Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“How does it work?” Joe asked.

“Superconducting magnets along the barrel and a high- potency battery pack. Pull the trigger and they accelerate the projectiles to a thousand feet per second in the blink of an eye.”

Joe nodded approvingly.

“Why are there two triggers?” Kurt asked.

“Since they are already equipped with a substantial power source, someone got the great idea to add a long-range Taser to the bottom rail. The lower trigger fires it. You can hit someone accurately up to fifty feet or simply hold the tip of the barrel against them and give a half pull to zap them manually.”

“So we don’t have to kill everything we see,” Joe mentioned.

The sergeant nodded.

A red light went on at the far end of the aircraft and they could feel the plane begin a rather steep descent.

“We’re approaching the drop zone,” the sergeant said. “Any questions?”

Joe raised a hand. “You said ‘drop zone,’ but we don’t seem to have parachutes.”

“You won’t need them,” Connors said. “You’ll be going out in the Hummer.”

“Does it fly?”

“Nope. But it can be put on a pallet and tossed out the back from an altitude of no more than twenty feet.”

Joe turned to Kurt. “You said we’d be using parachutes.”

“LAPES,” Kurt said. “Low altitude parachute extraction system. It’s all right there in the acronym.”

Joe shrugged, secured his weapon, and made his way toward the Humvee. “Why not? I’m open to new things, different experiences, novel ways of risking my neck in the name of science, why not try driving an SUV off an airplane moving at a hundred fifty knots? Somebody’s got to do it.”

Both Kurt and the sergeant laughed.

“Good luck,” Connors said.

Kurt nodded. “You want us to bring you anything back? T-shirt? Postcard? Puka shell necklace?”

The sergeant grinned. “I prefer a shot glass that says ‘We came, we saw, we conquered.’ ”

Kurt returned the smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Thirty minutes later, Kurt and Joe sat belted into a Humvee that was secured to a sturdy wooden pallet and a harness that would deploy two large drogue chutes. Joe was harnessed in at the wheel, though he wouldn’t actually do any driving during the insertion, as the danger of the wheels turning sideways and getting ripped off was far too great. Instead, the Humvee would use the pallet beneath it as a sled while the parachutes trailing out behind them would both slow the vehicle down and keep them from nosing over.

Kurt made one last check of his equipment. Out of an abundance of caution and a certain sense of nostalgia, he had added an additional weapon to his arsenal. Hidden in his pack was the Colt revolver that Mohammed El Din had given him. He doubted he’d need it. But if the recent past had taught them anything, it was that modern technology was vulnerable to tampering or failing at precisely the wrong moment. That being the case, having a backup weapon from a bygone era didn’t sound all that bad. He kept it zipped up in a front pocket that ran diagonally across the vest.

For less logical reasons he’d brought the pictures of Calista’s family and the lifeboat they attempted to escape in. After searching for the truth so painfully himself, some part of him thought she deserved to know hers.

The light on the wall turned yellow and Sergeant Connors pressed a switch that opened the ramp at the tail end of the C-17.

They were descending through two thousand feet into utter darkness. The sea was below them for a moment and then sand as they flew over the beach.

As they flew lower and slower, the howl of the airstream whipping past the open door took on a different tone. With full flaps and its gear down, the C-17 could move incredibly slowly for such a huge machine. But the wake turbulence caused by flying at a high angle of attack in such a “dirty” condition created a buffeting and whining sound that seemed to trail behind the plane as if banshees were chasing it.

On the map, the drop zone was labeled Antsalova Airport. Joe seemed concerned about that. “You think the people at this airport are going to be surprised when we drop out of the sky and drive off without stopping at customs?”

“It’s not much of an airport,” Kurt said, “more of a dirt strip with a grass hut at the far end. We’re only coming here because we need a flat surface to slide on. But there are no planes. No rental-car desks. No white courtesy telephone.”

“No Admirals Club?” Joe said, looking perturbed. Kurt shook his head. “Sorry, buddy.”