Aboard the aircraft emitting the code normally allocated to Global 901, Captain Andrew King stood before the open door. With his hands firmly planted on either side of the opening, King looked out toward the dark horizon. To his left a jump master stood ready, listening to the voice of the pilot over his headset as he stared intently at the bright red light over the C-141’s open door. Behind King and on the aisle across from where he stood, the soldiers who made up 1st and 2nd Platoons of Company A, 3rd of the 517th Parachute Infantry were crammed together. Throughout the cavernous aluminum fuselage the wind, affectionately known to paratroopers as the “Hawk,” howled and whipped about, drowning out all efforts to speak and be heard. This left King’s troopers with no choice but to look up toward the rear of the aircraft or stare intently at the parachute of their companion before them.

This moment, when all was ready, when every muscle in the bodies of King’s well-conditioned paratroopers was taut and straining with anticipation, each man was left with nothing but his own thoughts. For some those thoughts extended no further than the next five minutes. For others, like King, their minds were alive, open to images that were as boundless as the wide open Idaho horizon before him.

This, King told himself as he felt the invigorating rush of the cold morning air whip past his face, is my moment. Everything I have done, he told himself, all the suffering and humiliation endured as a boy, is about to be rewarded. It was no accident that his company had been selected to make the jump. No. He was convinced the honor of leading this assault was one that was rightfully his. He was the best of the best. He always knew that. But now everyone would. Why else had his company been selected to lead the way? While the others would share in the glory and acclaim that would surely come their way, they would be filmed walking down the ramps of their transports, much as leg infantrymen would. Only his company would do it the way that God intended paratroopers to do it, out the door at a thousand feet and into thin air.

“STAND BYYYYYY!” the jump master yelled, emptying his lungs in an effort to overcome the howls of the Hawk.