"Robert Doherty - Area 51 - The Reply" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doherty Robert)

fuel, reminding him of other missions in other parts of the globe. The back ramp
to the C-2 closed and the plane taxied to its takeoff position. The engine noise
peaked and then they were moving, rolling across the steel deck. There was a
sudden, short drop, then the nose of the plane tilted up and they were climbing
in altitude. Below and behind them, like fireflies in the dark, helicopters
lifted and followed.

49


"Ten minutes!" the SAS jumpmaster said. The message was picked up by the
throat mike wrapped tightly around his neck and transmitted to the earpieces of
all the jumpers, Turcotte included.
Turcotte did one last check of his gear, making sure everything was
functioning properly. He looked around at the other men in the cargo bay. He was
the only one in a single rig. The SAS troopers were wearing dual rigsтАФtwo people
hooked together in harness with one chute. Turcotte had never seen that used for
military purposes before. Usually such rigs were used by civilian jump
instructors to train novice jumpers.
The jumpmaster continued, pantomiming the commands with his hands. "Six
minutes. Switch to your personal oxygen and break your chem lights."
Turcotte stood up at the front of the cargo bay. He unhooked from the console
in the center of the cargo bay that had been supplying his oxygen and hooked in
to the small tank on his chest. He took a deep breath and then broke the chem
light on the back of his helmet, activating its glow.

"Depressurizing," the crew chief announced.
A crack appeared at the back of the plane as the back ramp began opening. The
bottom half leveled out, forming a platform, while the top half disappeared into
the tail section. Turcotte swallowed, his ears popping.
"Stand by," the jumpmaster called out over the FM radio. He moved forward
until he was at the very edge, looking into the dark night sky.

50


Turcotte knew they were over fourteen miles offset from the Terra-Lei compound
and should be attracting no interest from ground-based radar at this distance.
"Go!" The jumpmaster and his buddy were gone. The others walked off, the pairs
moving in unison. Turcotte went last, throwing himself into the slipstream and
immediately spreading his legs and arms and arching his back, getting stable.
 He counted to three, then pulled his ripcord. The chute blossomed above his
head. He slid the night vision goggles down on his helmet, checked his chute,
then looked down. He counted eight sets of chem lights below him. He turned and
followed their path as the SAS troopers began flying their chutes toward the
target. With over six miles of vertical drop, they could cover quite a bit of
distance laterally using their chutes as wings. Turcotte didn't know what the
current record was, but he had heard of HAHO teams covering over twenty-five
lateral miles on a jump. He felt confident that with the sophisticated guidance
rigs the front man of each pair of jumpers had on top of his reserve chute, they