Warriors

CHAPTER 67

The jump alarm bell signaled one minute to drop.

Hawke would be first out. He used the time to turn the impending scenario over in his mind: fitting all the individual jigsaw pieces of the strategic plan together as quickly as he could until they popped up as a cohesive story. Beginning, middle, and end. He couldn’t vouch for a happy ending, but he could always vouch for an end.

Of course, no war plan ever goes like it’s supposed to. But he’d gotten into this last-minute prep habit during his Royal Navy flying days and it had served him well. And just as the last puzzle piece popped into place—

The jump light flashed from crimson to green.

Hawke glanced at Stoke, gave him a big thumbs-up, and strode all the way out onto the lowered ramp.

“Mind your head, boss!” Stokely shouted over the roaring wind. Hawke instinctively looked up. There was a good twenty feet of clearance above him.

“Go!” the jumpmaster shouted.

Hawke stepped out into thin air.

The freezing slipstream body-slammed him like a wall of ice.

He sucked it up and relaxed into his long free fall, watching the earth spinning crazily up toward him, trying to memorize the island’s geographic details as they flashed by. Then, in what seemed like no more than a split second later, his flat chute deployed automatically and beautifully, an event always cause for brief but profound celebration.

He’d occasionally had a chute deploy ugly, and it was always most unpleasant.

He began a series of controlled and ever-tightening spirals to slow his speed for the rest of the way down. He was on a glide path toward the two-hundred-square-yard patch of meadow, the landing zone known forevermore as LZ Liberator. Stoke had code-named it aboard the sub.

Descending through three thousand, Hawke could now make out the purple-black silhouette of the mountainous basin where the target meadow was. The bowl of night was black, filled with cold, pinprick stars and drifting strands of cloud. Off to his left, a large white marble structure he recognized. The Te-Wu Academy for assassins. Then, to his left, he saw the huge white bunkers of the Centurion submarine complex and, finally, a large ultramodern four-story building he knew to be the newly constructed Weapons Design Center, or WDC.

Perhaps Bill Chase was in there at his drawing board right now. Burning the midnight oil in the service of a madman. CIA had told him that if Dr. Chase really was in residence on Xinbu Island, there was a very high probability that he could be found working and living in that building. The WDC, on Hawke’s map, was a quarter of a mile from the intended insertion point, the spot where they would breach the perimeter.

It was certainly possible. At the very least it was a good place to start. The ground came up fast, but Hawke tucked his chin in, bent his knees, manipulated his risers, and managed to stay on his feet.

He gathered his chute. He heard canopies fluttering high above and looked up to see a host of falling angels, the brave men who would march beside him into battle, each one of them prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice on this historic do-or-die night.

Hawke adjusted his helmet headset. “First Knight, this is Lone Eagle, copy?”

“Roger that, Lone Eagle, copy.” It was Stoke. The newly anointed “First Knight.” Stoke now informed strangers that he was the first member of his distinguished Harlem family to attend college — and the first to be knighted by the Queen.

Hawke said, “Boots on the ground, First Knight. LZ Liberator all clear.”

“LZ clear, roger that. I have you in visual contact, boss. Better duck, here comes the cavalry, over.”

He and Stoke would lead the two eight-man squads, code-named Lone Eagle and First Knight. Usually, in HR ops like this one, they would divide and conquer. Tonight was different. There was no way of anticipating the degree or concentration of resistance they would encounter.

Hawke, who trusted his instincts in these situations, had early on told Fitz and Chief Rainwater he believed they stood a better chance of survival if they stayed together as a cohesive unit. In the face of unknowable opposition, he wanted to present the enemy with a unified force, one with enormous combined firepower.

Two minutes later, Stoke was standing beside him, cutting away the remains of his chute.

“Boss, you know what they say about the best-laid plans?”

Hawke looked over at him. This wasn’t going to be good news.

“Yeah?”

“Froggy’s comms guy, Elvis Peete, he just got a radio flash from CIA Langley. Seems a Chinese army military medium-range transport, an IL-76MD, just lifted off from Ching Li air base on the mainland. She’d boarded heavy artillery and at least a hundred spec-ops paratroops, the best they got, badass storm troopers. CIA is certain the destination is Xinbu Island. Flown in specifically to protect this new leader, General Moon, and his fleet of Centurions. En route now.”

“Christ. Flying time from mainland to Xinbu?”

“Langley operations estimate the IL-76 will arrive here over target at 0400 hours. Enemy boots on the ground at 0430. Our guys up against a hundred heavily armed storm troops? Goatfuck, boss, really bad odds.”

Stoke looked at his wristwatch.

“We got less than sixty minutes before they show up.”

“Radio the sub. Get the skipper. Tell him to advance the offshore exfil up one half hour to 0415. Say I want those two SEAL delivery subs off the beach at 0400. Got it? Not a second later.”

“Copy.”

Stoke made the call, listened, and looked at Hawke. “Skipper says he’ll make it happen.”

Hawke had other things on his mind already.

He said, “Look down there. What do you see?”

He indicated the vast enemy compound spread out below them.

“Looks quiet,” Stoke said, his Zeiss binocs sweeping from right to left while they waited for the rest. From this elevated vantage point he could see the entirety of the installation below.

No reply. The man was thinking. Finally, he said, “They have to know we’re coming, Stoke. That’s why Moon called for the paratroops. But if they’re watching for us on their radar, because of the HALO jump, what they don’t know is that we’re already here. Right?”

“Or…”

“What?” Hawke said, silently counting off his men as their boots hit the ground.

“Or, somehow, they do know, boss. Whole thing’s a trap. They want us trapped inside their perimeter when all those mainland airborne troops arrive. That’s what Chief Rainwater thinks. And… oh never mind. Just idle bullshit, boss.”

“What does he think, Stoke? Tell me.”

“Well, I don’t want to say anything. But.”

“But what?”

“The chief is conjuring up the Chinese updated version of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn.”

“Seriously?” Hawke said.

Hawke cocked his head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. Stoke knew what was next. Hawke’s really bad Gary Cooper imitation.

“I ain’t no Custer,” Hawke said, dead serious.

Stoke laughed. “Hell no, suh, no, you ain’t!”

“How’s Brock?” Hawke said. “Seemed spooked right before the jump.”

“Told me out on the ramp something about his pucker factor. Said it was spiking a little bit, that’s all.”

“Pucker factor? What the hell is—?”

“Don’t even ask, boss, trust me.”

“I do. Assemble the troops, let’s move out. Now.”