Clive Cussler - Skeleton Coast

Linc’s boots skidded in the talcumlike grit that coated the flat roof so Pulaski now dangled over the edge of the building.

Mike wrapped his arms around Linc’s waist, digging in his heels while Eddie braced himself at the front of the bike and pushed with every ounce of strength. They checked Ski’s inexorable slide for a moment but the forces in play were too great. In just a few seconds, Eddie was only a foot from falling off the roof.

He made a snap decision. He whipped a knife that had hung inverted on his combat harness into the air, allowing Ski to see it and know what he was about to do, and then touched its edge to the tether. Under so much tension the cord separated with the slightest stroke.

Once more able to control his chute Ski dumped air and spiraled down the side of the prison, landing hard in the sand piled against the foundation. He lay stunned for a moment as the chute billowed and whipped across the desert floor, relieved that he hadn’t blown the mission. And then he saw the stake thrust into the ground thirty feet in front of him. On top of the wooden post was a piece of solid-state electronics, and he knew immediately it was a motion sensor pointing outward to warn the kidnappers of anyone approaching the prison. The nylon canopy was already under the sensor and a slight breeze would inflate it and trigger the alarm.

He grabbed at the riser lines and frantically pulled the chute toward him in a hand-over-hand motion that puddled nylon behind him. But it seemed no matter how much material he gathered he still couldn’t get the section under the sensor to withdraw.

The wind shifted, and like a child’s balloon, the parachute began to fill with air. Ski leapt to his feet and raced for the sensor, diving headlong so his body flattened the chute just before it blocked the motion sensor’s electronic eye. He slid on the slick nylon and would have crashed right into the pole if he hadn’t snapped his body over. He ended up on his back, his hip mere inches from the sensor.

Ski could see three dark silhouettes peering over the top of the fortress and, careful so as not to trigger the alarm, he gave them a thumbs-up.

He carefully retrieved his chute, bundling it in his arms like so much laundry. At the base of the prison he used the molded plastic insert from the pack to bury his entire rig in a shallow hole. He noticed that there were vent holes along the bottom of the foundation and recalled from the mission briefing that there were a series of tunnels under the prison designed so the prevailing wind would scour away waste from the latrines. When he finished with his chute he climbed the rope that Linc had unfurled.

“Well,that was fun,” he whispered when he reached the top and was helped over by Eddie and Mike.

“No harm, no foul,” Eddie replied.

For the next two hours they watched the prison from various points along its roof. The guards were dark-skinned, which surprised them. They’d expected the environmentally motivated kidnappers to be white Europeans or Americans, but they didn’t discount the idea that the kidnappers had hired African mercenaries. Two of the men stationed at the gate circled the perimeter every hour on the hour while the third guarded the open portal until their return.

The rigidity of their routine was a mark of unprofessionalism that boded well for the Corporation hostage rescue team. One of the men even smoked during his patrol, ruining his night vision when he lit the cigarette with a match and then giving away his location with the butt’s glowing ember.

Eddie made the decision to wait until after the guards performed their next patrol to make their move.

Linc would lower the bikes to the ground while he, Mike, and Ski scouted the interior of the prison. Their hope was to find Geoffrey Merrick and Susan Donleavy without alerting the kidnappers to their presence, but if they were discovered they were more than prepared.

CABRILLO would have preferred to wait until daylight to pursue the caravan, but the temperature would top out at well over a hundred and twenty degrees and the sun would leach every pint of sweat his body could produce. Delay simply wasn’t an option.

After checking in with Max Hanley using his sat phone, Juan made his preparations. He took off his boot and sock so he could retrieve the block of C-4 plastic explosive from the sole of his artificial leg. He then positioned the hard insert from his pack on the ground and stood on it, working the plate into the sand to find its center of gravity.

Satisfied he had the right position, he removed his leg and molded some of the plastic explosive to the bottom of the foot. He flicked a lighter against the soft explosive, holding the flame until it began to burn.

It was a trick Max had taught him. In Vietnam they would use C-4 from clay-more mines to cook their food.

He set the foot into the plate exactly where he wanted it and pushed down with all his weight. Quickly the two pieces of plastic turned waxen and then molten as they fused together, the seam between the two becoming indistinguishable. He dumped sand onto the plate to extinguish the last of the flames and waited ten minutes for it to cool. Juan grabbed the leading edge of the plate and slammed the attached leg into the ground as hard as he could. His makeshift solder held. To further reinforce the weld he shot four holes through the plastic plate with his Glock and bound the prosthesis with a length of riser line he’d cut from the parachute.

Juan gathered up his meager possessions, abandoning some of the ammunition to save on weight, and clambered to the top of the highest nearby dune. He laid the chute out on the ground and tied the riser to the shoulder straps of his combat harness, making sure that he’d adjusted the toggles so he could control the parachute. He sat and secured the leg onto his stump, checking his balance on the plate.

The wind continued to blow at his back, gusting up to thirty miles per hour at times and never dropping below twenty. From the top of the dune he could see the tracks left by the vehicles vanish into the darkness, but there was enough ambient light that he wouldn’t need his night vision gear.

He clumsily walked to the edge of the dune and, without a second thought, he launched himself down its face like a snowboarder racing for Olympic gold. The chute slithered after him as the plate glided over the soft sand. With his speed building, air was forced into the chute until it reached a tipping point and the canopy snapped open. The motion spun Juan around so that the parachute was in front of him, held taut by the wind. The power of the breeze overcame his gravity slide and Cabrillo was suddenly para-skiing.

He leaned back against the chute, tweaking his center of gravity as he hurtled down the dune. When he hit the bottom he flexed his knees to absorb the shock and continued to sail across the desert, borne along by the wind. And when the breeze shifted slightly and took him off the caravan’s trail he was able to tack like a schooner by pulling on the toggles, never getting more than a half mile from the ruts.

Created as an extreme sport in places like Vermont and Colorado, para-skiing involved a snowboard or skis and a chute much smaller than Cabrillo’s. The sand offered more resistance than snow; however, his large ram air reserve chute shot him across the desert at speeds adrenaline junkies could only dream of.

He fell a couple of times during the first fifteen minutes as he learned to control his rhythm, but after that he rocketed along, carving a serpentine course up and down the towering dunes while behind him he left a shallow furrow like the path of a sidewinder.

THE guards completed their circuit of the Devil’s Oasis ten minutes after midnight. The great door closed and the sound of a bar being lowered into place carried to the men huddled on the roof. They gave the guards ten more minutes to settle down before swinging into action.