Suzanne Brockmann – Tall, Dark and Devastating: Harvard's Education (страница 22)

“We don’t need to go into that, thank you very much,” Harvard interrupted. “Let’s just say, I don’t do much spelunking in my spare time.”

P.J. laughed. “I never would have thought,” she said. “I mean, you come across as Superman’s bigger brother.”

He smiled into her eyes. “Even old Supe had to deal with kryptonite.”

“Ten minutes,” Wes announced, and the mood in the plane instantly changed. The men of Alpha Squad all became professionals, readying and double-checking the gear.

Harvard could feel P.J. tighten. Her smile faded as she braced herself.

He leaned toward her, lowering his voice so no one else could hear. “It’s not too late to back out.”

“Yes, it is.”

“How often does your job require you to skydive?” he argued. “Never. This is a fluke—”

“Not never,” she corrected him. “Once. At least once. This once. I can do this. I know I can. Tell me, how many times have you had to lock out of a sub?”

“Too many times.”

Somehow she managed a smile. “I only have to do this once.”

“Okay, you’re determined to jump. I can understand why you want to do it. But let’s at least make this a single-chute buddy jump—”

“No.” P.J. took a deep breath. “I know you want to help. But even though you think that might help me in the short term, I know it’ll harm me in the long run. I don’t want people looking at me and thinking, ‘She didn’t have the guts to do it alone.’ Hell, I don’t want you looking at me and thinking that.”

“I won’t—”

“Yes, you will. You already think that. Just because I’m a woman, you think I’m not as strong, not as capable. You think I need to be protected.” Her eyes sparked. “Greg Greene’s sitting over there looking like he’s about to have a heart attack. But you’re not trying to talk him out of making this jump.”

Harvard couldn’t deny that.

“I’m making this jump alone,” P.J. told him firmly, despite the fact that her hands were shaking. “And since we’re being timed for this exercise, do me a favor. Once we hit the ground, try to keep up.”

P.J. couldn’t look down.

She stared at the chute instead, at the pure white of the fabric against the piercing blueness of the sky.

She was moving toward the ground faster than she’d imagined.

She knew she had to look down to pinpoint the landing zone—the LZ—and to mark in her mind the spot where Harvard hit the ground. She had little doubt he would come within a few dozen yards of the LZ, despite the strong wind coming from the west.

Her stomach churned, and she felt green with nausea and dizziness as she gritted her teeth and forced herself to watch the little toy fields and trees beneath her.

It took countless dizzying minutes—far longer than she would have thought—for her to locate the open area that had been marked as their targeted landing zone. And it had been marked. There was a huge bull’s-eye blazed in white on the brownish-green of the cut grass in the field. It was ludicrously blatant, and despite that, it had been absorbed by the pattern of fields and woods, and she nearly hadn’t seen it.

What would it be like to try to find an unmarked target? When the SEALs went on missions, their landing areas weren’t marked. And they nearly always made their jumps at night. What would it be like to be up here in the darkness, floating down into hostile territory, vulnerable and exposed?

She felt vulnerable enough as it was, and no one on the ground wanted to kill her.

The parachute was impossible for her to control. P.J. attempted to steer for the bull’s-eye, but her arms felt boneless, and the wind was determined to send her to another field across the road.

The trees were bigger now, and the ground was rushing up at her—at her and past her as a gust caught in the chute’s cells and took her aloft instead of toward the ground.

A line of very solid-looking trees and underbrush was approaching much too fast, but there was nothing P.J. could do. She was being blown like a leaf in the wind. She closed her eyes and braced herself for impact and…jerked to a stop.

P.J. opened her eyes—and closed them fast. Dear, dear sweet Lord Jesus! Her chute had been caught by the branches of an enormous tree, and she was dangling thirty feet above the ground.

She forced herself to breathe, forced herself to inhale and exhale until the initial roar of panic began to subside. As she slowly opened her eyes again, she looked into the branches above her. How badly was her chute tangled? If she tried to move around, would she shake herself free? She definitely didn’t want to do that. That ground was too far away. A fall from this distance could break her legs—or her neck.

She felt the panic return and closed her eyes, breathing again. Only breathing. A deep breath in, a long breath out. Over and over and over.

When her pulse was finally down to ninety or a hundred, she looked into the tree again. There were big branches with leaves blocking most of her view of the chute, but what she could see seemed securely entangled.

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