Page 68 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

With Mike safely away, Holly felt she could breathe again. Sort of. The air at fifteen thousand feet was thin and bitterly cold, fifty Fahrenheit below zero. Time to get out.

Besides, she had to jump precisely twenty seconds after Mike did for this to work.

She double-checked her attachment points to the drugged pilot, still counting time in her head, and waddled him to the hole she’d blown in the side of the plane. When her brain ticked nineteen, she stepped forward.

And fell backward.

The pilot wasn’t conscious—at least not fully, she hoped—but he managed to get a foot up against the side of the hull.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-two.

With each passing second, she was a hundred meters out of position as the plane continued on its course. Its crash course.

By twenty-three, it was clear that he was coming around and she didn’t have time to dose him. He braced a foot again.

At twenty-seven, she twisted hard to whack his head against the wall. It didn’t knock him out, but at least it dazed him for a moment. Then she turned around, and the two of them fell backward out of the hole at twenty-nine. Nine seconds, almost a kilometer late.

She did what she could to fly south, but she couldn’t open her chute too close to the plane. The human eye, and hopefully any radar, would be following the plane. Once it was well clear…

Holly waited ten seconds, watching the ground approach far too fast as it rose higher here than her intended drop zone, before she popped the chute.

Mike had three thousand meters, almost ten thousand feet of descent to get down the mountain along his planned path.

She’d planned on half that, lost a third of that to the changing mountainside, and had just used up two-thirds of what little she had in getting clear of the plane.

She considered dumping the asshole right here, which would give her the lift—maybe—to get clear of the ridge to her south. But Inessa would be saddened and Miranda, even though she’d never hear about this escapade, would be truly livid.

So Holly didn’t pop the emergency release on the pilot.

Instead, she bled out every meter she could, finally targeting a tiny gap in the trees, and plummeted down into the deep snow.