by Nick Cook
A bead of sweat trickles down my back. I ask him to continue.
‘The picture switches again, and the viewpoint is somewhere above the Old City, in a building of some description, and we’re face to face with this guy. He’s talking, deeply, as if the fate of the world is at stake, and there’s this flash, a burst of pure, intense white heat, the screens all disappear in a shower of sparks and Duke collapses.’
I scroll through photos on my iPhone until I reach the cabin sketch of the Engineer. I show Offutt the image. ‘This him?’
Offutt peers at it, looks at me. ‘Yes. Who is he?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Should I?’
‘You told me your cell targeted the jihadist WMD threat.’
‘So?’
‘He’s a bomb-maker with nuclear expertise. Goes under the nom de guerre “Engineer”. Jihadists have been chattering about him for months. They’re all telling each other he’s going to ride at the head of the four horsemen and wipe away the unbelievers on a day that’s going to make the Twin Towers look like a pre-game.’
I pause.
‘And you weren’t ever tasked with looking for him?’
I emerge with Offutt into a freezing wet day.
Hetta and Schweizer are waiting at the helipad. As we round the corner of a hangar, the wind picks up, throwing spray at us from the waves pounding the rocks off Hains Point. A hundred meters away a V-22 is warming up, one of the more recent additions to the presidential fleet: a ‘tiltrotor’ – half plane, half helicopter – able to take off and land vertically, thanks to two massive props on the end of its wings.
By the time I climb aboard, Hetta and Schweizer are already strapped in.
Hetta points to Offutt, cups her hands around her mouth and shouts at me over the engine noise. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s coming with us,’ I yell back. ‘I need him to tell the President what he just told me.’ It’s too noisy for a discussion. I mouth and semaphore the rest: Tell you when we get there.
Offutt straps in beside Schweizer. I strap in next to Hetta. We don headsets. There’s a surge of power from the engines. The Osprey lifts into the air and in seconds is in full forward flight. I see the river recede and the Monument and the White House. I settle back into my seat as soon as we’ve crossed the Beltway.
Gapes fled with five thousand pieces of imagery on a flash drive. He managed to avoid detection by the Grid and made his way to the cabin – a place, due to its isolation, he knew nobody would ever find him.
From thereon in, he’d lost his tech bridge to the holosphere; but he didn’t need it. He was a viewer – the best, everybody said – so he went back to basics. With pen, paper and an ability to access the signal line at will, he began to download his own data, sketching out everything he saw, filling in gaps, until he not only assembled a mosaic that spoke cryptically to what the Grid is, but delivered a warning: that without my intervention, apparently, the President is going to die in a conflagration in Jerusalem.
I stare out the window as we leave the suburbs behind, and think again about the muzzle flash in the blacked-out window of the office building beyond the labor union. The freeze-frame of the moment Gapes was shot by Jimenez. He knew he was going to die. And he knew it was the only way we’d listen really carefully to his message.
The day after the Grid meltdown, they took Gapes and Offutt for tests at a medical center within the Bluffdale complex. They were interviewed by a succession of suited types, but clearly military/intel, about what they thought they had seen. Was it real? Could the system have been hacked? At one point, Offutt heard one of the interviewers ask another whether it could have been ‘reachback’. Reachback? He had no idea what that meant.
Duke remained calm throughout. Calmer than Offutt had ever seen him. At first, he thought they must have upped his drugs, but, looking back, he realized it was because he’d made up his mind. That afternoon they went back to the bunker to resume calibration. Some tests were made with a new helmet and, for twenty minutes, Duke was left alone – long enough, they figured later, for him to download what he needed on a drive. That evening, while taking the air outside the ward where they were running more tests on them, he gave his orderlies the slip, and vanished into thin air.
Ahead, through the rain, the rolling hills of Pennsylvania await us.
What am I going to tell Thompson and Reuben? Gapes asked whether I believe the President to be a good man. I do, but there’s something that he isn’t telling me; and it isn’t just about Abnarth – it’s about two of the sub-panels in the sanctum that haven’t yet revealed themselves to us – Church and Pitnatsat.
The implication of Thompson’s sub-panel, 2B, is that he knows something about Church that he isn’t sharing. If so, what does ‘Church’ refer to? A straightforward reference to St John’s Church itself seems unlikely. Besides, I saw the way Thompson reacted when I asked him about it. He was lying. And ‘15ski’, beneath the surface layer dedicated to the Engineer, has me completely beat.
The engine note changes. I hear the whine of hydraulics above us, as the Osprey’s wings tilt toward the vertical and it begins its descent into Camp David. I look out the window. We’re still a hundred meters up. And then I feel the shudder. We all do. Hetta grabs a hold of my arm. I glance at Schweizer and Offutt.
Offutt, who must have made as many trips in vertical lift aircraft as I have, looks panicky. We all turn toward the source of the vibration, which is coming from the starboard engine. There’s a crackle in my headset. It’s hard to take in what the pilot is saying, because a cacophony of horns and alarms suddenly bursts from the cockpit, but the words I catch are ‘gearbox’, ‘failure’ and ‘catastrophic’.
‘What’s happening?’ Hetta yells.
I snatch another glance out the window.
We’re above a hillside covered in boulders and trees.
You get an engine failure on a helicopter, you contain it by decoupling the rotor and using the body mass to spin the blades as you fall, and flare off seconds before you hit the ground.
With a V-22, you lose an engine, it’s still possible to fly thanks to a driveshaft that transfers power from the remaining good engine.
But when you get a gearbox failure the power transfer option isn’t available.
I look back again toward the source of the vibration, which is getting worse. Then I look at Offutt. He pulls the straps tight across his shoulders and closes his eyes. Schweizer leans over and spews his guts across the floor.
We make a lurch to the right and I hear a voice in my head – not the pilot’s this time, but someone else’s – telling me to undo my seat belt, Hetta’s too, and I reach over and twist the catch; first hers, then mine. A second after I do this, the engine makes a noise like a rattling toolbox. At the next lurch, more violent than the one that preceded it, the Osprey noses down and rolls. I grab Hetta and we fall from our seats, bouncing off the floor as we tumble across the cabin, until we hit the starboard wall just behind the forward bulkhead. The noise is unbelievable. Chunks of metal colliding within the gearbox as it rips itself apart. Schweizer screaming.
The voice urges me to reach beneath me and I grab something, a handle, which, with all my strength, I pull.
The door opens and I free-fall into the freezing air, dragging Hetta with me.
I see the stricken V-22 rolling to the right, upside down, and the ground spinning beneath me. I close my eyes, screw them tight shut, but still see the huge orange fireball and feel its searing heat.
The blast rips Hetta from my grasp.
I feel myself lifted by the explosion.
Then, happily, nothing.
40
A WARM WIND IS BLOWING IN OFF THE OCEAN. A FIRE CRACKLES. Waves lap the shore.
I look up at the stars and see a million of them. Hope’s hand is on my shoulder. There’s no anger in her voice. All is good.
I’m drowsy. The numbness envelops me again, except for a sensation that
’s hard to describe, but it is boundless and timeless – like the moment I first laid my eyes on her, the day we went to the Mall – and I don’t want it to end.
‘Wake up, Josh.’
Wake up.
Now.
I open my eyes.
Above me, the branches of a tree are in flames. Thirty meters away, one of the props of the V-22, its blades shattered, is still chewing into the frozen ground, spitting clods of earth into the air.
A torn-off section of the tail-plane lies beyond it.
One of the fins, bent and twisted.
An arm, ripped free by the force of the blast, hanging from the shredded stump of a tree.
I sit up. My vision swims.
A second later, a thought. Jesus, I can move.
I drag myself away. The moment I’m clear, one of the flaming branches detaches itself from the trunk and crashes to the ground where I’ve just been lying, showering me in sparks and embers.
I get away from the tree altogether and prop myself against a rock, where I carry out a body check. Move my left foot, then the right. Lift the left leg, then the right. The left gives me a moment of pain. I run my hand along it. No broken bones.
I touch my face. There’s blood on my fingers.
My head hurts. My left leg hurts.
But that’s all.
Slowly, I get to my feet, holding onto the rock for support. The engine has been through its death-throes and is now still. The heat is intense. The V-22 crashed on the hillside. There’s fire and wreckage everywhere.
I shout to Hetta, almost blacking out with the effort. I hear nothing over the sound of the wreckage cooking off.
I start to walk, dragging my leg.
There’s nothing left of the Osprey’s nose-section; it’s buried itself in the mountain.
I scrabble down the slope. The body minus the arm is Schweizer’s. He’s lying on his back, eyes wide. They tell the story of every second of the horror he experienced as the V-22 augured in.
A few meters away, Offutt’s twisted body, face down, clothes torn off. I manage to put two fingers against his neck. No trace of a pulse. I turn around. No trace of the crew either. As I get to my feet, I feel the panic I felt when I could do nothing for the woman in the abaya.
Then I spot Hetta fifty meters down the slope. I stagger, trip and slide to a stop alongside her. As our bodies touch, she gasps, sucks down a lungful of air and opens her eyes.
Her hand goes up to her head. I tell her not to move.
‘What happened?’
‘You’re OK. Lie back.’
‘Anyone else get out?’
‘No. All dead. Lie back, Hetta. And stay still.’
I reach into my pocket. My cell’s still there.
I remove my jacket, place it over her. Check the signal.
One bar.
I dial 911. The call doesn’t go through.
I stay online. If there isn’t enough signal for a voice call, after thirty seconds the nearest mast will interrogate my phone. Request my GPS coordinates. Transmit them to the nearest first responder unit. Where might that be? Not relevant. The presidential fleet is equipped with the most powerful emergency locator transmitters on the planet.
‘Josh?’
‘Don’t talk. Help’s coming.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘Hang on.’
‘There’s a lot of blood on your face, Josh.’
‘I know, Hetta. It’s OK. Lie still.’
I hear a noise and see a familiar silhouette – a Black Hawk – through the trees, circling beyond the smoke.
I struggle to my feet, raise my right arm and wave.
As the helicopter banks toward us, my world goes into a spin and everything fades to black.
Book Three
* * *
BECOME THE SKY
41
I COME TO WITH A DRIP IN MY ARM, WIRED TO A MONITOR. MY left side is on fire. A nurse orders me to lie still. Time passes. Doctors come and go. I fall asleep again and wake up sometime later. My eyes adjust to my surroundings.
Dimly, I become aware of a shape at the end of the bed.
Reuben.
‘Josh …’
‘Where am I?’
‘Bethesda. Navy Med.’
He tells me it’s five days since the crash at Catoctin Furnace. Everything hurts, but I still feel myself smile at the crazy irony of the name of the location south of Thurmont where the V-22 came down.
I’ve been in an induced coma for part of the time to reduce swelling from the heavy concussion caused by the blow to my head.
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center – ‘Navy Med’ – is a stone’s throw from my old stomping ground. From my bed, I can see the trees bordering the USU campus.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like I survived a crash.’ My hand moves up to my head. ‘How’s Hetta?’
‘Amazing, considering what you’ve both been through.’
‘How long you been here?’ I ask him.
He looks at his watch. ‘I don’t know. An hour or so.’
‘Mr Kantner has visited every day since you came in,’ the nurse says, as she leans over to check the tube from my drip is securely taped to my arm. She then leaves to go get a doctor.
‘The President—’
‘Don’t go there, Josh.’
‘I need to know he’s OK.’
‘He’s OK,’ Reuben says levelly.
‘What happened in the meeting?’
‘It never happened.’
‘Because of the crash?’
He nods.
‘Reuben …’ I pull myself up the bed. ‘There are some things you and Thompson need to know.’ I focus with great difficulty on my discussion with Offutt. ‘About Jerusalem.’
He holds up his right hand, cups his left hand around his ear and gestures with his eyes to the four corners of the room.
‘We talk later,’ he says. ‘You need to rest.’
I shake my head and wish I hadn’t. ‘I need to get back to work.’
‘No, Josh.’ He holds out an envelope. ‘You don’t.’
I study him for a moment, then take the envelope and open it. Inside is a single sheet of Oval Office headed paper.
I force my eyes to focus. Thompson’s handwriting is distinctive. ‘Josh, I am so very sorry for what happened. Please know that Jen, the kids and I are all praying for your continued recovery.
‘We are so grateful for all the service you have so selflessly provided …’
I put it down. Reuben is on his feet, staring out the window.
‘Is Hetta relieved of her duties too?’
‘That’s not the way it’s being classified,’ he says.
‘Oh?’
‘You – she and you – need time to recuperate.’
‘And then?’
‘You’ll be free to do whatever you want. You can go back to your patients. She’ll be assigned to other duties, if that’s what she wants.’
‘Was that the deal?’
He looks at me. ‘Deal?’
‘With the people you gathered in Aspen Lodge?’
‘Christ’s sake, Josh. You almost died. Every doctor I’ve spoken to says it’s a miracle that you and Hart came through. A few days’ time, you’ll be back on your feet. In a week, she will.’ He pauses. ‘Please, use the time to get some help.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The past two days, in your sleep, since they brought you out of the coma, you’ve been doing nothing except talk about Hope. As your friend, I am begging you, Josh. Rest. For as long as you need.’
He takes a breath.
‘Actually, this isn’t a request. It’s an order.’
‘Miracle’ is a word I’ve heard a lot over the past forty-eight hours. I have shooting pains along my left side that baffle my physicians, as they correspond to the damage I sustained in the crash that killed Hope. My lef
t leg, when I walk on it, is painful, even though the radiologists tell me that nothing is showing up on any scans – beyond the fractures that healed all those years ago.
Hetta and I speak on the phone, but exchange nothing more than our war wounds. She has a mild concussion, a dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs and a badly bruised ankle. I have not yet been able to see her in person, in part because I’ve been told by the doctors to move as little as possible, but mainly because there are federal agents posted at our doors. Officially, they’re to keep the media out. Hetta and I are big news. But I can’t escape the feeling they’re really to keep her and me at a distance.
DJ’s raincoat is draped over his right arm. In his left, he’s holding flowers. ‘She says hello.’ He does his best to give me a smile.
‘How’s she holding up?’
‘Pissed, since you ask.’
‘She knows, then?’
‘Yes. SAIC Graham came to see her this morning.’
‘What’s with the flowers?’
‘I forgot she has allergies.’
He drops the stems into a jug of water at the foot of my bed.
‘You probably heard that I’ve been pulled off the church shooting investigation,’ he says after several beats.
I hadn’t.
Gapes’s security classification means the case has been handed to a special prosecutor in the Department of Defense. ‘Where, as we both know, it’ll get snuffed out like it never happened.’ He looks at me meaningfully.
‘Who’s the investigating authority for the crash?’
‘The V-22 is a Marine Corps asset. Where there’s the remotest suspicion of sabotage, unlawful death, a national security breach or terrorism,’ he says, ‘the Bureau is normally involved. Not this time. The Navy’s been given the investigating mandate.’ He pauses. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘What for?’