Chapter 42 - Free Fall Over the Gorge
The red emergency lights bathed the helicopter cabin in a wash of arterial crimson. Gravity tore at my stomach as the aircraft plummeted, the tail rotor shrieking against the shearing winds of the gorge. Harris’s hand remained hovering inches from his sidearm, his eyes locked onto mine with an unreadable mix of shock, suspicion, and survival instinct. Across the narrow space, the co-pilot wrestled violently with the cyclic stick, his knuckles white through his tactical gloves.
"Hydraulic failure on line two!" the pilot screamed over the howl of the turbines. "We’ve lost the tail rotor pitch! Hang on!"
"Rachel!" Harris yelled, his voice cutting through the mechanical deafening roar. "The key! What did Thomas mean?"
"He’s trying to make you kill me before we hit the ground!" I shouted back, gripping the nylon webbing of my harness until the fibers bit through my skin. "If Vance took the fall for the garage and Thomas survives the river, who do you think cleans up the loose ends? You think forty million dollars just sits in an escrow account without an execution order?"
The helicopter violently jerked to the port side. The glass windscreen filled with a terrifying kaleidoscope of jagged black pines and the foam of the rushing river below. A sudden burst of static erupted from the comms console as the emergency autorotation kicked in. The deafening whine of the turbine died down, replaced by the thrum of the main blades chopping through dead air, turning the chopper into a falling brick.
"Brace for impact!" Harris bellowed.
He didn't draw his weapon. Instead, with a seasoned tactical reflex, he lunged across the narrow aisle, throwing his weight against my harness bracket to lock the secondary release pin in place. He was protecting the asset—or protecting the forty million.
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The tops of the ancient hemlocks sheared through the undercarriage with the sound of tearing sheet metal. Branches exploded through the lower observation glass, showering the cabin in dark green needles and freezing river mist. The aircraft struck the granite ledge above the riverbank, spun one hundred and eighty degrees in a sickening pirouette, and slammed onto its starboard side, skidding across sixty yards of wet river gravel before coming to an abrupt, violent halt against the base of an abandoned railroad trestle.
For several long seconds, there was only the hiss of ruptured coolant lines spraying against hot exhaust pipes, the rhythmic drip of aviation fuel onto cold stones, and the groaning of twisted steel.
