’re going for a high-altitude detonation two or three hundred miles up. So, yeah, you can’t hit the enemy yet, but by the same token, they’re not anywhere close to a possible launch point either. That tanker is going to have to come a lot closer to the U.S. coast. Which should give you and your team time to get into position before the balloon goes up.”

“Let’s hope so,” Flynn said tightly. “But we’ve got another problem. We were all focused on finding the ship in the first place. But just how in heck are we going to keep tabs on it now?” He waved a hand over the map displayed on her tablet. “We were damned lucky to spot it once. But at best, we’ll only get a satellite pass over that part of the ocean once every twenty-four hours. And assuming the Gulf Venture is still making eighteen knots, it could steam another five hundred miles in some other direction before the Pléiades comes back around for another look.”

“Yeah,” Van Horn agreed. “Which is why Br’er Fox and I are working on couple of ways to handle the job.” She tapped the digital map. “Anyway, based on its last known position, we think it’s a safe bet that the tanker will keep heading northwest for at least another day. If it veers too much in any other direction, it’ll end up crossing into busier shipping lanes off South America or Africa — which could blow their cover.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m on a flight to Orlando in a couple of hours. I should be out hunting Gulf Venture by this time tomorrow or even sooner.”

“You can’t just send out a scout plane to track that ship,” Flynn warned. “The bad guys aren’t idiots. They’d be bound to spot a trailer… and then my guys and I are boned.”

She smiled back at him. “Yeah, copy that. But this isn’t my first aerial rodeo, cowboy. Just remember that subtlety is my middle name.”

Flynn acted surprised. “Really?” He grinned crookedly. “Man, Laura, you had some weird parents.”

Before Van Horn could smack him, his smartphone pinged with a new text message. He scanned it quickly and then looked at her. “I need to bum a ride with you back to Austin, if that’s okay.”

She nodded. “Can do. What’s up?”

“Some good news for a change,” Flynn said. “That special hardware I ordered from BMW just came in on an air freight flight. If I pick it up this afternoon, I can get it back here to the ranch by sundown. That should give us enough time for some trial runs with it later tonight and tomorrow morning before we fly out to Florida ourselves.”

“Sweet,” Van Horn said appreciatively. The tiny laugh lines around her eyes deepened slightly. “So Birdman Flynn and his glide boys are going Iron Man after all? You know, I’m kind of sorry I’ll miss seeing the first time you try out these new high-tech gizmos.”

He snorted. “Very funny.” He shook his head. “We sure can use the extra capability this experimental equipment ought to give us, but figuring out how to use it safely and successfully means more practice jumps… right at a time when it seems like the countdown clock is already ticking. Everything we’re planning rests on a hell of a lot of different assumptions — about the range of that rocket, about its probable target, the size of the crew aboard, and all the rest. And if we’re wrong about just one of those assumptions, we’re screwed… along with everybody else in the whole U.S.”

Van Horn’s own expression turned more serious. “I know what you mean, Nick. Basically, we’re in a race now, one where the competition is already well out in front… and we don’t even know where the finish line is.”

Flynn straightened his shoulders. “Then I guess we have to dig down deeper and run even harder, right?”

She nodded. “Just as fast and as hard as we can. And if you’re the praying type at all, that might not hurt, either.”