Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free PDF

main parachute harness followed by his reserve chute.  Under it he wedged a pair of fins and then rested the heavy waterproof pack containing his weapon and equipment on his leg as he clipped it to the parachute harness ready for lowering when his chute had deployed.  Although this was only a test run, everything had to replicate the real thing.
    As the time to the jump counted down, he felt the familiar tingle of anticipation, mixed with fear. He’d done hundreds of parachute jumps in his time in the Paras and the SAS, but even now, there was always a moment where he wondered if his nerve would fail him as he stood on the brink, looking down. It was part of the reason why they had dispatchers on board: to ‘assist’ hesitant jumpers out of the aircraft. If the dispatchers had to get physical they were backed by the full force of military law; an order to jump from the aircrew was a direct order and to refuse was a court martial offence.  If it occurred in a training jump, it was punishable by a couple of years in a military prison, but if it was on an operational jump, it was considered cowardice in the face of the enemy.
    Shepherd’s nerve had never failed him yet, but he never made a jump without the thought flashing through his mind.  He stood up with difficulty, trying to tense his legs against the bucking of the aircraft. He lost his balance under the weight he was carrying and he fell over. He was more embarrassed than hurt and he grinned shamefacedly as a dispatcher pulled him to his feet again and checked his equipment was safe to drop.  Together they staggered towards the tailgate.
    When they were all in the area of the tailgate they hooked up their parachutes to the overhead steel wires, two on the port wire and two on the starboard wire, allowing the patrol to exit almost simultaneously. That carried a risk, but allowed them to be close together in the air. For safety reasons Paras are trained to exit an aircraft at one second intervals but at over two hundred knots aircraft flying speed that translated into a considerable distance on the ground or in the water.  That wasn’t good enough for the SAS so Shepherd and the rest of the four-man team would exit together. While that made for more potential danger in the air it made things in the water much slicker, with the jumpers landing in a tight group.
    The loadmaster opened the tailgate.  The noise from the slipstream became almost overwhelming. Shepherd could make out the outline of Portland in the distance and the lights of Swanage on the port side.  The Hercules dipped its left wing and turned around the headland into Studland Bay, as the navigator gave a running commentary over the tannoy marking off time to drop in seconds. 
    ‘Stand By’ came over the tannoy, followed quickly by ‘Go!’  A dispatcher dropped a small chute into the slipstream.  It hung there for a fraction of a second, then filled and disappeared into the darkness.  It was attached to the drogue chute on the recce boat and as the chute filled with the slipstream, the boat disappeared into the night with a massive roar.
    The Hercules immediately went into a climbing turn up to 800 feet and turned onto a reciprocal heading to the one it had just been flying.  As Shepherd looked down through his PNGs, he could see the recce boat inflating on the calm sea.  Another ‘Go!’ came over the tannoy and he and the rest of the team stepped over the edge of the tailgate into the darkness below.
    He rode the slipstream and felt the nylon ties in his parachute breaking in sequence.  He was yanked backwards as the chute deployed and he used the chute risers to stop the pendulum motion.  Checking that his chute was fully deployed, he took a quick look around him for the rest of the patrol.  He could see them, close but not too close.
    With his parachute safely deployed, he lowered his equipment container on its suspension rope. The technique had the double benefit of preventing him