Savage Son (James Reece #3) - Jack Carr Page 0,119

chute unfurled the nylon canopy and violently arrested Reece’s free fall. After confirming that his canopy had deployed as designed, he scanned for the flashing strobes that indicated the position of his teammates. One by one he counted them until he’d confirmed that the other jumpers’ chutes had opened. They didn’t bunch up, to avoid creating a radar signature. Instead they switched off their IR strobes and flew in a loose formation behind Farkus’s lead, twenty-five yards apart. After the exhilaration of free fall and the dread of ensuring everyone was accounted for, Reece concentrated on maintaining his position behind Devan. He could see Edo’s head and tail. The dog was strapped into Devan’s harness, and Reece couldn’t help but wonder what the canine was thinking as he descended from the heavens.

As they glided toward the objective, Reece made tiny course corrections by reaching up and pulling on the parachute’s toggles, their forward momentum carrying them deeper into Russian territory and toward their target. Despite the cold, it was quite peaceful, the only sound the wind howling at their backs. Reece looked down and, below his boots, saw only darkness.

According to the ATAK screen, they were on course and maintaining sufficient speed and altitude to make it to Medny Island with a bit of air to spare. His oxygen appeared to be flowing normally and his mind was clear and alert. All Reece had to do for now was follow the leader. So far, despite the long odds, everything had gone according to plan, but as Reece knew all too well, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

CHAPTER 70

40,000 feet above the Bering Sea

IT TOOK ALL OF Liz Riley’s significant body strength to wrench the aft baggage door into the closed position. Thankfully, when she wasn’t flying airplanes, she was moving large stacks of iron in the weight room. She knelt in the baggage area in silent prayer, asking God to watch over the avenging angels who had just leapt into the darkness. After a few moments of quiet reflection, she unhooked the safety line she’d rigged to prevent her falling into the abyss and made her way back to the cockpit. The captain immediately began the repressurization of the cabin and cranked the onboard climate control to its highest heat setting. Fifteen minutes later, both pilots were able to take off their oxygen masks and lose a couple of layers.

Making a hard turn off their flight plan was bound to raise a few eyebrows, so they carefully drifted back toward the center of their course and resumed their airspeed and altitude. They’d continue a full forty minutes past the drop, at which point Liz would call Anchorage Oceanic Control and report cabin pressurization issues. She would request a rerouting to Adak, where they could land and have the system inspected by maintenance crews. That would put them as close as possible to their emergency rendezvous location without arousing too much suspicion.

As the jet roared through the night sky, Liz couldn’t help but return to her faith. She whispered a quiet prayer to the patron saint of paratroopers: “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend them in battle, be their protection against the enemy…”

* * *

Medny Island, Russia

Aleksandr Zharkov was in the bunker’s command center, where the weapon was controlled. Three uniformed operators manned the computer stations, each of them wearing headsets with lip microphones. One of them was in contact with the nation’s air defense network, which operated early warning systems that dated back to the Soviet era. A jet traveling nearby had strayed a few miles from its course, putting it at the limit of the Air Defense Identification Zone. It was time. Grant Larue, his SVR-placed illegal, never failed to provide the highest-quality intelligence. He was running his own source inside the White House, the American president’s own chief of staff, who believed he was passing information to a trusted friend who had a high-paying job waiting for him when he left politics. A useful idiot…

The weapon system on this island was the largest of its kind in the world and, so far, the tests had been extremely successful. The underground generators, capacitors, and dish emitters formed the basis of a directional EMP, designed to render the technological advantages of modern armies useless in an instant. An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse, a short burst of invisible energy. EMPs can be caused by coronal mass ejections from the sun, lightning, or nuclear detonations, varying significantly in size and