Deep Fire Rising

DIEGO GARCIA, INDIAN OCEAN

A thousand miles south of the Indian subcontinent, the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were like a handful of emeralds tossed on the blue waves. Dense tropical jungle, sugar sand beaches and azure reefs gave the islands their beauty. The extraction of copra oil from coconuts once gave them a thriving economy. All that changed in the 1970s when the British established a military base on one of the islands, a seventeen-square-mile atoll called Diego Garcia. At the time, it was a Cold War outpost for monitoring Soviet ships plying the Indian Ocean.

Over the next twenty years the island was gradually expanded. At the same time, it was handed over to the United States. Today, only a handful of the three thousand military and civilian support staff on the atoll are British citizens.

Diego Garcia gained a measure of fame as a staging area during Operation Desert Storm for B-52 bombers pounding Iraqi positions in Kuwait. Upgrades to the facility allowed it to base B-1s and B-2s during the Afghanistan campaign and again in 2003 for the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Strapped in the observer’s seat behind the pilot of the C-17 Globemaster cargo jet, Mercer had a clear view as the giant aircraft descended from out of the clouds after twenty hours of flight. The atoll was shaped like a squashed circle, an open ring of coral and sand that bulged on one side. It was there that an air base had been hacked from the jungle. As the plane dropped farther, he could see the long runway paralleling the beach and acres upon acres of parking ramps. He counted two dozen aircraft before giving up. Behind the landing strip was a village of prefabricated buildings constructed for those posted at this isolated location. Farther on was Camp Justice, a facility built in the wake of the September 11 attacks that housed military personnel involved in the global war on terror. Beyond the island nothing but ocean stretched to the horizon.

“We call it the dirt aircraft carrier,” the pilot called over the intercom, her voice filled with a Texas drawl. “Folks based here call it Gilligan’s Isle with guns.”

“Ever been here before?” Mercer asked Sykes, seated next to him in the second observer’s seat.

“Couple of times. Damn! That was a secret. Remind me I have to kill you later.”

The pilot eased back on the quad throttle controls and activated the thrust vectoring system that allowed the two-hundred-eighty-ton aircraft to land in less than three thousand feet no matter how large the load she carried. The air was thick and humid and the four engines labored.

Thundering over the runway threshold, the Globemaster floated on ground effects for a few hundred feet before settling on its multiple landing trucks. Without concern for passenger safety beyond getting them to their destination alive, the air force major slammed home the thrust reversers and Mercer pitched against his harness.

Almost immediately the plane slowed to taxi speed and swung off the 11,800-foot runway.

Now that they were on the ground, Mercer saw that the planes he’d noticed during their descent were B-52s, the venerable strategic bomber whose crews were generally younger than the aircraft they flew. At the end of the parking ramp were four futuristic buildings that looked like flattened domes. These round structures measured two hundred fifty feet wide and were almost six stories tall. The C-17 taxied to a spot in front of the last building and the pilot cut the engines. After being assailed by the whine of the turbojets for so long, the silence was disconcerting.

Mercer peered through the windscreen. The building was a hangar with open clamshell doors. Tropical light flooded the interior and yet the aircraft in the center of the cavernous space seemed to absorb it all. Although he’d seen the same plane the day before at Area 51, seeing it deployed and knowing what they would be attempting soon sent the first pangs of fear into his gut. Mercer’s fists clenched and he had to consciously work to get them to relax. Sykes noticed but said nothing.

Officially designated Spirit, the bat-winged B-2 had been dubbed the stealth bomber by the media. The aircraft in the hangar was part of the 509th Bomb Wing out of Whiteman AFB, Missouri. She was number 82-1065, a last-generation block 30 with every conceivable upgrade the builders at Northrop and the air force could devise. With an unlimited range due to her in-flight refueling capability, the stealth was the ultimate weapon of the U.S. doctrine of force projection. It could carry a variety of payloads in her rotary launchers, everything from thirty-six cluster bombs with their hundreds of individual bomblets to eight five-thousand-pound GBU-37 “bunker busters” to sixteen B83 multimegaton thermonuclear bombs capable of leveling entire cities.

For the past several months this particular B-2 had been stationed at Area 51, the linchpin to the development of the MMU-22 — what Sykes’s troops affectionately called the monkey bomb.

The concept for this secret weapon came from the military’s perceived need to covertly insert a commando team inside an area protected by heavy air defenses. Up until the development of the MMU-22 the only options were for troops to land beyond the radar umbrella and slog in on foot or risk a HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jump off the back ramp of a C-130. However, the Hercules cargo plane was as stealthy as a zeppelin and not much faster. Something better was needed, a covert way to get Special Operations soldiers to where they needed to be.

In the late 1990s, a British defense contractor was working on the development of pods that could be mounted under the wings of the Harrier jump jet. These man-sized capsules were designed for the rapid evacuation of wounded soldiers from deep behind enemy lines. Someone at the Pentagon expanded on the idea and wondered if it was possible to infiltrate troops the same way, but using a stealth platform such as the B-2 or F-117 Nighthawk fighter/bomber. From that abstraction grew the MMU-22.

The pods were slightly larger than telephone booths, doped in radar-absorbing composite material and formed in angular shapes to deflect incoming radar. Using the same global positioning satellite system that gave American bombs such precision, an onboard computer steered the MMU-22 as it fell. At a predetermined height, usually the minimum safe distance above the ground, the parachute would be deployed. Booker Sykes claimed accuracy of within twenty feet even in a crosswind of up to thirty knots.

Inside the pod, a Special Forces soldier was provided with enough room to stretch out, storage for combat harnesses, packs, equipment and the weapons necessary for their mission. While confining, the monkey bombs were lined with high-tech memory foam that made them relatively comfortable, provided the person inside didn’t suffer from claustrophobia. As Sykes had mentioned, there was a relief tube for a soldier to empty his bladder as well as a closed-circuit television attached to a camera at the bottom of the pod to give a view of the landing site during the descent.

Sykes loosened his safety straps and leaned over to Mercer. “Little more intimidating now that we’re here, huh?”

The B-2 resembled a black manta ray, its partially buried engine nacelles being the gills to feed the four General Electric F-118 turbofans, the bulbous cockpit the creature’s eyes. Even resting at its hard stand, the aircraft radiated menace. “I was thinking the same thing.”

Ten minutes later they were sweating on the tarmac. A steady breeze carried the iodine taste of the sea but provided no relief from the humidity. The ramp at the back of the C-17 was down and the aircraft’s loadmaster was coordinating a fleet of forklifts to remove the MMUs from the plane’s hold. Despite the tight security at Area 51 and here at Diego Garcia, the pods were crated in containers labeled MACHINE PARTS and wouldn’t be unpacked until they were in the hangar and the doors closed. There were eight MMUs in total, seven for Sykes and his Delta Force team and one for Mercer.

The six men, hand selected by Sykes, were perhaps the best-trained soldiers the United States had ever produced. They all came from the army and had excelled from their first days of basic training and in their extensive training since. Specialists in all forms of combat, they’d also learned to operate with initiative and flexibility. They were tighter knit than brothers, hard men who had trained through the human instinct of self-preservation to put their lives in the hands of the others. In Kosovo and Afghanistan and Iraq and a dozen other hot spots around the globe their bonds had been tempered by combat.

Because the occupant of the monkey bomb was virtually powerless once the weapon was loaded into the B-2, Mercer’s two days of orientation in Nevada was more for the Delta operators to assess him for themselves. New members seconded to the team, soldiers who’d already proved they belonged through years in the military, still needed months of initiation and indoctrination before they were accepted.

It wasn’t enough for the men that Sykes had said Mercer was all right. He had to prove it himself. In the thirty hours he’d spent with just the men, not Sykes, he was forced on two five-mile runs, endured numerous timed sprints through an impromptu obstacle course, expended about a thousand rounds of ammunition on a firing range and went on three static line parachute jumps (the jump master had explained why he wanted to see three jumps by telling Mercer anyone can fall from an airplane once, only a few will try it a second time and only damned fools go back for thirds and those were the kind he wanted).

In the end, the team’s senior noncom, Angel Lopez, a streetwise Honduran immigrant who went by the nickname Grumpy, had pronounced Mercer just marginally more fit than a week-old corpse. In keeping with the sequence of names the men chose for each other — Sykes being Doc, the son of a preacher who struck out consistently with women getting called Bashful, the team’s jokester going by Dopey, and so on — Mercer was given the ignominious name of Snow White.

Mercer and Sykes strolled past the hangar. In the background they could hear Grumpy snarling at the men. “H’okay people, we got twenty hours until we launch and twenty-four hours of work. I want a full weapons check, equipment breakdown and ammo load distribution in twenty mikes.”

At the edge of the aircraft ramp, beach sand blew across the asphalt in airy streaks. The wind had kicked up, a steady beat that flattened their clothes. Sykes hunkered down to a squatting position and took up a stick to draw random shapes in the dirt.

“What’s on your mind?” Mercer asked after a moment.

Sykes kept his eyes on his drawings as he spoke, his voice solemn. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since Dreamland. I just want you to know that Grumpy says you did okay back there. That’s a hell of a compliment coming from him.”

“So I gathered.” Mercer sensed this wasn’t what Sykes wanted to say.

“The boys are calling you Snow White.”

Mercer grinned wryly. “I’ve been called worse.”

“Yeah, I bet. Anyway, I’ve been with Delta for eight years now. I’ve lost a few men during that time. A good guy named Tom Hazen in Colombia, a heck of a sharpshooter in Pakistan, a gunny who got killed when his chute didn’t open at Bragg. A couple of others.

“These guys died doing their job. It’s part of the risk we take. But the thing is we take that risk. It isn’t given to us. Some ugly pops an ambush we’re too stupid to see, we deserve to get killed. That gunny packed his parachute wrong, he deserved not to have it open. You following me?”

Mercer knew where Booker was headed, but remained silent, knowing it needed to be said.

“Admiral Lasko tells me you’ve been in some real hairballs over the past few years and with some pretty good operators too. SEALs in Alaska, Force Recon in Africa. Some army spec dogs down in Panama last year. Don’t take this the wrong way, hell, there ain’t no right way, I guess, but I don’t want you thinking all that earned you a place here.”

“I never thought it did,” Mercer replied softly.

“I like you. I think you’ll do okay up there, but you have to understand my mission is about getting certain information back to the admiral. It’s not about protecting Miss Nguyen and it’s not about protecting you. If at some point you become a liability to that mission, or if you put one of my men at risk, don’t think I won’t drop you myself.”

“I’m taking this in the spirit it’s given. It’s not personal, I know.”

“It’s not, but this whole thing has my hackles up. We’ve never had a Snow White tagging along with the team before and that has me spooked.”

“You love them, don’t you?”

In the distance Grumpy was chewing out Sleepy, the marginally laziest man on the team. “Not them as individuals,” Sykes answered, “but the ideal of what they are. Faces come and go, but the team is still the same. Am I making any sense?”

“It’s the old saying about hating the president but loving the presidency. Only you’re talking about respect and honor, much truer feelings, ones that are harder to develop and sustain. You’ve felt this way for years now. It’s as much a part of you as the color of your skin. I’m not a member of your team, never could be, and you’re afraid that my going in with you will affect the balance somehow.”

Sykes nodded. “Something like that, I guess. I don’t mind being dropped out of a bomber in nothing more than a high-tech coffin or facing overwhelming enemy forces. I just like to know everyone who’s at my back.”

“There’s nothing I can say that’ll put you at ease so I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

They looked each other in the eye, a silent current of understanding flashing between them.

For the twelve hours the Delta team was slated for sleep, inside the hangar was a flurry of activity to prepare the B-2 and the eight MMUs. As Sykes had said, he and his men were only responsible for getting information out of Rinpoche-La. Mercer had been given the additional job of finding a way of turning that information into a practical plan. In an office off the barracks where the team snored away, he sat hunched over a laptop staring at the latest geologic reports coming out of La Palma.

The news wasn’t good. The numerous fumaroles, gas-emitting vents that dotted the volcano, were pumping out deadly aerosols with the force of jet engines. The discharge rate of noxious elements such as carbon dioxide and sulfur was rising exponentially. Rain as caustic as sulfuric acid was falling on parts of the island.

While the eastern side of the mountain was showing signs of displacement, the western, and more dangerous, flank hadn’t begun to slip. Yet each passing minute raised the temperature of the water trapped inside the volcano. It was only a matter of time before the increased pressure cracked the rock and the half-trillion-ton slab went crashing into the sea.

The president had hoped to keep the news of the potential eruption to a minimum, and it appeared for the time being his wishes were coming true. There weren’t any dramatic pictures for the media to focus on and the few so-called experts being interviewed downplayed the potential of a massive eruption because La Palma’s last jolt in 1971 hadn’t affected the fault. Instead, the press was focused on a Hollywood corruption scandal that was ruining the careers of several top-ranked actors. Mercer blessed the American fascination with fame and the misguided belief that the oceans still afforded isolation from the rest of the world.

Ever since he’d been asked to find a way to minimize the effects of a La Palma eruption, Mercer had spent countless hours examining the problem. He came at it from every direction, dissecting and discarding each scenario that occurred to him. Feasibility and practicality didn’t factor in his thinking. All he wanted were options. And as he’d known since the president first asked him to try to deflect a volcanic blast, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done except hope the other scientists working on the project were more inspired than he was.

Dawn found him asleep on the cradle of his arms.

The morning was spent in a locked room, where Sykes went over operational details. From the satellite photographs, a detailed model of the monastery and its environs had been constructed. The model maker had gone so far as to include a flock of sheep from a children’s toy farm.

The plan was simplicity itself. The back of the monastery hung precariously over a hundred-foot-tall wall of dressed stone that divided the valley into an upper and lower section. The wall, as substantial as that protecting any castle, spanned the width of the valley, and had doubtlessly deterred generations of soldiers from attempting an assault from the rear. The surety of the wall’s impenetrability made it less likely to be guarded and thus the logical choice for Sykes’s team. Under the cover of a moonless night, the MMUs would be directed to land in the lower valley at the base of the wall. There weren’t any discernible trails from the meadow to the upper valley so Bashful and Happy would free-climb the wall, anchoring ropes for the rest of the team as they ascended. From there it would be up to improvisation and luck to infiltrate the building and find Tisa. As a precaution, each man carried his own satellite phone to broadcast the eruption date once they’d gotten it from her.

Two hours before the afternoon takeoff, the team members began to don their gear. Maybe it was because Harry’s jokes about Prince Charming storming a castle had remained fresh in his mind, but to Mercer it seemed the process was like knights suiting up in their armor. Meticulous care was given to every detail. The weapons had all been cleaned and test fired the day before. Ammunition magazines were checked for the stiffness of their springs. Batteries for their comm gear and the sat phones were fully charged. If there was even minor wear on any piece of equipment it was discarded for another.

As the men were doing this, technicians swarmed the bomber and monkey bombs doing their last-minute checks. The two pilots performed their walk-around and were ready to board through the bottom hatch.

A blacked-out van took the commandos from their barracks to the hangar. Once inside with the door closed, the men piled out of the vehicle and assembled under the enormous flying wing. The large bomb bay doors were open. Although the air force had given this plane the name Spirit of Wyoming, the crew had added a nickname. Painted on one of the barnlike bomb doors was a fluffy cloud. Extending from it was a downward-pointing hand with its index finger extended. The drawing was vague as it emerged from the cloud but grew more detailed closer to the fingertip, as though its presence was becoming more real. The bomber’s name was written underneath. Invisible Touch.

As was tradition during the preflight for this flight crew, a portable cassette deck pounded out the Phil Collins song by the same name.

Mercer eyed the MMUs. Sykes was right. They did look like coffins, especially with their lids open. The foam lining was covered in a microfiber that had the sheen of casket satin. Great.

The team stowed their gear in compartments built into the bombs, making sure straps were cinched tight and nothing rattled. Once they were set, the pilots shook hands with each commando and climbed into the B-2’s belly.

At the side of one of the monkey bombs, Sykes called his group for one last pep talk. “For the next six hours we’re nothing more than passengers who” — he glanced into the open capsule — “have about the same amount of room as folks who get stuck in coach.”

There were a few nervous chuckles.

“We’ve been working with this system for a couple of months now. We’ve all taken a tethered drop from the twenty-foot tower and know how to handle a landing. The only thing we have to worry about is the chute opening. And that’s something we face every time we go so that means there’s no difference in this op from any other we’ve ever done. We don’t have to sweat it. Once we’re on the ground we know what to do.”

“Rules of engagement?” Bashful asked.

“Take down anyone with a gun or anyone threatening you. The only person we care about is Tisa Nguyen. Snow White’s given us a pretty good idea what she looks like, but don’t take chances. Any woman under the age of say, forty, is off limits.”

Bashful raised his hand. “Even if they’re coming after us, Doc?”

“Ain’t no chica coming after you, man,” Grumpy retorted and the men laughed.

“Anything to add, Snow?”

Mercer looked around at the confident faces. “Just that these guys blew a hole in a ferryboat in Greece two weeks ago to stop Tisa from talking to me. They killed almost fifty people. Take Doc Sykes’s advice. They won’t give quarter so don’t offer it. And if one of you tags a big bastard who dyes his hair like Elvis, you earned yourself two weeks on the Caribbean island of your choice with the woman of your choice.”

“Hoo-yah!”

“Except for Bashful,” Mercer added. “You monkeys will have to get him the girl.”

With that the meeting was over. It was time.

Two air force technicians helped Mercer into his MMU. Harnesses went around his legs and waist and over his shoulders. He was asked to unbutton the fly of his black fatigues and was given an appropriately sized sleeve for the relief tube. From down the length of the hangar he heard Dopey complaining that even their biggest one was too tight.

“You don’t put it over your mouth,” Sneezy joked back.

Mercer’s helmet was jacked into a communications console and the closed-circuit television was tested. The camera was placed on the bottom of the pod and on the four-inch flat screen he saw workers bent over the other capsules like something out of a sci-fi movie. He was shown the climate controls and ventilators and the mouthpiece for a specially concocted fruit beverage full of electrolytes and minerals. Two hours from the launch, he would draw from another tube. This brew contained stimulants and natural painkillers plus something to counter the effects of altitude sickness. Sykes warned Mercer that after drinking the potion it would be best if he didn’t submit to a drug test for a month or two.

“How do you feel, sir,” the tech asked, his hand on the lid ready to close Mercer in.

“Like I’m about to be interred.”

“Then you’re good to go.”

The lid came down and a vacuum system engaged to seal the MMU. Mercer cracked his jaw to adjust to the slight change in air pressure. The television screen was four inches over his face. The lighting inside the MMU was subtle and warm, a concession to the men who had to endure them for long flights.

A minute later Mercer’s pod rattled as the special cargo lift that had come with the team on the C-17 hoisted the MMU from its cradle and trundled over to the B-2. Clamps on the bomber’s rotary launcher clasped the capsule and drew it up into the bomb bay. No sooner had Mercer gotten comfortable again than another MMU was attached and the launcher spun. It was like being a bullet as it was loaded into a revolver. The launcher was designed to carry eight nuclear bombs and had been modified to carry four MMUs. The first four went into Mercer’s side of the aircraft, and the remaining were fed into the stealth bomber’s second bay.

External power cables were attached, as were the supplemental communications lines so the men could converse during the flight. After making each man call out his status, Sykes notified the pilots on the flight deck that the men were ready.

“Status board in the green, Doc. Taxi truck’s coming now. ATC gives us priority and there isn’t a recon satellite pass for another seventeen minutes. We’ll be cruising at a classified speed and at a classified altitude. Our flight time to target is also classified. So lay back and relax. We here at Cloak and Dagger Airways wish you a pleasant journey.”

The jagged winged aircraft was drawn from its revetment and pulled to a parking slot adjacent to the main runway. A ground crewman unhitched the tow tractor, snapped the pilot a crisp salute and motored away.

Deep in the B-2’s hull the first engine spun to life, followed seconds later by the other three. Although the powerful turbofans straddled the bomb bay, the noise level inside the soundproofed MMU was only slightly louder than what passengers experienced on an airliner.

The pilot performed one final test of the aircraft’s complicated control surfaces. Satisfied, he ran up the engines and the menacing plane began to roll under its own power.

In front of the aircraft, the end of the runway vanished in the wavering curtains of a heat mirage. Behind the plane, hot exhaust created the same effect so the bomber looked like a wraith enveloped in a chimera. Even on the ground the B-2 was otherworldly, like no aircraft ever built.

The engines’ roar turned into a scream as the Spirit picked up speed. Using less than a third of the runway, the B-2’s nose lifted and she took to the sky. The landing gear snapped closed as the bomber began climbing for the safety of the upper troposphere, high above commercial traffic.

From inside the bomb bay, the ascent felt smooth. The men made a few bad jokes and bantered for a while, but soon grew quiet as they settled in for the six hours of being locked in the MMUs with their thoughts and fears. After a while Mercer was able to forget where he was and what they were about to attempt. His mind drifted through countless random thoughts, and while he knew he should be thinking about the impending eruption on La Palma, he found himself focusing on Tisa.

Just one day and night with her had created a deeper impression on him than any woman he’d ever been with. He sought justifications and rationales for his thoughts and admitted that this wasn’t something he had conscious control over. He’d strayed from the path of what was logical and crossed into an emotional realm he seldom approached. The answer to the fundamental question of if he loved her wasn’t clear yet, but he did face the truth that he wanted to.

Mercer had earned the reputation as one of the best mining engineers and prospecting geologists in the world by making deliberate calculations and expertly assessing risk versus reward. Like so many other driven men he’d used those same analytical skills on his personal life as well. The result was a string of short but intense relationships that he ultimately cut short. The reasons were varied but underlying all the breakups was his belief that the affair would ultimately fail anyway and it was better for the women to have it end quickly. For the first time he got a sense that it was his own fear of getting hurt that made him end those other relationships. He wasn’t doing it to protect the women. He was doing it to protect himself. By breaking up quickly, he shielded himself from the risk of possible rejection and the associated doubts that came with it.

“Goddamned strange place for an epiphany,” he muttered as the plane streaked across the Indian Ocean.

And also for the first time, he believed in risking that kind of pain for the opportunity to be with Tisa. He had always been comfortable gambling with his life. That was part of any miner’s job. Now he was growing comfortable with risking his lifestyle too. He drifted to sleep with that thought foremost in his mind.

Hours later, the internal intercom squawked to life. “Gentlemen, this is the flight deck. We’re about an hour from the border with Tibet. Not that we expected they would, but Indian civilian and military radars have failed to pick us up. However we’re approaching the Chinese air defense net. Once we get closer to the border we’ll be dropping to the deck and may be forced to find a route where their radar coverage is thinnest. There’s nothing to worry about, but you guys may get tossed around down there.” He clicked off, returned a second later, and quipped, “Oh, and depending on conditions we might have to dodge a mountain or two.”

The strategic bomber’s flight path had kept it over the ocean for as long as possible, allowing her to top her tanks with an aerial refueling from a KC-10 tanker over the Arabian Sea. The plane made landfall north of Bombay and headed in a northwesterly diagonal across India toward Nepal. Cruising at forty-five thousand feet, too high for anyone on the ground to see or hear, the B-2 still skirted all the major population centers as extra insurance.

Now that they were nearing the Himalayan foothills it was time to drop closer to the ground and employ the aircraft’s sophisticated terrain following/terrain avoidance (TA/FA) system. One of the one hundred sixty-two onboard computers would take control of the plane, mapping out and following a route through the mountains while at the same time keeping clear of Chinese radar installations. Even though the stealth’s shape and skin gave it the radar cross section of a bird, the classified radar-detection system made certain that even that small of a picture wouldn’t appear on an enemy’s scopes.

The final piece of stealth gear to be employed was perhaps the most classified on the aircraft. Because of its unusual shape and mission needs, the B-2 flew below the speed of sound. Had it been able to travel faster than the thunder of its own engines, like the B-1b Lancer, acoustical detection wouldn’t have been a concern. Even with the engines shielded within the hull to deaden some sound, the Spirit flew within an envelope of noise generated by its four turbofans and could be heard coming miles off at low level. To counter this, the design team created an antinoise generator, a device that matched the frequency of the sound waves and produced waves of its own at the exact opposite amplitude. While consuming an enormous amount of fuel, the top secret apparatus effectively canceled out the jet’s bellowing roar. With the device in operation and at five hundred knots, the B-2 sounded barely louder than a well-tuned Harley-Davidson.

The Himalayan massif quickly came into range. The barometric altimeter showed fifteen thousand feet, but the plane was only a thousand above the ground. Trained for this kind of flying, the pilots were relaxed in their seats as the sophisticated controls moved of their own accord. The Spirit followed the path mapped by its GPS and radar, rocketing through steep valleys, slewing around ramparts that towered ten thousand feet above the bat-winged plane. It was a ride on the ultimate roller coaster, one in which the car determined where to put the tracks it was to follow.

The plane ate the distance across Nepal in twenty minutes and was a dozen miles from the Chinese border when the computer detected the first antiaircraft radar. In minutes a CRT screen in the cockpit lit up with dozens of radar contacts. The coverage appeared solid, a veritable minefield stretching the length of the frontier and projecting fifty miles into the country. Added to this was the presence of microwave towers built intentionally to detect a stealth bomber penetration. The towers emitted an invisible barrier of energy that the plane would have to fly through.

The idea behind the barrage of microwaves wasn’t to find the plane directly but rather to detect the hole it created when it cut across the net, much the same as sonar operators focus on quiet spots in the otherwise noisy seas to find modern noiseless submarines. Detractors of the B-2 had called this low-tech solution reason enough to scrap the $2 billion planes.

The veteran pilot watched the terrain map unfolding on the screen in front of him, trying to guess their route before the computer found it. There were several radars in the H and E bands to their west and a powerful microwave tower directly ahead. The tower appeared to be on a mountaintop. The computer banked the bomber so it steered close to the tower but a thousand feet below it in a valley only five hundred feet wider than the plane’s 172-foot wingspan. The pilot would have made the same maneuvers, although his solution came seconds after the computer’s.

Jagged crags of granite seemed to reach for the plane as it plunged into the steep valley seconds before breaking the microwave beam. She hugged the canyon floor, flying low enough to blow snow off the ground. Once the threat board showed clear, the heavy bomber shot out of the gorge, passing directly over a sleepy little village.

“There’ll be a story or two down there come morning.”

“If they knew comic books they could tell the local commissar that they were buzzed by Batman.”

“They were.”

With their clear view out the cockpit and ample time to prepare, the violent maneuvers seemed routine for the flight team. In the bomb bay, it was quite different.

Mercer was certain his shoulders would be black and blue. The sudden jukes and jinks slammed him around inside the MMU, straining his safety harnesses with each furious bounce. And if it weren’t for an iron stomach, he would long ago have lost his lunch.

The wild ride went on for twenty minutes, with changes of direction, attitude and speed coming with dizzying regularity. The fact that the men were horizontal in the pods and couldn’t gain equilibrium made it all that much worse.

“This is the flight deck,” the pilot called after a moment of relatively level flight. “We just penetrated the heaviest concentration of SAM sites and radar installations anywhere on earth and as far as the Chinese know this bird’s sitting in a hangar in Missouri. We’ll be over the drop zone in ten minutes. This ship’s at her most vulnerable when the bomb bay doors open. To minimize the risk the rotary launcher’s gonna spit you out like watermelon seeds. If you think the past few minutes were rough, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

For Mercer the waiting had become easier. He’d spent so much time worried about finding a way to save a planet full of people that it was almost a relief to only worry about saving one, Tisa. With that goal so close, his blood felt charged. The others were feeling it too. The bad jokes were beginning again.

“Five minutes to drop,” the pilot announced what seemed just seconds later.

“Okay, people,” Doc Sykes called out. “Tighten those straps, stow your relief and water tubes and button those flies. Once we’re on the ground, I want Dopey to rig the MMUs’ demolition charges with a four-hour delay. Sneezy’s his cover. The rest gather on me ASAP and we’ll make the assault on the wall. The two of you can catch up when you’re done. By then, Happy and Bashful will have finished their ascent and we’ll be ready for the climb. Turn on your external cameras and everyone give me a status report.”

By the time the Delta operators and Mercer told Doc they were ready, the pilot informed them the drop was in one minute.

Mercer’s sense of well-being evaporated. Facing a thirty-thousand-foot plunge in what amounted to a futuristic life-sized tin can, he knew that once the rotary launcher released the MMU his fate was out of his hands until the pod touched down. Sykes had said the first forty or so drops hadn’t been survivable. He’d later confided that a few of those that were survivable would have resulted in broken limbs, internal injuries, or worse. Mercer tried to recall his frame of mind when he’d blackmailed his way onto this mission and cursed the person he’d been then.

“Okay, boys, doors open in five, four, three, two, one.”

The hydraulic whine was drowned instantly by the screaming torrent of air that whipped into the large bomb bay. Mercer had only a second to sense the buffeting when the rotary launcher engaged. He couldn’t feel the other MMUs being jettisoned, but every two seconds the launcher advanced one slot and another was gone. After three quarter-rotations of the launcher it was his turn.

The mechanism spun to the lock position and the clamps holding Mercer’s MMU released.

The instant the monkey bomb was free of the Spirit it began a four-g deceleration that shoved Mercer’s internal organs toward his feet. Somewhere high above he felt his stomach calling for him to come back. Winglets deployed from the sides of the MMU to prevent the pod from tumbling as it transited into free fall. The drop was like a runaway elevator, only there seemed to be no bottom. Reaching its terminal velocity of one hundred twenty miles per hour, the stealthy MMU plummeted from the sky, unseen, unheard and completely undetectable. Clutched so tightly, one of the plastic handgrips on the side of Mercer’s body snapped off. He could barely force air into his lungs. At some point he became aware that he was screaming and probably had been since the MMU fell clear.

He remembered the television screen, but it showed nothing but blackness. He could only hope the GPS system was keeping the MMU on track, otherwise he’d have no chance of hitting the target and would likely crash into the side of a mountain.

“Come on,” he silently prayed. The chute should have deployed by now.

The designers had mistakenly not installed altitude displays for the soldiers inside the monkey bombs. He was sure he’d already passed the minimum safe distance above the ground and nothing was happening.

Jesus, the thing had malfunctioned.

What he didn’t know was that the MMU was working flawlessly, the stabilizing fins making constant adjustments to keep the weapon on target while the laser range finder knew to the inch how close it was to the ground.

At a thousand feet the onboard computer released the drogue chute to ease the shock of the main parachute deploying a moment later. As the MMU drifted downward, the range finder switched to secondary mode and began searching for the flattest place to land within a three-hundred-foot target area.

The strain of the chute billowing open came as sweet pain. Mercer took his first deep breath since the initial release and felt the adrenaline spike subside. He let go of the handgrip and heard it clatter down toward his feet. The closed-circuit screen flushed green as night-vision enhancers activated. Details on the ground were hard to make out, but even the murky glimpse was a welcome relief.

As his view resolved, Mercer could feel the MMU make adjustments to his flight path by controlling the ram-air parachute. In a moment he saw a flat plain immediately below his feet. It drifted out of view as a crosswind caught the pod, then came back as the computer made automatic corrections.

Sykes had trained him not to watch the landing to prevent himself from tensing. He closed his eyes at what he thought was the last second and had to wait almost fifteen more before shock absorbers at the bottom of the MMU touched down. As designed, the pod fell onto its back and the chute rigging was sheered away so the yards of black nylon couldn’t act as a sail and drag him across the landscape.

Mercer flipped a protective cover off the button that opened the pod and mashed it with his fist. The seal maintaining pressure in the pod hissed and the door opened slightly. A cold wind exploited the tiny opening and whipped the hatch all the way open. The first breath of the icy mountain air seared his lungs. Mercer coughed.

He unsnapped his harnesses and rose unsteadily. Around him he saw a monochromatic world of grays and the outline of steep mountain cliffs. If not for the tough grasses growing along the rocky valley floor, the scene could have doubled for a crater on the moon. The air temperature was in the low thirties, yet he would occasionally feel the warm caress of steam from a geothermal vent.

A figure loomed out of the darkness. “You okay, Snow?” It was Grumpy. He had already donned his equipment and cradled his M-4, the stripped-down assault version of the M-16. Night-vision goggles covered half his face.

“Yes, just a little shaken.”

“Don’t sweat it. That was one hell of a ride. Get into your gear, we’re moving out.” He turned away quickly.

Mercer grabbed his arm. “Hold it, did everyone make it down safely?”

Grumpy didn’t look at Mercer when he said, “Sneezy’s chute tangled. He’s dead.” The noncom shook off Mercer’s hand. “This op better be worth his life, man.”

“It’s worth all of ours,” Mercer said to Grumpy’s back as he vanished into the darkness.