Hard Landing

by Ophelia Sexton

  While camping out on a fire line during his rookie year as a smokejumper, he had learned the hard way to always check his PG bag if he left it unattended for more than thirty seconds.

  The last time he'd let his guard slip, she'd managed to steal all of his Oreos, replacing them with oatmeal-raisin cookies…which he loathed. He'd retaliated by swapping her spare bra with his athletic cup and a pair of fragrant used socks.

  "You okay?" Kara asked, her dark brows dipping over golden-brown eyes the exact shade of Carl's favorite whiskey. "You seem a little, uh…" She let her sentence trail off with an expressive shrug of her shoulders under her puffy jumpsuit.

  Carl wondered how much of his phone conversation she'd overheard. "I'm fine."

  She surveyed him skeptically. "Uh-huh. Sure, you are." Her lips pressed together, as if she were considering her next words—which was unusual for her.

  Then she said, her voice almost too low for even his keen ears to hear above the roar of the plane's engines and the deafening rush of the slipstream coming from the open door, "Look, my clan's trying to arrange a mating for me too. You need me to fake being your girlfriend, I'll be happy to do a Skype call with you or something and pretend we're a couple."

  Carl blinked at her in surprise. Wolf and coyote shifters in the Lower 48 were hereditary enemies, thanks to centuries of territorial disputes.

  But coyote clans were relative newcomers to Alaska, and there wasn’t the same bad blood between the Alaskan wolf shifter packs and the coyote clans who had settled in the southern part of the state.

  For a crazy moment, he considered taking her up on her offer. News of a serious girlfriend in Colorado might discourage his parents from ordering him back to Alaska.

  A flash of motion caught his eye as Mike suddenly straightened up. There was a shimmer of shifter gold in his dark eyes as he glared over Kara's head at Carl.

  Then Carl returned to his senses. I can't lie to my family… Even if I thought I could get away with it, it wouldn't be right to break trust with my pack.

  He sighed and twisted in his seat to clap Kara on her padded shoulder. "Hey, thanks for the offer. I appreciate it. But I've got to figure this one out on my own."

  She nodded. "Okay. I just want to let you know that I'm here for you."

  Warmth shot through him at her words. I'm not wrong to consider my jumper team as my second pack, even though most of them aren't wolf shifters.

  "And now, if you two have finished plotting out your rom-com, we've reached cruising altitude and it's time for our briefing." Grinning, Thor rose from his seat near the front of the plane and turned to face the jumpers seated on the long bench that lined one side of the cabin.

  Carl's face heated as he realized that the ambient noise hadn't masked his exchange with Kara as well as he'd hoped. Mike was still glaring at him.

  "We got some important stuff to cover this morning and not much time to do it, so listen up!” Thor continued, his deep voice easily audible even with all of the noise in the cabin. “It's been a heck of a fire season so far, but we’re catching nearly everything we’re jumping. Considering the conditions, that’s some damn good firefighting, guys. Let's keep up the great work." He nodded at them. "We're headed southwest right now. There's a fire burning in a rugged, heavily wooded area of the San Juan National Forest. It's still small but growing fast. Lots of trees. I'll do my best to find you guys a clear landing site in a meadow, but you know how that goes."

  Everyone, including Carl, laughed ruefully at this. They had all been trained to land safely in all kinds of conditions and knew better than to expect a nice cushy landing area clear of trees, logs, or rocks.

  "Now on to the wind and weather report…"

  Carl paid close attention as Thor continued speaking, outlining the expected conditions at their jump destination and passing along the latest fire reports from the wildland firefighting crews already on the ground.

  The fire was currently threatening ranches in a nearby valley. The steep slopes and lack of roads in the area had made calling in smokejumpers a no-brainer for the local US Forest Service guys.

  The tricky part was the weather. The same lightning that had sparked the fire had also unsettled the atmosphere. Conditions were windy and somewhat turbulent, and Carl was experienced enough to know that a thunderstorm usually meant downdrafts, which might make today's jump interesting, and not in a good way.

  The atmosphere on the plane crackled with excitement and tension. No matter how many seasons you jumped, each new mission came with a heaping dose of excitement, terror, and adrenaline.

  Carl spent the remainder of the hour-long flight listening to the rest of his jump mates shooting the breeze. Usually, he'd be right there with the bullshitting, but today he sat silently, checking and rechecking his gear while trying to push down his feelings of guilt for not being a better son and pack member.

  Mom and Dad need my help. Am I a selfish bastard for wanting to spend another season doing something that I love?

  Finally, they spotted a large plume of grayish-brown smoke staining the clear blue sky. Pete and Chris began circling around the fire, while Thor and Steve, who was today's jumper-in-charge, made their way to the open door at the rear of the plane.

  There, they clipped the pigtails of their harnesses to the restraining lines inside the cabin before peering out the door at the landscape of mountains, deep valleys, and steep forested slopes below, conferring about where the best jump spot might be.

  They needed to find a place that would allow the jumpers to land as close to the fire as possible, while avoiding hazards on the ground and remaining safely out of reach of the flames.

  After some back-and-forth discussion over their headsets with the cockpit, Thor began tossing out weighted crepe paper streamers. They fluttered down into the forest, the long lengths of brightly colored paper revealing which direction the winds were blowing at various altitudes during the descent.

  By this time, Carl, along with his fellow jumpers, was standing. His attention was glued to the windows, watching the streamers descend.

  Thor, Steve, and the pilots continued to discuss what they had seen with the first set of streamers. The jumpers did the same.

  Thor pointed out a promising stretch of riverbank with a narrow meadow and no fallen logs or other hazards visible from the air. "There's your jump site, guys."

  “Looks sweet! Only about a mile from the fire,” Josh Sterling, the team's other wolf shifter, shouted over the roar of the plane's engines.

  “Looks pretty gusty halfway down,” Kara shouted back, confirming what Carl had noticed. “I don’t want to end up in the middle of that river.”

  "That's what the toggles are for, Joker!" Carl teased. "Need a refresher on how to steer a chute?"

  Kara rolled her eyes at him. She was by far the most skilled at maneuvering during a jump, and everyone on the team knew it.

  “Take her to jump altitude,” Thor said into his headset.

  As the plane completed its spiraling climb, Thor took his place to the right of the open door and turned to Steve, who looked like a medieval knight in his padded Kevlar jumpsuit with its bulging pockets and his helmet with a metal-mesh faceplate. “Are you ready?”

  “I'm ready,” Steve replied. “Hook up!”

  He dropped into the sitting position and braced himself in the door while Carl moved up, standing close behind him.

  Thor slapped Steve's shoulder in the "go" signal.

  Without hesitating, Steve launched himself out of the plane.

  Carl moved into position next, seating himself on the door sill. His legs dangled over thousands of feet of empty space, the slipstream pushing at them with the force of rushing water.

  His heart was pounding—not with fear but with anticipation and excitement. He fucking loved this part of his job.

  Steve was still in the air, his round blue-and-white parachute floating some distance below the plane as he headed for the designated jump site.

>   “Did you see the streamers?” Thor asked.

  Carl nodded.

  “Did you see the jump spot?”

  Carl nodded again. The river directly below them sparkled like a diamond bracelet as it wound through a narrow valley flanked by steep, pine-covered slopes on either side.

  Thor continued, “There’s about two hundred yards of drift, but it’s gusty. Watch down low—there’s turbulence below that ridgeline. I’m putting you out over the top there,” he said, pointing at a landmark. “Hold toward the top of the ridge. Don’t get downwind. And stay away from that river.”

  Carl performed his pre-jump check of his parachute release handles, the connections to his reserve chute, and his cutaway clutch.

  The plane came around on its final lineup and leveled out.

  Carl waited for the signal to go. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, and he felt calm and focused at last.

  Thor leaned over his shoulder, peering down, studying the terrain unrolling below. “Get ready,” he shouted.

  Grabbing both sides of the door, Carl braced himself.

  Thor slapped his right shoulder, signaling that it was time to jump.

  Without hesitating, Carl launched himself forward, into space, and began counting down. “Jump-thousand, look-thousand, reach-thousand, wait-thousand…"

  Above him, the red-and-white US Forest Service plane shrank rapidly, the roar of its engines receding as he fell towards the trees and rocks far below.

  When he reached, “Pull-Thousand!” in his count, he pulled his release handle.

  The parachute opened with a teeth-rattling jerk. The loud rush of wind instantly quieted.

  Now came Carl's favorite part of a jump: the long glide down to the jump spot.

  He loved the serenity of soaring through the sky in near-perfect silence, the only sound the soft flutter of his parachute's fabric.

  Up here, he was a million miles away from the tug-of-war between his desires and his loyalty to his pack and family.

  Carl spent a few moments letting the blissful solitude soak into his soul. Then it was time to reach for his steering toggles and guide his chute down to the jump zone.

  Clearing the ridge, he saw that Steve had made it down safely.

  An instant later, he hit the turbulence that Thor had warned him about. The air punched at him as if he were a swimmer in stormy seas, battering at him with invisible waves and threatening to swamp the fragile vessel of his parachute canopy.

  As Carl fought to steer towards the designated jump spot, the wind abruptly gained strength. It shifted wildly, pushing him backwards towards the rocky spine of the ridge, which bristled with the tall spikes of ponderosa pines.

  He realized that there wasn't a chance in hell that he was going to make the jump spot. Worse than that, he'd be damned lucky to find somewhere to land without ending up hung up in a treetop.

  An updraft swept him up and over the ridge. He cleared the pines, but by that point, he'd lost too much altitude and was barely clearing two hundred feet.

  The wind died and Carl began moving forward, but it was too late to turn and clear the ridge a second time.

  Instead, he found himself looking down at an unbroken stretch of forest below the soles of his logger boots.

  Barely missing a stand of towering pines, he reefed down on his right-hand toggle and flew between two huge Douglas firs, his parachute canopy brushing the spiky boughs as he passed.

  But he didn't get the chance to experience relief at his close call. Suddenly, a third huge tree towered straight ahead in his glide path.

  "Shit!" Carl yanked his left toggle, but it was too late.

  He slammed into the crown of a towering blue spruce.

  A branch speared through his left thigh, effortlessly puncturing his Kevlar jumpsuit and numbing his leg.

  It left him skewered like shish-kebab a hundred and fifty feet above the forest floor, surrounded by the sharp fragrance of bruised spruce needles and the rusty scent of fresh blood.

  Chapter 2

  Shot to Hell

  "Shit," Carl said again as his parachute canopy deflated and draped itself over the branches above his head.

  He'd landed in trees before.

  In fact, all smokejumpers spent lots of hours during rookie training learning how to safely recover from a tree landing. And every jumper carried a 150-foot rope for exactly this situation.

  Step one: retrieve the letdown rope coiled in my right leg pocket, he thought.

  He reached down, and that's when his left leg began to hurt like hell.

  A patch of dark red wetness stained the edges of the ragged hole in his jumpsuit. Well, that explains the blood I've been smelling.

  Carl cursed again and twisted, bracing his right foot against the tree trunk as he freed his leg from the fucking branch impaling it.

  The movement sent a dazzling shower of bright golden sparks and black snowflakes dancing in front of his eyes. He concentrated on breathing and not passing out until the sick agony subsided enough for him to be able to think clearly again.

  Panting, he considered his options.

  During his training, he'd been taught to anchor his letdown rope to the webbing that connected his harness to the parachute.

  But is my parachute canopy hung up securely in this tree? Or am I better off tying my rope to one of these branches?

  The last thing he needed right now was to find himself plunging a hundred-plus feet to the ground, hitting every branch on the way down and impaling himself once or twice more.

  Shifters were tougher than Ordinaries, so he'd probably survive the hard landing. Probably.

  He decided to fasten his rope to the tree. After that, he detached himself from his canopy by pulling on the Capewell releases that fastened the parachute risers to his harness.

  All that was left to do now was to rappel down, aka "the easy part."

  Easier said than done, Carl thought as he looked down at his injured leg. The bloodstain was definitely bigger than it had been a minute or two ago.

  The next few minutes were an eternity of navigating branches and foliage as he gingerly descended the tree using just his arms and good leg.

  That's when he discovered that his left leg wouldn't support his weight.

  He glanced up at the mass of fabric still hanging in the branches high overhead and huffed in exasperation.

  Parachutes were too expensive to abandon.

  Under normal circumstances, he'd be divesting himself of his PG bag and reserve chute, donning a set of metal spurs retrieved from a cargo box, and preparing to climb back up the tree like a telephone lineman to retrieve his parachute.

  Not a chance of doing that today. He wouldn't be hiking out of here to rejoin his teammates in fighting that fire, either.

  Carl tested his injured leg one more time, just to see if there was any chance that he might be able to limp out of here on his two human feet.

  Nope. He cursed again and grabbed for the tree trunk as a fresh spear of agony shot up his thigh. His leg buckled beneath him, and the scent of blood intensified.

  With a sigh, he removed his helmet and began stripping out of his harness and jumpsuit one-handed while balancing awkwardly on his right leg and holding onto the tree.

  When he was down to his fire-resistant shirt and pants, along with his sturdy leather logging boots, he did a quick assessment of his injuries.

  Mostly scrapes and bruises, except for his leg, which was a mess. The branch had punched a deep, ragged hole through his quad muscle, tearing and bruising his flesh. At least it wasn't pumping blood, which meant that the branch had missed the major blood vessels.

  That was good news. He wouldn't have to apply a tourniquet.

  His radio crackled to life. "Jensen, you okay? Where the hell did you end up?" Thor demanded.

  "Alive and mostly in one piece. Wind took me up and over a ridge. I landed in a tree and had to let down," Carl reported.

  "Glad to hear you're okay," Thor said. "
Looks like Lopez was the only jumper to make it down without problems. Sorry about that."

  "Not your fault, man," Carl said. "Anyone hurt?" Other than me?

  He debated whether to report his injury. Nah. I'm in no danger of bleeding to death. It can wait. The last thing he wanted or needed was for his team to spend valuable time babying his sorry ass.

  "No," Thor replied, to Carl's relief. "But you all have a bit of a hike to the jump spot. The boxes all landed more-or-less on target."