The Re-Write Process

I just posted this on my Facebook site and figured it should maybe go here, too:

You "really" want to know what's on my mind? Okay, I'll show you:

"David Arris and his team raced dawn to the earth. The sun was barely slivering above the eastern horizon as he and his teammates ripped through 20,000 feet on their way to zero. They were falling like angels cast down from heaven, clad in HALO suits and armed with modernity's most lethal weaponry, and their intent was to destroy a group of the faithful. Not because God had ordered it, but because man had."

This is the first paragraph to the sequel to The Divine World, and I'm unhappy with the first sentence because it just doesn't seem strong enough. Suggestions? And, yes, I've re-written the entire paragraph multiple times to get to this point. This is the life of a fiction writer... at night...

So, Yeah, I'm obsessing on the first sentence of the story.