Chapter 52 - Terminal Velocity
Wind screamed in my ears with the roar of a collapsing mountain. Five thousand feet above the obsidian sheet of Lake Tahoe, the world tilted into freefall. The severed cable whipped past my shoulder like a silver serpent, and the chopper’s black belly receded into the freezing Sierra mist above us.
Charles was shrieking, flailing uncontrollably, his designer overcoat billowing around him like a shredded parachute. His hands clawed wildly at empty air, but his grip remained frozen onto the handle of the aluminum briefcase. The crimson light on its casing pulsed with a sharp, hypnotic frequency, each beep cutting straight through the howl of the air.
*Terminal velocity: one hundred and twenty miles per hour.*
At this speed, hitting the lake would be indistinguishable from slamming into solid granite. Navy dive training took over before panic could even register in my blood. I kicked my legs out, extending my arms into a wide arch to stabilize my descent, fighting the tumbling spin of the mountain downdraft.
I reached down to my tactical harness. When I boarded the submersible at sixty fathoms, I had strapped on an emergency maritime reserve rig—a low-profile chest-mounted steerable chute designed for coastal extraction. It was never intended to support two men, nor was it rated for an unguided plunge over an icy alpine lake at night. But there was no alternative.
I lunged forward in the slipstream, closing the distance between myself and Charles. I locked my right arm around his chest, wrenching his flailing body against mine.
"Hold on, you bastard!" I roared against his ear.
"It’s going off! The auction failsafe!" Charles shrieked, his eyes bulging against the wind shear. "We're going to die!"
With my left hand, I slammed the manual rip-cord ring.
A sharp, violent crack tore through my shoulders as the pilot chute deployed into the rushing dark. Half a second later, the main canopy caught the air with the sound of a cannon shot. The harness bit into my ribs with bruising force, jerking us upward against gravity so fiercely that Charles groaned as the air emptied completely from his lungs.
The briefcase slipped from his numb fingers.
"No!" Charles screamed.
I lunged forward, snapping my combat glove around the titanium handle just before the wind swallowed it. The crimson strobe bathed my knuckles in bloody light. The descent stabilized, but the canopy was tearing under the double load—the nylon groaning under the strain as we plummeted straight toward the black, glassy mirror of Emerald Bay.
"Brace for impact!" I yelled. "Feet together! Don't let your legs lock!"
May you like
The freezing Sierra water rushed up like a rising floor.
Two seconds later, we slammed into the abyss.
