Extraits

Chapter 1

To make matters worse, the phone kept ringing. The man with the craggy face and the salt-and-pepper hair ignored it, but the ringing became unendurable. With a curse he tried to lift himself, felt his arm muscles turn to wet noodles, and his cheekbone smacked hard on the iron floor. As he lay helpless, the throbbing pain and the chirping of the phone melded into a song of agony.

He was dying, no doubt about that, but couldn’t he at least die in peace? He just had to find a way to get to that telephone and yank it out of the wall—only then could he settle down to suffocate in peace and quiet.

It took all his strength, but somehow he made his cold, trembling arms drag him to the control console and grab at the telephone.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was tossing people out of an airplane.

“Three, two, one, go!” He hoisted the skydiver through the open floor hatch with one hand.

“Ten, nine, eight!” Remo said loudly over the wind and aircraft racket, staring at his watch.

“I will exit under my own power,” declared the next skydiver, words muffled by the helmet enclosing his entire face.

Remo, who took his job as jump coordinator very seriously, shook his head. “Six! No room for error five! Four!” At zero the skydiver jumped, but not before Remo gave him a quick shove that sent him spiraling away from the plane at an unplanned trajectory.

The next skydiver curled his lip as Remo counted down the next jump.

“You touch me, I kill you,” the squat, powerful-looking man called.

“Four! Eat shit ’n’ die three!”

The skydiver stepped through the hatchway on three, only to find himself dangling in the thin subzero wind just outside the belly of the aircraft. The jump coordinator was gripping him by the harness in one hand as if he were holding an alley cat by the scruff of the neck.

“One! Wait for it, zero!” Remo released the jumper with a twist. The skydiver with the bad attitude went flopping end-over-end toward Earth.