“I’ve been on to you for years, Peter.”
“I don’t believe—”
The Beeehcraft hit a small air pocket and bounced. Thorpe lost his balance and fell to one knee. O’Brien, who had hoped and stalled for that air pocket, immediately lunged toward the door.
Thorpe drew a gun from under his Windbreaker, aimed, and fired. A loud, deafening report filled the cabin.
O’Brien, his hand on the door lever, lurched forward, collided with the door, and careened back, toppling onto the deck. Thorpe aimed and fired again. A short, popping sound echoed in the cabin.
O’Brien lay sprawled on his back at Thorpe’s feet, holding his chest. Thorpe knelt beside him, and shone a flashlight on the chest wound. Thorpe spoke softly, almost comfortingly. “Just relax, Pat. The first one was a rubber stun bullet. Probably cracked a rib. The second was a sodium pentothal capsule.” Thorpe saw where the gelatin capsule had hit the thick nylon harness strap. He ran his hand under O’Brien’s shirt and felt a wetness where the skin had been broken. “I think you got enough of it.”
Thorpe rocked back on his haunches. “We have some talking to do, my friend, and about two hours’ fuel left to do it — and about six more drugs to go through if necessary.”
O’Brien felt the drug taking hold in his brain. He shook his head violently, then grabbed for his knife and brought it out in an uppercut motion, slicing through Thorpe’s left nostril.
Thorpe fell back, his hand to his face, the blood running between his fingers. “Bastard… you sneaky…”
O’Brien began to rise, then stumbled back. He sat braced against the fuselage, holding his knife to his front.
Thorpe aimed his gun again. “Would you like to find out what the third bullet is? It’s not lead, but you’ll wish it was.”
O’Brien’s arm dropped and his knife rested in his lap.
Thorpe pressed a handkerchief to his nose and waited a full minute, then said, “Feel better, Patrick? Okay, that was my fault for underestimating you. No hard feelings. Let’s begin. What is your name?”
“Patrick O’Brien.”
“What is your occupation?”
“Lawyer.”
“Not quite, but close enough.” Thorpe asked a few more warm-up questions, then said, “Do you know a man named Talbot?”
“Yes.”
“What other name does he go by?”
O’Brien did not speak for some time, then answered, “I don’t know.”
Thorpe made a sound of annoyance, then asked, “Were you on to me?”
“Yes.”
“Were you really?” He thought a moment, then removed a Syrette from his pocket. “I don’t think you got enough sodium pent. Let’s try something different.” He moved cautiously toward O’Brien, reached out with his free hand, and pulled the knife away. With his other hand he pushed the Syrette against O’Brien’s shoulder. The spring-loaded needle pumped five cc’s of Surital into O’Brien’s body.
Thorpe knelt a few feet from O’Brien. “Okay, we’ll give that a minute or so.” Thorpe found his cigarettes and put one in his mouth. The gun still trained on O’Brien, he took his Dunhill lighter and struck a flame.
O’Brien saw Thorpe’s eyes close reflexively and made his move. He half stood, reached out, and pulled the door handle. The handle disengaged and the door began to slide open, letting in a powerful rush of cold air along with the rumbling sound of the two engines.
Thorpe lunged for O’Brien and caught his ankle as O’Brien back-rolled into the opening. Thorpe yanked on the man’s leg, twisting as he did, and began to pull him in.
O’Brien let out a moan of pain but continued to arch back farther, getting his upper torso and arms into the powerful slipstream.
Thorpe braced his legs on either side of the open door and pulled with all his strength, swearing loudly over the din, “You old bastard! You foxy son of a—” Thorpe felt himself losing the battle against the slipstream as more of O’Brien’s body was dragged out into space. O’Brien kicked at him with his free leg.
Finally, Thorpe screamed, “All right, you son of a bitch! Die!” He slid his feet away from the doorframe and felt himself yanked headlong out into the slipstream, still holding O’Brien’s ankle.
Thorpe looked up instinctively and saw the Beechcraft’s navigation lights disappearing into the blue moonlit night.
They both fell, at the terminal velocity of 110 miles an hour, 161 feet per second, at which rate, Thorpe knew, they had less than 80 seconds to pull the rip cords.
Thorpe clutched at O’Brien’s leg and craned his head upward. He saw O’Brien’s right hand going for his rip cord. Thorpe wrapped both arms around O’Brien’s leg and twisted his body in a sharp torquing motion, causing them both to spin.
O’Brien’s arms were outstretched now and he tried to bring them back to his body. Thorpe saw the man’s fingers clawing toward the rip cord on his chest. Thorpe reached up and grabbed the cross harness running across O’Brien’s abdomen and pulled himself up until they were chest-to-chest and face-to-face. Thorpe wrapped his arms around O’Brien’s shoulders and drew him close into a bear hug. Thorpe stared into O’Brien’s face, inches from his own. He shouted, “Do you know who Talbot is?”
O’Brien’s eyes were half shut and his head began to loll sideways. He mumbled something that Thorpe thought sounded like “Yes.”
Thorpe shouted again. “What is Talbot’s name!” Thorpe saw O’Brien’s features contort into a twisted expression of pain and his teeth sink into his lower lip, drawing a stream of blood over his face. Heart attack.
Thorpe looked down. They had dropped, he estimated, over ten thousand feet. They had a mile or so to go. Thorpe looked back at O’Brien’s chalk-white face and was certain that Patrick O’Brien would never pull his rip cord. Thorpe shouted into O’Brien’s ear. “Geronimo and all that shit! Happy landing!”
He released his grip on O’Brien and they began to drift apart. O’Brien’s unrestrained arms flew up over his head. Thorpe reached out and gave him a vigorous shove, sending him tumbling away.
Thorpe looked at the ground that was coming at him very fast. “Oh, shit!” He yanked on the rip cord and looked up.
In a split second, he thought, depending on how the chute came out and opened, he might be too late. If it didn’t open at all, it was much too late for the emergency chute.
The black nylon chute shot upward nicely, like a plume of smoke, then billowed as the canopy began filling with air. Thorpe forced himself to look down. About three hundred feet. Two seconds to splat. Thorpe felt an upward jerk as he heard the snap of the canopy fully spread out. He looked down to see where O’Brien would fall, but lost sight of him in the dark ground clutter of the forest below. He thought he heard the sound of snapping wood followed by a thud.
Thorpe was fully decelerated now and floated about seventy-five feet from the earth. He spotted a small sandy clearing amid the moonlit scrub pine and tugged hard on his risers, sliding toward the nearby patch of open ground.
Thorpe tucked his legs up, and hit. He shoulder-rolled, then jumped to his feet and pulled the quick-release hook. The chute drifted a few feet off in the gentle breeze. He brushed the sand from his hands and face. “Not bad.” He felt that incredible high that comes after a safe landing. “Damned good.”
As he gathered his parachute, he gave a passing thought to O’Brien. The man was a worthy opponent. He’d expected more trouble from the pilot and less from O’Brien, considering his age. But old foxes were tough foxes. That’s how they got to be old.