A Leap of Faith

Alex was trembling, even under the weight of all his gear. He was terrified of what he was about to do, of what was happening all around him. Not two months before he'd been a new draftee from Charlotte, North Carolina. Right now he was supposed to be driving down to Myrtle Beach with a few of his buddies, chasing girls and all around enjoying Spring Break.
Now, though, he was bouncing and rocking violently in the back of a U.S. Army C130 cargo plane, waiting to jump into almost certain death. Sergeant First Class Henley had explained the plan to the platoon over a map in the unit's hangar bay/barracks two days earlier.
"This here," Henley had drawn his finger across the majority of the East Coast, "is us. The little Korean bastards've got pretty much everything else. I understand some of that is probably home for quite a few of you. Well, the first step for getting home back is this upcoming assault into Florida. We get a good foothold there, we just might be able to turn the tides of this war. To do that, we're gonna land soldiers and marines at key points like Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, so on. Really not our problem right now. Our mission is to drop behind enemy lines ahead of the beach landings. We'll soften up the defenses there and tie down any counterattack headed to our buddies out there in the drink. The LT will be here in a few to go over the specifics, but that's the gist of it. This is it guys, this is why we're here. This is what you trained for, we can do this. Let's take it to'em."
In those eight short weeks of basic training, the Army had only ever let Alex actually practice jumping from an airplane once! So desperate were they to get bodies to the front lines that only the most basic of skills had even been mentioned during training. He wasn't ready, couldn't be ready, would never be ready for this. But it was happening, and all he could do was panic. He looked out over the rest of the cabin, looking to see if anyone else was as obviously terrified as he was. Bathed in the sparse red light from the pair of bare bulbs at either end of the plane, there was no good way to get a look at the faces of the rest of the guys in the company. They all looked like shadowy demons, something from a nightmare. Hopefully, that was what the KPA would think too.
A sudden jolt threw Alex nearly a foot off his seat before gravity kicked in again. Then another off to the far side of the plane, followed by a loud boompf sound. The sounds and jolts started to come more and more frequently, and Alex was able to put together that it was the Korean AA guns on the ground.
He put his hands together in front of him and quietly prayed. "Jesus, please...dear God, please let me get through this. I'll do anything you want, I swear on my life, just plea-"
The soldier to Alex's right, a guy from First Platoon, grabbed Alex's wrist and shouted above the roar of the engines and explosions. "Jesus won't save you," then pointed at the M4 carbine strapped across Alex's torso, "This will."
That vote of confidence was broken up when the warning light suddenly illuminate the area above the starboard side door. A jolt of adrenaline and fear shot through Alex's gut like a bullet. The LT jumped up from his spot by the door and started giving orders.
"Stand up!"
Alex, along with the rest of the platoon stood. He noticed that another lieutenant was doing the same on the opposite side of the plane.
"Hook up and check static line!"
Alex clipped the tether on his parachute to the rail running along the side of the plane. It would activate his chute for him when the time came. Hopefully.
"Check equipment!"
With this order, the man at the end of the line, the second to last through the door, would inspect the gear of the man in front of him to make sure that he was ready to jump. When he was cleared ready to jump, Alex felt the rough slap of a man's hand on his shoulder.
"Ten okay!", he squeaked out, barely audible over the roar and chaos all around. He finished inspecting the man in front of him and clapped his shoulder. Once the sequence got to the front, LT told the first man to stand in the door and wait for the green light to jump.
The sixty seconds before the light change seemed like a year. The rear cargo ramp slowly began to lower, allowing the two rows of men in the center seats a way to jump simultaneously, rather than having to wait for everyone else to exit. As the crisp wind whipped, Alex was able to get a clearer picture of exactly what was unfolding thousands of feet below.

Judging from the endless flat darkness, the plane was still over the ocean. Alex knew that there were hundreds of ships down there, waiting to unload their troops and take the fight to the Koreans. As they neared the shoreline, red and orange balls of fire were visible on the surface. Vague outlines of what had to be damaged ships danced in the light of the flames as cannon fire momentarily illuminated the empty darkness in other places. There was a battle going on down there, the fleet was under attack. Then there it was, the Florida coast. The Navy had prepared for the landing by shelling the landing zones. Now, from where Alex stood, it appeared as if the entire state was burning. It was difficult to see in the utter darkness, but faint traces of destroyed buildings and blazing wreckage.
Not wanting to think of the horror unfolding on the ground, Alex turned back toward the other planes flying in formation behind his. A thought flitted through his mind briefly, something reminiscent of a World War II movie depicting the paratroopers in their own planes the night before D-day. The momentary flush of pride at being in the same position of those great men of the past was dashed in an instant when one of the AA guns on the ground finally found its mark.
A C130 to Alex's right took a direct hit dead center in the belly of the plane. It jolted in midair a moment before a ball of fire erupted in the cargo cabin, blowing out all the glass viewports along the hull. The plane, mostly intact from the outside, began to pitch and rolled upside down, hurtling toward the earth. As it neared the end of its descent, Alex was horrified to see tiny burning flecks begin to fly from the rear of the destroyed C130. People.
He felt the urge to vomit, the MRE chili from the evening before fighting to free itself from Alex's stomach. As he finally managed to wrestle it into submission, the jump light finally changed to green. The time had come.
"Go! Go! Go!", the LT hollered at each man as they waddled their way up to the door. Everyone was rushing to get out of the plane, blindly following one after the other out into the abyss of the night sky. Before Alex could do anything about it, he was standing in the door, looking out into the starless night.
"Go!", the lieutenant ordered.
Alex took one last deep breath, looked out into the darkness, and pushed off. There was a feeling of weightless ness just before his chute opened, then a rough jolt around his torso and crotch. Then he was floating down into Hell on Earth. "God help me."