Page 13 of Into the Fire

He stood there a second longer than hanging a harness took.

He remembered where everything was, and so did I.

Chapter four

Dante

Boone had me on the tower at eight sharp, harnessed to the cable and running exits through the mock-up Otter door like I’d never done one before. I’d expected it. What surprised me was how fast my body picked it back up: how to stack my hands and where my eyes belonged. After five years of fence posts, it was all still there.

Shep was on the ground with the drill log Boone had handed him. Hollis worked the far side of the pit, running a rookie named Teller through landing rolls. Teller got up the wrong way. Hollis made him do it over.

Boone checked my hookup before the first exit. He ran two fingers under the cable attachment, tugged on the harness, and stood close enough for me to smell clean sweat and Ivory soap.

“Something wrong with the rig?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then you’re just enjoying yourself.”

He stepped back onto the platform without answering.

From the door, I saw the entire base laid out like a scale model. The Otter sat on the ramp, toy-sized, with sunlight reflecting off its windshield. Pieces of the county road were visible between the trees as it dropped toward the valley. Past that, irrigation circles sat dark green against grass that August had burned brown.

“Get in the door,” Boone said. “Eyes on the horizon.”

I was already staring at the horizon.

Boone stepped back, and I stepped out. I counted to four, feet and knees together, hands on the reserve, and eyes up. The cable caught me and swung me out over the sawdust. I rode it down and hit the pit rolling.

Below, Shep looked at his log, then at me. “Okay, that was irritating.”

“You should’ve seen me when I was young.”

“Again,” Boone called down from the tower.

I climbed, got in the door, and jumped. It was clean.

“Again.”

Clean.

Shep stopped writing and just made check marks. Boone came down off the platform as I climbed out of the pit. “You’ve got it,” he said. “We’ll move on.”

“I want one more.”

“You don’t need another.”

“I didn’t ask you what I need.”

“We’re done here,” Boone said.

They hung me in the suspended harness for the part of requalification where a man dangles from a beam while somebody yells complications at him.

Boone rigged me into it himself. He secured the leg straps and the chest strap, running the backs of his fingers against my chest while he seated the buckle.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“You have no idea.”