Our chutes were almost touching and we were staring at each other. I remembered those dark, deep-set eyes from a dozen photos I'd looked at for too long. I kept my gun trained on his face, wondering why he didn't fire at me.
Khalil flashed me another smile and answered my question. 'Today she dies! And you live to see it! Tomorrow, you die!'
I steadied my aim at his face, but before I could squeeze off a round, he ducked his head behind hers. Then I saw his right hand go up, and I realized that the metallic object in his hand was not a gun. It was a knife. His hook knife or hers.
I saw the flash of the blade as Khalil brought it down in a slashing motion. Kate made a quick movement, and I could see her left hand go toward Khalil's face, then she screamed, and almost immediately I saw blood shooting into the airstream.
Oh, God… I had no shot, but I fired over their heads.
Khalil made a sudden movement, and I saw that he'd cut the cord that attached them, and in a second he'd released his hold on her and was in a head-down free fall.
I could have gotten off one shot, but there were people on the ground, and Khalil was not the problem now.
I looked quickly at Kate, who was dangling from her chute, her blood flying up into the airstream.
I shoved my gun into my pocket and pulled on my risers to get closer to her. Khalil's push-off had caused her to rotate so she was facing me now, and I could see the blood gushing from her throat. I shouted, 'Kate! Pressure! Pressure!'
She seemed to hear me and her hands went to her throat, but her blood kept flying into the air. My God…
I glanced at my wrist altimeter: 6,500 feet. Seven more minutes until we reached the ground. She'd be dead by then.
I needed to do something, and there was only one thing that might save her.
I steered my parachute directly toward hers, then, just as the two chutes were about to touch, I swung my body in an arc, and as the chutes collided I reached for her gripper with my left hand and got hold of it. I caught a glimpse of her face, and saw that her nose and mouth were bleeding where he'd hit her, and I saw the blood gushing through her fingers from the right side of her throat where he'd sliced into her jugular vein or her carotid artery. Bastard!
'Kate!' She opened her eyes, then closed them again, and her hands dropped from her throat.
The tangled chutes were collapsing, and we were starting to fall rapidly, so I did the only thing I could do; I yanked the emergency release on her main chute and it immediately flew away, pulling me and my entangled chute with it, and putting Kate into a free fall. I yanked my own main chute release and both entangled chutes were gone. We were both now in a feet-first free fall.
I looked down and saw her dropping a few hundred feet below me, with her arms above her head. She was either unconscious or close to it, and she was unable to stem the bleeding or control her free fall. She was accelerating toward absolute top speed of close to 200 miles per hour. I did a forward roll so that my head was pointed straight down, and I tucked my arms and legs in so that I, too, could accelerate to maximum speed. We were both rocketing at terminal velocity toward the ground, which was rushing up at me at a rate I'd never experienced before at this low altitude. The features and details on the earth were doubling in size with each passing second, and there was nothing I could do now except wait.
The barometric devices on our chutes were supposed to pop the reserve chute if the skydiver fell through a thousand feet at a high rate of descent and didn't pull the ripcord because of panic, malfunction, or unconsciousness. Kate, I thought, was unconscious by now, and the damned barometric device should have deployed her reserve chute, and mine too, but so far nothing was happening except a fatal, high-speed fall to the ground.
I could have manually pulled my ripcord and deployed my reserve chute, but I wasn't going to do that until I saw Kate's chute open.
My altimeter read two thousand feet, and I knew that these chutes had to open now. I stared at Kate falling a few hundred feet below me, and just when I gave up all hope, I saw her reserve chute stream out of its pack and begin to fill with air. Yes!
I grabbed my ripcord, but before I could pull it my barometric device kicked in, and I felt my reserve chute pop. In a few seconds the small chute was fully deployed, and it jerked my body from terminal velocity to a fast but survivable rate of descent.
I kept watching Kate as she fell. Her arms were hanging at her sides now and her head was slumped against her chest. She was definitely unconscious… not dead… unconscious.
Her chute drifted toward a thick woods, and I steered toward her. She had about thirty seconds before touchdown, and I prayed that she'd land in the open field before she hit the trees. In either case, her touchdown would be uncontrolled and she might break some bones-or worse if she fell into the trees.
I took my eyes off her for a second and scanned the field below. Everyone had realized that something was very wrong, and the people on the ground were running toward Kate's drifting parachute. I saw, too, that the standby ambulance was racing across the field. Where was Khalil?
Kate hit the ground about twenty yards from the tree line, and before her chute collapsed around her, I could see that she'd hit hard, without any movement to make a controlled landing. Damn it!
I hit the ground hard, collapsed my legs, shoulder-rolled, then jumped to my feet and released my reserve chute as I sprinted toward Kate. I barreled through the crowd that was gathering around her, shouting, 'Let me through! Get back!'
The crowd parted, and within a few seconds I was kneeling beside my wife.
She was on her back and her eyes were closed. Her face was deathly white, except for the streaks of blood. She was bleeding from her lips and nose where he'd hit her, and her neck wound was still bleeding, which meant her heart was still pumping.
I pressed very hard against her carotid artery below the wound and the flow of blood stopped. I kept my fingers on her artery and felt for a pulse with my other hand. She had a rapid pulse as her heart raced to compensate for the diminished volume of blood and to keep her blood pressure from collapsing. Another minute or two and there would have been no blood to pump.
I lowered my face toward hers. 'Kate!'
No response.
I put my hand on her chest and felt her heart racing, and also saw her chest rise and fall in shallow movements. Not good.
The crowd around me was very silent, but some guy behind me asked, 'What the hell happened?'
I looked around and saw the ambulance pull up and stop ten feet away. Two guys jumped out with a stretcher and medical equipment and raced toward us. I shouted to the paramedics, 'Severed artery!'
I turned back to Kate and said to her, 'It's all right. It's okay, sweetheart. Just hang in there, Kate. Hang on.'
The two paramedics were joined by a woman who was the ambulance driver, and they sized up the situation very quickly.
One of the paramedics said to me, 'Keep the pressure on.'
The other paramedic got a breathing tube in Kate's throat, while the first guy took her blood pressure and checked her breathing, then started a saline drip in one arm and another drip in her other arm. The second guy attached a bag to the tube and began squeezing it to force air into her lungs.
They briefly discussed immobilizing her neck with a collar, but decided it was too risky with a severed carotid. The paramedics log-rolled Kate to her side and the ambulance driver slid a backboard under her, then they rolled her back and immobilized her with straps. They quickly transferred her and the backboard to a rolling stretcher and again strapped her down while I kept the pressure on her artery. The driver raised the lower part of the stretcher to elevate Kate's feet above her head.
The paramedic team wasn't sure I should ride with their patient unless I, too, was in need of hospital care. I flashed my creds and said, 'Federal law enforcement. Let's get moving.'
Within a minute we were all in the ambulance and it was moving as quickly as possible across the rough field.
