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He threw his arms and legs out, stopping his body from spinning, leading with his belly. So much could go wrong. Tangled lines. High winds. Canopy tears. Most were fixable, provided they could be solved before 500 meters. After that, nothing really mattered since there wasn’t enough time to do much of anything except die.
The jump was going great.
Ahead, past a narrow beach, he saw the blurs of cliffs, rock faces, then the jagged outlines of treetops that blanketed the shore. Large boulders, like the teeth of an animal, protruded in a ragged line down the ridges. He had to avoid those. The clearing he sought, a meadow, opened just to the right, an area that the satellite map he’d accessed online noted as being about a hectare, more than enough of a target.
The alarm in his brain sounded.
1,500 meters.
He pulled the cord and the chute exploded upward.
A violent jerk and loud pop immediately signaled trouble.
The idea was to have a square, stable, steerable canopy. Instead, his had folded onto itself like a popped balloon, the cords shooting upward twisted and tangled among themselves. His body spun like a puppet on its strings. A blooming canopy meant a slower, manageable descent, but he was falling faster, twirling along the way, blood rushing toward his feet thanks to the centrifuge effect. If he didn’t stop spinning he’d black out. He carried a reserve chute, but it could prove useless since its lines might also become entangled with the disabled main chute.
He had to drop the main away.
He reached for the cutaway handle, but the force of the malfunction had yanked it upward, out of reach.
His internal clock told him that five hundred meters was coming fast.
Just a few more seconds until the ground found him.
Luckily, he’d been taught how to fight panic and think clearly. He decided there was only one option.
No matter the risk.
He released the reserve chute.
The packet shot upward, opening fully, only minimally affected by the tangled main lines. His drop slowed, as did the spinning, enough that he could grab his bearings and play with the lines. Two canopies, only one hungry for air, swung above him on opposite sides, flying him in a steep downplane to the ground.
Way too fast.
He twisted the reserve lines and began to steer his fall, angling toward the meadow. Google Maps had revealed that the national park stretched forty kilometers along the north shore. Not a light burned in sight, nothing but forested wilderness all around, which had seemed like a good thing. Now, if he was hurt, it could be days or weeks before he was found.
Three hundred meters to go.
He crossed the beach, now fully over dry land, zeroing in on the meadow.
Two hundred meters.
He fought ground rush, that alarming feeling of the earth coming toward you uncontrollably.
Fifty meters.
The trees were just below. This was a place of old growth, the stands thick and tall. He quickly decided that he should land using his whole body, as opposed to only feet, since he was moving fast enough to snap a knee. He yanked on the canopy lines and tried to create more drag.
The meadow appeared ahead.
Flat, open, inviting.
But also trouble since it was cold, hard earth.
He decided to make use of the trees, tugging on the canopy lines and adjusting his fall so that he brushed the tops of the ones near the meadow’s edge. His feet caught on the limbs and the drag had the desired effect as he slowed. He angled the chute farther down and dropped more so his boots kept brushing limb after limb, which hampered his ability to keep control. But once he passed the last few trees and found the meadow he was definitely moving slowly enough that he was able to fall the remaining few meters and use his legs to absorb the impact.
His body collapsed to the ground, the chutes fluttering to rest behind him.
He stared back up into the sky.
The Gulfstream was long gone.
Surely, the bastard from the charter company had sabotaged the main chute. Jump accidents were rare. The charter company most likely had feared what he might have in mind once on the ground and wanted nothing traced back to them. So they took his money, flew him halfway across the globe, then made sure he would not survive. Not a soul would have ever known the difference. Just a corpse on the ground or, even better, in the water. How it got there would never be explained. At least they’d allowed him to jump to the right spot. Most likely assuming it didn’t matter. He’d be dead regardless. Any other time he would go back and kill them all, but that was no longer possible.
He had a mission.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ANNAPOLIS
10:00 P.M.
Stephanie sat in the waiting room, where she’d been for the past few hours. An ambulance had rushed Peter Hedlund from his house to the nearest hospital. A lie, that she was with the Justice Department, had gained her a ride along with Hedlund. The local police had arrived just as they were leaving and followed them to the emergency room. She’d explained about Anya Petrova and Luke Daniels and the officers had reported about a hot pursuit on a local highway. Two hours ago she’d been told that Petrova was dead. When the locals started asking more and more questions, she’d referred them to the White House and the Office of the Chief of Staff. The people there, she’d said, would be more than happy to provide answers.
The day’s events weighed on her.
Cotton in trouble. Speaking to Cassiopeia again. Russians. Soviets. Litchfield. Being fired. Hedlund shot. Now Petrova dead.
The bright spot had come when she’d checked in with the White House and Edwin had told her that Cotton was on the move with Cassiopeia, headed for Canada on Aleksandr Zorin’s trail. Thank goodness he was okay. She could always count on Cotton to be right there when she needed him. And Cassiopeia, too, who now seemed to be fully back in the saddle. Edwin had also explained all that Cotton had reported, which filled in the gaps in what
she already knew. A picture was emerging—an incomplete one, but an image nonetheless.
She heard a familiar stamp of boots to tiles and looked up to see Luke approaching down the hall. He also looked beat.
“Sorry about that,” he said to her.
They were alone in the waiting room.
“The locals got overenthusiastic,” he said. “But I got this.”
He displayed a cell phone.
“Looks like a prepaid unit bought on the fly,” he said. “It was switched off.”
She told him what she knew about Cotton and Zorin and nukes.
“Looks like the players are all making their way toward us,” he said.
That it did.
“How’s Hedlund?” he asked.
She explained that one bullet tore into his rib cage, the other grazing across his right shoulder. He’d been lucky, as the chest round could have proved fatal. He’d been taken straight into surgery, his wife appearing a couple of hours ago. She was now with her husband in his recovery room.
“Quite a surprise that Hedlund was ex-FBI,” Luke said. “He got that gun when he was upstairs in his bedroom.” He shook his head. “Friggin’ Lone Ranger tryin’ to save the day.”
“It’s a miracle he’s not dead.”
“He’s also a liar.”
That caught her attention.
Luke fished another cell phone from his pocket. “It’s Hedlund’s. I took it from him before he headed into the library. He made a call with it while upstairs.”
She listened as he told her what happened—“Nothing here to find”—then asked the obvious, “Who did he call?”
