Andy McNab - DropZone

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 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 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?’