Hard Fall

by Ridley Pearson

  “You said he had two altimeters.”

  Meecham clearly didn’t like being interrupted. “Before a plane takes off, the copilot cranks up the air packs—he pressurizes the cabin. Right? He does it wrong, you feel it in your ears. Know what I mean? If you’re Bernard, to make sure the plane is aloft, you use an altimeter—preset to some given altitude—as your first gate. That way you’re insured the other gates aren’t activated until the cabin is pressurized. If the bomb goes off in the air, the more damage and the less evidence. Lockerbie was a good example of that; Lockerbie was supposed to blow over water. Anyway, the barometer is your first gate.

  “If I were building it,” he continued, “I’d use a second gate—a clock timer of some sort—to make sure the bird is well downrange before she blows—”

  “Casios? We’re pretty sure he bought two Casios.”

  “I saw that in the report.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. With Bernard, it’s possible I suppose. You have to be into microelectronics—chip circuit design—if you’re going to pull the guts out of a Casio and make anything happen. It’s certainly possible. So the order is: The air packs crank up the cabin pressure; the first gate, the altimeter, opens, which, by providing electricity, turns on the clock timer. Now that would be a command device we might see. But it’s not what Bernard did here. This glass bulb on yours changes all the rules. This bulb means Bernard’s detonator contained a third gate. That’s the only explanation.”

  “Meaning?”

  Meecham had prepared himself for this meeting. He reached to his right and retrieved a black dial, a glass bulb with two wires, and a small clock. He lined them up in this order. “My guess? Three gates, Michigan: an altimeter switch that opens gate number one after the cabin is pressurized; then a mercury switch as gate number two.” He tipped the switch. “The nose goes up and the second gate opens. Bernard has established two rules: the cabin is pressurized, the plane has taken off.”

  “And the Casio?”

  “The Casio is the last gate. After the plane is pressurized and the nose has lifted, the clock starts running down.”

  “Why the weird face?” Daggett asked.

  “I gotta tell you, a guy like Bernard doesn’t make a detonator this complicated without damn good reason. So what’s the reason?”

  “He wants to make sure the plane is airborne before the thing goes off. Isn’t that it?”

  Meecham shook his head. “It’s too complicated for that. The way you do that is set your timer for a good long time. A couple of hours. If the plane is delayed on the ground, then by setting the clock to run late, you cover yourself. No, it’s not that.

  “Let me demonstrate the problem here, Michigan.” Meecham picked up the glass bulb. It contained a shifting blob of mercury. He tilted it so the mercury held in the end of the bulb without the two electrodes. “This is the off position. No contact between these poles. No juice. The detonator is inactive. The timer is not yet hot. But during takeoff, this mercury runs to this end of the bulb and it is hot,” he said, duplicating the motion. “There is now juice running from the battery to the timer—the first and second gates are both open. The timer starts to run. But here’s the catch …” He tilted the bulb back again; the mercury slid away from the twin contacts, breaking the electrical connection. “As soon as the plane levels off, the mercury switch disconnects the juice. The timer will stop. No juice means no bomb. The whole fucking thing goes dead.”

  “So you’ve got them in the wrong order,” Daggett said, after a moment of thought.

  “No way. No other order to put them in, Michigan. At least not one that fits with what we know about the way flight sixty-four went down. It made it, what, a mile, two miles downrange? Nothing. What this tells us,” he said, pointing to his desk, “is that Bernard built this thing to activate at a specific time, during takeoff, while the plane is still in a climb. That is the only way to explain this. So you tell me: Now how much fucking sense does that make?”

  Daggett found himself back with Dr. Barnes from Duhning. The simulator, with Ward at the wheel, had duplicated a dozen takeoffs, all using differing times between takeoff and loss of pilot control. Barnes had wondered the same thing: Why do it?

  “Why do it?” Meecham was still talking. Words and faces were mixing around in Daggett’s head. “We have no evidence of an explosion. No evidence of any explosive material on board. We got squat!”

  Daggett said, “You mentioned this mini-detonator last time. You said it burned ‘hot.’ Does that mean it would be hot enough to start a fire?”

  “Start a fire?” His face lit up. “You kidding me? Does the pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic? It’ll melt fuckin’ metal!”

  Finally, the repetition inside the simulator made sense. Finally he had something to take Mumford. He came around the desk, took Meecham’s head between his hands, and kissed the man on the mouth.

  Chaz Meecham, wiping his lips, shouted, “You’re fucking crazy!”

  Nodding vigorously, Daggett grabbed the file. “Would you repeat all this for Mumford if I asked?”

  “If you promise not to do that again.”

  “I promise.”

  22

  * * *

  He LED her into the bedroom.

  Since he needed a furnished house, he used a complaint about the furnishings as his pretense for getting her upstairs. But she knew better. The sexuality had grown so intense on the drive over that neither had said much. As she climbed the stairs, she felt her knees weaken.

  Carl opened the window. Midmorning light streamed in, followed by a slight breeze and the distant, melodious accompaniment of songbirds. In the relative silence, he directed her to the edge of the bed and ran his hands in her hair. She closed her eyes. “That’s delicious,” she said. He kissed her mouth and she welcomed it.

  Carl scooped an arm under her knees, lifted her off her feet and set her down gently on the bed. He opened her blouse and his shirt and he pressed himself against her. Tears fell from her eyes. He asked, in a voice she could hardly hear, if he should stop. She shook her head no.

  He gently stole the remainder of her clothes, lost his own onto the floor somewhere, and sat alongside her. Tenderly, carefully, he browsed every inch of her with fingertips that felt like feathers. The breeze ruffled the curtain and the sound of the birds grew even louder. A bold sparrow dared to observe them from the windowsill.

  This felt dangerous. Her fears drove her pleasures higher, wind to her fire. Carl refused to have it over with quickly. This stranger milked every sensation he could from her, stretched every experience as if to test her tenacity. To challenge her. Twice she called out for him to enter her. Twice he whispered back, “No.” And twice she let herself go.

  Perhaps that was the real thrill: the surrender. She turned herself over to him. Her skin, her nerves, her innermost privacies, her self. This skillful man owned her for these long minutes. He drew imaginary patterns on her skin, finger-painted her thighs, drew her willingly open until she was fully offered to him. He kissed her there for ages, played with her, toyed with her, drove her to the edge of frenzy, only to retreat and settle her again. “My God,” she heard herself cry in a shuddering whimper. He kissed and tongued his way from her navel to her breasts, and back again. There was no end to his patience. He indulged himself with her, drove her clear to the edge and then past it, until she flooded with an intense heat that soothed her and carried her off so far that she neither heard him nor felt him. She reached down and pulled for him, but he would not give her this. He generously refused.

  Minutes, hours, weeks later? their mouths suddenly met, hot and wet, and he penetrated her at this instant. She cried out with joy. She felt him swell inside her. Deeper and deeper. Was there no end to him? She felt his rhythms. A connection so full and sweet, so tender and yet so filled with authority. Yes, he owned her.

  He pulled back and withdrew. “No,” she murmured, wanting him. He teased her entrance. Toyed with her. She opened her ey
es and tried to focus on his face, but found it impossible. He was smiling. She knew that much. She could feel it from him. Dreamy and distant, she retired to a place so full of joy and pleasure that she wanted to die. “Please,” she said, feeling her lips curl into a sleepy smile.

  He delivered himself slowly. Smoothly. Further and further. Totally. She arched her back to accommodate him. His hot tongue found her breasts and she felt herself explode. Never anything like this. Never anything close.

  She felt a complete and total whole with him. No longer two halves. No names. No faces. No identities. The same. Equals. His pleasure was hers. Her movement was his. Their moment was this.

  He went rigid, from toe to head, and erupted inside her. She saw flames. They cried out together. The bird took flight in a soft sputtering of wing. The two lovers convulsed and trembled, cried out and laughed, collapsed in a tangle of sweat and heartbeats.

  Naked, he smoked a cigarette by the window. He needed those keys. He needed to clear his head and get back on track. It wasn’t easy. She lay peacefully wrapped in the blankets, half asleep. He could feel her staring at him. He studied the backyard. “I would love it here,” he said in a distant voice that he hadn’t intended. What was happening to him? He felt unable to focus. There was much work to be done and he had no desire to do it. Emotions flooded him, so foreign that before he could prevent it, he became a victim to them. He felt like the juggler who took on one too many items and now found the task before him impossible—watched before his eyes as the circling objects defied his attempts to control them.

  “Would?” she asked.

  “Will,” he corrected, hating himself for his continuing deceit. Could he tell her? Could he possibly risk the truth? The truth? It was nothing but another of the objects in the slowly degenerating circle. “This is the way I will always think of this room,” he said. “Us. Now. This moment.”

  “You seem sad.”

  “Extremely happy, I assure you. If I could preserve this moment, if I could lock that door over there, the two of us inside … forever. Well, that would be my little piece of heaven.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “Can I?”

  “You don’t sound convinced,” she said.

  “You have another life. I’ve interfered. Should I sound convinced?”

  “I think you should.” She threw the covers off. He looked at her. She had a fine body. It had lost its youth, in places, its shape. But there was no body he would have rather seen at this moment. It was perfect. It was her. “Did I show you the two-headed shower?” she asked in a suggestive, humorous tone. “All European tile. Imported. Pressure sensitive controls. May I show you the shower?” she asked, coming off the bed toward him.

  She was magnificent, he thought. He tossed the cigarette out the window and watched as it tumbled, end over end, and the sparks scattered on the brick terrace. She headed straight for him and pressed herself against him, wet and warm, and he felt himself begin to swell. “Or should we just stay here in the chair?” she asked, taking him fully in hand and stroking him against her sex.

  “Why not both?” he asked.

  “Indeed?” she replied, helping him enter her. She closed her eyes and hung her chin on his shoulder.

  He listened gratefully to the singing of the birds. He took her firmly beneath the buttocks and carried her to the chest of drawers where he set her down. He drew her ankles high around his back and found her source of pleasure again. He watched her face squirm with his experiments.

  Then she bit his shoulder, and they both came at once.

  Following a brief nap and a failed shower because of no hot water, they toweled themselves clean, joking about how they would smell. Slowly, reluctantly, they dressed.

  Kort did what he felt he had to do. With the steady, sure voice of a cold-blooded professional he said, “Toss me your keys. I’ll steal your car and find us some take-out food.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “That will spoil any surprises I cook up.”

  “You’re an incorrigible romantic. You know that, Carl?”

  “I try,” he replied.

  “No, you don’t try. It’s natural. That’s what makes you so appealing.”

  Natural? he wondered. Call me by my real name, he willed. Call my bluff. Whatever you do, don’t hand me those keys!

  She fumbled through her purse looking for the keys and, finding them, threw them at him. He caught them effortlessly, a frog’s tongue snagging the fly.

  He stared at them in the palm of his hands: the keys. A simple little group of keys. A dozen ways he might have obtained them, some easier than others, and yet he had elected this route. Why?

  “Carl? Something wrong?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “I’m starved. Ravenous. Stop thinking.” She pointed toward the door. “Be off with you!”

  “Whatever you say,” he said.

  Copying the keys was a painless exercise. He pocketed his set, bought them some deli sandwiches and potato salad, and returned to the car. Here, as he was finding a stable location to rest the small bags of hot food, he came across an unexpected bonus: a shopping list written on the back of an envelope addressed to Mr. Cameron Daggett, listing Daggett’s street address. This saved him from having to shadow Carrie—or Daggett, God forbid—until being led to the house. It briefly cheered him up. But as he returned to the small cottage, his good spirits waned.

  Parked in the driveway, he sat behind the wheel for several long minutes, wondering where life might have taken them if they had found each other under different circumstances. A heavy sadness filled him. Feelings he had suppressed for years bubbled to the surface and spit at him, despite his efforts to contain them. He felt drugged: an unwilling victim of his own conscience. He had violated her, physically, emotionally, and now criminally. He had stolen from her. He had stolen the truth, stolen her trust.

  He hated himself.

  He slammed the car door hard. He fingered the gate’s wrought-iron latch and approached the house solemnly. Angry. Confused.

  Oh, yes, he reminded himself sardonically: he had accomplished his goal. Bravo! The keys were his.

  But what of his soul?

  23

  * * *

  Mumford’s corner office held them all easily, with room left over for a volleyball game. The pathologist, a Dr. Ben-David; Chaz Meecham from Explosives; and Lynn Greene occupied one of the two leather couches. Ben-David was a small man with pinpoint eyes and dark skin. Meecham looked his usual all-American, and today, a little younger than his forty-odd years. Lynn looked not a penny less than a million bucks.

  Daggett took one of the two leather chairs, leaving Pullman isolated on the opposing couch. Mumford appeared comfortable sitting in his leather high-back chair, enthroned behind his expansive walnut desk.

  Daggett could no longer act alone. Without Mumford’s blessing, he could not raise the manpower necessary to stop Kort from whatever it was he had planned, and so, two years of investigation came down to this one meeting. If Daggett failed to convince Mumford that the crash of flight 64 was not an accident, but sabotage, then he was to begin his lengthy report on the Backman bombing. With three days to go until the Pentagon meeting—which he still believed was directly related to Kort’s target—everything came down to his performance over the next twenty minutes.

  He felt well prepared for this meeting. He had phoned each person individually so they might know exactly what was expected of them. He was to become a conductor now, and like a conductor he tapped his pencil against the edge of folders piled high on the coffee table in front of him. As with music miraculously coming off the written page, he hoped that from this ensemble, a wealth of fact and supposition might develop into a convincing explanation for the behavior of AmAirXpress flight 64. An explanation was all he hoped for.

  He pulled out his list and raised his voice, hoping, against the odds, he might sound confident. Public sp
eaking was not his gift. “First off, I’d like to run around the room with a few questions. I think that will give us a look at some of the background, some of the groundwork involved.” He looked around for a glass of water. Seeing none, he continued.

  “My first question is to Dr. Ben-David. He’s both reviewed the autopsy protocols and has had direct discussions with the medical examiners in California who performed the autopsies. Specifically, the topic has been blood toxicology. What I wanted to ask you, Doctor, is whether or not you have any way of knowing if a person was unconscious prior to death?”

  Ben-David had an unusually high voice, and the annoying habit of pulling at his ear. “What’s interesting about this, is that just such a question came up about four years ago. In the medical examiner community …” he added. “And then, as now, it involved a plane crash. The concern was that the pilot may have blacked out only moments before impact. Critical moments, I’m afraid. Leading pathologists were pulled together to research the possibility of proving or disproving the pilot’s consciousness at the moment of death. The speculation was that by measuring the levels of lactic acid in the blood, we could determine the level of stress just prior to death. High levels might indicate the pilot was struggling to control the aircraft. Low levels might indicate the pilot had died before he was even aware of a problem. But it never really worked out. The tests were inconclusive. That’s a roundabout way of saying, no, we can’t tell—not yet, anyway.”

  He had Mumford’s interest. That was a good sign. Daggett asked, “And the cause of death to the flight crew of AmAirXpress flight sixty-four? It’s listed as a result of impact. ‘Body fragmentation,’ is the term, I think. Do you go along with that?”