Killers of a Certain Age(5)

“We’re handling it,” Billie tells him shortly.

“See that you do,” he orders. He turns to Helen. “Parachutes.”

She retrieves two large packs and two smaller ones—main chutes and reserves—from the overhead locker and hands them over. “Here you go.”

He passes them up to Sweeney before turning back. “You know what to do next. Finish up and get out of here. We’ll follow. And don’t forget the case,” he adds with a glance at the secretary slumped in his seat, the result of Nat’s quietly efficient handiwork. “Or all of this is for nothing.”

He returns to the cockpit before he can see Billie’s upraised middle finger.

Mary Alice, pushing herself to her feet, gives a shaky laugh as she strips off her blood-soaked uniform. Nat passes her a sleekly fitted black suit. It is made of a material developed by a military contractor happy to sell a few thousand yards under the table. Mary Alice’s skin is sticky with blood but she forces herself into the suit, strapping a utility belt and parachute neatly into place. The others do the same, checking their gear as they zip and buckle.

“We have a problem,” Nat announces. She lifts the calfskin case, raising the secretary’s arm with it. “Handcuffs. And no sign of a key.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Billie mutters. She strides forward with her knife and does what she has to do. Natalie looks on with interest, as if taking notes in a biology lab, and Billie grabs the case, strapping it to her chest with the severed hand dangling like an obscene accessory.

Helen tucks the dog into her suit, zipping it firmly against her body behind the reserve chute.

“There is no chance that dog survives the jump,” Mary Alice says.

“There is no chance I’m not going to try,” Helen replies coolly. Nat shoots her a look of gratitude and they head to the back of the plane, bracing themselves as Vance points the nose of the aircraft down, lowering the altitude by several thousand feet in a dive that almost stalls the engines.

“Show-off,” Helen says.

Just then the cabin lights flicker twice. The signal. Mary Alice steps forward and opens the aft door. Vance has flown southwest out of Nice, parallel with the coast, edging slightly inland before banking hard left to aim the aircraft due south. They are past the bulk of the mountains, flying just over the national park of the Plaine des Maures. It is flatter than the craggy uplands to the east, but it is far from level. According to the topographical surveys they received in their briefings, it is rugged, scrubby, and dotted with parasol pines and dangerous outcroppings. Now it unrolls beneath the belly of the plane, a long, unrelieved patch of black. Far to the west, a narrow line of violet marks the death of the day, and the first stars are winking to life just above the horizon.

Natalie snaps her goggles into place, saluting as she drops away into the night.

Mary Alice goes next, flinging herself away from the bottom step like a swimmer setting off for the deep end. Helen is graceful, tipping backwards with a final wave at Billie.

Billie stands on the threshold of the plane, taking a slow, deep breath. The air smells of salt from the Gulf of St.-Tropez and the sharp tang of fuel, and she is grinning as she throws herself into the blackness.

She counts as she floats. Thirty seconds until the chute can be deployed, and it is the most peaceful thirty seconds of her life. She is conscious of counting off the numbers, fingers touching the ring on the rip cord, waiting, half wondering if she should just let it go. From that altitude, there wouldn’t be much left of her when she hits the ground and she wouldn’t feel or see it coming. Nothing but that beautiful, empty blackness beckoning like the end of time.

Thirty. Her fingers pull hard and instantly she is yanked as the chute fills, stalling her free fall. She dangles, legs loose as a marionette’s as she drops to the plain. To her left, she can see three tiny lights glimmering as Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie drift to the ground. She lands harder than expected, the impact forcing the air out of her lungs.

She makes herself go limp, rolling to her side as she has been trained. She comes to a hard stop against the base of a parasol pine and the impact wakes a bird that shrieks once or twice before leaving with an angry flap of wings. Billie sees the beacons of the others, winking like fireflies in an uneven line across the plain. She lifts her face to watch two more fireflies drift from the dark bulk of the aircraft. It is flying low, silhouetted against the clouds like a set piece as it heads towards the Mediterranean. The fuel has been precisely calculated to run out somewhere between the Balearics and Sardinia in the darkness before midnight, leaving nothing but a few bits of broken fuselage and a slick of chemicals on the surface of the water. Billie remembers reading it is ten thousand feet to the bottom of the sea, where the bones of ships and sailors have lain for thousands of years. A few more won’t matter.

Billie feels something brush her leg—a tortoise? A rat? She pushes herself to her feet and scouts the others, their positions indicated by the large safety beacons they have activated. She activates her own, nearly blinded by the brilliant white light. She shields her eyes as she hears the helicopter approach, lowering itself to pluck her from the rocky plain. She is the fourth to get picked up, shivering with the aftereffects of adrenaline. She trips as she clambers aboard, landing flat on her belly and wishing she had made a more elegant entrance when she sees their mentor and the head of Project Sphinx, Constance Halliday—code name Shepherdess—sitting in a jump seat. Halliday is every day of seventy years old and dressed in a flight suit, a white silk scarf wrapped neatly around her throat to guard against a chill. A walking stick is braced against her leg.