"I have always felt that this Kildar was...not good," Father Devlich said. Tall and broad as Ferani was short he had dark red hair and a face lined by frowns. "He is not true Kildar."

"He has proven his worth again and again as a provider and as a warrior," Mother Makanee snapped.

"The Kildar must, by rights, have both strengthand the Soul of Battle. The Soul, though..."

"Makes them vulnerable," Father Kulcyanov wheezed. Though younger than Ferani he had led, if anything, a harder life and it showed. With lips and fingertips blue from congestive heart failure, everyone wondered how many more winters the old warrior would last. "I saw it in many of the best of my commanders. But it is what makes them the best. Without the Soul they are brainless bulls, unfit to lead a squad much less the Keldara. As much as we need the strength and spirit that the Kildars bring, the Soul has always been the hardest to find. This is a True Kildar. Whether he can manage to survive his trials, though, that is another question."

"He is weak," Ferani argued. "This...infatuation proves it."

"What of Kiril in all this?" Mother Devlich asked.

"If need be, Kiril will be sent forth," Father Kulcyanov said. "But I do not believe this Kildar will force that necessity. He has honor, this one. Strength, fierceness, honor and the Soul. It is a rare combination."

"A weak combination," Father Ferani said. "You will see. Every man has his weakness."

"Just because you have them, does not mean the Kildar does," Father Devlich said. "Some of us can keep our hands off other men's wives."

"Baaaaa," Father Ferani replied.

"Donot start that again," Mother Kulcyanov snapped. "Either of you. We must wait and see. If it is necessary, Kiril will be sent forth. We will speak to Colonel Nielson and ensure that he is sent to a proper place for a trained warrior. This is Tradition."

"Agreed," Father Devlich said, nodding. "Kiril is young. He will survive and even prosper. And a Keldara as Kildaran..."

"Oh, yes, leave it tome to break it to Katrina," Mother Ferani said, shaking her head.

"Katrina will be the least of our worries," Mother Lenka said. She was not usually included in such Councils. She knew why she was here for this one. "If you send Kiril forth and present Gretchen tothis Kildar, he will probably send youall forth. Bide your time. The final toss is yet to be played in this game."

"Okay, I've briefed you on this," Mike shouted over the roar from the freefall simulator. "Now I'll show you."

The vertical wind-tunnel was a fairly ma.s.sive structure. Mike had had one h.e.l.l of a time getting one in any sort of short timeframe; they usually were built in place over a couple of months. As it was it had taken three precious days, and d.a.m.ned near a half a million dollars, to get it to the valley of the Keldara.

And that didn't include the Georgian military heavy lift chopper that brought it from the airport.

Designed to be loaded on a trailer, the system was hardly state-of-the-art. The enormous sound generated by the older style trainers had become an issue in all developed countries so they were going relatively cheap. If you could call two hundred thousand dollars cheap.

But it was the one that Mike could get, in a hurry, cash on the barrel, no questions asked. So it was what he had to work with.

The system consisted of a catwalk that led to a wide platform. The catwalk and platform were supported twenty feet in the air. Under the platform was a heavy duty fan, a wind generator. Around the platform, which was heavily padded, was a steel cage in case the "flyer" got lifted to high or off to the side. In the middle of the platform area was a ten foot hole through which the wind entered.

The whole thing, fortunately, had fit in an Russian Antonov heavy lift aircraft. Mike had had to rent time on the private aircraft for the lift, which was hardly cheap. But with the generator he could speed up the training of the insertion team to the point that they'd bemarginally qualified for one hairy d.a.m.ned mission in time.

Besides Vanner, he'd chosen Julia Makanee and Olga Shaynav, two of his best radio operators. To backstop them there were two Keldara "hitters" from Team Sawn. The five were his charges for the next week. He had exactly seven days to get them not only HALO qualified butcomfortable with the idea.

The standard military course wasfive weeks, not one. And on any conceivable mission that the US military would send green HALO jumpers on, they'd be accompanied by trained and experienced personnel. In this case, theentire team would be green jumpers.

Given that a few peoplealways balked at actually jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, that was going to be interesting. He'd considered picking a few stand-bys, just in case one of the group was absolutely unwilling to actually jump or couldn't handle the training. But he really didn't have anyone to spare.

He'd used the three days to advantage, giving cla.s.ses in freefall maneuvers, having everyone practice body positions while lying on their stomachs and going over the theory of freefall, steerable parachutes and HALO. The cla.s.ses had run from early morning until he could tell everyone but Vanner's brains were cooking.

Now it was time to start working on freefall techniques. He wanted all seven to be comfortable with that before their first jumps; he just didn't have the time for tandem training.

Everyone was wearing jump coveralls, which were easier to train in. The coveralls were loose but Mike had to admit that Oleg and Julia still looked hot. Mike looked around at the group, grinned and then jumped into the rushing wind.

The enormous force of the wind picked him up out of his leap and lofted him up to about head-height.

He hung there in a box man position, arms and legs spread, then used his fingers to carefully spin in place, without moving out of the wind. He was pretty rusty-his last freefall was more than two years ago-but the moves were coming back pretty quick.

"What's this position, Largo?" Mike shouted.

"Box man, Kildar!" the shooter replied.

"Exactly, full box man," Mike said. "Now, if I pull my arms and legs in..." he said, matching actions with words, "I sink. That will mean you fall faster. Olga! Why would you want to do that?"

"I'm lighter than the men," the girl shouted back. "I might have to speed up to maintain formation!"

"Right!" Mike yelled then a.s.sumed another position, the quickly snapped out of it as he started to fly out of the windstream. "What was that position, Jeseph?"

"Delta!" Jeseph shouted back. "Useful for dropping fast and short, fast, maneuvers."

"Got it!" Mike yelled then got back in the box man position, but with his hands out of position. Suddenly he started moving away from them, slowly. "Julia! What's happening? What's happening?!" he shouted as if panicked.

"Kildar!" the girl shouted back, nervously, then stopped, grinned and shook her head. "Slide? Yes? You try to scare me!"

"Slide," Mike said, reconfiguring to get back in the middle of the windstream. "When you use this at first, you'regoing to slide! I'll be shouting instructions at you on how to stop sliding. But you'll go back and forth, side to side," Mike said, adding motions to the explanation. "But even if you get thrownall the way out!" He moved his arms outward and was suddenly thrown backwards out of the wind-stream, hitting the padding hard and then rolling to his feet. It was an effort, but he needed to demonstrate. "You'll be fine! That's what the padding is for! Besides, when you start you'll have on a harness," he added with a grin. "Vanner! You're up."

"Urrah!" the Marine shouted. "Let'sdo this!"

Chapter Fourteen.

"Master Chief?" Greznya said as Adams was walking out of the shoot house. He looked ragged and she wasn't sure if now was the best time but the intel was very hot.

"Go," Adams said, stripping off his balaclava and taking a deep breath. "Christ. I swear shoot houses take a year off your life every time you go in one. If it's not the propellant fumes it's the gaseous lead."

Greznya Mahona was twenty, old for a Keldara girl to be unmarried, with bright blue eyes and red hair.

She had been one of the first girls to join the intel section and when Mike had finally inst.i.tuted rank for the "intel girls" was immediately appointed NCOIC with a rank of Team Sergeant, the highest NCO position among the Keldara.

"Yes, Master Chief," the girl said, dimpling prettily. "We have a new download from Washington.

They've gotten ground penetrating shots of the buildings in Gamasoara as well as the two buildings near the agreed meeting place. There is no guarantee that Marina is in any of them, but..."

"But it's good intel," Adams said, rubbing a bright red mark on his cheek that looked something like the imprint of a gun-barrel. Greznya could tell that it was fresh and couldn't imagine where he'd gotten it.

"Can you convert...?"

"I've already converted the shots into two dimensional maps of each of the buildings that are probable for holding the hostage," Greznya said. "However, Creata has an interesting idea. She is pretty sure that she can create 3-d imagery for Unreal for some of the buildings. That will give an internal map of the building that we can load into the game packages. We could even run scenarios with it. Perhaps when we find where Marina is, if Katya can..."

"We're looking at nearly a week for insertion," Adams said, rubbing his chin. "Do it if you have time.

Good work. I need to look at those maps as soon as I'm done with reviewing this exercise."

"Very good, Master Chief," Greznya said. "I'll have them in your office by the time you get back."

"Okay, now let me go speak to the children," he said, turning back to the entry team. "SHOTA, WHAT THE f.u.c.k DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING? FIVE! FIVE, FIVE, FIVE! NOT f.u.c.kING.

ONE !".

"Okay, Julia, hold that," Mike yelled over the wind noise.

A couple of day's hard training and while the group weren't exactly masters of the air, but they had the basic moves. They'd all managed to learn to hold position in a box-man, maneuver slightly from that position and work in a delta, with the arms tucked in for more rapid descent and maneuvering.

Now it was on to tougher processes.

"Bring your arms in front of your face, carefully," Mike said. "Now, check your direction and distance."

At least Mike had managed to get top line equipment. Each of the team was outfitted with a GPS based navigation system. Punch in a GPS coordinate and it would give them current alt.i.tude and a direction and distance to the target.

Julia slowly brought her arms in front of her face and then glanced at the GPS.

"That way," Julia said, gesturing to her right with her chin. "I'm at ten thousand AGL." She referred to Above Ground Level. Height above sea level doesn't matter to a parachutist; the only thing that matters is height above what you're going to smack into.

"I'll give the distance as two kilometers," Mike said. "Okay, slowly rotate in that direction. Rotate a bit, check position, rotate a bit, check position. Carefully. Don't worry if you overshoot, just rotate back."

Julia followed the directions, occasionally bobbling in the air and sliding to the side but always getting back in position. It was hard work, fighting the blast stream the whole time while trying to keep in position three-dimensionally. But finally she was lined up.

"Do a ground check," Mike said. "Can you see the ground?"

"You said the weather report said clear," Julia replied. "I can see the ground."

"Do you think you have the DZ in sight?"

"I have the DZ," Julia said. "I think so. It's rightthere ," she added, pointing to a mark Mike had made on the wall.

"Could be the wrong DZ," Mike pointed out. "Wouldn't be the first time. But you don't have a lot of margin for error; most of the area is vertical. It's the only potential landing spot you've got if you don't want to be kissing a cliff."

"It's the right DZ," Julia replied, grinning. "I recognize it from the satellite shots."

"Good," Mike replied. "Check your team-mates, now. Where are they?"

"Most of them are below me," Julia said, looking around. "Even Olga; she's been putting on weight."

"Have not!" Olga yelled.

"Okay, slide over so you're cl.u.s.tered, but don't get too close. You don't want their air-stream interfering with yours. Do a ground check. You're off course to the left. What's happening?"

"Wind sheer," Julia said. "I correct."

"Check your GPS," Mike said. "Your distance is now one hundred meters to the DZ. You are at four thousand AGL."

"How did I get there so quickly?" Julia said, confused.

"You tell me," Mike replied, raising an eyebrow.

"The wind," Julia said after a moment. "It's pushing me across the DZ."

"Three thousand AGL," Mike yelled. "You're going to be popping any second. What do you do?"

Julia's mouth opened and closed for a moment and then she shrugged.

"I don't know!"

"Out of exercise," Mike said, waving her to the side. The Keldara girl slid sideways in the air-stream until she was at the edge of the tank and then slid off into Mike's arms.

"It wasn't really your call to make," Mike admitted. "But... dropping is strange. You think you have all the time in the world and then all of a sudden you'reout of time to make decisions. Vanner, you're team is overshooting the drop-zone. Enough that you're not going to be able to para-glide back to it. What do you do?"

"Rotate the formation into the wind," Vanner said, quickly. "Go into a delta-track and head as much into it as possible. It increases our rate of drop but increases our horizontal velocity. I trade height for distance."

"Good enough answer," Mike replied. "And that is the answer to Julia's question as well: You follow your team leader. That's why he should be lined up at the bottom of the stick. He is responsible for ensuring that you all get close enough to the DZ that you can all make it. Even if you think he's wrong on his approach,you follow your team leader ."

"What probably happens is that you miss the dropzone," Mike admitted. "If the winds are that high, that they push you that fast during the drop phase, you're going to be all over the map in the para-glide phase.

Where you're dropping, most of you are probably gonna kiss a cliff or slam into a mountainside. In which case, Vanner, you're going to have four or more out of your team with broken bones or worse. Who takes over if Vanner is killed?"

"I do," Julia said.

"Right, then Olga. And if both of them are out?"

"I take over," Jeseph admitted. "But I'm not as up on the commo end."

"Set up the commo, report in and then do what you can to hold on until I can get someone in to replace and support you," Mike replied. "Wewill get somebody in there, I promise. But you have to be ready for worst case. Worst case is you disappear into a black hole from my side. Worst case for you as well, but second worst is serious injuries in multiple on the drop. Keep an eye on your height and distance..."

Mike paused as the door to the simulator opened and Nielson stuck his head in the door.

"Kildar, got something, can't wait."

"Okay," Mike said. "c.r.a.p. Vanner, take over. Just work on positions and air-feel. I'll be back..." He looked over at Nielson and raised an eyebrow.

"Not soon," Nielson said, frowning.