One of my favorite parts in my novel Brass Monkey is the high altitude skydiving scene. The scene itself isn’t unique, I’m sure lots of thriller writers have had characters jumping out of planes at thirty thousand feet. But have they had that character be an amateur who has never done it before? And have they had that character panic due to something as trivial as not finding the toggles?

This little tidbit adds a dose of reality to the situation, and is based on something from my own life.

The Invitation

I was nineteen, working as a university co-op student on the Space Station Project at the Canadian Space Agency in Canada’s capital, Ottawa. I was sharing an office with another co-op student named Kevin, who coincidentally lived on the same floor of the same dorm as I had during our first year. One day during lunch another co-op student, a particularly attractive one from what I remember, poked her head in our office, and mentioned that some of the students were going skydiving on the weekend, and wanted to know if we would join them.

“Who’s going?” I asked.

She rhymed off a list of names that I don’t remember now, but one name stood out on that list. I won’t mention the name, since this story isn’t flattering to him. Let’s call him Jack. I believe he was a consultant, one of those types who was always calm, cool, collected, had an answer for everything—essentially a know it all. Then again, at age 19, who was I to know whether or not he did actually know it all?

Bottom line: he annoyed me.

I am Immortal

As soon as I heard he was going, I wanted in. I had to see this guy in a situation outside of a computer lab. My office mate agreed to join the group as well (but was later forced to bail when his mom found out), and we all (less Kevin) gathered at a local shopping center that Sunday to carpool for the ride to the airstrip where the training would take place.

There were two jump options. One was a solo jump from 3000 feet. The other option was to be strapped to the front of an experienced jumper, and at ten thousand feet, his groin and your ass would get to know each other for several minutes. Being an insecure nineteen year old, I opted, as did we all, for the solo jump.

Hours of training zipped by including videos, written tests, and full dress rehearsals, suspended in the air, pulling on toggles to learn how to steer ourselves once airborne. The excitement of knowing you were going to jump from a perfectly good airplane meant I at least wasn’t paying too much attention. After all, I was an immortal 19-year-old.

An aside to this story is important. My parents were stationed in Europe at the time, and I had told my dad a couple of days before that I was going to be doing this, and to not tell Mom because she’d just worry. Now that I am a dad, I realize that dads worry just as much as moms when their kids are going to do something stupid on the other side of the planet.

Jump Time

We were going up in a small, single engine Cessna (I assume—aren’t all small planes Cessna’s?). We were in teams of three, and I made sure I was on Jack’s team, along with a co-worker of his I’ll call Glen because I have no clue what his real name is. We donned our jump suits, were strapped into our chutes, then loaded in the plane, lightest first. This meant Glen was first, then me, and finally Jack, the largest of us. In the front was the pilot, and the instructor was either where the passenger seat should be, or was kneeling behind it in the back with us. I honestly can’t remember. All that is important about the seating arrangements is that they were tight. Five adult males in a tiny airplane with lots of equipment on.

Tight.

The plane took off, and with adrenaline fueling us with artificial courage, none of us could wait for that door to open, and for our turn to jump.

Or so we thought.

Near Disaster Strikes

The plane banks into position, the pilot throttles down, and the instructor opens the door. Wind whips through the cabin, my long heavy metal guitarist (aspiring) hair not covered by the helmet whips around as Jack positions himself. With his feet in place, left hand on the door frame, right hand on the strut connecting the wing to the body, he’s ready.

He was in perfect form. I was excited. So was Glen.

The instructor pulled the pilot chute from its pouch, then yelled over the howling wind and drone of the engine, “On three!” We all held our breaths. “Three, Two, One, Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, slapping Jack on the back. Jack stepped out gracefully, just as in training, then instead of letting go of the strut with his hand, grabbed onto it with the other.

With his feet dangling out behind him.

Both Glen and I began to piss ourselves laughing at the sight. A two-hundred-fifty pound grown man, holding onto the wing of a plane with both hands, his entire body flapping in the wind like a streamer.

Apparently this was a bad thing.

The instructor yelled, “Oh shit!” and reached out, trying to pull Jack back into the plane.

“Get him off or get him in!” yelled the pilot. “I have to turn otherwise we’re in restricted airspace.” At the time I didn’t realize we were near the international airport and turning was not an option; it was a requirement.

Realizing there was real danger, I jumped forward and grabbed Jack, and between myself and the instructor, we pulled him inside just as the pilot powered up and banked, yelling for the door to be shut. The instructor had trouble with this due to the higher speed and trying to balance himself as the plane banked sharply. We all just held on, trying not to fall from the plane.

With the door finally closed and the wind and noise calmed, everyone was able to recover as the plane looped again to get back into position. Glen and I had shit-eating grins on our faces as the reality of the situation sank in.

Our cool, calm, collected consultant, had panicked.

“What the hell happened out there?” It was clear the instructor didn’t share our amusement.

“I don’t know!” exclaimed a clearly embarrassed Jack. “Something just said grab on!”

I know I laughed out loud; I’m not sure Glen did, him being in his early thirties with probably a little more self-control.

The instructor lowered his voice slightly, putting his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Listen, you don’t have to jump if you don’t want to.”

Jack looked about the cabin, and quickly came to the same realization we all had. If he wasn’t going to jump, we would have to land, because there was no room for us to shuffle around. He must have known that any embarrassment he now faced, would be far worse if everyone saw the plane land to let him out.

He shook his head. “No, I’m okay. Let’s do it.”

The Jump: Redux

Nobody said anything until the plane looped back into position. The door opened, Jack resumed his jump position, and the instructor, holding the pilot chute, yelled, “On three! One! Two!” And then he shoved him out of the plane, tossing the pilot chute after him. He looked out the door, then closed it, turning to us.

“I always get them to jump.”

Glen and I laughed nervously, now realizing our instructor was a little nuts.

My Turn

I got into position when the door opened on the next loop. There was no way in hell I was going to repeat Jack’s performance. I heard the count, faint, as if coming from another plane, my surging pulse pounding in my ears, but I felt the slap on my back and I stepped out.

And totally forgot to arch.

This was the one thing they stressed. “Don’t forget to arch!” Arching meant bending your back, legs and arms spread out, trying to create as much surface area to help stabilize yourself so you don’t tumble and tangle your chute.

And I didn’t arch. Instead, I yelled something stupid like “Geronimo” or “Cowabunga” or whatever my nineteen year-old brain thought would make a clever epitaph should anything go wrong.

Something Goes Wrong

I felt the tug of the chute and almost immediately felt like I came to a stop in midair. I looked up and saw a good chute. All four corners where they should be. Nice rectangle. Lines all straight, no tangles. Everything good.

Except for one thing.

There were no toggles.

My heart leapt into my throat. How the hell was I going to control my chute without toggles? We had been warned of power lines, we had been warned of highways. We had been warned to listen to the voice over the one-way radio.

“Jumper two, turn right.”

That was me. How the hell could I turn right without toggles? Clearly something was wrong with my chute. Clearly the idiot pot smoking adrenaline junkie who had packed my chute had effed up and forgot to attach the toggles.

I looked down and saw the power lines scratched across the ground below.

I reached for the emergency release. My hands gripped the handle, and I was about to pull it, to rid myself of this death trap I was floating under, and hopefully deploy a good emergency chute.

About to pull, my inner voice cut through the adrenaline fueled panic and snapped me back to reality. “Wait!” I let go of the handle. I was floating, quite calmly, quite slowly. I wasn’t plunging to the ground. I had a perfectly good chute above me. Why would I get rid of that without being sure?

“Jumper two, turn right!”

They sounded a little more urgent, but I was over two thousand feet in the air, and was in control again. I looked up, not panicked this time, and examined the rigging over my head.

And found the toggles. Nicely Velcroed in place.

I reached up, released them, and pulled on the right toggle, banking as instructed, and making a mental note to tell the trainers that they should Velcro them in place during training as well.

The Landing

The rest of my jump was uneventful. Jack continued to have problems, the ground controller continually yelling at him to turn, but he was still panicking, rarely listening to instructions. I on the other hand was having a blast. It is impossible to describe how peaceful it is, floating under the chute, the light ruffling of the nylon above you, the floating sensation, and the view.

The view was incredible. The world stretched out below me for as far as the eye could see, and it was wonderful. It was a perfect blue sky day, the sun was shining bright, with only a few clouds tossed on the canvas for effect.

And before I knew it, it was over. I was guided in for my landing, and rather than doing the instructed flare, touch and roll, I flared, landed on my feet and spun around, gathering my chute just like James Bond would do, not some pussy amateur.

I was congratulated on a great jump, a terrific landing, and in my jump book, which I still have somewhere to this day, it has written:

“Arch needs work.”

As I headed back to remove my equipment, I was asked by one of the members, probably the adrenaline junkie who had packed my chute with textbook accuracy, “Would you do it again?”

“I’d do it again, right now!”

He and the hot groupie with him both laughed and he said, “Most fun you’ll ever have with your clothes on.” I looked at her and wasn’t sure.

The End

The jump was never mentioned again with Jack around, except for photos of our jumps having been dropped on our desks several days later. All useless.

Jack had bought I think the first digital camera available in Canada. Today we expect 5, 10, 15 Megapixel cameras. This was a 256 Kilopixel thing or something useless like that. So, not only did the few shots that were taken turn out so grainy it could have been my grandmother jumping, but, to top it all off, the person he had given the camera to didn’t know how to use it, so she wasn’t pressing the button properly, leaving only a handful of shots.

The real pisser: for about twenty bucks they would have provided us with photos, but we had turned them down, Jack promising us better, free photos.

Or is it?

I was a co-op student, renting a room with a shared phone. The phone rang that night, about four in the morning. I got up and answered it.

“So you’re alive!”

It was my mother. I guess Dad had told her. And boy had he. Here’s the story of what happened that weekend in Canada.

I was a Computer Engineering student attending University of Waterloo. That weekend, my Dad was at his office with the radio on, and heard a news report that three Waterloo Engineering students had died skydiving. No names were provided, but I can imagine, now that I am a father, what must have gone through his mind. It actually brings tears to my eyes thinking of it. I have no doubt he heard, “Your son is dead.”

He went home, told Mom about the three deaths, and she wondered aloud if I knew them. Which is when Dad dropped the bomb.

And I got a phone call.

The Writing Lesson

This is something from my life, a few elements of which I incorporated into Brass Monkey, hopefully making a rather routine skydiving scene more interesting. They say write what you know, which I think is BS. With the possible exception of John le Carré or Ian Fleming, not many authors today write what they know. Tess Gerritsen may have been a doctor, but she wasn’t a cop, or a coroner, or pursued by psycho serial killers, but she writes about them, using her medical knowledge to add a note of credibility, a touch of believability, to her writing.

I know computers. So my books, when dealing with a tech element, are believable. Am I a highly trained Delta Force operative, or an archaeologist?

No.

Not yet.

But, I am a diabetic, and Detective Shakespeare’s character has many elements drawn from my own life.

Detective Eldridge’s hospital experience from when he was a child was taken from my own life.

I hate Jags for good reason, so every book has a scene about that.

These things, because they were real, because they are real, make the books more believable, more relatable.

And more human.