Chute Roll

Chapter Seventeen

In parachuting, there are other events besides target. During free fall, the time without the chute open, teams make different shapes in the air, with the divers holding hands and moving around.

It didn't look that strange then, when I jumped with my partner. And I knew I'd have to worry about what it looked like. Ronnie, the gold-toothed guy, had said the chute-roll would happen today. That meant a pilot and an airplane would be diving out of the sky to get Sabella. That meant the pilot — whoever he was — would be watching.

As always, the ground hardly seemed to move. From 8,000 feet above, the free-fall part seems much slower than it is.

My partner and I twisted and turned together. I made sure I held on tight to my partner's wrists.

I held off on pulling the ripcord. A chute-roll could only happen if the parachute was open. The longer I waited, the better.

I felt the air push at the skin and flesh of my face. Sometimes, when I'm in a goofy mood, I let my lips flap in the wind and I make goo-goo noises. This time, though, was not a time to be goofy.

Six thousand feet and still dropping like an anvil.

Then I saw the airplane. It was a speck, but growing larger.

I waited.

Five thousand feet.

The airplane headed straight for us.

I pushed away, yanking my partner's rip cord. The chute trailed out, then opened. I fell from my partner, still in free fall.

I kept looking up, get farther and farther away. I needed to get us much space between us as possible. Above me, the figure dangling from the parachute got smaller and smaller.

The plane came closer. I knew that plane. It was the one that Spike always flew.

There was maybe two thousand feet between us when I finally pulled my own ripcord.

One...two...three... Bang! My chute jerked me with the feeling of safety that I loved.

I fell at an angle. I had to twist to look past my chute and above at what was happening.

It made me sick.

The airplane zoomed in on the parachute above me. Like a hawk closing in for the kill. It flew just over the parachute. Like a twist of smoke in wind, the parachute swirled and sucked, wrapping around the small figure so high above me. There was no chance for the backup chute to open. No chance to release the main chute.

Then the figure grew as it gained speed.

Three seconds later, it fell past me. I didn't have to look up to watch it. I stared downward as it dove toward the desert floor.

"Good-bye Sabella," I said. I knew I would never see her again.

Thirty seconds later, there was a little plop of dust. Just like in the roadrunner cartoons, when the coyote falls and falls and falls and falls and finally hits.

From where I was, floating in the air, I saw it all.

A long black car started to speed out into the desert. Sabella's bodyguards.

But a brown car jumped out from behind some brush in a gulley. It cut the black car off. Two men jumped out of the brown car and waved the black car to a stop. It was the brown car that had followed me and Sabella from my apartment. It was the brown car that had trapped me last night.

The FBI.

They were taking over the sudden horrible death of Sabella Scanelli.