Jerod eyed the parachutes Vance and I were wearing and whistled. “You already have the ‘chutes. Seems to me it’d be a shame if we didn’t use them.”
“And even if I was willing,” I continued to argue (I really don’t know why I continued to protest), “which I’m not, there’s no one to do a tandem jump with me.”
Jerod leered at me. “Nice try. You’re too big for a tandem jump. Besides, if you were really planning on a tandem jump, then you wouldn’t be wearing a parachute, would you? Your instructor would. You were going to use a static line, and you know it.”
Well, it was worth a try.
“Fine. I’ll use the static line.”
“Not this time, Bacchus. You’ll jump when I say to jump, otherwise this plane will be in for a very rough landing.”
I looked back at the unconscious form of Harry, then Ash, and all the members of the Daredevils and the police officers who had volunteered for this mission. I couldn’t let them come to any harm. Whether I liked it or not, I was gonna have to do this.
“If we do this,” I nervously began, as I began tugging on my parachute’s shoulder straps, to tighten them as much as I could, “how do we know you’ll allow these people to safely land?”
Jerod returned to his seat to pull out the helmet stored in a bag, comprised of netting, underneath. He strapped it to his head and pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
“You don’t. But, don’t worry. We’re all going to jump together.”
“No, we’re not,” a new voice suddenly announced.
I turned to see who had spoken and almost danced with joy. It was Marshal Binson, and he was holding a gun! I had to stop myself from fist-pumping the air. Much to my dismay, however, Jerod didn’t seem too surprised.
“Well, well, Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken.”
“I was never asleep,” Ash pointed out. “I had to wait for you to identify yourself. I must admit, you don’t look like you usually do.”
Jerod opened his arms wide, “This is me, all right, in the flesh. I must admit, I didn’t think you’d wake back up.”
“I told you,” Ash all but growled, “I wasn’t asleep.”
“Your body language says otherwise,” Jerod replied.
It was at this time that I noticed Jerod’s gun was not pointed at Ash, but at a point somewhere to the left of where Jerod was standing. Wasn’t he worried that he’d punch a hole through the aircraft? And clearly Jerod was unconcerned. Did he know something we didn’t?
“Your face has sleep lines, your hair is tousled, and your eyes are dilated. No, Marshal Dumbass, you were asleep. That tells me you’re still drugged.”
“Am not,” Ash insisted.
And… it was at this time that Ash’s gun wavered, and moved a little to the right, as though the marshal had noticed his aim was off. However, he was now too far to the right. Of all the infernal luck. Jerod was right. Ash had somehow regained consciousness, but that didn’t mean he was in full control of his faculties. Add a firearm to the mix, and you have a recipe for disaster.
“You see it, don’t you?” Jerod said, directed to me. “And you? Clouseau? Love the name, by the way. What’s your professional take on Marshal Dumbass here?”
I could see that it didn’t take long for Vance to determine Ash had no business standing in a shaking plane, such as this. In fact, the turbulence was starting to get worse, which prompted Vance to release himself from his seat belt and head towards the marshal. Vance sighed heavily and then pointed at the closest seat.
“You’d better have a seat, pal. You’re in no condition to…”
“Don’t presume to tell me what to do,” Ash snapped. His gaze was unfocused, and the gun had started to shake. “I’m taking this scumbag in, and that’s final.”
We must have hit a rough patch of air, because all of a sudden, the plane was shaking so bad that all of us were thrown off balance. Well, Vance, Ash, and Jerod were. They were all thrown together and went down in a tumble of arms and legs. As for me? Well, I was still strapped in to my seat. Grumbles and curses were tossed about as Jerod hastily extricated himself from underneath Vance and Ash. His gun was immediately pointed at the cockpit.
“Both of you, on your feet,” Jerod growled, as he stepped to his right so he’d be in line with the cockpit. “If either of you so much as twitch, then I’m going to send a bullet straight through our pilot’s brain pan. Care to guess what’ll happen to everyone here?”
Ash blinked a few times as his befuddled brain tried to process Jerod’s threat.
“We don’t want that to happen,” I said, stepping in. The turbulence had died down, so I finally released myself from my seat. “Listen, pal, this is gonna have to be the one who got away. There’s too much at stake here.”
“I cannot let him go,” Ash vehemently declared. “If he takes out the pilot, I can guarantee you he’ll be dead before he can take another shot.”
“You’re talking about the pilot,” Vance tried to point out. “Unless you can fly this bird, and, I’m guessing by your condition, you can’t, you have to let him go.”
“And we’re supposed to take your word that you’ll leave these people alone?” Ash argued. “What about your father? Where’s he been hiding? How do I know he won’t be waiting for them back at the hangar?”
Jerod checked his watch again and stepped over to a small, square panel. It contained two buttons: green and red. He stabbed his finger down, on the green button. Even though it was unbelievably loud inside the plane, we could still hear the groaning metal as the plane’s exit ramp began to lower.
“You won’t. I could tell you my father will be waiting for me, on the ground, and you might believe me. Or you might not. Either way, I don’t care. Now, Clouseau? Bacchus? Get ready.”
Confused, Ash looked at me and Vance and cocked his head. “Where are you guys going?”
“We’re apparently going skydiving,” Vance groaned.
I held up my hands in another time out. “Wait a damn minute! How am I supposed to know when to pull the handle? How am I supposed to steer this thing? I don’t know how to do any of that!”
Jerod was shaking his head. He pointed the gun back at the two of us and nodded towards the ramp. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ash’s face redden with anger. Jerod was completely ignoring him, as though he was no more dangerous than a guinea pig.
“They’re not going anywhere,” Ash insisted. He aimed his gun. “Neither are you, Jerod Jones.”
“At least point the gun at me, and not at one of your undercover officers,” Jerod complained, as he turned his back on the marshal and adjusted the parachute straps around his legs.
Surprised, Ash looked down at his gun, then in Jerod’s direction. “I am pointing it at you.”
“Actually, you’re not,” I quietly told the marshal. “Trust me, I’m impressed as hell you managed to wake up, but you clearly are not fully awake. Put the gun down before you hurt someone besides Jerod.”
Ash turned to Vance. “Is he serious?”
“He is. There’s no shame in sitting this one out, marshal.”
Marshal Binson’s gun lowered, until it was pointing down.
“Good boy,” Jerod said, as though he was praising a five-year-old. “Now, are the senior citizens ready?”
I looked over at Vance, back at the exit ramp, and then down at the teeny, tiny checkerboard the ground had become, thousands of feet below.
“I’m really wishing I had gone to the bathroom right about now,” I groaned.
Just before the three of us could step off the exit ramp, and out into nothing but air, Jerod turned, tossed the gun to Ash, and waved.
“See ya on the other side, marshal!”
With that, Jerod pushed the two of us out of the plane and then followed us out.
ELEVEN
The movies had it all wrong. How many times have you watched someone jump out a plane and then have a friendly conversation with the person next to them as
they tumbled – end over end – through the air? Well, take it from me. It doesn’t work that way, not in the real world. The wind was rushing by me so damn fast that I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of hearing anything, let alone hear my own screaming, which I’m sure I was doing.
I looked at my flailing arms and legs and realized that freaking out and panicking – in mid-air – was completely pointless. After all, I did have a parachute on. All I had to do was pull the cord and then pray I didn’t drift into some power lines on the way down.
Yes, that’s a morbid thought to have, but then again, I was just forced out of a plane, at gun point. A little bit of rational reasoning was much better than losing my cool, which based on Vance’s frantic arm movements, was exactly what he was doing. A split second later, his parachute opened, and he was violently yanked skyward.
Remembering we had a third member of our party, I quickly scanned the skies for Jerod, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. True to his word, the worst mass murderer to ever grace Pomme Valley with his presence had made good on his escape.
Whatever. Right now, I had more pressing problems to deal with. Vance had the right idea. It was time to bring this nightmarish freefall to an abrupt end.
My fingers had just located the handle and had closed around it, and I was ready to pull, when I caught sight of a distant form, tumbling end over end as if he was an out-of-control airplane caught in a spin. What had happened to Jerod? Had he somehow knocked himself out when he jumped out of the plane?
The mists cleared, and the cloud I had been falling through finally dissipated. That was when I caught sight of a second distant object. This figure had his arms and legs tucked tightly to his sides, and he was angled away from us, which explained why the distance between us had been steadily increasing. Who, then, was this fourth person?
My hand refused to pull the handle. I don’t know why. I sure as hell gave it the order, since falling like this was – in my opinion – anything but fun. But, something was nagging me. Something felt… off. Whoever that person was, it was clear they were in trouble.
Then it hit me. Son of a bitch. Only one person was stupid enough to follow us out of that plane, especially drugged. It was Ash, it had to be. However, it looked like the sensation of falling had caused the marshal to pass out. If he wasn’t awake to pull the cord on his parachute, then how the hell was he expected to walk away from this experience?
Jerod was gone. Vance had deployed his parachute. Ash was unconscious. That left only one person: Yours Truly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I shouted, at the top of my lungs.
It didn’t do any good. The winds whipped the words out of my mouth the second they were spoken. No wonder we were told to keep ourselves hydrated. The simple act of speaking resulted in a bone-dry mouth in less than two seconds.
A quick glance at the ground confirmed I had about five minutes before I would become a human hamburger patty, so if I was really going to do something, then it had to be now. The problem was, how do I get over to him? Ash had to be several hundred feet away, and at least a couple hundred feet higher than me.
This is where my love of movies comes in. Now this? This part I’ve seen, numerous times, and the physics do hold up. Spreading your arms and legs, like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, would create more drag, and therefore, partially slow your descent.
Yes! It was working! Ash’s spinning form was getting closer. By twisting this way and that, and then mimicking the straight-as-an-arrow form I had seen Jerod use, I was able to get close enough to Ash where I could reach out and snag a leg. Once I had the marshal falling normally, and had stopped the spinning, I ran my hands down his sides, looking for the pull-cord.
Talk about inappropriate as hell. One guy feeling another guy up? Blech. But, these were extenuating circumstances.
There! I found the handle, and based on how quickly the ground was approaching, I had less than two minutes before impact. About ready to give the cord a mighty yank, I caught sight of Rascal River, snaking this way and that. Unfortunately, it looked as though we were angling straight for it. And, complicating the matter, trees could be seen lining the river for miles in either direction. This definitely wasn’t the time to be living in the middle of a forest. What was going to happen when we land? What would happen if Ash landed in the water? He’d drown! Then again, I can’t imagine hitting the trees would be that much safer.
Steeling myself, I yanked hard on the cord, and was rewarded with seeing Ash’s small auxiliary parachute deploy, which snapped open and deployed the main chute. The marshal was then yanked out of my grip as his momentum slowed drastically, as it was supposed to do. Eyeing the river below me, I yanked my own cord and waited for my own chute to open. All in all, it only took about three seconds to completely open and yank my sorry butt to what felt like a standstill.
Now I know why the instructors were so keen on making sure the straps and fasteners on our chutes were as tight as possible. The rapid deceleration had to be the most unpleasant experience of the entire excursion, not counting having a gun thrust in my face. And, since the parachute has straps that circle around my thighs, and are all hooked together, I can’t even imagine what it’d be like if your freefall was jerked to a stop, and those straps rode up.
Ah! This was more like it! The wind was no longer howling at my face. I could hear birds chirping and leaves rustling as I neared the ground. Unfortunately, I also heard rushing water. A quick check below me confirmed I was headed straight for the river.
“Oh, sure. Why the hell not?”
Thankful for the instructors for pointing out the quick release fastener, so the parachutist wouldn’t be dragged along the ground after landing, I released the chute nearly a dozen feet above the river, and just like that, I was back in the Rascal. And it was just as cold as I remember. Only, this time, there was no raft waiting for me.
The section of river I had been dropped in was blissfully calm, only it didn’t stay that way. In fact, I do remember this part of the river from when we rafted it earlier. If memory serves, a lateral, or ‘narrowing’ of the river was just past those trees, which meant things were about to get a whole lot trickier. It was time to get my fat butt moving!
One thing I didn’t count on was how tired I had become. I must have flailed more than I realized, ‘cause it felt like I had just spent 45 minutes on my tread-climber exercise machine. Swimming became a chore, and much to my horror, I realized I wasn’t going to make it to shore before the river narrowed.
Less than ten seconds later, I was jetting along in the river, bouncing painfully off of submerged rocks, protruding branches, and any number of other things in the river. My parachute, which had been jettisoned over the water, rushed by me. I don’t know why I did it, but I reached out to grab several of the trailing strings and lines.
Thanks to the cold temperature of the water, I felt my body going numb. If I had any hope of rescue, then it was going to fall on my ability to hold on to something in order to be dragged out of the water. Right now, my best bet was my parachute. So, before I lost all feelings in my fingers and hands, I tied the cords around my right hand and prayed it would hold.
A wave of cold water splashed in my face as it suddenly felt like my parachute had become entangled with the propeller of a boat, and I was being pulled through the water. My teeth started chattering, my hands were numb, and the only thing I could think about was the location of that damn Class IV drop-off. Was I close?
“Zack! Jesus! Hold on, buddy!”
I turned to the voice. It was Vance! How had he managed to get on the ground so quickly?
“Grab hold!”
My eyes wouldn’t focus, no matter how many times I blinked. Thankfully, my ears still worked, and they told me Vance was scrambling along the riverbank, trying to get ahead of me.
“He’s got hold of the chute!” I heard someone else shout. “See that? He’s wrapped it around his hand. Someone snag that chute!”
I don’t know the exact specifics of what happened next. Vance told me later that night that he and a family of campers he had stumbled across formed a human chain and stretched out far enough to grab the parachute. Since I had tied myself to it, it was just a matter of reeling me in.
“Get him next to the fire,” a female voice said.
“I’m o-okay,” I managed to get out. Finally free of the water, my eyes cleared. There was a sea of faces – mostly unknowns – staring down at me. A blanket was produced, in which Vance flung it over my shoulders. “H-how did you g-get down so f-fast?”
“How’d I get down so fast?” Vance repeated, confused. “It took forever to reach the land. I opened my chute too damn early. What happened? Did you see where Jerod went?”
“N-no.” Damn chills. My teeth were chattering, and I know I was sounding just like Woody Woodpecker.
“What happened?” Vance wanted to know. “Why’d it take you so damn long to deploy your chute? Jesus, Zack. I thought I had lost you. I never want to feel like that again.”
“Where’s Ash?” I carefully asked, determined not to stammer.
Vance blinked and stared at me. “Did you just ask me where your ass is? Seriously?”
As serious as the situation was, this drew a laugh not only from me, but from the nearby campers, too.
“N-no. Doofus. Ash. Where’s Ash?”
“Probably still in the plane, why?”
“No. He followed us.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. “The jump knocked him out. I had to pull his cord for him.”
Vance’s eyes bugged out as he stared at me. The campers, overhearing what I had to do, gasped with alarm. “He’s okay. At least, I think he’s okay. I’m pretty sure he’s up a tree somewhere.”
Vance hastily unzipped his red jumpsuit and fumbled about inside, but his hand came back empty.
“Where’s your phone?” I asked, concerned. “You didn’t drop it, did you?”
Vance looked at the campers. “Does someone have a cell phone I could borrow? It’s a police emergency.”
Case of the Dysfunctional Daredevils Page 17
