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brassiere. So far, so good —it had deployed properly and everything checked out fine. He suddenly wondered if, like so much else sold in the United States these days, the chutes had been made by a bunch of kids in a Chinese factory. They could take out a battalion of paratroopers just by skipping a few stitches.
    â€œDamn it!” The temperature was 45 degrees below zero. He really didn’t like HAHO jumps. You froze your damn ass off long before anyone got a chance to shoot it off.
    He double-checked the canopy. Satisfied it was in full working order, he loosened the straps on his ruck hanging from his chest and let the ruck drop to the top of his boots to distribute the weight more evenly.
    Floating while freezing, he began searching for the other jumpers in the night sky. With shaking hands he pulled down his night optical device (NOD) so that it rested in front of his eyes. Infrared (IR) chemlights glowed on the back of each man’s helmet. Although invisible to the naked eye, the IR chemlights could be seen through the NODs. The Outcasts stacked up. John glided at the bottom and a large blob that was clearly Pancho was just below Alex. The large black space between them should have been Danny, but he wasn’t there. Where’s his chemlight?
    Shit, shit, shit!
    Alex looked harder at the empty space between John and Pancho. Shit! Danny drifted between them, his chute partially deployed and flapping in the wind! He was already too far away for Alex to tell if he was unconscious or not.
    John spun his body and looked up to check his chute. Alex willed John to lunge after Danny and grab him, but he had already fallenpast and was picking up speed. Alex did a quick calculation and tore at the release tab of his main chute. It detached and he was suddenly flying again, straight down. He angled his body into a high dive and blew past Pancho and John.
    A cloud base at fifteen thousand feet rushed up to meet him. If he didn’t get to Danny before then, he’d lose him. Alex was having a hard time maintaining the angle of his dive and realized his ruck was causing the problem. There was no way to cut it loose now. He strained and kept his dive. The wind ripped at his mask, trying to pry it off his face. The distance between him and Danny closed.
    Five hundred feet. He started working out what he would do when he caught up to Danny. He’d try to get the unconscious man in a leg lock and bear hug. Then he’d pull his reserve and hope like hell.
    Three hundred seventy-five feet. Danny must be unconscious. He was on his back, his arms flailing about in the wind. Grabbing him wasn’t going to be easy.
    Two hundred twenty feet. The top of the cloud base was looming close. This was going to be tight. Alex turned his focus back on Danny.
    One hundred feet.
    Forty-five feet. Alex reached out his gloved hands. He’d grab Danny first, pull him in tight, then wrap his legs around him.
    Twenty feet. A piece of canopy from Danny’s chute ripped loose and flew up into Alex’s face. He desperately clawed at the cloth with his left hand while still reaching out with his right. He pulled the cloth away and was in the clouds.
    Danny was gone!
    Alex looked around, but he couldn’t see anything. He had no choice. He pulled the D-ring for his reserve chute and a moment later felt the reassuring jerk as the harness straps bit into his body. No point looking up; he wouldn’t be able to see a damn thing.
    He tried to calculate how far off course he’d be when he landed. He was still ten thousand feet up, so he should be able to steer closeto their original drop zone. If John and Pancho saw his chemlight they’d fly toward him. Alex said a silent goodbye to Danny. Murphy’s law was a bastard.
    Most of the buddies Alex lost, like Jabberwocky, he knew better than Danny. Some Alex didn’t know as well. Experiencing so much death rubbed calluses onto his soul, but it didn’t stop him