When The Devil Whistles

by Rick Acker

  After the pass, he climbed and banked again. A giddy euphoria swept over him. He grinned, then laughed. “Hey, Julian, I think I’m getting the hang of this!”

  “Looking good! There’s chatter up and down my scanner. Sounds like the police will be here in a couple of minutes. I also heard something about fighters from Fresno.”

  “Excellent! A couple more passes ought to do it, just to keep our friends on the dock off balance.”

  He made a wide turn and circled the dock for a few minutes, testing the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. The flight controls continued to be a problem, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He swooped down again, firing a short burst into the water in front of the dock for effect. Men scattered for cover or fired up at him. But again Connor didn’t notice any hits.

  He had just started making yet another pass when his cockpit radio crackled. “November-one-niner-niner-six-November, this is Falcoln 11 of the Air National Guard. Break off immediately or you will be shot down. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged. I was wondering when you guys would show up.”

  “You will fly due west, climb to five thousand feet and circle over open water until we arrive. Then you will accompany us to Moffett Field. If you do not follow my instructions exactly, you will be shot down. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged. You’ll want to take a look at that dock before we leave.”

  He pulled up and turned west, waiting for his escort. There was a glint behind him and he saw two fighters streaking toward him. He was going 325 miles an hour, and the F-16s closed on him like he was standing still. One pulled alongside to his right, while the other stayed behind him.

  Despite the repeated threats to shoot him down, Connor was deeply relieved to see the fighters. His part in this drama was ending. The military and police would take over now. He noticed that his hands shook on the plane’s controls.

  Just as the F-16 pulled up beside him, Julian’s voice shouted in his ear. “There’s something going on!”

  “Yeah, I know.” The F-16 to his right turned toward the Deep Seven dock and Connor paralleled his escort. Apparently the pilot was going to take Connor’s advice about seeing for himself. “It’s the military. They just ordered me to stop.”

  “No! Not in the air—on the dock!”

  “What?” Connor pressed his head against the side of the cockpit, but the plane’s nose blocked his view of the dock.

  “Missile! Missile!” Julian shouted.

  Connor caught a glimpse of something small flying up toward the two planes. He pushed the throttle all the way open and rolled to the right. The White Knight snapped over and out of the missile’s path.

  For a split-second, Connor thought he was safe. Then the lead F-16 exploded yards away. A wave of light, heat, and sound enveloped the P-51.

  Connor dragged back on the stick, trying to keep the plane’s nose up as it hurtled over the dock. The altimeter said he was at three hundred feet. He tried to turn left and away from the gunners below, but his rudder seemed to be gone.

  Two hundred feet. Rattling, roaring, and garbled shouting filled his ears as he fought to keep the White Knight in the air. Bullets slammed into the canopy, making impact craters that looked like flattened snowballs.

  One hundred feet. He was over the water again, so close that he could see small waves in the moonlight. No way he was going to be able to nurse the plane to an airport.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Ditching at sea!” he shouted to whomever was listening.

  Sixty feet. He slowed as much as he dared to lessen the impact, trying to keep the nose up the whole time.

  Fifty feet. Forty. Thirty. He braced himself for the crash. “Dear God, please—”

  The water came up and hit him like a wall.

  66

  MITCH’S HEAD HURT AND HIS EYES STUNG, BUT HE FORCED THEM OPEN. He couldn’t see the fire, but he could feel and hear it. The wall behind him was too hot to touch. The roar and crackle of hungry flames grew louder every second.

  Dim red and yellow flickering lit the wreckage around him. The roof slanted down from one wall to the floor, like a giant lean-to. Wiring hung around them like jungle vines. Tools, bullets and debris carpeted the floor.

  The woman—Allie—was still in the chair, but a beam lay across her and she wasn’t moving. He tried to crawl over to her, but his hands and feet were still duct-taped together. Someone needed to help her—and him.

  “Hey, Ed.”

  No response.

  He looked around, but Ed was nowhere to be seen. He took a deep breath to call out, but smoke burned in his lungs and he choked. His head spun, but he tried again. “Ed!”

  Even though his voice was little more than a loud croak, help came. A figure approached, but he couldn’t make it out in the dim light and smoke. Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and dragged him backward along the wall.

  They were outside and a cacophony of new noises erupted. Sirens, shouting, gunshots, and explosions ripped through the air. Flashing red and blue lights competed with the bright white from the remaining lights on the security fence. Men ran all around him, shouting and carrying guns. Columns of smoke rose into the night sky. Floating fires and speedboat searchlights lit the water.

  His rescuer pulled him out of the action and deposited him a few yards from the edge of the dock. “Thanks, Ed. I owe you, buddy. The girl is still in there.”

  He was alone. A chilly sea breeze blew over him. It made him shiver, but it was a welcome change from the smoke-filled heat in the building.

  He heard a low moan beside him and turned his head. Ed lay beside him on the cold concrete. So who had rescued them? He looked around, but whoever it was had disappeared.

  67

  ALLIE FLOATED BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS, REALITY and unreality. Sometimes she was almost fully alert and knew that she was drugged and lying in a hospital room, hooked to an IV and a battery of monitors. But most of the time she was elsewhere.

  The faces came and went. Sometimes they crowded around her—Mom, Dad, Connor, Trudi, strangers with white coats and nameplates, the torturer in the ski mask. Other times they left her utterly alone and she felt she was the only one left in the world.

  The pain, though, was always with her. Mostly it was a dull buzz in her head and left arm that troubled her sleep and never let her get quite comfortable. But if she moved too quickly or bumped her arm against something, it would come in great blinding jags that made her cry out.

  Her dreams were vivid, and many of them involved interrogation. In one, she was back in the chair at Deep Seven and the two men—one with a mask and one without—were pounding her with questions in some foreign language, and then pounding her with their fists when she couldn’t answer. Another time, she sat in a conference room at Doyle & Brown and Connor talked to her. She couldn’t follow what he was saying, but she knew it must have something to do with her lies. His eyes were like golden-brown lasers that physically hurt her. She couldn’t find a way to answer him, just apologize over and over as his eyes burned into her.

  But the worst—and most vivid—dream involved Mom and Dad. They sat beside her bed, looking at her with loving, worried faces. Sometimes she saw Mom’s face and sometimes she saw Dad’s, but she always heard Mom’s voice. Their questions weren’t harsh or judgmental, just hurt and uncomprehending—and that made them worst of all. How had she gotten into trouble like this? Why hadn’t she said something? How had all this happened?

  Unlike in her other dreams, Allie answered them. The words poured out of her, gushing out through a broken dam in the depths of her soul. Old, stagnant words, kept bottled up too long. Sharp-edged questions of her own that had cut her like broken glass whenever she touched them over the years.

  Why did Dad give her the awful secret of his death? Why did he make her lie? Those were his last words to her, to anyone. She was the one driving that night. Why couldn’t she just say so and let the hurt out? Why? But no, Dad made her lock that secret away in a
box. Was it any surprise that she learned to push other painful things into that same box? That was Dad’s last lesson. Was it her fault that she learned it too well?

  But then Connor was standing there looking at her like she was sewage and telling her it was her fault. That was so unfair. And it was even more unfair that he was right.

  So she tried to fix things, but they kept getting more broken. And Jason Tompkins was still dead. And Dad was still dead. And… and…

  She was crying then, babbling meaningless sounds. Mom’s voice was crying with her. Finally, she slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Allie awoke—really awoke—for the first time early on a sunny morning. Fresh light slanted in through three windows and cast wide, bright rectangles across her bed, the sturdy guest furniture around it… and Mom. She lay in a recliner with a hospital blanket over her, snoring softly. Her faded blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail and the top of a Cal Berkeley sweatshirt (a gift from Allie) was visible over the top of the blanket. She looked younger—sleep had smoothed away many of the care lines on her face.

  Allie sat up—and instantly regretted it. Sharp pain knifed through her head and left arm. She gasped, which gave her a coughing fit. And that, of course, just made her head hurt more.

  Mom opened her tired blue eyes. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Just lie down. The nurse will be here in a minute. She pushed a button on a small box attached to a thick white cord. “I’m here. Mom’s here. Everything is all right.” She got up and walked over to the bed, hands held out.

  Allie gingerly lay down again. “Hey, Mom. It’s good to see you.” Her mouth tasted like sour cotton. “Could I get some water? Maybe a cup of coffee too? Black.”

  The door opened and a thin Asian woman in a white uniform walked in carrying a clipboard. She looked at Allie and smiled. “Good morning.” She glanced over at Mom. “Morning, Sandy.”

  The nurse looked back at Allie. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit by a truck. And I could really use a cup of coffee and some water.”

  The nurse laughed with grating perkiness. “Well, it sounds like you’re back with us. Let me just ask you a few questions. What’s your full name?”

  “Allison Christine Whitman.”

  “Very good. Where are you?”

  Allie looked around. “Beats me. Looks like a hospital room.”

  Nurse Perky gave Allie an approving smile. “That’s right! Two for two. Now for the last one: who’s that over there?” She pointed at Allie’s mother.

  “That’s my mom. Her name is Sandra Whitman.”

  “Excellent! Doctor Andrews was hoping you’d start making more sense if we reduced your medication levels. He’ll be in to talk to you on his morning rounds.” Nurse Perky glanced at the monitors by Allie’s bed and jotted something on the clipboard. She looked up and flashed another smile at Allie and her mom. “Bye.”

  “Can I get some coffee?”

  But she was gone.

  Mom folded her blanket and hung it over the back of her chair. “I’ll get you a cup, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  While she was gone, Allie collected her thoughts. She remembered going to Deep Seven, meeting Ed and Mitch, calling 911, and then getting caught. After that, things got patchy and jumbled. She recalled men questioning and hurting her. Then there had been an explosion and fire. That all made some sense, but she also remembered seeing Connor’s plane, which made no sense at all. And her mind held dim images of him interrogating her too. Dad had been there too, and— An uneasy thought crept into her mind. What had Nurse Perky said about her making sense now? What exactly had she said while drugged?

  Mom walked back in carrying two steaming paper cups. She handed one to Allie. “There you go, honey.”

  “Mom, I was wondering, um… Well, have you been here for a while?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Clayton called me three days ago, and I got here as soon as I could. I’ve been in your room ever since.”

  “Did I— was I talking?”

  She smiled. “Oh, yes. You had a lot to say, but most of it didn’t make any sense. You also talked to people who weren’t here. The doctor said the medication and your injuries made you confused. It was almost like you were half asleep, half awake.”

  Allie twisted her sheet in her right hand and looked down. “Did I talk about Dad?”

  “You did.”

  Allie looked up at Mom’s face. The care lines were back, deeper than ever. She looked exhausted. “What did I say?” “You said a lot of things.” She pressed her lips into a thin, pale line for a moment.

  “You said that he made you lie. You said you… you said something about his death.”

  “That it was my fault?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  Allie gulped her coffee, as if the hot liquid would make it easier to speak. It merely scalded her mouth and throat.

  She coughed and took a deep breath. “It was my fault. I was driving.”

  There. It was out there. It was finally, finally out there. After all these years, the truth sat out in the open like a boulder that she had finally dropped from her shoulders. But would that boulder forever block the path that connected her and Mom?

  Mom stared at Allie for several seconds, her mild eyes filled with pain. She pinched them shut. “Oh, Allie. You’ve carried that all these years.”

  Mom bowed her head, and Allie could see tears falling into her lap.

  Allie felt her own eyes fill and her throat swell. “Dad made me promise not to tell you. He said you wouldn’t understand. He wanted me to blame him, so I did and… and…” Her words dissolved into sobs.

  “He was trying to protect you.”

  She nodded and buried her face in her sheets. Waves of agony swept over her. This was like having surgery done on her soul with no anesthetic.

  “Allie, who is Jason Tompkins?”

  She looked up and saw the reproach and fear in her mother’s face. “I talked about him too?”

  Mom nodded.

  Allie took another sip of her coffee to calm herself. “Mom, there are some other things you should know. Actually, there are a lot of things.”

  For the next hour, Allie talked and her mother listened. Mom stopped crying but didn’t otherwise react. She just sat there and absorbed what her daughter was saying with a blank look.

  Allie filled in all the secret gaps in her life: Erik’s meth use, Jason Tompkins’s death, Blue Sea’s blackmail, her fraud at Deep Seven, why she ran away, why she came back. Everything.

  Then she reached the end and fell silent. It had been surprisingly easy. Once the first big confession was out, it was as if the cork was out of the bottle. She could pour it all out, and she had. Now she felt empty.

  The two women sat quietly. The monitor beside the bed beeped softly and a bird sang outside the window.

  Allie drained the cold dregs of her coffee. Awful stuff, even for a hospital. “I suppose you hate me now. It’s okay—pretty much everyone I know hates me. I even hate me. I deserve it.”

  Mom reached over and took her hand where it lay on the damp sheet. “Oh, Allie. I don’t hate you. I love you, sweetheart. I just… it’s as if you’ve been a complete stranger and I just found out about it. I, I don’t quite know what to think. But I don’t hate you.” She smiled and patted Allie’s hand. “And I don’t think that Mr. Norman hates you either. He’s been in here every day for at least an hour.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. We had some good conversations about you.”

  “What did—”

  A sharp knock at the door interrupted her. Nurse Perky was back, and she had brought an equally chipper doctor with her. “Well, I understand you’re feeling better, Allison.”

  She thought for a moment. “You know, I think I am.”

  68

  KIM TAE-WOO, KNOWN TO MOST PEOPLE IN THE WEST AS CHO DAE- jung or David Cho, lay in his hospital bed, watching the ceiling. During
the battle on the dock, he had suffered a superficial bullet wound, smoke inhalation, and some cuts and bruises. The smoke inhalation left him short of breath and prone to coughing fits, but he was getting better. He suspected that he could be released soon—if the Americans had any intention of releasing him.

  He doubted they would. Two heavily armed guards stood inside the door, and whenever it opened he could see more men outside. As soon as he was well, he expected to be moved to a high-security prison somewhere. Perhaps Guantanamo or wherever the Americans kept terrorists these days.