“Right,” Ron nodded eagerly. “I do parasailing all the time, I know the drill.”
“Okay, good. Now just remember, don’t ride it higher.” Kamir shook his head, “That’s really important. Sometimes the Jetstream will curl down a bit, and if you get into that.you’re going for a long ride. And you’re not geared up for it. K”
Ron nodded, “Got it.”
“Alright!” Kamir clapped him on the back, “Have fun, my man!”
“I will!”
Ron turned and headed to the plane that Kamir had arranged for him, and the dark faced young man turned to the stuffy looking, dirty blond who walked up behind him. “You get it done”
“Oh yeah.” The man smirked, holding up a circuit board. “He’ll be ten klicks up before he even has a clue how screwed he is.”
Kamir snorted, “I ever tell you how much I hate cops”
“Not lately. Buy me a drink at the Blue Yonder and I’ll let you remind me.” The dirty blond grinned.
Kamir laughed, clapping the other man on the back. “Come on then.”
Behind them the plane carrying Ron Somer taxied around into position for takeoff, its motor droning loudly in the desert air.
“Nothing on our friend Raoul. “Gwen sighed, closing her terminal with a flick of her finger.” You think she lied”
“No,” Anselm shook his head, “No, I think she was lied to.”
Gwen nodded reluctantly. “I’m sorry, I thought I could give you a lead.”
“You have.”
“What”
“The Thermies.” Anselm said, grimacing. “Much as I don’t want to get involved with those people, it looks like Amir might have something to do with them.”
“That won’t be easy,” Gwen warned, “The Thermies are a tight knit group, they don’t much like outsiders.”
“If the job were easy,” Anselm smiled ruefully, “Then anyone could do it.”
The drone of the airplane engine created a constant background noise as Ron Somer checked his gear again, and then looked out the side.
They were climbing hard as they circled around the kilometer high tower, the sight of the immense spire taking Ron’s breath away. He’d parasailed in the Rockies, and free climbed in the Andes, and done a lot of things that were considered crazy but for all the beautiful sights he’d seen while he was living his life, this was one of the most awesome. He watched the high speed tram as it climbed the outside of the tower, taking tourists to the top of the project tower where they could walk around the relatively narrow boardwalk that hugged the lip of the tower’s huge maw. He’d been there himself a couple days earlier, with his new wife and.
Oops.
Ron blinked, he’d forgotten to tell Adrienne what he was doing.
I’ m a dead man, He groaned, shaking his head as he reached for the portable in his pocket.
No, no, better to wait. There was too much noise here to talk anyway, and he’d have plenty of silence in short order. She knew that he was trying to catch a flight before they had to leave anyway, she’d even been cautiously encouraging.
Ron smiled.
Cautiously encouraging meant that she hadn’t wanted to somehow aggravate the escaped mental patient she felt her new husband had turned into, but it was still cautiously encouraging. He was going to have to get her to come along on some of his jaunts, Ron knew. Thrills were multiplied when they were shared, like all good things in life.
“Almost there!”
The pilot’s yell startled him out of his deep thoughts and refocused his mind on the rush ahead. Ron grinned and raised his fist, “Alright!”
The plane rose over the lip of the tower, still climbing to get high enough above the stack, then slowly leveled out. The pilot turned around in his seat as he headed the plane away from the tower on an even level.
“Alright! I’m gonna turn the plane around in a minute and come back, you’ll jump when I tell you, Got it”
Ron nodded, flashing a thumbs up. “Got it!”
“Don’t get fancy, pull your chord as soon as you’re clear!” The pilot yelled, “That’ll give you time to correct any mistakes you make.the air around the tower has some crazy shears, so watch out for them!”
Ron nodded again, accepting the advice.
“You sure you want to do this!” The pilot yelled again, turning in his seat to look back, “It’s a freaky thing for a beginner!”
“I’m sure!” Ron called back, flashing a thumbs up.
“Alright!” The pilot turned back around and gripped the controls again, “Get ready!”
Ron Somer nodded, checking his gear yet again.
The plane came around in a wide, lazy arc, until it was leading right back into the huge tower as the engine buzzed mindlessly in the background.
“Thirty seconds!” The call came a moment later. “Open the door!”
The co-pilot jumped back, then grabbed the door as he roughly pushed past Ron, sliding it open with a jerk. “Get ready!”
Ron moved to the edge of the plane, grabbing onto the doors at either side. Below him the dust of the desert, the tiny buildings of the city, and shimmering glass of the greenhouse crawled impossibly slowly even as the tower itself seemed to rush in his direction.
“Jump!”
Ron threw himself out the door, screaming a joyous war cry as he flipped clear of the plane’s wing, tucked in a graceful half gainer as he spun and turned in the air. He knew that the pilot had said not to get fancy, but Ron loved to flip and roll as he free fell. After a few seconds though he reached up and yanked the chord to his Para-Pack.
The Para-Pack was something of a cross between a parasail and a para-chute. The airfoil design of the pack was a little more advanced than the chutes of yesteryear, but it was the materials that really made it something else. Lighter and stronger than designers even dreamed of only two decades earlier, the memory plastics knew what shape they were supposed to be and always struggled to return to it when they were set loose.
There was no sudden jerk as the pack deployed, the chords he was hanging by were compressed when in the pack and they absorbed his weight as they let themselves extend to their full length until the sudden snap of the foil above unfolding. In a few seconds, Ron Somer was gliding easily and silently through the wild blue as he grasped the control handles and tugged lightly on them to circle around and line up on his destination.
The Tower.
From the top of the Project tower the view was simply astounding, you could literally see as far as the air would let you in all directions. High powered binoculars, available for rent, would let the visitors see the skyline of Sydney on a spectacularly clear day, though usually the city was obscured by heat shimmers on the horizon.
The Project officials had learned a long time earlier, though, that the view wasn’t the main selling point of the tour.
People loved watching idiots do stupid things, it seemed, so whenever one of the thermies was in the air, which was most of the time despite early efforts to keep them away, there was always a crowd oohing and ahing at the flying men.
This time was no exception as the plane came around and everyone saw the man jump out.
“There he is!”
Someone shouted, completely unnecessarily, and pointed at the figure as he fell in an aerial ballet. It was short lived though, and the gossamer wings of a Para-pack soon appeared in the distance and they could see the man come around toward them.
“He’s really going to go for it!”
The tour guide tried not to roll her eyes, she’d been on this shift for too long to be impressed by the machismo of the Thermies anymore. They were crazy, sure, but it was commonplace to her. In fact, this one was pretty simple actually, with none of the flare most of the show-offs showed.