Blackout Part 2: Olesia Anderson Thriller #7.2: Olesia Anderson, #7.2

By D.D. Marks

She's ten thousand feet above Venezuela and about to hit terminal velocity, but Olesia Anderson isn't out of the game.

Her father is waiting, somewhere in the shadowed corridors of the bunker below, along with a legion of trigger-happy Zero Error soldiers. With Burroughs closing in behind her, Venezuela is the most dangerous place in the world for Olesia right now, but she's come too far to turn back.

After all... this job is personal.

BLACKOUT: PART 2 is the conclusion to the pulse pounding, fight-or-die double length thriller that sees Olesia dropped into the middle of a warzone in search of answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Ruz
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386624318

Book preview

Chapter 1

Olesia fell to earth.

The world was a blur of evening skies and thick jungle canopy. The wind tore Olesia’s screams away. She tumbled out of control, ass over head and head over ass. The plane was a distant smudge of light, the flames swallowed almost entirely by thick clouds of smoke.

She counted two others plummeting with her. Two spindly figures twisting as they tried to pull their ripcords. How high had they been? Five klicks, six? That gave them thirty seconds before impact, before they were splattered across the Venezuelan landscape. Zero Error wouldn’t even have to bury them - they’d just hose their remains off the lianas. Old training swelled up. No time to worry about the others. Body position - face down, ready to deploy. Hand on the cord. She could do this…

Shit.

At terminal velocity, with the wind stinging her eyes and tears blurring her vision, she couldn’t find the cord. She groped back beneath her arm, desperate for the little plastic toggle that’d open the chute, but it wasn’t there.

Twenty seconds, now. It didn’t seem possible, but the ground was coming up faster. Come on! She stretched as far as her damaged joints would allow. Plastic slapped against her knuckles. Come ooooon!

With ten seconds to go, she got the toggle in her fist.

The whap of the chute opening was sweeter than any hymn. Nylon cloth unfolded across the sky and jerked her upward hard enough to slam her breath out. The world suddenly stabilized - she was upright, watching the canopy shoot up towards her.

Far above and to the south, two chutes had bloomed. Kay and Samantha, drifting to earth as gently as autumn leaves. She grasped for the radio she’d clipped to her belt, but it was gone - lost in the mad, washing-machine tumble, she guessed. The plane wasn’t even a speck of smoke and flame anymore, just a bright point on the horizon. Simon had managed to stabilise the old beast and was headed for a rocky landing.

Go, she whispered. Go, go, run-

The missile was a streak of light across her vision, rising from the jungle below and cutting the horizon in two. She barely had time to register it passing before the shockwave crashed across her, buffeting her sideways. Tears sprang to her eyes as she choked on exhaust. Tracing the missile back to its origin was simple: a spot in the jungle canopy less than half a klick away. As for its destination…

There was nothing she could do but hold her breath as the missile dwindled into the distance, following the Moresby all the way to the horizon.

It was trustworthy, it was honest, it was rebuilt by hand and loved well past its used-by date. It even had a name, lettered on the side of the nose in swooping calligraphy. But all that care wasn’t enough to save it.

The missile met the Moresby, two tiny points of light kissing just above the jagged edge of the mountains. Then came a third, larger light, bright enough to sear a white point into Olesia’s vision.

From so far away, the explosion was barely louder than a balloon popping. Olesia turned her head as the Moresby blew apart like a flock of birds scattering in the wake of a predator, leaving behind nothing but drifts of coal-black feathers.

The canopy came up fast. Kay and Samantha were still above her, carried far by hard winds. There was nothing she could do but relax.

The jungle devoured her whole.

She’d had better landings, all things considered.

The jungle canopy was dense, matted, too thickly woven to fall through cleanly. The first branches bent aside under Olesia’s weight, cradling her as she descended, and for a second she clung to the vain hope that she’d land gently upon the jungle floor. Then her parachute met the canopy and collapsed. Her calm descent turned into a sudden tumble as Olesia crashed through the spiderweb of thinner limbs at the canopy summit, bounced off a fork as wide around as a fat man’s waist, and jerked to a stop as what remained of her chute tangled in the branches.

She twisted in the wind, struggling to breathe. The harness had cinched tight around her chest, cutting off her air. Her vision drifted over with red clouds as she reached for the harness release. Only ten feet to the ground, but it seemed a mile from where she hung.

The release was stiff. She squeezed, swore, squeezed again, until the latch finally clicked and she fell free. The jungle floor shot towards her and slapped her off her feet, and all Olesia could do was lie still, groaning, her own pain drowned out by the cries of birds of paradise.

Pain radiated up her legs and into her guts as she pulled her right knee to her chest and wiggled her toes. Everything worked. Same with the left, although that might’ve been shock. It took two tries to get to her feet, and a headspin left her leaning against the trunk of a colossal palm tree. Her left leg wobbled beneath her weight, but held. No broken bones, no sprains. No Olesia-pancake.

Ten out of ten.

The evening light filtering through the canopy was dappled, tingling on her skin. When Olesia looked to the sky she saw only trees jostling for space, arching upward in a desperate grab for sunlight. What little sky peeked through the slashes in the canopy was almost midnight blue.

No way to see Kay or Samantha’s descent through the foliage. For all she knew, they were already on the ground. The fall had spun her around, and it was near impossible to tell east from west with the trees so high around her. She listened for someone shouting, blundering through the trees, but couldn’t make out anything over the white-noise buzz of insects. The jungle was a rising roar, a cacophony of birds yammering midnight mating calls and bugs the size of Olesia’s palm rubbing wings as they built cocoons in the hollows of trees. Creatures a little too large for comfort prowled just beyond the periphery of her vision, purring behind the curtain of ferns…

She reached back for a rifle that wasn’t there. She’d almost forgotten the AR-15 in the fall, but now that she was on the ground she was keenly aware of the missing weight. God, if only she’d had a few seconds more to fiddle with the straps. All their armaments were scattered across the rainforest or incinerated in the wreckage of the Moresby. She had a water bottle, a day’s worth of food, a flashlight, her SP-01 still strapped to her hip and spare magazines for a rifle she no longer carried.

No compass, no map, no buddies, no plan. But at least she was alive-

-saw her come down around here. She has to be-

Olesia pressed so low she tasted dirt. Footsteps were closing in from what might have been the north. Three… no, four sets, thudding in the muck.

A cheap camo jacket wouldn’t save her. They knew the jungle, and if they had surface-to-air missiles to spare on a shitty cargo plane, they’d be armed with something a little heavier than an SP-01.

I think I see-

She didn’t wait for them to stumble across the bright white slashes of her parachute. Pistol in hand, she forged a path through the trees, following what she hoped was the sunset. The ferns folded around her.

There! Fan out, fan-

A single gunshot echoed through the trees.

Chapter 2

She felt the bullet pass close enough to kiss, like a lion tamer had cracked a leather whip next to her ear. It was like being slapped upside the head - all sound vanished, replaced by a high mosquito hum. She stumbled, feet catching in the underbrush. The ground before her sloped away sharply, rolling into a muddy valley.

Olesia jumped.

The shouting behind her faded as she skidded downhill, through the mud. It was impossible to stay upright as she bounced from rock to rock. Saplings snapped beneath her weight as the slope leveled out, and the world stopped spinning around her as she fetched up in the gully at the base of the hill.

Far above her were frantic cries. Men shouting in Spanish. Another voice, American accented, rose above them all. You, loop around. No shooting! Kill her and I’ll skin you, got it?

The voice was familiar, but with her head still buzzing and the earth tilting beneath her feet, she couldn’t quite place it. How many Zero Error thugs had she left alive since that first encounter in Bethesda? More than enough to develop a couple grudges. God, had they shipped Sandwich Guy and his incompetent friends all the way to Venezuela just to apprehend her?

She had to keep on her toes. Keep moving. Eyes ahead, scoping out the shadows. She shook off the nausea and scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. Within moments she was draped in shadow, stealing along the fold of the valley, calming her nerves with deep breaths of humid, tropical air.

Did you see… Snatches of conversation carried on the wind. Goddamn it!

She grinned and ran faster. Over rotten logs and beneath the tilting angles of leaning palms, long sharp leaves reaching out to scratch her cheeks with needle tips. The pain in her jarred ankle faded away, replaced by an adrenaline burn that left the world bright and tingling. She wasn’t going to get caught, not by these cheap rent-a-merc assholes. She’d beaten them before and she’d beat them-

End of the valley! Move, move!

Olesia cursed under her breath. No time to congratulate herself. Shadows were moving in above her, on the ridge. She had to play smarter, not harder. She dove into the thick underbrush, ignoring the fine lines of heat the branches tore across her forearms, aiming for the darkest patches. Mud splashed up her calves and over her chest. She took a handful as she ran and smeared it across her cheeks - better camouflage than any knock-off military jacket. All she needed now was a hole, a ditch, a…

It appeared before her like a saint, reaching for her wide, welcoming arms. A tree so huge it would take ten men to ring it while holding hands, reaching so far into the canopy Olesia couldn’t make out where the treetop ended and the sky began. At the base, roots flexed from the earth, forming a colossal arching buttress.

The gaps between the roots were just large enough for a child to slip through and shelter in the shadows, hidden from the outside world. A child… or a desperate woman, thinking thin thoughts.

Olesia threw herself at the gap. Her right arm slipped through, followed by her shoulder, but the roots were too tight - they caught her camo vest, jerking her to a stop.

Footsteps carried in the distance. Muffled whispers. The creaking of a leather rifle-strap.

She swore, unsnapped the buckles on her vest, and shoved it into the shelter of the buttresses. The jungle air was clammy on her skin, her t-shirt sucking up into her armpits as she wormed her way beneath the roots. Her head popped through, bark scraping blood from her forehead. Then