Far off ahead of me was a brilliant spot of orange. I could actually see Jerry’s chute preceding me along the path. He appeared to be a little below me and closer to the inner wall. Who had made the mistake in altitude, him or me? Or was our difference an illusion from the lack of fixed reference points? Was I in a feet-down attitude or hanging on some angle? Before I could decide the orange dot disappeared into the cloud.
Down below me was a canyon of dark menacing cloud where the outer rainwall met the bottom of the eyewall. Down there chaos reigned supreme, tearing everything that came in contact into shreds from the extreme forces of the wind and water. The balloon chute was lifting me higher above it. Although I had gotten that brief glimpse of Jerry I still had seen nothing of the bright pink flash that would mark Mariah. Was she ahead, behind, above, beside, or below me? There was no way I could tell.
Our intervals should have spaced us out with several hundred meters of vertical separation, but the variant winds, choices we had to make, and random wind events meant we’d tend to stay close together, but not too close. The odds of coming near enough to see were fairly slim. Nevertheless, it was worrisome not to know where both my partners were at the moment. The fact that I had seen Jerry below me was unsettling because it meant that I had gone beyond my planned envelope.
My ground speed was now topping 200, and showed no sign of decreasing. Pressure was down to a mere 620 millibars—Janice was a real bear of a storm! At this altitude the winds were more organized into a smooth laminar flow, absent much of the turbulence that would be present below. Still, with winds climbing to over 250 klicks; this was not an area to lose one’s concentration.
Wind force is not a linear relationship: The force of the wind increases with the square of the velocity. A thirty-knot wind has nine times the force of a ten knot one, and the wind carrying me along through the clear air was in excess of 200 kilometers per hour!
The altimeter told me I was nearly at the peak of my climb, halfway between the rainwall and the eyewall. With some regret I blew the balloon and deployed my third chute, a small one designed for the extremely high shear forces ahead of me. From here I planned to ride my chute down to the outer edge of the eyewall and skim the top of the comma. I glanced at the time; nearly two and a half hours had elapsed since I left the relative safety of the boat far, far below and even farther behind me. Just like in my previous jumps time seemed to compress enormously when I was working the winds. Only the first touch of fatigue in my arms told me that the clock must be correct and that I had been working for that long a period.
Ground speed was still going up as the cyclonic wind effect drew me closer and closer to the eyewall. I didn’t like the way the altitude was going down. It was too damn fast to suit me. With considerable effort I tugged the leading edge of the sail to gain some lift.
That was a mistake! “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I yelled as I fought for control. The clear air had deceived me into thinking everything was normal and I had reacted accordingly. In these wind force conditions I should have lifted the eyeward edge to gain altitude, using the greater wind speeds on that side to provide lateral lift. But I hadn’t and now I was paying the price as the chute started to oscillate back and forth, spilling wind with each twist and turn. Worse luck, I was losing altitude and dropping back into the turbulent air once again. I shifted as much weight to the eyeward side as I could and felt a response, a bit of a lift. Suddenly the lift became extreme as I swung closer to the eyewall. Somehow I had been caught in an eddy that was drawing me toward the immense dark wall of cloud.
Pressure was up to 700 now, meaning I had dropped uncomfortably close to the top of the comma, the most dangerous area of the eyewall. What could I do? The closest reachable updraft was inside the eyewall. The only choice here was to minimize the proximity to the severe winds closer to the outer parts of the eyewall. I glanced at the ground speed and felt a sudden shock: The reading was over 300 kilometers per hour. I was being sucked into the ultra high winds of the comma itself!
There was a sudden flash of color coming from my right, just before something hit my legs and spun me around. When I recovered from the sudden shock of the unexpected I found that something heavy was smashing repeatedly into the side of my head and my feet were entangled and being twisted this way and that. For a second I felt that I was tumbling head over heels; being pulled by the chute in one direction and dragged in the other by something unknown holding my legs in its grip. For some reason my right shoulder wasn’t feeling the pressure. I grabbed for the control lines on that side and my hand met empty air—the strap had broken and I was dangling by one line. A quick glance above showed the remnants of the chute twisting and turning like a candlestick above me. I assumed that that direction was up, since you can never trust your senses in these situations and the altimeter reading showed that I was still dropping. Panic seized me momentarily: I had to do something to gain altitude.
In a flash of analysis so rapid that I could only reconstruct it in retrospect I figured out what to do. The next chute in front was to be the conventional chute I was to use to navigate the eyewall. In this situation deploying that one was sure suicide; it would provide far more lift without control. With it I wouldn’t be able to clear the comma. The chute on my back pack was another balloon, the one that I was to use in the eye. Well, I’d handle that problem later, right now my concern was getting above the growing mass of dark cloud beneath my feet. If that chute could hold in this wind it might, just maybe, give me the lift I needed to clear the worst of the comma’s winds. The balloon chute was the only option, risky in these winds, but an option.
In desperation I yanked the handle to deploy the balloon, watching its sutliff rip away the torn shroud as well as the unused chute, and risked a look below me. With a shock I saw a fragment of bright pink fabric fluttering around my legs. Somehow, against all odds and our careful planning, Mariah and I had smashed into each other. But she was supposed to be far above and ahead of me: What chances had she taken to cross my path? Then I recalled seeing Jerry far below and my fear that I was out of position. Dear Lord, I thought in a quick prayer: I hope I didn’t kill her!
The balloon was never designed for such winds and was a bitch to control, whipping right to left like a manic pendulum. I watched the altimeter readings, willing the numbers higher and higher as if by sheer mental pressure I could do what the balloon was attempting. I felt a icy wetness on my neck where whatever it was had been hitting me. I stole a quick glance to my right and saw that the air bottle had come loose and was swinging free by the hose. Was my helmet broken? Was I bleeding from the ear? No, the chill on the side of my head was due to the faceplate swinging free, exposing my face to the freezing winds. With one hand I slammed it shut and pressed the clamps tight. Already the cold had frozen the exposed skin on my cheek, meaning I’d lose some of it. Did that really matter when I was dangling nearly four kilometers high over a monster hurricane that would smash me like an insignificant bug? I concentrated on controlling the chute to whatever extent I could and prayed hard for divine intervention. The altimeter fluctuated rapidly, alternatively showing marginal improvement in altitude and sudden descents into the maelstrom as the comma drew closer and closer.
Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t going to make it. Janice was the one who would finally give me the death that Billie swore I had been seeking. Well, I never thought it would end this way; falling miles down with a tail of flaming pink behind me. Would I have been in this fix if I hadn’t secretly wished for my own death? Would I be sailing clear above the raging storm instead of being sucked into the core if I didn’t yearn for Janice to kill me? Somehow the torrent ahead and the emotional mess of my self-doubt merged. Where could I have steered differently and averted the problem? Was there something about me that allowed this to happen or had I been the captain of my own fate?