Sam nodded. 'Today we're doing ground training,' he went on. 'You'll do your first jump tomorrow.'
Ethan immediately felt disappointed. He was impatient, wanted to jump now, get back into the air, feel the sky rushing past him, experience again that strange moment when the world below just seems to sit there, perfectly still, not getting any closer, your brain unable to compute that you're at terminal velocity, falling at around 120 mph.
Johnny went and stood next to Sam. Ethan thought how different they were Sam with his startlingly short hair, hard face and unflinching stance; Johnny looking like an advert for why extreme sports make women want to sleep with you.
'Sam's going to be leading on this,' Johnny said. 'I'm helping out. When you do your jumps, you'll leave the plane with both of us. We'll help you get a feel for the air, sort your positioning out, that kind of thing. And I'll be filming it all too. So at least you'll look good.'
'It'll give us something to analyse on the ground,' said Sam, ignoring Johnny's comment. 'Just another way of being extra thorough. The quicker you get the details right, the better you'll be when you're up there.'
'It'll also give us something to laugh at,' added Johnny.
Ethan noticed a smile start to flicker across Sam's face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He was beginning to understand the man a little more now, and since the jump he felt he could trust him absolutely.
'As Sam said,' said Johnny, 'today's ground training.' He went over to the hangar wall and pulled out what looked to Ethan like a tea trolley.
'What the hell's that?'
'The perfect way to make you look a total knob,' said Johnny. 'We'll be using it to show you the basic moves you'll need. You lie on top of it that way you can practise the correct positions and movements in freefall.'
'Are you having a laugh?' Ethan looked doubtfully at the trolley.
Johnny shook his head and Ethan saw a rare seriousness on his face. 'If you can't do it down here, and do it well, then there's no way we're going to throw you out of a plane,' he said. 'It's human error, not equipment failure that kills. Skydiving is only as dangerous as you make it. Get the basics right, and you can do this stuff without even thinking about it. It becomes instinctive. You'll be fine.'
Ethan remembered Luke saying something similar about human error versus equipment failure. He listened even more intently to everything Sam and Johnny were saying.
Sam looked at him, his eyes hard. 'Questions?'
Ethan shook his head. 'Not yet anyway.'
'Good,' said Sam. 'You've learned your first lesson: shut the hell up. It's the only way you'll learn. I'll tell you when you can ask questions. Until then, just listen to us and do what we say. Understand?'
'Totally,' said Ethan, and meant it.
Johnny bent down and picked up a skydiving rig. 'By the end of today you'll know what this is, inside and out. You'll know how to read an altimeter. You'll know how to exit an aircraft and how to do a freefall the correct body position, hand signals, canopy control everything.'
Ethan nodded. Sam knew his stuff, that was obvious, but so did Johnny. He was a flash git everyone knew it but he was also an astounding skydiver. And Ethan could see that Sam had a lot of time for Johnny, despite the fact that they were different in almost every way. Johnny lived and breathed skydiving. What he didn't know, you didn't need to know. Ethan wondered if he'd ever be like that; hoped he would.
Johnny interrupted his thoughts. 'Tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, you'll be jumping from twelve thousand feet. Forecast is good we shouldn't have any problems. For each of your AFF jumps, we'll be in constant radio contact, so we can guide you down, help you correct what you're doing. Jump eight, your last jump, will be your first solo. You'll be entirely on your own. Complete that, and you're qualified. However...' He paused and looked at Sam.
'What?' said Ethan.
'Qualifying to jump solo doesn't mean you can then just get into any plane and start throwing yourself out whenever you want,' said Sam. 'After AFF you have to do a further ten consolidation jumps before you're classed as capable, experienced and safe. With each of those jumps, one of us will jump with you.'
Ethan saw a smirk slide across Johnny's face. 'And it'll take a miracle for you ever to make it look as good as I do.'
Sam didn't respond, but Ethan laughed.
It all felt so unreal. He couldn't believe he was sitting there, listening to Johnny and Sam, learning to skydive. And somehow he'd got all this training for free. Somehow, Sam and Johnny had sorted something out. He had no idea how or why. But he knew Sam well enough to realize that any more questions about it would not go down well.
What followed was a day so intense, Ethan felt like his brain would burn up. Sam and Johnny pushed him hard. Lying on the trolley, he practised the freefall body position again and again. Sam didn't mince his words. If Ethan got something wrong, he knew all about it. Sam wouldn't accept anything less than perfection. And that perfection had to become instinctive.
What really intrigued Ethan, though, was that in the midst of the info-dump he was undergoing, Johnny and Sam seemed really interested in who he was. When they weren't telling him stuff or demonstrating something, they were asking questions not just to make sure he was remembering what they were teaching him, but about his background, how he'd come to be there at FreeFall with them, learning to skydive.
'Everything's important,' Sam had said over lunch. 'Not just who you are, but why why you are. I don't want to put just anyone in the sky and throw them out of a plane attached to a silk bag. That'd be irresponsible. I want to know why they're in the air in the first place, what kind of person they are, their motivation. Understand?' you are. I don't want to put just anyone in the sky and throw them out of a plane attached to a silk bag. That'd be irresponsible. I want to know why they're in the air in the first place, what kind of person they are, their motivation. Understand?'
By the end of the day Ethan's mind was leaking terms he'd never heard before. He found himself rattling off phrases like he knew them: AAD, body position, burble, cut away, RSL, terminal velocity, wave off, and the term used to describe people who don't jump wuffo. He was never going to be a wuffo ever again. That felt good.
Sam had drawn the day to a close with a 'Well done, Ethan,' and a firm shake of the hand, before driving away in his Defender. Now Ethan was sitting on a bench outside the hangar, his head resting against the wall.
'So,' said Johnny. 'How are you doing?'
'I'm knackered,' said Ethan, and meant it. 'Sam's a hardarse, isn't he? Really drives stuff into you like your life depends on it.'
'That's because it does. Sam lives and breathes skydiving. He's done it all his life.'
'You're no different,' Ethan told Johnny.
'Oh, I am,' he said, sliding down next to Ethan. 'I've been jumping for two years. I'm a qualified rigger. I can do formation stuff and solo. But Sam? He's a god.'
'Yeah. A scary one,' said Ethan. 'But that's the funny thing about him. He's this terrifying perfectionist but at the same time you can't help liking him. What's his story?'
Johnny shrugged. 'He doesn't speak much about his past, his military life. But I know he's done plenty of HALO and HAHO jumps, and that's some really serious shit. He's one of the most experienced skydivers in the business.'
'HALO?' asked Ethan.
'High Altitude, Low Opening,' Johnny explained. 'Used by special forces when they want to get in behind enemy lines nice and quickly.'
'Sounds pretty intense,' said Ethan.
'You've got that right,' Johnny agreed. 'You're jumping at over thirty thousand feet. You have to carry oxygen cylinders because you can't breathe that high up. You also have to wear special thermal kit to stop yourself freezing to death on the way down.'
'Nice.'
'Yeah. It's pretty difficult to pull a ripcord if you're an icicle doing a hundred and twenty.'
'So how low's the low opening?' asked Ethan.
'Real low,' said Johnny. 'When you eventually release your canopy, you're under two thousand five hundred feet.'
'Freefalling for over twenty-seven thousand feet? That's crazy!'
'Sure is. And pulling your canopy at under two thousand five hundred doesn't allow any room for error.'
Ethan was quiet for a moment; then he looked at Johnny. 'Imagine it freefalling all that way. Unbelievable. You fancy it?'
'Do I really need to answer that?'
Ethan grinned. 'No,' he said. 'Not really. So what's HAHO?'
'High Altitude, High High Opening,' said Johnny. 'You jump from the same height, wear thermals, but you need more oxygen, because you release your main canopy pretty much immediately after leaving the aircraft. You can be up there for some time.' Opening,' said Johnny. 'You jump from the same height, wear thermals, but you need more oxygen, because you release your main canopy pretty much immediately after leaving the aircraft. You can be up there for some time.'
'That'd be amazing!' said Ethan. 'Like flying!'
'Sam described it just like that,' said Johnny. 'He reckons a HALO jump is the closest thing to nearly dying, because you're just plummeting and you can't really believe you're going to survive. But a HAHO is totally different. The advantage of HAHO is that you can leave an aircraft outside a hostile area and land silently inside enemy territory. There's no danger of the noise of the aircraft alerting the opposition. Also, they're safer. Easier to control. Higher survival rate.'
'Survival rate?'
Johnny nodded. 'HALO is pretty dangerous. Screw that up and you hit the deck. A few people have died doing it. Anyway,' he went on, 'looking forward to tomorrow?'
'Like you wouldn't believe,' said Ethan.
'It's a whole different ball game now,' Johnny told him. 'But just remember what we said and you'll be fine. And if you thought doing a tandem was incredible, wait till you find yourself under your own canopy.'
And when the time came, when Ethan actually found himself at the door of the plane at 12,000 feet, Johnny on one side, Sam on the other, everything Johnny had told him, everything he'd felt during the tandem, was blown out of the sky. This was a totally different experience. In the tandem jump, the decisions had all been made by Sam. Now, even though Sam and Johnny were with him, Ethan decided when to jump. And he wasn't strapped to anyone at all.
The call came, and Ethan jumped.
He fell...
... tumbled...
... tried to stabilize...
Around him the world spun and flipped. The plane appeared, disappeared.
Green Earth...
Blue sky...
Green again...
Arch your back, Ethan... he told himself.
Stable! Air rushing past, blasting away all sense of sound.
Ethan felt his arms buffeted by the wind as if he'd stuck them out of a car sun roof at eighty.
Johnny and Sam used hand signals. Ethan recognized them from the intense training of the day before. Understanding burst in his brain and he responded, adjusted his body position, checked his altimeter.
This feels natural, he thought; like I'm meant to be up here, doing this like I'm meant to be up here, doing this. But what really grabbed him was the sense of freedom. Even with Johnny and Sam falling with him, he was out there and in control of what was going on. It was up to him to get his positioning right, to pull the ripcord. And it felt brilliant. Nothing could ever touch this.
More hand signals. Time to deploy the canopy. Ethan looked down to the handle at the end of the ripcord. He knew he had to make sure he had firm contact. He gripped it hard, just as Sam and Johnny had taught him in the hangar, raising his other hand above his head for symmetry, to stop himself from spinning out.
Everything was in the next movement.
He pulled the handle hard and downwards. Any other direction and the wire could snag in the steel piping it ran through, the pin wouldn't pull, and the main canopy wouldn't deploy.
As soon as he'd pulled the handle, he pushed both arms out to the side.
Symmetrical.
Stable.
Crack!
Ethan felt his whole body being pulled upwards as, above him, his canopy burst open, caught air, inflated. Johnny and Sam were nowhere to be seen; they'd spun off to find some clean air to pull their own rigs.
'Ethan. You OK?'
For a second Ethan had no idea where the voice was coming from. He was breathless, disorientated, buzzing like hell. Then he remembered the radio. It was Johnny on the other end.
'Fine,' he said. 'I'm fine.'
'Spotted the DZ?'
Ethan quickly glanced around. There it was. How small it looked. 'Got it. Now what?'
Sam's voice came over the radio too. 'Remember what you learned yesterday. Just stay on your current heading,' he said. 'You're doing fine. Remember to use those steering toggles. Try it. Track right.'
Ethan pulled the right steering toggle. He felt himself turn to the right. He eased off, tried the left toggle, turned left. Wow! He was in control of this thing! Unreal!
'Great,' came Sam's voice again. 'Keep doing that so that you're on course for the DZ, OK? But remember, you're not aiming to land on it. You're aiming for the field just off to the right.'
Johnny's voice crackled in. 'It's a bigger target than the DZ and it keeps you out of the way of those who know what they're doing. Like me.'
Ethan laughed, looked down at the fields below, and started to gradually alter his course.
The world was getting closer and everything was quiet. The wind pushed him along, and slowly he drifted down, down, down.
'Right,' came Johnny's voice. 'I'm down. Perfect landing, obviously. How are you feeling?'
'Awesome! How am I looking?'
'You're on a good heading,' said Johnny. 'Stay on that line and I'll meet you in the field, OK?'
'No worries,' said Ethan.
'OK. Just remember to turn into the wind and flare as you come in, just to slow yourself down. Not too much, though; I don't want you collapsing your canopy and breaking a leg on your first jump.'
Ethan looked down. He could see Johnny waving up at him, walking from the DZ to the field. And it was getting closer. He was amazed by how the Earth could seem so far away, and then, in seconds, come racing up to meet him. He let the wind take him. The field was clearly visible, and with the occasional adjustment he was dead on course. Following Johnny's instructions to the letter, he turned into the wind for his final approach.
He felt the wind slow him down. Then he pulled the toggles together, felt the canopy buck a little and he was down.
His first landing. His first solo landing.
Bloody hell...
Johnny strolled over.