that look on his face: hard, unmoving, unwavering.
‘Now that’s sorted,’ said Sam, ‘I’ve arranged for you to meet up with Luke after work. He’ll be waiting for you in the hangar. Head over there as soon as you shut up the shop.’
‘What am I meeting him for?’ asked Ethan.
‘Luke’s offered to help keep your mind off the fact that you won’t be jumping for a while.’ Sam looked at his watch. ‘He’s going to train the hell out of you instead. Now get your arse over to the shop and open up. You’re losing me business.’
As usual, Ethan wasn’t given a chance to reply – Sam was already heading off to his office.
The shop was busy, and with every customer that came in to buy kit, Ethan felt more and more envious. Since completing his AFF, he’d hardly gone a day without a jump. It didn’t seem fair – like he was being punished for saving Kat’s life. He was glad when the time came to shut; he headed off to the hangar, wondering what Luke had planned ‘to keep his mind occupied’, as Sam had put it.
Luke was waiting for him when he arrived. ‘Hi, Ethan,’ he said. ‘Good day?’
‘It was a day,’ replied Ethan. ‘What are we doing?’ He couldn’t be bothered with the small talk. He was grumpy, and he doubted there was much anyone could do about it.
‘Formation drills,’ said Luke. ‘And you need to get this shit absolutely right on the ground before you can even consider doing it in freefall.’ He walked over to the hangar wall and pulled out one of the trolleys Ethan had used during his AFF. ‘Once I’ve shown you the basics, we’ll lie on these,’ Luke explained. ‘As you already know from your AFF, you lie flat on them, as if in freefall, and try to move smoothly between each formation.’
‘I’m going to learn formation stuff?’ said Ethan. ‘Why? I didn’t think I was ready.’
‘Sam’s idea,’ said Luke, ‘and he thinks you are. He also wants to make sure you don’t stagnate while you’re resting that shoulder. We’ll be running through all the usual skydiving drills as well as the formation stuff. Got it?’
Ethan nodded. If Sam thought he was ready, then he wasn’t going to say no. As he headed towards the trolleys, he thought about the team, and about Jake. Did this mean Sam was considering him as Jake’s replacement? If there was anything he wanted more, then he couldn’t think what it was. He pushed one of the trolleys back and forth. ‘Are you sure this isn’t a joke?’
‘No joke, Ethan. Remember – this is all down to Sam. And I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t really have a sense of humour.’
What followed then, and for the four ensuing weeks as Ethan’s shoulder was allowed to recover, was training that covered just about everything Luke knew about formations and skydiving in general. Ethan knew everyone joked about Luke’s obsession with the tiniest of details, but as the weeks passed, he soon saw just how useful and important that obsession was. Luke didn’t just know what he was talking about, he sounded like he’d invented it. And before long, Ethan had the formation drills down to a fine art. But that wasn’t all: Luke constantly quizzed Ethan on the finer points of safety, awareness in the air, and landing. He also taught Ethan how to pack his own rig.
‘You’ll not be able to jump with this until you pass your rigger’s qualification,’ said Luke as Ethan repacked his rig under Luke’s watchful gaze. ‘But at least this way you’ll know what you’re doing when you come to do the official training. And knowing it won’t do any harm, will it? Means you’ve a better understanding of how your rig works.’
Ethan agreed. Everything Luke showed him he absorbed, memorized and practised. And if he wasn’t at work, he was reading up on skydiving, chatting to more experienced skydivers, hanging out with Johnny; anything, just so long as it was about being in the air.
Ethan was obsessed. He knew it.
It was a bright Saturday morning when Ethan finally rode his bike into FreeFall with a grin on his face like a melon slice. The four weeks was over. He was jumping today.
He was just climbing into the minibus with Sam when Johnny arrived.
‘Couldn’t miss your first jump,’ he said as he sat down next to Ethan.
Two other faces appeared.
‘Luke . . . Natalya . . .’