waves. He closed his mouth and tried to breathe, but his nose was clogged. He opened his mouth again an gulped the air and rain. His head, he realized, was below his legs.
For what seemed like a long time, he hung in the darkness, gathering his strength.
He pawed around and his right hand brushed something. Something soft but firm. Dirt and leaves. He discovered that he was hanging only a foot or so from the ground, and the panic subsided. Gritting his teeth against a pain in his side, he fumbled in the darkness for the harness-release fittings. They were always on his chest, just below the collarbones. But he could not find them and, infuriated and sick with fear and pain, he tore off his gloves, frantically feeling everywhere trying to find the familiar metal shapes.
Frustration bred panic and he stopped squirming just before it overwhelmed him.
Maybe the fittings had moved as he had twisted around inside the harness.
He explored slowly. He found the left catch over his shoulder. It opened readily, freeing his head and left shoulder. Now that he knew where to feel, he located the right one easily, and his body slumped down until he was partly on the ground. His legs, though, were still entangled above his head.
He needed his flashlight. He forced himself to remember where he had stowed his pencil flash, then he worked methodically to retrieve it. The beam pierced the darkness. His eyes took several seconds to focus, and he saw that his legs were caught in shroud lines that extended upward into the trees.
Something wet was running into his mouth. It tasted coppery. Blood? He patted his face with his hand, then shone the beam on his hand. It was bright red. He picked pieces of his helmet’s plexiglass visor out of his face. When he touched his nose pain shot through him. Broken.
A minute passed before he worked up enough nerve to move again. He dug out the parachute shroud cutter from a vest pocket and slashed at the nylon lines around his legs. There were many lines. He paused to rest and swung the light around. Dark foliage in every direction.
Cursing silently, he resumed slashing at the tangled white cords that trapped him like a fly in a spider’s web. Pain in his left side restricted his movements. More blood flowed into his mouth, and he spat it out. He was wet with a mixture of rain, sweat, vomit, and bloody spittle. His right leg finally came free. His body slipped again, and now he lay on the ground with one leg still caught.
The closeness of freedom galvanized him. He tore at the remaining cords with the cutter. At last, his left leg also came free with a jolt of pain that seared him.
He groaned, the first sound that had escaped from him. When the pain lessened, he pushed himself into a sitting position and examined his left leg carefully with the penlight. At his knee, which his G-suit didn’t cover, The his flight suit was ripped, and blood covered his knee and the ragged edges of the cloth. The joint was swollen, but he could still bend it.
He cleaned the dirt and leaves from the neck of his flight suit, then took off his helmet. The visor was shattered. He ran his fingers through his hair, which was sticky and stiff.
The radios! He reached into the front pocket of his survival vest and pulled out one of the two radios he carried. With the penlight, he inspected it. It looked undamaged. He turned on the emergency beacon which would allow someone searching for him to home in on him. Then he silenced the beacon, put the device to transmit/receive, and adjusted the volume, “Tiger, this is Jake.” No answer.
He tried sever more times at minute intervals and finally received a response.
“Hey, Jake.” The voice, though weak, filled the pilot with elation.
“Where are you?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“I’m okay. You okay?”
The answering voice was tired and faint. “Not really I can’t get out of my chute.”
Shit!
“I’m out of mine. I’ll find you. Just hang tough until I get there.”
“I ain’t going anyplace.”
Jake lowered the radio and flashed the penlight around: trees and underbrush in every direction. Still sitting, he found one of his plastic baby bottles an drained it, pausing only once for air. The water was warm, but it cleaned out the salty, coppery taste in his mouth. He was still thirsty, but he would hold the other bottle until later when he would be thirstier still Capping the empty bottle, he slipped it back in his vest.
“Devil Five Oh Oh, Devil Five Oh Oh, how,do you read, over?”
Jake’s heart leapt and he struggled with the radio.
“Devil Five Oh Oh Alpha reads you loud and clear, over.
“Devil, this is Nomad One Seven. Give me thirty seconds of beeper, over.”
“Roger beeper.” Jake turned the beacon feature of the radio on and held the radio so that the little antenna pointed straight up. Now the Nomad pilot could home in on the beacon with his automatic-direction-finding, or A D F, equipment. After thirty seconds, Jake switched back to voice. “Nomad, Devil Five Oh Oh Alpha, did you copy, over?”
“Roger, we got your beeper. Identify yourself, over. “Jacob Lee Grafton, lieutenant, seven three five niner niner four.”
“Copy. Wait.”
Jake sat in the darkness and let hope and elation run through him.
We’ve been found already! We’ll be rescued!
“Devil, Nomad. Have you two joined up and are you hurt?”
“Negative join-up and pilot has minor injuries.
Tiger, are you hurt, over?”
Silence, which the rescue pilot eventually broke.
“Copy negative join-up and pilot minor injuries.”
My bombardier is hung up,” Jake explained.
“Okay, Devil Alpha. Keep the faith. I’ll call you again in several minutes. Wait.”
Depression replaced elation. As he huddled.in the darkness, Jake reviewed the flight and catalogued every error. They should not have run that target a second time. He should have pushed the emergency jettison button and hauled ass out to sea. Right now he and Tiger could be sitting in their rafts waiting for the Angel. Yeah, with sharks circling in the dark water “Devil Alpha, this is Nomad. Give me another thirty seconds of beeper,” Jake complied.
“Okay, Devil,” the Nomad pilot told him, “we had a couple good cuts on your posit. We’ll come to get you at first light. You guys find a hole and crawl in it. Still have your watch?”
Jake looked at his wrist; the luminous hands of the watch glowed in the darkness. “Yes. It’s 2057.”
“Okay. Somebody will call you at 2200 and every hour on the hour after that. Got it?”
Jake rogered and the conversation ended. He laid the radio beside him and tried to think. The first priority was to find Cole and free him of his chute.
Could he be found in this jungle?
They had been heading 250 degrees when they ejected. How much time had there been between ejections? He could recall the exact reading on the airspeed indicator: 245 knots. He had jumped may second or two behind the bombardier.
He tried to work the arithmetic of converting their airspeed to feet per second but gave up and decided it couldn’t be more than a thousand feet. No more than the length of the Shilo’s flight deck, and probably less. Cole was so where in this jungle within a thousand feet of where he sat.
He drew out his compass and unwound the parachute shroud line he had wrapped around it many months ago. He placed the loop around his neck, and the compass dangled.
He checked himself over one more time before setting out. He was bloody both at his knee and on his side, but the blood seemed to have coagulated.
His survival vest contained a bandage, which he wrapped around his knee–G-suit, flight suit, and all. There was nothing he could do about the tear in his side, but he wasn’t hurting too badly-yet.
He gathered up the penlight and radio and, leaning against a tree trunk, he maneuvered himself upright. He had been wrong; the pain in his side was very bad. He put some weight on the torn leg, and it buckled. He had to repeat the whole effort. The adrenaline was wearing off. His face throbbed, and his side and knee screamed with pain. Every muscle ached from the blows he had received as he fell through the trees. He found, though, that if he
