Craven looked up, one eyebrow raised. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I fall stable on your missus every Friday night.’
The company laughed, but soon they all went back to checking and rechecking their gear. Nobody wanted to leave anything to chance.
The loadmaster approached them. ‘Ten minutes!’ he shouted over the noise of the engines, holding up the gloved fingers of both hands so that there was no confusion.
The men started to get ready. Sam’s chute and weapon were already firmly strapped to his body, as was his GPS unit, but the rucksack was on the floor in front of him. He hooked his legs over it, then scraped it towards him so that it was under the bench. Once it was in position, he clipped the bag to the back of his legs and wound the straps round to his front, pulling them so they were firmly tightened. It would make walking to the tailgate difficult when the time came, but the bag needed to be attached to the back of his legs to balance his weight properly. He then turned his attention to the digital screen of his automatic opening device. Four thousand feet. If all went well they would open the chutes at four thousand five hundred; but if there was a problem the AOD would save his life.
‘Five minutes!’
Sam fitted the oxygen mask and helmet to his face. Up until now they had been breathing the oxygen from the aircraft’s mainframe, but now they needed to make sure their breathing apparatus was fully operational. As soon as he attached his oxygen mask, Sam’s breathing sounded much louder in his ears. It heightened his senses somewhat, even though the toughened black plastic of his mask had plunged the area around the tailgate into a deeper shade of darkness. The men around him looked more like cosmonauts now than soldiers. He breathed steadily and deeply. Everything was as it should be. The air was coming through. He got to his feet, as did the other seven members of his troop. The loadmaster approached to help them to the back of the plane.
Steve Davenport and Matt Andrews went first. Behind them were Tyler and Craven, then Webb and Cullen. Sam and Mac took the rear. In front of them a red light shone in the gloom of the Hercules’s belly. When it turned green, that would be the signal for the off.
A sudden rush of noise and with it a judder of turbulence. The tailgate was opening.
Sam was running on pure adrenaline now. Everything else that had been preoccupying him – Jacob, Mac and what the hell was going to happen when they hit land – took second place. Every cell in his brain was concentrating on the jump. Outside it was pitch black: from where he was standing he had the impression that he was about to dive into nothingness.
The loadmaster touched one hand to his headphones then held up a single finger. One minute. Sam and Mac looked at each other, but through their equipment the expressions on their faces were unknowable. They both faced forward again.
Green light.
There was no order. No hesitation. Davenport and Andrews jumped to the edge of the tailgate and fell out, their bodies arched and their arms spread out as though they were about to embrace the empty air. Tyler and Craven followed immediately.
A pause. Webb and Cullen waited for perhaps thirty seconds before they jumped. An eight-man unit freefalling in close proximity to each other could cause a splash on a radar; two four-man units were less likely to. Once Webb and Cullen had disappeared, Sam and Mac shuffled behind them. And then, the moment they reached the edge of the tailgate, they toppled forwards.
The wind hit Sam immediately, roaring in his ears and lashing against his body as if a powerful wave had just crashed over him. He fell belly downwards, his body arched and his palms outstretched. He was vaguely aware of the Hercules roaring away into the distance above him, but he didn’t concentrate on that. Instead he looked around to check the position of the others. They manoeuvred themselves so that they fell in a circular formation. It was possible to see them all perfectly clearly: the half moon provided plenty of light – it even glowed slightly on the helmets of the unit as they fell. Thirty thousand feet down, he could make out the twinkling of sparsely separated settlements. In a corner of his brain he wondered if any of these would be their target. It was impossible to tell from this height. They would have to wait until they were closer to the ground.
That wouldn’t be long.
They hurtled towards the earth, deafened by the rush, their senses keen with adrenaline. Terminal velocity, the maximum speed they could achieve. Thirty seconds passed.
A minute.
A minute and a half.
Everything was as it should be. Despite himself, Sam felt a surge of wild excitement. A thrill. As his altitude decreased, his view of the landscape below became less extensive; but those bits he could see became clearer. They were freefalling into a widely deserted area. In the distance he thought he saw the headlamps of a vehicle. But it was the only one. From what he could tell at this height, there were very few people around who might possibly notice the unit HALOing in.
The freefall suits of his troop ruffled in the fast-moving air, like a banner being whipped in a gale. Below and in the distance, Sam saw the chutes of the four men who had preceded him burst open. The others were under canopy. They intuitively adjusted the direction of their freefall to get closer to them. Any second now it would be their turn to open.
Four thousand five hundred feet. Cullen was the first to open his chute; the rest of them followed suit immediately. Sam tugged on his rip cord and felt the chute erupt into the air. There was a sharp jolt through his body as his velocity suddenly reduced; the rushing sound eased off and the unit started to float gently towards the earth.
Under canopy, it didn’t take long for them to see the band of forested area towards which they were headed. Currently they were a little too far east, so almost with a single mind they changed their course to bring them down safely in the area beyond the trees. Perhaps a mile to the north, Sam saw buildings. Three of them, set in a horseshoe shape.
The training camp.
His eyes narrowed as he gazed at it through the dark visor of his helmet. All thoughts of the thrill of the HALO jump dissolved away. He could think of nothing now but getting back down to earth.
The camp disappeared from his field of vision. All he could see below him now were the trees and the area of flat ground behind them where they were to land – and where the others already had. Unclipping the straps that bound his rucksack to his legs, he allowed the pack to fall to the ground, still attached to him by virtue of a long, tough lanyard rope. As the pack fell to earth, he prepared his body for the impact of landing.
Ten seconds.
Five.
He hit the ground running with that strange sense of regret that always follows a jump. Behind him the chute wafted silently to the ground. He quickly unstrapped the cords of the rucksack from around his legs, then unclipped the whole thing. Pulling off his helmet and removing the mask, he started tugging the chute towards him, bundling it up into a crumpled ball. All around him, the others were doing the same thing. They made hardly any sound.
Sam checked out his surroundings. The moon that had illuminated them in freefall now cast shadows on the ground and gave him surprisingly good vision. He was standing about thirty metres from the tree line in a field of stubble. South of him there appeared to be another field with a crop a good two metres high. Hemp, he reckoned. A lot of it. An acre of that would earn him more than a Regiment salary. Sam turned his back on it as the others started to congregate around him.
‘Get into the cover of the trees,’ Mac hissed. ‘We’ll dump our gear there, out of sight.’
The unit hauled their rucksacks onto their backs and ran towards the forest.