Gambit by David Hagberg (manga ereader .txt) 📗

started, she’d gotten steady, almost completely forgetting any fears she would normally have, a slight smile on her lips.

She was ready now. Her only real concern was for Bender.

The unwinding altimeter on Vetrov’s wrist showed they were coming up on the three-thousand-meter mark, at which point, it was time to discard their oxygen masks. So far, his face had been covered by the mask, a Kevlar helmet on his head, so he had no real sensation of falling through the air. It was more like floating.

“Stage one,” he said into his lapel mic, which was the signal to discard the German-made masks. He took his off and let it fall free to his right; it tumbled end over end away from him. The nearly two-hundred-kilometer-per-hour hurricane directly on his face was strong enough to curl his lips back and send ripples across his cheeks.

He looked again at his altimeter as he passed the two-thousand-meter mark, and he began to smell things. The salt air, perhaps, a hint of wood smoke or perhaps charcoal, maybe a baker using a wood-fired oven, baking bread for his morning customers who would be up and about in a few hours.

All of it was almost unreal, but he’d done these sorts of night jumps so often this one seemed almost routine, except that in a few more minutes, he and his people would be going into battle. And he found that he was looking forward to it, because afterward, he would be able to send for his wife, and they could settle down somewhere with more money than they ever dreamed was possible.

On the ground, McGarvey checked his watch. Pete was about twenty feet to his right, still curled up in a ball, facing him, her eyes bright even in the darkness. “You okay?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Just peachy. How about you?”

“They should be opening their chutes in under a minute. Safety off.”

“Are we going to shoot before they land?”

“No. They’ll be pistols ready as soon as they release their equipment bags, and they’ll have the high ground. But once they touch down, they’ll be busy for the first sixty seconds or so getting free of their chutes and gearing up. We shoot then.”

“In the back?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a tough world,” Pete said.

“We didn’t make it so,” McGarvey said. “And if I’d had my way from the beginning, I would never have drawn my gun except on a firing range.”

“Stage two,” Vetrov said into his mic as his altimeter wound down past one thousand meters. He pulled his rip cord, the hang gliding chute deployed with a nearly noiseless burp, and his speed almost instantly dropped to less than thirty-five kilometers per hour.

He put on his night vision optics. Their objective showed up about two klicks almost due south. It showed no lights. McGarvey and his wife were sound asleep in their bed. And by the time they realized that they had come under attack, it would be far too late.

Using the parachute’s toggles left and right, he adjusted his glide path to set down about fifty meters from the lighthouse.

When he was sure his angle was correct, he scoped the ground from directly below him and slowly on a broad path all the way to the top of the hill. But there was nothing to be seen except scrub brush.

At forty meters, he radioed, “Stage three,” released his equipment bag, and took his pistol from its holster strapped to his chest.

“There,” McGarvey said, and he counted six equipment bags dropping from the operators.

“I see them,” Pete said.

“Wait until I open fire.”

“Will do.”

At the lighthouse, Alicia spotted the parachutes, and she grabbed the binoculars and watched as the equipment bags dropped.

“I count six,” she said.

“Jesus,” Bender said. “Let’s just get this shit over with and go home.”

“Amen,” Alicia said.

SEVENTY-ONE

Vetrov hit hard, his left foot twisting on a rock, a sharp pain stabbing his ankle, but he went with the momentum, rolling to the right, his pistol out and ready to fire.

He was up in an instant, and keeping low, he brought his parachute in hand over hand while scanning for any opposition and looking to his troopers. There were only three of them about ten meters back—Silin, Orlov, and Petrin, also busy with their chutes.

“Vasili, Eduard, copy?” Vetrov radioed.

“We hit a gust and landed short,” Vasili Anosov came back.

“What about Eduard?”

“Here,” Nikolayev came back. “I’m about twenty meters behind Vasili.”

“Get squared away and get your asses up here on the double. We’re going in,” Vetrov radioed. Spreads like this drop weren’t uncommon, but just now, it was more bothersome to him for some reason.

Nikolayev had the big plastic bag, so Vetrov and the other three merely bundled their chutes, gathered the shrouds, and tied them around the nylon so the fabric wouldn’t be blown around on the light wind. Anything that large moving around down here would be a dead giveaway of their positions.

By the numbers as if in a carefully choreographed dance, they opened their equipment bags, extracted the MP7s, pocketed five of the six magazines they’d brought, and loaded the sixth into the weapons, jacking a round into the firing chamber.

They wore their civilian clothes beneath their black ODUs, their fake passports and other creds, plus a few thousand euros, in flat packs strapped to their chests.

The pain from Vetrov’s foot radiated all the way up to his hip now, and each step he took was agony. But he was still mobile, which meant nothing important was broken.

Alicia was looking through the binoculars. “I count four of them,” she said. The laser range finder showed them fifty-one meters downslope. They’d bundled their parachutes and had taken things out of their drop bags that she couldn’t quite recognize, but she was almost certain they were weapons, until one of them turned in profile and she made out the same room broom that was lying close at hand on the low table beside the window.

“I thought you