flooring. Both sprayed silicone over the rip-cord cable, the closing pin, and the closing loop. The next steps were rote. The black canopy was made of zero-porosity nylon, and Janson rolled his body over the loose drapes, pressing as much air out of it as he could. He straightened the stabilizer lines and toggles, and folded the flattened canopy to ensure an in-sequence opening, taking care that the rigging was on the outside of the folds. Finally, he bunched it into the black mesh pack, squeezing the remaining air through the edge stitching before slipping a clasp through the grommet.
Katsaris, with his nimble fingers, was finished in half the time.
He turned to Janson. "Let's you and I do a quick weapons inspection," he said. "Pay a visit to the junk shop."
The premise of a team was that anybody would accept personal risk to reduce a risk borne by another. An ethos of equality was crucial; any sense of favoritism was destructive to it. When they met as a group, Janson therefore dealt with the men in a tone that was at once brusque and friendly. But even within elites, there were elites - and even within the innermost circles of excellence, there is the chosen one, the golden boy.
Janson had once been that person, almost three decades earlier. Just a few weeks after he'd arrived at the SEAL training camp at Little Creek, Alan Demarest had picked him out from the enlisted trainees, had him transferred to ever more elite combat teams, ever more grueling regimens of combat drills. The training groups got smaller and smaller - more and more of his peers dropped out, defeated by the punishing schedule of exercises - until, by the end, Demarest isolated him for intensive sessions of one-on-one training.
Your fingers are weapons! Never encumber them. Half a warrior's intelligence is found in his hands.
Don't squeeze the vein, squeeze the nerve! Memorize the nerve points until you can find them with your fingers, not your eyes. Don't look - feel!
I spotted your helmet above that ridgeline. You're fucking dead!
Can't see a way out? Take the time to see things differently. See the two white swans instead of the one black one. See the slice of pie instead of the pie with the slice missing. Flip the Necker cube outward instead of inward. Master the gestalt, baby. It will make you free. Firepower by itself won't do it. You've got to think your way out of this one.
Yes! Turn your hunter into your prey! You've got it!
And thus did one legendary warrior create another. When Janson had first met Theo Katsaris, years back, he knew - he simply knew, the way Demarest must have known about him.
Yet even if Katsaris had not been so extraordinarily gifted, operational equality could not supplant the bonds of loyalty forged over time, and Janson's friendship with him went far beyond the context of the commando mission. It was a thing compounded of shared memories and mutual indebtedness. They would talk to each other with urgency and candor, but they would do so away from the others.
The two made their way to the far end of the warehouse, where Foundation-supplied weaponry had been stowed earlier that day. Katsaris quickly disassembled and reassembled selected handguns and long-barreled weapons, making sure that the parts were oiled, but not too heavily - combusted lubricant could create plumes of smoke, visual or olfactory giveaways. Imperfectly plumbed barrels could overheat too quickly. Hinges should be tight, but not too tight. Magazines should slide readily into place, but with just enough resistance to ensure they would be held securely. Collapsible stocks, like those of the MP5Ks, should collapse with ease.
"You know why I'm doing this," Janson said.
"Two reasons," Katsaris said. "Arguably the two reasons you shouldn't be doing this." Katsaris's hands moved as he spoke, the clicking and snapping of gunmetal providing a rhythmic counterpoint to his conversation.
"And in my position?"
"I'd do exactly the same," Katsaris said. He raised the disassembled chamber pocket of a carbine to his nose, scenting evidence of excessive lubrication. "The military wing of the Harakat al-Muqaama al-Islamiya never had a good reputation for returning stolen property." Stolen property. Hostages especially those suspected of being assets of American intelligence. Seven years ago, in Baaqlina, Lebanon, Janson had been captured by the extremist group; his captors initially thought they had taken an American businessman, accepting his legend at face value, but the flurry of high-level reactions fueled other suspicions. Negotiations quickly went off