Page 36 of The Woman Left Behind

Total panic lurked just beyond the next breath. They were jumping with her.She’dhave the parachute. That seemed like a completely stupid situation for them to set up, but she knew they meant business. When it came to their training, the GO-Teams didn’t mess around, it was serious as a heart attack. Levi was forcing her to do this, or else. She had to get her head straight and either quit before they went out that door, or, once they had, function and do her job.

“Take off the tandem harness,” Boom instructed, and numbly she began unhooking and shucking out of it, then getting into the harness with the parachute container. At least Boom had packed the parachutes himself, so she trusted that it was properly folded and would deploy correctly, if she could just keep her head in the game and remember topull the freaking cord.

She knew how to do this. She just had to keep the panic at bay and remember what she’d been taught. As she geared up she ran through the parts in her head, picturing them, naming them: the container that held the D bag; the deployment bag, which actually held the parachute; the risers; the pilot chute; the toggles; the reserve chute; the automatic activation device that would deploy the chute at a certain altitude if she hadn’t already done it. Thinking of the AAD gave her a bit of relief; the parachute would open regardless of what she did... unless she started fighting them, and they were in the wrong position when the parachute deployed, meaning they’d be hopelessly tangled.

She couldn’t panic. Their lives depended on it. Mentally she walked herself through each and every thing that could go wrong, and how to handle every situation, immediately, no hesitation and no trying to fix it. Don’t analyze,act.

Boom opened the door. Again. She was beginning to hate that sight. No, there was no “beginning” to it, she hated that open door with every fiber of her being. Freezing cold air was blowing through the cabin, like being caught in a winter storm. She didn’t want to be cold, she didn’t want that door to be open, and she desperately wanted to be on the ground.

“Let’s go,” Levi yelled. Resigned, she pulled her goggles into place and the three of them shuffled to the door. Boom gave her a thumbs-up sign and she gave him anare-you-crazylook. Bookended by the two men, Levi on the left and Boom on the right, she crouched with them.

Tears blurred her vision, ran hot against her eyelids.Dear God, please don’t let me kill them,she silently prayed. They each took firm hold of her harness, and heaved themselves, and her, out the door.

Damn fools!she thought wildly, including herself in the sentiment.

Her vision went black. She still felt the horrendous wind, though strangely it didn’t feel as cold once they were out of the plane as it did while they were still in it. It tore at her skin, slapped at her. She tried to breathe, tried to do the counting thing, four in and hold for seven, but she couldn’t inhale for a four count; she could barely gasp, not much oxygen getting past her constricted throat. At least she wasn’t screaming this time, but that was because shecouldn’t,not because she had any choice about it.

“Open your eyes!” Levi bellowed, barely heard above the roar of the wind.

Doh.So that was why she couldn’t see. Squeezing her eyes even tighter, vehemently she shook her head. She didn’t want to see. She’d already seen that view twice today, and that was twice too many times. It didn’t improve with repetition.

Boom tugged on her harness. “We have you!” Like Levi, he was yelling as loud as he could.

“You have to do this!”

Levi again. She had stereo nagging.

But he was right. She had to do this.

At least her brain hadn’t turned off this time. She was at least capable of thinking, even if her teeth were chattering in fear and her bones felt as if the terror had turned them to water. Her breath was hitching in her throat now; her lungs were burning in their need for oxygen. How soon before she did pass out, from lack of air?

Oh,God.

She had no idea what their altitude was, hadn’t looked around in the basic security check for other aircraft or any of the obstacles she was supposed to be aware of. She just knew she couldn’t pass out, at least not without pulling the pilot chute that deployed the main chute. She had to do that one thing, because Levi and Boom were with her. They were relying on her to get them all out of this hell alive. She had to function.

Clumsily she reached behind her back. Boom had had her do this time after time; she knew where the pilot chute was, she had to pull it free.

She pulled it.

For an agonizingly long time that was really only a couple of seconds, nothing happened; their plummet down was as fast as ever, and her heart sank, because it hadn’t worked, the parachute hadn’t worked. Then there was a whoosh that shefelt,a vibration that shivered through her harness, and they were jerked violently upward as if attached to a bungee cord. Somehow she had air in her lungs now and she screamed because surely, surely Levi and Boom would be jerked away from her. She grabbed for their hands—

She felt them lose their grips on her harness.

The horror she’d felt during the first two jumps was nothing compared to the awful sense of disaster that overwhelmed her, smashing into her chest like an avalanche. A guttural scream tore out of her throat, long and agonized, and her eyes popped open as she searched frantically for their falling bodies even though she knew there was no way she could reach them, nothing she could do to stop their headlong plunge to their deaths. Here she was swinging under that damn chute, and they were gone.

Levi!Sobs choked her. She tried to scream his name, tried to turn her chute so she could look for them, tried to—

The world stopped. Two canopies were floating down near hers, one slightly behind and below her, the other slightly above. Levi. Boom. With their own freakin’ parachutes.

Rage filled her like whiskey, hot and potent. They’d tricked her. They’d made a fool of her. Yeah, they’d gotten her to control her own jump, but she freakin’hatedthem for this whole miserable day and this was the cherry on top of the whole shit shake.

Her arms were shaking violently as she grabbed the toggles, so violently that her parachute began swinging back and forth. Terrified, she turned them loose, then grabbed them again when she remembered she had to hold them. Looking down, she saw her feet swinging and way, way below them was the patchwork of the earth, thousands of feet down. The shaking got worse and desperately she switched her gaze to the horizon, the blur where sky met earth.

She had to get down. She had to safely navigate all those thousands of feet of nothing but air, she had to steer this stupid parachute—and whatmoronfirst thought it was a good idea to jump out of a plane with nothing but a glorified umbrella to float him down like he was Mary Fucking Poppins—to somewhere close to the landing zone and then actually make it down without breaking a leg, her back, her neck, or any other bone, because she had to be relatively whole and unhurt in order tokillthem, not just for scaring her to death but likely laughing while they did it, and on top of all that they’d made her dis Mary Poppins. People went to hell for less than that.

Tears kept pouring down her face. She tried to stop crying, tried to wipe her face on her hunched shoulder, but every time she did the motion started her parachute swinging and she’d just now gotten the damn thing fairly stable. She could hear both Levi and Boom yelling encouragement and instructions at her, but she didn’t acknowledge them in any way, didn’t look at them, didn’t even scream at them to eat shit and die the way she wanted to.

She had several minutes before they were on the ground. Technically she knew that was how long it took, though the descent had seemed so much longer the first two times—and this one felt even longer. In that short length of time she had to wipe away any sign of tears because damned if she’d let them know they’d made her cry, that she’d been so terrified forthem.

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