Sniper Elite: One-Way Trip

CHAPTER 13

It was dark by the time Gil landed in Kandahar, and Crosswhite’s friend Joe met him at the foot of the ramp of the C-130, not far from the 727 that sat waiting in the dark for Gil to load with his gear. Joe was a civilian contractor with Army Intelligence, over six feet tall with sandy blond hair and a hatchet face. He appeared edgy, looking all around and back over his shoulder, as though he was worried someone might be watching him from the shadows among the other military aircraft.

“You’re Joe?” Gil said easily, trying to put the younger man at ease.

“Yeah, look,” said Joe. “You never heard of me, okay?”

Gil smiled. “I’m not even here. How’s that sound?”

Joe smiled back and pulled from his pocket what appeared to be nothing more than a common iPhone. “Okay, this is the smart phone prototype we’ve been working on. We’re field-testing them with the Deltas right now, so there’s only a dozen of them in existence. As far as anyone knows, this unit is malfunctioning and out of service until you bring it back — in one piece.”

Gil chuckled. “Roger that.”

Joe stood beside him so he could show him the display, working the apps with his thumb. “This damn thing is smarter than God, dude. Once we get the bugs worked out of it, all you special ops guys will be using them. It works just like all the others you use, but this fucker will do it all, dude — GPS, biometrics, encrypted text messaging, mortar ballistics — you name it. No more kit bags with PDAs for every different fucking device. See what I mean?”

Gil nodded enthusiastically, accepting the phone and running deftly through the different apps. Except for a few variations and all the extra options, it worked exactly like the other PDAs he had carried, only this unit seemed a bit more user friendly, and the GPS even featured an interface with the military version of Google Earth. Within fifty seconds he had triangulated his exact position on the tarmac to within three feet, and the screen was overlaid with a recent satellite image of where he was standing, allowing him to zoom in and out.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, glancing at the taller man.

Joe’s face split into a wide grin. “Pretty fucking badass, right?”

“And this covers, say… Iran, as well?”

Joe’s eyebrows soared. “Assuming anyone was crazy enough to cross over the border? Yeah, they’d be good to go. And, dude, this ain’t shit,” he continued enthusiastically. “Within the year, you’ll be able to use this fucker to tap into a live feed of the surrounding terrain — provided there’s a satellite or a drone overhead — and zoom right in on your fucking enemy without having to expose yourself. No more fucking around with those little toy drones you guys are tossing into the air. This is the fucking future of combat tech, dude.”

“Suppose it falls into enemy hands?” Gil needed to know. “Can it be traced back to us?”

Joe shook his head. “Dude, the parts are all made in China.”

“Okay, suppose they try hacking into it?”

“No sweat. There’s a couple different countermeasures. We can fry it from the command center right here in Kandahar — or you can set it up to do that automatically.” Joe took a small black, shock-dampening nylon case from the canvas musette bag over his shoulder. “This is the case for it — it attaches to your molly gear. There’s a chip inside it — like in a car key. You can set the phone to check in with the case however often you want it to — from up to a distance of a hundred feet. So let’s say you set it to check in every three minutes, and then the phone falls out of the case while you’re on the run. In three minutes, the phone will try to check in with the chip inside the case to be sure it’s still with you. If it doesn’t get the signal it’s looking for, it checks again in three more minutes. If it still doesn’t get the signal, it waits another three minutes, then fries itself. The second countermeasure is simple: after the enemy enters the wrong access code three times—”

“It fries itself.”

“You got it,” Joe said. “The access code for this unit is three-two-one-star. You don’t want a complicated code in combat. After five minutes of nonuse, you have to reenter the code. Easy peasy.”

“Can I fry it myself if I need to?”

Joe looked at him. “Dude, I just told you. Enter the wrong access code three times.”

Gill chuckled. “Okay, dude. I got it… and you’ll be here in the command center until when?”

Joe shrugged. “Until Crosswhite calls and tells me your mission is complete. I’m your overwatch, dude—unofficially.”

Gil stuck the smart phone inside the case and zipped it closed. “What happened in Dallas?”

Joe shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Crosswhite kept me out of jail. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“Can you track my location with this thing?”

Joe shook his head. “That app’s still fucked up. It’s one of the software integration problems.”

Gil offered his hand. “Do me a solid and keep awake tonight, will ya?”

“Roger that.” Joe took his hand. “Crosswhite said to remind you to tuck and roll — whatever the fuck that means.”

“Wilco,” Gil said.

Gil boarded the 727 with all of his gear a short time later and sat down in the cramped rear compartment to wait for Melisa. Normally, the 727 did not have a rear compartment, but the CIA had customized the cabin to accommodate the parameters of the mission. The fabrication work was first rate and did not appear jerry-rigged in the slightest. In fact, Gil would never have guessed it wasn’t an original feature to the aircraft.

Melisa came up the stairs a few minutes later dressed in the two-tone blue uniform of a Turkish Air flight attendant. She hit the button to raise the hydraulic stairs, and then sat down in the jump seat directly across from him, appearing slightly tense.

“You don’t look at all nervous,” she remarked.

Gil smiled. “Fear accompanies only the possibility of death. Calm ushers its certainty.”

She couldn’t help the tiny grin that came to her face. “In other words, you’re very good at hiding it.”

He laughed. “I’m jumping out the ass-end of a jet… in the dark… over Iran. Of course I’m hiding it.”

She nodded, returning to business. “In five minutes, we will taxi to the concourse to take on passengers. I will help the other attendant to get everyone settled and then rejoin you back here.”

“Is the other attendant with MIT as well?”

“The entire crew is MIT.”

Gil had suspected as much, but during the rush to prep, that detail never came out. He had worked with foreign intelligence agencies before, but never with MIT. He had heard different reports about them, some good, some not so good.

“Who’s vetting the passenger list?”

“We are,” she said. “Is that okay? Mr. Lerher didn’t have the resources in place.”

“It’s probably better that way,” he said, not necessarily believing it, but what the hell, it hardly mattered now.

“Anyone suspicious,” she went on, “or anyone matching a name on our list will be… delayed and forced to take the next flight.”

The plane began to move a short time later, taxiing out onto the tarmac and over to the passenger terminal. The rear staircase would not be used to board any of the passengers.

Melisa got up from her seat. “I will go forward now to assist Kamile with the boarding of passengers.”

“Okay.” A quick glance into the passenger compartment and Gil could see that Kamile was a much more petite MIT agent than her counterpart. Then he spotted the bulge of what he suspected was a pistol in the rear waistband beneath Melisa’s tight-fitting uniform. He doubted if any of the passengers would notice. Most of them would be too preoccupied with finding a seat and getting into the air.

Ten minutes after taking on passengers, they were airborne, bound for Iranian airspace.

“Well, I guess there’s no turning back now,” he said as Melisa retook her seat.

“No,” she said. “This will be my first time in Iran.”

“Worried?”

She smiled. “Fear accompanies only the possibility of death.”

The 727 was swiftly approaching Gil’s high-altitude release point (HARP) some thirty miles north of his DZ. The plane couldn’t deviate any farther south for fear of tipping off the Iranians to Turkish involvement, should they ever come to suspect the assassination of Al-Nazari to be the work of American forces, rather than the result of civil unrest.

Gil was rigged up and nearly ready to jump. He had the SVD slung barrel-down on his left side with the stock jutting up behind his left shoulder. The rest of his gear was stowed in a kit bag hanging in front of him, and the 106ci portable oxygen system was attached to his right side. Both his main and reserve parachutes were RAPS (Ram Air Parachute System), which would allow him to travel up to forty miles under canopy during his high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump.

All that remained for him to do was don his Pro-tec helmet and oxygen mask.

The phone on the wall buzzed, and Melisa answered it, speaking briefly with the pilot and checking her watch. She hung up and looked at Gil. “We go on oxygen in two minutes. We lower the stairs in three.”

“Roger that.” Gil checked his own watch, then pulled on his helmet and buckled the oxygen mask into place. Two minutes later he and Melisa were both on oxygen, and the cabin pressure was beginning to drop. Kamile was in the cockpit with the pilots, all of them on oxygen as well. As luck would have it, most of the passengers were already asleep, and those who remained awake were unaware of a problem until moments before they were blacking out.

Melisa lowered the stairs, and the outside air rushed into the cabin in a great gust, forcing them to steady themselves against the bulkhead until the pressure equalized a few seconds later. Gil gave her a thumbs-up. He walked down the staircase and stepped off the bottom, tucking himself into as tight a ball as he could manage. The instant the turbulence struck him, he was reminded of the raging surf at Waikiki, only this was about ten times as bad. He was spun so furiously about that he felt like a rag doll. The oxygen mask was nearly ripped from his face, and for a moment it felt as though even his boots might be ripped off.

Then it was over, almost as quickly as it started. He was in free fall.

He waited for the automatic rip cord release to activate at thirty thousand feet. When it did, he felt the familiar tug at the harness, but something was wrong. He looked up to check his canopy. There was no moon, but he was still above the cloud layer, and the stars provided enough of a backlight for him to see that he was in deep trouble. The severe turbulence must have damaged either the RAPS or the automatic release system, because his reserve had deployed along with the main chute, and neither one could properly deploy. He was falling dangerously fast.

Finding his cutaway knife, he quickly began cutting away the cords of the main chute. The reserve was of the same ram air configuration and would still allow him to travel under canopy to the DZ, but only if he could cut away the main fast enough to leave him with sufficient air time. He cut the last cord, and the main slipped away into the night, allowing the reserve to deploy fully. Now he could dig out the Chinese GPS system and make corrections to his direction of travel. The fact that the unfamiliar unit was having trouble holding a satellite signal did not exactly surprise him. He put it away and dug out the Delta prototype, careful to keep the lanyard looped tightly around his wrist. He switched it on, and the satellite signal was instantly acquired. Within ninety seconds, he knew exactly where he was.

Taking hold of the steering toggles hanging at his waist, he corrected his course. Doing the math in his head, he was pretty sure that he could get himself to the intended DZ. According to the GPS system, he was traveling at nearly twenty miles an hour. If that kept up, he would be arriving in roughly an hour and forty minutes. For now, there was nothing to do but settle in for the ride. He checked his watch. It was 00:20 hours. There was plenty of time. He wouldn’t be engaging his target until 11:30 hours the next day.