Page 36 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)

An Unexpected Stop

Determination has kept me going whenever my life became stressful, such as having to spend most of my childhood in hiding, or that time Capone’s men abducted me when I was little.

It also comes in pretty damn handy when falling a couple thousand feet from an airplane without a parachute, which I had done a couple of hours ago.

Yeah. That hurt.

A lot.

Go to Nicaragua, they said.

It’ll be fun, they said.

Well, I suppose it was, other than my assignment taking a turn for the unexpected…

and having every major bone in my body broken.

Usually, people rely on mechanical assistance to survive a drop like that.

Zip lines, chutes, wingsuits, hell, even hang gliders.

Not me. Nope. I’ve only got my determination not to die.

I mean, I would have happily used a parachute, but the night walker the Agency sent me down here to eliminate didn’t offer me one.

Admittedly, I’d knocked him unconscious with a 9mm hollow-point to the forehead before the conversation had gotten around to ‘where do you keep the parachutes’.

Additionally, I miscalculated the stupidity of his bodyguards.

All things considered, diving out the door kept me alive.

A high-speed impact with the ground is infinitely more survivable without the addition of a giant fireball and twisted plane wreckage.

Yeah, I survived the fall… but could do without the excruciating pain.

Broken bones, after all, take a little time to heal.

Patience, Mina, patience.

Biding my time is another talent that I’ve developed over the years.

Again, I think about 1920 or so—it’s a little fuzzy in my memory—when those Outfit guys snatched me out of my backyard.

My family had some money back in those days, and they figured they could get a quick infusion of cash by taking me for ransom.

They showed up to rob the place, I think, and it surprised the hell out of them to spot me since no one knew my parents had kids.

Sensing opportunity, they kidnapped me. After a few hours tied up with a bag over my head, they finally removed it to give me food and water.

They thought they’d grabbed a helpless six-year-old, but as soon as I could make eye contact, game over.

Lucky for them I’d only been around thirty at the time, so my vindictive streak hadn’t developed.

I merely compelled the men to take me home.

I still don’t know for a fact what my father did to them, but it’s a pretty easy guess.

The squealing of knitting bone in my skull stops, so I open my eyes.

I’m flat on my back, surrounded by greenery, staring up at the jungle canopy overhead.

Based on the amount of dirt gathered at my shoulders, I still had a bit of forward momentum when I hit the ground.

I’d lift my head to check out my impact trench, but merely thinking about it hurts too much. Need a little while more.

I grit my teeth and choke back a scream while untwisting my right arm into a reasonably normal shape. Luck is with me—no bones punched holes in my shirt. Few things hurt as bad as compound fractures with a puncture. And I didn’t exactly have a sewing kit with me.

A giant four-winged bug comes in for a landing on my cheek. I puff at it, but the critter ignores me, so I puff harder. It twitches, irritated.

“Hey, get off,” I mutter past a thick gurgle of blood in my throat. “I’m not dead yet.”

Again, I puff at it, and the bug flies off.

Ugh. Seriously. Can’t a girl get a little respect?

I’m not a landing pad for giant dragonflies…

or whatever that thing is. Gradual cracks and creaks come from my legs, ribs, and spine, each one in time with a jolt of pain as my bones mend.

Grr. I’m really going to need to find someone to eat, and soon.

I briefly fantasize about mashing Andrew’s face into a table upon my return to Langley, but abandon the idea after only a few humorous moments of daydreaming.

My having to leap out the door of a faltering Learjet wasn’t his fault.

Hmm. The plane had to have been under 2,000 feet since I didn’t lose consciousness.

Despite the pain, I still consider that a good thing.

I hate being defenseless, especially in a jungle.

And if my head had burst open, it would have been at least a couple days before I woke up…

longer if any quadrupedal carnivores decided to munch on me.

To occupy the next hour or two, I go back and forth over my mission in my head.

I’d infiltrated the underworld of Managua, Nicaragua and spent the past three weeks observing Miguel ángel Garza exert mental control over a handful of small (and not so small) criminal gangs.

My goal had been both to determine what interest the Dominion had in the Central American drug trade, and eliminate him once I couldn’t learn anything more.

Yeah, we kinda play for keeps in my business.

Anyway, while Garza undoubtedly had Dominion ties, his activities here appeared motivated entirely by a desire for personal power over humans.

That’s not proof his entrenchment in the underbelly of Nicaraguan crime or influence over a handful of key players wouldn’t have eventually become an issue.

My first thought had been the Dominion came up with something to add to the drugs that would turn humans back into barely-sentient quasi-apes, but daytime television already exists.

In all seriousness though, Garza didn’t appear to be tampering with the drugs.

No, he was just a three-bit idiot lording over two-bit idiots.

So at least half of the last two months has been a waste of time since nothing traced back to any overarching scheme of the Dominion.

Local cops should’ve been able to deal with this guy.

Well, assuming they hadn’t been bribed. For damn sure, the CIA didn’t send me down here to clean up narcotics.

Someone got some bad intel about the Dominion.

And being a pile of mushy meat on the floor of the jungle doesn’t exactly help my mood.

I smile to myself, picturing the Learjet careening into the jungle like a lawn dart, a bloom of orange fire rising up from the crash site.

Honestly, it had been beautiful in a terrifying sort of way.

While falling, a story I’d heard from somewhere came back to me about a man who survived a drop from a great height because he’d fainted.

According to a bunch of internet armchair doctors, his body being completely limp allowed him to walk away from a plunge that should’ve killed him.

Not literally walk away, but the guy lived.

So, I decided to try it—going limp that is.

It might have just worked, too, since I didn’t pop like a tomato on impact.

Disembowelment takes a lot longer to recover from—not that I have personal experience with that, just heard stories.

To my best estimation, about four hours go by of me lying here staring up at the sky before moving ceases being the most painful idea I can come up with.

The random creaks and squeals from my skeleton have stopped.

My bones don’t feel like they’re moving around inside my muscles anymore, and full-body pain has gone away, replaced with the sort of hunger that requires me to concentrate while eating—so I don’t kill some poor bastard.

Fair bet if I meet someone running around the jungle with an AK47 and a bandana over their face, they’re going to be high on something…

and probably a criminal. Except cocaine or whatever in their system might be a problem.

Be just my luck they’d hit me with a random drug test upon my return to Virginia.

There’s irony in there somewhere… a vampire failing a blood test.

I’ll just have to take my chances. I need to feed, and soon.

I sit up, brushing dirt and bits of plant matter off myself.

Since Garza’s little plane didn’t have any sort of flight attendant staff for me to impersonate, the sneaky approach got me on board via hiding in the plane three hours before he showed up.

The dress that I’d been wearing to blend in among the locals didn’t survive the fall.

It’s somewhere along the impact scar I left, ripped off me the instant I made contact with dirt.

Fortunately, my bodysuit weathered the crash just fine.

The material is on the thin side, and form-fitting, so I usually wear it under clothing when I’m on assignment.

Only when it would get in the way of a mission—like a fancy dinner party where I have to show leg or cleavage—does the suit stay behind.

It’s got plenty of little places to hold gear and gadgets, not to mention it’s quite tough, being partially Kevlar fiber—though not enough to be useful as armor.

The major downside, other than it being skin tight, is without having other clothes on top of it, I look like a cross between an action movie spy and that chick from Tomb Raider if she had black hair.

My suit is the exact opposite of subtle and unassuming.

But, it beats ending up stranded in the jungle naked.

I don’t do the underwear thing, not since a pair of panties almost killed me in 1994.

Don’t ask. It wasn’t pretty. Okay, fine.

Ask. The damn things were CIA issued with an antenna wire and electronics in the waistband…

military airbase in Czechoslovakia, ECM pod…

and yeah, you can see where that’s going. Fire bad. Fire down below even worse.

Andrew, my handler, still sometimes calls me ‘hot pants.’ And I still sometimes punch him in the nose.