A/N1: Ownership of Chuck is up in the air. Not really, of course, but I thought it was a cool segue.
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Thursday, December 4, 2008; 5:59 AM PST
Head down and feet up, her arms tight to her sides, legs extended behind, Sarah was falling at over two hundred miles per hour. A deadly dart ripping through the predawn sky over Los Angeles. Her eyes were fixed on the strobe light on the roof of the building, her target. So long as the light stayed stationary in her vision, she was following the necessary slope. If it began to move left or right, up or down, she would have to adjust her body position to get back on track.
The wind was whipping past her at hurricane strength, roaring like a freight train in a wind tunnel. At that speed, the air behaved as a semi-solid substance. Thick and viscous. Something to push against. And it was those pushes against her slipstream, tiny movements at this point, that allowed her to steer her body in space.
She knew Zondra was behind her, hopefully matching her move for move to the tiniest body position. She couldn't look over her shoulder to check, though, without messing up her approach to the target. Not a concern, though, as she could rely on the comm link.
"How tracking, Zee?"
"On target. I'm following your butt down," said Zondra.
Sarah withstood the temptation to reply to her friend and partner with a clever quip. While she loved the adrenaline rush that skydiving created, she knew that this operation needed 110% concentration. If she were doing this just for fun, she'd be whooping and hollering and grinning. But if she were doing it just for fun, she wouldn't be facing deadly consequences for the most minor of mistakes.
The lady spies were wearing coveralls, helmets, goggles, altimeters, gloves, and tight boots covering their ankles. Each woman had a gear bag snugged between their knees and connected to their harnesses by a quick release strap and a twenty-foot tether.
Their parachute gear consisted of a main chute and a reserve canopy. Sarah knew from long experience to find her operative handles by touch rather than sight. The pilot chute handle used for deploying the main. The handle for deploying the reserve. And finally, the cut-away handle, to be used if the main canopy tangled on opening. In that event, in a normal jump, she could cut the main chute away and deploy the reserve. Of course, on this operation, she would be deploying her main too low to have sufficient time to cutaway and re-deploy. If her main chute tangled, she'd likely end up as chunky salsa on the roof of her target, or as her skydiving instructor had called it – red mist. There was also the automatic activation device, an emergency device which measures altitude and descent rate and would deploy the main chute if she hadn't done so at a set altitude, if, for example, she hit her head and was falling unconscious. Again, unnecessary here, as on this jump she was going to deploy at 2,000 feet, although she had set the AAD for 1,000 feet just in case. They had obtained the height of the building from the records in the building department, and she'd calculated her minimum altitude accordingly.
Five thousand feet would have been the normal recommended height to open her chute, but she wanted to be visible to observers on the ground for the absolute minimal amount of time. Two thousand feet would give her chute time to open, and she'd be on the roof of the building only seconds later. The goal of remaining invisible was the reason she was jumping at this hour. Predawn gray, but with enough light to see the roof. Hitting a drop zone with building equipment and structures in the dark could easily lead to a broken ankle, or a broken back in the worst case.
There was a beep in her helmet. "Four thousand feet," she said aloud.
"Roger that," said Zondra.
She'd set the alerts in her helmet for added safety. In a jump like this, altitude awareness was crucial to survival.
Sarah raised her hands and brought her arms up to the height of her ears, elbows bent. The sudden drag on her upper body pushed her head and shoulders back and moved the rest of her body straight into the onrushing air. Her legs bent at the knees. Within moments she'd slowed from over 200 miles per hour to about 120 miles per hour, as she changed from the delta position to the arch position. The deceleration slammed her entire body and drove the wind from her lungs.
She had planned the slower speed for her chute's deployment. She'd made the mistake of deploying her chute at excessive speed once before, and vowed to never make that mistake again. The violent deceleration when her chute had opened had felt like her insides were going to be squeezed out her butt.
She trusted Zondra behind her to have performed the same change in body position, as it was part of the agreed-upon plan to do so at that altitude.
The change in position had put her off her target by a touch, so she moved her arm slightly and got back onto the necessary track. The building was much closer now and Sarah, in the light from the brightening sky, could see the individual elements of the equipment on the roof.
At two thousand feet there was another beep in her helmet.
Sarah said, "Two thousand. Deploying."
As Zondra said, "Roger," Sarah reached behind her to the bottom of the parachute rig and pulled on the handle to release the pilot chute. The small pilot chute pulled free of the container and caught the air, inflating it and pulling it behind her on the bridle. Only a second or so later, the drag of the pilot chute pulled the deployment bag, holding the main canopy, out of the container and deployed it.
Sarah seemed to jerk to a halt, the harness hard against the straps under her thighs which bore the majority of the force. In reality, she wasn't actually stopped and she continued to fall under the canopy at about 18 miles per hour, but it was a far cry from her speed moments before. She automatically reached for the steering toggles connected to the risers to control what was, essentially, a flying wing. At the same time, she was visually checking to make sure that the canopy had deployed properly without tangling or twisted risers or partial folds or any of the other nightmares which could occur to the unlucky. Her canopy looked good and solid and she smiled briefly to herself; even with hundreds of jumps she'd never had to deploy her reserve chute. She jiggled the steering toggles a bit and watched the canopy react as expected. So far so good.
She released one of the steering toggles and used her free hand to rip loose the velcro fastener connecting her gear bag to her leg. The bag fell away, only to jerk to a stop below her at the end of its tether.
All her attention was now focused on the rapidly approaching rooftop, her eyes fixed on the strobe light. She pulled down on one of the risers, spilling air from an edge of the chute and steering her in the desired direction so as to come down slightly to the right of the strobe. Chuck had used a drone to land the strobe atop one of the bulky HVAC units on the roof. From her study of the photographs of the rooftop she knew there was a nice open space just to the right.
She hoped she would be heading into the wind, but she couldn't tell. When Casey had dropped both she and Zondra from the helicopter, he had done so in a location taking wind speed and direction into account. But winds could change in both intensity and direction and, in any event, the wind at the height of the roof might be different altogether. If this were any other kind of drop they might have a windsock or smoke on the drop zone, but none of that was available to her and her partner this morning. Even if they'd been accepting of the idea to try a remotely detonated smoke device on the roof, the result might be seen from the ground and thereby ruin the whole plan.
Sarah was over the edge of the roof and felt her gear bag land with a thud. She pushed both steering toggles down midway, spilling air from her canopy and reducing her speed and forward momentum. She began to glide over the roof on a flat canopy. Once at the spot she'd picked, she punched the toggles down as hard as she could. The remaining air spilled from the canopy, dropping her. As her feet touched down on the roof, she jogged forward two steps, to compensate for the residual forward momentum, and stopped.
Immediately, she moved to the side and began to gather her parachute and gear bag to her. She needed to clear the drop zone for Zondra, coming in only seconds later. Zondra landed in almost the same spot as Sarah had, but with a touch too much speed. She ran forward to bleed it off and stumbled to her hands and knees.
"Dammit," she growled, annoyed at herself.
"Ok?" asked Sarah.
"Yeah," confirmed Zondra.
Sarah changed the frequency on her comm link and said, "We're down and operational."
"Roger that," came Jorge's voice. "No visible activity outside. I'll alert the Colonel."
This part of the plan had been focused on getting an operative or two on the roof of the Fulcrum building without detection. The timing and method of insertion had been selected with that in mind. Even the gray colors of their gear and chutes had been selected to blend into the color of the pre-dawn sky.
Of course, getting permission to jump within the congested airspace of downtown Los Angeles hadn't been without its own challenges. But when Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters called FAA Administrator Roger Sturgell at midnight in Washington and he in turn called the man in charge of Air Traffic Control for southern California at 2:00 AM Pacific Time, extraordinary things could happen. At the time of Sarah and Zondra's jump, all air traffic had been temporarily diverted away from Los Angeles and would remain so until the ATC heard from Colonel Casey.
In case anyone driving by noticed the parachutes, the Los Angeles 911 system had been told that the jump was a part of a movie shoot.
The real risk, though, was that a Fulcrum agent entering or leaving the Strength Leader building would look up and see parachutes landing on the roof during the scant seconds that they had been visible. That eventuality would blow the plan wide open.
So far, though, no alerts seemed to have been given and the only sounds were made by the wind.
While Zondra was still coming off her hands and knees and wrapping up her parachute, Sarah had thrown off her helmet and goggles, unhooked her canopy from her harness, and was opening her gear bag. Packed on top, for immediate access, was her M4A1 assault rifle and a web belt containing pouches of magazines of 5.56 caliber ammunition. Without a word to Zondra, and still in accordance with their plans, she darted across the roof towards the stairway exit. Taking up a position behind a heavy metal box containing some variety of building equipment, she flipped off the safety on her weapon and took aim at the door.
Only a few seconds later, Zondra took her place next to Sarah, identically armed.
The women remained motionless and focused on the door for a full ten minutes. By that point, dawn had passed and the winter sky was glowing with shades of rose and peach. It was promising to be a clear sunny day, with the temperature mostly in the 50's. Once the allotted ten minutes had passed, Sarah touched her watch and said, "No reaction from inside. We seem to have made it in without detection."
"Roger that," said Jorge. "Good news."
"Ok, Zee," said Sarah. "Go get yourself squared away. I'll keep the door covered. Once you're done, we'll switch."
"Right," said Zondra.
Immediately, Zondra turned from the door and went back to her gear bag. Standing next to the bag, she stripped off the parachute harness and gray coveralls and other skydiving gear. Beneath the exterior coverall were a set of black combat fatigues and a heavy black sweater. She decided to leave her gloves on. She donned and tightened a rappelling harness and combat webgear on top of it and the sweater. There was a pistol at her right hip and pouches of ammo magazines for both her weapons together with other miscellaneous weaponry and tools draped around her body.
She slung her rifle over her shoulder and picked up the heavy cylinder of compressed gas from the bag. She carried it to the fresh air intake vent of the building's central HVAC system and laid it carefully on its side. Next, she carried a large plastic tarp and a handful of small weights and left them on the roof next to the cylinder. Returning to her gear bag, she removed a small black backpack and set it aside. Finally, she took from the bag a two hundred foot long coil of rope with a carabiner connected at one end. She took the rope to the side of the building which lacked a ground floor entrance and connected it to a heavy metal pipe near the outer parapet, but left the coil near the pipe. Zondra then packed all her skydiving gear into the empty gear bag and zipped it closed. Once done, she went back to Sarah carrying the black backpack and said, "All set."
"Right," said Sarah, as she slung her weapon over her shoulder and headed back to her own gear bag.
Less than ten minutes later, Sarah had accomplished the same actions which Zondra had previously, although the second cylinder of compressed gas was not accompanied by another tarp and weights. Sarah had left those items in the bag as redundant. They had each carried them, however, in case one of them made it to the roof and the other did not.
Zondra remained on watch at the door, while Sarah sat next to her with her back to the box they were using for cover with her knees drawn up comfortably towards her chest. The light wind whipped a loose strand of hair into her face and she impatiently brushed it back. Sarah looked at her watch and saw that it was just 6:34 AM. Four and a half hours to showtime.
She opened her own black backpack and said, "Want some coffee?"
"Sure," said Zondra, not taking her eyes off the door over her gunsights.
Sarah opened the thermos she took from her backpack and poured a cup of coffee for Zondra. Zondra took the cup and swiveled around to sit next to Sarah, who kneeled up to take Zondra's position watching the door. It was the only access to the roof in the event they were to be discovered and part of the plan was to defend the roof against assault from that avenue. They would be ridiculously outnumbered and outgunned in a fight though. The ropes and rappelling gear were to provide a means of escape if disaster struck and it came to a rooftop firefight.
The lady spies sat and took turns drinking coffee from the one cup.
More than an hour passed before Sarah said, "I have to pee."
"Too much coffee," nodded Zondra, keeping an eye on the door.
"No such thing at this hour," said Sarah "Gonna be a hassle with all the gear and the harness, though."
"Yeah," agreed Zondra. "Go for me too, as long as you're making the effort."
With a chuckle, Sarah moved over to conceal herself behind one of the larger pieces of equipment. She was back eventually.
Another hour later, Sarah said, "Hungry. I'm getting out my sandwich."
"What did you get?" asked Zondra.
"Turkey and brie," said Sarah. They had arranged for food from the Studio's commissary beforehand, knowing that, if the plan worked, they would have several hours of downtime on the roof. "How about you?"
"Tuna salad," said Zondra, reaching into her own bag for her sandwich.
"Oh, no, girlfriend. I've warned you about the tuna salad," said Sarah with a concerned expression.
"I'm living on the edge," said Zondra.
"You'll be living on the edge of the toilet before too long," said Sarah, shaking her head.
"I prefer to be an optimist," said Zondra. "You got any chips?"
"Here you go," said Sarah, handing her a bag of Ruffles.
It was another couple of hours later when they checked their watches and nodded to each other. It was a few minutes before 11:00 AM.
Sarah touched her watch and said, "Jorge, we're releasing the gas in a couple."
"Roger," said Jorge. "Right on time."
Leaving the door unattended, they moved to the fresh air intake for the building's HVAC system. Opening the valves on both cylinders, the lady spies placed them near the intake, covered the whole thing with the tarp and laid the weights along the edge of the tarp, confining the gas to the area around the intake.
That accomplished, they went back to watching the door over their gunsights and waited for any reaction from inside the Fulcrum building.
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A/N2: There are experienced skydivers, with thousands of jumps, who have never had to deploy their reserve chute a single time. They claim that the most dangerous part of skydiving is the landing. The ground is hard and comes up fast. From personal experience, I can attest to the veracity of that truism. What's that joke? The fall doesn't kill you, it's the sudden stop at the end.
A/N3: Sarah's plan's in motion. What do you guys think?