<div align="center"><strong>Pearl Harbor-Hickam AFB, Hawaii<br/>1930H LOCAL - 0630H TARGET<br/>Tarmat 02-01-A<br/>Winds NW-W 8 mph<br/>MC-130 Combat Talon 'Daytona Six-Five'</strong></div><br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/KristieAndreaParker/mc-130e-11.jpg)</div>Senior Chief Petty Officer Hackett stood at the base of the ramp leading into the pitch black cargo hold of the MC-130 Talon with full parajump gear on, excluding the helmet and breathing gear. All in all, she was easily twice her normal size with everything strapped on. Of course the frown and bead of sweat rolling down her forehead told another story. She was lugging around close to 100 pounds of gear, and that was more than three quarters of her overall body mass, but she soldiered on. The frown on the other hand, was with the idea of taking untrained jumpers into a HALO at night over hostile territory. HALO jumps were dangerous enough with trained personnel but throw in civilians and things got hecktic quickly. Of course Anna had to remember not to get over-come by her nerves and let things play out. She finally took to leaning against the side of the aircraft and everything went through her head. She looked around the oranged bathed landing strip of Hickam, several small vehicles were moving about as a flight of two F-15's wailed overhead, Anna couldn't help but watch and smile. The sun was going down, just barely cresting the horizon around the ocean.<br/><br/>She'd done a lot of HALO jumps, most after the infection spread but a few before. The best, for her, in terms of stories to be told were ones where you jumped near urban centers. At the very start of the evacuation, most cities had power. And she had to jump with night vision. Everything, millions of little lights bathed in a green hue glittered the pitch black ground below, if there were cars some were moving. It was heart pounding, opening up the ramp and being greeted by thousands of little green flickers of light. Of course the beauty of the view from the sky was diminished by the infected and chaos on the ground. Gunfire, explosions and screaming were all you could hear the first few rescue jumps.<br/><br/>But all of that was a simple lead up to now. Today would be the hardest jump of her life, if for no other reason than every jump was the hardest. The SEAL motto, '<em>The only easy day was yesterday</em>' embodied her feelings best. Two days ago she'd been sleeping herself into submission reading over the newspaper and playing hockey or basketball with other SEALs, and today she was without anyone she could trust, not easily at least. She checked the small watch on her right wrist and sighed, waiting for the other members of her team to show up. As she waited though, Anna ran through what she'd explain and what she'd leave them to figure out or just ignore all together. She knew two of them were military which helped, but most service units did not train their soldiers in HALO or HAHO jumping. Only special missions units, like Special Forces, trained in such jumps, though almost all military personnel had some form of jump training.<br/><br/>It still didn't help that she was sitting here waiting, though that couldn't be helped. She enjoyed being first here, it allowed her to get comfortable in her jump gear and get all the links out. With this much gear on, things tend to ride up or move around in uncomfortable ways until you found that perfect way to move that didn't result in discomfort. In the back of her head, Anna was actually quite tired, but she planned to sleep on the plane up until the jump or around then. The rumble of the engines and idea of being 30,000 feet in the air comforted Anna, or at least allowed her to sleep sitting nearly straight up with 100 pounds of gear on her body.