and I will.”
Doc spoke. “Clear the line.”
Wally stepped back in. “Roger. LB, monitor.”
“Will do. Good luck, boys.”
Wally’s canopy kicked him left, tugged on a gust eddied by the great ship passing beneath him. He adjusted, staying on course across the freighter’s midsection. His altimeter read six hundred feet. Wally subtracted ninety feet; the LZ stood at the top of the superstructure, nine stories above the water.
The NVGs gave Wally his first clean look at the Somali on the port wing. The pirate faced into the headwind, elbows on the rail. The pirate looked thin, with arms and shoulders typical of an underfed villager in Africa. His blouse ruffled around him; a scarf covered his head. Wally was glad for the glimmering image of the man, just an amplified light signature, no memorable features.
He cleared Valnea below and flew another hundred meters past her port beam. Behind him, the freighter kept pushing ahead at twelve knots.
“Doc.”
“Go.”
“Ready?”
“Get ’em, Wally.”
Wally hauled on his left toggle. The ram chute responded, banking him counterclockwise. On the left harness strap across his chest, he unclipped the Stevens lanyard. This would stop his reserve chute from deploying when he landed, because he was going to hit the LZ without his main canopy. Last, Wally flicked off the safety on his M4.
Completing the turn, he shortened the distance to the Valnea. A hundred yards out and two hundred yards up, Wally braked to let the freighter slide completely by. The NVGs highlighted the guards on the port rail just as LB described, with one exception: below the superstructure, where LB claimed he’d taken out a Somali, there now stood two green figures.
Wally had thirty more seconds under canopy before he either landed on the ship or splashed. The pirate on the port wing made no movement to show he was aware of Wally hanging in space, circling in behind him.
The ship was now four hundred feet below. Wally put on speed, zooming down from behind, chasing her. Accelerating, he bled more altitude. The freighter whipped up a five-knot head-wind as LB had predicted, mingling with the ten-knot crosswind out of the southwest. Diesel exhaust and a wave of heat rising from the smokestack washed across Wally’s glide path, fouling and stirring the air. The freighter ran away from him at twelve knots. Wally worked the chute’s airfoil for all the velocity and lift he could squeeze from it, holding his line behind the freighter.
He had only moments left. Quincy, two hundred feet above him, was lining up on the same track. The Somali in Wally’s goggles kept his focus forward.
Wally drifted down, coming level with the belching smokestack. Without warning, hot exhaust smacked his chute, sheering him left, away from his target.
With no time to spare, he yanked hard on the right toggle, correcting so quickly the chute stalled. The violent maneuver bucked him outside the wing’s railing, over the dark water. The approach was going wrong. Twenty feet out and ten feet above the wing, Wally was close enough now to shoot the guard but couldn’t spare his hands from the toggles; he might manage to take out the Somali just before slamming into the side of the ship—not an option. His nerves spiked. Wally clamped his teeth, stuck with the plan, and fought the chute in its final seconds.
He flew the last ten feet forward as fast as the chute could carry him. A southwest gust gave him one last jolt of lift. The canopy loomed above the rail. The pirate tilted back his head to catch the sudden dark whoosh above him. Instead of sneaking up on the guard from behind, Wally by accident and fortune swooped in from the side. His boot had a clean shot at the pirate’s temple.
He cocked his leg to time the kick. The canopy swept him down and in, fast. Wally flared the chute, hitting the brakes. The tip of his boot struck dead in the center of the pirate’s head scarf. The man was bowled over, buckling to a heap on the deck.
Wally sailed over the flattened pirate, reaching back for the handle of the main chute cutaway. He yanked out the pillow grip. Instantly, the long lines separated from the container, the toggles beside his shoulders sprang away. Wally dropped the last few feet to the floor, spreading his legs to straddle the pirate, a final flourish. Behind him, the freed canopy, snared on the breeze, blew across the wing’s rail, tumbling into what he hoped was