Sixteen hours later, January 20, 1944
The ancient kapok tree was dead now, but its lower half was still anchored to the thin tropical soil by four giant buttress roots, radiating from its base like triangular fins. Assailed by fungi and wood-boring insects, what remained was a hollow shell. Gray and skeletal, it had resisted rain and wind to stand fifty feet above the forest floor. But no birds flew near this kapok anymore and even the insects seemed to avoid it. The sentinel stood silent against the approaching fall of night, its interior blacker than a mine shaft. Yet deep within the dead tree, the darkness had begun to shift.
Several miles away and at an altitude some five hundred feet above the hollow tree, R. J. MacCready gripped the parachute’s static-line hook in his left hand. His right hand lay across the chest pack of his reserve chute.
A red light went on above the jump door.
“Hook up, Captain,” Richards called, reemerging from his cubbyhole. This was the first Mac had heard from the radio engineer since the order to “gear up for drop,” and it was the first he’d seen of him since their refueling and leg-stretching stopover. “Sixty seconds to go.”
MacCready rose from the bench seat and attached the metal clip to a steel cable that ran the length of the aisle just below the ceiling of the plane. He shuffled toward the jump door feeling like an eighty-year-old man under the weight of his gear and the bulky T-5 parachute. Why couldn’t he be like other academics, content to spend their lives among mountains of library books and museum specimens rather than mountains of trouble? Three times before, he had resolved, “This is the last time I will jump out of an airplane that is not on fire or coming apart at the seams.”
And yet here he was again.
This time, though, the forest canopy below was whipping by too fast and too close. High pucker factor, he thought, squinting against a warm blast of air. A green mat of trees stretched, unbroken, to the horizon. “Where’s Chapada?” he shouted back to Richards.
“Forty-five seconds, Captain.” Either the man hadn’t heard the question or he’d chosen to ignore it.
MacCready tried again. “Where’s the town? Major Hendry said I was getting dropped just outside Chapada.”
Richards shook his head and moved up to stand behind him. “Captain, we can’t very well drop ya right into the town.” MacCready could feel the man conducting a final check of his main parachute. “Wrong person gets a look at this plane or you jumpin’ out of it—who knows what could happen?”
Richards had a point, but MacCready gave him only the slightest of nods as he scanned the terrain below. “Well, where are you dropping me, then?”
“It’s marked on your map, sir,” the radioman replied, and MacCready could hear the impatience returning to his voice. “There’s a village down there and a road. Y’all should avoid the village and get on the road. Head north for three hours—you’re in Chapada.” Richards checked his watch. “Fifteen seconds, Captain.”
They were still flying over lowland forest but MacCready could see that there were a few patches of open ground. He probably should have reviewed the game plan in the plane, but he’d needed the sleep. Preparation is overrated, he’d reassured himself. In the distance, the terrain began to rise into a maze of soaring rock formations that would have looked at home in the American Southwest—Utah, perhaps. But there was still no sign of a village or a road, and MacCready was becoming extremely skeptical about his chances of finding either.
“I am extremely skeptical, Richards!” MacCready yelled, noticing that the red light above the jump door had gone off—replaced by a green light.
“Time to go, sir.”
MacCready braced himself in front of the jump door. “Are you sure there’s a—?”
“Knees to the breeze, Captain!” the radioman shouted.
“What?”
“Go! Go! Go!” Richards said, pointing out the door.
MacCready shot the man a final dirty look, then stepped off with his right foot into nothingness. He concentrated on keeping himself in a tight, semifetal position, which he knew would prevent him from getting in the way of the chute deployment. The blast of the slipstream spun his body toward the rear of the airplane, and a split second later the fifteen-foot-long static line reached its full extension. It seemed to MacCready as if someone were trying to jerk the parachute off his back from above. He knew this was the static line tearing away the canvas lid on the main pack.
So far, so good.
“One . . . two . . . three . . . f—” MacCready felt a tremendous jolt rip through his body—as if a giant had snapped an enormous bullwhip—with him at the end of it. Unfortunately, it also felt like the big guy was trying to yank the parachute saddle harness that looped from his crotch to his shoulders, right up through his ass.