by Glenn Cooper
“What’s your intention?” the president said.
He gave his answer to the cockpit crew. “Change your course to Chattanooga,” he shouted.
“No can do,” the pilot yelled back. “We’re under orders to fly to Detrick.”
“Whose orders? This unelected non-entity?”
“I am the President of the United States,” Perkins hissed.
“There is no government anymore,” Mitchell said with his customary evenness. “It’s all gone to Hell. It’s just people, and this person is going to Tennessee to find his family. You want to keep calling yourself the president, go ahead, humor yourself.”
Perkins gestured toward Jamie. “This man is a doctor. He’s got a cure and he needs the facilities at Detrick to make it a reality.”
“You want to go back to Maryland after you drop me in Chattanooga, I won’t stop you.” He seemed to search for his greatest point of leverage and settled on Morningside. He pointed the gun at her. “Give the flight crew an order to change course or I will put a bullet in her brain.”
Morningside shut her eyes in terror. “Please, don’t hurt me. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Two weeks ago, I was the Secretary of Agriculture. Agriculture! This can’t be happening to me.”
“Gentlemen, we’re going to Chattanooga,” Perkins shouted to the pilots. “Is there enough fuel to get us back to Detrick?”
The copilot punched up a map of the southeastern states and replied, “With the auxiliary tanks, we can make it on fumes.”
“Okay, do it,” Perkins ordered. “What’s our flying time?”
“Three hours there, three back.”
The hijacker kept the pistol on his greatest perceived threat, his colleague. All Jamie could do was re-grasp the hands of the frightened girls.
The younger agent said, “You took an oath to serve and protect, Grant. There’s no expiration date on that oath.”
“Maybe you can shut the fuck up. The whole country’s expired. My responsibility’s to my family. You should get your ass to Hartford to find your people.”
Perkins looked dog-tired and profoundly sad. “Agent Mitchell, can I call you by your first name?”
The agent wouldn’t look him in the eye. He nodded.
“All right, Grant, don’t think for a minute that I haven’t appreciated your extraordinary service these past weeks. I know the pressure you’ve been under. We’ve all been sick with worry about our families. I’ve got kids and grandkids back in Illinois I’ve lost contact with.”
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“I’m not trying to do that. You’re the one with a gun, son. The only one who can change your mind is you.”
“We’re going to Chattanooga.”
“So, you’ve said. Listen, I can’t report you to the head of the Secret Service. He’s no longer in the picture. I can’t have you charged with a crime. There’s no functional judiciary. All I can do is appeal to your conscience. Son, you’re going to have to live with the fact that you’ve put the development of a cure at risk.”
“I’m not your son and if you keep talking, I’m going to tape your mouth. Sir.”
Marine One flew through the dark skies over a black, featureless landscape. The girls’ fears eventually gave way to boredom and Emma declared, “I want to play.”
“We don’t have any games,” Jamie said.
“Do they play tic-tac-toe?” Morningside asked.
Jamie said, “You’d have to teach them.”
“I can try.”
Perkins helpfully produced a pad festooned with a Presidential Seal and a couple of pens, and Morningside began a tutorial. As with many of their newly learned tasks, they were slow to pick up the skill, but at a certain inflection point, it was like rolling a stone downhill. Comprehension flooded in after a few times of being shown how the Xs and Os could make rows. Emma was quicker than Kyra to figure out how to block the opponent, but when both of them understood the basics, they were hooked. Jamie had to move to let them sit with the pad between them.
The vice president and the president watched like proud grandparents and Jamie noticed the hijacker’s face soften as he watched too.
“You got kids?” Jamie asked him. He hadn’t expected him to answer, but he did.
“A boy and a girl.”
“How old?”
“Twelve and thirteen.”
“They’re in Chattanooga?”
“With their mother. We’re divorced. With my job, I didn’t bother to try for custody. It wasn’t going to happen.”
“When was your last contact?”
“The day the eastern grid went down. A week later, I managed to get a guy I know at the Pentagon to radio a guy he knew at Arnold Air Force Base to ride over to Chattanooga to check on them. He found them. They were hunkered down with supplies. None of them were sick. My message was: hold on until I come. Now I’m coming.”
In time, the girls grew tired and nodded off. This unleashed a contagion. Perkins and Morningside developed the yawns and drifted off too. The two agents were disciplined. They occupied themselves in cold stares. Jamie fought sleep hard. The situation was too fraught. Emma’s head was on his lap and he stroked her hair.
The copilot’s status report didn’t wake anyone.
“We’ve just passed Asheville, North Carolina. We should be arriving in Chattanooga in half an hour. Where should we put down?”
Mitchell said, “You got the Chattanooga High School on your map?”
“We’ve got everything mapped.”
“Good. Land on a playing field. My house is near there.”
“Okay, maintaining eight thousand feet until we clear the Great Smoky range.”
The younger agent said in a low voice, “Come on, Grant, I can’t hold it anymore. Let me use the head.”
“You heard him. Half an hour.”
“I’m telling you, man, I do not want to piss my pants. Let me have some fucking dignity.”
Mitchell sighed and told him that he was going aft with him. “No sudden moves and you’re going to keep the door open.”
Jamie watched them moving to the rear.
He heard the younger man yell something incredibly loud by way of distraction.
He saw him grab for Mitchell’s gun.
He heard the blast of the errant shot fired through the ceiling as the two men grappled.
He saw Mitchell wrest the gun free and fire three times into the other man’s chest.
He felt the helicopter pitching to the right and heard the pilot and copilots shouting at each other.
“Tail rotor malfunction!”
“Descending! Auto-rotate on my command. Now!”
“Freewheeling!”
The main engine was no longer driving the rotor. The helicopter began to spin like a top in an emergency, controlled descent.
The girls screamed.
“What’s happening?” Perkins yelled.
Morningside began to pray loudly.
“Pitch it down! Maintain glide speed!”
“Where’s the mountain? Where’s the goddamn mountain!”
“We’re good. Valley elevation is twenty-five hundred.”
“Passengers: belts tight! Brace for impact in one minute!”
The spinning was churning Jamie’s stomach. He reached over to pull on Emma and Kyra’s seat belts. He told them he loved them. He wanted them to hear that before they crashed. Morningside stopped praying, at least out loud, and the cabin went quiet save for the whooshing of the main rotor, freewheeling through the darkness.
Suddenly a whooping siren blared from the cockpit and an automated voice announced, “Terrain. Terrain. Terrain.”
The sound on impact was horrible—crunching metal, breaking glass, God-awful screams.
Everything was sideways. His belt kept him from pitching forward.
Something splashed his face and got in his mouth. It tasted coppery, like blood.
Then he felt the worst pain
he ever had, and at that moment, mercifully, he blacked out.
49
The voices seemed far away, but that was an artifact of a concussed brain. A man was crawling into the cabin through a gaping, jagged hole in a fuselage ripped open by a thick pine-tree limb.
A flashlight beam cut the darkness.
“What do you see?”
“Give me a second, okay?”
“Any survivors?”
“Did I not just ask for a second?”
“This is a government helicopter.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause I can read.”
“All right, I’m in.”
“I smell fuel.”
“I smell it too.”
A man was inside now, half-standing on the galley cabinet. The fuselage was lying on its port side.
“Jesus!”
“What?”
“Both the pilots are dead.”
“You sure?”
“Hard to be alive if you’re heads aren’t there.”
“Oh God, I don’t want to see that. Anyone else in there?”
“Yeah. Hang on.”
“They alive?”
“For fuck’s sake, Dennis, give me a second!”
Jamie saw a red shirt and managed to speak. “Help my girls.”
“Mister, hang on, I’m coming to you. Dennis, I’ve got a live one here!”
The rescuer made his way from the cockpit to the cabin and as he paused at the lifeless body of Oliver Perkins strapped into his captain’s chair, Kyra began to cry. Jamie turned his head as far as he could and saw both girls in a similar posture to him, leaning forward, hanging by seat belts. Emma wasn’t moving. Kyra was holding her left arm with her right hand and bawling her eyes out. Jamie tried to undo his belt but the way his body was doubled over, he couldn’t get at the buckle.
“Hold up, mister,” the rescuer said. “Let me help you.”
The man used a strong forearm to push Jamie’s torso back to get at the buckle. Jamie fell into his arms and let out a short scream when he put weight on his left ankle. He settled on a space in between Perkins’ and Morningside’s legs. Perkins was definitely gone; his neck was bent at an impossible angle. He wasn’t sure about Morningside.
“I think you got a break there,” the man said.
“Don’t worry about me. Help the girls.”
The man approached Emma and shouted over his shoulder, “Dennis, get in here if you’re not too fat to squeeze through. I need help getting the survivors out. There’s gasoline everywhere.”
“Coming.”
“What’s Kev doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell him to run and get Connie and tell her there’s injured.” He had a look at Emma and said, “She’s breathing. I’ll get her out of her belt.”
Jamie hopped on his good leg to get closer. He said, “I’ll stabilize her neck in case there’s a fracture. You bear the weight.”
“You sound like an EMT or something.”
“I’m a doctor.” Kyra was probing him with wild eyes. “Honey, we’ll get to you soon.”
They both heard a low moan underneath Kyra’s screams. Morningside was slumped against one of the windows, grimacing.
“I just sent for a friend who’s also a doctor. You’re going to have some work on your hands if this thing doesn’t blow up while we’re inside it.”
They got Emma down to the ground. Jamie frantically grabbed the flashlight out of the man’s hand and used it to check her pupils. They were symmetrical and constricted to light. The second man was inside now shining his flashlight in their faces. He was a big fellow, his forehead wet with sweat despite the cold.
The man in the red shirt said, “This is my neighbor, Dennis Cole. I’m Pete Dyk. We’ve got places near here.”
“She all right?” Cole asked.
“She’s not bleeding in her brain,” Jamie said.
“That’s good. Why’s she out cold?”
“Concussion.”
Emma began to stir and her eyelids fluttered open on their own.
She said, “Daddy?”
“I’m here, baby. We crashed but you’re okay. Does anything hurt?”
“No.” She looked around. “Why is Kyra crying?”
“I’m going to check her now.”
“Can you walk?”
“I can walk.”
“Get her out of here,” Jamie told Dyk. “Get her away from the wreck.”
Dyk referred the matter to his friend. Cole put a big arm around Emma’s waist and steadied her as they went forward to the escape hole.
Dyk saw two dark shapes toward the tail and asked Jamie if there were any other passengers.
“Two Secret Service agents.”
“Christ! Who are you people?”
“That man was the President of the United States. This woman’s the vice president.”
“The fuck you say. What are you doing here? What happened?”
“Tell you later, okay?”
Jamie told Dyk to check on them while he tended to Kyra and Morningside. “One of them was shot by the other one,” he added.
“This is one story I need to hear.”
It was easier to kneel than stand. Jamie dropped down at Kyra’s feet and asked what hurt.
“Arm hurt!”
He palpated along it and elicited a howl near her elbow.
“It’s broken, honey. I’ll get you better soon, okay?”
Dyk called over his verdict. “They’re both dead.”
“Get the girl out. Kyra, go with the nice man.”
Morningside was next. She was semi-conscious with a thready pulse. Jamie ran his hands over her. She sucked air and grimaced when he pressed on her abdomen.
“Mrs. Morningside,” he said. “Can you understand me?”
There was a weak nod.
“We’re going to get you out of here. Just hang on.”
Dyk and Cole came back inside after a while and told Jamie the girls were safely away from the crash site.
“Her next,” Jamie said. “Go as easy as you can. She’s got abdominal trauma.”
Jamie hopped forward and saw the damage done to the cockpit by a rotor fragment that had sliced through metal, flesh, and bone. Near the cockpit, a cabinet door was open and an umbrella with the Presidential Seal spilled out. He took it for a cane and squeezed himself through the jagged opening in the fuselage.
Survivors and rescuers huddled in a clearing a safe distance from the wreckage. After ten to fifteen minutes, Jamie heard a boy shouting for his father. Cole shone his flashlight toward the voice.
“We’re over here, Kev!”
The woman who was soon in their midst instantly took charge.
“Okay, what’s the story?”
Dyk began, “Well, Connie—” but Jamie propped himself upright and said, “This woman’s the most serious. She’s got blunt trauma with a probable intra-abdominal bleed. This girl’s got an elbow fracture—her ulna, I think. And this one’s got a concussion. They’re five deceased on board the helicopter.”
“You a doctor or something?” she asked with a Carolinas accent.
“Neurologist. You?”
“Surgeon.”
“That’s handy.”
“Can be,” she said. “Forget something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re leaning hard on that umbrella.”
“Oh yeah. Broken ankle.”
“Okay, let me look at the abdomen first. Who is she?”
Jamie thought for a moment. “I think she’s the president now.”
“Of what?” Connie asked.
“The United States.”
“You don’t say.”
Cole and Dyk lit up Morningside with their beams, and in the light, Jamie got a look at the surgeon. She was late thirties, maybe early forties, black hair, olive skin, taut over high cheekbones. She gave off a Top-Gun vibe with tight jeans and leather bomber jacket, and she exa
mined her patient with the efficiency of a triage specialist. She wasn’t all that delicate in her approach and Morningside yelled in pain.
“She’s got a lacerated spleen,” she said, bouncing up. “I’ve got to operate pretty damn fast.”
“Is there a hospital near here?” Jamie asked.
She snorted at that. “My dining room table’s going to have to do. Let’s get down to the trucks. What’s your name?”
“Jamie Abbott.”
“Connie Alexiadis. She really the president?”
“One of the deceased on the plane was the president. She was next in line, so yeah.”
“Then we better get motoring.”
*
Connie’s house was just over a mile from the crash site. Jamie would find out later they were in western North Carolina in a narrow valley of the Great Smoky Mountains. The late-October night air was close to freezing owing to the elevation. Jamie volunteered to ride in the bed of one of the pickup trucks to tend to Morningside, who had to be transported with her legs propped higher than her head. He used the only blanket to keep her warm. By the time they pulled into Connie’s driveway, his teeth were chattering.
Connie hopped down from her truck and began giving orders.
“Pete and Dennis, get the lady into the house. Just clear everything off of the dining-room table. Kevin, you bring the girls inside and set them up in the living room with blankets from the spare bedroom. Give the one with a broken arm a pillow to rest it on. And give them some water.” She lowered the cargo door and extended Jamie a hand. “Come on.”
He still had his presidential umbrella and once down, he waved her off. “You do your thing. I’ll manage.”
She ducked under one of his shoulders to prop him up. “It’ll take you forever to get up my stairs. I need you in surgery.”
She was right. They had to climb a half-dozen stairs to her covered porch and it would have cost him a lot of time and pain. Once inside, he had a fast look around. A fire was going in the living room and the girls were already installed on a soft leather couch. It was an old house, a period piece. The room was cluttered and rustic with lots of exposed wood.
Connie left Jamie on an ottoman and called out for someone named Dylan. A teenaged boy tentatively came down a hall and showed himself.