Hellbent

The whoomping grew louder. A Black Hawk banked into view over the hillside and set down before them. Dirt and twigs beat at them. Jack closed his eyes against the rotor wash.

As the rotors spun down, a pair of geared-up men emerged. They wore flight suits and parachutes and looked generally overprepared. Three more men and the pilot waited inside the chopper.

Jack shouted, “A bit of overkill, don’t you think?”

Thornhill shouted, “We owe a debt of gratitude to helicopters this week!”

Jack didn’t know what to make of that.

“Well,” he said, “let’s get on with it, then.”

The two men in flight suits took Jack by either arm and conveyed him over to the helo. The others hauled him in. As they lifted off, Jack caught a bird’s-eye view of Thornhill vanishing back into the SUV as smoothly as he’d appeared. Two freelancers headed to search Jack’s truck, and the others peeled off to their respective vehicles and drove away.

The helo rose steeply and kept rising. Black Hawks have an aggressive rate of climb, and the pilot seemed intent on showing it off. This wasn’t gonna be a joyride. No, this trip had another purpose entirely.

Jack had done more jumps than he could count, so he knew how to roughly gauge altitude by the lights receding below.

They passed ten thousand feet.

Fifteen.

Somewhere north of that, they stopped and hovered.

One of the men donned a bulky headset and readied a handheld digital video camera.

Another slid open the doors on either side.

Wind ripped through the cabin, making Jack stagger. Given his cuffed wrists, he couldn’t use his arms for balance, so he took a wide stance.

The cameraman shouted, “Look into the camera!”

Jack did as told.

The cameraman listened to someone over his headset and then said, “What are your current protocols for contacting Orphan X?”

Jack shuffled closer, the wind blasting his hair, and squinted into the lens. “Van Sciver, you can’t honestly believe this will work on me.”

The cameraman listened again and then repeated his question.

Jack’s shoulders ached from his hands being cinched behind his back, but he knew he wouldn’t have to bear the pain much longer.

“There is nothing you could ever do to make me give up that boy,” Jack said. “He’s the best part of me.”

The cameraman winced, clearly catching an earful from Van Sciver over the headset, then squared to Jack with renewed focus. “I’d suggest you reconsider. We’re at sixteen thousand feet, and you’re the only one up here without a parachute on.”

Jack smiled. “And you’re dumb enough to think that puts you at an advantage.”

He bulled forward, grabbed the cameraman’s rip-cord handle between his teeth, and flung his head back.

There was a moment of perfect stunned silence as the parachute hit the cabin floor.

The wind lifted the nylon gently at first, like a caress.

And then the canopy exploded open, knocking over the men in the cabin. The cameraman was sucked sideways out the open door. The Black Hawk lurched violently as first the chute and then the cameraman gummed into the tail rotor.

The Black Hawk wheeled into a violent 360. Jack gave a parting nod to the sprawled men and stepped off into the open air. On his way out, he saw the powerful ripstop nylon wrapping around the bent metal blades.

By instinct Jack snapped into an approximation of the skydiver’s stable position, flattening out, hips low, legs spread and slightly bent. His hands were cuffed, but he pulled his shoulders back, broadening his chest, keeping his hanging point above his center of gravity. The wind riffled his hair. He watched the sparse house lights wobble below, like trembling candles holding strong in a wind. He figured he’d have hit 125 miles per hour by now, terminal velocity for a human in free fall.

He’d always loved flying.

Jack thought of the malnourished twelve-year-old kid who’d climbed into his car all those years ago, blood crusted on the side of his neck. He thought about their silent hikes through the dappled light of an oak forest outside a Virginia farmhouse, how the boy would lag a few paces so he could walk in the footprints Jack left shoved into the earth. He thought about the way his stomach had roiled when he’d driven that boy, then nineteen years old, to the airport for his first mission. Jack had been more scared than Evan was. I will always be there, Jack had told him. The voice on the other end of the phone.

The ground was coming up fast.

I will always be there.

Jack shifted his legs and flipped over, now staring up at the night sky, letting gravity take his tired bones. The stars were robust tonight, impossibly sharp, the moon crisp enough that the craters stood out like smudges from a little boy’s hand. Against that glorious canopy, the Black Hawk spun and spun.

He saw it disintegrate, a final satisfaction before he hit the ground.

* * *

Evan stood in the darkness of the Vault, breathing the dank air, watching the live feed with horror.