Countdown to Midnight

Thirty-Eight

Caught by the aircraft’s prop blast, Flynn whirled away through the brutally cold air. The tremendous force generated by four large six-bladed propellers, each revolving hundreds of times per minute, sent him tumbling head over heels. For a split-second, he fought down a growing sense of alarm. This churning maelstrom was far worse than anything he’d experienced during their dozens of practice jumps — all of which had been made from much smaller civilian aircraft. If these howling winds ripped his wingsuit or tore off the BMW electric impeller strapped to his chest, he’d fall far short of the Gulf Venture… and then drown in the icy waters of the Atlantic.

And then he fell out of the turbulent wake curling off the LM-100J’s wings. Instantly, the subzero, roiling currents around him smoothed out. The wind’s shrieking madness faded away, replaced by the low rumble and hiss of air rushing past the nylon fabric of his wingsuit as he plunged toward the ocean at more than 140 knots. But he was still tumbling out of control.

Carefully, Flynn spread his arms and legs into tapered V shapes — creating a wider surface to bite into the air rushing past him — and then just as quickly curled his arms back toward his chest whenever he felt himself again starting to lose control. The effect was much the same as that created when a space capsule rolling too fast rhythmically pulsed its thrusters in opposite directions to counteract the spin and slow its rate of rotation. Gradually, he regained complete control over the wingsuit and was at last able to turn himself over to face downward and extend its fabric fully to create a stable airfoil. His speed had decreased to a little over 120 knots. The glowing figures on his navigation display showed that he was now descending through 26,000 feet above sea level. “Dragon Lead proceeding to target as planned,” he said into his throat mike.

“Dragon Two is same,” Tadeusz Kossak replied over the circuit. “I have your helmet IR beacon in sight, Lead.” One by one, the rest of his team checked in, reporting that they too had made it safely through the vortex created by the Super Hercules and were following him down.

As his fear of plummeting out of control faded, Flynn felt a surge of elation. Despite the incredible danger involved, the sensation of wingsuit flying was intensely exhilarating. It was the closest thing possible to achieving the sensation of free, unencumbered flight so long dreamed of by humans. For these minutes, as he glided onward toward the still-distant Gulf Venture, he would be almost a true master of the air — mimicking the birds, and the gods of myth and legend.

He looked ahead along his glide path. Those towering masses of cloud below, etched in silver and gray by the moonlight, were now much closer. He checked his heading and lowered his right shoulder slightly, banking a few degrees to bring himself back on the most direct course toward the oil tanker’s predicted position. Under the overall sense of euphoria provoked by this near-silent flight through the darkness, he was conscious of a gnawing worry. How close were their enemies to launching their missile? If he and his men were too late after all, the first warning would be a brightening glow through those same clouds — a diffuse glow that would quickly resolve into a blinding plume of fire as the Iranian-made rocket and its Russian-produced nuclear warhead soared onward toward space, completely untouchable and unstoppable.

Still gliding toward the ocean’s surface at about 120 knots, Flynn arrowed into the clouds. Instantly, the sky around him disappeared. He was surrounded by a sea of impenetrable gray. Ice pellets hammered at his arms, legs, and chest. And then, as he descended into warmer air, the ice impacts stopped, replaced by rivulets of rain that blurred across his clear polycarbonate face shield and streamed away to either side. Without any visual reference points, he had only the faint sensation of falling through endless nothing. Time seemed to slow again. Only the steadily decreasing numbers on his altimeter and GPS readouts provided any sense of movement. Resolutely, he held to his current course. While slashing through this mass of cloud with near-zero visibility, the risk of a fatal collision with one of the other Dragon team wingsuiters was high. Several close calls during training had shown that the only way to minimize the danger was to stay on a rigidly defined flight path — and make any needed corrections only once you were free of the cloud layer.

Sooner than he’d expected, Flynn broke back out into the open. With the moon obscured by the solid overcast, the sea below and the surrounding sky were nearly pitch-black. But there, still thousands of feet below and some miles ahead, he could make out a tiny, brightly lit point against the unrelieved darkness of the ocean. As he continued his descent, it steadily grew larger and clearer. “Target in sight,” he reported.

Confirmations of the sighting from the rest of his assault force echoed through his headset. They were all now about six thousand feet up and a little more than six nautical miles out from the Gulf Venture, trailing behind him in a ragged line across the sky. This was another danger point for Flynn and his men. At their present speed and rate of descent, they were still approximately three minutes out from the tanker. And if a sharp-eyed lookout using IR binoculars spotted them on the way in, that was more than enough time for the enemy weapons crews to man their guns and blow them out of the sky. So it was time to make use of the tactical edge offered by their BMW assistive propulsion gear, Flynn decided. “Follow me!” he ordered. “And stand by on your impellers!”

He sharpened his dive angle, plunging ever faster toward the surface of the Atlantic. Swiftly, his altitude decreased, flickering from six thousand to four thousand to a thousand feet in less than a minute. Moments later, scarcely a hundred feet above the rolling wave tops, he flared his wingsuit slightly, shedding velocity to pull out of this steep dive and into near-level flight. In the same motion, the gloved fingers of his right hand curled inward and pushed buttons on a controller strapped to his wrist. “Impellers on!”

With a high-pitched whine, the BMW electric propulsion unit activated. Inside its twin engine nacelles, the tiny carbon fiber impellers spun up to 25,000 RPM, pulling him through the air like the conventional propellers used on larger aircraft. Flynn accelerated instantly. As his speed jumped, he adjusted his angle of flight carefully so that he was now flying straight and level — racing across the surface of the sea with only feet to spare. Ahead, he could see the massive bow of the Gulf Venture swinging toward him as the huge ship continued maneuvering in a series of repeated 360-degree turns. One corner of his mind noted that a huge patch of the ocean around the vessel seemed oddly flat, as though it were being held down by weights.

Through his headset, he heard sudden loud whoops of glee from Hynes and several of the others. A wild grin flashed across his intent face. He figured that overexcitement at this breathtaking flight just above the waves was better than screams of sheer terror.

The oil tanker grew rapidly in Flynn’s sights. They were drawing together with a combined velocity of almost 170 knots — closing the remaining gap between them nearly three hundred feet with every passing second. His eyes narrowed as he rapidly judged distances. There wasn’t any more time to rely on instruments. Things were happening too fast. Everything was going to come down to instinct honed by training and practice.

With only about three hundred yards to go, the Gulf Venture’s tall, rounded bow loomed out of the darkness, rising high above him as it shouldered through the slowly heaving sea. Flynn’s shoulders tensed. Ready… set… now! “Go for pop-up!” he yelled. He threw his shoulders back and arched his back to zoom skyward, going vertical to bleed off forward velocity and gain altitude in the same maneuver. In less than a second, he’d climbed three hundred feet above the deck of the oncoming ship.

“Dump impellers and deploy your chutes!” Flynn radioed. His gloved fingers pressed another control. Electronic latches on his breastplate opened. Cut loose, the winged BMW propulsion unit tumbled away into the darkness, throwing up a white-foamed splash when it hit the surface of the ocean. In that same moment, his ram parachute streamed out behind him and snapped open with a tooth-rattling jolt. Tugging on the front risers to control his heading, he slid downwind along the length of the enormous oil tanker, aiming for a comparatively clear patch of deck a couple of hundred feet forward of the ship’s towering aft superstructure. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him seven more camouflaged rectangular parachutes floating down out of the sky behind him. The Quartet Directorate’s Dragon assault force was coming in right on target.

“Enemy in sight!” A lookout screamed suddenly. “Directly over the ship!”

Startled, Captain Reza Heidari jolted upright from his seat at the navigation plot table. With the countdown clock now at T −21 minutes and proceeding smoothly, he’d been busy calculating the series of turns needed to bring the tanker directly through the selected launch coordinates at precisely the right moment. He stared out the bridge window, stunned by the horrifying sight of parachutes unexpectedly blossoming just above his ship’s hull. This was impossible, one part of his mind screamed. The unknown aircraft his radar had been tracking had never approached closer than twenty-two nautical miles. That was well outside the range of any feasible conventional airborne assault.

With an effort, he closed his open mouth and regained a measure of control. Theoretically impossible or not, it was happening. A hostile landing force was touching down on his deck — right in front of his bewildered eyes. All that mattered now was to destroy this group of enemy paratroopers before they wrecked MIDNIGHT beyond repair.

Heidari whirled round on his second-in-command. Like him, the younger officer stood rigid at his station, gaping up at the descending parachutes with utter amazement. “Dabir!” he snapped. “Sound general quarters! Order our Quds Force commandos to attack immediately! I want that deck cleared!”

A swift counterattack to hit the enemy airborne troops while they were still struggling out of their parachutes was the only sound tactical move. Allowing them time to get their bearings and seize the initiative would be disastrous.

“But the rocket!” Dabir protested. “Stray bullets from a gun battle could set it off!”

“Fuck the rocket!” Heidari growled. Then he forced himself to think clearly. “Belay that. I still want our commandos to attack. But they are to engage the enemy only at close range! And using precise, aimed fire. Make that clear to them!”

“Yes, sir!” the younger officer nodded rapidly. He hit a button at his station. Klaxons blared out across the whole ship, deafeningly loud. Then he grabbed an intercom phone and started yelling into it, relaying the captain’s orders to the senior warrant officer in charge of the two reinforced squads of Quds Force soldiers aboard. He stopped in midsentence and looked back at Heidari. “What about the guards posted outside Launch Control?”

“Send them all!” Heidari snarled. This was no time to plan a cautious, defensive fight. Allowing the enemy free reign over the Gulf Venture’s deck was tantamount to accepting ignominious death and defeat. For all he knew, they had orders to plant explosives to destroy the Zuljanah rocket and his ship together. This far from land, such a move would probably be suicidal, but not all infidels were cowards afraid to sacrifice their own lives when needed. “In fact, pass the word to the antiaircraft gun and missile crews. I want them out on deck in combat, too!”

For a moment, Dabir only stared at him. “But, Captain,” he protested. “Our sailors don’t carry personal weapons! They’ll be cut to pieces by trained enemy troops.”

“The crews can fight with fire axes and other tools,” Heidari said grimly. “Or using their bare hands, if necessary!” He saw the younger man’s horrified expression. “Don’t you understand, Touraj?” he said through gritted teeth. “Lives mean nothing now. Not theirs. Not yours. Not mine.” Shaken, Dabir nodded hurriedly and bent back to the phone to pass on his orders.

Heidari swung around toward one of his petty officers, a reliable veteran of years of service aboard the Revolutionary Guard’s fast-attack combatants. “You!” he said curtly.

“Sir?” the middle-aged sailor answered, stiffening to attention.

The captain fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and tossed them over. “Get down to the storage locker where we confined those Russians and let them out. Tell that idiot Skoblin to throw his men into this battle before we lose everything!” The petty officer nodded once and hurried off, rushing toward the nearest ladder.

Thinking furiously, Heidari turned back to the windows. Outside, on the deck, the first enemy paratrooper had just landed. He swallowed hard, seeing the digital clock over the plot table still counting down. Somehow, he and his men had to either drive this hostile force into the sea… or hold the launch control center until Majidi and his technicians were finally ready to send their missile soaring aloft toward the United States.