Martin"s Secret

Martin had managed to throttle back the jet’s engines and reduce their angle of descent enough to allow them to escape injury as they exited the plane. But the ACR hacker quickly regained control and returned the Gulfstream to its doom trajectory. Martin estimated its position by the fading scream of air rushing over its sabotaged airfoil and touched an icon on his phone as he dropped beneath some clouds. The dark sky lit up after the nitroglycerin and plastic explosives ruptured fuel tanks and flames expanding from a fiery, yellow ball obliterated the aircraft.

The concussion of the explosion made Martin’s ears ring and rocked his chute violently, nearly causing it to fold. He lost sight of Jessica and spent a few seconds righting himself before scanning the darkness for a glimpse of her chute. Finally, the white, nylon canopy of her rigging flashed between the cloud ceiling and a blanket of low-altitude fog, the kind that often accompanies sunrise in Florida’s humid climate.

A strong west wind and thermals rising from the warm Gulf waters slowed their descent and pushed them east as burning pieces of the jet dotted the darkness below. After donning night-vision goggles Martin maneuvered close enough to yell at Jessica to steer clear of power-lines, trees, and buildings when they got closer to the ground. A strong easterly wind had pushed them west over land and at three-thousand feet, roads, lights and buildings came into view between pockets of fog. Unlike the freezing air at higher altitudes, the sea-level temperature in the region was a humid sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit as Martin searched for a clearing.

The fiery, mid-air detonation had alerted every law enforcement and search-and-rescue team in the area and they would quickly form a perimeter around the crash site. Even though Martin’s true identity and legal status were uncertain, being charged with the theft and destruction of the seven-million-dollar private jet was unlikely. After all, the plane could have been flown back to its base-hangar no worse for the wear if the company hadn’t tried to use it as a murder weapon. He figured ACR and its CIA associates would go silent but for statements to media pushing a false narrative about the incident. Martin hoped incinerating the would-be coffin would lend him the element of surprise as a defensive ploy since they appeared to be victims of a mid-air explosion.

Martin glimpsed a stand of trees and beyond them a row of mostly one-story retail businesses that bordered a main east-west highway. Meanwhile, twenty feet below, Jessica was drifting precipitously close to the buildings and if she landed short she’d be dragged through the treetops.

“Use the steering lines to guide the chute away from the trees,” he shouted, pointing at the tree line.

“I’m not going to make it,” she yelled back, and let fly a short scream.

“You’ll make it,” he encouraged. “Left, pull on the left line and flare when you’re fifteen or twenty feet from the ground.”

Jessica cleared the treetops but from her vantage, the ground looked like an enormous meteorite rushing up at her. Fortunately, the tall pines and oak trees surrounding a grassy field served as a wind buffer, enabling her to level the chute. She pulled hard on the steering toggles and the chute flared braking her drop velocity but filled with a gusty morning breeze became a sail that pushed her dangling in a lateral direction. She glided uneventfully save the occasional flutter of her chute until realizing she was headed for a tall, chain-link fence bordering a one-story shopping center. Once again she yanked on the toggles. This time the chute pitched further up then settled after losing momentum. Her feet finally touched the ground and she rolled just as Martin had instructed.

Before she could shed her parachute Martin was standing over her holding the briefcase and with an index finger positioned vertically across his lips.

“Are you hurt?” he whispered.

“I thought I was going to land on that building,” she answered in a trembling whisper.

“Are you kidding? You nailed it” – he bent over and released her chute – “but you need to take off the outfit.”

“Wait, joining the Mile High Club doesn’t mean you can....”

“No, no, just the jumpsuit, we have to blend,” he clarified while dragging and clumping her chute into a wad.

“I know, I was joking, Martin.”

Jessica’s mix of courage and humor inspired and refreshed Martin and he wanted to tell her how beguiling she looked in the glow of the parking lot’s security lamps. He wanted to say she was sensuous even when leaned back on her elbows in the grass wearing the too-large jumpsuit, her dark hair disheveled and talking about landing on buildings. But he just smiled. This was no time for romantic banter. He had spotted a security guard at the other end of the sprawling one-story mall before they landed and he might already be on the phone with authorities.

Down the street, there was a large automobile and recreational vehicle dealership that maintained facilities on both sides of Cortez Boulevard, a six-lane highway leading to Brooksville. He figured there would be at least two more security guards and lots of cameras trained on those pricey cars, trucks and recreational vehicles.

“Veterans Expressway is a few miles that way,” he said in a calm voice and pointed east. “That’s where we’re headed when I get back. Meet me at that little bus stop on the other side of the intersection in thirty minutes. I’m going shopping for a vehicle.”

“I’m tired” - Jessica stood, unzipped the jumpsuit and stepped out of it - “I need sleep.” She dramatized the proclamation by protruding her bottom lip and exhaling upward which shifted a tress of hair from over an eye.

Guilt pierced Martin’s conscience like a matador’s banderilla. He was compelled to offer her another opportunity to walk away. It weighted him that this long grieving widow had left a safe existence in a small Colorado town for a dangerous life on the run with a man she barely knew, a man who barely knew himself. There was a wedge between his emergent infatuation and his desire to extract her from the situation. Urging her to get on the first flight to Colorado would be the right thing to do, even if it meant losing her.

“Maybe I should book you a flight home when we get to Tampa, just until I can figure things out,” he suggested.

Jessica’s response was a meld of hurt and rile. “Are you trying to get rid of me, again, after everything that’s happened?”

“No, but I almost got you killed, twice in twenty-four hours.”

Jessica held her gaze, hoping his eyes would reveal more than his words conveyed. Unsure of his mixed signals, she simply turned and made her way east, parallel to the ten-foot-high fence.

Martin could barely suppress an overwhelming desire to stop her and tell her how much he wanted her to stay as she disappeared into the night.