Riders (Riders, #1)(4)

“Okay. The accident.”





CHAPTER 3

You have my military record, Cordero, so you know the lead-up: how I’d literally boarded a plane for Fort Benning, Georgia the day after I got my diploma in May. It’d been a long senior year, not a lot of fun for me, and I couldn’t wait to put high school behind me and start doing something I actually cared about.

I spent the summer going through Basic Training, then Advanced Infantry Training, then Airborne School, finally ending up where I really wanted to be—the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. RASP is the gateway for becoming a Ranger, a soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment. My dad had been part of this elite combat unit once and I was determined to become part of it too, even if it killed me—which is actually what happened, but I’ll get to that.

RASP, in a nutshell, is eight weeks of pure punishment meant to weed out anyone who’s not supposed to be there. The program puts you through constant physical and mental tests on almost no food and even less sleep. Intense. But my Ranger buddy and I were both in it for the long haul. Cory was from Houston, a couple of years older than me, and relentless. He’d face a twelve-mile run in full combat kit with a grin and his personal motto: Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat.

Four weeks in, our class had been reduced by around half, to fifty guys. We were pulled away from the steady stream of road marches and weapons drills for a parachute jump. Most of us had just gotten our jump wings in Airborne School, and they wanted to keep our training fresh in our minds.

We loaded into an Air Force C-130 just after 10:00 a.m. Cory and I took our seats side by side, how we’d pretty much been for the past month. As the plane’s propellers fired up, the anticipation of the coming thrill erased the aches that had been piling up in my body. By the time we were in the air, I found myself grinning. Like every other five-jump chump.

My first jump a few weeks earlier had required a leap of faith just to get out the door. But then the canopy had opened four seconds later, right on time like it was supposed to, and I’d relaxed, and it had been amazing. It was real quiet and peaceful on the way down, and you couldn’t beat the view.

This jump would be my sixth. Since it was only intended to refresh our training, we were jumping Hollywood-style, which meant we weren’t wearing our weapons, rucks, or combat load. Without all the gear, I felt more comfortable, and I knew it would also give me more time on the descent. Jumping from a thousand feet, the whole thing never lasted much longer than a minute—combat jumpers need to get on the ground fast—but without all the battle rattle weighing me down, I might get a few more seconds in the air than normal.

I sat back. Compared to the stuff I’d been doing, this was going to be a treat.

Listening to the drone of the engines, my eyes moved over the guys sitting in jump seats against the outside skin of the aircraft and in rows down the middle. It’d been a long time since I’d felt like I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

Then Cory dug an elbow into my side. “Good, Blake?”

The question sounded casual but I knew it wasn’t. The week before, we’d been pulling an all-night march on Cole Range—acres of Georgia woods reserved for our training—and we got talking about the worst things we’d ever been through. I was so sleep-deprived, hungry, and sore, I let slip that nothing had ever felt tough since my dad had died August 2nd of the previous year. Which happened to be a year ago, that very day. I was sitting on that plane on the anniversary of his death—and Cory had remembered.

But I had it under control.

“Good, Ryland,” I replied. Then I flipped him off as a thank-you for asking.

In the center aisle, the jumpmaster started going through the jump sequence. Get ready, stand up, hook up, check static line, check equipment, sound off. I went through each check, along with the fifty guys around me. Airborne School put thousands of soldiers through this process every month and every part of it ran like a well-oiled machine.

As we approached the drop zone, the jumpmaster opened the door and cold air rushed into the plane. Sweat rolled down my back as the adrenaline buzzed through me. The feeling of toeing right up to the edge of my limits was familiar. I’d leaned pretty hard on it over the past year because it made me forget exactly what Cory had just reminded me of.

The jumpmaster gave the go command and the guys at front of the line started exiting, one after another, handing their static lines to the safety by the door and launching into the sky.

We moved quickly. In seconds it was Cory’s turn. He jumped through the door and disappeared, and then I was up. I took my last steps on the plane and threw myself out. As the air current grabbed me, I locked my feet and knees together and hit a good exit position. The plane’s engine noise receded rapidly behind me. As this was a static-line jump, my chute would autodeploy. My job was just to make sure that happened properly.

Setting my hands on my reserve chute, I counted off like I’d been trained to do. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand.”

What the…?

Where was the tug?

I looked up, searching for an open canopy like I’d seen in my previous jumps.

It wasn’t open.

What I saw above me was a twist of pale silk. The canopy had rolled into a tight line. I instantly recognized it as a parachute malfunction—a streamer, also called a cigarette roll because of the way the parachute looked.