Barracuda: Final Bearing

Inside the cockpit Namuru felt the aircraft shake, then tremble violently as the wings and tail liquefied and vaporized, the module encasing him spinning toward the earth. The g-forces of the spin knocked Namuru about the cockpit, straining his five-point harness, threatening to break his neck. Namuru wondered if the computer were still active. If it had malfunctioned in the breakup of the airframe, the cockpit module would fall dumbly into the ground below, shattering at terminal velocity of 160 kilometers per hour. He fought the dizziness of the spinning cockpit and the massive g-forces to reach his gloved hand for the manual parachute lever. He had just managed to brush it with his fingers when the explosive bolts blew off the drogue chute panel, ejecting a streamer from the rear of the cockpit module, stabilizing the wildly spinning egg until one second later the main chute blew out, luffing in the slipstream gale until it filled, the cockpit module settling below it. The cockpit egg now drifted gently down to the slope of a craggy hill a hundred meters below. Namuru had only a moment to inhale to clear his head before the module hit the mountainside, the impact considerable even under the canopy of the main chute.

Namuru hurried to punch the cockpit rupture button, knowing that the computer would wait only two minutes for him to activate it before self-destructing. The worst thing that could happen on this mission was his capture, and if he had arrived unconscious, the computer would kill him before allowing him to be taken. He pulled the cover from the rupture command switch and toggled it down and the cockpit module split in half, opening cleanly along a prescored material weld. The top of the module pulled up and away from the bottom on pneumatic cylinder struts, allowing a cold wind and diffuse but glaring winter light into the module. Namuru unlatched a case from the bulkhead of the capsule and hauled himself out into the cold of the outside and stepped away from the cockpit. Seconds later the module began to smoke and sizzle, burning until there was nothing left but a black molten pool of carbon, melted fiber optics and singed liquid crystal.

Namuru opened the case he had withdrawn and revealed a thick vest, full of pockets, heavy with explosives and the automatic pistol. He put on the vest and took out equally heavy pocketed pants that he strapped onto his thighs and fastened with Velcro seams. He kept his helmet on, since it contained two cameras, one that gave Yokosuka Center a view of what he himself saw, a second with a fisheye lens focused on his face. He pulled a small folding spade from a utility pocket and covered the smoking ruin of the cockpit and the parachute with earth dug from the rocky frozen ground. He stepped back after a few minutes, sweating despite the chill, realizing the job was far from perfect but still would only be noticed by someone stepping on top of it.

He ditched the shovel, pulled the pistol out of his vest, screwed on the long silencer and snapped a large clip into the gun. He then thrust the piece into a soft holster set into his vest and withdrew high-powered binoculars and a black rubber box with rounded edges about the size of a steno pad. The pad had heavy elastic straps on the back and a removable cover on the front that now revealed a liquid crystal display. Namuru strapped the pad onto his left forearm, then ran a small wire between his watch and the pad, switching the watch into digital compass mode, its satellite receiver turned to the orbiting Galaxy geostationary multipurpose satellite. A thumb pressure on the display turned the unit on, the display flashing a question mark. He raised the pad to his lips and whispered his password, which this hour was “blue.” The display flashed to life, bright and colorful, although the light from it faded to black if the screen were observed even slightly off from directly in front of it at a distance of thirty centimeters. “Nav display, vector to Tamga weapons depot,” Namuru whispered to the pad. An overhead satellite photograph view of a hilly rocky region flashed onto the display, the scene showing an eerie depth from the three-dimensional effect. The green of the trees and ground cover were broken by several roads, a winding rail track and the roofs of several small buildings, with what appeared to be an expansive flat plateau among the buildings. A yellow grid flashed up over the landscape, with a blinking circle on the crest of a hill to the south of the compound. Namuru noted that the circle was within two kilometers of the center of the complex — and since the circle was his own position, he would have an easy hike to the base perimeter. He looked up into the cloudy sky for any sign of the sun, but it was buried in thick overcast.