Hurricane!

Illustration by George Krauter

The late September weather was crisp and clear outside my downtown office as a flurry of homeward bound office workers scurried for the Metro across Connecticut Avenue, eight floors below. Off in the distance I could hear the ever-present whine of sirens, normal background noise in Washington, just as the cloud-specked sky above was a seldom noticed constant in this city where the focus usually was on more mundane and immediate things.

The telephone rang just as I was pulling the file on the Severance drums and fries matter out of the cabinet. “Janice has turned north,” Jerry Nord’s voice on the other end said abruptly. “She’ll hit the gulf stream sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What’s her status?” I asked, my heart starting to accelerate from the rush of adrenaline as the impact of his words hit me. “Has she been upgraded from a tropical depression again?” The three previous candidates had proven less to our liking, one turning toward the Georgia coast, the second dropping back to a tropical storm just as we were ready to launch, and the third swinging over Florida, with much attendant destruction. I wanted to be sure that this one wasn’t going to be a waste of time and effort as well. Janice had already changed status once as she shifted north.

“Better,” Jerry fired back. “Her surface winds are over thirty-three meters per second; she’s a bona fide hurricane and still growing.” He paused and then Mariah’s voice came on the line in a rush; “Why are you wasting time talking on the phone?” she shouted. “Get your ass out of that chair and get down here right away. We don’t have a lot of time to get the boat into position!”

“On my way,” I replied eagerly to both of them. As soon as the line went dead I told my administrative assistant to rearrange my schedule for the next week and get me a seat on the next plane to Charleston. Then I told Tonya to inform Severance that we’d deal with her demon when I got back, and quickly shoved her papers back into their folder.

That done, I hit the autodial for my apartment and counted the rings; four and it would roll over to the answering machine, meaning that Billie was out. Just as my hackneyed message was about to start she picked up the phone. “Janice is the big one again,” I said before she had a chance to say anything other than “Hello” in that little girl voice of hers. “Throw some of my clothes in my travel bag and put my bathroom stuff in my dopp kit for me. I’ll be by in half an hour to pick it up on my way to the airport.” I slammed the phone down, grabbed my coat, and headed for the elevator before I remembered that I didn’t add the obligatory “Love ya,” before hanging up.

“Billie,” I yelled as I unlocked the doors to the apartment when I got home. I was hoping to give her a quick hug and kiss for luck before I left, but there was no answer. I found my bag sitting in the hall with a note pinned on the top. I shoved the note into my pocket, grabbed the bag, and rushed out the door, hoping that my garlicky, swarthy cabbie had understood enough English to grasp my promise of a generous tip if he waited.

I remembered the note as the cab jostled with the other cars to ease into the flow of evening traffic across the Fourteenth Street bridge toward National airport, and fished it out of my pocket. “I can’t believe that you are doing something so idiotic and stupid,” the note began lovingly in her elegant handwriting. “Despite everything that I say you still seem determined to kill yourself in some spectacular manner. You’ve got to be insane to try a stunt like this and I don’t want to live with someone who has a death wish. I will be gone when, and if, you return. Don’t bother to call.”

A cold knot formed in my stomach. Where would I be without Billie? Should I turn back and try to stop her? Or was this just another of her dramatic ploys to get me to do what she wanted? I leaned forward to tell the driver to turn around when I caught the tail end of the weather forecast from his radio; “… Could prove to be the storm of the century,” the announcer said. I settled back in my seat, shoving the note into my side pocket: Providence had intervened, reminding me of Janice’s siren cry. The weather report was her way of beckoning me, I was sure. Maybe I could still make up to Billie when I got back, but my Janice was an ephemeral mistress, never to be courted again once she had passed my way. She would give me no second chance.

The flight to Charleston was uneventful. I drank two cans of apple juice and didn’t eat the peanuts they offered since I was still on the low residue diet Jerry and Mariah had recommended we follow at the beginning of hurricane season. The 767 had a few moments of rocking turbulence over Charlotte as the plane encountered the bumpy air on the leading edge of Janice’s distant center. “I am coming. I am near,” her nudges seemed to say to me. Almost three years of preparation for this day lay behind me, three years of trying to plan every aspect of our conquest of the biggest storm of all—a full-fledged south Atlantic hurricane!

The whole thing had started while Jerry and I were taking a three-day trip on the upper Shenandoah River in the early months of summer a few years back. That time of the year was the quiet period for storm jumpers. The spring storms were gone and it was too early for the squall lines or the hurricanes to start. The Sun had to pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere to get those weather cells going so we had some time to just relax.

The upper part of the Shenandoah is a nice technical challenge; a maze of rocks and boulders interlaced with streams of inches-deep water. We had to fight our way downstream, often having to backtrack when we chose the wrong route and had to try another. Stubborn pride always kept our portage to a minimum, even if it was only a few steps, with the result that we worked twice as hard as necessary to make a few miles of river. Occasionally we would find an arm that stuck off and would explore it to find what it might reveal, often ending in a marshy mess of cow flop and mud. Too seldom we found a decent rapid—more of a challenge in a canoe than our usual kayaks, which could not carry the camping gear.

We talked about a lot of things over the campfire that night. Jerry had been doing some thinking about the big storms and needed to talk it out. “We’ve been jumping storms for a few years now, you and I,” he began. “Damn near mastered most of the them, too.” Jerry, modest soul that he was, didn’t mention that he was not only the top storm jumper in the world but also the premier maker of storm jump equipment: His line wasn’t the biggest nor the widest; it simply consisted of the best quality jump gear in the world. You never had to worry about the reliability of one of Jerry’s parachutes, they were over-engineered far beyond the expected range of conditions. Neither could you fault his lovingly assembled, handmade electronics; altimeters, wind gauges, computers, radios—everything storm jumpers needed to preserve their stupid hides once they headed into the mouth of the beast. Naturally Jerry guaranteed every one of his products with his own life, using a random item from his inventory for his own jumps. It not only ensured adequate quality control but was a hell of an advertisement as well.

Jerry stirred the fire with a stick and continued; “Sometime every August or September the big depressions blossom in the southern Atlantic and move along the east coast. I was wondering if we could jump one of them?”

“Holy shit, Jerry,” I exclaimed in shock. “You’re talking about jumping into a damned hurricane, aren’t you! Are you crazy or something?” I mean, we all talked about it, mostly braggadocio and wishful thinking. After all, a hurricane was just a big storm, right? Yeah, and a tyrannosaurus was just a big gecko. As far as I know Jerry was the only certifiable expert who had even voiced the possibility of actually trying it.

“Klien did it,” he said quietly. “Jay jumped and managed to survive.” As if that was any excuse. Klien had jumped against all advice when hurricane Fred had crossed the Florida coast. He had ended up with multiple fractures, a collapsed lung, and the ridicule of nearly everyone who followed storm jumping. When they finally fished him out of the Gulf all he was concerned about was if his stupid camera was still intact. His computer indicated that he’d gotten just a thousand meters into the storm before Fred ripped most of his jump gear away, smashed him around for long agonizing minutes, and finally plunged him into the surf where he was beaten by flotsam and jetsam for half the night. Jay had been an idiot for making the attempt, everybody knew that, and foolishly lucky to have survived.

Only, I wondered, why was the idea so deliciously appealing when coming from Jerry? Probably because the idea of mastering the might of a full-fledged hurricane would be the pinnacle of storm jumping: the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest for the first time. And Jerry would be the best sherpa guide anyone could hope for.

He tossed a twig into the fire and watched the flame flare into brief life. “I think we can work out most of the techniques for doing it safely. It’s just a matter of planning things out in detail and having the right equipment. Well, you sleep on it and let me know if you want in on it.”

“You really are going to do this, aren’t you?” I asked when the embers were just a cherry glow and the last of the tea was gone.

“Yes,” he replied. “And you’re going to go with me,” he replied, turned over in his sleeping bag and went to sleep.

“No, I won’t,” I said testily to his back. ‘You are one insane bastard. I won’t be a party to your suicide.” There, I thought, that should end the discussion.

Jerry never referred to his crazy idea the rest of the trip, although it was never very far from my mind. The excitement of jumping into a major hurricane drew me on the one hand, while the danger that it posed to my life and limb pushed me away. The idea thrashed back and forth within my thoughts for days after. Not that I had any real control over the situation. Jerry knew I would come around to his way of thinking, no matter what I said.

Finally I could stand his silence no longer. I called him up to tell him that in no way was I going to go along with his crazy idea… I ended up flying to Florida to try out some of his ideas in one of the “small” tropical squalls. One jump with Jerry’s proposed equipment and I was hooked. Nothing was going to keep me away when Jerry made his assault on the big one.

Over the next year Jerry and I painstakingly worked out the ways we could harness a hurricane’s power to our advantage. In a seemingly endless succession of jumps into nightmarishly bad weathers we discovered what worked and what didn’t. The failures were the really scary parts for both of us, especially the ones that we almost didn’t survive. By the time we had completed our research we had earned a reputation in the jump community for being reckless, crazy, and stupid; which is quite an honorific in that brotherhood.

A big change in our plans came when another spring came around and we decided to do the Youghiogheny River. Every decent white water enthusiast on the east coast loves the Youghiogheny River, the lower Youg, that is, from the easy stairstep riffles at the top, just below Ohiopyle Falls, to the roaring Class V and VI rapids down toward the bottom. We planned to start our run at the Loop takeout, right at the top of the thirteen-kilometer drop down to Brunner Run. Once you get under the bridge below the Loop you have to keep going because the river drops five meters per kilometer, about sixty for the whole run, which builds up a hell of a roaring sheet of water to ride.

Another kayak had just put in when we got to the edge of the stream and was paddling upstream to get into a decent position for a solo run. I waved my arm to signal we should all make the run together, wondering if the other guy would be able to keep up with us as the difficulty level increased down below. The fact that he had put in at the Loop told us that he wasn’t a raw beginner, the kind whose courage would fade when he hit anything above a Class III rapid. He waved back with his paddle, backed until we were in the water and then took off like a shot right through the gap and under the bridge, making a nice tight stem turn with the main flow.

He was riding the hydraulic at Dimple Rock when I shot the chute, letting me lead Jerry and him through Swimmer’s hole and down the Cucumber, a rapidly accelerating stairstep of rough waters that starts as Class III and ends with a Class IV bone-shaker. By the time we reached the Bottle I had gotten a measure of our companion; reckless, daring, and a little crazy. In other words, a normal white water enthusiast. Jerry went through the Bottle of Wine in his normally cautious fashion, not sacrificing speed for safety, but not taking chances either. Then Jerry and I waited upended in the smooth hydraulic below the Bottle when the other guy came through hell-bent for leather, zipping by us in an effort to be the first to hit River’s End.

The End isn’t my favorite piece of the river. Right at the top of the passage through the mass of rocks there’s a double hydraulic that gives a great ride, but only if you keep your speed up. Slow down and the second backwash will drag you in and down, giving you a double dose of the wet lung disease as it yanks you out into the current. Once you are past that hazard, and hurtling along at a good clip, you enter the Canyon. The huge boulders rearing up on either side always give me a claustrophobic feeling while I’m twisting and turning to stay in the channel. Drifting just a hair to either side of the Canyon means that the current will smack you against one of the huge rocks. If that happens, and you don’t twist in time, the water pressure can pin you there, holding your kayak flat against the rock face with tons and tons of water pouring over you. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, the bottom of the End opens up on a cascading series of haystack hydraulics, upwellings that can throw you into next Wednesday if you aren’t careful. I usually try to go around them and stay close to Whale Rock where there’s a slight eddy current. Jerry takes an even more deliberate course over the first one and around the next two.

When I finally worked my way to the bottom and made the swing at the rocks I had the shock of my life. Our erstwhile companion was riding upright on the last of the hydraulics, calm as you please. “Race you guys to the take out,” he yelled in a feminine voice. The high-pitched voice told me that the guy was just a damned reckless kid!

There was no way I was going to let some hot dog kid beat me on my river! I turned the kayak with a vicious sweep of my paddle, did a rollover to refresh myself, and waited for the kid to come abreast. When he shot by me, using the impetus of the water gushing out of the End to give him an extra boost I realized my mistake: I had to build up speed from nearly a dead stall while he was gaining speed with every sweep of his paddle. The kid was really good! Jerry was two strokes and three lengths ahead of me in pursuit by the time I got my ass in gear.

By the time we reached School-house the kid was tens of meters ahead of me and skipped though the washboard without missing a beat. Jerry gained a little on the flat water to Laurel Run and lost some when the kid took the dangerous, but faster route down the Stairstep; something only daredevils or damn fools usually attempt. The three of us hit the Brunner Run rapid side by side and dueled down the riffles, Jerry leaning to caution, me finding a middle course, and our opponent taking chances with every hazard. I managed to cut across at the bottom of the riffles, where the water flattens out, and squeezed him off on the big rock to the right, forcing him to either hit the rock or follow. I swept around in a victory curl right at the takeout, just a few feet ahead of Jerry. No kid was going to show us up!

Which is why both of us manly men were stunned when the kid beached the kayak, stepped out, took off the helmet, and shook out that head of flaming red hair that beautifully set off Mariah’s dark green eyes. I think Jerry fell in love the instant she flashed him that smile of hers.

Mariah and Jerry began to see a lot of each other in the next few months after our meeting on the lower Youg. He told me that she was an accomplished hang glider, sailplane pilot, and sport parachute enthusiast. From his tone I knew he was hooked, big time. Well, it was just a short step for Jerry to get Mariah to try jumping a few storms. Before long she was better at navigating the erratic winds than anyone else on our team. She was a natural and, frighteningly fast, acquired an expert’s skill. Trouble was, she got so damn good that hubris reared its ugly head: She felt she could do no wrong and wanted to start pushing the envelope.

There was a hell of a row between the two of them over where to draw the line between risk and foolhardiness. Mariah’s style was the opposite of Jerry’s. She was the daredevil of the pair, willing to risk everything on the chance, providing the payoff was worth it. Specifically, she wanted to try jumping the squall fronts that moved like freight trains across the Oklahoma plains. Everyone, even the craziest storm jumpers, thought the idea was too dangerous to even think about it. Jerry carefully explained to her that those type of storms were too poorly organized and unpredictable to jump safely. It did no good, but he did try to talk her out of it.

The result of all the talks and discussions and warnings was that Mariah did some squall line jumping on her own, including one autumn jump with some experimental gear that Jerry had devised for our hurricane assault. To prove that everyone else was wrong she had ridden a roaring monster of a tornado for nearly twelve kilometers across Oklahoma, clocking ground speeds of nearly three hundred, and lived to tell about it. That storm blew her clear across the state before depositing her in the only tree within ten kilometers of her landing site. So what if she broke both legs, not to mention a dozen or more other minor and major bones in the attempt—she had proven that she could do what the veterans said couldn’t be done!

Jerry proposed to her in the hospital while she was lying there, defenseless in her casts and semi-comatose from the sedatives. He figured that someone who could ride a tornado and survive was worth holding onto. Can’t say I blamed him. I was best man at their wedding—which occurred between fifteen hundred and a thousand meters, surrounded by the rest of the jump club, and a very, very scared-looking minister. After that it was taken for granted that Mariah would be going with us when we tackled the big one.

The change in the pitch of the engines, the chiming of the tone, and the announcement from the stew to put our seatbelts on brought me back to the present. The plane abruptly began its descent. On the way down the crosswinds made the plane lean sickeningly to one side, slip, and then come back level. A kid in the back started to cry. The wind managed to smash us around a few more times before our wheels banged three times onto the rain-slick runway and started rolling down the seemingly endless taxi run to the Charleston terminal.

The wind-driven force of the rain beat a steady drum roll on the roof of the rental car as I recovered my luggage and drove to pick up Jerry and Mariah and drive to the harbor. To all those around me the rain, wind, and thunder may have just been aspects of another summer storm, but I knew better; even from a thousand miles away my Janice was already calling me into her arms.

Late the next day the deck of Jerry’s “research” boat dropped under my feet as the twelve meter wall of white flecked, gray water rose behind the stem. Up and up, towering higher than I could see, the immense wall rose as we dropped further into the trough. Finally the crest rose far above, where the one hundred kilometer per hour winds would be blowing the white froth off its top, that was something I couldn’t see because of the helmet’s restriction on my head movement. What would this wind be on the Beaufort scale, I wondered? Force eleven or better for sure! The wall moved relentlessly away from me, a vast mountain of water racing away from our stern and leaving us in a watery valley, surrounded by huge peaks of moving, liquid geography.

I wasn’t worried about the survivability of the boat: The Valkyrie had been a completely enclosed, stress tested, air-droppable attack ship before the wave of peace came over the world and made military surplus a growth industry. She could be dropped from a plane going at over two hundred kilometers per hour, bob to the surface, and have her engines going immediately. No little hurricane could harm her. Jerry had found her the perfect vessel for our planned assault on the hurricane.

As soon as we reached the trough the deck started to rise like a rising elevator, faster and faster as another wave moved beneath us. I was forced to brace myself as the boat tipped backward on the slope of the wave. Only the strength of the clamps on my boots and the line from the reel at my back held me from tumbling off the stern. Finally we reached the apogee and were exposed to the full force of the wind that drove a solid sheet of water horizontally across the deck. The deluge obscured my faceplate and prevented any view of the surrounding seas. Of course, this close to the storm you couldn’t see more than a few meters in any direction anyhow, so I wasn’t missing much.

“Pressure just went below 980 millibars,” the intercom crackled in my ear. “We’re approaching your outer rainwall. Better get ready to leave.”

“Check your gear,” Jerry’s voice said unnecessarily over the intercom. I glanced to my right and saw him wave one orange arm. While we were plowing our way from Charleston harbor into the Atlantic I’d already checked every item of my equipment ten times at least, and did a final check before coming out to get into position on the deck. But caution was ever the watchword for a jumper so I dutifully ran down my mental checklist one more time. With a snap of my chin I brought the heads-up displays that were projected onto the inside of my faceplate, confirming the captain’s pressure reading with bright red numbers. The altitude reading below it showed us varying from plus to minus twelve meters: Since we were in the middle of the tropical depression surrounding hurricane Janice, the GPS reading would show us to be above the Earth’s ideal spherical surface at the crest of the waves and below it on the troughs. Heading, attitude, speed, rate of climb, and all of the other minutiae of this venture were checked and confirmed in the display.

I reached up and felt for the oxygen bottle strapped to my shoulder, the battery pack was attached on the opposite side, and confirmed that my helmet was strapped tightly to my skull with the face mask clamps tightened down. The jump we were about to make was very much like climbing a very, very tall mountain. Up at the top we’d be at nearly seven kilometers with the air pressure down to a mere four or five hundred millibars—not too healthy for human lungs and consciousness, to be certain.

Next I tested each of the straps securing my parachutes into place, giving a tug to make sure that their lines hadn’t become tangled since the last time I checked. The chutes were all connected, each one would pull the other as it was released through a sutliff shroud arrangement. We’d have no time to bother with release and deployment once we were on our way, so everything that could was arranged to happen without human intervention. The eight linked chutes, four in front and four behind, gave the three of us a comical look—like a group of brightly colored, rotund beetles. I reached behind me and felt the release on the hook of the take-up reel and the boot clamps, tracing the pull cord around my waist to the handle at the front, right beside my left hand. The other handle, on the right side, was for the ribbon chute, my primary deployment.

We had developed our storm jumping techniques gradually, leaping out of airplanes into thunderheads with various types of sport chutes to start and worked our way up to tackling the edges of the hurricanes in the south Atlantic and far Pacific, where they still call them typhoons despite international attempts to standardize weather terminology. Each of our jumps was designed to perfect some point of technique or test a new wrinkle in technology. Most led to the development of yet another innovation, such as the balloon chute combination that I carried as my numbers four and six.

The sails and chutes in my inventory were partly Jerry’s innovations; modifications to the early Irwin Eagle parasail models. Every one of them was proven using wind tunnels and simulations that tested the radical designs. The ribs were inflated by the wind’s shock wave as the sutliff pulled the deployment shroud away. This gave the sail’s reinforced dacron added structural strength and turned the chute into an airfoil. The modern jumper’s standard rig was a cross between a hang glider and a sport parachute, modified for the high winds you normally encountered within a storm front. They were every bit as advanced a technology as the suit’s heads-up displays, and the GPS receiver in my helmet.

There wasn’t much I could do about the suit, aside from ensuring that the seals were all closed and that the battery pack was firmly attached at my waist. The suits were the latest innovation Mariah had uncovered. She’d discovered the material on one of her systems searches for new technology we could use. Our suits were layers of space-age materials that embraced us like a second skin. The outside was a waterproof and thermally protecting layer that would keep most of the external environment away from our frail bodies. Their strong elastic would also, Jerry observed with his obsessive attention to detail, hold us together if we broke anything, like an arm or leg, during the jump. All the suits were colored to have high visibility in dark and stormy waters. Jerry had selected the usual international orange while I chose the sailor’s survival red. Mariah, with her usual attention to style and a desire to be different, was garbed in gear dyed a flaming fluorescent pink, for heaven’s sake!

Next to our skins we wore a thin set of underwear that would pass most of our perspiration and retain our body heat. This was just another version of the polypropylene underwear that had been around for years and was still the best thing you could have next to your body, except another body, that is.

The middle layer of the suit was the critical one. This was the micropore fabric that was the latest in survival technology. The layer was composed of thousands and thousands of cells, each of which had their own function to perform. One type would reverse the flow of heat from one direction to the other like miniature heat pumps. If the external environment was cooler than a certain level it would not allow any heat to escape from the body. If it was warmer, as it was at the moment on the deck of the ship where the temperature was nearly thirty-two degrees Centigrade, it would allow the heat to escape to the outer skin, where it would evaporate and provide a measure of cooling. A second type of suit cell reacted to pressure, filling its volume with scavenged fluid, no problem with the amount of work we’d be doing, and becoming rigid as the air pressure lowered, sealing the suit, and keeping our blood from boiling. The third type of cells were mediators, governing the range of behavior of the others and which were themselves controlled by the small computer built into the suit’s battery pack. I glanced down to make sure its tiny red telltale was winking. All considered the suit was one step short of qualifying as a primitive life form.

“Why do you want to waste your time checking this stuff again?” Mariah’s voice crackled over the intercom. “It will either work or not at this point. You certainly aren’t going to back out now!” That was just like Mariah, fractious as hell before a jump, more so than normal, given our current situation. Jerry got picky-picky, covering his nervousness with constant confirmation that everything was in readiness while Mariah was more of a “spit on it and go” philosophy. I never could understand how the two of them had thought their marriage could succeed with such disparate styles.

Despite their different styles both Jerry and Mariah were meticulous about our preparations. Nothing was going to be used that hadn’t been tested under extreme conditions a dozen times or more. Every step of our jump was carefully planned down to the most picky detail. Step by step procedures were drawn for every possible contingency and scenarios were run a hundred times to make sure we knew all the dangers Janice could offer. It was only after all the details were settled that Mariah’s basic personality came to the fore; her “let’s get on with it,” panache.

It had been Jerry’s cool head and credentials that had held off the Coast Guard until we could get our boat beyond the limit. “We are a weather research craft, fully rigged for heavy weathers,” he had advised them when they hovered to tell us to turn back. That wasn’t a lie. We were a fully recognized arm of the GDN Foundation, a preeminent weather research institution well known for its airborne sensors. Jerry had started the foundation with the profits from his parachute business and used his jumpers as mobile collection platforms. Each of Jerry’s helmets collected continual readings from GPS as well as pressure. With rather exacting precision the foundation could report the precise wind flows as the jumper transits the storm. The information was invaluable, since no unmaneuvered balloon could possibly reach the places we went.

Naturally the Coast Guard knew who we really were and what we were about to do, but they had to observe the forms dictated by their regulations. Our refusal to heed their fair warning relieved them of any responsibility for whatever might occur. Once we stated our credentials and were on the high seas we were on our own recognizance, to survive or fail on our own.

I tried to imagine what it must look like from their safe perspective as the Coast Guard vessel turned back. Here I was, clamped to the deck of a heaving ship heading into the teeth of a major hurricane, burdened with nearly two hundred kilograms of parachutes, electronics, and survival gear, and ready to leap off into the wind-driven seas. Crazy bastards, they would probably think, wondering what motivated us. How could I explain how it felt to try for the big one, the thing that had never been done before—a complete closed circuit of a major hurricane!

The circuit was a natural progression for us. We had practiced by riding the faces of the big storms, flying before the heavy winds for the past three years. Jerry and I had skirted the periphery of the typhoons in the Pacific, bouncing around the inner rainwalls, riding the updrafts to three or four thousand meters before bailing out. Making a complete circuit of the heart of the hurricane was something others had tried while we practiced and perfected. The last three tries had resulted in two jumpers dead and one missing, all drowned or presumed drowned in the turbulent seas after having their gear ripped apart by the ferocious winds. “One must surmount the comma,” Jerry had proclaimed one evening as we were planning our assault, tracing an arching line above the heavy winds and turbulence of the eyewall on the three dimensional wind model we had downloaded from the NOAA board.

A hurricane can be thought of as a concentric ring of rainwalls ranging up to a thousand kilometers away from the eye, each one a raging torus of cyclonic winds and rising thermals. The most forceful winds of the central eyewall exist at the one o’clock position to the storm’s track and close to the bottom of the rising stack of warm air, the primary energy cell that forms the eye. It is the rising warm air within this cell that fuels the hurricane’s fury. Sucking latent heat energy from the surface the air rises clear to the stratosphere in enormous volumes, dropping part into the quiescent eye and the rest into the overflowing storm shield. Most of the energy transfer occurs at various levels of the stack, dropping the temperature as the warm, moisture-laden air condenses out and releases its energy.

It is as you approach the inner eyewall that the pressure gradients change rapidly and the wind speeds increase. Down near the surface the storm might have a pressure of one thousand millibars, while at six thousand meters the pressure would be down to half that, with a corresponding drop in wind velocity at any point from the center.

Over two pots of coffee and innumerable arguments we sketched out a route we could take to circle the storm and survive. We had to make use of the prevailing winds, our expertise in handling high speed wind sailing, and our knowledge of the structure of the storm.

We would try to get into position and enter on the eastern side, just inside the first major rainwall, about seventy kilometers from the eye at about the four o’clock position. We would use the updraft at that location to climb to two thousand meters and turn toward the eye before we got caught in the side draft that would take us out and back down. Using the winds surrounding the eyewall we would climb another thousand meters, and fall into the eyewall near the two o’clock spot. If our calculations were correct, and the plan worked, we would then accelerate, brush the top of the comma itself, which would give us enough momentum to spin into the eyewall. Once there we would climb the stack of upward flowing air and fight our way into the eye at about nine kilometers up. Once we were in the eye we would have a few moments of rest before fighting our way back out.

Our plan was to drift around in the eye to the eight o’clock position and dive near the surface, fight our way through the trailing eyewall—where the wind gradients were less—be carried back up to altitude by the up-wellings of the trailing rainwalls and be carried around to the starting four o’clock position. Naturally the storm would have moved by this time and the same relative position would be far northeast of where we had started. Hopefully, our path would describe a long ellipse with the eye of the storm as its primary center.

The “ifs” of the plan were manifold. It depended upon our hurricane following a decent track and not recurving on itself, bending back and destroying the smooth laminar wind flows on which we depended. It depended on the storm structure having a nicely rounded shape and not going excessively elliptical on us, which would throw us far off course and make retrieval, provided we survived, difficult if not impossible. It depended on the reliability of the NOAA weather model we had downloaded and our faith in accuracy of the wind and pressure dynamics described in a dozen or more meteorological texts. It depended on our gear being the best we could get. It depended on us using every bit of skill and knowledge we had acquired over the last five years of storm jumping. And, to be honest, it depended on the power of prayer and the will of God.

“Nine sixty millibars,” shouted the captain. At the same time the long ribbon unrolled from a standard at mid-deck. I watched it whip around for a few minutes before it steadied and hung straight out a few points off our stern. The captain was keeping us into the wind, showing us the shape of the wall we were penetrating. “Launch whenever you’re ready,” he said calmly. How could he be so damn laid back while fighting the seas, the winds, and his common sense to keep us on a true heading, I wondered. Is he as crazy as the rest of us? The answer was obvious.

“All right,” Jerry said with rising tension in his voice, “Let’s make sure of everything one last time before we go. Now just wait while I—”

“Wait, hell!” Mariah said, deployed her sail and kicked free of the clamps just as we reached the peak of a wave. I watched the wind rip the small pink parasail from her front pack, lift her clear of the deck, which disconnected her from our intercom link. I couldn’t see the thin strand of monofilaments from the reel that kept tension on her and ensured that she would rise against the wind. With a wind speed in excess of one hundred klicks even a small sail has enormous lifting power, equivalent to the large, low-speed parasails that they use to tow swimmers at all of the Caribbean resorts.

“God damn that woman,” Jerry muttered. “OK, here I go,” and then he launched when we hit the next peak. I watched the water wall build at the stern once again, feeling the boat drop away as we slipped down into the valley of anticipation. The heart monitor on the display showed my rate to be way up there, as if I had run a mile. Then the familiar elevator feeling came again as the boat started rising to the crest of the immense wave. With my heart hammering in my chest I waited for the crest to appear, one hand on each handle. There! The peak was coming. I released the clamps and the sail together, timing the emergence to match the peak of our climb.

WHAM! The sail opened with a snap as the straps pulled me forward while the reel line offered just enough resistance to force the tiny red kite above me to rise into the wind. I was yanked nearly horizontal as I instantly accelerated, smashing into the top of the departing wave and finding myself immersed in the gray water for a microsecond before emerging on the back side and begin climbing, water streaming out of my boots. The universe was a swirling buffeting mass of wind and water as my body turned this way and that, fighting the line from the reel and the straps pulling me aloft.

In less than a minute I had reached the end of the line and was flying nearly three hundred meters above the raging seas below. I could feel the snap of the automatic release going off, dropping the line from the reel and giving me to the fury of the storm. I was immediately accelerated to match the wind velocity by the fierce winds. I tried to twist around, to face away from the direction of travel, but the straps to the small sail stopped me. The altimeter showed me at a ground speed of just under one hundred kilometers per hour, just about even with the wind. I hit the release for the next chute and watched the wind whip the small red one and the sutliff away.

With an enormous kick of my feet I managed to turn partially around to face into the wind as my second chute tumbled and deployed. Now that we were moving relative to the wind the larger chute wouldn’t be ripped to shreds when it emerged, so went the theory. The instant it filled out to shape I began hauling on the forward and eyeward lines to dip that side and steer me toward the rear of the rainwall, where the rising winds were more likely to be found. My heads-up display showed me to be rising slightly, now at about 110 meters with a ground speed of less than one hundred. I checked the rate of climb a second later and saw that it had risen a few meters per minute, which indicated that I was following the plan so far. If I continued I would soon hit the major stream of warmer air and be able to start my ascent to the top of the storm.

The big difference between parachutes and gliders is that the chute merely slows the rate of descent while the glider uses aerodynamic properties to gain lift from the wind rushing over its surfaces. The chute above me used a minor fraction of the tremendous wind force to keep itself inflated and the rest to develop positive lift. I was, in effect flying into the wind even as Janice carried me backwards to her heart.

The outer annular ring of a hurricane, our first rainwall, is a twisting torus of wind that acts just like the roller-beater on a vacuum cleaner; sucking some of the warm air beneath it into a rising stream while feeding most of it inward to the central vortex; the eyewall. Close to the center of this wall of winds there is considerable turbulence as the rapidly rising winds, which are also moving horizontally around the torus and thus describe a spiral, mix into the smoother flow of the inner winds. The trick I had to master was to keep myself away from this turbulence and stay within the rising air streams. Either the pressure gauge or ground speed indicator would tell me which direction I was heading: Inward was lower pressure and outward was higher; inward was higher speeds and outer was lower. It was a delicate balance, but one we had all experienced before. I expected no problems on this phase of the jump.

As I hung there and carefully guided the chute into the rising river of air being sucked into the storm from the surface of the raging seas below, I wondered at the calm that had overtaken me. My heart monitor showed me back to an exhilarating normal, just as if I were jogging along at a nice aerobic rate. I was now moving with the winds, leaving the relative safety of the boat far below and behind as I drew closer to the heart of Janice—her inflowing eyewall. Unassisted, her winds would take me in and down drawing me to her destructive comma and sure death. Only my skill at guiding the expanses of inflated fabric above me would overcome that event. I carefully noted every aspect of the wind and movement, checking the pressure readings each second to make sure they kept moving in the right direction.

Jerry’s helmet displays were rather sophisticated derivations of the basic GPS data. To save weight, which means eliminating as many heavy batteries as possible, Jerry used a small processor to calculate ground speed, altitude, rates of climb, and position from the signals being beamed from the twenty-four orbiting GPS satellites far above the storm. The only other instruments we carried were the redundant and passive pressure gauges threaded into our suits and helmets. Within the margin of error the data on the displays were better than we could get from even kilograms of standard instruments and batteries weighing us down. Jerry’s electronics only added a mere five hundred grams, half a kilo, including the batteries.

Whoops! The rate of climb suddenly dipped, indicating that I had gone too far in one direction. Struggling with the heavy straps I managed to steer back into the upward winds. Largely you had to work by feel and hunch where reading was impossible through the shaking and rocking the winds caused. The turbulence wasn’t nearly what I expected to find farther in, but was still considerable and took all of my strength to overcome. If I let the wind take control the buffeting could become more than I could handle. At this point Janice had to be handled with some delicacy, like an exlover at the end of an affair.

Suddenly there was that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach as I started climbing at an increasing rate. The rate of climb was now reading in meters per second, not minutes, and my horizontal speed was way down to a mere eighty kilometers per hour. In my mind’s eye I recalled the geometry of this part of Janice from our model. The winds would be rising on a sixty or seventy degree angle from below as they circled Janice’s center, being pulled up into the vacuum above. The pressure readings dropped with every few meters of altitude. When the rise started I had seen something around nine hundred millibars. The figure was now closer to eight hundred. I confirmed with the altimeter reading that I was already at the two thousand meter level, which was right on the profile. To maintain my place I started a lazy track left and right, tending more left than right to accommodate the curvature of the winds. You had to be cautious at this level. With no reference points in sight you could have a serious problem with orientation; the old diving syndrome that was the bane of high altitude hang-gliding. With this level of wind force you could easily be flying upside down to the ground, or any other orientation, for that matter. Only the helmet display kept me oriented as to up and down. I’d learned over the years to completely ignore my body’s signals, since they could kill you if you trusted them too far.

I keyed the relative display onto the left side of the display and saw that I was still around sixty-five klicks from the eye, which again was right on the profile. I continued my sweeping tactic, keeping my eye on pressure, rate of climb, and speed.

At seven hundred and fifty millibars I cranked the oxygen flow into action and took a heady whiff to clear my head. Above this level the headaches and nausea from oxygen deficiency from my exertions would start without the breathing mask. The storm wasn’t too bad at this level, over three thousand meters, especially since most of the moisture was traveling along with me. I watched the pressure drop, drop, drop as I continued to rise.

A long while later, somewhere along about six hundred and fifty millibars, visibility improved momentarily and I thought I saw a flash of color beside me, but wasn’t sure. Suddenly I noted that my ground speed was increasing, as was my calculated distance from the eye. Without warning I had been thrown out of the rainwall stack and was being swept by the cyclonic outflow into the intermediate cirrus formations, from which there would be a major downflow. For some reason Janice had chosen to be contrary and forced me out of her rainwall far sooner than expected. The model said that I should have had another thousand meters of altitude from this formation!

I tugged the lines around and started to sail back eyeward, losing altitude even as the storm blew me backwards. Suddenly the rate of climb indicator went crazy, rising swiftly and just as quickly dropping. Somehow I had gone right through the rising flow and emerged into the back of the rainwall. I started to lose altitude immediately.

If I didn’t do something right away I’d be swept too quickly into the eyewall to clear the comma. I released the parasail and dipped with a stomach churning twist as the ejection pulled out the next offering in my assault on Janice. I could feel the wetness at the seat of my suit as my bladder let loose with the jerk of acceleration. Above me a bright red balloon chute was expanding. With my left hand I reached over and twisted the knob on the tank anchored to the straps, feeding an extra measure of gas into the expanding balloon. In a few seconds the arrangement had achieved positive buoyancy and began to lift me. The ground speed increased enormously, rising to nearly 150 kilometers per hour. With a heave and twist of my shoulders I turned the harness so that the wind was striking me from directly ahead. This would let the cyclonic winds draw me inward even as I gained altitude.

The balloon chute was Jerry’s most significant contribution to jumping, and probably made it possible. Kotsch called it the “ugliest damn flying device ever invented” and most people who weren’t jumpers agreed with him. When you are dealing with hypersonic and turbulent winds of a major storm most standard designs just won’t work. The balloon chute looked like a misshapen sausage that had sprouted stubby and assymmetrical wings at various points. The bulbous top faired back in a tear-shaped cross section while the lower cross sections were more nearly elliptical. The control lines were tied to each set of “wings” so they would move in concert and bend the balloon at the same time. Ungainly as it looked it did provide both lift and control under extreme wind force conditions.

Soon I was climbing through thin wispy clouds that had to be the cirrus from the rainwall stack. For a moment I broke through into some clear air and could finally see more than a few meters around me. Matter of fact, due to some anomaly of storm winds I had entered a volume relatively free of rain and cloud.

Off to my right I could make out the convoluted shape of the rainwall and, far above it, the bottom of the outflow’s cirrus layer. In between there was clear air, an area of seeming calm that was belied by the rapidly mounting numbers of my ground speed indicator.

Far off ahead of me was a brilliant spot of orange. I could actually see Jerry’s chute preceding me along the path. He appeared to be a little below me and closer to the inner wall. Who had made the mistake in altitude, him or me? Or was our difference an illusion from the lack of fixed reference points? Was I in a feet-down attitude or hanging on some angle? Before I could decide the orange dot disappeared into the cloud.

Down below me was a canyon of dark menacing cloud where the outer rainwall met the bottom of the eyewall. Down there chaos reigned supreme, tearing everything that came in contact into shreds from the extreme forces of the wind and water. The balloon chute was lifting me higher above it. Although I had gotten that brief glimpse of Jerry I still had seen nothing of the bright pink flash that would mark Mariah. Was she ahead, behind, above, beside, or below me? There was no way I could tell.

Our intervals should have spaced us out with several hundred meters of vertical separation, but the variant winds, choices we had to make, and random wind events meant we’d tend to stay close together, but not too close. The odds of coming near enough to see were fairly slim. Nevertheless, it was worrisome not to know where both my partners were at the moment. The fact that I had seen Jerry below me was unsettling because it meant that I had gone beyond my planned envelope.

My ground speed was now topping 200, and showed no sign of decreasing. Pressure was down to a mere 620 millibars—Janice was a real bear of a storm! At this altitude the winds were more organized into a smooth laminar flow, absent much of the turbulence that would be present below. Still, with winds climbing to over 250 klicks; this was not an area to lose one’s concentration.

Wind force is not a linear relationship: The force of the wind increases with the square of the velocity. A thirty-knot wind has nine times the force of a ten knot one, and the wind carrying me along through the clear air was in excess of 200 kilometers per hour!

The altimeter told me I was nearly at the peak of my climb, halfway between the rainwall and the eyewall. With some regret I blew the balloon and deployed my third chute, a small one designed for the extremely high shear forces ahead of me. From here I planned to ride my chute down to the outer edge of the eyewall and skim the top of the comma. I glanced at the time; nearly two and a half hours had elapsed since I left the relative safety of the boat far, far below and even farther behind me. Just like in my previous jumps time seemed to compress enormously when I was working the winds. Only the first touch of fatigue in my arms told me that the clock must be correct and that I had been working for that long a period.

Ground speed was still going up as the cyclonic wind effect drew me closer and closer to the eyewall. I didn’t like the way the altitude was going down. It was too damn fast to suit me. With considerable effort I tugged the leading edge of the sail to gain some lift.

That was a mistake! “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I yelled as I fought for control. The clear air had deceived me into thinking everything was normal and I had reacted accordingly. In these wind force conditions I should have lifted the eyeward edge to gain altitude, using the greater wind speeds on that side to provide lateral lift. But I hadn’t and now I was paying the price as the chute started to oscillate back and forth, spilling wind with each twist and turn. Worse luck, I was losing altitude and dropping back into the turbulent air once again. I shifted as much weight to the eyeward side as I could and felt a response, a bit of a lift. Suddenly the lift became extreme as I swung closer to the eyewall. Somehow I had been caught in an eddy that was drawing me toward the immense dark wall of cloud.

Pressure was up to 700 now, meaning I had dropped uncomfortably close to the top of the comma, the most dangerous area of the eyewall. What could I do? The closest reachable updraft was inside the eyewall. The only choice here was to minimize the proximity to the severe winds closer to the outer parts of the eyewall. I glanced at the ground speed and felt a sudden shock: The reading was over 300 kilometers per hour. I was being sucked into the ultra high winds of the comma itself!

There was a sudden flash of color coming from my right, just before something hit my legs and spun me around. When I recovered from the sudden shock of the unexpected I found that something heavy was smashing repeatedly into the side of my head and my feet were entangled and being twisted this way and that. For a second I felt that I was tumbling head over heels; being pulled by the chute in one direction and dragged in the other by something unknown holding my legs in its grip. For some reason my right shoulder wasn’t feeling the pressure. I grabbed for the control lines on that side and my hand met empty air—the strap had broken and I was dangling by one line. A quick glance above showed the remnants of the chute twisting and turning like a candlestick above me. I assumed that that direction was up, since you can never trust your senses in these situations and the altimeter reading showed that I was still dropping. Panic seized me momentarily: I had to do something to gain altitude.

In a flash of analysis so rapid that I could only reconstruct it in retrospect I figured out what to do. The next chute in front was to be the conventional chute I was to use to navigate the eyewall. In this situation deploying that one was sure suicide; it would provide far more lift without control. With it I wouldn’t be able to clear the comma. The chute on my back pack was another balloon, the one that I was to use in the eye. Well, I’d handle that problem later, right now my concern was getting above the growing mass of dark cloud beneath my feet. If that chute could hold in this wind it might, just maybe, give me the lift I needed to clear the worst of the comma’s winds. The balloon chute was the only option, risky in these winds, but an option.

In desperation I yanked the handle to deploy the balloon, watching its sutliff rip away the torn shroud as well as the unused chute, and risked a look below me. With a shock I saw a fragment of bright pink fabric fluttering around my legs. Somehow, against all odds and our careful planning, Mariah and I had smashed into each other. But she was supposed to be far above and ahead of me: What chances had she taken to cross my path? Then I recalled seeing Jerry far below and my fear that I was out of position. Dear Lord, I thought in a quick prayer: I hope I didn’t kill her!

The balloon was never designed for such winds and was a bitch to control, whipping right to left like a manic pendulum. I watched the altimeter readings, willing the numbers higher and higher as if by sheer mental pressure I could do what the balloon was attempting. I felt a icy wetness on my neck where whatever it was had been hitting me. I stole a quick glance to my right and saw that the air bottle had come loose and was swinging free by the hose. Was my helmet broken? Was I bleeding from the ear? No, the chill on the side of my head was due to the faceplate swinging free, exposing my face to the freezing winds. With one hand I slammed it shut and pressed the clamps tight. Already the cold had frozen the exposed skin on my cheek, meaning I’d lose some of it. Did that really matter when I was dangling nearly four kilometers high over a monster hurricane that would smash me like an insignificant bug? I concentrated on controlling the chute to whatever extent I could and prayed hard for divine intervention. The altimeter fluctuated rapidly, alternatively showing marginal improvement in altitude and sudden descents into the maelstrom as the comma drew closer and closer.

Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t going to make it. Janice was the one who would finally give me the death that Billie swore I had been seeking. Well, I never thought it would end this way; falling miles down with a tail of flaming pink behind me. Would I have been in this fix if I hadn’t secretly wished for my own death? Would I be sailing clear above the raging storm instead of being sucked into the core if I didn’t yearn for Janice to kill me? Somehow the torrent ahead and the emotional mess of my self-doubt merged. Where could I have steered differently and averted the problem? Was there something about me that allowed this to happen or had I been the captain of my own fate?

The balloon shuttered with vibration from the buffeting of the heavy winds as we rose, straining every strap until they sang with tension, threatening to tear away in the howling wind. I couldn’t tell if we were climbing or falling. The hammering vibration made it impossible to read the numbers on the faceplate. I was being drawn into something over which I had no control, none whatsoever. Billie was right; I was stupid to try to jump a hurricane. Maybe death would be an easy way out of my messy situation, I thought fleetingly. But then, I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t really want to end my life in the middle of a stupid Atlantic hurricane. I wanted to beat this bitch of a hurricane; that was my motivation. I wanted to show Janice that I wasn’t something that could be tossed about. I could get out of this, I could make it back to safety and life!

With the strength born of desperation I hauled on the control lines, forcing the balloon about and forward to the winds. I could feel the tiny wings bite air as we swooped and soared in the heavy winds. My arms ached as if I had been pressing weights for hours. My fingers were getting numb from the grip on the lines—crucifixion syndrome, I dredged up from somewhere in the depths of my jump schooling. And then, just when I thought it would never happen, despite the strains and wobbles, we began climbing. What’s more, we were climbing at an ever increasing rate. Now that my attention on the altitude was less focused I noted the closeness of the immense cloud formation of the eyewall. Well, I had finally gained a little lateral control at this point. Down this close in the comma the gradients in wind speed were such that there was nearly a kilometer per hour difference in speed between the two sides of the balloon, which is to say that we were being sucked into the wall, willing or not. I braced myself for the turbulence I knew was awaiting me. Thank God the winds were lessening, if dropping back to a mere three hundred could be considered less.

The darkness of the eyewall enclosed me like a thick fog. No, that’s wrong! Fog is a gentle mist. The eyewall cloud was a horizontal sheet of wind driven, microscopic bullets. I could see the horizontal striations as we “drifted” through the wall. Ground speed was now down to nearly two hundred fifty with an altitude of nearly seven thousand meters, barely above the worst of the comma’s fury. Where was I in terms of the launch ship? The chronometer said I’d been aloft nearly four hours at this point. Let’s see, Janice would have moved northeast about thirty kilometers in that time as I followed my spiraling, rising ride to the top and would move another thirty or more as I worked my way back down to the surface.

There was an insistent upward tug on the lines and the altimeter readings started increasing rapidly. I must have reached the inner uplift of the eyewall. I let the strong updraft carry me upward, my ears popping with the sudden change in pressure. Lord, the altimeter was rolling so fast I could barely track the changes while the pressure was dropping at an astounding rate. A chill swept over my body as the surrounding temperature dropped; the reading said it was minus forty and dropping! The ascent rate was more than could be accounted for by the buoyancy of the balloon. After I gained another five hundred meters the wind speeds were down to a reasonable one hundred fifty kph. The force of the upward wind stream was such that I could easily be swept to the top of the storm, twenty six thousand meters above the Earth, well beyond the capabilities of my survival gear. I had to get out of the upward air stream if I was to survive.

The balloon was now a hindrance to my escape. The positive buoyancy was permitting the storm winds to lift me higher and higher. If I let it go perhaps the force of the wind would be insufficient to hold me up. Without another moment’s hesitation I cut the balloon free and tumbled helplessly down, the altimeter rolling backwards at an astounding rate. When the altimeter said I was below the thirty thousand meter mark I let out the big rogallo that was to be my escape chute out of the eye. It took less than a minute to unfold and lock itself. Finally the fabric of the chute tugged me into a stable attitude and I oriented myself to the surface. As soon as I regained my balance and a measure of control, I lifted my legs and clipped the aft line onto my heel, pushed the control lines forward, assumed a horizontal attitude, and converted my rogallo from a chute into a glider. At the same time I put strong pressure on the right side and turned to have the wind at my back. The acceleration was exhilarating as speed picked up again. But altitude and control weren’t my objectives. The idea now was to gain enough speed to blast out of the upwelling stream and reach the relative calm of the eye itself. Down, down, down I pointed the nose and felt the speed build and build as we dove faster and faster. The pressure readings showed me the route as I bore onward through the lightening mist.

Suddenly there was a burst of sunlight around me. Then I caught snatches of blue sky. I turned to head for the brightest patch in the mist and broke clear of the wall. But I hadn’t reached the calm eye just yet. On the inside of the eyewall was more of the swiftly ascending warm air that fed this beast. The rogallo tipped, pulling me upward. Despite my efforts to shift my weight forward, the wind was too strong. I couldn’t fight it.

If I didn’t escape it would carry me back into the main flow I had just left.

I leaned to the right to see if I could steer a little and had no effect on our course. Attempts to lean to the left also met with no success.

Then I remembered the way Jerry and I had used the hydraulics on the Youg when we first met Mariah. Rather than fight the flow of the water we had let it have its way and used its force to our advantage. Quickly I leaned backwards, spilling the wind from the rogallo and feeling our rise stop at the start of a slip. I let the altimeter fall two hundred meters before leaning forward and letting the wind control us once again. The maneuver had moved me a fraction closer to the center, but there was a fluttering in the control that I didn’t like. I repeated the maneuver and moved even closer, the fluttery feeling of the control lines was growing worse with each repetition. Finally, after six repetitions I was finally gliding in clear air, ground speed at a measly twenty kilometers per hour, blue sky above and a few puffy cumulus below me. I glanced at the wing above and was astonished to see its tail a shredded mass of streaming ribbons. It wouldn’t be much of a glider in the soft winds of the eye, that was sure.

From this vantage I could see the inner foot of the eyewall. I had come out about twenty degrees beyond it, close to our planned exit mark by some quirk of fate. I glanced around, hoping to see Jerry’s orange or Mariah’s pink balloons, praying more than a little for a sight of pink, to be honest. Despite the turbulence and buffeting we had planned to exit close by the same position, barring accidents, I added ruefully. I looked around again, saw nothing but clear air.

At this point on my flight plan I should have had my balloon deployed and been drifting gently southwest on the prevailing winds of the eye toward our exit route. Jerry had dreamed up this drifting strategy as a way of giving us some respite and preserving our strength for the effort to break out of the eye. But I had blown that leisurely option. For now I had to ride my torn rogallo to the exit point against the winds, in the opposite direction, overcoming the torn fabric fluttering above me, and fighting my body’s demands for rest. I had to keep away from the eyewall winds, and be alert to the deceiving calm of the weather in the eye the whole time. I would hit my exit point in less than optimal shape; that was sure.

My strategy was to continue to use the uprising wind to overcome the loss of lift of the rogallo. I would steer back into the upwelling air and gain altitude even as it drove me backwards. Then I would get out and glide across the chord of the eye and repeat it. With each try I should progress a few kilometers or more, just like tacking a sailboat; two forward on the glide and one back on the climb. Ideally I could lose just the right amount of altitude to be at the right level when I had to start my return route.

Two hours later time began to decompress rapidly. Had it only been two hours of endlessly repeating the climb and glide? Seemed like ten or more. Arms are really getting heavy, having to haul the lines all the time. Can’t rest though; have to make it through. My leg was suddenly cold as the suit tried to adjust for the sudden heat and moisture that relief of my bladder had caused. This virtual icicle in my crotch kept me from drowsing for a short while, but soon I was back into a semi-dream state, neither fully awake not completely dozing.

“Why are you fighting me so much?” Janice whispered in my ear with a silky, sensuous voice and caressed my cheek with a cool brush of her hand.

“Because I love you,” I replied calmly, wondering why I couldn’t see her.

“I can’t love you back if you keep fighting, you know,” she went on with a husky, inviting tone to her voice.

“No, yes. I won’t let you do that. I can’t just stop and let you win.”

“Come on,” her sexy voice continued to whisper urgently. “Why don’t you just let yourself relax and let me take you in my arms? Come on now. Please,” she implored. I could feel her tears running down my cheek where they merged with my own. For a second I felt myself surrendering, welcoming the warm release that sleep in her arms would bring.

A chill ran down my neck and I shook my head. Those weren’t tears on my cheek, they were icy cold rain drops that were running into the suit. The damn face mask had come loose again. I flipped it close, pressing the broken clasp as hard as I could to seal it. Damn, I had drifted too close to the wall again as I had nodded. I twisted my body and dove toward safety once again coming fully alert. I reached back, gave my air bottle a boost, and bit down hard on the mouthpiece. Hallucinations were indicators of carbon dioxide build up. Have to be careful about that. I bottomed out of the fall and turned back to enter the updraft once again.

The four o’clock position wasn’t close and I was at my physical limit for managing the lines of the rogallo. It didn’t matter whether I was in the right place or not. I had to get out of the eye and back to the surface while I still had the strength. I decided to make the final dive to where my one and only chute could be deployed. I glanced around once more, hoping to see either the chutes of Mariah or Jerry coming close and was disappointed. Were they both lost in the storm? Had Mariah failed to clear the comma after our brief encounter and been dashed to her death? I sincerely hoped not, feeling more than a little at fault. But there was little I could do about it at this point, suspended above the back end of the hurricane with nothing holding me up but a few plastic pylons and a rapidly deteriorating strip of fabric. I drove thoughts of Mariah from my mind as I concentrated on climbing as high as I could and working my way into the eyewall once again.

At this altitude and position in the eye the transition out wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as my entry. I topped out with the rogallo at twenty one thousand, well above my planned level, and pulled the release for the last small chute, letting the rogallo go with the winds. The added strains of the winds in the wall would have destroyed it instantly and, instead of being the proper vehicle for going through the wall it would have been a suicide glider. It was a relief to have my feet drop back to their normal position and feel my body supported without having to strain my arms, legs, and back.

The eyewall on the trailing edge of a hurricane is considerably less ferocious than the leading edge: Wind force is a quarter of the leading edge and the wind speed gradients are far less steep. Neither are there the heavy force upwelling wind streams that I had encountered a thousand years ago, was it only two hours previous? As I started the descent the ground speed climbed back toward two hundred with heavy buffeting as I hit the transition layer. I hit the up-welling and watched as the altitude numbers grew larger. With the smaller chute I had to get much higher than I had planned so I could make the horizontal distance to get beyond the major rainwall.

Up and up I went, waiting until the altimeter showed that I was over fifteen thousand meters. Even the tiny heat exchangers in my suit couldn’t hold back the bitter cold at this altitude much longer. When I could stand it no more I tipped the chute, blowing the pillow of wind beneath it and steered away from the eyewall. Suddenly I was dropping at an accelerating rate as well, as the small chute left the stack and started screaming toward the surface. In less than half an hour I would drop from altitude and hit the rainwall where I could expect a little more lift before the long glide as far from the center as I could get.

It was a clear dive from the outer rainwall’s stack, not much different than a hundred practice dives I’d made in stormy weather. I kept the lines taut as best I could. Both arms now felt like lead weights and my hands were so cramped from holding the lines so tightly for so long that I could barely feel them at the ends of my arms. I weaved my wrists into the webbing of the straps, a dangerous practice, but necessary considering my physical state, and used whole arm leverage to control the lines. My shoulders, already bruised with the constant beating of the straps, ached with the added workload.

By the time I hit one thousand again my ground speed was down to a mere seventy klicks. For the past five minutes, I had been falling through heavy, rain-driven cloud, the back outwelling of the eyewall. I twisted in my harness to glance ahead and caught a momentary glimpse of the rising sea. I freed my wrists and dangled my hands at my sides, willing the blood and feeling back into them and wincing with the pain when it did. Hoping that brief respite was enough for what I next had to do, I gripped the lines and braced for the surface turbulence, knowing I would have to fight my way through it or be dragged back into the storm’s center.

After a few moments of sheer fright as an unexpected downdraft of cold air sent me plummeting toward the surface at nearly a hundred meters per second, I broke out of the clouds just above the foaming water. Ground speed was now down to fifty again, a relative walk compared to all I had gone through. Now it was dip and glide, dip and glide, ever proceeding outward toward the open sea, the ship, and Jerry and, hopefully, Mariah. The gentle motion was relaxing, like a cradle, where the baby sleeps. Sleep, that would be nice; just to close my eyes for a moment and…

With a start I opened my eyes and saw the water immediately below my feet, churning into a froth from the surface winds. In a few seconds I was going to hit and be in the drink. What was it I was supposed to do? Oh yes, I released the straps for the excess gear, feeling it fall away from me. Suddenly my feet were being dragged through the waves as I skipped over the surface of the ocean. With a final sigh I released the chute and fell into the sea. The water closed over my head. I had returned to the home of my watery ancestors. I closed my eyes, too exhausted to fight my way to the surface.

The seals on the floatation gear inflated automatically when I failed to pull the tabs and brought me to the surface. I cracked the mask and inhaled a heady breath of damp, salty air: It was wonderful! The dashing of cold Atlantic water through the open mask roused me from my stupor and filled my mouth with bitter brine. I slammed the mask shut, trapping considerable water inside that sloshed back and forth as I bobbed in the waves.

At this point there was nothing I could do. The salty water was already activating the distress beacon, sending a coded message to a satellite far above that relayed it to Valkyrie, who would, with luck, be able to find me in this heaving seascape of waves and wind. All that I could do was wait and hope. Sometimes you just have to put your trust in other people.

Jerry and Mariah both survived the jump. Mariah lost most of her gear when she tried cutting too close to the wall and blew her rig near the top of the comma. It was her cast-off gear that had struck me, not Mariah herself, I was relieved to discover. She barely managed to recover control with the small chute after she had fallen nearly four thousand meters. She hit the water just beyond the worse part of the storm, and had been tossed and tumbled in the wind-driven, foamy mountain range of waves for a full day before anybody could get near enough to recover her. A fall that long gave her a lot of time to think about other things, even while she was working hard to figure out how to save her life. Ever after that experience she has not been quite the risk taker she used to be.

Jerry made it through the whole profile, encountering no problems as he gamely worked his planned route to its logical conclusion. I have no doubts that he enjoyed every single minute of having everything come out exactly as he foresaw it.

I kept away from jumping for a couple of months, not easy since we three were suddenly the darlings of the jump community; targets of every para-journalist in the world. NOAA paid a nice bonus for the data from our computers and put that and our model out on the Internet for every jumper in the world to examine and copy. Now that someone had done it everyone could build on the experience. Sort of like putting pitons in the cliff face to mark the trail up Everest.

The next season our fame slipped away when Kit Strock’s team used my experience with the balloon rig to travel the primary energy cell’s up-welling winds, that’s nearly two million metric tons of air per second, clear to the top of the stack—the freaking stratosphere, for God’s sake; fifteen miles of vertical climb by her archaic measures—and returned, less a few toes and fingers to be sure, but alive! Kit was a fool, but a daring one, I’ll give her that.

To this day I wonder at my conquest of Janice: Did I successfully conquer the storm that raged around me or was I just lucky that I managed to maneuver myself out of serious trouble? For that matter, do any of us really have control over the momentous forces that shape our lives or are we merely content to tack with the wind and make the best of what is offered to us?

Mariah and Jerry called last week. They want to know if I’d like to go with them to Hawaii in the fell. They are thinking of trying some sustained jumps in some of the big typhoons that grow in the South Pacific. They’ve got to be even crazier than before to suggest that I’d do something that stupid.

I don’t know if I should call back or not.