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Disclaimer:
This is the introduction and part one of the serial fanfic Icarus Falling. This fanfic contains characters from the NBC television show, The Pretender. This is story purely the product of my all too vivid imagination and is not intended to convey anything other than the fact I may need psychiatric care. I do not lay any claim to the characters nor do I seek to perform any copyright infringement by writing about these characters. No small animals or egos were injured during the writing of this fanfic. I hope you enjoy this first edition of my fanfic that shall continue until I finish the story or the voices in my head decide I am no longer worthy. New editions should be available each week. I hope you like it, please send comments, hate mail and other forms of non-monetary re-embursement to me at Pretender7@geocities.com.
Without further ado, I bring you…
The Winds of Change, Part One of Icarus Falling
Chapter 1 (rating PG)
Introduction
The Centre, SL-17, August, 1969
"Jarod, I need you to pay attention," the precise, accented voice of Jarod’s mentor, Sydney, anchored his mind and he was able to return to reality.
"Sydney, I -- I can’t do it." The young Pretender stammered, his wild eyes pleading for some explanation. Sydney had no answer to give him. "The numbers just don’t make sense."
"Jarod, you must do it. Thousands of people are counting on you, their lives and their homes are in danger and we need to know. Look at the computer models again. Analyze the data. I know you can do it." The stoic glare on Sydney’s companion, Dr. William Raines, told quite another story.
The Brainchild super-computer was furiously calculating sheet after sheet of numbers, each time coming up with wildly different answers. Both doctors knew this should not be happening, mathematics had never lied before, but somehow now it was. The two Program Directors had agreed to bring in a Pretender to analyze the situation. Jarod was the natural choice.
"Sydney, the numbers don’t add up. There is no flaw with the program algorithm and I can’t see where the data is incomplete, but the answers. . . ." Jarod was as unaccustomed to failure as he was to sunlight, something he had not seen since entering this place.
Raines had seen enough. "It’s hopeless. Put him back in his room," the two large men near the only door to the simulation lab practically leapt to Jarod on Raines’ gravelly command. "You will answer for this failure, Sydney." He couldn’t help twisting the knife. Kyle was proceeding as planned but no one seemed to recognize the brilliance of his work. They only seemed to care about Sydney and his little wunderkind Jarod. Raines relished moments like these.
"Wait!" The insistence of Jarod’s young voice stopped the much bigger men in their tracks. "I think I’ve got something. Sydney, do you have any more of these things?" Jarod said looking at the Brainchild. Only seven were known to be in existence.
"Perhaps, Jarod. Why?"
"I just wondered what would happen if we ran two sets of data and then overlaid them to dampen out the differences."
Sydney’s inquiring glance towards Raines threw him over the edge. Raines had absolutely no intention of helping the miscreant out of this one. Besides, only a handful of people, Sydney not included, knew about Raines’ Brainchild in SL-27. Very few more knew about SL-27 itself. There were no other such machines at the Centre and Raines had no qualm about keeping Sydney in the dark that he had one too. No matter how may lives were at stake. "You know the answer to that question, Sydney. You were the only one with the Department’s approval to obtain a Brainchild. Pity that we couldn’t have proven Jarod wrong in this case as well."
Sydney, unfazed, turned quickly away from his colleague and towards the young Pretender. "Jarod, try to use the methods we have been working on. Close your eyes and expand yourself. See the data in a new way. Don’t just look at the data, feel the data." Sydney knew this was a risk. The Centre did not approve of his dabbling in extra-sensory perception. Sydney just couldn’t dismiss the many successes he had achieved with Jarod using these controversial methods. Sydney was sure Raines had a Brainchild. His ego was not too large to blind him to Raines and his antagonism towards Jarod and Sydney’s other Pretenders. Sydney knew that this incident would be immediately reported to the Tower. Jarod’s ESP sims and training had been continuing despite the Tower Directive to the contrary, but he had the data and the successes to back up his research. He just might win this one, and maybe Raines knew it.
"Okay, Sydney, I’ll try." Jarod closed his eyes and his hands instinctively grabbed for the data sheets. His breathing began to slow. Soon the shallow breaths of air began to worry Sydney. Jarod had never been this deep before. Raines, on the other hand, began to fear Jarod had lapsed into a hypnotic state. His recent use of hypnosis as a way to control the Pretenders and eliminate any bad experiences and ill feelings from them was going full force now. Sydney had deliberately been kept out of this program. His moral stance would undoubtedly have been destructive. "East. The storm will move east and make landfall somewhere east of Mobile, or right at Mobile Bay. That’s where it will go."
Jarod collapsed.
"Take him to the Infirmary, now!" Now it was Sydney’s turn to bark the orders and cause the men to jump. Privately he mused that they would jump and move like that for anyone who commanded them to. The Centre bred them for that. "Raines, let the Tower know about Jarod’s prediction. I will notify the local authorities."
"Sydney," Jarod’s weak voice nearly pleaded.
Sydney jerked around, concerned, "Yes?"
"It was just a sim, right? There is no Hurricane Camille, is there?"
"Yes, Jarod," said Sydney, feigning the tone of the concerned parent. Somehow, though, it always came out more condescending than caring. "It was just a sim, just like they all are." It was not the first, and would not be the last time Sydney would lie to Jarod. That didn’t mean he liked it, but he did agree with the Tower Confidentiality Directive regarding the Pretenders. If they knew how many of the sims were not re-enactment’s of past events but experiments in future or current events, they may not be able to take the pressure. Most of the Pretenders were still under twenty and still needed protection. Sydney believed this.
As the room cleared, Raines took careful note of the outcome of this ‘sim.’ Kyle had no idea what to do with the data, while Jarod’s idea had some merit. He recognized the tangible benefits of this information. He would continue to not only watch Jarod’s progress in person, but would begin to monitor Sydney’s files as well. What Sydney never knew was that Raines’ position at the Centre allowed him to.
* * * * *
Part One
Parker, Arizona
August 5, 1997 1600 PST
The sun drew a hot bead across the sandy desert floor. Falling at nearly 120 miles per hour, Jarod hardly noticed. The skyboard he had been riding for the last eight thousand feet felt like an extension of his body. His lean, acutely muscled frame twisted and turned with the board displaying the grace of a figure skater. He was currently doing a move he called the ‘Twister.’ Similar to ‘Helicoptering,’ this move would have been impossible on a normally configured skyboard. Jarod’s board, however, was hardly normal. He had carefully taken both ends of the board and first ‘cooked’ them flat then twisted the blades on the end into a twist pattern. The resultant torsional forces were incredible. If not for the g-suit, he may have blacked out.
Ted was no slouch at filming, but Jarod’s erratic movements were very difficult to track. The insane movement of Jarod, combined with his skyboard’s extra drag and lift made station-keeping all but impossible for Ted, who had to rely on a spread-eagle position and years of practice. The extra ‘wind-pockets’ Jarod had sewed into Ted’s jumpsuit did help a little, but it still took all his years of jumping to stay with his partner. Practice had, though, nearly proven perfect.
Ted figured that Jarod was practicing for competition, because this was the only move he did anymore. Even then, it was strange activity to only practice one move on a jump. Skysurfing routines were seamless dances of choreographed move after choreographed move, each one filmed by a highly trained partner. A competition jumper should have had his filming partner here practicing camera angles and station keeping. That bothered Ted. Of course, a lot of things bothered Ted about Jarod. Hell, anyone who spun, upside-down, time and time again was definitely a strange fish. Work was work, however, and Ted hadn’t been having a particularly good year at the airfield. After movies like Navy Seals and Drop Zone, the skydiving industry had been the place to be. With national coverage of SkySurfing championships and other ‘Xtreme’ sports Ted had enough business to keep the bills paid, but he wasn’t raking in the money he had counted on.
Normally, the ex-Green Beret would have dismissed Jarod’s request to rent the plane, pilot and a filming partner for an entire month as either the random desire of a spoiled rich kid or the fantasy of some nut, but now he knew it was neither. Anyway, the $25,000 cash in advance plus Jarod’s insistence on covering all incurred expenses for unlimited jumps convinced Ted that money talked and Jarod jumped. This was the one-hundredth jump they had made in the last month, a pace that Ted was beginning to find tiresome. For Jarod, he thought, it must have been hell.
Having worked some black bag operations both pre- and post-Desert Storm, Ted had a very keen sense of observation. In his heart, he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that Jarod was a competitor. Anyone with his bankroll should have a private plane and a sponsor. Besides, Ted kept up with the competitors and he had never heard of Jarod Bravo before. He didn’t know everyone, but Jarod’s talent wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. His equipment had too many military characteristics for a true pure civilian jumper, and Jarod’s mannerisms were strictly military. Jarod was probably an Army-brat, second or third generation.
Of course, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to notice the two inch diameter black cylinder fiberglassed to Jarod’s skyboard. What piqued Ted’s interest was Jarod’s quick dismissal of the object. He explained it was a homing beacon in case they became lost. Ted knew from the quality of the other equipment Jarod used that that was too large for a homing beacon.
Initially, their jump schedule had been fairly easy. They would jump at dawn, hike back to the camp and jump again right at dusk. Jarod was insistent they jumped at a specific location each time. Not the same specific location, but a specific location each time none the less. Initially written off as foolishness by Ted, this insistence on the exact jump point was religious. Jarod had the pilot install a state of the art GPS system and he re-calibrated the altimeter daily. He gave exact three-dimensional coordinates and double-checked each of the pilot’s jump commands with his own equipment. Twice he had jumped early because his instruments had differed from the pilots.
Like most ex-Rangers, Jarod wore no reserve chute. Jarod wore the conventional fully articulating parachute, but never adjusted his path of fall. Most skydivers, Ted included, relished spending each moment in the air and wore the articulating chutes to enable them to steer their flight and in most cases prolong the flight by catching updrafts or winds. Jarod never adjusted his flight, and seemed genuinely upset one jump after having to flare for a cactus. By the time Ted reached the ground, Jarod had invariably landed, secured his chute and was making notes in the red notebook he always carried.
Over the course of the month, they had gradually increased the jump schedule to three and sometimes four jumps per day. Jarod demanded they make four jumps during one severe windstorm. Ted and the pilot had grounded Jarod after two insane jumps nearly killed everyone involved and Jarod reluctantly agreed to postpone jumping only to promptly wander off into the desert until the storm was done. Jarod never seemed to tire. The light in his trailer was on after Ted went to sleep and Jarod usually had the coffee ready in the morning as well. One thing Ted could not complain about, though: his coffee maker had never run so well.
The assigned break-off point was two thousand feet and upon reaching it Ted waved to Jarod and deployed his main canopy. The satisfying snap of the nylon chute above him and the familiar jerk of instantaneous deceleration let Ted know, even before he looked, that he had a good opening. Jarod, however, continued to plunge at an incredible rate.
Ted began a slow right turn with heavy flare in order to make sure that Jarod had achieved a similar good opening. No matter how many times you jumped, the first priority is always to check the opening, Ted reminded himself, but the sight below would afford him no more time for concern for self.
Jarod had continued to plunge through one thousand feet and was coming dangerously close to the minimum height for the chute to deploy. Ted watched in horror as Jarod plummeted to five hundred feet, still inverted in his Twister move. Ted began to fear Jarod had blacked out and would soon be crushed on the rocks below.
At four hundred feet, Jarod jerked himself upright and deployed his chute. At that altitude, the three seconds that the chute required to deploy would eat up all but one hundred feet. Jarod estimated his ground impact speed would be a stout 35 miles per hour, roughly equivalent to sprinting headlong into a wall. Unfortunately, the g-suit did not help much with this and he couldn’t afford to break his fall in any way.
Ted was surprised that Jarod was even moving when he reached the ground. To be sure, Jarod had only managed to pull himself up and start to dust himself off, despite the large lead he had obtained. Somehow, Ted wasn’t surprised by the goofy smile across Jarod’s face: this guy wasn’t bothered by anything. "Are you all right?"
"Scary, wasn’t it?" Jarod had a way of saying exactly the wrong thing to Ted.
"What the hell kind of stunt was that? You could have been killed!"
"Killed? No, I could have survived the impact with this sand about fifteen miles an hour faster without any permanent injuries. I had ten more feet. You’re right, though, I really shouldn’t have waited any longer." Jarod said this in a manner that Ted filed away as very dry sarcasm. It just wasn’t possible that Jarod could have planned it that close. "Oh, I guess I dropped something," Jarod added as he reached for the Tasmanian Devil Pez container, wrapped in a plastic bag, half buried in the sand at his feet. "Wouldn’t want to lose this now."
Ted’s mind couldn’t keep up with its surroundings. For one of the first times in his professional career, he made the wrong judgment about the events occurring around him. His conscious mind struggled to believe that Jarod had dropped a small plastic Pez dispenser, filled with candy, upon crashing into the ground -- no -- crashing into the one patch of loose sand for a hundred yards in any direction. His mind skimmed over the meaningless detail that the candy dispenser should have been crushed in the fall. His mind came up with absolutely no reason why the container should be wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. His mind just simply could not accept the only possible truth: Jarod had placed it there prior to the jump. What he couldn’t accept is that Jarod, without making a single correction in his fall, had pinpointed his landing point to within a meter. He didn’t accept it because it should have been impossible.
* * *
Following the hike back to base camp, Jarod was in unusually good spirits. Ted was much more quiet and subdued because he couldn’t get it out of his head that something about Jarod just didn’t make any sense. His background story turned out to be legitimate, although Ted believed that Jarod had probably done his share of black bag operations as well. No one has that little background information unless it is fabricated. The CIA covered its tracks well, but they didn’t have the heart (or the real desire) to add all of the real things people had: a bad check here, a jealous lover there, a pet iguana, etc. CIA backgrounds were carefully written to avoid the ‘falling from the sky’ syndrome, but once you read a few of them (including Ted’s own background) you spotted them as surely as a dime-store romance sticks out from "Moby Dick." Ted was never afraid of the ex-Ops guys because he knew dozens of them. Jarod was just different.
After each jump Jarod would get on the laptop that he carried everywhere, except to jump, and spend about two hours uploading information into a spreadsheet program. The data was uploaded and then Jarod would set the computer calculating for another hour. During this time Jarod usually showered and this gave Ted the time to examine Jarod’s equipment a little. Ted never really felt bad about breaking into Jarod’s room to check out his stuff, because Ted always figured that Jarod knew what he was doing and didn’t care. Jarod’s password program and firewall were beyond Ted’s limited computer skills (MS DOS was beyond Ted’s skills most of the time) and Ted saw, and replaced, three ‘triggers’ set in the room to detect entry. He figured that Jarod had five actually set.
After the data had been analyzed, Jarod would interpret the results and then, most amazingly to Ted, he would delete the results. All that data down the drain. Ted wasn’t dumb enough, though, to ask him why. Jarod might have known about the very high tech surveillance equipment in the trailer, but then again maybe not. Ted wasn’t dangerous, but as a former intelligence operative, he was incessantly curious. Besides, it was his trailer and he didn’t want anyone trashing it. That was how the rationalized it anyway. After the data dump, Jarod would start entering information for the second jump of the day, review the video of the last jump, and the cycle would repeat.
Today, Ted knew it was different. Instead of showering, Jarod impatiently paced the room waiting for the computer to give the results. As he paced he kept time with a small hand-held football game that until last week had been a relic from Ted’s childhood. Jarod had seen the game and asked if he could fix it. Ted reluctantly agreed because he suspected the obvious: Jarod had also had one of these when he was a kid and wanted to play it. The only thing that seemed to stop him now was the end zone.
Once the data produced an answer, Jarod clapped his hands together, smiled and jumped into the shower. After a brief shower, he re-entered the room, clad only in a towel, and began to pack.
* * *
Ted tried to feign surprise when Jarod announced his departure an hour later, but he realized it was a futile gesture. "I’ll be sorry to see you go, I’ve had a good time filming you. You really know what the hell you are doing up there."
"I used to be an instructor."
"Yeah? Well, I hope you enjoyed your time here. You still have a couple of days rental on the plane."
"That’s okay. Maybe you can take my friends up. They should be here tomorrow or the next day. I’ve got what I need and I really should be going. After all, it looks like it’s going to be a busy season."
"Busy season?" The fact that Jarod had mentioned friends was not lost on Ted, but he was trying to be polite and not jump for joy at the thought of more paying customers like Jarod. He may have a good year after all.
"Yes, the prevailing climate conditions should produce a lot of storms this season."
"Storms? What like hurricanes and such?"
"Uh huh."
"Are you some kind of storm junkie or something?" Ted had encountered this type before. Once the thrill of life from man-made danger had begun to pale, the next step was natural disasters. The number of ex-SF guys who ran around the country looking for tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc. was hard to believe. Still, he’d never have guessed that about Jarod.
"Something like that. I’m more of a meteorologist."
"Oh." That fit even less.
"My friends should be here soon and I’d like you to give them this." Jarod handed Ted a small briefcase. "They should be able to figure out the combination."
"Okay," said Ted.
"Ask the witchy one to show you her scar."
"Her scar. Right."
"Got it?"
"Yeah."
"Oh yeah, I erased the data so that each previous jump wouldn’t effect the jump we were making."
"Huh?" Stammered Ted, knowing full well what Jarod was implying. Ted may not have understood what Jarod meant, but he did know this man was someone to watch. Someone Ted wasn’t so sorry to see go. Ted was becoming a little more leery of these friends of his. "Ah, do you need a ride to town?"
"Let’s fly." The look on Jarod’s face told Ted that Jarod would be traveling light when he left. Ted noted that the skyboard Jarod displayed now had none of its predecessor’s modifications.
This time, Jarod was doing it for fun.
This is the introduction and part one of the serial fanfic Icarus Falling. This fanfic contains characters from the NBC television show, The Pretender. This is story purely the product of my all too vivid imagination and is not intended to convey anything other than the fact I may need psychiatric care. I do not lay any claim to the characters nor do I seek to perform any copyright infringement by writing about these characters. No small animals or egos were injured during the writing of this fanfic. I hope you enjoy this first edition of my fanfic that shall continue until I finish the story or the voices in my head decide I am no longer worthy. New editions should be available each week. I hope you like it, please send comments, hate mail and other forms of non-monetary re-embursement to me at Pretender7@geocities.com.
Without further ado, I bring you…
The Winds of Change, Part One of Icarus Falling
Chapter 1 (rating PG)
Introduction
The Centre, SL-17, August, 1969
"Jarod, I need you to pay attention," the precise, accented voice of Jarod’s mentor, Sydney, anchored his mind and he was able to return to reality.
"Sydney, I -- I can’t do it." The young Pretender stammered, his wild eyes pleading for some explanation. Sydney had no answer to give him. "The numbers just don’t make sense."
"Jarod, you must do it. Thousands of people are counting on you, their lives and their homes are in danger and we need to know. Look at the computer models again. Analyze the data. I know you can do it." The stoic glare on Sydney’s companion, Dr. William Raines, told quite another story.
The Brainchild super-computer was furiously calculating sheet after sheet of numbers, each time coming up with wildly different answers. Both doctors knew this should not be happening, mathematics had never lied before, but somehow now it was. The two Program Directors had agreed to bring in a Pretender to analyze the situation. Jarod was the natural choice.
"Sydney, the numbers don’t add up. There is no flaw with the program algorithm and I can’t see where the data is incomplete, but the answers. . . ." Jarod was as unaccustomed to failure as he was to sunlight, something he had not seen since entering this place.
Raines had seen enough. "It’s hopeless. Put him back in his room," the two large men near the only door to the simulation lab practically leapt to Jarod on Raines’ gravelly command. "You will answer for this failure, Sydney." He couldn’t help twisting the knife. Kyle was proceeding as planned but no one seemed to recognize the brilliance of his work. They only seemed to care about Sydney and his little wunderkind Jarod. Raines relished moments like these.
"Wait!" The insistence of Jarod’s young voice stopped the much bigger men in their tracks. "I think I’ve got something. Sydney, do you have any more of these things?" Jarod said looking at the Brainchild. Only seven were known to be in existence.
"Perhaps, Jarod. Why?"
"I just wondered what would happen if we ran two sets of data and then overlaid them to dampen out the differences."
Sydney’s inquiring glance towards Raines threw him over the edge. Raines had absolutely no intention of helping the miscreant out of this one. Besides, only a handful of people, Sydney not included, knew about Raines’ Brainchild in SL-27. Very few more knew about SL-27 itself. There were no other such machines at the Centre and Raines had no qualm about keeping Sydney in the dark that he had one too. No matter how may lives were at stake. "You know the answer to that question, Sydney. You were the only one with the Department’s approval to obtain a Brainchild. Pity that we couldn’t have proven Jarod wrong in this case as well."
Sydney, unfazed, turned quickly away from his colleague and towards the young Pretender. "Jarod, try to use the methods we have been working on. Close your eyes and expand yourself. See the data in a new way. Don’t just look at the data, feel the data." Sydney knew this was a risk. The Centre did not approve of his dabbling in extra-sensory perception. Sydney just couldn’t dismiss the many successes he had achieved with Jarod using these controversial methods. Sydney was sure Raines had a Brainchild. His ego was not too large to blind him to Raines and his antagonism towards Jarod and Sydney’s other Pretenders. Sydney knew that this incident would be immediately reported to the Tower. Jarod’s ESP sims and training had been continuing despite the Tower Directive to the contrary, but he had the data and the successes to back up his research. He just might win this one, and maybe Raines knew it.
"Okay, Sydney, I’ll try." Jarod closed his eyes and his hands instinctively grabbed for the data sheets. His breathing began to slow. Soon the shallow breaths of air began to worry Sydney. Jarod had never been this deep before. Raines, on the other hand, began to fear Jarod had lapsed into a hypnotic state. His recent use of hypnosis as a way to control the Pretenders and eliminate any bad experiences and ill feelings from them was going full force now. Sydney had deliberately been kept out of this program. His moral stance would undoubtedly have been destructive. "East. The storm will move east and make landfall somewhere east of Mobile, or right at Mobile Bay. That’s where it will go."
Jarod collapsed.
"Take him to the Infirmary, now!" Now it was Sydney’s turn to bark the orders and cause the men to jump. Privately he mused that they would jump and move like that for anyone who commanded them to. The Centre bred them for that. "Raines, let the Tower know about Jarod’s prediction. I will notify the local authorities."
"Sydney," Jarod’s weak voice nearly pleaded.
Sydney jerked around, concerned, "Yes?"
"It was just a sim, right? There is no Hurricane Camille, is there?"
"Yes, Jarod," said Sydney, feigning the tone of the concerned parent. Somehow, though, it always came out more condescending than caring. "It was just a sim, just like they all are." It was not the first, and would not be the last time Sydney would lie to Jarod. That didn’t mean he liked it, but he did agree with the Tower Confidentiality Directive regarding the Pretenders. If they knew how many of the sims were not re-enactment’s of past events but experiments in future or current events, they may not be able to take the pressure. Most of the Pretenders were still under twenty and still needed protection. Sydney believed this.
As the room cleared, Raines took careful note of the outcome of this ‘sim.’ Kyle had no idea what to do with the data, while Jarod’s idea had some merit. He recognized the tangible benefits of this information. He would continue to not only watch Jarod’s progress in person, but would begin to monitor Sydney’s files as well. What Sydney never knew was that Raines’ position at the Centre allowed him to.
* * * * *
Part One
Parker, Arizona
August 5, 1997 1600 PST
The sun drew a hot bead across the sandy desert floor. Falling at nearly 120 miles per hour, Jarod hardly noticed. The skyboard he had been riding for the last eight thousand feet felt like an extension of his body. His lean, acutely muscled frame twisted and turned with the board displaying the grace of a figure skater. He was currently doing a move he called the ‘Twister.’ Similar to ‘Helicoptering,’ this move would have been impossible on a normally configured skyboard. Jarod’s board, however, was hardly normal. He had carefully taken both ends of the board and first ‘cooked’ them flat then twisted the blades on the end into a twist pattern. The resultant torsional forces were incredible. If not for the g-suit, he may have blacked out.
Ted was no slouch at filming, but Jarod’s erratic movements were very difficult to track. The insane movement of Jarod, combined with his skyboard’s extra drag and lift made station-keeping all but impossible for Ted, who had to rely on a spread-eagle position and years of practice. The extra ‘wind-pockets’ Jarod had sewed into Ted’s jumpsuit did help a little, but it still took all his years of jumping to stay with his partner. Practice had, though, nearly proven perfect.
Ted figured that Jarod was practicing for competition, because this was the only move he did anymore. Even then, it was strange activity to only practice one move on a jump. Skysurfing routines were seamless dances of choreographed move after choreographed move, each one filmed by a highly trained partner. A competition jumper should have had his filming partner here practicing camera angles and station keeping. That bothered Ted. Of course, a lot of things bothered Ted about Jarod. Hell, anyone who spun, upside-down, time and time again was definitely a strange fish. Work was work, however, and Ted hadn’t been having a particularly good year at the airfield. After movies like Navy Seals and Drop Zone, the skydiving industry had been the place to be. With national coverage of SkySurfing championships and other ‘Xtreme’ sports Ted had enough business to keep the bills paid, but he wasn’t raking in the money he had counted on.
Normally, the ex-Green Beret would have dismissed Jarod’s request to rent the plane, pilot and a filming partner for an entire month as either the random desire of a spoiled rich kid or the fantasy of some nut, but now he knew it was neither. Anyway, the $25,000 cash in advance plus Jarod’s insistence on covering all incurred expenses for unlimited jumps convinced Ted that money talked and Jarod jumped. This was the one-hundredth jump they had made in the last month, a pace that Ted was beginning to find tiresome. For Jarod, he thought, it must have been hell.
Having worked some black bag operations both pre- and post-Desert Storm, Ted had a very keen sense of observation. In his heart, he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that Jarod was a competitor. Anyone with his bankroll should have a private plane and a sponsor. Besides, Ted kept up with the competitors and he had never heard of Jarod Bravo before. He didn’t know everyone, but Jarod’s talent wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. His equipment had too many military characteristics for a true pure civilian jumper, and Jarod’s mannerisms were strictly military. Jarod was probably an Army-brat, second or third generation.
Of course, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to notice the two inch diameter black cylinder fiberglassed to Jarod’s skyboard. What piqued Ted’s interest was Jarod’s quick dismissal of the object. He explained it was a homing beacon in case they became lost. Ted knew from the quality of the other equipment Jarod used that that was too large for a homing beacon.
Initially, their jump schedule had been fairly easy. They would jump at dawn, hike back to the camp and jump again right at dusk. Jarod was insistent they jumped at a specific location each time. Not the same specific location, but a specific location each time none the less. Initially written off as foolishness by Ted, this insistence on the exact jump point was religious. Jarod had the pilot install a state of the art GPS system and he re-calibrated the altimeter daily. He gave exact three-dimensional coordinates and double-checked each of the pilot’s jump commands with his own equipment. Twice he had jumped early because his instruments had differed from the pilots.
Like most ex-Rangers, Jarod wore no reserve chute. Jarod wore the conventional fully articulating parachute, but never adjusted his path of fall. Most skydivers, Ted included, relished spending each moment in the air and wore the articulating chutes to enable them to steer their flight and in most cases prolong the flight by catching updrafts or winds. Jarod never adjusted his flight, and seemed genuinely upset one jump after having to flare for a cactus. By the time Ted reached the ground, Jarod had invariably landed, secured his chute and was making notes in the red notebook he always carried.
Over the course of the month, they had gradually increased the jump schedule to three and sometimes four jumps per day. Jarod demanded they make four jumps during one severe windstorm. Ted and the pilot had grounded Jarod after two insane jumps nearly killed everyone involved and Jarod reluctantly agreed to postpone jumping only to promptly wander off into the desert until the storm was done. Jarod never seemed to tire. The light in his trailer was on after Ted went to sleep and Jarod usually had the coffee ready in the morning as well. One thing Ted could not complain about, though: his coffee maker had never run so well.
The assigned break-off point was two thousand feet and upon reaching it Ted waved to Jarod and deployed his main canopy. The satisfying snap of the nylon chute above him and the familiar jerk of instantaneous deceleration let Ted know, even before he looked, that he had a good opening. Jarod, however, continued to plunge at an incredible rate.
Ted began a slow right turn with heavy flare in order to make sure that Jarod had achieved a similar good opening. No matter how many times you jumped, the first priority is always to check the opening, Ted reminded himself, but the sight below would afford him no more time for concern for self.
Jarod had continued to plunge through one thousand feet and was coming dangerously close to the minimum height for the chute to deploy. Ted watched in horror as Jarod plummeted to five hundred feet, still inverted in his Twister move. Ted began to fear Jarod had blacked out and would soon be crushed on the rocks below.
At four hundred feet, Jarod jerked himself upright and deployed his chute. At that altitude, the three seconds that the chute required to deploy would eat up all but one hundred feet. Jarod estimated his ground impact speed would be a stout 35 miles per hour, roughly equivalent to sprinting headlong into a wall. Unfortunately, the g-suit did not help much with this and he couldn’t afford to break his fall in any way.
Ted was surprised that Jarod was even moving when he reached the ground. To be sure, Jarod had only managed to pull himself up and start to dust himself off, despite the large lead he had obtained. Somehow, Ted wasn’t surprised by the goofy smile across Jarod’s face: this guy wasn’t bothered by anything. "Are you all right?"
"Scary, wasn’t it?" Jarod had a way of saying exactly the wrong thing to Ted.
"What the hell kind of stunt was that? You could have been killed!"
"Killed? No, I could have survived the impact with this sand about fifteen miles an hour faster without any permanent injuries. I had ten more feet. You’re right, though, I really shouldn’t have waited any longer." Jarod said this in a manner that Ted filed away as very dry sarcasm. It just wasn’t possible that Jarod could have planned it that close. "Oh, I guess I dropped something," Jarod added as he reached for the Tasmanian Devil Pez container, wrapped in a plastic bag, half buried in the sand at his feet. "Wouldn’t want to lose this now."
Ted’s mind couldn’t keep up with its surroundings. For one of the first times in his professional career, he made the wrong judgment about the events occurring around him. His conscious mind struggled to believe that Jarod had dropped a small plastic Pez dispenser, filled with candy, upon crashing into the ground -- no -- crashing into the one patch of loose sand for a hundred yards in any direction. His mind skimmed over the meaningless detail that the candy dispenser should have been crushed in the fall. His mind came up with absolutely no reason why the container should be wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. His mind just simply could not accept the only possible truth: Jarod had placed it there prior to the jump. What he couldn’t accept is that Jarod, without making a single correction in his fall, had pinpointed his landing point to within a meter. He didn’t accept it because it should have been impossible.
* * *
Following the hike back to base camp, Jarod was in unusually good spirits. Ted was much more quiet and subdued because he couldn’t get it out of his head that something about Jarod just didn’t make any sense. His background story turned out to be legitimate, although Ted believed that Jarod had probably done his share of black bag operations as well. No one has that little background information unless it is fabricated. The CIA covered its tracks well, but they didn’t have the heart (or the real desire) to add all of the real things people had: a bad check here, a jealous lover there, a pet iguana, etc. CIA backgrounds were carefully written to avoid the ‘falling from the sky’ syndrome, but once you read a few of them (including Ted’s own background) you spotted them as surely as a dime-store romance sticks out from "Moby Dick." Ted was never afraid of the ex-Ops guys because he knew dozens of them. Jarod was just different.
After each jump Jarod would get on the laptop that he carried everywhere, except to jump, and spend about two hours uploading information into a spreadsheet program. The data was uploaded and then Jarod would set the computer calculating for another hour. During this time Jarod usually showered and this gave Ted the time to examine Jarod’s equipment a little. Ted never really felt bad about breaking into Jarod’s room to check out his stuff, because Ted always figured that Jarod knew what he was doing and didn’t care. Jarod’s password program and firewall were beyond Ted’s limited computer skills (MS DOS was beyond Ted’s skills most of the time) and Ted saw, and replaced, three ‘triggers’ set in the room to detect entry. He figured that Jarod had five actually set.
After the data had been analyzed, Jarod would interpret the results and then, most amazingly to Ted, he would delete the results. All that data down the drain. Ted wasn’t dumb enough, though, to ask him why. Jarod might have known about the very high tech surveillance equipment in the trailer, but then again maybe not. Ted wasn’t dangerous, but as a former intelligence operative, he was incessantly curious. Besides, it was his trailer and he didn’t want anyone trashing it. That was how the rationalized it anyway. After the data dump, Jarod would start entering information for the second jump of the day, review the video of the last jump, and the cycle would repeat.
Today, Ted knew it was different. Instead of showering, Jarod impatiently paced the room waiting for the computer to give the results. As he paced he kept time with a small hand-held football game that until last week had been a relic from Ted’s childhood. Jarod had seen the game and asked if he could fix it. Ted reluctantly agreed because he suspected the obvious: Jarod had also had one of these when he was a kid and wanted to play it. The only thing that seemed to stop him now was the end zone.
Once the data produced an answer, Jarod clapped his hands together, smiled and jumped into the shower. After a brief shower, he re-entered the room, clad only in a towel, and began to pack.
* * *
Ted tried to feign surprise when Jarod announced his departure an hour later, but he realized it was a futile gesture. "I’ll be sorry to see you go, I’ve had a good time filming you. You really know what the hell you are doing up there."
"I used to be an instructor."
"Yeah? Well, I hope you enjoyed your time here. You still have a couple of days rental on the plane."
"That’s okay. Maybe you can take my friends up. They should be here tomorrow or the next day. I’ve got what I need and I really should be going. After all, it looks like it’s going to be a busy season."
"Busy season?" The fact that Jarod had mentioned friends was not lost on Ted, but he was trying to be polite and not jump for joy at the thought of more paying customers like Jarod. He may have a good year after all.
"Yes, the prevailing climate conditions should produce a lot of storms this season."
"Storms? What like hurricanes and such?"
"Uh huh."
"Are you some kind of storm junkie or something?" Ted had encountered this type before. Once the thrill of life from man-made danger had begun to pale, the next step was natural disasters. The number of ex-SF guys who ran around the country looking for tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc. was hard to believe. Still, he’d never have guessed that about Jarod.
"Something like that. I’m more of a meteorologist."
"Oh." That fit even less.
"My friends should be here soon and I’d like you to give them this." Jarod handed Ted a small briefcase. "They should be able to figure out the combination."
"Okay," said Ted.
"Ask the witchy one to show you her scar."
"Her scar. Right."
"Got it?"
"Yeah."
"Oh yeah, I erased the data so that each previous jump wouldn’t effect the jump we were making."
"Huh?" Stammered Ted, knowing full well what Jarod was implying. Ted may not have understood what Jarod meant, but he did know this man was someone to watch. Someone Ted wasn’t so sorry to see go. Ted was becoming a little more leery of these friends of his. "Ah, do you need a ride to town?"
"Let’s fly." The look on Jarod’s face told Ted that Jarod would be traveling light when he left. Ted noted that the skyboard Jarod displayed now had none of its predecessor’s modifications.
This time, Jarod was doing it for fun.
