The first officer extinguished the light and nodded, then he reached down for the Flight Management Computer near his left knee and began tapping on the miniature keyboard. They were too far away for a safe insertion, so he entered a lateral offset from their planned route on the airway, executed the change, and leaned back in the faux sheepskin — covered seat as the autopilot adjusted course to the west and brought them closer to Hainan Island.
The captain locked eyes with the first officer, hesitant to voice his apprehension. Both knew there were over three hundred passengers blissfully unaware of the clandestine ballet that was about to take place beneath their feet.
In the Boeing 777’s bulk hold, four men bent at the waist and stepped from the heated pod, before shuffling to the now open cargo door at the aft end of the massive jet’s lower deck. They moved carefully, burdened by heavy layers of dark clothing to combat the extreme cold they were just beginning to feel.
Each man wore a rig with both a main and reserve chute on his back and a navigation system strapped to his chest. Clipped to their harnesses, just below their waists and hanging almost to the floor, were kits containing everything they might need to complete their tasks once on the ground.
“Jesus, it’s cold!”
They had trained for exactly this scenario and had experienced the extreme cold temperatures before, but they never got used to it. Their memories of the frigid Coronado surf were distant, but the lessons had been ingrained in them, and they huddled closer together as they waited.
“Thirty seconds,” the jumpmaster said.
Their communication system was state-of-the-art and allowed them to speak to each other through line of sight. But once they exited the airplane, they would be connected to the entire team — including the QRF aboard the USS
Each man took his place in line. The fourth and final jumper closed the hatch on the pod they had just exited and sealed it for the return trip to Hickam. The pod itself was necessary for a mission like this. It contained four jump seats bolted to opposite bulkheads and four spartan bunk beds that had been lifesavers during the long flight. The four jumpers had boarded the pod at a warehouse in Honolulu, carrying with them their free-fall rigs and kit for the mission. Though each man carried supplemental oxygen, the pod contained its own life support system and was both heated and pressurized.
After the airline loaded the pod onto the plane, the men struggled to make themselves comfortable while they waited for the Boeing to take off and fly almost five hours before reaching the drop zone. Four hours into the flight, an alarm sounded, and the men began preparing for their jump. They added extra layers of clothing, checked and rechecked their rigs, then strapped into their parachutes and adjusted their kit bags.
Fifteen minutes after the first alarm, a second alarm sounded, and the lights in the pod extinguished and were replaced with a night vision — compatible faint, green glow. Each man grabbed a mask from the bulkhead next to his jump seat, placed it on his face, and inhaled pure oxygen.
Jumping from high altitude posed several challenges to a human body not designed to live at 36,000 feet, and each jumper spent forty-five minutes breathing one hundred percent oxygen to flush any residual nitrogen from his system. At sea level, nitrogen was harmless, but during rapid changes in pressure — such as when they depressurized their pod in preparation for the jump — any nitrogen in their system could cause decompression sickness and incapacitate the jumper.
But these men were experts. Each had hundreds of high-altitude jumps, and the routine of pre-breathing was second nature. Another positive result of breathing one hundred percent oxygen was that it increased their visual acuity, and as their eyes adjusted to the low light environment of the pod, they made out the shapes of the other jumpers around them. Their eyes were adjusted fully to the darkness by the time their pre-breathing cycle had ended and the pod depressurized.
“Thirty seconds,” the jumpmaster said. He didn’t shout. He didn’t have to. Each man wore a mask pressed to his face with a small microphone seated inside just below his nose.
With the pre-breathing cycle complete, each man removed the masks affixed to the bulkhead and replaced them with the supplemental oxygen masks they carried on their rigs. Each wore a heavy balaclava over his face, pulled down just below the chin to allow the oxygen mask a tight seal. Over that, they wore Peltor headsets and lightweight bump helmets with night optical devices clipped to a bracket on the front and flipped up to allow an unobstructed view through their thick goggles.
Graham reached up and tapped the helmet of the man in front of him. “Four ready.”
Ron repeated the gesture. “Three ready.”
“Two ready,” Todd said.
“Go,” the jumpmaster said.
“On me!”
