47- Plane Jump into the Sea

  He unbuckled it and stood. The assassin clutched the back of the seats as he made his way to the door, located just behind the cockpit. The plane lunged brutally, throwing 47 to the floor. He pulled himself up to continue what might be his final act, but then he remembered the briefcase. If he was going to die, he wanted to perish with his beloved tools of the trade. The hitman retraced his steps, clumsily moving through the cabin as the jet jerked and tilted erratically. When he reached his seat, 47 leaned over and grabbed the case with his adopted insignia, similar to a fleur-de-lis, stamped on the outside.

  Back to the door.

  He didn’t dare look out the window as he moved. How many seconds did he have left? A minute or two? Less?

  It took a near-superhuman effort to reach the hatch. The instructions for emergency opening were printed on the interior. It wasn’t rocket science. Push this lever and pull that one.

  So do it. What are you waiting for?

  Push. Pull.

  The hatch broke away from the fuselage and soared into space. A huge gush of wet air nearly sucked Agent 47 out with it, but he held on to a safety handle on the side and braced himself with his shoes against the frame.

  Now he could see the well of death below. A thousand feet? Less? With the storm battering the doorway, it was difficult to know for certain.

  But it was obvious he had only a few seconds left.

  Jump!

  If he was going to do it, he had to do it now.

  Jump!

  Agent 47 thrust himself through the hatchway and was hit with a sledgehammer of rain and wind. For a moment he didn’t think he was falling; he was aware only of being suspended in the maelstrom. Incongruously, he sensed that he was still clutching the briefcase in one hand. The assassin thought he saw the jet veer off into the darkness above and beyond him, but he wasn’t sure. He was blind and deaf from the raging hell around him.

  For no logical reason, he started to count to himself.

  One … two …

  Was he even moving? Was the frenetic, cold whirlwind spinning him around and around?

  Three … four …

  The noise was unbearable. It was as if he were inside the roars of a thousand beasts.

  Five … six … sev—

  A wall of freeze slammed into his body, and the cacophony abruptly ended. The powerful wind ceased and was replaced by an envelope of frigid liquid.

  For a moment he might have lost consciousness. He wasn’t sure.

  Relax. Don’t fight it. Go limp.

  Years of training had conditioned Agent 47 to completely surrender to the sea. To fight it would be disastrous. The only way to surface and catch the precious oxygen above was to become a lifeless, weightless particle of ocean trash.

  And it worked.

  Agent 47’s bald head broke the surface, and he gasped for breath. It was only then that he kicked and moved his arms in an effort to tread. The ocean was indeed rough and extremely dangerous.

  Incredibly, he still gripped the briefcase. It was as if the thing was in actuality an outgrowth of his arm.

  The life jacket!

  He had almost forgotten it.

  With his free hand, he pulled the tube up and into his mouth. Blowing was extremely difficult. It was hard enough to breathe normally in such conditions, and yet he managed to do it. It took an eternity, but slowly the vest inflated and did its job to keep the assassin afloat.

  Completely spent, Agent 47 allowed the roiling waves to carry him wherever they might, yielding to a blanket of black unawareness.

  Voices and noises murkily drifted in and out of his brain. As his eyelids blinked open, blurry bright lights pierced his retinas like spears. He felt the urge to cough, but the effort was a gurgling gasp. Hands were on him, pushing, pulling …

  He heard the distinct words, “He’s alive!”

  And then he sank back into a cocoon of nothingness.
...

  “Good morning,” he said in a British accent. “I’m Dr. Chalmers. How are you feeling?”

  Agent 47 didn’t answer.

  “You’ve had a rough time. You were lucky we were nearby. We picked you up out of the water. You’d almost drowned.”

  Again, the hitman said nothing.

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine. You have a strong constitution.”
...

  “I am nowhere near one hundred percent operational.”

  “We think you are,” Travis said. “The fact that you survived that jump from the plane and the subsequent hours in the sea proves that you are. Did you know you were floating in impossibly rough waters for seven hours before we picked you up? That’s extraordinary. Any other human being, even one with your, uh, special genetic structure, would never have endured the ordeal. You did, 47. We’re all astonished and … humbled.”

- Hitman: Damnation, chapter 7