He started packing the rig.
Greg exhaled so hard he nearly coughed.
The jump happened twentyminutes later.
Greg watched from behind his pathetic scrub brush as Dustin made the climb. The cliff wasn't as high as the last one. This would be a quick jump, only a handful of seconds of freefall before deployment.
Before deployment would fail.
Greg wondered what was going on in Dustin’s head.
Did he have any idea that he was about to die? Did he reckon with that possibility on any jump?
Don't think about it. Just watch. Just wait. Do your job.
Dustin jumped.
The freefall was short. Greg counted the seconds, each one stretching into eternity. One. Two. Three.
Dustin reached for the pilot chute.
The canopy deployed.
Greg held his breath.
For a moment, everything looked normal. The parachute caught air, Dustin's descent slowed, and?—
The lines snapped.
The canopy tore away, a useless tangle of fabric spinning off into the wind, and Dustin dropped like a stone.
Greg's whole body went cold.
He’d done his research.
At eight hundred feet, there was no reserve. No backup plan. No second chance. BASE jumpers knew this. They accepted it every time they stepped off an edge. If the main failed, you died.
The main had failed.
Dustin was going to die.
But this was what Greg had wanted, wasn’t it? This was the assignment. This was?—
He was running before he finished the thought. Sprinting across the open desert toward the landing zone,not caring if anyone saw him, not caring about anything except?—
Except what? What was he going to do? Catch the mortal?
Dustin hit the ground.
The sound was?—
Greg would never forget that sound.
He stopped running. His legs wouldn't work anymore. He stood there in the middle of the Nevada desert, fifty yards from the impact site, and waited for the soul to rise.
That was how it worked. The body died, the soul emerged, the reaper guided it through. Greg had seen it dozens of times during his internship. He knew what came next.
He waited.
