Callsign: Knight (Shin Dae-jung) (Chess Team, #6)
Jeremy Robinson
CALLSIGN: KNIGHT
1.
Shin Dae-jung—Callsign: Knight, could detect most attacks before they struck. What his keen ears and eyes didn’t detect, he could normally feel, as though he possessed some kind of sixth sense. Most soldiers experienced this from time to time, but Knight, as a member of the ultra-black ops Chess Team, relied on it more than most. So when he felt a tingling on his skin, he tensed and filled his lungs to shout a warning, but the pilot, Captain Daniel Mueller, beat him to the punch. “Instrumentation is down!” Mueller shouted.
“We’re going down!” called the co-pilot, whose name Knight never learned.
Knight’s training didn’t allow him to panic. He quickly analyzed the situation to determine if there was anything that he could do to help. Unfortunately, double-checking his seatbelt and gripping his armrests were his only options.
The transport was a hybrid aircraft known as a CV-22B Osprey that combined the hovering and vertical take-off and landing abilities of a helicopter and the long-range transport capabilities and speed of an airplane. It had wings like a plane but also had four prop-rotors powered by turboprop engines, and transmission nacelles mounted on each wingtip that could tilt up or down. It had been painted black for use by special ops. Knight supposed that if he was going die in a crash, at least he was doing it in style.
“I’m going to try and sit it down on top of one of these buildings,” Mueller said. “Hang on!”
Knight tried to focus his mind on his surroundings instead of his impending death. The sound in the cabin wasn’t as he expected however. It was eerily quiet. In other crashes he had experienced, a million different noises compounded upon each other and created a deafening wall of sound. Blaring alarms, flashing lights, the squealing of a broken rotor blade or damaged engine, the sound of enemy fire still rattling against the chopper’s fuselage, the buckling of metal, the roar and snap of fire. He wondered for a moment why everything was so quiet. Then, he realized what had hit them. It could only have been some type of electro-magnetic pulse weapon, a device designed to overload electronic systems, which meant that the Osprey had been converted into a twenty-ton glider.
He opened his eyes but immediately regretted doing so. The large gray concrete walls of a parking garage loomed ahead, and he knew from experience that they were coming in much too fast for a safe landing.
He braced himself as the belly of the Osprey struck the surface of the parking garage and skidded forward. Sparks shot up from the friction on the concrete from the bird’s metal belly.
Mueller tried to direct the Osprey sideways and away from the approaching sidewall of the structure. But they were moving too fast, and he had too little control. The Osprey burst through the wall, sending fragments of concrete raining down, and careened forward over the edge of the building.
Knight’s stomach climbed into his throat as the ground fell out from beneath them and they plummeted downward. He fought the urge to tighten his muscles for the impact, knowing that being relaxed and loose during a crash could save your life. This was the reason that so many drunk drivers survived a crash while their victims were killed.
Luckily, the parking structure had a multi-tiered design, and they only had three levels to fall. The nose of the Osprey struck the concrete and dug a groove as its momentum pushed it forward. The contents of the cabin tore free from the harnesses, and a large supply box slammed against Knight’s side. The smell of charred metal and hydraulic fluids filled the air, and the screeching of metal on metal sounded like a freight train throwing on its brakes. The Osprey slid sideways to the middle of the empty parking garage’s roof and then finally came to a stop.
He didn’t waste any time. He popped off his restraints and stepped over the scattered mess of the cabin toward the cockpit. Mueller was conscious, but his leg had been trapped when the Osprey’s nose had compacted. The co-pilot, on the other hand, was very dead—his chest impaled by wreckage.
Damnit, Knight thought, but stopped himself from thinking about the dead man. They’d been attacked. He was sure. That meant time was short. Knight positioned himself on Mueller’s side and grabbed hold of the control panel pressing against the man’s leg. “Okay, I’m going to try and push this up. You pull your leg free.”
Mueller’s head bobbed up and down rapidly.