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At the moment, Dustin was miles away from the uncertain man who had kept Wes talking the other night after his brother’s bachelor party, and was in full-on commander mode, going over every detail with the LT, the aircraft commander, the jumpmaster, and the PT technician who would monitor them for altitude effects, since they were jumping from 18,000 feet that morning. In addition to the checks by the jumpmaster and PT, each of them went over their own equipment, including the oxygen required by jumping at such a high altitude.
Once in the air, the team waited in anticipation for the two-minute warning, no one talking much. They’d been at this since before dawn, and this would be their third jump of the morning, and the highest altitude one so far. Shiny, the newbie SEAL, had the least jump experience out of all of them, and looked distinctly green around the edges of his pale lips.
“It’s going to be fine,” Wes shouted at him, over the roar of the plane. “You’re doing great.”
“Yeah,” Curly added. “You know what to do.”
They all did—hundreds of jumps under their belts, hours and hours of practice and training. And soon, they’d be out on another mission, doing this for real in enemy territory. Just like an active mission jump, they had gear and equipment spread between them, weight carefully distributed so that the lighter guys like Wes and Shiny had heavier packs in order to fall at the same rate as the bigger guys like Curly and Dustin. They couldn’t risk some of the team falling at a faster rate and ending up far from the landing zone, even in practice.
Dustin followed the PT and jumpmaster down the line of SEALs waiting to jump, checking the connections and bottle pressure in their equipment and watching as the PT checked for signs of hypoxia. Wes looked away when he reached him, not wanting to risk making eye contact as Dustin passed. Fuck, this was hard, even when his mind was so occupied by the immediate mission at hand.
“Two minutes!” The jumpmaster signaled, and the preparations increased to a flurry as their oxygen got switched on. Wes struggled, as always, to breathe normally with the flow of oxygen. He checked his over-gloves. He’d lost one in a jump before, and he could still remember the rush of freezing air against his skin.
The hatch opened, the roar of air almost deafening as they lined up in prearranged order—they would head out in two groups of eight, heading for two landing zones. Below them the desert landscape, interrupted with patches of green here and there, looked like the background in a model train setup, so miniature and indistinct. Their success today would depend in part on how well they did in getting everyone in their group to within the orange-flagged landing zone. Wes was in Dustin’s group, along with Shiny and Bacon.
The first men were away with a loud whoop. Jumping this high, the main risk was passing out, something the oxygen helped with but didn’t entirely alleviate. Their chutes were designed to open even if they were unconscious, but serious injury was always a major worry on a HALO jump. Staying together was the other big concern—they needed to be close enough to reach the landing zone together, but not so close as to risk a collision.
Which was why Wes paid close attention to the jumpmaster, going exactly on his mark, even as Shiny rushed it, just a hair of a second early. But that was all it took for their formation to be off—Shiny was too close to Dustin, dangerously so, and the way his body was dangling, it looked like he’d passed out. Dustin steered himself away, but Wes couldn’t tell from his angle whether they’d actually collided.
Fuck. This was bad. Bacon was screaming a warning into his com set for the ground crew to be prepared for a hard landing from Shiny and possible injuries. Wes had to be concerned about himself and his own safe landing, but his adrenaline was racing for Dustin.
Please let him be okay. Please don’t let him land hard. A hard landing could easily kill even the most hardened of SEALs, and if Dustin or Shiny were passed out, they might not have much control over that. Wes’s pulse roared like the C-23 they’d just exited. His chute deployed at the right moment, but Shiny’s seemed to be late, same as Dustin’s, sending both of them farther away from their group.
As they approached the ground, the bright orange flags waved in the stiff breeze that wasn’t helping anything. He was on course to hit his target LZ spot, but Dustin and Shiny were off course, dangerously behind them.
The second Wes hit the ground, he started disconnecting from his chute and pack. His com headset buzzed with ground control screaming about the guys off course, and the SEALs who were landing safe checking in. Right beside him, Bacon was ripping off his chute too, and the two of them sprinted out of the landing zone to where Shiny and Dustin had drifted.
