ADAM HALL - The Pekin Target

No sensation of falling, just the slam of the air and then the diminishing sound of the plane.

One.

The body turning. Moonlight against the retinae.

Two.

Turning and tilting now. Two dark shapes in the dome of night, the plane and a small blob, de Haven.

Three. And pull.

Pilot chute crackling, and the hiss of the lines.

In Seoul I'd been a hundred miles away from Tung Kuo-feng. Now, if it were daylight and I used the field-glasses, I'd be close enough to see him, to see his face.

Access.

Main canopy deploying, black nylon against the black sky and the harness jolting and the windrush gone off. Falling through the dark, knees and feet swinging straight up into the moonlight, and then down. Even in the dark, if he used his field-glasses, he would see me now, a cloud drifting against the wink of stars, no bigger than a man's hand.

He would have all the time he needed. Things would be easier for him than at a shooting gallery.

Li fei, what did they ask you?

Everything slow now, and no wind. Night and silence, and the wink of moonlight on the metal grip of the toggle above me and to the left with the girl sixty feet away above my left shoulder.

What did you tell them?

The cold pressed at my face. When I looked down I could see mist shrouding the mountains in white. A blind landing could be a killer, but we'd known that.

Anything?

May you rest, anyway, in peace, with your cinnamon eyes so modest under their smoky lashes, touched there by the artist with a stub of charcoal as his signature to perfection.

Hanging in the sky, like something caught up on a web and powerless to move in any direction. Loss of identity: neither fish nor fowl, with arms but nothing to hold, no ground to tread. A target, perhaps if you must have a name.

A white sea below, flooding from horizon to horizon, with dark islands of rock, and suddenly close. I reached up to the toggles, rehearsing. There was no sign of the girl; she must be directly above the black spread of my canopy.

The mist smelled wet, and had the bitter taint of woodsmoke in it; there were three villages below, on the periphery of our main target area.

The mist rushed white, swirling as I turned, with the dark peaks thrusting upwards and tearing the vapours into shreds along the valleys; I pulled the toggles and started a swinging action, turning slowly to face the moon and then looking down; if there were lights burning at the monastery I should see them by this time unless the mist were too thick; it was patchy now and breaking up, and I saw a mountain peak at eye level and watched its dark cone rising against the stars, blotting them out one by one.

At any second now I was going to hit rock.

Dropping through mist, under the milky light of the moon.

I spat twice, trying to find the wind's direction so that I could turn my back to it for the landing; but Newcomb had been right: there was no wind.

Falling fast now: I could see crags and a dark cliff face through a gap in the mist as it swirled around me and filled the canopy, spilling away in the moonlight; falling faster and faster but at the same speed: it was just that I could see more of the environment and could orientate visually. Turning slowly away from the moon's white haze, the moon itself hidden by the canopy, turning and swinging and looking downwards now, watching for the ground, if there were any ground and not just a cliff or a crag or an outcrop waiting to break my back; falling, falling fast with the mist clouding white and then suddenly dissolving, clouding again, the ground rushing up, then a great rockface sliding against the sky and the lines trembling as the canopy caught against something, tugging and swinging me full circle and back again, dizzying, look down, keep on looking down, everything

dark now, the mist gone and nothing below me but black rock, look down, then suddenly the sense of nearness to great mass, and I dragged myself up the straps to soften the impact and saw the rocky floor and doubled my legs and pitched forward and flung out my hands, kicking at the rubble and feeling a tug on the lines as the canopy dragged and caught and jerked me upright before it broke clear and I went pitching down again, sliding on all fours across the rocks until everything stopped.

I thumped the release and stepped out of the harness and looked up to find the girl; then I heard her cry out and saw the huge shape of her canopy billowing against the sky before it reached the cliff and spilled air and she span and struck the rockface and bounced away again, swinging in a wild arc as the nylon tore free and dropped her small figure beyond the edge of a ridge. I began stumbling forward, pulling the radio from the kit strapped to my waist and hitting the transmit button.

Eagle to Jade One. Eagle to Jade One.

I kept moving forward, checking the straps securing the rest of the equipment; if she were still alive she'd need first aid.

The set put out a rush of static, then cleared as I adjusted the squelch. Come in, Eagle.

Ferris.

Eagle to Jade One. Q down and safe. DH injured. Will report.

He acknowledged and I shut the thing off and started running, my boots sliding over loose gravel and sending it scattering. Even with the noise I was making I was aware of the great silence around me, and the weight of the mountains that sprawled here in the shadow of night. I crossed the ridge and fell twice, loosening rock and hearing it tumble as small stones sent their echoes crackling against the hard face of the cliff. Three or four times I called her name softly, but heard no answer. The light was better here; the moon had found a break in the mist and the rocks glittered like jet. I called again, but there was only the massive silence pressing down.

I let myself drop again, sliding through a crevice and finding flat ground at the edge of a dark pool that had no reflection; and the eye-brain interchange of data and association took an instant to inform me that the pool wasn't water but her black canopy.

"Hello, Clive."

She was on the ground, face up, just lying there. I bent over her, freeing the buckles of the medical kit. "What's the damage?"

"Broken leg. Don't touch it; it's beautifully numb."

"Are you bleeding?"

"Not much, I think. Don't worry. I thought I saw a light, when I was coming down, over to the east — did you see it too?"

"No." I was touching her flying suit lightly, feeling for damage and odd angles, and also letting her know that she wasn't alone; sometimes the voice isn't enough. Blood glinted along her left leg, where the suit had been ripped away. "I'm going to clean you up a bit; it'll sting. Try to —»

"Clive," she said, "listen to me. And don't do anything. I think I saw a light from the direction of the monastery; then either it went out or the mist hid it again. You know what I'm saying. They might have seen us."

I soaked one of the cotton-wool pads in the ether. There was no blood pooling anywhere; it was just oozing from the surface capillaries of the abrasion. "We knew there was the risk," I told her.

"Okay. Clive, please listen and do what I ask. Put that stuff away. It stinks." Her voice was light but emphatic, and I stopped what I was doing. "I've got a broken leg, and there is absolutely no way you can get me out of here: no way. When the pain starts I'll need morphine — I'm no bloody hero; and that would mean carrying me across these mountains to a goat track, and finding a goatherd and asking him to fetch a horse and cart from the nearest village, and waiting till he did that; and there'd be the trip to the village, in a bumpy cart. Clive, do you know your paramedic stuff? Do you know what state my leg would be in by then? After two days, maybe three days?" She put her hand on my arm. "There's just one other little thing. When daylight comes we'll be in sight of the monastery, or if we're not, we'd move into sight of it a dozen times on the trek to the goat track, unavoidably. Are you starting to get any kind of message?"