Chapter 13 #3
And she had no idea who’d just saved her life.
Or who’d tried to kill her.
Or if they were the same person.
West had stood in the emergency doorway and watched Britta fall away from him, and couldn’t move.
No—no!
Her scream had cut through the wind. Raw. Terrified. His name torn from her throat as Alan Martin had pulled her out into open air.
Then they were gone. White parachute deploying. Getting smaller. Disappearing toward the ocean below.
Just West and a plane full of explosives headed straight for Fisher Island.
For President White’s yacht.
The bomb in the cargo hold had maybe three minutes on it now.
Three minutes to dump this plane into the sea.
West spun from the doorway. Ran toward the cockpit.
He grabbed the cockpit doorframe. Scanned for the emergency parachute. There had to be one—had to be.
He tore through overhead compartments. Nothing. Storage panels. Nothing.
Two minutes, his inner timer said.
Under the copilot seat. A locked compartment. West dropped to his knees. Yanked. The lock held. He braced his foot against the seat base and pulled with both hands. Metal groaned. The lock snapped.
The compartment gave. An emergency parachute pack inside. Compact. Military grade.
West grabbed it. Started strapping it on. Harness over shoulders. Clips at chest and waist. His hands shook. The buckles fought him.
One minute.
The plane was still on autopilot, the Westwind a guided missile.
The F-16s would shoot it down before it got to the yacht.
Hopefully.
He dropped into the pilot’s seat. Grabbed the control column. Shoved it forward with both hands.
The nose dropped. The horizon tilted. Alarms screamed. Autopilot fought him—trying to level out, maintain course.
West kept pushing. The Westwind went into a dive. Steep. Getting steeper.
Forty-five seconds.
The altimeter spun backward. Eighteen thousand feet. Seventeen. Sixteen.
West locked the control column. Emergency override. The plane would keep diving now. Into the ocean. Not into the yacht.
He ran out of the cockpit. Down the aisle, toward the gaping emergency exit.
Thirty seconds.
Wind screamed through the opening. The decompression pulled everything toward that door. Papers. Debris. West.
He reached the doorway. Looked down.
Ocean. Getting closer as the plane dove. Maybe a thousand feet.
This would be close.
His hands checked the parachute straps. Everything secure. Ripcord accessible.
He’d done this before. Airborne training. Tactical insertions. But those had been planned. Coordinated. Not desperate escapes from nose-diving planes about to explode. So that was new.
Maybe he wasn’t such a fan of impulsive and by the seat of his pants.
West stepped into the doorway. Wind hit him. Tried to rip him out. He grabbed the frame and held on.
Somewhere below—maybe in the water already, maybe still falling—Britta was alive or dead, and West had no way to know which.
Five seconds.
He hurled himself from the plane.
The wind caught him. Spun him. He stared up, spotted the plane—still diving, nose pointed down.
West rolled. Spread his arms. Stabilized. Found the rip cord.
Pulled.
Nothing.
No, no—the ocean rushed up at him, too quickly.
West pulled again. Harder.
With a brutal jerk, the parachute deployed. West’s body slammed against the harness as it jerked him up. His ribs screamed. But he was drifting now.
Above him, the Westwind exploded into a fireball, the boom rattling through West’s chest.
Debris started falling. Burning metal. Some pieces larger than cars. All of it deadly.
West pulled the parachute cords. Tried to steer. But he was too low. Too close.
One chunk—part of the wing—missed him by ten feet. Hit the water with a massive splash.
The ocean was right there. A hundred feet. Fifty.
The parachute hadn’t had time to fully slow his descent. He was coming in hot.
Twenty feet.
West took a breath. Deep.
Ten feet.
The impact drove all breath from his lungs.
The water sucked him under, hard. Salt flooded his mouth, his wounds burned.
The parachute collapsed. Dragged him under. White silk pulling him down into blue, heavy, unforgiving.
He kicked. Fought the lines tangling his legs. Reached for the knife.
He slashed at the lines until the canopy fell away.
West kicked toward the surface. His lungs screamed. The ocean wanted to keep him. Pull him deeper.
He broke the surface.
Air, sweet air. He gasped. Coughed. Vomited salt water. The air tasted like diesel fuel and burning plastic.
His body did automatic assessment. Ribs intact. No sharp pain to indicate a punctured lung. Legs working. Arms functional.
No broken bones.
That was impossible. The parachute had deployed at maybe five hundred feet. Hitting water from that height, even with a chute, should have shattered something.
But West was whole.
Thank You, thank You, God.
The thought was automatic. Instinctive. Directed at something bigger than training or luck.
Thank You for keeping me alive.
Something had hit the water twenty feet away. Large and on fire, the waves driving it toward him.
West dove underwater. Blue surrounded him. Muffled the sounds. Made everything quieter.
He stayed under as long as his lungs allowed. Then surfaced. Gasped.
He treaded water as he turned in a slow circle. Debris spread around him—pieces of the Westwind scattered across the water. Some chunks recognizable as fuselage. Most just twisted metal and burning plastic.
The plane had vanished.
And somewhere in this mess—or already rescued—was Britta.
West’s chest tightened. He scanned the water. Searched for white parachute silk, for two people, any sign of them.
Nothing.
Just debris and smoke.
Please, God, do me another solid and save her.
He started swimming in the direction she’d gone down, toward open water.
Please, please.
He didn’t know how far he swam. Every time he stopped, it seemed he’d only gone in circles, the air still smoky behind him, the horizon in front of him, endless.
He stopped. Treaded water. Scanned again.
Still no sign of Britta. No parachute. No Coast Guard boats.
Where was she?
West’s breathing came faster. What if the parachute had failed? What if Alan had miscalculated? What if she’d hit the water wrong? What if she was unconscious? Drowning?
What if West had survived and Britta hadn’t?
Worse, the adrenaline had started to crash, his body aching—so maybe he had hit harder than he’d thought.
A piece of fuselage came out of nowhere, riding a wave.
West saw it half a second before impact. Tried to dive—it hit his head on the left side, right above his ear. The force snapped his neck sideways. Pain exploded. White light. Then darkness at the edges.