"Sorry I can't bring you in closer, slower, and lower," said Stafford sympathetically. "The trick is for you and your men to land on the ice without your chutes being discovered in the air. My orders state in no uncertain terms for me to make my routine supply run to McMurdo Sound in my normal flight pattern. I've shaved it as close as I dare without raising suspicion. As it is, you'll have to glide nearly ten miles to your target zone just outside the security fences."

"The wind is blowing from the sea, so that's in your favor," offered Brannon.

"The cloud cover helps, too," Cleary said slowly. "And if they have a functioning radar system, the operator will have to have four eyes to detect us from the exact moment we exit until we deploy our canopies."

Stafford made a slight course change and then said, "I don't envy you, Major, jumping from a nice warm airplane into an icy blast one hundred degrees below zero."

Cleary smiled. "At least you didn't hand me the tired old pilot's line about 'jumping from a perfectly good airplane.' I appreciate that."

They all laughed for a few moments at the inside joke among professionals. For decades, parachutists had been posed the question, "Why do you jump from a perfectly good airplane?" usually by pilots. The stock answer Cleary usually gave was "When a perfectly good airplane exists, then I'll quit jumping."

"As for the cold," Cleary continued, "our electrically heated thermal suits will keep us from turning into icicles while we descend to a warmer alt.i.tude."

"The clouds extend, too, within a thousand feet of the ground, so you'll be falling blind most of the way, since your compa.s.ses and GPS instruments are ineffective," said Brannon.

"The men are well trained for that. The key to a successful high-alt.i.tude, low-opening infiltration jump is to exit at the correct grid coordinate upwind, and have everyone under canopy at relatively the same alt.i.tude."

"We'll put you out on a silver quarter. But it won't be no picnic."

"No," said Cleary solemnly. "I'm sure that in the first minute after we drop from the plane, we'll wish we were falling into a fiery h.e.l.l instead."

Stafford checked the instrument panel again. "After you and your men finish prebreathing, I'll decompress the cabin. Immediately afterward, I'll pa.s.s on the twenty- and ten-minute warnings to you and my crew. Then I'll notify you over the intercom when we're six minutes from the release point. At two minutes out, I'll lower the ramp."

"Understood."

"At one minute out," Stafford went on, "I'm going to ring the alarm bell once. Then, when we're directly over the release point, I'll turn on the green light. At the airspeed we'll be flying, you'll have to get out quickly as a group."

"Our intentions exactly."

"Good luck to you," said Stafford, twisting in his pilot's seat and shaking hands with the major.

Cleary smiled faintly. "Thanks for the ride."

"Our pleasure," Stafford said genuinely. "But I hope we don't have to do it again anytime soon."

"Nor do I."

Cleary stood and straightened, left the c.o.c.kpit, and walked aft into the aircraft's cavernous cargo bay. The sixty-five men seated inside were a serious-faced group, dogged and dead calm, considering the uncertain peril they were about to encounter. They were young. Their ages ranged from twenty to twenty-four. There was no laughter or unproductive conversation, no grousing or complaining. To a man they were absorbed in checking and rechecking their equipment. They were a composite of America's finest fighting men, hastily thrown together on the spur of the moment from special units nearest to Antarctica that were on counter-drug operations throughout South America. A team of Navy SEALs, members of the Army's elite Delta Force and a Marine Force Recon team ... a combined band of secret warriors on a mission unlike any ever conceived.

Once the alert had been given the Pentagon by the White House, the one thing they had in short supply was time. A larger Special Forces unit was on the way from the United States but was not expected to reach Ok.u.ma Bay for another three hours, a time span that might prove too late and disastrous. Admiral Sandecker's warning was not received with enthusiasm by the President's top aides, nor the Armed Forces chief of staff. At first, none dared believe the incredible story. Only when Loren Smith and various scientists added their weight to the plea for action was the President persuaded to order the Pentagon to send a special force to stop the rapidly approaching cataclysm.

An air a.s.sault with missiles was quickly ruled out because of an utter lack of intelligence data. Nor could the White House and Pentagon be absolutely sure that they might not find themselves in hot water with the world for destroying an innocent plant and hundreds of employees. Nor could they be certain of the specific location for the command center for Earth's destruction. For all they knew, it could be hidden in an underground ice chamber miles from the facility. The Joint Chiefs decided that a manned a.s.sault offered the best chance of success, without an international outcry if they were wrong.

The men were seated on their heavy rucksacks, wearing parachutes, and were engaged in completing jumpmaster inspections. The rucksacks were full of survival gear and ammunition for the new Spartan Q-99 Eradicator, a ten-pound deadly killer weapon that integrated an automatic twelve-gauge shotgun, a 5.56-millimeter automatic rifle with sniper scope, and a large-bore barrel in the center that fired small shrapnel-inflicting missiles that exploded with deadly results at the slightest impact. The spare magazines, shotgun sh.e.l.ls, and shrapnel missiles weighed nearly twenty pounds and were carried in belly packs slung around their waists. The top flap of the belly pack held a navigation board, complete with a Silva marine compa.s.s and digital altimeter, both clearly visible to the jumper while gliding under his canopy.

Captain Dan Sharpsburg led the Army's Delta Force, while Lieutenant Warren Garnet was in command of the Marine Recon Team. Lieutenant Miles Jacobs and his SEAL team, which had aided NUMA on St. Paul Island, was also part of the a.s.sault force. The combined group was under the command of Cleary, a Special Forces veteran who had been on leave with his wife enjoying the Kruger Game Park in South Africa, when he was whisked away on a minute's notice to take command of the elite makeshift a.s.sault unit. It had to be the first time in American military history that separate special units were merged to fight as one.

For this mission, every man would be utilizing a new ram-air parachute system for the first time, called the MT-1Z or Zulu. With a four-to-one lift-to-drag ratio, the canopy could travel four meters horizontally for every meter descended, an advantage that did not go unappreciated among the three teams.

Cleary scanned the two rows of men. The nearest officer, Dan Sharpsburg, tilted his head and grinned. A red-haired wit with a gross sense of humor, and an old friend, he was one of the few who actually looked forward to the suicidal plunge. Dan had been "chasing airplanes" for years, achieving the status of Military Free Fall Instructor at the U.S. Army's prestigious Special Forces Military Free Fall School in Yuma, Arizona. When not off on a mission or training, Dan could be found skydiving with civilians for the fun of it.

Cleary had barely had time to glance at the service records of Jacobs and Garnet, but he knew they were the best of the best turned out by the Navy and Marines for special force missions. Though he was an old Army man, he well knew the SEALs and Marine Recon teams were among the finest fighting men in the world.

As he looked from face to face, he thought that if they survived the jump and glide to the target site, they then had the Wolfs' security force to contend with. A well-armed and trained small army of mercenaries, he was told, many of whom had served the very same forces as the men on the plane. No, Cleary concluded. This would be no picnic.

"How soon?" Sharpsburg asked tersely.

"Less than an hour," Cleary answered, moving down the line of men and alerting Jacobs and Garnet. Then he stood in the middle of the united fighting men and gave them final instructions. Satellite aerial photos were carried by everyone in a pocket of their thermal suits, to be studied once they had fallen into the clear and opened their canopies. Their target landing site was a large ice field just outside the mining facility, whose broken, uneven landscape offered them a small degree of protection when regrouping after the jump. The next part of the plan was the a.s.sault on the main engineering center of the facility, where it was hoped the doomsday controls were housed. Expert military minds judged that fewer casualties would occur if they landed and attacked from the outside rather than landing in the maze of buildings, antennas, machinery, and electrical equipment.

Coordination was to take place once each unit was on the ground and a.s.sembled for the a.s.sault. Any who were injured upon landing would have to suffer the cold and be dealt with later, after the facility had been secured and any systems or equipment that were designed to separate the ice shelf destroyed.

Satisfied that each man knew what was expected of him, Cleary moved to the rear of the cargo bay and donned his parachute and rucksack. Then he had one of Sharpsburg's men give him a complete jumpmaster inspection, with emphasis on his oxygen-breathing equipment for the long fall.

Finally, he silhouetted himself with his back to the closed cargo ramp in the floor and waved his hands to get the men's attention. From this point on, communication with the entire a.s.sault team would be conducted by hand and arm signals, which was standard operating procedure. The only voice communications until the jump would be between Cleary, Sharpsburg, Jacobs, Garnet, and Stafford in the c.o.c.kpit. Once they exited the aircraft and were under canopy, each man could communicate with individual Motorola radios over secure frequencies.

"Pilot, this is the jumpmaster."

"I read you, Major," came back Stafford's voice. "Ready on the mark?"

"Jumpmaster checks complete. Oxygen prebreathing is under way."

Cleary took an empty seat and studied the men. So far, it was going well, almost too well, he thought. This is the time when Murphy's Law came sneaking around, and Cleary wasn't about to allow Mr. Murphy any opportunities. He was pleased to see the men were fully alert and primed.

They wore hoods under gray Gentex flight helmets to gain additional protection from the harsh subzero temperatures. Adidas Galeforce yellow-lens goggles for fog and overcast were attached to the helmets, resting up and leaving the men's eyes clearly visible to Cleary and the oxygen technician so they could check for any signs of hypoxia. The heating units in their thermal suits were activated, and each man checked his buddy to make certain that all equipment was properly organized and in place. Bungee cords and web straps were strategically laced around each man's clothing and equipment to prevent them from being torn away by the great burst of air expected upon their exit from the ramp.

After they checked their radios to confirm that each was transmitting and receiving, Cleary stood up and moved near the closed ramp. Facing his a.s.sault force again, he saw that all the men were giving him their undivided attention. Once again, he motioned to the man nearest his left with a thumbs-up signal.

IN the c.o.c.kpit, carefully studying his computerized course and the programmed target, Captain Stafford was concentrating his mind and soul on dropping the men waiting aft over the precise spot that would give them every chance of surviving. His primary concern was not to send them out ten seconds too early or five seconds too late and scatter them all over the frozen landscape. He disengaged the automatic pilot and turned the controls over to Brannon so his perspective and timing would not be diverted. Stafford switched to the c.o.c.kpit intercom and spoke through his oxygen mask to Brannon. "Deviate one degree and it will cost them."

"I'll put them over the target," Brannon said self-a.s.suredly. "But you have to put them on it."

"No confidence in your aircraft commander's navigational abilities? Shame on you."

"A thousand pardons, my captain."

"That's better," Stafford said expansively. He switched to the cargo bay intercom. "Major Cleary, are you ready?"

"Roger," Cleary answered briefly.

"Crew, are you ready?"

The crewmen, wearing harnesses attached to cargo tie-down rings and portable oxygen systems, were standing a few feet forward of the ramp on opposite sides.

"Sergeant Hendricks ready, Captain."

"Corporal Joquin ready, sir."