‘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 fine. And if you thought doing a tandem was incredible, wait till you find yourself under your own canopy.’

And when the time came, when Ethan actually found himself at the door of the plane at 12,000 feet, Johnny on one side, Sam on the other, everything Johnny had told him, everything he’d felt during the tandem, was blown out of the sky. This was a totally different experience. In the tandem jump, the decisions had all been made by Sam. Now, even though Sam and Johnny were with him, Ethan decided when to jump. And he wasn’t strapped to anyone at all.

The call came, and Ethan jumped.

He fell…

… tumbled…

… tried to stabilize…

Around him the world spun and flipped. The plane appeared, disappeared.

Green Earth…

Blue sky…

Green again…

Arch your back, Ethan… he told himself.

Stable! Air rushing past, blasting away all sense of sound.

Ethan felt his arms buffeted by the wind as if he’d stuck them out of a car sun roof at eighty.

Johnny and Sam used hand signals. Ethan recognized them from the intense training of the day before. Understanding burst in his brain and he responded, adjusted his body position, checked his altimeter.

This feels natural, he thought; like I’m meant to be up here, doing this. But what really grabbed him was the sense of freedom. Even with Johnny and Sam falling with him, he was out there and in control of what was going on. It was up to him to get his positioning right, to pull the ripcord. And it felt brilliant. Nothing could ever touch this.

More hand signals. Time to deploy the canopy. Ethan looked down to the handle at the end of the ripcord. He knew he had to make sure he had firm contact. He gripped it hard, just as Sam and Johnny had taught him in the hangar, raising his other hand above his head for symmetry, to stop himself from spinning out.

Everything was in the next movement.

He pulled the handle hard and downwards. Any other direction and the wire could snag in the steel piping it ran through, the pin wouldn’t pull, and the main canopy wouldn’t deploy.

As soon as he’d pulled the handle, he pushed both arms out to the side.

Symmetrical.

Stable.

Crack!

Ethan felt his whole body being pulled upwards as, above him, his canopy burst open, caught air, inflated. Johnny and Sam were nowhere to be seen; they’d spun off to find some clean air to pull their own rigs.

‘Ethan. You OK?’

For a second Ethan had no idea where the voice was coming from. He was breathless, disorientated, buzzing like hell. Then he remembered the radio. It was Johnny on the other end.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Spotted the DZ?’

Ethan quickly glanced around. There it was. How small it looked. ‘Got it. Now what?’

Sam’s voice came over the radio too. ‘Remember what you learned yesterday. Just stay on your current heading,’ he said. ‘You’re doing fine. Remember to use those steering toggles. Try it. Track right.’

Ethan pulled the right steering toggle. He felt himself turn to the right. He eased off, tried the left toggle, turned left. Wow! He was in control of this thing! Unreal!

‘Great,’ came Sam’s voice again. ‘Keep doing that so that you’re on course for the DZ, OK? But remember, you’re not aiming to land on it. You’re aiming for the field just off to the right.’

Johnny’s voice crackled in. ‘It’s a bigger target than the DZ and it keeps you out of the way of those who know what they’re doing. Like me.’

Ethan laughed, looked down at the fields below, and started to gradually alter his course.

The world was getting closer and everything was quiet. The wind pushed him along, and slowly he drifted down, down, down.

‘Right,’ came Johnny’s voice. ‘I’m down. Perfect landing, obviously. How are you feeling?’

‘Awesome! How am I looking?’