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The cable snapped free with a metallic whine. The wingboard and the parasail rose unencumbered and began to slow.
Leaning forward like snowboarders ready to move downhill, Kurt and Joe eased the craft into a mild descent. The wake of the powerboat vanished down below as Akiko turned away and in a moment the only sound Kurt or Joe could hear was the wind blowing past them and the rush of blood in their ears.
“Slight crosswind,” Joe said. “We’re drifting to the south.”
They leaned to the left and the board tilted beneath them. For an instant it felt as if it would slip away, but the brilliance of the twin wing system became evident as the parasail above corrected for any overzealous maneuvering done down below.
Having adjusted for the wind drift, they overshot for thirty seconds and then turned back on course. The feeling was incredible. Kurt had made a hundred jumps in various kinds of parachutes. He’d BASE-jumped in a wingsuit and even flown an expendable glider nicknamed the Lunatic Express, but all those descents were either fast and furious or slow and peaceful. The wingboard was somewhere in the middle, controllable with a simple body lean; it responded to the slightest weight shift, but there was a graceful sense to the pace. It moved at forty miles an hour instead of traveling like a bullet the way you did in a wingsuit. “This is like surfing the sky.”
Joe was grinning as broadly as Kurt. “If we survive tonight, I’m going to make this my new hobby.”
Kurt glanced at the timer on his wrist and then at the altimeter. “Eight hundred feet. Been just over a minute. We’re more than halfway there.”
As they moved closer, the jagged black shape of the island grew larger and appeared to rise up in front of them. Even in the dark there was something sinister about the place. Kurt could see waves breaking against it in splashes of angry white foam. The abandoned buildings looked like battlements in the low light.
“Time to enhance our vision,” Kurt said.
Kurt reached up and pulled the infrared lenses over his eyes while Joe pulled down the night vision goggles.
Joe suddenly saw the island in green with gray tones. He could see the outlines of the buildings, the narrow overgrown alleyways between them and the rubble strewn in open spaces. The closer they got, the more dilapidated everything appeared.
The island had been abandoned since 1974. Some of the buildings had fallen into disrepair before then. The place had survived several typhoons and hundreds of storms. The concrete shells of the buildings remained standing, but they were crumbling badly, the windows were all gone and foliage growing in the gaps was doing its best to split the structures apart.
“We’re right on target,” Joe said, “but still drifting a little. We should have no problem clearing the first row of buildings and dropping on the second row, closer to the center of the island.”
“Can you tell the condition of the roofs yet?”
“Not really,” Joe said, leaning to the left once again. “We’re still too far away.”
Kurt’s view of the island was almost invisible. The cold concrete was actually cooler than the surrounding waters, making the island a dark void in a swath of gray. There were tiny dots of heat here and there, but, based on their size, he knew they were probably rodents and birds that lived on the island.
“Any sign of the Yellow Brick Road?” Joe asked.
“Not even a munchkin or a flying monkey,” Kurt said.
He scanned methodically, but the maze of buildings made it hard to see anything at ground level. “Can we drift right a little and then come back against the wind? I need a better view of the alleys.”
“We’re getting closer,” Joe said. “We’ll have to make it quick.”
They shifted their weight to the right and the wingboard made a graceful turn. Kurt got a view between many of the buildings, spied a dimly glowing area and made a mental note of where it was. “Can we go a little more?”
“Ten more seconds,” Joe said, “then we turn back.”
Joe began a mental count as Kurt peered back and forth, looking for any sign of activity.
“That’s it,” Joe said. “Lean hard left.”
Joe leaned into the turn and felt Kurt doing the same. As they threw their weight over and pulled on the control cables, the twin-winged glider pulled up and turned sharply. “Level off.”
They were now dropping rapidly and picking up speed at the same time. The sea vanished and the outer layer of man-made structures raced by, not far beneath the wing.
“We’re going too fast.”
Pulling back on the chute stopped the descent momentarily. The glider ballooned upward as the speed dropped. By the time they leveled off and began descending again Joe could see they were going to miss the landing zone.
“It’s no good,” Joe said. “We’re going to overshoot and crash into the mountain. Divert to the left, we’ll have to cross over and land in the open area at the front of the island.”
Joe leaned into the turn. Kurt reacted instantly and the wingboard curved toward a gap between the rock wall and the tallest building.
