Breaking Point

by Dana Haynes

  The supervisor hung up, searched the wall for the red acrylic clipboard and a telephone number, and called the National Transportation Safety Board emergency number in Washington, D.C.

  13

  PAUL MCKINNEY’S CELL PHONE rang at 12:02 A.M. Friday. He was up anyway, hunting for an antacid and angry at himself because that bowl of chili at 9:00 P.M. had been a dumb idea and he’d known it at the time.

  “McKinney here.”

  The voice on the other end said, “Chief? State police. Helena Regional reports they may have an airliner down in the state forest, not two miles from Twin Pines. Figured you’d want to know.”

  “No kidding! Are you guys airborne tonight?”

  “Sure are. Chopper’s outbound, heading your direction.”

  The police chief of Twin Pines, Montana, brushed back the curtains in his kitchen and saw the running lights of the state police helicopter heading straight over his little town.

  “Thanks for the call. I’ll get on up there, see if I can help.”

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  Her BlackBerry chimed to life. Beth Mancini jerked awake. She sat curled on the love seat, realizing she’d fallen asleep halfway through All About Eve. Dammit—that was two nights in a row! She contemplated holding it for a third try but—given that her special work phone was buzzing at her—decided just to send it back to Netflix. Chances were, she’d be on a flight within two hours.

  She connected the line, knowing it could only be her assistant. “Hey, Rick.”

  “Beth? We’ve got reports of a Claremont down over central Montana. It went down after eleven P.M. their time.”

  “Okay,” she said, reaching for the remote and shutting down the TV. “Meet you in the office.”

  Her heart raced. This would be her first major crash as intergovernmental liaison.

  MONTANA

  A mile from the fuselage, one of the dismembered engines hissed. Electricity arced between two wires, and a pool of kerosene—airplane fuel—ignited. In less than forty seconds, the engine, its propellers, and the intact section of the wing were on fire.

  Being August, the underbrush in the vicinity caught fire, too.

  The blaze began feeding itself with a long line of jet fuel that stretched about half a mile to the second engine. And from there to the fuselage.

  * * *

  Kiki half carried Tommy out through a great gouge in the ceiling of the fuselage, about halfway back. Outside, in the forest, she gasped: a trail of downed trees and debris stretched as far as the eye could see.

  She found a freshly created stump and helped Tommy sit. “Okay, I’m going to go find survivors.”

  “Hey,” he gasped, the blood on his scalp glinting in the moonlight. “Love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She limped back into the fuselage, stepping gingerly on the balls of her bare feet, knowing that shattered glass and shards of aluminum would be everywhere.

  Tommy sat, dizzy, gasping, nauseated. He heard someone moan to his left. He staggered to his feet, stumbled a half-dozen steps, came to a girl, a teenager, lying on her stomach. Tommy dropped to his knees. He felt her pulse. “Ah shit,” he muttered, seeing that her left sleeve was black with blood.

  He ripped her T-shirt, revealed a sweet bleeder just below her shoulder. The brachial vein.

  Tommy shrugged out of his sport jacket, used the sleeve to tie a pressure bandage around the girl’s arm. She spit leaves out of her mouth. “Am I dead?”

  “Nope,” Tommy said. “Course, your doctor’s got a concussion, so…”

  A man crouched by Tommy’s side, laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. What happened to the plane?”

  Tommy blinked blearily. The guy was a little out of focus. He had silver hair. He held a piece of broken steel.

  Tommy’s mouth was too dry to swallow. “The hell should I know. Hey, put that shit down, man. No souvenirs. This is a crash scene.”

  As he spoke, Tommy turned the girl over. Beyond the bleeding right arm, she appeared to be okay. The silver-haired man knelt, brushed blond hair from her eyes. “Do you know what happened to the plane?”

  She shook her head. “W-where are we?”

  “Okay,” the stranger said, and smiled with confidence at Tommy. “Stay with her.”

  “Sure,” he slurred, as the man stood and strode off.

  * * *

  Kiki found the body of the boy who’d been playing Nerf football with the copilot at Reagan. He had a large gash in his abdomen. Kiki stared at him, then turned and bent at the waist and threw up, holding her hair back. Her eyes teared up. He had died quickly, she noted. That was probably a blessing.

  She heard sobbing. A largish woman in her sixties hung sideways from one of the portside seats. The woman wore pink velour sweats with MALIBU across her bosom in cursive. Kiki helped her unbuckle her seat belt and supported her as she climbed down. The woman’s eyes bulged as she stepped down out of her seat. She was sobbing, hysterical. “My leg! Oh my god, my leg!”

  Kiki—who rowed in San Francisco Bay and played beach volleyball—put the woman’s arm over her shoulder, her own arm behind her. “Not a problem. Lean on me.”

  Once they were out of the airliner and twenty feet clear, Kiki helped the woman sit. They both peeled back the cuff of her sweat bottoms to find a fragment of white anklebone protruding from the skin. The woman took one look at the bone fragment and her eyes rolled up in her head. She passed out.

  * * *

  Kiki returned to the fuselage, stepping gingerly to avoid glass, and found another survivor in seat 7C. It was the first survivor she’d found in any of the left-hand seats. It was a man, unconscious. He was small, maybe five-two, and appeared Middle Eastern, wearing a tweed suit, a black tie, and a white shirt. He looked professorial, she thought, peering at him through the dusty dark.

  A bright light engulfed the unconscious man. Kiki turned. A man stood behind her with a Maglite, holding it up near his left shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked. He wore dark clothing and good hiking boots, his hair silver and cut very short.

  “Yeah. Help me get him up.” She bent over, unbuckled the man.

  With the seats cocked at a ninety-degree angle, it was tough to do. The stranger helped lift the man up, took him by his shoulders as Kiki took his knees. As the stranger began walking backward toward the hole in the fuselage, he said, “So what happened to the plane?”

  She had forgotten to ask Tommy. “No idea. I was asleep.”

  * * *

  Tommy knelt over the surprisingly calm teenager, his fists in the soil, fighting the urge to puke again. His vision blurred and his arms shook.

  “You okay?” the girl lying on her back asked.

  “Yeah. Hit my head.”

  “I know,” she said, and pointed to Tommy’s face. He reached up to touch his temple. His fingers came away tacky with blood. “It looks scary.”

  He mustered up a wobbly smile. “Nah. I’m okay. You’re awful calm.”

  The girl said, “I’m on Prozac.”

  “Your doctor’s got you on Prozac? How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Tommy said, “Your doc’s an asshole.”

  She said, “Yeah.” After a beat, she raised her good arm, stuck out one finger. “Can you help that guy?”

  Tommy followed her finger. A man lay on the ground, on his side, curled up and moaning.

  “Shit.” Tommy breathed deeply, steadied himself, rose to his feet, fell to one knee, and tried it again. “Don’t move, darlin’.”

  He staggered like a punchy boxer, made it to a pine tree. He leaned against it, caught his breath. He slid to his knees by the wounded man’s side.

  “Hey. Buddy. You okay?”

  He reached out and shook the man’s shoulder.

  “N-no,” the guy replied, his teeth chattering. “I’m … I’m fucked up.”

  Tommy shuffled his knees closer. He touched the man’s hunched back, his neck. The man lay in the fe
tal position, arms pressed against his torso, knees up.

  “I’m a doctor, man. Let me get a look.”

  Tommy lifted the upward-facing arm—the man lay on his side—away from his gut and saw a large puncture in his abdomen. A portion of the man’s lower intestines was revealed.

  “Well, shit … Okay, hold on.”

  Tommy looked around in the moon-glow gloom, found an airline pillow. He shuffled on his knees through the leaves, grabbed it. He brought it back, put it within the moaning man’s line of vision.

  “We’re gonna make a pressure bandage. Okay?”

  The guy nodded. He unwound a little from the tight fetal position, hissed as Tommy pressed the pillow against the gaping wound in his gut. Tommy whipped off his own belt, passed it around the pillow and the guy’s waist. He cinched it tight, buckled it in the back.

  “Okay, buddy. Just … Cavalry’s comin’.”

  * * *

  Kiki and the silver-haired stranger set the unconscious man down about twenty feet from the fuselage. Kiki went to work touching his arms, legs, and torso, looking for obvious wounds. She found none. She wasn’t aware that the stranger had walked away.

  * * *

  The fire reached the second engine, which ignited in a great whoooosh! A spear of flame continued moving toward the fuselage.

  * * *

  From where he knelt, next to the man with the gut wound, Tommy heard tak!

  Tommy froze. “You hear that?” he asked.

  The guy in the fetal position moaned.

  Tommy tried to shake his head, but that produced nausea. “Coulda swore I heard—”

  Tak!

  He froze again. “You heard that, right? The fuck is that?”

  Tak!

  A dozen feet away, a wounded, forty-foot-tall Douglas fir went tak! tak! tak-craaaaack! and fell over. It crashed three feet from Tommy and the gut-wound guy. Leaves and dirt blossomed. A dead bird thumped against Tommy’s chest.

  Tommy coughed as the leaves and dirt whirled past him.

  Tommy blinked, then pulled a Star of David on a silver chain out of his shirt and kissed it. “Fuckin’-A!”

  * * *

  Far apart in the ruined fuselage, both Kiki and Calendar turned at the sound of the tree falling. Kiki flinched at the loud crash. Calendar did not.

  * * *

  As the rustling ended, Tommy heard more moaning. He grunted, rising, stumbling sideways, climbing over the newly felled fir tree. He circled two more trees, found another survivor, on her back, keening in pain. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.

  Tommy collapsed to his knees beside her. She was maybe sixty, heavyset with big, fleshy arms, in a Malibu sweatshirt. She wore ankle socks but no shoes. “Hey. You okay?”

  She stirred, eyes fluttering open. “Who … who are you?”

  “I’m a doctor. Where does it hurt?”

  “My … my ankle.” She began crying. “I can see the bone!”

  Tommy wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. He lifted the cuff of her sweats: the ankle was broken, a chalky white stick of bone protruding. She had to be in some serious level of shock not to be screaming.

  “This woman pulled me out. She saved me.”

  “Gorgeous redhead?”

  The woman with a portion of her ankle outside her skin said, “God oh my god oh my god oh my god…”

  “Okay. Just … here.”

  She lifted her pant cuff, looked at the bit of bone. She cried harder.

  Tommy found a man’s sweatshirt in the dirt. He brushed it off, looped it softly around her leg. He looked into her eyes—she wasn’t in focus, thanks to his concussion. “’Kay, now, I’m gonna push this bit of bone back through the hole in your leg. Breaking the ankle hurt, I know, but this next bit’s gonna hurt worse.”

  Sweat beaded on her jowly face. She nodded.

  Tommy used his thumb to shove the bone back through her skin and she shrieked, eyes squeezed shut. Tommy grabbed both ends of the discarded sweatshirt and yanked them tight around the bleeder. Her mouth fished open but no more sound emerged.

  “You okay?” he asked, but she fell back, limp, unconscious.

  “For the better,” he mumbled to himself. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled back to the fifteen-year-old girl.

  That’s when he saw the fire in the not-too-far distance. He was so dizzy, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe it was moving their way.

  He collapsed to his knees by the girl.

  She said, “Did you see that tree fall?”

  “That…” Tommy huffed, “was fucked up.”

  * * *

  Calendar stepped back into the fuselage and moved forward. He came upon a man strapped into his seat and dangling to his right. He recognized Vejay Mehta, a senior designer at Malatesta, Inc . He was unconscious and unresponsive, but alive. The engineer’s chin rested on his chest. Calendar grabbed the man by the scalp, lifted his head, and slammed the length of pipe into his throat.

  He looked at the seats across the aisle. They were empty but there was enough blood in the left-hand seat to suggest that it had been occupied and the passenger hadn’t survived. He knew from the computers that Christian Dean had been assigned the seat.

  The other seat should have held Andrew Malatesta. It was empty, too.

  Calendar wouldn’t leave until he found both engineers.

  He walked up toward the flight deck, stepping over luggage and bodies and bits of the airliner’s aluminum skin. He found no more survivors. He stepped over the body of a blond flight attendant. The door to the flight deck had come unhinged, hung at a funny angle. He shone his Maglite through the gap.

  A man in the pilot’s uniform of Polestar Airlines rose unsteadily to his feet. “Hey. Get me … get me outta here.”

  Calendar pulled the steel bar out of his belt and placed it near the one hinge still intact. He applied pressure, put one boot up on the cabin wall. The door clanged open, fell on top of the flight attendant’s body.

  “Thank you,” the pilot said. “God bless you.”

  Calendar stepped into the flight deck, put an arm around Miguel Cervantes’s neck, and twisted fast. His spine broke. Miguel died instantly, his body falling back into the sideways ceiling of the flight deck and sliding down to the ground.

  Calendar looked around, saw the dead deer. How odd, he thought. He moved to the side, lifted part of the right-hand pilot’s seat, which had been destroyed. He found part of Jed Holley’s cadaver. Satisfied, he stepped out of the flight deck.

  * * *

  Tommy checked the eyes of the fifteen-year-old girl. In the moonlight, it was tough to tell, but they looked good. “How many fingers,” he said, holding up two.

  “Two.” She lay as he’d moved her, not trying to get up.

  “Straight A’s. Okay, you just lay there and be good.”

  She said, “’Kay.”

  He felt around the makeshift pressure bandage he’d kludged together and didn’t feel much blood. He looked around, squinting in the dark. To his right, six aircraft seats sat; three rows of two, each in the right order. The entire deck beneath them must have slid out, keeping all the seats together.

  Only one seat was occupied. Tommy forced himself to stand, staggered over to the six seats. A woman sat in the third of three rows. Or most of a woman. She’d been decapitated.

  Tommy leaned against the second, or middle, row.

  “Tommy?”

  He peered down between the first and second row of seats that sat so abstractly on the forest floor. He saw a woman lying there, facedown. But the voice he’d heard was Isaiah Grey’s.

  “Tommy … I tried to save her. Jesus, man…”

  Tommy felt the woman’s neck. No pulse. He realized Isaiah was wedged beneath her corpse.

  “I know,” Tommy said. “Let’s get you outta there.”

  * * *

  Calendar walked the length of the fuselage. He moved past the gaping gash in the roof and disappeared into the d
ust just as Kiki stepped back into the nightmarish tube of metal and plastic and glass and death. They were back-to-back, moving in opposite directions, she toward the flight deck.

  Calendar found Christian Dean’s head, neck, and one shoulder halfway back. The rest of the corpse was missing, but Calendar hadn’t any more use for it than Christian, himself, had now.

  * * *

  In the food-services nook, back by the toilets, Andrew Malatesta struggled to sit up. He’d hit his head very hard. His back was killing him and he was pretty certain his left leg was broken. He wiped stinging sweat away from his eyes, looked around for anything that could be used as a crutch.

  A light shone on his face. He squinted up into it. “Gimme a hand.”

  The stranger, oddly enough, sat on the sideways wall next to him. He turned the Maglite on himself, revealing his placid features, his tightly cropped silver hair. “Hello. Andrew Malatesta?”

  After a beat, Andrew’s shoulders sagged. The whole truth was so obvious. He spoke with sorrow and resignation. “You fucking bastard.”

  Andrew’s rage began to overcome his pain. No longer looking for a crutch, his eyes cast about for a weapon.

  Calendar’s light fell on an aluminum attaché case under the food trolley. He leaned forward, pulled on the handle. It didn’t move. He tugged again and it came free.

  He checked. It was locked.

  “This is the sketch pad I’ve heard so much about?” Calendar said, his voice soft, almost drowned out by the hiss and spark of severed wires. “Word is, you’re the sorcerer’s apprentice.”

  “It was a plane full of … innocent people!” Andrew growled.

  “All threats,” Calendar said with true regret, “foreign and domestic.”

  “You leave my wife alone…” he gasped.

  Calendar nodded. “Oh, I can pretty much guarantee you we’ll leave her alone.”

  Andrew stared into his eyes. The silver-haired man smiled a slight, almost timid smile. After a time, Andrew shook his head. Just a little.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  Calendar slammed his elbow into Andrew’s windpipe. He sat with the electronics designer until he died. Then he stood, grabbed the titanium case, and headed out.