Against the Clock (28 page)

21:36:28

Director Zelig walked up the gangway ladder briskly. He liked his movements to be fast, bullish, severe. To be perceived in any other way was a sign of mediocrity and weakness. And he was anything but mediocre or weak.

He nodded to the flight attendant at the door, a distinguished military man. His salute was still in mid-motion by the time Zelig passed him and entered the main cabin of the airplane. All conversations ceased. There was an instant silence, as though even the air around them froze in place.

There were two lines of first class seats on either side of the aisle. The first row and the rear rows were taken up by security personnel. The next two rows were for specially screened and chosen members of the press. The remaining five rows were allotted for Director Zelig and his guests.

Zelig broke the silent trance with a brisk wave and short thanks for attending this historic occasion. He looked each guest in the eye, as though intimidating them one by one.

With a grunt, he nodded almost to himself and took his seat. To his left, Agent Lipski was engaged in a quiet discussion on his cell phone and motioned to Director Zelig that he would be interested to hear the outcome of that call.

It annoyed him immensely that he would have to wait for Lipski to conclude the phone call, or that his junior agent would be the one disseminating information to him, but that was the nature of his position; he had to relinquish some control via delegation if he was to successfully rule the international espionage world.

Feigning disinterest, Zelig adjusted his expensive cufflinks, stole another satisfying glance at his Patek Philippe watch, and readied himself for take-off.

He clipped his seatbelt together and pulled the belt taut around his waist. Sitting back, he felt the plane gently moving away from the hangar, taxiing out to the runway.

21:36:28

Shirin tightened the leg strap over her upper left thigh, then the strapping over her upper right thigh. Both were snug and secure. She adjusted each shoulder strap, then fixed the chest strap.

The modified TonySuit Apache Wingsuit was prepped for pre-flight readiness. She had packed the parachute attached to her back herself, as she had overseen the modifications herself to the Wingsuit. She had tried it on and tested it. She had trust in it.

The military was slow to accept the Wingsuit's technology and potential, as was the intelligence world. It took a special kind of person to fly one on a mission, and with early failures, the powerbrokers of operations dismissed them until the technology could be improved to raise percentages of success.

To Shirin, that logic spoke of the meek and worked on the assumption that all agents were created equal. She was not.

She fitted the skydiving helmet in place, adjusted the chinstrap, lifted the visor, and fixed her binoculars out over the airfield again. The plane had not moved.

Shirin checked the gun holster sat her side underneath the wingsuit material, secured the clasps around the grips of both Berettas, and went through a final inventory of the utility bag tied to her waist.

She was ready.

21:40:05

Just under two miles away, the rear tail stabilizer of Director Zelig's plane started to move. From that distance, even the image through the Oberwerk 20x80mm binoculars was useful only to visualize general movement. For Shirin, that was enough.

The airfield was limited in potential with only one runway. It was shared for take-off and for landing. Given the nature of its use tonight, Shirin knew there would be no incoming flights. This location was remote to the point that flight controllers would have little issue with conflicting flight paths.

Once the plane was in line, it would go.

Shirin focused her attention on trying to identify the plane as it rolled out beyond the visual barrier of the hangar. She also needed to know on which side of the runway it would start its run.

The first prop came into view, then the second… It was a de Havilland. She was familiar with it.

Lowering the binoculars, Shirin quickly slipped her feet into the flight suit booties, closed the zips, and latched the magnets. She tested her grip by twisting her feet into the dirt. It was solid.

She pulled up the main suit zipper from foot to neck. Zipped her left arm in, then the right. The suit was flight ready.

Looking through the binoculars again, she could see the plane lining up on the near side of the runway at a constant pace. It would be in position in less than a minute.

Shirin bent down, collected the backpack from the ground, and flung it forward off the edge of the cliff. She wouldn't need it anymore. No matter what happened next, she would never return here. If she failed, she felt better knowing any evidence she may have left behind would be almost impossible to retrieve.

Adjusting the focus slightly, she could see the plane was at the end of the runway, halfway through its final turn. Once it was lined up, she knew it would go. She had to take off before it did. She kept watching it. Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one second,
go!

Shirin tossed the binoculars off the edge, tightened the strap around her right wrist, her left wrist, closed the helmet visor, then took three long, fast strides to the edge of the cliff and jumped.

21:41:28

Time slowed as though the air was flash frozen, Shirin suspended over the edge of an awe-inspiring drop. Her arms were tucked at her sides and slightly behind, her legs neatly together, graceful. And then, the powerful forces of gravity smashed the stillness and sucked her down into the darkness of an endless abyss.

She was falling face first like a torpedo, black and invisible. She extended her arms out and felt her fall slow; then she spread her legs against the Wingsuit's fabric, and felt the webs between her arms and legs catch her weight.

Almost like a parachute opening, her fall seemed arrested, defying gravity.

Dropping her left shoulder slightly, Shirin twisted her torso, pulled taut with her legs, and felt the Wingsuit bank to the left and accelerate forward like a jet plane.

Skirting the edge of the mountain, Shirin calculated she was speeding forward about thirty feet for every ten feet lost in altitude. Knowing her suit, she could max just over two hundred miles per hour if she needed to.

Shirin adjusted her flight path to angle straight toward the left of the airfield. She could see Zelig's plane on the ground, in position for take-off. She knew instinctively she was still too far away.

Pitching her arms farther behind her, she pulled her legs farther apart, tilted her shoulders down and forward, and felt the Wingsuit respond instantly, driving her faster and faster.

The small vibrations of slicing her way through the air did little to distort her sense of sound or sight. Instead, she felt more alert and more aware of every detail around her. The paddock plains below reminded her vaguely of the rice fields she had flown over in the Philippines.

The sound of the accelerating engines winding up for take-off reached her before she was close enough to see the turning propellers. She had thirty seconds before the plane would be at its required acceleration for lift-off.

She was coming up behind the accelerating plane fast. She willed herself to fly faster, adjusted her limbs to maximize forward momentum, and focused her vision on the rear tail stabilizer of the de Havilland. She was 300 feet away, 250 feet, 200, 150 and closing fast.

The seventy-three-foot plane continued to increase its acceleration, with the end of the runway getting progressively closer. Shirin calculated she was screaming through the sky at approximately 190 miles per hour while the plane was still picking up speed, but only needed 165 miles per hour for lift-off. She had to slow down or risk overshooting it.

Moving her arms out and slightly forward, Shirin adjusted her speed.

Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty feet.

Coming up behind the plane, she could feel the turbulence of its 2000-hp engines. She fought to control the stability of her flight the closer she got to the large plane.

Twenty feet. Ten feet.

Shirin could almost reach out and touch the rear tail stabilizer as she passed over it. The slats over each wing were fully deployed. The nose of the de Havilland suddenly lifted off the runway. Its long body followed, pitching at four degrees, five degrees, six degrees…

Coming in quickly directly over the roof of the pilot cabin, Shirin pushed her arms forward, creating a sudden lift, then slowed her speed and tucked her arms and legs together as the main body of the plane rose ten degrees and met her in mid-air.

Shirin connected with the fuselage of the plane with a thud, almost knocking the air out of her lungs. Instantly she lifted her hands up to shoulder height, gripped the super electro-osmotic adhesive plates strapped around her wrists, and engaged the power button with her thumbs.

The adhesive plate of each device clunked onto the fuselage instantly, fusing her to the body of the plane. She had thirty minutes of continuous use for each plate before their power source depleted.

The plane beneath her climbed fifteen degrees, then she felt it free itself of the runway below and push higher into the sky. The pressure of its angle and steep climb pressed her against the cold metal fuselage with such force she found it hard to breath.

There was nothing for her do to but focus on her breathing, on her body staying as one with the main body of the plane, and wait until its aggressive climb was over.

21:42:12

Detective Leeds frowned, an expression etched into his face for many years already. He didn't recognize the patient transferred into the bay, but then again, he didn't expect to.

He wasn't ashamed to admit that he was still shaken from seeing Shirin Reyes and instinctively knowing that whatever he was sucked into involved her.

It was with a feeling of true and total dread that he acknowledged the truth to himself. He didn't have any choice.

The patient had arrived only a few minutes earlier. The nursing staff had fussed over him, increased his pain medication, and hooked him up to several monitoring devices. He didn't particularly understand what they were doing. Didn't really care.

He told the head nurse he needed to question the patient, and was told without compromise he would have to wait. In a way, he was thankful for it. Delaying the inevitable.

21:42:29

Shirin lay flattened against the round curve of the upper fuselage. The force of acceleration and drag tempted the stability of the electro-osmotic plates and the strappings to her wrists, but still they held.

The wind shear assaulted her, whipping and pulling at the fabric of her Wingsuit. She pressed her helmet hard against the metal of the plane's canopy, focusing her mind and body to hold on.

Shirin's arms were extended to full stretch, fixed to the plane via the electro-osmotic suction plates. She braced her left arm, prepared herself, tensed her muscles, and pushed the release button with her thumb.

The pressure on her arm was almost overwhelming, but she was ready for it. All her weight, all the pressure, now battled against her one adhesive plate on her right hand. She waited for it to fail, for her body to be flung from the plane's back, but the plate held firm.

With only one hand securing her, her body started bouncing up and down against the fuselage as the force of air surrounded her, whipped against her.

She struggled to move her left hand back up to chest height. The muscles in her arm ached against the burn, but slowly she fought the resistance as her hand reached up under her chin. She gripped the emergency release cord of the Wingsuit she had modified into its design and tugged down hard against it.

Instantly the webbed suit stripped from her body and disappeared behind her. She was left in her skin-tight insulated wetsuit-like bodysuit. She felt the resistance against her halve, and quickly she was able to re-stabilize herself against the fuselage.

Hugging her streamlined body as closely as possible to the hard surface of the plane, Shirin held on.

Not waiting for the plane to level out, she started to move.

21:42:37

Barratt smiled. He didn't know why. He felt dizzy. Drunk.

He didn't know what the nurse had injected into his IV line, but his pain was gone. And in its place, a wave-like sensation of happiness rolled over him. It was a drug, he understood. But at the same time, he didn't care.

He knew he hated it, knew it compromised him, but he didn't care. He smiled. He even laughed.

He tried to shake it off, but that just made him laugh more.

He closed his eyes, tried to focus his mind, tried to rationalize. It was just a chemical reaction. It would pass.

Lost in a haze, something nagged at him. The detective…
Hahaha he looks funny!

21:42:56

Ben walked out of the Recovery ward looking serious. Robyn didn't like it. Something was wrong.