in a crouching position for the two seconds it took the previous jumper to clear the aircraft, it was their turn to leap.
The gap of less than four seconds between jumps turned the queue into a slow walk. Every time someone lined up in the doorway, James hoped they’d mess up so that they’d be out of the drop zone before his turn came around. But each trainee had invested ninety-six gruelling days into qualifying as a CHERUB agent. Bruised, hungry and exhausted, they’d put in too much to let fear get the better of them now.
So James found himself in the doorway, buffeted by freezing air and sunlight with his strop hooked to the cable above his head. With the drop zone closing in twenty-two seconds, he crouched and felt extremely dizzy as he looked down. They were below cloud cover and the orange chute of the previous jumper was unravelling, high above seven kilometres of golden sand.
He was locked to the spot. He felt like he was going to shit and puke at the same time and made a lunge for the handle on the side of the door. But before he got a grip, Dana batted his hand away and slammed her palm into the back of his chute, tipping him forward.
‘Chicken,’ she sneered, exchanging smiles with Mr Pike as she took James’ place in the doorway.
James found himself falling face first towards the beach. The reality of this was more than his brain could comprehend. His trousers billowed, air tore beneath his helmet, making his chin strap dig into his neck. It was awful and wonderful. Out of every moment of James’ life, freefalling five hundred metres above ground was the wildest.
The shock of being pushed meant that he’d forgotten to count three elephants, but the jump training he’d received the previous day kicked in when he felt a tiny jolt as the line connecting him to the aircraft went taut and ripped open his chute before snapping away.
‘Check canopy,’ James shouted.
His first upward glance only earned him a face full of sunlight, but two seconds later the sun was filtered through a billowing mushroom of orange nylon. If it hadn’t opened he would have had less than five seconds to deploy his reserve chute, but it seemed OK so he followed his training and shouted the next order.
‘Make space.’
The brilliant sunshine turned the beach below into white glare, but he looked down and was reassured to see the previous jumper hundreds of metres away. You couldn’t look up through the canopy, so the rule was that you only worried about people below you.
‘Check drift,’ James gasped, before looking down and realising that the ground was approaching rapidly.
The weather was calm and the landing zone huge so he didn’t have to open his lift webs to correct his path. This was a huge relief, because you can’t get a feel for steering a parachute while standing on the ground, and the most common cause of accidents for inexperienced jumpers is steering too violently before touchdown.
The final part of jump training had involved the landing: you’re supposed to know which way the wind is blowing and get your feet in a safe position. If you get this wrong, you’ll find yourself falling one way while the wind tugs your chute in another. Instead of crumpling, your body gets twisted in all directions.
So James was alarmed when he looked down and saw a crab the size of a dinner plate coming into focus. His mind was blank: he couldn’t remember which way the wind was blowing, or even which way he was pointing.
All he could do was crumple and hope for the best.
2. WHITE
In the summer of 2004 a CHERUB mission was instrumental in bringing down the cocaine baron Keith Moore and his gang, known as KMG. For many years KMG imposed a kind of order on criminal activities over an area that stretched from the northern suburbs of London to Oxfordshire.
Although KMG only sold cocaine, the cash generated by this business enabled associates to diversify into other criminal activities, ranging from illegal raves to armed robbery. When more than a dozen of KMG’s most senior figures were imprisoned, it created a power vacuum that gave rise to a bloody gang war.
There are at least five significant gangs operating in the territory once dominated by KMG. No single gang controls a significant area, but the most fearsome reputation