“For five million, you’re welcome.”
“Pleasure doing business with you.”
Then Grant drags me into the cabin towards the Black Hole of Doom.
“Oh God, oh God…” I moan.
Jumping out of the skyscraper was bad enough. It was horrible, actually. But the time span from when I found out we were jumping to when we actually jumped was one minute, maybe two at most.
I’ve known we’re going to parachute for ten minutes now, and that ten minutes is the killer. My dread has built up so much that I literally feel like I could puke any second.
I’m terrified. In fact, given the choice, I might just go down with the plane.
Grant’s not giving me that choice, though.
He throws the inflatable raft package into the cargo bay. Then he scampers inside and holds his hand towards me. “Come on!”
Ignoring my fear, I take his hand and crawl into the hole after him.
Once inside, it’s cramped and cold and loud. He holds a flashlight from the tool kit and cinches our parachute harnesses together. “If we get separated – ”
“Why would we get separated?!” I ask, terrified.
“We won’t, but if we do, pull this,” he says, pointing out the ripcord on my parachute. “And here’s the buckles to take off the harness. Once you hit the water, make sure you – ”
I almost scream at him, “Would you stop giving me instructions like we’re going to get separated?!”
He’s trying not to laugh, and for a second, I want to slap him. “You ready, then?”
“No!”
Grant smiles, then leans toward the hole in the wall of the plane. “ALRIGHT, MIKE – GO FOR IT!”
There is a mechanical CLACK sound, and suddenly the wall to the side of us pops open. The small doorway is almost ripped off as the wind shrieks in around us, cold and violent.
“Ready to cheat death again?” Grant yells in my ear.
“OH GOD!” I scream, and shut my eyes as Grant grabs me and throws us out the hatch into the void.
7
Another not-nearly-as-horrible thing about the skyscraper: we were upright the whole time. At least I wasn’t tumbling head over ass, completely disoriented.
Which is exactly what’s happening now.
We spin through the air for several seconds, me screaming the entire way. I can feel the wind trying to rip me and Grant apart, and I panic even harder.
After a few seconds, though, we stop tumbling and more or less stabilize in an upright position. I think. At least we’re not somersaulting through the air, anyway.
“Hang on!” Grant shouts.
I feel a tremendous jerk that wrenches my body. I feel like I’m three years old and wearing overalls, and an adult has suddenly snatched me up by my Osh Kosh b’Gosh shoulder straps.
Then we’re not falling nearly as fast. Everything is a lot more peaceful, if you can call cold wind whistling past your ears ‘peaceful.’
I open my eyes. Below us I can see the ocean, the glint of the moon off the waves, and a few patches of light on the coast. Which is actually really close to us. We’re not that far from the beach.
Off to my left, I can see the flashing lights of an airplane, tiny in the distance. I realize it’s the jet we just jumped out of, and marvel that this all is working out.
“Easy peasy Japanesey!” Grant calls into my ear.
“There was nothing easy about this!” I shout back at him.
Off to our side, something big and orange plummets past.
“What was that?” I ask.
“The inflatable raft.”
“When did you inflate it?”
“Right after we jumped out.”
“I didn’t see you!”
“I was busy doing stuff while somebody else was screaming their head off,” he teases.
Yeah – with damn good reason, I think.
We are edging closer and closer to land, though we’re still over water. Everything is rushing towards us at a faintly alarming speed.
I thought you softly drifted down like a snowflake when you parachuted.
Not so much. More like semi-controlled falling.
“When we hit, let your legs bend and crumple up underneath you!” Grant says.
“Even if we hit water?” I ask, because it looks like we’re going to hit the water.
“Especially if we hit the water!”
Shit, we’re going to hit the water.
The raft hits the water far below, about sixty feet to the right of us. I can make it out, a dark rectangular shape against the glittery moonlight sparkling beneath it. It’s only a hundred feet from shore.
“Should I swim for the raft or the shore?” I ask.
“The shore. We should be able to make it easily.”
The waves rush up towards us. The foam on the breakers looks silver in the moonlight.
Grant adds in a mischievous voice, “Get ready for the enema!”
Damn it – I’d totally forgotten.
I clench my ass cheeks as tight as I can as we zoom towards the ocean.
SPLASH!
The impact is hard, and we go under – and then my feet hit something.
Sand.
We rebound up to the surface, sputtering and coughing, and I realize I can stand – at least when the waves aren’t crashing over my head.
“You okay?” Grant asks.
“Yes!” I say, deliriously happy. “No enema!”
He laughs as we half-swim, half-stagger towards the shore. We’re still buckled together, after all, and it’s like the worst three-legged race you’ve ever run in your life.
Once we can fully stand on the sand and not get submerged by the waves, he unhooks both his parachute and mine, freeing us.
“You know I was totally kidding about the enema, right?” he says.
I look back in shock. “What?!”
“Well, I mean, it’s a real thing, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen to us. Using a parachute makes you fall too slow for it to happen.”
“Then why did you tell me about it?!” I ask, angry as hell.
“So you’d stop thinking about dying!”
Oh.
Well, mission accomplished, then.
8
We never used my parachute, but Grant’s is sprawled out in the water like the remains of some giant jellyfish.
“We’ve got to hide this, or it’ll be a dead giveaway when they start looking for us,” Grant says.
We drag the parachute silk in from the water, which is like pulling in a giant net full of fish. The drag on the silk from the water is insane.
Once we have it in hand, Grant balls it into a giant, sopping wet bundle and carries it with us up the shore.
I look around us. There are huge cliffs rising from the water off to the right. The beach is sparsely developed, with only a half-dozen houses here and there, each a couple hundred feet from the beach. Everything is dark in the pre-dawn hush, lit only by the moon.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, clutching my wet body and shivering from the cold.
“Reconnaissance,” Grant answers, setting the parachute down next to me on the sand. Then he pulls off the backpack, unzips it, and pulls out his leather case of lock picks. “Stay here.”