by Dale Mayer
He dove down underneath, catching her just as she slammed into his wings. But her added weight folded his silks, with both ends drooped uselessly toward the ground, and Wynn bringing down the center point. Yet it brought her closer to him. He felt for her harness through the silks and grabbed on tight before he pulled his chute. This was like yanking on the parking brake when the foot brakes wouldn’t respond in a car. Not the best thing but the second-best thing at the moment. They were jerked back and up, and he heard her cry out. The chute was tangled in the mess above him. It slowed their descent but not enough.
She shouted, “Hit the water.”
He glanced around to see a river below them to the right. It would still be a hard blow of a landing but was their best option. He adjusted his angle as much as he could, hoping it was enough. The wind caught and dragged his disabled mess toward the water. He fought for control. Yet again, he could hear her yelling something above him, but he couldn’t make out her words.
By now the wind had really twisted up his own silks, and they went down faster and faster. He had to worry about them drowning, tangled in the lines while underwater. He kept his focus on the river as they came in hard and fast. Before he was about to hit, he reached up and unhooked from his harness. It wouldn’t do much for him—or even for her—but it might cut down Wynn’s speed at the moment of her impact with the water.
He let their rigging soar above him as he dropped below, and smack, he hit the river hard. Instantly he drove up to the surface, searching for Wynn. His and her silks were a tangled mess on the surface, the frames dragging them down, the current already catching one section of it. He could see everyone on the river bank racing toward them, but there was no sign of Wynn. He pulled out his knife from his boot and swam toward the swirling mass of purple and blue and white silk in the center of the river. He grabbed a big gulp of air, went back down underwater and luckily spotted her immediately.
When he caught her up in his arms, she struggled, her panic instinctively already taking over. Tanner pinched her hard to grab her attention, then slammed his mouth over hers and blew his oxygen into her mouth—then started cutting. She relaxed as if understanding he was here to help and that her struggles made that worse. As it was, she’d gotten herself into a hell of a tangled mess.
He popped up to get another gulp of air, went back down, transferred more air to her and back to work cutting lines. The water churned around him as the others came in to help. Finally she was freed.
When Tanner broke through the surface again, he could see her gasping for air, but Shadow had her in a firm grasp as he moved her toward the shoreline.
Tanner called out to her, “Are you okay?”
She raised a hand with a thumbs-up sign.
Mason appeared beside him. “What about you? That was a pretty hard landing.”
Tanner nodded, gasping for breath. “I’m okay. We need to get this mess out of the river though.”
“The guys are on it,” Mason said.
They made their way to the shoreline and dragged themselves up the steep embankment to collapse on the grassy edge. Tanner sat there, soaking wet, catching his breath as he studied the wreckage in front of them. “I’d sure like to know what happened.”
“You’re not thinking sabotage, are you?” Mason asked. “In our line of work, we tend to get caught up in that thinking a little too easily.”
Tanner chuckled. “She said one of her assistants had an issue with the harness, so Wynn was flying it to check it out herself. She started off fine but then not so fine. I just know, at the end there, her lines and wings were completely tangled, and I thought I saw some loose lines flying free.”
Mason’s frown was instantaneous.
Tanner nodded. “Right. To me that sounds ominous already.”
“Take a closer look into that.”
“I’m on it.”
A truck drove up behind them. Jackson and Kanen hopped out. They ran winches from the back of the truck and were already in lighter gear, out of their boots and jackets, heading into the water to hook onto the paragliders. Sodden silks now were entangled with debris from the river. It took a few minutes, and, with Mason and Tanner helping, they had both paragliders and the silks on shore, up on the side of the river.
Mason turned to look at Tanner. “Was your unit okay?”
“It was fine, until we tangled coming down.” He turned and walked to where Wynn remained on her back, staring up at the blue sky. He collapsed beside her. “Close call.”
She rolled her head toward him and gave him a half smile. “Thanks for the rescue.”
He shook his head. “I think it was more of a guided crash than a rescue.”
“The problem with coming down on top of you is getting your silks all caught up too,” she said. “It would have been better for me to go down alone than to kill us both. But honestly I really didn’t want to smack into the ground at that speed.”
“Neither did I. Good call on the river.”
“It was a last-minute thought,” she said with a half laugh. “By the time I hit the water, I realized I was between two sets of gliders with a mess of tangled lines.”
“But I had my knife on me, and we got you out of there, so it’s all good.” They lay there quietly for a long moment. “Changes your view of life, doesn’t it?” he said.
“It sure does.”
“Scared to go again?”
She shook her head. “No. But I want to know what happened to that harness.”
“Ever had an accident before?”
She nodded. “Sure, just a couple, but they were a long time ago,” she admitted. “I’ve been doing this for ten years professionally. First competing and then training. I’ve never had an accident like this.”
“What are you thinking?” Tanner asked.
“This may sound weird and totally unrelated, especially since I wasn’t paragliding. But, in the last couple months or so, I’ve had three odd incidences leading up to this.”
“All of them this bad?”
She shook her head. “No, not even close. Makes me wonder if this one today wasn’t supposed to be the finale.”
As her words settled in his soul, he stared at her with a grim realization. “You think all four of these recent incidences—paragliding or not—were on purpose?”
“Yes. And no. I don’t know, … but I really don’t want this one in particular to have been premeditated. Yet, I don’t know what else to think,” she said. “Like I said, ten years, nothing out of the ordinary. Now this.” She shook her head, bounded to her feet and brushed the debris off her wet clothing. “Time to do a postmortem.” And she turned and walked away.
*
Wynn couldn’t stop the shaking. She hoped Tanner hadn’t noticed. It was hardly a sign of confidence if the instructor went to pieces in front of her students. Yet, these SEALs were probably better prepared for this kind of emergency than she was. Like she’d told him, ten years. Sure there’d been a couple mishaps over the life of her career—and now a few minor things of late, mostly concerning her personal life—but nothing while paragliding that was anything like today. What she hadn’t told Tanner was how the parachute she always wore hadn’t opened earlier. Whoever had intended for her to go down had planned for her to go down and to stay down. That was a sobering thought.
Her legs were still wobbly as she made her way to the school’s truck she’d driven out here. In her heart she knew today had been no accident—it had been sabotage. But she’d have to go over the glider in order to prove it. This was her personal paraglider, her own specially designed harness. This had to be a personal attack.
She hadn’t gotten more than twenty feet when her arm was grabbed roughly. She spun, surprised to see Tanner glaring at her. She raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean, incidences? Explain.” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully. “And do you realize what you’re saying?”
She shot him a hard loo
k. “I know what I suspect, yes. Three incidences before this are three too many. And this one almost killed me.” She glanced around. “I could have died several times over on this flight. If it wasn’t for you, I probably would have,” she said boldly. “But I did survive, and that won’t make somebody very happy, will it?”
“Who?”
His tone was harsh. As if he were still coming to terms with the fact that somebody evidently was trying to kill her. “I’m not sure,” she said honestly.
In the back of her mind—what with the road rage incident and the break-in at home and the falling pillar narrowly missing her at work—she’d wondered, so she’d fully checked her equipment today with extra care. Then Trish had wanted to try Wynn’s personal rig, so Wynn had let her do one flight. When Trish had worried that something was wrong, Wynn checked it over again quickly, then decided the best way to figure out the problem was to take it for a flight.
“I work with a lot of people. I wouldn’t have said I had any enemies.” She shrugged. “I have a lot of friends, but of course nobody is perfect.”
“You have no idea who could be trying to kill you?”
Kanen stopped the truck close to them. “Do you guys want a lift?”
Wynn shook her head, pointing. “That’s my ride there.” The school’s logo was on both sides of that truck.
“Good enough.” And he drove off.
Tanner walked, his boots wet, his clothing completely soaked, and yet he didn’t seem to notice, whereas she could already feel her thighs chafing, her ankles blistering inside her shoes. She wanted nothing more than to go home and to have a hot bath, curl up in bed and think about what just happened. No, actually she’d rather go to sleep and forget about what just happened. But it was well past the point of pushing this off as being her imagination. Today, whoever had tried to kill her had almost succeeded.
Chapter 2
Two hours later Wynn arrived at the school, wet and shaken. She entered the front office building, heading toward the showers and her locker. Luckily she had a full change of clothes still here, including underwear and shoes. She didn’t feel much better afterward, but at least she was dry. She left the office building, locking it up behind her, crossed the huge tarmac area and entered the warehouse.
She stood alone in the school’s warehouse—really two adjoining hangars with storage in loft areas above and in various corners below or on shelving units all around its perimeter, leaving the main square footage open and unobstructed. She stared at the skeleton of her paraglider, now on the floor of the warehouse. She’d had this one for a couple years. And it had certainly done its time and more, but she’d always been very strict about its maintenance and safety. It should have lasted another several years. It wasn’t the only one she had, but it was by far her favorite.
It was late, and she was tired, but she knew she would never get to sleep tonight without at least some answers.
The crash itself had caused more damage to what had already been wrong with the glider—per Trish’s earlier remarks—not to mention the lines that were cut to rescue her. How would she tell those helpful cuts from possibly those harmful ones? And then there was her chute. It had failed to open. Something that had yet to happen to her. Ever. That it would happen at the same time as the paraglider failing was more than a coincidence. She stood, rocking on her heels, her hands in her jeans pockets, as she stared at the crumpled mess in front of her. Should I tell the cops? But it’s just supposition at this point. Hard to find any evidence after the crash landing and the watery rescue.
Proving sabotage, … well, that would be hard to do. Still she had to try.
She bent down and straightened out what she could of the glider and its silks. Once the pieces were relatively in the correct position and the wings were stretched out to their full forty-foot span, then she studied the remains. What was missing was her parachute. Not seeing it, she walked around to where Tanner’s paraglider sat in a crumpled heap. He’d taken the brunt of her fall, both that of her accelerating body weight and that of her paraglider.
Since she and Tanner had both crashed, chances were his paraglider was done for too. As she searched through the remains, she found his parachute still attached but not hers. Frowning, she walked over to a nearby corner, where her jacket and personal belongings were, wondering if somebody had tossed the chute there. But there was no sign of it.
Walking toward her backpack, she pulled out her cell phone. Heading to the wreckage again, she took pictures from as many angles as she could to examine later on her computer. But she couldn’t let go of the fact that her chute was missing. The best answer was it lay at the bottom of the river. Which meant she would never see it again.
She always packed her own chutes. That was just one of the many safety checks that she did. So what happened here? After she’d taken pictures, she bent down on her hands and knees and slowly examined the lines inch by inch. There were multiple cut lines, but, given Tanner’s underwater rescue of her, that was to be expected. But what about the two slashes in the wings? Had these occurred before the crash landing in the water? Considering the branches in the river, likely not.
When she’d first noticed trouble, her wings were billowing, and a line had snapped up in the top right corner.
With heavy thoughts, she stood, snagged her jacket and backpack, took one last look around, shut off the lights and walked out, locking the door behind her. She crossed the tarmac separating the warehouse hangars from the front office building. Her deep-purple Jeep sat in the first parking lot, outside the main office door—the last lonely vehicle in the lot.
As she pulled away from the school, she glanced behind her, wondering what it would take to get to the bottom of this.
For so long, paragliding had been her life. She now taught paragliding classes at the school on a regular basis for the last two years. Although unnerved by today’s events and grateful to be alive, she knew she didn’t dare let the fear overtake her, keep her from going up again, or she’d lose her livelihood. And the way to get over that fear was to get back on that proverbial horse as soon as possible and also to get answers about what happened today.
Back at the apartment where she was temporarily house-sitting, only a few miles away from the warehouse, she downloaded all the images from her phone onto her laptop. While the transfers took place, she made a simple sandwich and a hot cup of tea, then sat down to take a closer look. She was too tired to see any differences from what she had noticed in person. Knowing the pictures were all safe, backed up in the cloud, she shut down her laptop and headed to bed. But sleep wouldn’t come easily.
She kept waking up as she relived the crash over and over again. Lying under the covers, soaked in sweat, it seemed like her initial shock had receded, and now her body’s full reaction to the trauma had settled in.
She huddled, letting the tears flow as she realized just how close she’d come to not even lying in this bed anymore. Finally exhausted, she’d slept, but the last thoughts in her mind were Who hated her enough to want her dead? And why?
*
Tanner called the paragliding school, looking to speak with Wynn.
“I’m sorry, she’s not in yet,” came the chipper voice.
He frowned. “I left a message earlier. When she gets in, could you please tell her to call me?”
“Is this Tanner?”
“Yes. Please pass on the message. I’ll keep calling until she answers me.”
“Persistent, aren’t you?” But the woman on the other end of the call had said it on a happy sigh, as if that was the best thing somebody could be.
Tanner shook his head, not quite understanding the attitude. “In this case, yes,” he said briskly. He clicked off his phone, pocketed it and walked into the impromptu meeting. He hoped he was on time, but he couldn’t let go of talking to Wynn to make sure she was okay. He still wasn’t happy at having to leave last night with the rest of the teams, but, without wheels of his own and still on duty,
he couldn’t avoid it.
Mason glanced at him as he walked in. Kanen was here too. “Did you get ahold of her?”
Tanner shook his head and took his seat as the commander stepped up to the front of the helicopter hangar where they’d been working. The next hour was a rehash of so much of the same old stuff that it was hard to pay attention. At one point, Kanen smacked Tanner on the leg, and he bolted upright. The commander caught the movement and gave Tanner a half glare. He returned it with a small smile.
Finally the meeting was over, and they filed outside. Kanen said, “You were really lost in there.”
“I can’t get over Wynn feeling the accident was no accident,” he muttered in a low tone for only Kanen’s ears.
But true to form Mason heard. “Are you sure?”
“Hell no. That’s what I wanted to talk to her about,” Tanner said. “Apparently this is her fourth incident in several months.”
The men stopped.
Tanner nodded. “This one was by far the worst. She’s afraid it was sabotage.”
“Why didn’t she say anything yesterday to us?” Mason exclaimed as Jackson joined them.
“I didn’t have a chance to ask. I suspect she wanted to find evidence first.”
“After a crash like that, I’d be surprised if anything is left to find,” Jackson said. “Are you sure somebody didn’t follow her home and finish the job?”
Tanner shot Jackson a horrified look. “I called the school’s main number several times last night but got no answer. So then I searched for her cell number. Called it a couple times. Still no answer. But, with her in the air as much as she is, her cell’s probably sitting in her Jeep. And I’ve called the school three times already this morning, speaking with their receptionist,” he said.
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble, if they’re responsible for all four attempts on her life in the last several months,” Jackson warned. “This one would definitely have killed her if you hadn’t been there with her.”
“She had said something about the assistant instructor having trouble with Wynn’s unit earlier, and so I stuck with her. I just had this feeling …”