Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

One of the loadies joined them. He pointed at the quad bike on its pallet and shouted above the noise of the engines, ‘Automatic deployment at three thousand five hundred feet!’

Danny gave a thumbs up to indicate he understood. With the help of another loadie, they waddled awkwardly but carefully to the back of the plane. They stood to one side of the rails that carried the quad bike. Danny grabbed a piece of strapping on the side of the fuselage and gripped it tightly as the tailgate started to open.

There was a distinct change in the atmosphere. Cold air hit the exposed parts of Danny’s face. Although he knew that the next few hours were dangerous, that he was freefalling into hostile territory with a woman he couldn’t trust, to carry out an operation that everyone involved with would deny should it go wrong, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill. If you didn’t get a buzz from a HALO jump, the SAS wasn’t for you.

The tailgate was fully open. There was no sign of the moon, but Danny could see the stars and, far away and far below, arteries of light on the ground. The head loadie held up three fingers to indicate three minutes out. Danny waited for the red light to turn green while the other guys prepped the quad bike’s pallet. He could sense that Bethany’s nervousness was increasing. Her limbs were rigid and she was breathing fast. The oxygen mask amplified the sound of Danny’s own breathing, which was slow and composed. It was impossible to ask Bethany if she was okay, so he squeezed her arm reassuringly. She flinched and withdrew it.

Two minutes out. They edged a little closer to the tailgate, Danny still gripping the strapping.

One minute out.

Green light.

Everything happened in a moment. The quad bike on its pallet shot along the rails and out into the sky, a tiny stabilising drogue chute stretching out behind it, flapping wildly. Danny threw himself and Bethany after it, arching his outstretched arms and legs back to ensure that they fell stably. They slid over the familiar curve of the Herc’s slipstream. The deafening roar of the aircraft’s engines instantly disappeared, replaced with the fierce, icy rush of wind in their ears as they accelerated towards the earth, their clothes and gear flapping madly. He needn’t have worried Bethany about the risk of turning over. His body was arched rigidly and they were falling face down to the earth, her legs tucked inside his. He quickly felt for his own drogue chute, which was folded into a side pouch of his rig. He grabbed it, threw it out and immediately felt its steadying influence as they continued their acceleration towards terminal velocity.

There was light everywhere. Danny could see the moon now, crescent and hanging low. Infinite stars clouded the sky. From this great height he could see villages and towns on the ground, glowing yellow masses with arterial routes spreading in all directions. The curvature of the earth glowed faintly even in the darkness. He concentrated on the glowing lumisticks tied to the quad bike. There they were, red and blue, below them. It was not easy to judge distances in the air, but he estimated that they were separated by a constant fifty feet of altitude. He altered his body position so that they were falling a little closer to the vertical, but not so close that they would get tangled in the quad bike’s parachute when the automatic deployment device activated.

He checked the glowing altimeter on his wrist. The number on the display was decreasing rapidly.

25,000.

20,000.

They had certainly reached their maximum rate of descent, well in excess of 120 miles per hour. The rush of air was louder, the lift of air resistance at its peak. Here, closer to the earth, Danny’s field of view was smaller and diminishing. Fewer settlements. Fewer towns. He had a much greater sense now that they were freefalling into a large, uninhabited expanse. The thick darkness of the desert at night. He saw spots of light here and there. Bedouin encampments, maybe, or vehicles traversing the bare terrain. Civilian or military? Impossible to know. Either way, they were to be avoided. Directly below them, however, he saw nothing. The drop zone had been well chosen.

15,000.

10,000.

5,000.

Any moment now, the quad bike’s automatic deployment device would kick in.

4,000.

3,500.

Suddenly he saw the quad bike’s enormous chute deploy and billow, blocking his view of the lumisticks. He immediately deployed his own rig and sensed the rigging lines shoot up above him. He felt the instant pull of deceleration. The wind noise diminished. Almost complete silence. Just the gentle flapping of the spreader bar, a rectangular piece of material above him that held the rigging lines in place and stopped the chute from inflating too quickly and messily.

They didn’t need oxygen at this altitude. Danny reached for Bethany’s mask, pulled it away and removed his own. ‘You okay?’ he said. There was no need to raise his voice.

‘What if I said I wasn’t?’ Her voice had a slightly wired timbre, half thrill, half fear.

‘You’re doing great,’ Danny said, and instantly regretted it.

‘I’m not a child.’

Danny reached for the toggle lines of their parachute, which he could use to follow the quad bike to the ground and guide them on to target. They drifted quietly. The air, so cold when they’d left the Herc, grew warmer. Danny scanned the earth below, checking for threats or obstacles on the landing zone. It was a clear night, well lit by the moon, and he had a good view of the ground. He saw nothing to worry him.

The quad bike made contact with the earth and its chute started to deflate. Danny guided himself and Bethany to one side of it. When they were almost on the ground, he pulled both the toggle lines to flare the tandem chute and put them safely down. Their feet touched the ground and he could sense Bethany’s tension releasing. He immediately unclipped her from the tandem rig. She disentangled herself from the day packs round her legs and staggered forwards, plainly relieved to be on solid ground again. Danny gathered the chute. Once he had an armful of crumpled canvas, he took off his freefall rig. He opened his day pack and retrieved his collapsible entrenching tool. He unfolded it while scanning the area all around. The moon lit the terrain up well, but there was little to see. It was barren and almost featureless. Hard earth, with the occasional sturdy desert weed. The ground was level, giving Danny a 360 view of a couple of hundred metres into the distance. There was a shallow wadi, only a couple of metres wide and less than a metre deep, a little beyond the quad bike. He saw no vehicle marks on the ground, but that didn’t mean people never came here, and Danny couldn’t risk just leaving the parachutes. He would have to dig them in.

‘Gather that chute,’ he told Bethany, pointing at the quad bike’s rig. ‘Then keep watch. Let me know if you see anything.’ Bethany nodded. Danny took his entrenching tool over to the wadi. The ground would be softer in the ditch, easier to excavate. He jumped inside and started to dig.

It was hot, hard work. The entrenching tool could only cut into the earth inch by inch, with the metronomic scraping of a gravedigger’s shovel. It took a full twenty minutes for Danny to make a hole big enough to conceal both chutes, while Bethany kept watch. By the time he’d stuffed them inside, he was drenched with sweat. Before filling the hole in, he jumped up out of the wadi and turned his attention to the quad bike. It was still fastened to its wooden pallet with a tangled mess of strapping. He loosened, undid and removed the straps, then carried them over to the hole and buried them. He shovelled the dislodged earth back over the stash, flattened it down with his boots and redistributed the surplus. He rejoined Bethany, took the quad bike’s keys from the secure pouch, climbed on board and drove it off the pallet.