Fort Benning, Georgia
A t fifteen thousand feet, the door of the DC-47 was unceremoniously yanked open, letting in a roar Michael Waller could compare to nothing he’d heard before. A piercing, silvery morning light flooded the plane, and fierce winds stung his eyes.
“This is it!” his team leader shouted. “Hook up, check down, stand in the door.”
Michael adjusted the pack straps on his parachute, tightening them past the point that had been recommended.
“Waller! You’re up!” he heard, sending his heart rate into full gallop.
He walked toward the door, crouched low and hunched forward like a turtle with too heavy a shell on its back. He’d endured much in his specialized army training—jungle school at Holabird, where his group was forced to walk for days in jungle-like conditions, and enemy captivity training at Fort Polk, where they were put into metal lockers and buried underground—but nothing was as intense or terrifying for Michael as having to dive out of a plane.
He knew this was considered fun for most, and he’d told no one how scared he was. His fear of heights embarrassed him, almost as much as the reason for that fear. As the yawning door of the plane came closer, he saw his father’s face—handsome but cruel—as he stood on the high dive of their local pool, right before he picked up his five-year-old son and dangled him, headfirst, above the water, the glints of yellow sunlight thankfully blinding Michael’s eyes. His father had thought this stunt would make Michael tough. Unfortunately, it had had the opposite effect where heights were concerned, and that too mortified Michael. He’d always told his father in later years that the high-dive trick had worked. He wasn’t afraid of heights at all. But he’d lied.
If Michael’s son-of-a-bitch father could see him now, he’d be proud. Finally. The problem was, Michael hadn’t been able to tell anyone about the training they’d been put through. He’d volunteered for the army for the same reason a lot of guys did—boredom, literally a lack of anything better to do. He had checked Intelligence as his desired field, mostly because it sounded very James Bond.
He’d been put through testing and accepted for agent training and the intelligence corps. At Holabird, his schooling had been fun at first, as had the after-hours trips to downtown Baltimore. But the training had become more intense, and agents were weeded out. Michael knew he must have shown an aptitude for something to have been allowed to continue. Yet it was confusing, because no one knew what kind of program they were being brought into, or what, exactly, they were being trained to do.
And now this. Now he had to throw himself out of a goddamn plane.
“Waller, ready!” his team leader yelled as Michael reached the door.
He stood paralyzed, feeling the sting and scream of the wind on his face. He looked down and saw the land fifteen thousand feet beneath him, resembling a patchwork of emerald and dirt brown, while the sky’s powdery blue spread around him. No way, he said to himself. He turned his head, ready to call it off for the sake of survival, when again he saw his father’s face.
“Waller, ready!” his team leader yelled again.
This time he shouted back, “Waller, ready!” surprised at the heartiness of his voice.
He grasped the sides of the door, rocked himself three times and flung himself out. His body flipped head over toes. Over and over again. His brain fought every instinct and warning that his frantic nerves sent. He arched his chest and hips to the point of pain, forming a U shape, the way he’d been taught. Finally, the position of the body worked, and he was hovering facedown, flying through the blue, his cheeks flapping. There was no sensation of falling. He’d been told that but hadn’t believed it. He was simply suspended there, bouncing in the sky, above everything, above reason or fear now.
Too soon, he checked his altimeter and it was time to activate the chute.
In the hangar, as other unit members landed, Michael clapped them on the back and accepted their congratulations. They were all giddy and high. Michael marveled at the capacity of his mind to move from sheer fear to exuberant joy. It was a lesson he was grateful to learn.
The team leader walked up, and the unit automatically went silent.
“We have a special guest,” the team leader said. “Colonel Coleman Kingsley.”
He and the rest of his unit snapped to attention in full salute.
An arresting figure stepped through the doors of the hangar and paused. The sunlight flooded behind him so that Michael couldn’t see his face.
“At ease,” the colonel said, stepping closer. His voice was deep and calm, so different from the terse barks of Michael’s commanding officer.
Michael felt a thrill race through him. He’d never met someone of such high rank. And then there was the man’s imposing presence—the way he stood with a calm confidence that spoke of battle, and the way his eyes, the color of an exotic sea, assessed the unit with an all-knowing gaze.
“Gentlemen,” Colonel Kingsley said, “congratulations on your first jump. There will be others, I assure you, and there will be more training. Training that will test every fiber of your body, every cell of your mind. You will succeed in this training. You will do so because we have selected you carefully. When you complete this, you will join me.”
Colonel Kingsley paused then, his blue, blue eyes landing for a moment on Michael. And in that moment, Michael wanted to make the man proud. He wanted to succeed for him, in a way he’d never wanted to for his father. Michael raised his chin at the colonel, hoping the gesture would show he’d do anything, anything, he was asked to do.
4
Oakbrook, Illinois
T he goal of babymaking had sapped all my energy and focus for the last few years. It had taken all of Scott and me. And since he left, my goal had been to get some peace in my life, less focus, less intensity, more freedom. No more hormone shots. No more doctor visits or blood tests. And I got that peace, I suppose. It had been very peaceful in the house that Scott built. But I was ready for some excitement. So when Michael left a message five days after my talk with Liza, I didn’t play coy and count the prescribed, recommended amount of days to reply. I called him immediately. I was geared up for something new, some craziness perhaps, maybe just a touch of chaos.
“How did Liza convince you to call me?” I asked him.
“Liza is very persuasive.”
“That’s the truth.”
We both chuckled.
We launched into a long get-to-know-you discussion. The next night, he called again. And again a few days after that. They were easy conversations, filled with stories that required a new audience to be fresh and entertaining, stories my old friends had heard way too often.
Michael was charming and interesting. He talked of jazz and art and restaurants all over the world. His conversations were filled with anecdotes from the numerous jobs he’d held throughout his life—a photographer in Washington, D.C., a pharmaceuticals salesman in Boston, a winery owner in Napa.
“How did you get from taking pictures all the way to stomping grapes?” I asked.
“Well,
