Breaking Point

by Dana Haynes

  Calendar’s vision was hazy with a red glow that came not from the nearby fire but from synapses popping discordantly inside his head. “No,” he said.

  After a beat, Barry said, “Say again?”

  “No. I’ve got to finish some business here, first.”

  Barry Tichnor said, “No! Get to it now. We—”

  Calendar broke his cell phone in two, tossed the parts into the wreckage, and turned away.

  He knew that Cates, from Alabama, had served with honor as a U.S. Army Ranger and had been awarded three Purple Hearts. He knew that Dyson, a Pennsylvanian, had been a SEAL and left behind a kid sister who waited tables and attended Penn State. He knew that both soldiers had expected to someday die with their boots on. He knew for a fact that Cates and Dyson had been Christians. It’s why he’d picked them.

  From Calendar’s point of view, Barry Tichnor’s mission was part and parcel of the war on terrorism. Anything that made America stronger made the terrorists weaker. Anyone who stood in the way of that stood with the terrorists. It was as cut-and-dried as that.

  What he did not know was who in this godforsaken town had killed these two good men. He could think of only one way to make sure the right person was punished.

  31

  JACK GOODSPEED CALLED ONE of his crew at the auto-parts store. Within a minute, Jack had his phone on Speaker and the crew member was reading them the Andrew Malatesta speech.

  Ray said, “Deal like that? Could be worth hundreds of millions. That’s a motive.”

  Peter Kim said, “Yes, but we’re in the fortunate position of not caring.”

  When others looked at him oddly, he said, “We’re crash investigators! We don’t care about why. We care about how. That’s all we care about. And right now, we have a potential how. That’s a win, people.”

  He turned to the sturdy FBI agent, noting that Ray rarely moved when he didn’t need to. “Calabrese. You got yourself proof of a crime. The crash is yours.”

  Ray looked around the real estate office, sized up the situation. Other members of the Go-Team studied him as well, waiting to see how their lives were about to change.

  “Nah.” Ray waved it off. “Your crashers don’t know me. You keep the baton, let the suits in D.C. decide who’s in charge later.”

  Peter nodded, thinking not how gallant Ray’s gesture had been but how surprised he was at the agent’s use of logic. “Okay. Lakshmi, arrange to get the rest of the bodies out. Beth?”

  “The number of bodies left unautopsied has been whittled down enough so that the county morgue can now handle the remains. I called them. They’re expecting us.”

  “Right. Agent Calabrese, coordinate with the chief of police, please. His name’s Paul McKinney. He needs to know about this Calendar and that we suspect Teresa has been murdered. Tell him about the bodies of the hit men. Jack, Reu—”

  An air tanker attacked their eardrums yet again. Peter shouting, “What are those?”

  Gene said, “Ilyushin Seven-Six. Damn things can carry forty-four tons of water. And they’re flying gas cans. Stays in the air for about four thousand miles, even fully loaded. And the reason they’re so loud is, they’re so low. Taking on water at Helena Regional, I’m guessing, then cruising at eighty, a hundred feet over this town before hitting the fire lines.”

  Peter blinked at him. “When I said, ‘what are those,’ I was being rhetorical. Jack, Reuben, Hector: go secure the Claremont. Get it airborne before the fire gets here. Get everything back on board the fuselage.”

  Peter turned to Beth. “You and Lakshmi supervise moving out the last few bodies. At this stage, preserving all evidence is our number-one task. Everyone good with that?”

  Gene Whitney hacked a wet cough. “Anybody know where the babe with the guns went?”

  Ray turned. The others, too. Daria had been standing by the door. Now she wasn’t.

  Peter Kim turned to Tommy. “You go with Calabrese. The police station is crammed with firefighters and emergency-med techs. Have someone check your head.”

  “Nothing wrong with my head, Petey.”

  “Hey, you could be bleeding into your brainpan right this second and I’d sleep like a baby tonight. But you croak, and I’ll have Duvall in my face again. Which, you know … Pass.” Peter turned to her. “Kiki. About what I said earlier. Sorry.”

  She nodded but did not smile.

  “Fair nuff.” Tommy stepped forward, proffered his hand.

  After a moment, Peter took it.

  * * *

  Calendar marched stiff-legged back to his SUV but didn’t realize he was doing so. Later on, he wouldn’t remember starting the truck, driving across town to the abandoned feed store he’d hidden his gear in. He wouldn’t remember climbing out of the cab. One minute he was staring at the yellow dozer, the next at the spiderwebbed store. A Russian-made cargolifter roared overhead but he didn’t hear it.

  * * *

  Only three bodies from Polestar Flight 78 flight were left in town. The rest had been taken to Helena for autopsies. While there were more than enough ambulances to get those three bodies out, the traffic jam of evacuees at the town’s edge would make it tough to get ambulances into town.

  Chief McKinney pleaded his case to the superintendent of the Twin Pines/Martin’s Ferry School District, who had finally consented to let Lakshmi transform one of his school buses into a hearse. Again.

  Chip Ogilvy waved a finger in Paul McKinney’s face. “The students would think it’s cool, but if the parents find out, they’ll go ape shit. This never gets out, Paul! Never!”

  HELENA REGIONAL

  Dorina Hande had feared she would never again feel the rush of flying a fighter jet after she’d left the Canadian Air Force.

  Following the first Gulf War, she and a contingent of pilots from the air force, within the Défense Nationale, had been attached to the U.S. Fifty-fifth Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, flying out of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and keeping Saddam’s jets out of the Northern No-Fly Zone. She’d been locked on countless times by antiaircraft batteries. Had been fired on by fire-and-forget missiles, only to climb well out of their range.

  Good times.

  Three weeks after becoming a civilian, Dorina Hande received a flyer in the mail about a career as an air-tanker pilot. She hadn’t been hopeful, but when she shown up at the airport outside Vancouver and taken her first look at the mammoth Ilyushin II-76, with its 165-feet wingspan, it had been love at first sight.

  She was as happy as she’d been over the sands of Iraq, only now she slept in her own bed at night with her partner of seventeen years and two Labrador retrievers.

  The radio embedded in her Mickey Mouse ears crackled. “Hotel Juliet One One Three, you are filled and ready to fly.”

  She saw the water truck pulling away from her Ilyushin. She had more than forty-four tons of water, and she had a map with highlighted coordinates.

  “Ah, roger that, Helena Regional. Be back soon. Over.”

  “Runway Five-Two-Three is yours, One One Three. Go get ’em. Over.”

  She peered out her windshield, and back over her left shoulder, as three more converted Ilyushins lined up behind her, ready to sprint.

  * * *

  Police Chief McKinney had his hands full with the slow-going evacuation of his town. Learning about the silver-haired assassin, Calendar, didn’t improve his mood much. He was equally unhappy to learn about the two killers and the overturned dozer. He wasn’t all that thrilled that Daria Gibron with her twin hand-cannons was doing a road-show version of Tomb Raider and nobody knew where she was.

  He stood with Ray Calabrese in the bustling police station, which was serving as the temporary HQ for the state firefighting team. Kiki Duvall had led Tommy a few feet away to find a medic.

  Paul McKinney said, “I’m sorry, you said this woman is Israeli intelligence?”

  Ray said, “Not anymore.”

  “So she’s what, again? ATF?”

  “Not really, no.�
�

  “FBI?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Then what?”

  “Utility infielder.”

  McKinney grunted. “Great.” He went to put out the all-points bulletin on Calendar. Not that his handful of police officers weren’t already up to their eyeballs in alligators.

  Tommy was getting his vision checked by an EMT-3. Kiki had hoisted herself up onto a counter in the police station to take pressure off her leg. She nudged Ray’s arm when he approached. “Are you all right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She smiled. “Raymond…?”

  He shot her a sheepish grin. “I’m okay. Rattled, seeing her. But also … I was worried about her soul. ATF’s got her doing some fucked-up shit down in Mexico. Coming back here, bird-dogging you and Texas. It’s a relief. It means she’s still in there somewhere.”

  HELENA

  Renee Malatesta had spent hours watching local television newsfeeds, describing the oncoming forest fire that was threatening the town of Twin Pines.

  Finally, she took a hit of rum, washed her face, and asked the front desk to call her a cab.

  When it arrived, she climbed into the back. “Take me to Twin Pines, please.”

  “It’ll be expen—” The diver was cut off when she stuck three fifties through the Plexiglas screen.

  Renee knew this little town. She’d been taken there in a coach to see the body of Andrew. Which had transformed into something rich and strange. The bodies of Christian and Vejay, too, and they were her fault every bit as much as Andrew’s body was.

  As far as she knew, this was Andrew’s last resting place. As far as she knew, this was where the investigators were, too. The ones who sought the truth about Andrew’s death.

  TWIN PINES

  Jack, Hector, and Reuben got to the auto-parts-storage facility on the eastern edge of Twin Pines and were surprised to see that Ginger LaFrance and Casper the Friendly Airship had already raised the Claremont two feet off the ground. The smoke was thicker out here.

  “That fire’s coming awfully fast,” Ginger said. She’d added a Jack Daniel’s baseball cap to her ensemble. “I made the call to get her airborne. I hope—”

  “No, good call. Hey, who has this Malatesta dude’s speech?”

  One of Jack’s guys raised his hand.

  * * *

  A be-on-the-lookout bulletin went out for Calendar, but, with police units helping with the traffic logjam or escorting fire equipment, nobody was honestly looking for him.

  Ironically, Calendar pulled into an alley not a full block from the police station.

  He walked to the back of the vehicle and opened the hatch. He reached in and pulled forward a charcoal-gray box, opened it to reveal a nest of black foam rubber and a shoulder-mounted launch tube.

  Emotionless, he pulled out the pieces of the launcher and assembled it.

  Calendar reached back into the SUV and pulled a second, identical box closer to him, just as a Twin Pines cop passed the entrance to the alley, turned, and noticed him.

  “Hey! You!” the cop shouted. He began jogging down the alley, reaching for his service revolver, unhooking the holster flap.

  Calendar drew his silenced HK .45 and put a bullet through the officer’s chest before the officer’s hand got anywhere near his pistol grip. The officer fell straight back, arms and legs akimbo, looking like he was trying to make a snow angel in the middle of the pavement in August.

  Calendar watched him for a while, cocked his head a little. He holstered his weapon, walked down the alley, and went to his haunches at the officer’s side.

  The wound pulsed a deep red. The cop’s mouth opened and closed silently. His right lung had been destroyed and blood seeped into his airway. His eyes were wide, wild.

  “I hate this town.” Calendar spoke softly. He reached down, unpinned the cop’s slightly crooked, five-pointed badge, and repositioned it so that the top point of the star pointed straight up, relative to his torso. It was a small detail, but a good microcosm for Calendar’s perspective of Twin Pines.

  “This town is weak and falling apart,” he explained. “Your mayor is a drunk. Two good, Christian soldiers, both real-life war heroes, were murdered in such a way that they won’t get an open casket. My good friend Dyson, I doubt they’ll find enough of him to even cremate. And all because we came to this town.”

  The officer turned his wide eyes toward the man speaking to him, although it was unclear if he understood the words.

  “This town is keeping me from making sure enemies don’t have weapons they should not have. This town reeks of death and decay.”

  Calendar spoke softly and slowly, as if instructing a child. He brushed dandruff off the officer’s shoulder. “We never did what we did for the media elite or the fat cats on Wall Street or the Gomorrah-corrupt administrations that come and go. No, we fought for hometown America. For places like this. But…?”

  Calendar glanced around, sighed. “I hate this town so very much. I hate that this may be the future of the American heartland. Killing you won’t end the tumor in America’s soul. But, Officer? It’s a start.”

  The officer died, his last pink-bubbled breath hissing free, eyes fixed.

  Calendar stood, returned to the prototype pulse weapon. He opened the second box in the back of the SUV. It, too, was filled with black foam rubber. The rubber had been drilled with six cylindrical holes.

  One of the holes was empty.

  The other five were not. They contained the beta-tested electromagnetic weapons Barry Tichnor’s R&D boys had whipped up from Andrew Malatesta’s designs.

  They looked like gigantic Good & Plenty candies, Calendar thought. Or suppositories from hell. Long and convex at both ends, they were five inches in diameter and color coded, red end forward, black end backward. Stenciled on the side was THIS END FORWARD.

  He removed one, hefted it in his hands. He could feel, more than hear, liquids slosh inside the front and hind ends of the projectile. It contained two separate sections. The chemicals within were foreign to Calendar but he knew that when they intermixed, they created an electromagnetic pulse with a range of only eighty meters.

  The equivalent of a micronuclear bomb. Enough energy to stop all electric impulses, but over such a remarkably small radius.

  He gently slid the projectile into the launch tube, the same way one loads a rocket-propelled grenade. The launch tube was shoulder-mounted with a sighting system to peer through.

  Calendar walked out into the street, stepping over the dead body of the officer. The street was empty, thanks to the evacuation. He walked to a thrift store, kicked in the door, searched around until he found stairs, then climbed to the second floor. He found a ladder retracted into the ceiling, pulled it down, and climbed up onto the roof.

  There, he hefted the launch tube to his shoulder.

  A phalanx of four Russian-made air tankers flew low toward downtown Twin Pines from the west.

  Calendar put his eye to the crosshairs of the site. With no emotion whatsoever, he said, “I truly hate this town.”

  32

  EIGHTY FEET OVER TWIN Pines, Dorina Hande heard a thump through the aluminum skin of her Ilyushin. A second later, all power on the flight deck died.

  The four Soloviev D-30KP turbofan engines flamed out.

  “Hey. No. What the heck…” She toggled the ignition switch. She checked the A/C backup battery. Nothing.

  “Helena Regional! Mayday! This is Hotel Juliet One One Three, declaring an emergency! Over!”

  But she got no squelch back. The radio was as dead as everything else.

  The insanely heavy tanker nosed over, heading for downtown Twin Pines. Dorina planted her boots on the deck and hauled on the yoke for all she was worth.

  An image snatched for her attention, at the very corner of her eye. She glanced over.

  It was Hotel Juliet 114. It, too, was falling from the sky.

  * * *

  The EMT told Tommy, “You’re fine
, sir. Try to get some—”

  The young paramedic stopped talking as yet another roaring jet cruised over the town. People were getting used to it, at least.

  Only this time, instead of diminishing along a Doppler curve, the roaring just … stopped.

  Everyone in the police station quit talking, glancing around, trying to pinpoint how and why this flyover sounded different. They could hear the drone of another jet, not too far off, getting close, and it, too …

  … stopped.

  Tommy’s eyes bulged. “Holy fucking shit! I’ve heard this before!”

  He sprinted for the front door, Ray Calabrese right on his ass, drawing his service weapon.

  * * *

  Out on the street, Tommy got five paces and staggered to a halt. Three blocks to the west, a twenty-foot-tall, four-jet cargolifter with silent engines sank below the town’s roofline, falling fast, clipping power lines and, a second later, smashing into the U-Store-It facility behind Stan’s Meat Market.

  It was two blocks to the north and two blocks to the west but the sound of the crash was horrifyingly loud. Tommy went to one knee, hands over his ears. Kiki was out now, mouth agape, followed by police officers and state firefighters.

  Ray shouted, “Look!” and pointed.

  Another Ilyushin, six blocks away, sank out of sight and, a moment later, a gusher of dust and smoke and flames rushed into the sky.

  From the direction of the first crash, a rumbling force field of dust and debris roared into the air, a psychedelic hurricane of destruction bearing down First Street toward the police station. Tommy grabbed Kiki and yanked her to the ground, lying atop her (yet again) as the debris field hit them like a sleet storm.

  Ray held his ground. Others fell. The crook of his elbow over his eyes and a hand over his mouth, Ray squinted as the maelstrom rushed by.

  And as it passed them, Kiki’s supersensitive hearing picked up another roar.

  “Tommy!” she shouted.

  Forty-four tons of water cascaded down First Street toward them.