Freefall

by Adam Hamdy

  FREEFALL

  By Adam Hamdy

  Out of Reach

  Battalion

  Run (exclusive e-novella)

  Pendulum

  Freefall

  New York • London

  Copyright © 2017 Adam Hamdy

  Jacket design by Daniel Rembert

  Jacket photographs: Shutterstock

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to permissions@quercus.com.

  e-ISBN 978-1-63506-002-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hamdy, Adam, 1974– author.

  Title: Freefall / Adam Hamdy.

  Description: New York, NY : Quercus, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047158 (print) | LCCN 2017051436 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635060027 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635060034 (library edition) | ISBN 9781635060003 (hardback) | ISBN 9781635060010 (paperback)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Technological. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6108.A5 (ebook) | LCC PR6108.A5 F74 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.92–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047158

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  For all the broken people who have found the strength to carry on

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part Two

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  1

  Sylvia Greene longed to accept her fate. Knowing what was coming, she had tried to prepare herself, but all rational thought was lost to instinct as she faced death. There were no words, no conscious thought, nothing she could articulate, just an overwhelming urge to fight the noose that crushed her neck. It didn’t matter that she wanted to be there, hanging at the end of the rope, that she knew it was the only way to protect her family. The darkest, most primitive regions of her mind rebelled and sent her fingers flying up, setting them to work on the thick rope. Her nails clawed at the rough fibers, and her bare legs kicked the air, desperately searching for something solid.

  She could see her chair, lying on its side, beneath her flailing feet. The pain of the noose biting into her neck was unbearable, and her struggle was only adding to the misery. Her manicured nails were being shredded by the ferocity of her efforts, sending shards of agony shooting along her fingers. She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that it would all be over soon.

  Research had been her business and she’d gone into this situation armed with as much knowledge as possible. She knew she had to endure less than five minutes of suffering before her brain died. Once that happened the pain would stop. Her heart would keep beating for another fifteen minutes but, like an orchestra robbed of its conductor, would eventually lose its rhythm and cease. Then she’d grow still and cold, and the ugly business of death would begin, the rigor mortis, the decomposition. Sylvia hoped that Connor found her. Not the boys, she prayed. Not the boys. She hated to think of them seeing her dangling at the end of a rope, naked but for her underwear. Blue. Lace. She’d chosen a matching set in her favorite color, knowing what was coming.

  Sylvia wished she hadn’t thought of the boys. Pictures of their faces filled her mind, and the urge to survive became unbearably strong. She saw them staring up at her as unsteady toddlers, holding her hand, their moon cheeks pushed back by broad smiles, basking in her unstinting love for them. Bigger, older, the puppy fat lost, laughing manically as the roller coaster hurled them around Thorpe Park. Crying over a grazed knee. Arms cradling a boy lost in awe of a Star Wars film. A startled face suddenly exposed from beneath a duvet, discovered reading Harry Potter way beyond bedtime. Then, her husband Connor, watching her undress, his desire palpable, his love enduring. Sadness, smiles, fear, anger, hope, and joy, rich moments, all shared together. She and Connor steering the boys through the storm of life, trying to help them chart the most favorable course. Her heart ached and tears streamed as she thought of the three of them making the rest of the journey alone, but this was the only way.

  She’d known she’d cry. The scale of loss made it inevitable. She was healthy, smart, just the wrong side of forty, and she had a family she adored and a job she cherished. Everything was being cut short, and it was the theft of her unlived life that saddened her most.

  In the days leading to t
his moment, Sylvia had often found herself wondering whether it truly was inevitable. Perhaps if she’d handled things another way? If she had been a different person? If she’d sought help sooner? But there was no more to be gained from lamenting what had happened than there was from mourning her unlived future.

  She wondered if this was how schizophrenics felt. Her rational mind was calm and reflective, but there was part of her that was determined to fight the inevitable. It felt feral in its angry efforts to try to breathe, to tear the rope, to lash out. Her whole body shuddered with the sheer force of this beast, while her brain registered what was happening as it might note the behavior of a stranger, as though her death was happening to someone else.

  Bright lights suddenly flared in her vision. Colors so vivid she could taste them. They exploded wherever she looked, filling her eyes with beauty. Sylvia had read about this, the last furious firing of the brain before it began to shut down. Her body writhed violently as though the primitive regions of her mind sensed they had very little time left. It was hard to see through her tears and the crackling colors, and now Sylvia had a sense of the world growing distant. Then there was a sudden pinprick of white that burned brighter than anything she’d ever seen. It grew bigger, consuming everything until her eyes saw nothing but the blazing heart of a sun.

  Freefall. The reason she was dying. The unwelcome word violated her mind, burning through it, leaving nothing in its wake. Her very last thought: Freefall.

  Sylvia’s body fell still, and the primal resistance died, the instinctive and the rational uniting in emptiness as the last embers of her life were extinguished. Her heart kept beating after her body fell still. After a while it stopped and the blood began to cool in her veins.

  2

  The stars didn’t judge him. Seated beneath the sweeping canopy of distant suns, for a moment John Wallace shed his burden in contemplation of the eternal fires that blazed in countless distant galaxies. They were unmoved by the guilt he’d carried ever since the woman he loved had died in his arms, and they, like the jagged mountains that surrounded him, would stand undiminished when Wallace and everyone who might remember him were long dead. Considering the eternal gave Wallace momentary respite, but he did not live in the endless heavens and was bound to the earth, caught in the tangle of emotions life had woven for him. Guilt dragged him back, and the majesty of his surroundings faded as he remembered that he did not deserve to be free. He pictured her distraught face looking up at him, and the looming peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains were lost to maudlin grief.

  “I miss you,” he said softly. “I miss you so much.”

  The heavy ache that had filled his chest ever since her death intensified, spreading from his heart until it pulled at his entire body, as though trying to force it to collapse from within. It was a familiar sensation, one that Wallace knew he needed. This painful burden was the only remaining connection he had to the woman he loved. He couldn’t let it go.

  “I thought I knew what I was doing,” he continued. “I don’t . . .”

  The peace of the forest was broken by the crunch of approaching footsteps, and Wallace fell silent immediately.

  “Tr’ok Si’ol.” The boy’s voice came from behind Wallace, and he turned to see Kurik, his host’s youngest son, approaching, his olive complexion lit by starlight.

  For all his months in Kamdesh, Wallace had been unable to learn the meaning of Tr’ok Si’ol, the name his host, Vosuruk, had given him. Whenever he asked, people smiled sympathetically, but would simply repeat Vosuruk’s pronouncement that it was his Kom name.

  “Oasa mes I’a,” Kurik continued as he stepped closer. “T’ot gij’a ku t’u z’otr.”

  “English, please,” Wallace replied, having only recognized a single word: z’otr, which meant kinsman. He could speak passable Pashtun, and a little Arabic, but was still struggling with Kamviri, a dialect that was spoken by fewer than ten thousand people.

  “Father say come.” Kurik was mildly embarrassed and hesitated over each poorly formed word.

  “I don’t want to intrude.” Wallace raised his hands and took a step back, but it was clear that his words and gesture were lost on the teenager. He wasn’t ready to leave; his memorial had just begun.

  “Come,” Kurik responded emphatically, before turning away.

  Wallace took a last look at the stars and tried to imagine his love up there with them, free. But he knew that the only place she existed was in the hearts of those who’d known her. It was with some resentment that he turned to follow the boy. Wallace’s nightly conversations were a way of bringing her back to life, and tonight she would remain buried.

  Kurik looked back and smiled when he saw Wallace had started to follow.

  Wallace had spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan and still didn’t fully understand the country’s complex culture. Forced together as a single nation by the British, Afghanistan was in fact a patchwork of provinces whose people often had more in common with their tribal cousins in Pakistan or Tajikistan than they did with those who shared their nationality. Wallace had traveled to Nuristan because all the reports he’d heard suggested it was still riven by conflict. The Nuristani tribes that had spent hundreds of years fighting each other had banded together to resist the resurgent Taliban. Western media presented the conflict as a simplistic struggle between government forces and Islamic militants, but the fight was far more nuanced. For decades, Nuristan had been known as Kafiristan, which, roughly translated, meant Land of the Infidels, so called because the locals had long resisted conversion to Islam. Pockets of the ancient Kalash faith still flourished in Nuristan, and even Muslim converts still observed the rites and practices of their ancestors’ religion. The Nuristani tribes were doing what they’d done for decades, resisting the imposition of an alien authority, be it British, Islamic, Soviet, Taliban, American, or Pashtun. Right now, the Kom were engaged in a battle to prevent Taliban forces taking control of their homeland, and Wallace had chosen them because he knew they were an open people with a social hierarchy based on wealth, which meant he could buy his way in.

  After some delicate negotiations in the capital which almost ran aground in misunderstanding, Wallace was smuggled out of Kabul, up the Bashgal Valley to Kamdesh, the ancestral home of the Kom. The town consisted of simple, two-roomed homes, arranged in terraces on the steep slopes. The room on the ground floor was usually a livestock stable, and goats were the most common residents due to their ability to thrive on the mountains and survive the bitterly cold winters.

  Wallace offered Vosuruk, the town’s magistrate, two hundred dollars a week for lodging. Vosuruk was a middle-aged landowner, who looked young for his fifty-something years. He had a warm, approachable face, but his eyes could not conceal a sharpness that helped keep the remote mountain town in order. Three wives and nine children stood testament to Vosuruk’s wealth, but even a high-ranking magistrate could not turn down two hundred dollars a week in a country where the average annual salary was only double that figure.

  Vosuruk partitioned the stable that took up the lower floor of his house to create a room for Wallace, where he could sleep next to the goats and horses. Vosuruk’s family were fascinated by the wealthy stranger who lodged with their livestock, but Wallace wasn’t interested in fostering a reputation as a curiosity. He asked Vosuruk to introduce him to local warriors fighting the Taliban. Normally Vosuruk spoke passable English, but whenever Wallace raised the subject of war he would feign sudden incomprehension. All he could ever manage was, “O’c n’a san’oa san’i,” which Wallace came to understand translated roughly as, “I don’t know any soldiers.”

  Wallace understood enough Kom social custom to know that militia could not operate in the region without the blessing, and probably the assistance, of the magistrate. A bed and safety could be purchased, but he knew that Vosuruk’s trust would only be gained by time. So he had spent his days getting to know Vosuruk’s family and photographing them and the other townsfolk. Vosuruk
had five sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Guktec, was a rugged man in his late thirties, who had two wives and five children of his own. At fourteen, Kurik was Vosuruk’s youngest son and the child of his most recent wife, Zana, a slight, introverted woman who did not look more than thirty. Kurik had inherited his mother’s wide eyes and gentle demeanor.

  On his third day in the town, trailed by Kurik and some of his younger friends, Wallace had gone exploring and found a rocky outcrop deep in the cedar forest that covered the surrounding mountains. The first visit had been marred by the sniggers and giggles of his young coterie, but the following week, after the children had lost interest in him, Wallace had returned in an attempt to find a private place where he could be alone with his grief. Vosuruk had jokingly referred to the outcrop as V’ot Tr’ok Si’ol. Wallace had been able to discover that V’ot meant rock, but, since his efforts to translate his Kom name had floundered, all he knew was that the townspeople now identified the place as his and seemed to take some amusement from the fact that he would go to such lengths to find solitude.

  Wallace’s Rock was located fifteen minutes’ walk from the edge of town and was accessible by a difficult trail that had been cut through the thick forest for some long-forgotten reason. Now, as they pushed through the brush, Wallace began to see flickering lights dotting the mountainside, and then the sharp-edged silhouette of the town started to come into view. As he and Kurik emerged from the shelter of the trees and crested the lip of the dirt track, Wallace felt a blast of the April wind and pulled his Deerhunter jacket tight around his neck. There had been no snowfall since the week he’d arrived and the bitter weather had started to ease into summer, but the nights still offered a chill reminder of some of the desperate cold he’d felt when he first came to the town in February.

  The arduous conditions didn’t just demand hardy livestock, they fashioned rugged people. Living at altitude, coping with the rigors of the terrain, the Kom were slightly built, but strong and fit. It had taken three days to get Vosuruk’s permission for him to use his camera, for which there had been a hundred-dollar surcharge, but in chronicling the people of the town, Wallace had not seen a single case of obesity. The mountains simply wouldn’t allow it, and would sweep aside any who became unable to deal with life on their unforgiving slopes.