“Captain Fentress, give the feed to the flight deck,”

said Zen.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Fentress, apparently trying to joke—a new development that Zen had to leave unremarked, as the Flighthawk hit a gnarly gust of wind. He ramped up thrust but was nudged off course and had to start the whole run over again.

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“If we had more altitude, I could get a better angle for Captain Freah,” said Fentress, who was giving Freah the feed so he could plot his jump after the missiles did their work. “Save some time.”

“Curly, let me fly my plane, okay? We’ll do it like we rehearsed.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fentress.

They were silent until he reached the end of the runway area and began recovering.

“We’ve got it up here, Jeff,” said Breanna. “Glitch downloading the targeting data to the missiles. Take us a minute.”

“Flighthawk commander acknowledges.”

“Getting awful formal,” said his wife.

“Just doing my job, Quicksilver leader.”

Breanna didn’t answer. Chris Ferris marked the location on the Megafortress’s automated targeting system, then opened the bomb bay doors. The two hand-built missiles whose noses looked like spherical clusters glued together sat on a massive rotating bomb rack in the rear of the plane.

Ferris gave a countdown to launch, handing the process to the computer at five seconds. A sharp metallic trrrrshhhhh sounded over the interphone circuit as the first missile launched; 3.2 seconds later the second tore away.

“Ground wire loose somewhere,” said Louis Garcia, who was sitting in the rear bay. “Going to have to fix that when we get down.”

“Three seconds to target,” said Ferris. “Two, one—”

Over southeastern Turkey

1310

WHEN THE BACK DOOR OF THE MC-17 OPENED, THE TEM-perature inside the hold dropped dramatically. The cold RAZOR’S EDGE

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bit at Captain Danny Freah’s skin despite the layers of thermals and special drop suit he wore. But at least it meant they’d be getting to work soon—the worst part of any operation was the wait.

Danny moved his hand up to the visor of his combat helmet, clicking the control to increase the resolution on the feed he was receiving from Zen’s U/MF. A fair amount of smoke lingered from the explosion, but the weapons seemed to have done their job perfectly.

“We’re up next,” said the transport pilot. The communications and video were piped in through a hardwire; the MC-17B/W did not yet have an internal wireless connection. “Should be good to go in zero-one minutes.”

“Show’s under way,” Danny told the others in his team.

“Look alive, look alive,” said Hernandez, the team jumpmaster. Though he’d already checked everyone’s equipment twice in the past five minutes, he began one last inspection.

“First pass is for the ’dozers,” Danny said, though the reminder wasn’t necessary.

“Sure I can’t ride one down?” asked Powder.

“Next jump,” said Danny.

“He just wants to make sure he gets his turn driving,”

said Egg Reagan. “Trying to bump me.”

“I ain’t bumpin’ you. It’s Nursey who shouldn’t be at the wheel. You ever ride in a Humvee with him?”

“I’m not the one who lost his license,” answered Nurse.

“Who lost their license?” asked Danny.

“Just a rumor,” said Powder.

“We’re cleared,” said the MC-17B/W pilot. “Dust is settling. Okay, boys, look good.”

One of the loadmasters near the tail ramp waved a fist in the air, then pushed a button on the thick remote control panel in his hand. The bulldozer closest to the doorway jerked forward on its skid; lights flashed above the 112

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opening. In the meantime, the MC-17 slowed dramatically, its jet engines whining and shuddering. Danny tightened his grip on the rail behind him as the plane turned herself into an elevator, gliding down ten stories in the space of a few half seconds. The two bulldozers lurched forward on their automated launch ramp. They slowed as they cleared the door, seeming to stop in midair before bobbing outward, one after another.

Danny turned his gaze back to the top half of his visor and its feed from the Flighthawk. A lot of dust, nothing else. Then a large black rock furled into view, followed by another. As the U/MF flew past, smoke and dust started to clear and Danny saw the drogue chutes chuttering off to the right, the ’dozers sitting on the ground.

“Fuel’s up,” said the loadmaster. Two more crates made their way toward the door. These were perfectly square. Four barrels of diesel fuel for the ’dozers, along with some hand pumps and additional equipment, were contained inside custom-made cylinders packed into the spidery interior lattice of the special shock-absorbing crates. Following the fuel were two more skids with jackhammers and assorted gear. After they were out, the MC-17 began climbing to give them a little more room for their jump.

“Wind’s a bitch out there, boys,” said Hernandez. “Be sharp.”

“As a pin,” said Powder.

Danny took a breath as the yellow light came on above the door, indicating that they were almost ready. He took his place in the second line, still holding the rail as they waited for Hernandez’s signal. The seven men on the team went out practically together, two teams abreast holding hands.

A “normal” rig for a recreational parachuter always includes a special altimeter device to deploy an emergency RAZOR’S EDGE

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parachute once the jumper passes a preset altitude in case the main chute fails. A device that worked on essentially the same principles in the Whiplash jumpers’ gear deployed their MC-5 ram-air parachutes based on a prepro-grammed glide course. Sending GPS data as well as altimeter readings to their combat helmets, the “smart rigs” turned the Whiplash team members into miniature airplanes. They steered the boxy, rectangular chutes through the swirling winds, their bodies lurching as coun-terweights as they fought through the difficult fall. All seven men came down within ten yards of each other—a tight squeeze between the equipment and the work area, though if this had been an exercise at Dreamland or the Military Free Fall Simulator at Fort Bragg, Danny would have made them repack and jump again.

Stowing his chute quickly, the captain cleared his rucksack off the work area and recalibrated his smart helmet’s com set, waiting while it searched for the tactical communications satellite deployed by Raven. That took only about five seconds, but by then the others were already pumping fuel into the ’dozers, which seemed to have come down okay. Danny walked over to the pile of rubble created by the AGM-86s.

There were rocks all over the place. Annie had promised a fairly even pile.

But the ridge itself was gone, and the pockmarks from the explosion seemed a few inches deep at most. They’d have it flattened and meshed in no time.

“All right, get the ’dozers, let’s go,” yelled Danny. “The rest of you guys, get the equipment squared away and then get ready for the mesh. Should be here in thirty minutes.”

“You sure we can get it all down, Cap?” asked Bison.

“Timetable’s tight.”

“Bison, if you had a problem, you should have spoken up before,” said Danny.

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“No sir, not a problem.”

“He’s just trying to slow things down because he’s got the latest time in the pool,” said Powder.

“What pool?”

“We bet on how long it would take,” admitted Bison sheepishly.

“You guys get to work before I make you take out hammers and pound these boulders into dust,” Danny told them.

Liu fired up his bulldozer first, moving it off the thick planks of its landing crate. The sergeant had claimed that he had worked two summers with a construction firm; as improbable as that seemed—Liu stood perhaps five-six and weighed 120 soaking wet—he had demonstrated at Dreamland that he knew how to work the ’dozer, slamming the levers around like an expert. He pushed ahead now, angling the rocks straight off a shallow cliff at the right side of the strip.