Then he reached down to where he had tied the bag of money, tugged open the drawstring, and reached into the bag. With the chute open, the wind had lessened considerably and movement was easier. He grabbed a fistful of cash, yanked it out, and tossed it away. Then he began emptying the bag as quickly as possible, throwing handfuls of money off into the night.
Suddenly, he felt a jerk on the lines. Looking up, he saw that several bundles of money had been swept upward and were interfering with the main canopy, partially deflating it. At the same time, he felt his fall accelerate toward a fatal rate of descent.
He did not panic. In a practiced move, he cut away the main canopy by pulling the release handles on the shoulder straps. He now went into free fall. He quickly pulled the second handle to manually deploy the reserve chute. But when it snapped out and open, he realized there was something wrong with this, as well; it had deployed but not cleanly. Maybe it had been sabotaged or, more likely, it had simply become stiff from sitting too long without being repacked. A not uncommon problem.
But it was a dire problem for him.
Cooper felt an unfamiliar surge of panic as he dropped through the darkness, the wind tearing loose the bag with the rest of the money. Nothing he tried could correct the deployment of the reserve chute. He continued to fall, the partially collapsed reserve chute juddering in the turbulence, a final cloud of twenty-dollar bills bursting like confetti and fluttering away into the night as the struggling figure plummeted down toward the forest below, soon lost from sight in the howling storm.
4
Present Day
The AgustaWestland 109 GRAND shot northwest, powerful rotors humming, flying so low that its landing skids almost seemed to brush the azure-blue surface of the Atlantic. It rose as it cleared the reefs, barrier islands, and bays that led to mainland Florida.
In the luxurious cabin of the helicopter sat three people: a man in torn jeans and a plaid shirt; a young woman in a pleated white skirt and blouse, wearing dark sunglasses, with a large sun hat on her lap; and a spectral figure in a severely cut black suit, who sat looking out the cabin window with a remote expression on his sculptural features. Despite the tinting of the window, the brilliant sunshine outside turned his silver-blue eyes a strange platinum color and gave his light-blond hair the sheen of a snow leopard’s fur.
This was Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With him in the passenger cabin were his ward, Constance Greene, and his partner, Special Agent Armstrong Coldmoon. They were departing the scene of a successfully concluded case on Sanibel Island, Florida, and though relatively little conversation was taking place, there was a sense of closure in the cabin and a feeling that it was time to get on with their lives.
Now the helicopter climbed and banked right, to avoid the hotels and luxury condos of Miami Beach, glistening like an alabaster Oz against the line of sand and the blue water beyond.
“Nice of the pilot to give us a show like this,” Coldmoon said. “It’s like a ride at Disneyland.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Pendergast replied in his silky, butter-and-bourbon New Orleans accent.
“You’re assuming it was intentional,” Constance said as she leaned forward to pick up the volume that had slipped from her hands when the helicopter banked: Clouds without Water, by Aleister Crowley. “Turbulent pitch and roll are often the first indications of helicopter trouble, before the stresses of a vortex ring force it into an uncontrolled descent.”
This was greeted by a moment of silence broken only by the whine of the engines.
“I’m sure we have an excellent pilot,” Pendergast said. “Or is that your fey sense of humor at work?”
“I find no humor in the prospect of having my person, burned and dismembered, spread across a public beach for all to see,” the young woman replied.
Coldmoon couldn’t see her eyes behind the Ray-Bans, but he felt sure she was looking at him, gauging the effect this morbid observation was having. Not only did this strange, beautiful, erudite, and slightly crazy woman scare the hell out of him — in the last week, she had both saved him and threatened to kill him — but she seemed to get a distinct enjoyment out of busting his balls. Perhaps, he told himself, it was a sign of interest. In which case — no thanks.
He took a deep breath. It didn’t merit thinking about. Mentally, he was already thousands of miles away, at his new posting at the Denver Field Office, far from the muggy air and stifling heat of Florida.
His gaze drifted from Constance Greene to Pendergast. Another strange one. Even though he’d just completed two cases back-to-back with the senior agent, Pendergast was another reason why Coldmoon wanted to get to Colorado as quickly as possible. The guy might be a legend in the FBI and the finest sleuth since Sherlock Holmes, but he was also notorious for the number of homicide cases he’d solved in which the perp had been “killed during apprehension”... and Coldmoon had learned the hard way that anybody who partnered with the guy had only a slightly better chance of surviving than the perp.
As the confectionary beaches of the Florida coast skimmed past below him, bringing him ever closer to the plane that would take him west, Coldmoon felt a sort of release, as if from prison. He almost smiled at the thought of the incredulity on the faces of his cousins, who lived in Colorado Springs, because his assignment had been so delayed that they refused to believe he was actually coming. Cheered by this thought, he glanced out the window again. The coastline was still as built up as farther south, but the buildings were not nearly as tall now. He could see I-95 running up the coast, wall to wall with cars. That would be something else he wouldn’t miss, although he’d heard that traffic in Denver had gotten crazy over the past few years. From above, it was hard to tell where they were. The flight was longer than he’d expected. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Pendergast and Constance had their heads together and were speaking in low tones. It was odd, though — he didn’t know a lot about Miami, despite the time he’d spent there, but he was pretty sure that the airport was west of town, not north... especially not this far north. They’d passed what he thought was Miami some time ago.
He sat back in his leather seat. Were they headed for an air force base or FBI helicopter landing pad? After all, their boss, Assistant Director in Charge Walter Pickett, hadn’t yet issued him a plane ticket to Denver. Maybe they were flying him in a government or military jet — it was the least the Bureau could do, given the shit he’d been through. Unlikely: now that word would soon be coming through of Pickett’s promotion to Associate Deputy Director, he was probably too busy packing his own bags for D.C. to think of anything else.
“Hey, Pendergast,” he said.
Pendergast glanced up.
“I thought we were headed for Miami International.”
“That had been my assumption.”
“Then what’s going on?” He looked out the window again. “Looks like we’re hell and gone from Miami.”
“Indeed. It would appear that we have overshot the airport.”
At these words, Coldmoon became aware of an uncomfortable tickling sensation — something like déjà vu, but distinctly more unpleasant — manifesting itself in the rear of his brain. “Overshot? You’re sure we aren’t coming back around for a landing?”