Atlantis Found

"Time to go back to work," he a

Cleary stared through the windshield over the pilot's heads, but all he saw was cloud cover. He assumed that a corner of the Ross Ice Shelf was looming unseen ahead and below the aircraft. "How's my time?"

Stafford nodded at the instrument panel. "We'll be over your release point in one hour. Are your men ready and eager?"

"Ready, maybe, but I'd hardly describe them as eager. They've all jumped from a jet aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet at one time or another, but not while it was traveling at four hundred miles an hour. We're used to feeling the aircraft slow down before the ramp lowers."

"Sorry I can't bring you in closer, slower, and lower," said Stafford sympathetically. "The trick is for you and your men to land on the ice without your chutes being discovered in the air. My orders state in no uncertain terms for me to make my routine supply run to McMurdo Sound in my normal flight pattern. I've shaved it as close as I dare without raising suspicion. As it is, you'll have to glide nearly ten miles to your target zone just outside the security fences."

"The wind is blowing from the sea, so that's in your favor," offered Bra

"The cloud cover helps, too," Cleary said slowly. "And if they have a functioning radar system, the operator will have to have four eyes to detect us from the exact moment we exit until we deploy our canopies."

Stafford made a slight course change and then said, "I don't envy you, Major, jumping from a nice warm airplane into an icy blast one hundred degrees below zero."

Cleary smiled. "At least you didn't hand me the tired old pilot's line about `jumping from a perfectly good airplane.' I appreciate that."

They all laughed for a few moments at the inside joke among professionals. For decades, parachutists had been posed the question, "Why do you jump from a perfectly good airplane?" usually by pilots. The stock answer Cleary usually gave was "When a perfectly good airplane exists, then I'll quit jumping."

"As for the cold," Cleary continued, "our electrically heated thermal suits will keep us from turning into icicles while we descend to a warmer altitude."

"The clouds extend, too, within a thousand feet of the ground, so you'll be falling blind most of the way, since your compasses and GPS instruments are ineffective," said Bra

"The men are well trained for that. The key to a successful high-altitude, low-opening infiltration jump is to exit at the correct grid coordinate upwind, and have everyone under canopy at relatively the same altitude."

"We'll put you out on a silver quarter. But it won't be no picnic."

"No," said Cleary solemnly. "I'm sure that in the first minute after we drop from the plane, we'll wish we were falling into a fiery hell instead."

Stafford checked the instrument panel again. "After you and your men finish prebreathing, I'll decompress the cabin. Immediately afterward, I'll pass on the twenty and ten-minute warnings to you and my crew. Then I'll notify you over the intercom when we're six minutes from the release point. At two minutes out, I'll lower the ramp."

"Understood."

"At one minute out," Stafford went on, "I'm going to ring the alarm bell once. Then, when we're directly over the release point, I'll turn on the green light. At the airspeed we'll be flying, you'll have to get out quickly as a group."

"Our intentions exactly."

"Good luck to you," said Stafford, twisting in his pilot's seat and shaking hands with the major.

Cleary smiled faintly. "Thanks for the ride."

"Our pleasure," Stafford said genuinely. "But I hope we don't have to do it again anytime soon."

"Nor do I."

Cleary stood and straightened, left the cockpit, and walked aft into the aircraft's cavernous cargo bay. The sixty-five men seated inside were a serious-faced group, dogged and dead calm, considering the uncertain peril they were about to encounter. They were young. Their ages ranged from twenty to twenty-four. There was no laughter or unproductive conversation, no grousing or complaining. To a man they were absorbed in checking and rechecking their equipment. They were a composite of America's finest fighting men, hastily thrown together on the spur of the moment from special units nearest to Antarctica that were on counter-drug operations throughout South America. A team of Navy SEALs, members of the Army's elite Delta Force and a Marine Force Recon team… a combined band of secret warriors on a mission unlike any ever conceived.

Once the alert had been given the Pentagon by the White House, the one thing they had in short supply was time. A larger Special Forces unit was on the way from the United States but was not expected to reach Okuma Bay for another three hours, a time span that might prove too late and disastrous. Admiral Sandecker's warning was not received with enthusiasm by the President's top aides, nor the Armed Forces chief of staff. At first, none dared believe the incredible story. Only when Loren Smith and various scientists added their weight to the plea for action was the President persuaded to order the Pentagon to send a special force to stop the rapidly approaching cataclysm.

An air assault with missiles was quickly ruled out because of an utter lack of intelligence data. Nor could the White House and Pentagon be absolutely sure that they might not find themselves in hot water with the world for destroying an i

The men were seated on their heavy rucksacks, wearing parachutes, and were engaged in completing jumpmaster inspections. The rucksacks were full of survival gear and ammunition for the new Spartan Q99 Eradicator, a ten-pound deadly killer weapon that integrated an automatic twelve-gauge shotgun, a 5.56-millimeter automatic rifle with sniper scope, and a large-bore barrel in the center that fired small shrapnel-inflicting missiles that exploded with deadly results at the slightest impact. The spare magazines, shotgun shells, and shrapnel missiles weighed nearly twenty pounds and were carried in belly packs slung around their waists. The top flap of the belly pack held a navigation board, complete with a Silva marine compass and digital altimeter, both clearly visible to the jumper while gliding under his canopy.

Captain Dan Sharpsburg led the Army's Delta Force, while Lieutenant Warren Garnet was in command of the Marine Recon Team. Lieutenant Miles Jacobs and his SEAL team, which had aided NUMA on St. Paul Island, was also part of the assault force. The combined group was under the command of Cleary, a Special Forces veteran who had been on leave with his wife enjoying the Kruger Game Park in South Africa, when he was whisked away on a minute's notice to take command of the elite makeshift assault unit. It had to be the first time in American military history that separate special units were merged to fight as one.

For this mission, every man would be utilizing a new ram-air parachute system for the first time, called the MT-1Z or Zulu. With a four-to-one lift-to-drag ratio, the canopy could travel four meters horizontally for every meter descended, an advantage that did not go unappreciated among the three teams.