by Akart, Bobby
Angela and Tyler looked at one another and nodded.
Tyler addressed their children. “Okay, guys. It’s time to get out of here. We need you both to brace yourselves against the front of the car until the firefighter can get into position to put the other harness on J.C. It will just take a minute, right?” Tyler looked to the firefighter with hopeful eyes.
“That’s right. I’ll be just underneath for a moment to release the safety bar. The extra harness is sitting in the car at your feet. As soon as you’re loose, I’ll scramble up there and get you squared away.”
“Okay,” said J.C. sheepishly, still seemingly unsure about the whole operation. He felt for the single safety belt strapped loosely around his waist.
Kaycee gave the belt one final tug to tighten it and then tried to encourage her brother. “I’ll help you, buddy.”
J.C. nodded and prepared himself. The firefighter crawled under the car and began to crank the release mechanism. At first, the safety bar opened smoothly, and then it stopped suddenly.
“It’s okay,” the firefighter began. “My hand slipped on the lever.”
J.C. looked over at Kaycee for reassurance, and then without warning them, the firefighter cranked the lever the rest of the way, abruptly opening the safety bar before the children were prepared for it.
“Oh no!” exclaimed the firefighter as he lost his balance and swung wildly toward the center of the Kingda Ka structure.
“Ahhhhh,” screamed J.C. as his small body crashed into the edge of the coaster compartment in front of him. He toppled over the hood and began sliding downward, desperately trying to hold on.
“Grab him!”
Kaycee was trying to hold onto his jeans, but J.C. kept sliding downward, slipping through her grasp. She grabbed one ankle, causing him to spin sideways until all she had was his shoe.
“Daaad!” plead Kaycee as she struggled to brace herself and hold onto her brother.
“Help!” screamed J.C.
Tyler hooked his right arm through the lifted safety bar and swung outside the car like an acrobat performing a high-wire act. He reached for J.C.’s leg with his left arm, but it was too late. His foot slipped out of his sneaker, leaving J.C. and his shoe careening toward the ground.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Delta Flight 322
Using the seat backs, Cort pulled himself deeper into the water, quickly moving past several dead bodies that were stuck in their seatbelts or people who’d been knocked unconscious from the overhead luggage. He’d lost count of the number of rows he’d passed, but when the curtains separating the first-class seating from the main cabin floated in front of his face, he knew he was there.
Cort wrestled with the curtains, which fluttered around his body. He grabbed the partition wall and heaved himself forward into first class. He quickly became disoriented, unable to remember where Congressman Pratt was seated. At first, he looked to his right, not realizing that the aircraft was upside down. The seats were empty.
Relieved, he turned his body around and planned to swim straight up the aisle to the aft exit. As he grasped the headrests to use them as a catapult, he felt hair. Cort reached into the dark water, grasping the seats on the other side of the aircraft for leverage.
He felt the unmistakable portly, bloated corpse of Congressman Pratt. The man was still strapped into his seat with his life vest around his neck. It had been inflated and wedged his body between the seat back in front of him, which had been fully reclined. The congressman had drowned having never had the opportunity to leave his seat.
Cort shook his head and closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do, so he focused on his own survival. Propelling himself upward using his arms like oars against the seat backs, Cort floated toward his row, where much-needed oxygen awaited.
However, upon reaching the exit rows and his original seat 26-C, there was no oxygen. Only water. The plane must have slipped deeper toward the bottom of the Gulf.
Cort kept swimming. Row after row, he expected the water to end and the much-needed oxygen to appear. It didn’t. He looked upward toward the tail section. The faint glow of starlight was gone.
He stopped. Did the plane shift? Am I swimming down now? Deeper into the water? Panic set in. He didn’t want to drown.
Cort tried to relax his body and mind. He had to decide. Go back to the exit row, or continue toward the tail section?
He thought quickly and then removed a seat cushion next to him. The buoyant effect would answer the question. He released it and it gradually floated toward the aft exit door. Cort didn’t hesitate and chased it up the aisle, grabbing another seat cushion as he went. His legs kicked at the water, forcing his body past the lavatories and out of the plane through the exit door.
But it still wasn’t over.
Using the seat cushion to aid him toward the surface, he kicked as hard as he could, mustering all of his energy and will to reach the surface. But he was fading.
The average person can hold their breath for thirty to sixty seconds. Cort, who remained in excellent physical condition by playing basketball at the congressional gym, was in better shape than most.
The instinct not to breathe underwater was so strong that it overcame the agony and feeling of helplessness when a person was running out of air. No matter how desperate a drowning person became, the body’s innate desire to inhale didn’t occur until it was on the edge of losing consciousness.
At that point, the body’s bloodstream became filled with carbon dioxide, and the amount of oxygen diminished. The chemical sensors in the brain triggered an involuntary breath, one that cannot be suppressed willfully, whether the body was underwater or not.
Neurologists call this the break point. It usually happens after eighty-seven seconds. Some physicians refer to the brain’s reaction as neurological optimism. It was as if the brain had made an irrational determination—holding my breath is killing me, and breathing in might not, so I might as well breathe in.
When the first involuntary breath was taken, most people were still conscious. In a way, it was unfortunate because there weren’t many things more unpleasant than gasping for air only to have water forced into your lungs instead. Drowning was a horrible way to die.
Cort had entered a state of voluntary apnea when he took that last deep breath and descended into the plane in search of Congressman Pratt. That was two minutes ago. He had reached his break point when voluntary apnea becomes involuntary. A point where his next spasmodic breath would drag water into his mouth and down his windpipe. A point where the Gulf of Mexico would flood his lungs and end any transfer of oxygen to the blood.
His final breath.
The process of drowning made it harder and harder not to drown. The body became akin to a sinking boat, with its destiny the bottom of the ocean.
For Michael Cortland, former basketball player at Yale, as well as loving husband and father, the clock was running out. He was half-conscious and weakened by oxygen depletion. He was in no position to fight his way back to the surface. Fate had caught up with him.
His destiny.
Chapter Fifty
Times Square
New York City
A dirty bomb looked no different than any other conventional explosive, but it was wrapped in radioactive materials. Bundles of cobalt-60 or strontium-90 could take the most common ordnance and create radioactive dust clouds capable of causing severe sickness or death in millions who came in contact with the material. The cleanup costs associated with the widely dispersed radioactive particles could cost trillions of dollars, not to mention the fact the affected areas might have to be abandoned for many years or even decades.
As the quadcopter drones buzzed through the skies of Manhattan, dropping their payloads around Times Square, as well as near Grand Central Station, the island’s transportation hub, widely dispersed particles of radioactive material blanketed Midtown New York. The dust was inhaled or absorbed into the body, but it didn’t necessarily kill im
mediately. It could potentially hasten the demise of those whose immune systems were weak due to a previous cancer or other diseases.
Those who justify the use of dirty bombs as a humane form of warfare argue that, like an electromagnetic pulse attack, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction but, rather, a weapon of mass disruption. In the attackers’ minds, immediate body count was the standard by which the use of a weapon should be judged. Not fear.
The quadcopters delivered a deadly blow to New York City, one that wouldn’t be fully understood for days or weeks. In addition to the panic, and the deaths that resulted therefrom, the financial center of the world would suffer an unimaginable economic calamity.
Tom knew about the threat, as he’d studied the subject extensively after a Thanksgiving Day conversation with Willa. She’d warned him that drone warfare would be used by terrorists in the years to come. He just didn’t imagine it would happen so soon. He pushed the conversation into the back of his mind. For now, his focus needed to be on their survival.
“Donna, this is very important,” he said calmly to his gimpy wife. “You have to keep this scarf wrapped around your face as tight as possible. I’m gonna keep my sweatshirt pulled over my nose and mouth.”
“Tom, is there poison in the air?”
“Sort of. Maybe. I mean, possible radioactive material. Listen, you won’t smell it and nobody will know they’re ingesting it. But, trust me, it’s there.”
“I don’t know if I can walk and hold this in place too.” She looked down at her right leg, which was bent at the knee to keep pressure off her ankle.
“You’re not gonna have to worry about that because I’m gonna carry you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am. Really, just like I did the day we got married.”
Tom couldn’t see his bride’s grin, but he could see her eyes smiling at him. “Okay, but I’m a little chubbier than back in the day.”
“Well, I’m not that skinny kid from Beaufort, South Carolina, anymore either.” Tom stretched out the name of his hometown, pronounced BYOO-fert, out of habit. The town’s pronunciation was often confused with the coastal town of Beaufort, North Carolina, which was pronounced BOH-fert. Residents of both these Southern towns were quick to correct Yankees who got it wrong.
Donna, who was a Charlestonian through and through, mocked him from time to time and couldn’t resist in this tense moment. “Okay, my BYOO-tiful husband, carry me up to your lair and have your way with me.”
Tom rolled his eyes and laughed. “Okay, Miz Shelton, here we go.”
With a grunt he swept her up in his arms, and the two momentarily touched their foreheads to one another. Tom moved along the Avenue of the Americas under the canopy-designed entrance to the block-wide office building until he made his way to the corner of West Forty-Fifth Street.
They were only a couple of blocks away from Times Square, and in the fifteen minutes since the bombs had begun to detonate, the crowd had thinned somewhat, scattering throughout Midtown Manhattan like millions of mice fleeing a giant cat.
He turned against the flow of people who were pushing and shoving their way down Forty-Fifth Street. Using the canopy as cover down the left side of the street, he noticed that Connolly’s Pub across the street had been broken into, and people were stepping over the broken plate glass to get inside. Ignoring the melee as people fought to seek cover, he pushed forward until he saw the orange flags marking the entrance to the Hyatt Centric. Now his challenge was to cross the street.
Donna turned her head and saw the problem. “Should we wait until they pass?”
“It’s a steady stream of people, and the longer we’re in the open, the more dangerous it is. Hold me tight, Donna. I’m gonna need my arms to push people out of the way as we go across.”
Donna gripped her husband’s neck and shoulders so that her arms supported her own weight. Tom studied the flow of people. There were too many. Then he noticed the temporary sawhorse barricades put into place by the city. Most were toppled over, but one was pushed to the side next to a FreshDirect delivery van parked in front of Bobby Van’s restaurant to their left.
“Here we go!” exclaimed Tom as he made his way alongside the delivery truck and tucked the barricade under his arm. It was heavy, as was Donna, but adrenaline and love fueled him.
Using the barricade as a battering ram at first, and then a method of diverting the crowd as he turned it sideways, the masses slowed and began to divide in the center of the street as he moved across. When he was close enough to reach the sidewalk in front of the Hyatt, he dropped the barricade, which allowed him to run the final ten feet to avoid the stubbornly approaching mass of people.
Tom’s breathing became laborious and his chest was heaving from the extraordinary effort he’d given to get them across the street. Relieved, he took a moment to catch his breath and gently set Donna on the ground. With him leading the way and Donna hopping close behind, they kept their bodies pressed against the granite wall as they inched closer to the revolving glass doors of the hotel.
When they reached the overhang to the Hyatt hotel entrance, a new challenge presented itself. Getting inside.
Chapter Fifty-One
Will Hightower’s Home
Atlantic Station
Midtown Atlanta, Georgia
They made their way to Will’s truck and drove in silence as they traveled up Northside Drive toward Midtown. Will didn’t bother to check in with the stadium’s headquarters or the Security Management Team. Following the evacuation order, the entire stadium had emptied to make way for Atlanta’s bomb squad and the SWAT team. FBI vans were pulling up to the stadium exits as Will led his kids in the direction of their car.
The kids were somewhat in a state of shock. Neither spoke as they fought traffic, which was also fleeing the area surrounding the stadium. Besides the frightening event’s impact upon their emotions, it was late and several hours past Skylar’s bedtime. Ethan’s injury likely caused his body to be exhausted as well.
He glanced at the clock on his truck’s radio. It was just after midnight. He shook his head and closed his eyes for a second while he waited for the traffic signal to change. He angrily tapped the steering wheel with his fingers, berating himself for the decision to take the kids to the concert and agreeing to work that night.
The fact of the matter was that he needed to earn the double-time pay to cover his upcoming credit card bill, which included the Christmas gifts he’d bought for the kids. For a paycheck-to-paycheck guy like Will, just because Christmas came along and gifts were purchased didn’t mean he got an instant raise to cover the out-of-the-ordinary expense.
He’d learned that lesson the first year of divorce when, out of a sense of guilt, he’d overspent on the children’s presents. Their joy and appreciation meant nothing in January when he tried to juggle his credit card bills with his child-support obligations. Karen certainly didn’t give him a pass due to his Christmas generosity. The squabble with her resulted in a six-month hiatus during which he wasn’t allowed to see his children, and his phone contacts were limited by their mother.
Now another holiday had resulted in him stepping in a pile of crap again.
Way to go, dad of the year. This was a New Year’s my kids will never forget. Nor will their mother. Nor will I. Their mother will make sure of that.
As he turned off Northside Drive toward his home in the Atlantic Station neighborhood of Midtown, Will turned on the radio to listen to the local news reports of what had happened at Mercedes-Benz Stadium that night. He reached for his phone to see if his ex-wife had called, freaking out over the safety of her children with the unfit parent, a term she often threw in his face when he underpaid his monthly support.
There was no call or message from Karen. There also wasn’t any news of the evacuation of the stadium. There were bigger, more deadly events taking place around the country.
Will quickly turned off the radio so his kids couldn’t hear.
What was happening? Was this a coordinated attack? Terrorists?
Will’s mind raced until he pulled into the driveway of the small turn-of-the-century craftsman-style home located near the shopping and restaurant district of Atlantic Station. The home suited his needs perfectly. He was in walking distance to the MARTA station, shopping, and entertainment, although he never indulged himself. Also, it was intended to provide the kids a sense of normalcy when they visited him, rather than staying in a condo or apartment somewhere.
“Hey, kids, here we are. Ethan, do you need some help inside?”
“No, I’m good,” he responded sleepily.
“Sky, are you awake?”
“Yes, Daddy. Is it time for happy New Year?”
Will smiled and chuckled. From what he’d just heard on the radio, he wondered.
“It sure is, baby girl. Happy New Year to you both. Son, you keep that compress on your head and I’ll get the luggage. Can you unlock the door with your free hand?”
“Yeah,” he responded. He pulled the shirt away from the gash and touched it with his fingers. “It stopped bleeding. Do you want your shirt?”
Will laughed. “Nah, I probably won’t need it anymore. Who knows? Come on, it’s kinda chilly out here. Let’s get you both cleaned up and settled in bed. I’m pretty sure we’ll all sleep in tomorrow.”
Ethan led the way up the sloped sidewalk to the front door and entered the foyer. Skylar sleepily followed him inside while Will carried all the bags. He dropped them just inside the door and closed it behind him.
“Let’s get some lights on,” he said as he walked into the darkened home and flipped on as many switches as he could reach quickly. The downstairs of the two-story home consisted of a living room together with a kitchen/dining area. Three bedrooms and two baths were upstairs. “Why don’t you guys take a seat on the couch while I get some wet towels and bandages to take care of Ethan’s busted noggin’.”