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bounced off the ground before he ever woke. Immediately the guys radioed about their dead Teammate. Pancho had been on that op. While waiting nearly an hour for someone to come and help them take the body out, Pancho reached into the rubble of the dead SEAL’s Playmate cooler, took his lunch, and ate it.
    Pancho, John, and Danny joined Alex in pre-breathing.
    After thirty minutes, the C-130 rose above ten thousand feet over Afghanistan. For each one thousand feet the plane ascended, the temperature dropped 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Alex put on overgloves, which covered his tactical gloves so his hands wouldn’t freeze off.
    As they reached eighteen thousand feet, a physiology technician monitored the SEALs and aircrew for signs of altitude sickness.
    The plane rose higher and higher. Soon the loadmaster called out, “Thirty minutes!”
    Alex’s bladder had stretched tight from all the water he’d been drinking, so he relieved himself in a piss tube in the bulkhead.
    â€œTen minutes!” They were approaching the point of no return. Once they took that step off the plane, there’d be no getting back on.
    â€œFive minutes!” The C-130’s ramp lowered. Although there was no moon, there was still more light outside the plane than inside. The light entered the plane. The guys disconnected their breathing lines from the C-130’s large oxygen tanks and connected the lines to their small individual tanks. Each SEAL checked and double-checked his oxygen bottle pressure and connections. They had duct-taped their masks onto their helmets so when they jumped, the wind wouldn’tblast the masks off their faces. Alex also made a quick check of Pancho, John, and Danny. The PT watched them for signs of hypoxia. Burdened with his green oxygen tank on his left, rifle on his right, and more than a hundred pounds of gear in his backpack, Alex waddled behind the others, who also waddled to the ramp.
    â€œThree minutes!” With all the wind blasting into the plane, Alex couldn’t hear the loadmaster call out the time interval, but Alex recognized the man’s three-finger sign and relayed it to his Teammates in case they hadn’t seen it. Alex dropped to his stomach and slithered onto the ramp. He peeked over the edge and all he could see were clouds. He hoped the ground matched the aerial images the Colonel had shown them.
    â€œOne minute!” Alex slithered back away from the ramp and stood. He hoped the pilot and crew were on target.
    â€œThirty seconds!”
    The light on the ramp switched from red to green. Pancho and John looked to Alex for the “okay.” Alex pointed off the ramp: go . John was the lightest and would take the longest to reach the ground, so he jumped first. Danny went next. Pancho was heavier than Alex, but Alex had to make sure everyone got off the plane okay before he jumped. The three SEALs had distributed their gear so Alex carried more weight.
    Alex brought up the rear, and stepped off the plane at twenty-six thousand feet above Afghanistan. It was the Superman feeling, mixed with fear and ecstasy. He longed to just fall through space, but the whole point to a high-altitude, high-opening jump was to deploy your chute right after jumping. Even more crucial, if he waited too long to pull his chute, he’d blast through Pancho’s canopy below him and they’d both die.
    A mere four seconds after stepping off the plane, Alex pulled his rip cord. He tensed up, even though he had done this hundreds of times before. Would the chute deploy? It was amazing to realize that your life literally hung from a bunch of string.
    After what seemed an eternity, the chute opened at twenty-six thousand feet. The force was so abrupt and violent that Alex was certain he cracked a vertebra. Tensing really didn’t help. He looked up and did a 360-degree check of his high glide ratio canopy to make sure it hadn’t folded over itself like a giant