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He doesn't look frightened, now.
Of course if he said so you wouldn't hear him. Adam sits across from you on the opposite bench, and if you both leaned out and stretched you could touch his hand, but beneath the roar and rattle of the aircraft's engines he might as well be a mile away. The vibration never used to bother you and it doesn't seem to bother him; there's the slightest twinge in your spine as you bend forward.
You ignore it. This is one of your favourite parts: you breathe in sweet, pure oxygen in preparation for the jump and, momentarily, it makes you feel invincible. The knowledge that in minutes you'll be in freefall thrums like electricity through your veins.
Adam holds the mask to his mouth to ensure a tight seal. He doesn't look as excited as you are, though he stares you down, and his hands are steady.
They hadn't been steady last night. When the details of the mission had been hammered out on a tactical level the other Patriots had made it apparent they didn't need further input from you. Fair enough. Your job has always been the doing, not the planning. You'd left them be, and that's when you noticed Adam sitting by himself, drinking out of a bottle.
Trust Eva to need to be extracted from a war zone. She couldn't be satisfied with a nice seaside hotel in Monacco; she needed dragons in the form of S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles to bravely vanquish for her rescue. Those SAMs made insertion a risky proposition, and it was you who proposed the HALO jump - because, honestly, you'd've offered to anyway - which will make you too high and then too small to be detected. At night. Invisible. Dangerous as hell but if you're going to play that woman's knight in shining armour you'll be damned if you don't love every minute of it.
You weren't expecting the kid to offer to come along. And by offer, you mean insist.
"You can't be scared," you'd said. That bottle was most definitely hard liquor, from the smell. "You jumped out of a plane without a parachute."
"I'm not scared," he'd retorted, and it was so deliciously defensive a grin crept over your lips.
"Of course, that was what - thirty feet off the water? And mostly lateral momentum." You'd taken a seat beside him and slung an arm around his shoulders. "The worst that was going to happen to you was a couple of broken bones. Thirty thousand feet up, where we'll be... well, let's just say they'll be scraping you out of the dirt with a spoon."
Adam'd looked deeply unimpressed. "Provided both of my chutes fail." He pointed out, but he did take another long pull.
It was more than twenty-fours until the jump. It wouldn't hurt him. "You think that's the only thing that can happen to you up there? If you miss the landing and hit the trees, that could get ugly. Might be going fast enough for the branches to take your limbs or your head off. If you're lucky. If not, you could end up impaled in six different places." You'd jabbed him in the chest with your finger for emphasis. "Or you could get tangled up in your own cords and suffocate. Bad way to go."
"I know what I'm doing," he'd insisted, not looking you in the eyes. That was unlike him.
"Do you? Because this isn't an ordinary jump. At the altitude we're dropping from you could get hypoxic. Black out just before you hit the ground - never stand a chance." You'd lowered your voice, gravely. "It could be that your mask seal was slightly too loose. You'd never even know it. Before you'd realize it you can't think right, can't remember what to pull or how to direct yourself and BAM." You'd smacked your hand against the table. "A puddle of blood and bones in the jungle."
You've bled off most of the nitrogen in your system; you signal to him to switch from the plane's own oxygen supply to the bottles you'll be using on the way down. He moves deliberately, carefully, detaching and reattaching the hose like he's defusing a bomb. Soon the light above you will turn from red to green and he'll have to be ready.
You'll make sure he is, you decide. You'll watch his every move, and as he checks over his suit and chute and the kit you'll be carrying with you, you check it again for him. You're not going to let her baby boy splatter himself against the ground because he's nervous over his first real jump.
He was plainly annoyed, though not annoyed enough to shake you off. You'd thought him mostly impervious to risk and there's something about his trepidation that's every bit as endearing as his grandstanding dauntlessness. You'd squeezed his shoulders and told him: "You know, there's a song your mother used to sing for me to calm me down before a jump."
Adam'd been surprised and intrigued, though he'd tried to hide it under a layer of indifference. "Oh?"
"Do you want to hear it?"
"I might as well."
You'd hummed a little bit of it, trying to get the tune to come back to you. That would be the easy part: it'd been long years since you'd sung it, and you weren't sure if the words would come back to you.
He'd shaken his head, dubious. "My mother may have been a patriot, John, but she did not sing you The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
It'd taken all of your willpower not to laugh, and you'd pressed a finger to his lips instead. "She didn't. Good ear, though." When you were more or less certain you'd got it, you forged onward:
"He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright
He checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight
He had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar:
You ain't gonna jump no more"
You'd been surprised to see Zero standing above you when you finished the first verse, as uncharacteristically cheery as the kid was unsettled. He'd tsked and set a glass down in front of Adam, murmuring, "Manners," then taken a seat beside you. "Is it somebody's first jump?"
"No, it isn't," Adam'd protested, but you were having none of it.
"His first combat jump." You could read it plain as day.
"Mind if I join you, then?" You hadn't been sure what he meant, until he continued. "It's been bloody ages since I sang it, so you'll have to forgive a few slips. I think the last time was with her. Must have been."
"See?" Proof you weren't having him on. Adam'd stayed, for the moment.
And in a rich tenor voice you'd never known Zero had:
"'Is everybody happy?' cried the Sergeant looking up
Our Hero feebly answered 'Yes,' and then they stood him up
He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked
And he ain't gonna jump no more.
The light turns green and you stand as one. Face to face you're close enough to see that he has it all done up properly. There's nothing to fix, but you do adjust his straps. He's as big as he'll ever be but he's still skinny; doesn't know that these need to hurt or the shock when the chute opens could rip them loose. That shock will be worse than he's felt before at low altitude with the GRU.
He makes a face. Endures it. Moves to the back with you when the ramp opens, eyes wide at the perfect darkness of the night sky above the clouds and the faint red-orange blooms of the battle below. Beautiful.
He catches your sleeve before you jump.
With his static line unhooked, the hero's primary chute doesn't open. When his reserve fails he has no choice but to face the inevitability of his impending demise with detail that grows ever more gruesome as the song progressed.
You'd been surprised that Zero knew it, but you shouldn't have. For all he was a suit in an office these days, he was an honest-to-god para when he was young. The kind of man you've told yourself you would have been had you been born but ten, fifteen years sooner; the real version of one of the green plastic heroes with their plastic parachutes you'd sent drifting, spiralling down from the stairs for a surprise attack on cardboard Panzers. He'd jumped with her in North Africa, her and an elite handful of the best and bravest, with none of the toys you and Adam have now. Only wits and will.
You'd slung your other arm around him. You'd thought, maybe, that you could see a hint of that young trooper in the smile he'd worn, how he could have worn it when he'd followed her, boots bloused and sleeves rolled up and as deeply impressed by her as you had been. As anyone was.
He's too damn old now, though. To be a para. You are too if you're being honest with yourself - at least, you're getting there. The knees go first. Then the ankles. You're only in your mid-thirties and you can already feel it when you land hard.
Not Adam. He's the right age. He even wears his hair like they did back then: long on top, slicked back and to the side, sharply parted; blond enough to be grey in the grainy black-and-white films of your youth that had left you so enraptured by those volunteers who leapt out of perfectly good airplanes. Until she'd taken you, and shown you how to do it for yourself.
Adam'd waited impatiently and his gaze had found the ceiling more than a few times at being forced to listen to two old men lovingly describe his fate if he wasn't careful. He'd finally left at the last verse, knocking the chair back forcefully enough that you'd had to catch it or it would have toppled.
He'd always loved to make a scene.
There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,
Intestines were a-dangling from his paratrooper suit,
He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,
And he ain't gonna jump no more.
You'd finished it together. Between the two of you, you'd remembered all of the words and you were smiling ear-to-ear, just like Zero was. You stole Adam's bottle and his glass and poured some for Zero for a toast. You resent the way he operates, the decisions he makes, so much of the time, but in that moment you remembered why you'd agreed to join him.
"I'm glad you can take the piss out of him, Jack," Zero'd remarked wistfully. "He takes it out of everyone else."
Then he'd raised his glass: "Shoot true. March fast and far."
"Every man an Emperor," you'd answered.
Adam steps around to stand in front of you. Unhooks his mask on one side and points to your face. You respond in kind. A few breaths won't hurt; it looks like he has something to say.
It sounds like he's humming.
You smile against his lips when he kisses you. A fleeting brush of warmth; the knowledge that you're playing the protector not only to Eva, but her son as well.
Then he reaches up to touch your shoulder. To show you that the cord of your reserve chute is tangled in your oxygen supply and he grins the cockiest, most shit-eating little grin you ever saw, shouting above the whipping wind:
"Hell of a way to die, John!"
Until you wipe it off his face by shoving him out the back of an airplane.