The Fall (48 page)

*   *   *

Jack didn't sense downward acceleration for some time, as he seemingly glided in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, like a wing, the nylon and Nomex webbing stretched between his torso and arms and also between his thighs, increasing stability.

But his altimeter told a different story.

He was most certainly falling.

And fast.

Lacking a vertical speed indicator, he did quick mental calculations to determine his speed based on time and lost altitude, determining that it had taken him four seconds to travel one kilometer, meaning he was falling just under the speed of sound.

When he reached kilometer forty-two, Jack assumed a near-vertical profile and sensed a light buffeting in his legs as he closed them, locking the rare-earth magnets Angela had sewn to the sides of his boots.

The buffeting increased, shaking him, forcing him to stiffen his muscles, to keep from tumbling. Jack clenched his jaw, trying to keep it together as he gained speed, finally reaching the sound barrier.

And just like that, the turbulence vanished.

Another calculation confirmed that he had just covered a kilometer in under 2.9 seconds.

I'm supersonic.

He slowly brought his arms to the sides of his suit, controlling his acceleration just as a purple glow materialized around him.

Hello there,
he thought, watching it dance about him as solar gamma rays began to charge the glass accelerator embedded in the suit.

Speed increased to the neighborhood of Mach two as he counted seconds in his mind, outside temperature beginning to climb, but not nearly as much as his last jump, when he had reentered the atmosphere at a much faster speed, meaning less energy transfer from vertical speed to heat.

But the air finally heated to incandescence several seconds later, though Jack could no longer tell where he was because it would mean breaking his descent profile to lift his left arm and look at his altimeter.

He frowned at this unfortunate flaw in Angela's design, unlike the OSS, which had a faceplate display providing him with relevant descent telemetry.

So he did the only thing he could do: continue counting seconds in his mind, working under the assumption that he dove roughly through one kilometer every two and a half seconds.

And with air molecules heating around him, sound returned to his world in the form of the ear-piercing growl of an atmosphere fighting back, slowing his descent, like an invisible shield.

Holding his profile and trusting the physics in Angela's calculations, he watched the lavender glow increase about him as the pressure from deceleration and the accompanying heat tore into his ablation shields, as he began to feel the temperature rise through the insulation layers.

Damn,
he thought, finding it difficult to concentrate, realizing that he wasn't only pulling multiple Gs but lacked the ability to apply pressure to his legs and force blood back to his upper body.

Somewhere in the following seconds, as his tired mind guessed he had reached the vicinity of kilometer twenty-eight, the blinding purple light around him began to pulsate, slow at first, but with increasing intensity.

Squinting, his facial muscles tight, his jaw locked from concentration, Jack felt the rocketing temperatures permeating beyond the flexible insulation material, reaching his inner layers, beneath the aluminized Mylar and the nylon suit.

He tried to see beyond the glowing sphere of fire surrounding him, trembling with hues of purple, barely able to breathe, to force cool oxygen into his lungs as the pressure on his chest rocketed, as thoughts once again began to drift to the periphery of his mind.

But he couldn't afford to pass out.

Not now.

He lacked an autopilot, the means to maintain his descent profile during this critical period, where he had to keep the blunt shape of the reinforced carbon-carbon tiles facing the inferno, shielding the rest of his suit from certain incineration as he dropped through the atmosphere like a meteor.

Jack pushed himself, fighting the growing light-headedness, his rising body temperature, his inability to deliver enough oxygen into his bloodstream.

And he persisted, reaching deep into his core, into his training, into the discipline instilled in him by his relentless BUD/S instructors to never give up, to refuse to surrender, to ignore staggering odds and forge ahead, to stare death in the eye and wait for it to blink.

The only easy day was yesterday.

Jack forced the thought into his mind, letting it flash as bright as the purple light converging on him, alive with sheet lightning, entrapping him, swallowing him through the incandescence, the heat, and the deafening noise.

He tried to breathe to inhale, but the heaviness on his chest became overpowering, unbearable, gripping him like a scorching vise, squeezing him.

The only … easy day … was yesterday.

Jack summoned all his strength to inhale again, just one more time, holding his breath for as long as he could, knowing that each passing second brought him closer to his goal, his target altitude, and to the harmonic that would magically arrest his fall, cheat the laws of physics currently trying to crush, incinerate, and tear him apart.

He wanted to scream but that would require the oxygen he could no longer deliver to his system as the weight on his chest pressed harder still, as he opened his mouth but couldn't fill his collapsing lungs, his caving chest.

Lightning gleamed again, bright, violet and green and blue, its ear-piercing thunder crushing the reentry uproar, the billons of air molecules blazing a quarter of an inch from his blunt shields.

The light intensified, blinding him, forking into his helmet through the heat shield and the sun visor, through his eyelids, stabbing his mind.

And then it suddenly stopped.

The pressure, the furnace, the glaring light.

Jack filled his lungs for the first time without effort as he opened his eyes, staring at the vibrating membrane surrounding him, laced with color, writhing with flashes of light, but also soothing, comforting, insulating him from the harsh conflagration of a moment ago.

But he was still falling, once more inside this colorful chute that Angela had managed to calculate with impressive precision.

Jack risked a glance at his altimeter, locked on twelve kilometers as he dropped fast toward the bottom, alive with jagged lightning, its surface rippling, awash with sparks of static energy.

He quickly regained focus, became aware of his surroundings, recalling the last trip down.

Here we go again,
he thought as he dove into the bottom, crashing head-first, feeling the familiar elasticity as the chute's floor stretched, giving under his downward momentum, thinning as it extended, as lightning cracked around it, flickering with energy just before it burst, releasing him into bright skies.

Jack squinted again as he free fell, checking his altimeter, realizing he had lost exactly 1.2 kilometers, emerging at 10.8 kilometers or 35,000 feet.

Thank you, Angie.

He transitioned into a traditional skydiving profile, once more stretching the fabric between his arms and legs to adopt a winglike shape as his eyes scanned the rapidly approaching ground, trying to get his bearings from this altitude, recognizing the tip of Florida, the Keys, locating the large metropolitan area of Miami off to the west.

Twenty-seven thousand feet.

He controlled his descent easily, just as he had done for so many years in the SEALs performing high-altitude low-opening insertions into hostile territory.

And that's precisely how he had to view the world below. Hostile.

Twenty-two thousand feet.

He searched for highways, for roads, for any semblance of civilization, and shifted his arms to glide in that direction. West. Toward the greater Miami area.

Angela was raised there. And Jack guessed that would be precisely where she must have gone when in trouble, where she would have options, help, people willing to help her.

Seventeen thousand feet.

Jack selected his landing site. A grassy field close to a two-lane road that fed into a larger road running east-west, disappearing into the distant Miami metropolitan area.

Thirteen thousand feet.

He slowly opened a valve on the front of his suit to equal pressure with the atmosphere, feeling his ears ringing for an instant, before probing his target again, confirming his choice, free of trees or fences, the grass swaying gently toward the west providing him with wind direction as he dropped below nine thousand feet.

He reached for the rip cord handle secured with Velcro under his left arm and held it tight, waiting.

Six thousand feet.

Forty-five hundred feet.

Jack watched the ground rising rapidly toward him, but he waited just a bit longer, determined to reenter this world by the book, like a SEAL, hitting his selected site with precision.

Twenty-seven hundred feet.

Twenty-one hundred feet.

Fourteen hundred feet.

Nine hundred feet.

Jack waited just a couple more seconds, a hand on the rip cord handle, pulling it hard the moment he read five hundred feet.

The parachute performed flawlessly, blossoming above him with a hard tug, quickly arresting his fall, slowing him down to a gentle glide a hundred feet from the ground, allowing Jack to land with a slight wind drift.

He rolled the moment his feet touched the grass, letting his cushioned body absorb the impact, before sitting up against the wind, the parachute collapsing behind him.

The helmet came off first, and Jack took a deep breath of fresh air, filling his lungs, briefly closing his eyes as he once more thanked Angela for building something that, albeit not perfect, had been more than enough to do the job, to get him back in one piece.

The gloves came off next, before Jack unfolded the airtight flaps over the main zipper down the front of the suit and zipped it down his waist.

He walked out of it with ease in his skintight battle dress, which this time he would wear under a pair of loose jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt that Angela had secured for him to the bottom of the parachute compartment.

Last time he hadn't had a choice, venturing into the world in his futuristic suit. This time around he wanted to blend in right away, to minimize attracting attention, but still without giving up the protection of this bulletproof piece of engineering.

He got dressed and tucked his Sig in the small of his back, covering it with the T-shirt and kept the SOG knife in its ankle sheath.

He looked around, selecting a cluster of trees separating the meadow from the road to hide the parachute and suit, covering them with branches before heading for the road, feeling the front right pocket of his jeans, where Dago had tucked in a roll of twenty-dollar bills.

Jack grinned, deciding that if anyone would know the whereabouts of his wife, it would be her old biker friend.

The road was Highway 41, which framed the north end of the Everglades National Park, meaning he hadn't drifted significantly during the entire ascent and subsequent jump. And based on the sun, he estimated it to be mid-morning.

This time around, however, he had little luck hitching a ride, walking for almost thirty minutes before reaching a large gas station that had a convenience store and a large restaurant.

He bought a couple of bottles of water and some snacks, consuming them at a picnic table at the edge of the parking lot while watching the patrons come and go, biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity, which came about ten minutes later.

An elderly couple in an old Chevrolet convertible pulled up to one of the pumps, fueled up, and then parked just twenty feet from Jack, not bothering to put the top up before walking into the restaurant.

Thank you,
he thought, waiting for them to go inside before jumping in and reaching under the dash, locating the right wires, bypassing the ignition, taking less than thirty seconds to hot-wire it.

He steered the vintage car, which was in impeccable condition, out of the gas station and headed west on the highway, checking his watch, deciding that unless someone alerted the couple, it would be at least thirty minutes before they came out, and probably even longer before a cop arrived and added it to the stolen vehicle database.

But Jack remained vigilant, keeping to the speed limit, trying to look relaxed, just another Floridian enjoying a morning ride on a sunny day. He even put on the owner's Wayfarer sunglasses left on the console.

His right hand on the wheel and his left elbow resting on the door, Jack covered the thirty miles to Miami in fifteen minutes, turning south on Highway 997 and west on 296th Street, near Homestead Air Reserve, reaching the shop in another thirty minutes.

He drove past the building, noticing it was closed, which was strange for a weekday, and headed to the corner to go around the employee parking lot in back.

That's when he spotted it. A white van with tinted windows parked across the street a block away from the shop's entrance. Two men were inside. Jack pretended to ignore them while driving around the block, noticing another white van at the edge of the empty parking lot with two more men.

Hastings had this place covered front and back, and the fact that it was closed meant that Dago, his gang, and probably Angela were somewhere else.

Maybe even with Pete.

As he was about to drive off, the van in the parking lot sprung to life, accelerating toward him. Jack went for his gun, but the driver simply swerved around him, taking off, turning the corner and heading to the front, obviously not interested in him.

Jack's instincts screamed at him to follow, and he did, also turning the corner just as the van in front also drove off, following the first one.

Where are you guys going in such a hurry?

*   *   *

They reached the farmhouse at one in the afternoon and spread across the front and back, covering the gravel entrance connecting the main house to the road, the path from the back porch to the large orange grove, and even the trail off to the left leading to a duck pond.