JUSTICE FROM ABOVE
One thousand …
Two thousand …
Three thousand …
Four thousand …
Five thousand …
SIX THOUSAND …
Check canopy! Gain canopy control!
OK … good … f*ck this job.
That’s when I could feel my heartbeat again. The 10 seconds prior had been like holding my breath underwater. At jump altitude, 1,500 feet in this case, every nut, bolt, and rivet of our Cessna-182 seemed to rattle and bang as if trying to get out of the plane before I could. It made me wonder, what ever did happen to DB Cooper?
“One minute!”
The Jump Master’s command brought me back to the inevitable reality that I was going to jump into thin air on the assumption that an oversized bedsheet and a bunch of string was going to keep me from dying prematurely at terminal velocity. Honestly? I was way more stressed out and way less excited than I had hoped to be. But I remembered something I had heard from one of my NCOs way back in my “butter bar” Second Lieutenant days:
All due respect, sir, Jesus hates a p*ssy.
