The day of our wedding, everything was ready. We had originally wanted to do the ceremony at Gerald’s mansion, but as Wes and I planned, getting our parents out of the way so we could spring our surprise entrance would be too difficult to do without their knowing. Instead, we rented a large banquet hall at a country club, which just happened to be next to a golf course that we used for the ceremony itself.
Mom and Gerald were greeted at the entrance to the club by the manager, who was conveniently distracting our parents for us. They assumed we were already there, getting ready to walk down the aisle. Meanwhile, we were lifting off in a Blackhawk helicopter from the small, private airport ten miles away. The manager made some kind of excuse about the golf cart being screwed up, so they’d have to walk the half mile up to the banquet hall, giving us time to make our grand entrance.
When the helicopter was near the tenth hole, Wes told the pilot to hover at 5000 feet, discreetly far enough away that none of the guests were suspicious, until we were sure Mom and Gerald were both seated in their chairs. The altar was set up to look over the fairway for the first hole, a rather picturesque setting that had been used in a semi-famous movie about golfing years before. Wes closed his face mask and sent a signal to the Minister of the Wedding with some kind of transceiver. “All right, hit it.”
The crowd of about a hundred people, mostly employees of Collins Robotics and their families, but also a few of Wes’s old Army buddies, and one old man that Wes had whispered to me he suspected was Oscar from his secret agent days, all looked to the altar as the minister stood up.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you,” he said in a slight Midwestern twang. “I get to start this ceremony off in a way that is a first even for me, and I’ve been doing this for going on twenty-five years. The bride and groom have planned a unique entrance for all of you, so if you’d please stand up and direct your attention above us.”
The helicopter pilot did his job perfectly. Swinging around, he parked us right where we wanted, about twenty yards north of the wedding party and a thousand feet up. We had designed for the Mark X to be able to handle larger falls, but we didn’t want to put too big of a divot in the turf. The country club was being nice as it was.
“Ready, babe?” Wes asked over our private intercom circuit. “Just remember, take it like a drop from a basketball hoop. Let the suit do the work for you.”
It took more guts than I had anticipated to slide out the side of the Blackhawk. I had done the calculations over and over; freefall time was supposed to be just over eight seconds, and we’d hit the ground at just over a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Basically, I dropped out of a helicopter into a car crash, and was depending on my design to let me walk away alive.
Those eight seconds were both the shortest and the longest of my life, even more so than the plane crash. Part of my mind was in total freak-out mode, shutting down and making the whole fall seem like only a blink of an eye. Another part of me slowed time down to a crawl, so it felt like I was up there for what had to be a minute at least. I found out later that the feeling was normal, the result of your brain being in panic mode.
Thankfully, I was able to hang onto Wes’s instructions to me to keep calm and let the suit do the work. Hitting the ground, I let my knees bend and roll, the suit working perfectly. It wasn’t until I was on my feet that I realized that instead of The Wedding March, the band was playing Back in Black, and I started laughing. Mom and Gerald were both on their feet, and part of me felt bad for the expression on Mom’s face. Still, she recovered well and joined in the clapping, Wes and I striding toward the altar together. I had to give it to the minister—he recovered well from the shock, and spoke again into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bride and Groom.”
Wes
After the ceremony was over and Robin and I were back in normal clothes, Dad found me and hugged me, right before giving me a sharp smack on the shoulder.
“If you ever try to scare the bejesus out of Rebekah and me like that again, you’re going to find out you’re not too big to get a whoopin’ from your old man,” he joked, smiling with tears in his eyes. “But it’s beautiful, son. And you’re the second luckiest man in the world today.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, looking toward the front of the reception hall, where the Mark X and X2 were on display, an appreciative crowd of people gathered around. “Although I will have to respectfully disagree with you on the ‘second luckiest man’ bit.”