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And then he panicked.

I’ll never get found up here!

“Help!” he called out in Italian. “Up here! Someone! Help me!”

There then came a bright light in his eyes, and he immediately stopped.

The beam of light moved down to his torso, and he felt a hand yanking at his harness, then heard the metallic rattling of the harness release.

The next sensation that John Craig van der Ploeg felt was that of falling forward—and then down.

More limbs slapped at him as he fell.

“Ugh!” he grunted as he hit the ground, landing faster than he’d expected.

Then he heard a fa

miliar voice.

“Knock off the yelling!” Dick Canidy said with more than a little disgust. “You were only five feet off the ground, for christsake.”

John Craig caught his breath, then said, “What happened?”

“What the hell do you think happened? You landed in a tree! A huge chestnut. The damn thing must be sixty feet tall.” He grunted. “You sure like hitting huge fucking targets.”

John Craig moaned, then reached for his right boot.

“You okay?” Canidy said, shining the beam back to his face.

He saw John Craig wince.

“My foot. It feels like it’s on fire.”

The flashlight beam moved to the booted foot—on the way illuminating some dried vomitus on John Craig’s black coveralls—and Canidy knelt to get a better look, grateful the foul odor was mostly gone.

He carefully grasped the boot and slowly moved the toe of it up and down.

“That hurt?”

“A little. Some burning.”

“I don’t think it’s broken. You’d have a helluva lot more pain if it were.”

Canidy then started to slowly roll his foot side to side.

“Stop! That burns like hell!”

“Let’s see if you can put any weight on it,” Canidy said, then stood and offered his hand.

John Craig hopped up on his left leg, then tried to take a step. He screamed in pain as his ankle gave way and his right leg collapsed beneath him.

Once again on the ground, he crab-crawled over to the thick trunk and leaned against it.

Canidy looked at him.

“Well, shit! This certainly changes things. . . .”

He looked up, and then around them.