As one of his comrades read out verses from the camo-bound scriptures, Lieutenant Ford Brody took out an old, wrinkled photo from his left vest pocket. It was a picture of Elle and Sam, one that he'd been carrying around on all his tours, as a constant reminder of what mattered to him the most in the world. That picture gave him hope, purpose and courage in the face of all the adversities that befall a soldier of the US NAVY. With no extraction plan on this mission, should he return in a casket, he would carry the memory of his family and the happiest moments spent in their company as his last. Ford looked at the picture and let out an involuntary sigh.
The alarm blared out, drowning the sermon of his comrade, his own heartbeat and every other sound. The launching bay was engulfed in a dark shade of red light. Ford and every member of his newly embedded HALO insertion unit clasped the oxygen masks over their faces as the bay door opened up with a loud mechanical hiss. The eerie red light was snuffed out as the sun on the distant horizon seeped inside the launching bay.
Everyone stood up in a line and checked the gear and harness safety of the fellow soldier in front of them. Then they proceeded towards the door in two lines, keeping the mesmerizing, surreal beauty of the gold-bluish horizon in sight. A second alarm went off over the whistling wind and everyone lined up in their trained formation, readying for the dive into free fall. Ford pulled the goggles off his helmet and put them over his eyes, took a few deep breaths to steady his pulse, even though he could feel the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. His focus sharpened as he counted down the number of beeps of the second alarm. His gut clenched, his muscles tightened and along with all the trained HALO divers, Ford broke into a synchronized run at the end of the third beep and launched himself into the void of the open sky, at a height of 30,000 feet.
They were, for this brief moment, angels without wings, dropping into certain death from above into a dense garden of clouds, with the sun shining in all of its magnificence, to their left. The red flares tied to their right feet went off, sending trails of crimson smoke from the aircraft as it flew away over their heads. With velocities exceeding 100 miles an hour, Brody and his brothers-in-arms breached the white clouds in mere seconds and were soon engulfed in darker ones. The only sources of light were the burning flares below and around him, and then the dark sky lit up in a bright crackle of thunder and lightning. With his arms and legs stretched out, Ford froze at this sight while he plummeted towards earth. He could hear his own panicked breathing through his mask as he looked around at his comrades, all at the mercy of gravity, being pulled downwards with sheer force and speed. Were they all panicking as he was?
Ford had no time to ponder on that thought, for in that moment, the sky cried out in a deep rumble as it was torn once again by another bolt of lightning and the cocoon of dark clouds suddenly vanished. Through the limited visual range of his protective goggles, Ford witnessed another terrifying sight, the burning skyline of a city where his most treasured possessions reside, San Francisco, fast approaching towards him. Ford's mind shouted out the names of his son and wife, his brain went into overdrive and he snapped back to the mission at hand. Ford's right hand instinctively went to the parachute release pin on his vest and clamped it. The timing has to be perfect before he falls out of terminal velocity. He was rapidly descending and passed the skyscrapers in no time.
This was it!