If Bolan’s parachute became entangled in that lofty canopy, he ran a risk of being killed or crippled in his bid to reach the ground. The first step in his new campaign could also be his last.
Around two thousand feet he pulled the main rip cord. There was a heartbeat’s hesitation, known to every jumper who survives a drop, before the main pack opened and the chute blossomed above him. Bolan’s headlong plummet was arrested as the shroud lines snapped taut, air filling the cells of the sleek pilot chute overhead.
Bolan clutched the risers, using them and the parachute’s slider to guide his descent toward the treetops. This was his most vulnerable time, dipping lower by the moment at a speed most riflemen could easily accommodate. He didn’t think there would be spotters in the treetops, but a hunter in a clearing on the ground might catch a glimpse of Bolan and his parachute, might even have the time to risk a shot before he ran to spread the word.
One clearing in particular preoccupied the jumper’s thoughts.
The drop zone had been chosen based on aerial and satellite reconnaissance, map coordinates for Bolan’s final destination matched against bird’s-eye photographs of the jungle canopy he’d be required to penetrate on D-day. A natural clearing in the forest had been spotted from on high, charted and measured, analyzed for likely risks as far as a computer half a world away could take the problem toward solution. Based on that intelligence, he had been told precisely where and when to leave Grimaldi’s Cessna for his leap of faith.
The dark patch of the clearing lay below him now, and slightly to his left, meaning a hundred yards or so, from Bolan’s altitude. It was a black hole from his viewpoint, while sunlight reflected on the treetops all around that vaguely oval gap amid the foliage. From two thousand feet, it looked like the cup on a putting green. Up close, he guessed, it would resemble an abandoned well or mine shaft yawning to receive him.
If he didn’t miss his mark and hang up in the trees.
Bolan was skilled at navigating parachutes. He’d learned the art as a young Green Beret and practiced it sporadically throughout his wars, keeping his skills and reflexes in shape. Still, there were always unexpected twists and turns in any combat mission. Wind might carry him off course, a bird could strike him in the head and render him unconscious, or the guidelines on his chute might snap, leaving him rudderless.
If none of that transpired, he had a chance to hit his mark—and only then would he find out what happened next.
The guide lines didn’t break. No windy gale or suicidal bird disrupted Bolan’s plan. He steered the parachute without a hitch, correcting his descent by slow degrees until the dark mouth of the jungle clearing was directly underneath his feet. Up close it was a black maw, roughly oval, thirty-seven feet, nine inches wide at treetop level.
The dimensions were precise, but Bolan had no clue what might be waiting for him at the bottom of the shaft.
Assuming that he ever got that far.
He marked a bull’s-eye in his mind, steered for it, watching his target instead of the belled chute above him. Bolan pointed his toes, peering between his boots as if they formed a gunsight’s V.
So far, so good.
The treetops rose to meet him much more swiftly now, it seemed, during the final yards of his descent. Gripping the risers firmly, Bolan fought to keep the parachute on course, resisting updrafts from the sun-warmed canopy.
The clearing yawned beneath him. With a hiss of ripstop nylon, Bolan hit his mark. The forest swallowed him alive.
It was a curious sensation, being swallowed by a jungle. First, the sunlight flickered, faded, screened by treetops looming overhead as Bolan cleared the forest canopy. An instant later he felt a drastic change in the humidity and temperature. Though shaded now, Bolan had also lost the morning breeze. It felt like plummeting into a sauna, fully clothed.
Dead air didn’t provide the same support for Bolan’s parachute, either. The pace of his descent accelerated, but he had no room for any kind of meaningful maneuver. What had once gone up was coming down, and he could only brace himself for impact as the ground rose to accept its human sacrifice.
A glance in passing told him that the clearing had to have been created by a lightning strike that shattered one great tree, in much the same way demolition experts drop a skyscraper without inflicting any major damage on its neighbors. Eight feet below him, closing fast, Bolan saw the detritus of the forest giant’s fall. A ragged stump sprouted from mulch and teeming fungus growths, surrounded by remains of charred and rotted wood.
Before he had a chance to think about what might be living, breeding, feeding in the giant compost heap below him, Bolan struck the spongy surface. He had time to veer a yard or two off course, avoid impalement on the sharp-pronged mahogany stump, but that effort cost him balance on the landing and he rolled in filth, smothered in the chute as it descended like a shroud.
Bolan opened the quick-release clasps on his harness and shed it, pulled his knife and slit the parachute, emerging from it like some mutant forest life-form rising from its amniotic sac. At once, he sheathed the blade, unslung his AUG and waited where he stood for any challenge from the jungle murk.
A silent minute passed, then two, and he was satisfied. Keeping his rifle close at hand, Bolan hauled in the flaccid remnants of his chute, and opened his entrenching tool. The mulch beneath his boots was soft and had a mildew stench about it. When he broke the surface crust, it teemed with vermin—ants, worms, beetles Bolan didn’t recognize—but he dug deeper, leaving those he had disturbed to scramble for another path to darkness, out of sight.
He dug until he had a pit of ample size to hold the bundled parachute, his spare, the harness and the helmet he had worn. Filling the hole was faster, but he took the extra time to evenly disperse the surplus mulch he’d excavated from the reeking mound. The next rain, probably sometime that afternoon, would mask whatever signs of digging Bolan left behind. Searchers would have to excavate the spot themselves, to find his gear, and there was no good reason they should even try it if they’d hadn’t seen him drop in from on high.
Digging ditches in ninety-degree heat and ninety-eight-percent humidity drained a strong man’s vigor in a hurry. Bolan was a veteran jungle fighter, long accustomed to the hardships of tropical climates, but every day spent away from the jungle, swaddled in the chill of fans and air conditioners, reduced a subject’s tolerance for enervating heat. His thirty hours in Brazzaville had helped provide a measure of reacclimation, but there was a world of difference between the city—any city—and the bush.
Bolan folded his shovel, stowed it and allowed himself a sip of water from one of his canteens. Ironically, dehydration was a major risk in the midst of a sodden rain forest, where any water he found would be teeming with germs, unfit to drink unless he boiled it first.
And Bolan couldn’t risk a fire.
Not yet.
He might be burning something later, but for now he had to pass unnoticed through the forest en route to his target. Any chance encounters on the way increased the danger to himself and to his mission.
He had taken on the job for old times’ sake, driven by feelings long suppressed if not forgotten, paying an installment on a debt of loyalty he knew would never fully be discharged.
In truth, he didn’t want to cut that tie, however tenuous it was. Sometimes even a scarred and bloodied warrior needed something to remind him of another time. Another life. It might be lost beyond recall, but memories were precious, all the same.
He palmed the GPS device and got his bearings, let the compact gadget point him toward his goal. A stranger waited for him there, not knowing it. Bolan had come to save that stranger from himself, at any cost.
Old