'We just checked commo.'
'Yeah, I'm nervous. You okay?'
'I'm fine, Commander.'
'Okay, I'm going to run up to the cockpit and check with the pilots.'
'Got you.'
He turned and walked up the big ship's dark bay to the cabin, cracked a door and leaned in.
Back here it was dark, with a few red safety lamps lit, and the subtle roar of the big engines chewing through air on the other side of the fuselage. It felt very World War II, very we-jump-tonight, strangely melodramatic.
Here I am again, he thought.
Here I go. Face some other motherfucker with a rifle.
Been here before.
But he did not feel lucky tonight. He felt scared, tense, rattled, keeping it hidden only because poor Bonson was so much more rattled.
He looked at the end of the bay, where the big ramp was cranked up. In a few minutes, it would yawn open into a platform and he would get a signal and he would step out, and gravity would take him. He'd fall for two minutes. Maybe the chute would work and maybe it wouldn't. He wouldn't know until it happened.
He tried to exile his feelings. If you get mad, you get excited, you get careless, you get dead. Don't think about all that shit. You just do what has to be done, calmly, professionally, with a commitment to mission and survival.
Don't think about the other man. It's what has to be done. It's the only thing that makes sense.
He tried not to think of Julie or of the man who'd come across time and space to kill her for what she didn't even know she knew. He tried not to think of his ancient enemy and all the things that had been taken from him by the man. He tried not to think of larger meanings, of the geopolitics of it all, of the systems opposed to each other, and himself and the other, as mere surrogates. He exiled all that.
'Sarge?'
He turned, it was a young air crewman, a tech sarge who looked about fifteen.
'Yeah?'
'You got your parachute on upside down.'
'Oh, Christ,' said Bob.
'You haven't been to jump school, have you?'
'Saw a guy parachute in a movie once. Ain't it the same thing?'
The kid smiled.
'Not quite. Here, let me help you.'
It took just a few seconds for the young NCO to have him geared up correctly.
Yeah, that made sense. It felt much better, now it fit right, it was okay.
'You need oxygen, too, you know. There's no air to breathe this high.'
'Yeah, they told me.'
The kid had a helmet for him, a jet pilot thing with a plastic face shield, an oxygen mask and a small green tank. The tank was yet another weight on the belt over his jumpsuit, and the tube ran up to the helmet, which fit close around his skull and supported it in plastic webbing.
'I feel like a goddamned astronaut,' Swagger said.
It was nearly time.
Bonson came back.
Behind them, with a shriek of frigid wind, the ramp door of the Hercules opened. It settled downward with an electrical grind, and outside the dark sky swirled by.
Bonson hooked himself up to a guy wire so he wouldn't be sucked out. The tech sarge gave Bob a last go- round, pronounced him fit and wished him well. With the ramp down, there was no oxygen and so they were all on oxygen. He felt the gush of air into his lungs from the clammy rubber mask around his mouth, under the face plate. He tasted rubber.
Bob and Bonson edged down the walkway to the yawning rear of the aircraft. The wind rose, howled and buffeted them, the temperature dropped. Bob felt the straps of the chute, the weight of the jump bag tethered to his ankle, the warmth of the jump helmet. Outside he could see nothingness with a sense of commotion.
'You cool?' said Bonson over the radio.
Bob nodded. He was too old for this. He felt weighed down with the rifle, the optics gear, the boots, the helmet, the parachute, all of it too much, all of it pulling on him.
'You got it? You just cannonball when you go out. You fall, you fall, you fall, then the thing opens up automatically.
You can stabilize with the risers on the left or the right of the chute. I don't need to tell you. You've done it before.'
