Arctic Storm Rising

He turned his head to look at the rest of his team. Soldiers and airmen gave him answering grins or flashed thumbs-up signs. Another positive of the quick trip, Flynn thought dryly. Nobody’d had much time yet to consider what a really dumbass idea this was.

And then Staff Sergeant Wahl was leaning over him, holding on to a seat frame. “Six-minute warning, sir,” the HC-130 crewman yelled into Flynn’s ear. For the purposes of this flight, Wahl was acting as both loadmaster and jumpmaster. Despite the half-inch-thick insulation covering almost every exposed metal inch of the aircraft’s fuselage, the deafening roar from the Super Hercules’s big engines made it sound like the other man was a hundred yards away.

Wahl saw his answering nod and moved out into the middle of the compartment. He waved his arms to get everyone’s attention. “Get ready!” He used hand signals to make sure he could be understood over all the pounding racket.

Obeying the command, Flynn and the others unbuckled their seat belts.

“Port-side personnel, stand up!”

Made awkward by all their heavy equipment, Flynn and the five men with him on the HC-130’s left side staggered upright and turned toward the rear of the plane. As the first man slated to jump, he was at the head of the line.

“Starboard-side personnel, stand up!” Wahl shouted next.

Now those seated on the right side clambered to their feet. Sergeant Andy Takirak, who would be the last man out, was at the back. A gauze bandage covered the jagged cut on his forehead. He met Flynn’s gaze and nodded confidently, as if to confirm that he was ready to go despite his minor injury.

Wahl spoke briefly into the intercom mike attached to his flight helmet, checking in with the cockpit crew. He nodded sharply at what they told him and then looked back at the waiting paratroopers. “Hook up!”

Flynn grabbed his static line and snapped its hook over the anchor cable stretched above his head. Behind him, the others in his stick did the same. Those to his right followed suit, hooking onto another anchor cable running down that side of the aircraft.

Wahl moved down the line of heavily burdened soldiers and airmen, watching closely as they checked their static lines and equipment and then did the same for the man in front of them. Satisfied by what he saw, he nodded to Flynn. Then he moved around to the side of the equipment pallet loaded with their two snow machines, sleds, and other heavy gear. The jumpmaster clipped his own safety line to a bracket. “We’re opening the rear ramp now! Get set!”

Flynn and the others shuffled carefully into position several feet behind the pallet.

The tail section of the HC-130J split in two, with the top half elevating out of the way as the big rear ramp whirred down and locked in position. The whole process took just twenty seconds. Immediately, the noise level ratcheted up to an almost unimaginable level. Between the suddenly magnified roar of the huge Rolls-Royce turboprops and the howling ice-cold wind gusts whipping down the length of the compartment, it was now virtually impossible to hear anything.

Crouched beside the equipment pallet, Wahl signaled the waiting men to stand by. They were ten seconds out from the drop zone. Abruptly, he yanked a restraining cord away. Freed, the pallet rolled smoothly down the ramp, tipped over, and vanished into thin air.

Given the “go” signal by Wahl the moment the ramp was clear, Flynn didn’t hesitate. He moved forward down the ramp and stepped off into space.

Instantly hurled away from the HC-130J by its freezing prop blast, Flynn tumbled through the night sky like a gale-borne leaf… until his parachute snapped open with a tooth-rattling jolt. Jesus, he thought dazedly, that hurt. Dangling under the chute’s billowing canopy, he slid downwind at a dizzying pace. Looking down past his boots, he saw a darkened landscape lit silver in places by moonlight spilling through fissures in the cloud layer overhead. Steep-sided hills and ridges rose on all sides of the snow-covered valley below. And the boulder-strewn slopes lining its southern edge were growing ever-larger with alarming speed.

Flynn held tight to his risers and twisted around, trying to find the rest of his team as they jumped behind him. He had time to catch only a brief glimpse of other moonlit parachutes scattering across the sky on the wind.

Everything after that happened very fast. The silvery snowpack below him took on shape and definition with horrifying swiftness. Hurriedly, he released his rucksack and weapons case, bent his knees, tucked his chin, and—

Whummp.

Flynn thumped down with a bone-jarring thud and rolled sideways. Despite the hard landing, this time he was able to unclip his left-side riser attach and spill the wind from his fluttering canopy before it could drag him very far across the snow. Moving quickly, he stowed his used parachute, shrugged out of his jump harness, and then checked over his weapons and other gear — pausing only to spit blood from a cut lip into the snow.