‘Ya gotta remember, Charlie,’ Hudd’s man yelled in my ear. ‘Sit with ya feet over the sill, hold ya sack in ya lap, duck down an’ roll forward. Once yer outa the ship let go of the sack an’ its weight will pull ya upright. Then the ’chute will open with a bang. You jumped before ain’t you?’ I nodded. He added, ‘Piece a piss.’
Second bastard to tell me that in a few hours. We were droning over brown mountains. We had been droning over brown mountains for hours. Some of them still had snow on their boots.
I yelled back, ‘What if we get split up?’
‘We won’t. You’ll jump first, an’ we’ll steer our ’chutes to land near you. Piece a piss.’ We’d have to do something about expanding his vocabulary if we got away with this.
Ten minutes later I was sitting on the sill, clutching that bloody kitbag to my chest. My feet were out of the aircraft, and were being swept sideways by the slipstream. Someone who called himself ‘the jump master’ was crouching behind me, and I was literally shaking with fear this time. The only concession to safety was the silly thing like a racing cyclist’s helmet I had on my bonce. A small red light came on above my head; I tucked my chin into my chest, and waited for the tap on my shoulder. It never came. The bastard behind me pushed my head down further, and rolled me out. Cold air on my cheeks. Tears dragged out. I let go of the sack. Jerked upright . . . and then that other bloody jerk as the parachute snapped open with a pop, and the canopy crackled above me as it sorted itself out. Three jumps so far, and the parachute had opened properly each time. I tried to calculate the odds of the next one going wrong, and couldn’t.
Peace. Cold right hand because I had lost my glove. Brilliant blue sky. A few puffy white clouds sailing like yachts above me. I looked around: Hudd’s man was literally only twenty yards away. He grinned, and actually took one hand off his shroud lines to wave. That spun him away from me, and I watched as he straightened his shrouds, and used his deadweight as a pendulum, to bring himself back. By twisting my head to look over my other shoulder, I could see Hudd above me, and over to the left – not much further away. He had his knees and feet together, just like in the book. I tried to copy him.
Only minutes later, it seemed, the sack attached to my right ankle hit the deck, followed by me. I rolled once before it dragged me into a shallow gully and wrapped me up in my shroud lines. The parachute continued to billow above me like a captive balloon. If you’ve jumped you’ll know what I mean: we’ve all been there at least once.
As I landed, I distinctly saw a small snake wriggling to get away from me: my shadow passing overhead must have spooked it. It must have mistaken me for an enormous bird of prey. It looked like one of those small desert vipers. As I sat up, I saw similar flashy movements in the clumps of scrubby hard grass around me. So I shouted,
‘Snakes!’
Hudd’s head poked over the edge of the gully. He said, ‘Shut up, Charlie. You’ll scare them. Just watch where you put your hands and feet an’ you’ll be OK. Stand up now.’ I stood, feeling a little foolish. ‘Now bend, pop your sack, and hand its strap up to me.’ The sack had a snap release from the leather strap that had secured it to my ankle. I bent down and did as he said. Looking for those tell-tale shapes in the grass, I saw one. It was a yard from me, and watching me with beady yellow eyes.
I knew a rattlesnake named Alice once, and rather admired her uncompromisingly vile temper, but we always outnumbered her so that was OK. Now the boot was on the other foot, and I didn’t like it. The bloody things were all around me. I handed Hudd the line attached to the sack, and he hauled it up to where he was standing. Then he reached a hand down and pulled me out.
Hudd’s man was sitting in the scrub a few yards away. He had pulled his arm out of his jacket sleeve, and had split his shirt sleeve up to the biceps. He was injecting himself. He was giving himself an injection in the back of his hand, and then another high up on his arm.
‘Antivenom,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Snake bit.’ He showed me two small puncture marks on the back of his hand. The skin around them was reddened to the size of a sixpence. ‘Bit right through me glove. Feisty little beggars ain’t they?’
‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘We’ll soon know if I’m not, won’t we? Wonder what they taste like.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If we run out of food, we can eat them,’ Hudd said. ‘I ate a Brown Snake once. It tasted like a gamey old chuck. Can you two get yourselves sorted out? I want to get moving.’
We each had a pack in the sacks that had come down with us. Theirs looked bigger than mine, but I had two. I had a second small canvas pack into which was built a small radio and a Morse key. It weighed just over a pound and had a range like an albatross. I liked it so much that I’d already decided to keep it once the
