Jed took three long strides and threw himself out into the night, noting the altitude of one thousand feet on the altimeter strapped to his wrist as he did. He had ten seconds until contact with the ground, roughly. So eight seconds to deploy his chute.

A wicked crosswind hit him the instant he left the plane and sent him corkscrewing.

Panic flared in his chest.

This wasn’t a HALO where he had twenty thousand feet to get himself sorted. He had five seconds to orient, stabilize, and deploy his shoot. That was it. The SEAL inside instantly took control—vaporizing all fear, all uncertainty, all doubt. Two hundred and fifty kids were counting on him. Sarah Beth was counting on him. Tonight would not be the night he would meet his Maker.

Calling upon the muscle memory of countless jumps, he harnessed gravity and frictional aerodynamics to get into the proper form. Legs bent at the knees, arms out, he found the horizon. Like a bowlegged Superman, he leaned left and steered himself toward the dark campus below, which was getting closer and bigger at a ridiculous rate.

Seven seconds . . .

His right hand found the rip cord.

Lightning flashed.

Eight seconds . . .

He pulled it.

The chute jerked him upright in his harness. Thunder boomed and he waited to see if the blue serpent snaking across the sky had its fangs set on him, but thankfully the electric pain never came. He pulled sharply on the left riser, spiraling left before releasing it. He was coming in hot, too hot. At the last moment, he pulled hard on both risers, braking his fall and insane forward velocity. He felt the brick pavers under his feet, but as he released the risers, a powerful gust of wind dragged his chute violently to his right and then jerked him up again. Finding his Koch fittings, he released the parachute and dropped eight feet to the ground. On impact, he rolled out of the hard fall and came to rest lying on his back, staring up into the tempest.

He took a second to perform a self-check for broken bones and torn ligaments. Finding his body relatively painless, he thanked God and scrambled into a crouch. With practiced efficiency, he loosened his rifle sling with his left hand as he raised his weapon with his right. Then taking a knee, he dropped his night-vision goggles into place and scanned the grounds for threats. Seeing none, he searched the sky for parachutes.

He counted two—one released and skirting along the ground, the other attached to a jumper in the last moments of descent. The winds had scattered them, but they were all touching down within fifty yards of each other. He felt a squeeze on his left shoulder.

“That was a heckuva ride,” Eli said with a grin. “I thought I was going to go splat there for a second.”