mince his words. If Ethan got something wrong, he knew all about it. Sam wouldn’t accept anything less than perfection. And that perfection had to become instinctive.
What really intrigued Ethan, though, was that in the midst of the info-dump he was undergoing, Johnny and Sam seemed really interested in who he was. When they weren’t telling him stuff or demonstrating something, they were asking questions – not just to make sure he was remembering what they were teaching him, but about his background, how he’d come to be there at FreeFall with them, learning to skydive.
‘Everything’s important,’ Sam had said over lunch. ‘Not just who you are, but why you are. I don’t want to put just anyone in the sky and throw them out of a plane attached to a silk bag. That’d be irresponsible. I want to know why they’re in the air in the first place, what kind of person they are, their motivation. Understand?’
By the end of the day Ethan’s mind was leaking terms he’d never heard before. He found himself rattling off phrases like he knew them: AAD, body position, burble, cut away, RSL, terminal velocity, wave off, and the term used to describe people who don’t jump – wuffo. He was never going to be a wuffo ever again. That felt good.
Sam had drawn the day to a close with a ‘Well done, Ethan,’ and a firm shake of the hand, before driving away in his Defender. Now Ethan was sitting on a bench outside the hangar, his head resting against the wall.
‘So,’ said Johnny. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m knackered,’ said Ethan, and meant it. ‘Sam’s a hardarse, isn’t he? Really drives stuff into you like your life depends on it.’
‘That’s because it does. Sam lives and breathes skydiving. He’s done it all his life.’
‘You’re no different,’ Ethan told Johnny.
‘Oh, I am,’ he said, sliding down next to Ethan. ‘I’ve been jumping for two years. I’m a qualified rigger. I can do formation stuff and solo. But Sam? He’s a god.’
‘Yeah. A scary one,’ said Ethan. ‘But that’s the funny thing about him. He’s this terrifying perfectionist but at the same time you can’t help liking him. What’s his story?’
Johnny shrugged. ‘He doesn’t speak much about his past, his military life. But I know he’s done plenty of HALO and HAHO jumps, and that’s some really serious shit. He’s one of the most experienced skydivers in the business.’
‘HALO?’ asked Ethan.
‘High Altitude, Low Opening,’ Johnny explained. ‘Used by special forces when they want to get in behind enemy lines nice and quickly.’
‘Sounds pretty intense,’ said Ethan.
‘You’ve got that right,’ Johnny agreed. ‘You’re jumping at over thirty thousand feet. You have to carry oxygen cylinders because you can’t breathe that high up. You also have to wear special thermal kit to stop yourself freezing to death on the way down.’
‘Nice.’
‘Yeah. It’s pretty difficult to pull a ripcord if you’re an icicle doing a hundred and twenty.’
‘So how low’s the low opening?’ asked Ethan.
‘Real low,’ said Johnny. ‘When you eventually release your canopy, you’re under two thousand five hundred feet.’
‘Freefalling for over twenty-seven thousand feet? That’s crazy!’
‘Sure is. And pulling your canopy at under two thousand five hundred doesn’t allow any room for error.’
Ethan was quiet for a moment; then he looked at Johnny. ‘Imagine it – freefalling all that way. Unbelievable. You fancy it?’
‘Do I really need to answer that?’
Ethan grinned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really. So what’s HAHO?’
‘High Altitude, High Opening,’ said Johnny. ‘You jump from the same height, wear thermals, but you need more oxygen, because you release your main canopy pretty much immediately after leaving the aircraft. You can be up there for some time.’
‘That’d be amazing!’ said Ethan. ‘Like flying!’
‘Sam described it just like that,’ said Johnny. ‘He reckons a HALO jump is the closest thing to nearly dying, because you’re just plummeting and you can’t really believe you’re going to survive. But a HAHO is totally different. The advantage of HAHO is that you can leave an aircraft outside a hostile area and land silently inside enemy territory. There’s no danger of the noise of the aircraft alerting the opposition. Also, they’re safer. Easier to control. Higher survival rate.’
‘Survival rate?’
Johnny nodded. ‘HALO is pretty dangerous. Screw that up and you hit the deck. A few people have died doing it. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘looking forward to tomorrow?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ said Ethan.
‘It’s a whole different ball game now,’ Johnny told him. ‘But just remember what we said and you’ll be