One hundred twenty seconds later the computer announced that it was starting the separation countdown, beginning with sixty seconds. Stoner took a long, slow breath when the numbers on the computer reached ten.

Lying facedown in a pod attached to the belly of a hypersonic X-37B, Stoner at that moment was above the Bay of Bengal, moving at several times the speed of sound. His launch capsule was considered highly experimental, and doctors had not cleared it officially for human use due to the high g stresses and temperature variations it subjected its passengers to. Stoner was not immune to these—one could not flaunt the laws of gravity entirely—but his body could deal with stresses well beyond those of the average human. In a sense, he was an athlete’s athlete, though no athlete would have accepted the trade-offs it had taken for his body to reach such a state.

Tucked into the belly of the X-37B, Stoner’s capsule was as lean as its passenger. From the outside, the vehicle looked like a flattened shark, with faceted, stubby wings and no tail surface. From the inside, it looked like a foam blanket, squeezed tight against Stoner’s body and equipment packs.

He was some 2,200 miles from his tentative landing target. It was time to launch.

Three, two, one . . . Stoner felt a thump, but otherwise had no sensation of falling or even slowing down. Encapsulated in his pod, he was still a satellite moving close to eight times the speed of sound.

The exterior geometry and the coating made the pod difficult to track from the earth, especially in the shadow of its mother ship above. Within seconds the pod had steered itself toward a keyhole in the Iranian radar coverage, taking a course that would avoid the country’s few radars capable of finding high-flying aircraft and missiles. It aimed toward a point the mission planners called Alpha, where the pod ceased being a satellite and turned into a flying rock, plummeting toward the earth.

Stoner didn’t know the specifics about the radars he was avoiding or the maneuvers that the craft would take. To him, Alpha was just a very sharp turn down, one that would press his flesh against his bones. He readied himself for the maneuver, slowing his breathing further, until even a yogi would have been envious. The pure oxygen he breathed tasted sweet, as if his lungs were being bathed in light honey. He saw a white triangle in his mind, a cue that told his body to relax. He had worked hard over the past several months to memorize that cue—relaxing was the hardest thing to learn.

“Ten seconds to Alpha,” said the computer.

Physically, Stoner couldn’t move. In his mind he leaned forward, welcoming the plunge.

The craft tipped and spun sharply. Now he was a bullet, plunging to earth. The gauge monitoring the hull temperature appeared on the information screen as the friction spiked. The temperature was yellow, above the safe area.

“Faster,” he whispered, and pushed his thoughts ahead.

“Leveling,” declared the computer a few seconds later.

The pod became an airplane, extending its stubby wings as far as they would go. It was now over central Iran.

Stoner got ready for the next phase of his flight—leaving the pod.

“Countdown to separation beginning in ten seconds,” said the computer.

Stoner started to exhale. As he pushed the last bit of air from his lungs and contracted his diaphragm, the floor below him swung back. He fell immediately, the capsule maneuvering to increase the force pulling him away.

He pulled his arms tight against his body, falling into a sitting position as he descended into the night. He was still relatively high—sixty thousand feet—and had he not been breathing pure oxygen would have passed out. He saw nothing, just blackness.

“Helmet,” he said in as strong a voice as he could manage.

The visor image snapped to a synthetic blue, then flashed and gave way to a panoramic view of the ground he was falling toward. The optical image was captured by one of the stereoscopic cameras embedded in the shell. A small GPS guidance indicator and an altitude ladder appeared at the right. The numbers said he was falling at a rate of 512 knots, not quite supersonic.

Slower than he had in practice.

The sun was brilliant. The cloud cover looked like a tufted blanket below him.

Stoner tucked his head toward his chest like a diver and rolled forward until he was head first, his legs behind and slightly above him. As he pushed them upward and sharpened the angles of his descent, he slowly spread his arms. The thick webbing that had been folded between them and his chest fanned out. Then he extended his legs, stretching the carbon and titanium webbing between them.

Mark Stoner was now a human parachute. Or, as one of his instructors had once quipped, a breathing brick with stubby wings.

He pushed his body around, aiming to get in the general direction of his target. To avoid the long-range radars, he had dropped south and west of his preferred landing zone. Now he needed to move back north. The course change took some time to accomplish.

His landing zone bordered an area well protected by the radar. His smart helmet had radar receiving circuitry—a “fuzz buster” that could detect and alert him to radar waves. Slightly more sophisticated than the latest circuitry in fighter jets, the miniaturized radar detector indicated the closest radar signal was well off to his right.

Stoner shifted his body. The suit he was using had been pioneered by Danny Freah in the 1990s. Working with Freah on the newer version, he’d received quite a number of tips on how to get the most from the lightweight titanium rods and their small motors. Without them, even Stoner’s overmuscled body would have found the fall exhausting.

The visor display highlighted Istgah-E Kuh Pang, the closest named village to his landing target. It was built along a railroad; the only roads were hard-packed dirt and trails through scrub and rolling desert bordering it.

“Locate target subject,” he told the computer.

The screen flashed, put up a map, then zoomed back. The Whiplash locating system showed his position and that of Turk Mako’s. Turk was sixty-seven miles away, across chalky, uneven hills, and several valleys that passed for fertile in this arid land.

Still roughly where he had been earlier.

This will be easy, Stoner thought.

The edge of a radar coverage area was to his right, barely a mile away. The arc extended forward—Stoner maneuvered left to avoid it.

The computer advised him to lower his speed. He pushed his elbows out, increasing the resistance. He had to begin bleeding off speed now if he was to survive the landing without broken bones. He dipped his left arm gently, banking in the direction of an open valley, then dipped in the opposite direction, lining up toward the town. But there was another radar, and then suddenly the display began flashing—he was being picked up by an aircraft, extremely close, flying in the shadows of the mountains.

Stoner pressed his head down, moving a little faster.

“Visual,” he told the computer.

The hills popped into view.

“Eight times magnification,” he told the computer. Stoner wanted to see details of the terrain he was flying over. “Locate aircraft.”

“Aircraft ten miles south,” said the helmet, calculating from the RWR; it was too far for the infrared viewer to pick it up.

“General course?”

“South by southwest.”

Not something to worry about, he decided, moving his arms out farther to slow his descent.

The suit flapped slightly at his shoulder where it was fitted beneath his backpack, but otherwise it was a snug, tight fit. He felt good, in control through 20,000 feet, though still moving a little faster than he should.

Stoner tilted to his left and pushed his legs out, intending to begin a wide spiral to slow his momentum before dropping into the target area. With every second, he got closer to becoming an ordinary flying human.