When Rome Stumbles

by David Kershner

  “What the hell is this, Sam?” Mike asked calmly.

  “I’ll tell when we’re airborne,” she replied as she started buckling herself into the co-pilots seat.

  Typically, it was the co-pilot that assisted with the pre-flight checks. However, as President of the company, Samantha relegated Joyce to the role of flight attendant. She didn’t trust anyone with less flight hours than she anyway. By FAA regulations, the plane had to carry a back-up. As far as Samantha was concerned, she was abiding by the law, albeit technically. Besides, she figured, when she was conducting business on the flights, it helped to actually have Joyce around to aid Mike when he needed it.

  With a range of twenty-two hundred miles, and being aided by the jet stream this time, they would have no problems making it to the Municipal Airport in Iowa City without refueling. Once on the ground, they would only require a splash of fuel before heading to their final destination, the Hyloset corporate offices in Washington D.C.

  “So, how’d it go?” Mike asked inquisitively.

  “Oh, they threatened to tarnish my dad’s name, bury the company, make me disappear if I didn’t play ball. The usual.”

  “How is that ‘the usual’?” Mike asked incredulously.

  “Dad told me everything about those three in the last days and weeks. I knew every dirty little secret about them before I stepped foot in a boardroom.”

  “Interesting. Every little secret you say?” Mike wondered aloud with more than a little hint of concern in his voice.

  “Yup. Every little secret.”

  Mike swallowed hard. “I see. And what do you plan on doing with that information?”

  “For starters, I think I’ll try and burn them all to the ground. The trick will be to salvage as much of Dad’s reputation as possible without shuttering the company in the process.”

  “And me?”

  “Mike, you’re a good man. You didn’t know who or what was on that plane. As far as you knew, it had threatened to crash into a heavily populated area. You were ordered to shoot it down.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?” he wanted to know.

  “What was the point? It won’t clear your conscience or cleanse your soul. You want absolution see a priest. Right now we need to put as much distance between us and this place.”

  “Well okay then,” Mike said. “Let’s get this pig in the air.”

  “You good to handle the take-off on your own?” she asked.

  “Of course, why?”

  “I need Joyce for something,” Samantha replied.

  “What are you up to, Sam?” he said in a concerned, scolding parental tone.

  “I’m still working on it. Call me if you need me,” she replied

  * * *

  Josh awoke to a pounding head, cottonmouth, and an insatiable need to urinate. Evil woman.

  He stared at the ceiling recognizing it as his bedroom. How the hell did I get here? The last thing he vaguely remembered were the alarms going off. Had I imagined it?

  He couldn’t resist the urge to relieve himself anymore and said, “I gotta pee.”

  He rolled himself out of his bed and began taking his first unsteady steps towards the bathroom. As he stood there emptying his bladder for what seemed like an eternity, all he could think about was Amanda’s damn letter from the grave. How can that woman still get to me? The jumbled stream of consciousness and never ending questions were all consuming.

  Nearly two weeks had passed since the funeral and he finally decided that he needed to put an end to this foolishness. He washed his hands and began searching for the Tylenol. My God am I thirsty. He cracked open the childproof container, took out three pills, and stuck his mouth under the running faucet to wash them down. He stood there, butt-naked drinking from the tap like livestock when it hit him. Crap. I know that name. Damn it!

  Josh turned off the fixture, decided not to dress, and began heading to his office. As he sat at the desk, he began sifting through the stacks of papers. After several minutes of furious searching, he finally found the entertainment magazine Katherine had left behind after their hasty retreat back to Athens. Why didn’t this register before?

  There she was, right there on the cover with the headline: ‘Actress Heather White Discusses Life in the Industry’.

  He sat there, not fully believing what he was seeing. He darted back to his room and retrieved Amanda’s letter. As he shuffled back and forth between rooms, he didn’t even notice that Juan and Basilia had put the destroyed house back together. Once he located the offending material, he ran to the office and picked up the magazine.

  He quickly scanned Amanda’s words and the article simultaneously. Her admission to complicity in their daughters kidnapping and ransom had blinded him to the rest of the message. Her confessions obscured the other text. Josh was so filled with rage and hatred that he hadn’t truly seen, read, or understood the reason for her betrayal. He read Amanda’s words over and over again.

  We were happy, but then Jessica’s daughter appeared on our doorstep. Two decades of sobriety went out the window.

  She said her name was Heather and she seemed like a very nice young lady. I’m sure she meant well. After all, she just wanted to meet her father.

  Josh put the letter down on the desk and leaned back in his office chair. As he stared at the ceiling and recalled the ill-fated romance with Jessica, he couldn’t help but say, “Ho-ly s—...”

  * * *

  Edward Tomason had been asleep for less than thirty minutes when his head of security shook him awake.

  “Sir, you need to read this,” he said as he thrust a sheet of paper in front of him.

  “What is it, Mr. Toombs?” Edward asked.

  “It’s a print out of the digital recording from Samantha Jameson’s room earlier tonight.”

  Edward pushed his wife’s arm off of his chest and rotated in the bed so his legs hung off the side. His feet barely touched the floor. As he began to slide into his plush slippers, he reached over for his reading glasses.

  “What am I looking at? Where’s the other half of the conversation? This doesn’t make any sense without the rest of it,” Edward began impatiently.

  “That’s all there is, sir. She didn’t use the land line in her room and there’s no cell service out here. We believe she used a satellite phone,” Mr. Toombs responded in a short clipped tone.

  Edward flipped the paper over and began reading page two of the transcript when he bolted out of the bed and said, “Get Abernathy and have him meet me in my study. Now!”

  The Congressman groggily shuffled into the office wearing his flannel pajamas, slippers, and a robe. He immediately asked, “What now, Edward? It’s three o’clock in the damn morning. Can’t this wait?”

  “Absolutely not! That little bitch is about to screw us all!” Edward exclaimed as he handed him the transcript of the phone call.

  As the Congressman began reading the document, his mouth began to open a little bit wider with every line he read.

  “Oh my God! What are we going to do?” he asked astonished.

  “I have an idea. I want you to call the Secretary of Defense. Tell him that Senator Hightower and an executive have been abducted from my ranch. Let him know that my security detail gave chase, but they managed to board a private jet hangared at a nearby landing strip.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Edward?”

  “James, I don’t have time to explain all of the details. The short version is Samantha Jameson is a mole and Senator Hightower has been feeding information to the FDA. Okay? Now pick up the phone!” Edward exhorted.

  “What makes you think a call to him is going to help?” James said, questioning the request.

  “Weren’t you the deciding vote on his nomination?” Edward asked emphatically.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So? That means that he owes you, James. This is how Washington works. Make the call!”

  * * *

  Samantha reent
ered the cockpit of the plane and began taking her usual position in the co-pilots seat. Mike was leveling the plane off at thirty-thousand feet when he glanced over to see that Samantha was no longer in her business attire.

  “Hey, Sam?” he began.

  “Yeah,” came the reply as she completed the contortionist like maneuver of climbing into her seat.

  “Um, why are you wearing Joyce’s uniform?” he questioned.

  “Well,” she started. “I was thinking about putting some of my pararescue training to use.”

  “I see. And what, exactly, does Joyce have on?”

  “Oh, I gave her one of the business suits I had packed in my bag. Don’t worry she’s not hanging out back there in her skivvies.”

  “Good. So...,” he said leadingly. “What exactly is your plan here?”

  “I thought I’d try a tandem HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) jump.”

  “Seriously! Have you lost your friggin’ mind? We don’t have the equipment on board for that Sam, and you know it,” Mike blurted out.

  “Relax, Mike. I’ll take the unconscious Senator back there and we’ll tandem jump at twenty two thousand or less so neither of us needs oxygen beforehand. That way we won’t be susceptible to hypoxia. It’s all under control,” she answered in an easy going tone.

  “You’re insane, Sam. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “All the time,” she replied with a smile. “All the time.”

  The two flew on in silence as the flight made quick work of the eastern Rockies and North Country. With a cruising speed over five hundred and thirty miles per hour, the rugged peaks illuminated by the full moon in southern Montana and the width of Wyoming faded quickly. It wasn’t long before the clear skies revealed the plain states of South Dakota and Nebraska. In a little more than two hours they were over Iowa.

  “We’re coming up on Des Moines and Iowa City in about 30 minutes. You better trade with Joyce and get your jump suit on,” Mike announced as he started to disengage the auto-pilot and begin his descent.

  “It’s alright, Mike. We’re not landing,” Sam replied as she brushed his hand away from the console.

  “Excuse me? Your flight plan says we’re going to Iowa City and dropping off Senator Schmuck back there.”

  “We are flying straight to Columbus,” Samantha replied.

  “And you were planning on informing me of this when?”

  “I’m telling you now,” she answered.

  “And what do we do when we get to Ohio, Sam?”

  “You will refuel and go on to D.C. I’ll jump with the Senator as your decelerating and descending over Springfield.”

  Mike thought for a moment until the name of the city sank in. Then he remembered, “Goin’ to try an’ make it to your aunt’s house then, are you?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Great plan, Sam,” he replied sarcastically.

  “I know, right,” Samantha replied in her best mock 80’s valley girl impersonation.

  “So if we suspend reality for a minute and assume that the two of you survive a tandem jump, what then?” Mike asked.

  “Then I call the Secretary and tell him what’s going on. I’m not going to say where we are though. The less you, and he, know the better.”

  Mike grunted his reply and the two resumed the silence that had dominated the flight until then. The only time either spoke over the course of the next hour was to identify cities and towns they were flying over like they were checking off waypoints until Samantha jumped. Peoria. Champaign. Indianapolis.

  A few minutes after passing Indy, Samantha turned to Mike and said, “What Dad did to you was pretty crappy, Mike.”

  “Yeah, well. What’s done is done. He was my friend.”

  “Some friend. He had you shoot down a sitting U.S. Congressman. What kind of friend does that? What did you do after he told you?”

  “He didn’t tell you that?”

  “No. All he said was that after you became his pilot he drunkenly confessed on some business trip in the middle of a Brazilian cantina.”

  “Well, that’s just like your dad,” Mike replied as he paused. “Always leaving out the good parts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He neglected to tell you that I beat the ever lovin’ snot out of him in that crapo bar. I grabbed a cab and made a beeline straight to the airport, took this plane, and flew home,” Mike continued, but had to stop because he started laughing at the memory.

  “What’s so funny?” Samantha questioned.

  “I wish I could have been there to see your old man with those black eyes, swollen lips, and broken nose stumbling, still half drunk, through Porto Velho airport trying to buy a ticket to get home. Boy was your mom pissed when he got back.”

  “Holy crap,” Samantha exclaimed as the proximity sensor light start flashing.

  “She was pretty mad alright and I’m sure that was probably her first thought when she saw him,” Mike replied not having seen the LED blinking.

  Samantha sat up for a better view out of the cockpit window. “Not that, Mike. There’s another plane out there. It’s at our four o’clock about five-thousand feet below us.”

  “Can you tell what it is?” Mike answered as he switched off the autopilot and took control of the plane.

  Samantha called out to Joyce over the plane’s PA system and asked her to bring her the binoculars from her bag. Once she hung up the mic, she started turning off the cabin and cockpit lights so her eyesight could readjust to the darkness. Joyce reached the front of the plane a few moments later and handed them to her over the back of her seat.

  As Samantha took them from her, Joyce said, “Sam, that guy is starting to wake up. What do you want me to do with him? Who the hell is he anyway?”

  Samantha placed the field glasses up to her eyes and adjusted the focus. “I think there’s just enough moonlight to...oh my,” she said calmly, very matter-of-factly. “It’s an F-15 and he’s loaded for bear. And that is Senator Mitchell Hightower and he is going to be one of the star witnesses for the prosecution.”

  She lowered the lenses and turned to Mike, “I only see one, but I’m guessing there are probably more.”

  “Nah. I doubt that,” he responded. “The reserve units are the only ones using F-15’s these days. They generally only send up one at night to save money.

  Joyce started to show signs of panic both in her voice and her demeanor when she blurted out, “How can you two be so calm about this! There’s an unconscious Senator in the back of the plane and a fighter jet at our wing!”

  “It’s okay, Joyce,” Mike said soothingly, reassuringly. “Everything is going to be just fine. Right, Samantha?”

  “That’s right. He’s probably out on a routine patrol,” she replied as she started unbuckling her shoulder straps. “Come on, Joyce. You can help me get the harness on the Senator. Mike’s got this up here, right Mike?”

  Mike replied with a nonchalant, “Right-o.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Joyce answered quickly and unconvincingly.

  The two of them unbuckled Senator Hightower and rolled the semi-conscious man out of his chair and on to the deck of the aircraft. Samantha grabbed the harness and began working it up over his legs while Joyce propped his upper body up with her knee in his spine.

  “Sam?” came a call through the cockpit door.

  “What is it, Mike?” Samantha answered.

  “That F-15 swung under us and is now at level flight on the port side... just in case you wanted to know.”

  “That’s great, Mike. Thanks for that,” Samantha replied sarcastically.

  Samantha turned her attention back to her task and said, “Joyce, I need you to grab him under his arms and lift him so I can work this thing underneath him.”

  Joyce did as she was instructed without a word of complaint. She would have done well in the military.

  “Okay. We’re good. Set him back down.”

  Again, the co-pilot complied with
the instruction.

  “Now let’s lay him down so we can get the harness over his shoulders.”

  Joyce grabbed the back of the Senator’s head while Samantha held his forearms and the two gently lay him on the deck.

  “I’m going to check on Mike and our little visitor. Can you finish up here while I do that?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” came the reply again.

  Then again, maybe she wouldn’t have done so well in the military. She stood up and started to make her way back to the cockpit. Sam was about to enter the cockpit and turned slightly to check on Joyce’s progress when the back of the plane exploded with debris, shrapnel, and wind. The plane pitched violently forward. Samantha was immediately thrown into the bulkhead outside the cockpit.

  When Samantha came to, all she could hear was the ringing in her ears. She was oblivious to the deafening noise from the wind and the loose material swirling inside the cabin. She turned her head and she could see Mike in the pilot’s seat trying to keep control of the aircraft. His mouth and lips were moving, but all she heard was that damn ringing.

  What’s he saying? Is he saying ‘Joyce.’ Check on Joyce? That’s it! Check on Joyce!

  Finally understanding, she began to roll herself onto her stomach in an attempt to work her way up to her knees. She was halfway up when the cabin exploded again. The foam from the seats spewed from the cushions and the side tables were shredded into a hail of wood and metal punji sticks. She quickly put her head back down and instinctively covered her head for protection.

  When the explosions ended, she saw that the previously innocuous material was impaled like daggers and needles, skewered into the sidewalls of the cabin. As she looked further down the aisle, see saw the motionless bodies of Senator Hightower and Joyce. The co-pilot was slumped over his torso.

  She quickly used her hands to push herself up, but her left arm gave out far too quickly. She cried out in pain as she collapsed back on to the deck. She took her right hand and began probing her shoulder. That’s when she found it. There was a hole the size of dime just under her collarbone. She reached back over and probed for the exit wound. Damn it!