Don Pendleton - Perilous Cargo

“We’ve got facing wind speeds of sixty-plus miles an hour, and we’re icing over, sir,” he said. “The flaps are...”

Bolan’s stomach rolled as the descent became sharper, then leveled slightly. “The flaps are what?” he shouted.

“We’ve got ice warnings in the wing system. Having trouble maintaining altitude and direction.”

“Damn it,” Bolan muttered. “Keep us in the air, Major!”

“We’re trying, sir,” he said.

“Get your chute ready,” he told Nischal. The plane shuddered once more, paused and then began to descend again.

“I’m all set,” she told him.

Bolan checked the altimeter again. Twenty-eight thousand feet. “We’re out of time. We’ve got to go right now,” he said, punching the button that would open the cargo bay doors.

“We’re iced over completely!” the pilot yelled. “Jump clear, jump clear!”

The doors opened and immediately the wind and pelting ice slashed at them. Bolan shoved the container forward, trying to push it into the opening. Nischal leaned down to try and help, then stumbled in the gusting winds.

That was all it took for the icy air to snatch her. She rolled toward the opening and Bolan tried to grab her but missed.

“We’re going down!” the major yelled. “Get clear! We’ll hold it as long as we can!”

Nischal continued the slide and Bolan saw her reach for and miss grabbing one of the support struts on the ramp. She spun around again and her chute snagged on a piece of metal sticking up from the very edge of the ramp. He couldn’t hear it over the howling wind, but he could imagine the tearing sound it made.

Her eyes met his and he knew there was nothing for it. He jumped, trying to catch her, but by then she’d torn free and begun the long fall to the ground. Bolan glimpsed the ragged remains of her parachute, still hung up on the cargo bay doors and, at the edge of the ramp, their equipment. Then he, too, was free-falling into the storm.

The cold was breathtaking and his goggles were frosting over. He straightened his body, trying to pierce the darkness of the night and the storm. Long seconds passed that felt like minutes. Finally, he saw it: the telltale flicker of her shoulder light. Bolan dived straight at her, almost missed, and for a long minute, they were tumbling through the sky together.

“Hold still, damn it!” he yelled, and she wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him, locking herself in place. Bolan saw that they were at eight thousand feet, and with no clue of their location, he pulled the cord on his chute, praying like hell they didn’t come down in a crevice, an avalanche zone or, worse yet, right in the middle of Nyalam, where the guards would surely have some interesting questions for them.

Nischal was trembling against him as they fell through the storm. “We’re okay,” he said into her ear. “It’s going to be all right.”

She tipped her head back and he saw that she wasn’t crying. She was laughing.

“You think this is funny?” he roared.

She didn’t reply, but he could tell by the shaking of her shoulders that her mirth continued. Bolan didn’t find it funny at all, but then he realized their fears about things going wrong had already come true, and he smiled wryly.

Twisting in the sky, he tried to see if he could spot the jet. In the poor conditions, it was nearly impossible to see anything. Lightning flashed all around them, a better guide to the ground than the altimeter on his wrist. He caught one last glimpse of the tail of the plane heading to the ground to the south. He shifted his grip on Nischal and reached for the flare gun tucked on the outside of his pack. He shot the red flare downward. The light was initially swallowed by the flurries of snow, then he saw it hit, flickering faintly as it bobbed in some body of water below them.

Bolan grabbed the steering toggle on his chute, bringing the canopy in on one side to pull them closer to shore.

“I hope you can swim,” he yelled.

“Why?”

Nischal craned her head just as they splashed into the water. The gear from the HALO jump weighed them down, dragging them into murky depths. Bolan broke the surface, gasping for air. The water was frigid, almost cold enough to freeze over.

He’d lost his hold on Nischal when they’d hit, and he urgently searched the darkness for signs of her. The red flare floating thirty feet away was the only light. Bolan pulled a blade from his boot and cut the chute free, shoving it as far away as he could. He took a deep breath and dived under. The blackness engulfed him, but he pushed farther, deeper. He reached out for another stroke to take him deeper still and connected with what was left of Nischal’s pack.

Grasping it tightly in his fist, Bolan kicked for the surface, feeling her weight still connected to the pack. When he reached the surface he pushed onto his back, pulling Nischal onto his chest. She coughed and sputtered as he swam, moving them closer to shore. After ten minutes, the bank was only ten yards out and Bolan felt like his legs were on fire. Both of them were shivering uncontrollably. Nischal began to kick, as well, and they finally made landfall. They hit the shore and the snap of the cold air hit them like a fist. Their clothing began to freeze almost immediately.

“We have to get out of these wet clothes or we’ll freeze to death,” Nischal sputtered through her chattering teeth.

Bolan pulled a high-intensity flashlight from his sodden pack and aimed it around the shoreline. “Look,” he said, pointing. “There’s a small cave or at least a place with some cover over there. Let’s move.”

They broke into a ragged jog, stripping their clothes the minute they were out of the wind. Bolan dug through his pack and found two T-shirts that weren’t perfectly dry but were an excellent improvement over their current clothing situation. He didn’t pause as he handed Nischal one of the shirts and pulled the other over his head. He also had extra pants in the bag, but they were too wet to bother with. Everything would need to be wrung out and dried once they had a fire going.

Reaching the cave, he set to the task, silently thankful that he’d managed to keep at least his personal gear together. There was enough scrub brush in the area that it took little time to get a decent base fire going. As he built it up, Nischal huddled closer to it, trying to absorb the warmth. Bolan sat next to the fire and pulled her close, rubbing her arms and legs.

“Normally, I’d object,” she muttered.

“Normally, I wouldn’t offer. But we’re each other’s best defense against hypothermia.”

Her shivering began to ease and she leaned forward to rub her hands close to the flames. Bolan didn’t move, watching the firelight flicker on the shadows in the cave. He studied the woman in front of him, curious about her, how they had landed together. There were few people in the world that he felt comfortable with, but her light banter had put him at ease. He noticed a small cut on her arm.

“We should dress that.”

She glanced at the small wound.

“I didn’t even realize I had it.”

Bolan fished a small first-aid kit from his pack.

“Well, you’ve managed to pull out clothes and medicine from that bag... You don’t happen to have a communications array, extra weapons and food socked away in there, do you?”

“No,” he said. “But at first light, we’ll do an inventory and see what we have left to work with.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have much. I think most of my personal gear is in the bottom of the lake, and the rest is wherever the plane went down.”

“I bet we’ll be able to find enough to get started, and by then our clothes will be dry, at least. Once we’ve got a handle on that, we’ll go to the crash site.”