………………………….
The bus was approaching Melina’s stop, and her brother was still asleep. As the bus came to a stop, she got up and made her way to the back. Ellen gave her a look that questioned what she was doing back there. It melted into astonishment when Melina approached Travis. He had said what his name was, but Ellen had not put it together that Travis was Melina’s brother until that moment.
Melina gently shook Travis’s shoulder. “Travis, it’s time to go home.”
The normally raucous bus was now stone silent as all eyes were on the pair as they made their way to the front of the bus and down the stairs to the street. As the bus pulled away, Melina and her brother walked side by side on the sidewalk toward their house.
“You realize the importance of what you did, don’t you?” Melina asked.
“I didn’t realize that naps were that uncommon,” he said.
“I’m not talking about the nap, you ninny,” Melina said. “The confrontation with Ellen.”
“Oh, that,” Travis said. “I have watched enough prison movies to know that, on the first day, you are supposed to walk up to the biggest, baddest dude in the yard and start a fight with them. Let everyone know that you are not to be messed with.”
“Wait, why are you watching prison movies?” Melina said. “A few months ago, you were afraid of your own shadow, and now you are picking fights with big bad people?”
“Things are different for me,” Travis said. “Mom’s accident changed everything.”
Melina stopped walking and looked at Travis. “What do you mean?”
“It’s no secret that I’ve leaned on Mom a lot over the years,” he said. “She has always stood up for me. Fought my battles. Much more so than Dad.”
“Yeah,” Melina said with a small laugh. “You used to refer to yourself as a momma’s boy without realizing that those words had a negative connotation. We just always thought that you two had a unique bond because Mom quit work to stay home when you were born, but I went to day care. I learned to have a little more independence than you.”
Travis continued. “When Mom had the accident, I found myself on my own. I lost my crutch. I was lost.”
“So what happened?” Melina asked. “How did you go from that to what happened today?”
“A couple of months ago, while we were all visiting Mom in the convalescent hospital, you went in to see her, and Dad and I sat outside. After a few minutes of silence, I started crying. I don’t know why. When I looked up, I could see that Dad was crying too. I had never seen that before. I crawled onto his lap, and he held onto me like I was five years old again. When I finished crying, I felt older. Like I had grown up right there. From that point on, I was no longer scared.”
“I must admit that you have seemed a bit older to me,” Melina said. “But how do you explain the angry boy from the bus?”
“That’s easy,” Travis said. “Once you have removed the mantle of fear, you can analyze any situation logically and use your natural gifts to your advantage. I must admit, once I discovered that, I was like a kid with a new toy.”
“You have natural gifts?” Melina asked.
“Everyone has gifts,” he said. “Mine is that I am smart for my age and can understand theoretical physics.”
“Do I have gifts?” Melina asked.
“You have gifts that I can only dream of,” he said. “You can read faster than anyone I know. You have a keen sense of adventure with a complete lack of concern for your own personal safety. And you are the greatest older sister a brother could ask for.”
Melina looked at her brother. She had never looked at him the way she saw him now. She grabbed Travis in both her arms and hugged him.
“I love you, little brother.”
She stopped hugging him but kept her arm around his shoulder as they started walking for home again.
As they got closer to the house, Melina could see that there was a car parked in front of the house that she did not recognize. She knew her dad was home because he had texted her phone. He told her to come straight home after school instead of going next door to Mrs. Baker’s house like her and her brother usually did.
“Do you know whose car that is?” Melina asked.
“Nope,” Travis replied.
They went up the sidewalk to the front door of their house and went inside. From the entryway, Melina could hear voices from further in the house. She walked down the hallway toward the sound until she reached the kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table was her dad and a woman wearing a warm-up suit and tennis shoes. She looked to be about her dad’s age. All Melina could see was the back of the woman’s head, but she could tell that she did not know the woman. Nobody she knew had long, straight blonde hair worn in a ponytail. The woman and her dad were laughing about something as she approached the table.
Melina cleared her throat and glared at the woman seated at the table. Just who was this woman sitting and talking with her dad?
“Melina,” her dad said. “I’m glad you’re home. I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine.”
Yeah. Old friend, she thought. More like someone that is trying to replace her mom. Moved on already, Dad?
“This is Angela Coleman,” he continued.
Angela turned around and looked up at Melina. Melina paused for a moment. She had the odd feeling that she had seen Angela before.
“Hello,” Melina said.
“Angela is going to be staying here watching you and Travis while I am away on a trip for a few days,” Evan said.
“Wait… what?” Melina asked, looking confused. “You’re going on a trip?”
While her dad used to go on short trips every month or so, he had not been on any trips recently. Not since it was necessary for someone other than her mom to watch her and her brother.
“Yes, kiddo,” her dad said. “It’s just for a few days. I should be back by the weekend.”
Melina’s dad noticed that she was still fixated on Angela. He had never seen her have quite that expression before.
“Angela used to work in the same department that I do,” he said. “She retired a few years ago, and now she works for the company doing short-term nanny work.”
Melina’s head buzzed with thoughts. Okay, she is here to do a job. But she is an old friend of her dad. And sometimes, old friends become new girlfriends. At this point, Melina realized that she was staring and not talking. She did not know what to make of all this, but she did know that she wanted to leave the kitchen.
She did her best to put on a polite face. “Excuse me. I am going to go to my room. Pleased to meet you, Angela.”
Melina backed out of the kitchen and ran upstairs.
Chapter 5
Melina was in no mood for talking to her dad, and she certainly did not want to run into Angela. So she got ready for school and skipped breakfast, only coming downstairs when her dad yelled up to her that it was time to go. Her dad was not in a mood to talk either. He had to be to the airport in less than an hour, and he was already starting to go through the pending mission in his head. With her brother in the car, though, the drive was anything but quiet. After they backed out of the driveway and drove down their street, he started right in.
“I’m a pretty big hit with the ladies,” Travis said, looking over at Melina.
She had planned on looking out the window and stewing about Angela for the whole drive to school, but this was too good to ignore.
“What do you mean, ‘I’m a pretty big hit with the ladies?’” Melina asked.
“Just what I said,” Travis replied, now lowering his voice. “I’m as smooth as a baby’s butt. With butter on it.”
“As smooth as a buttered baby butt?” Melina said as she laughed. “Are you sure you want to go with that visual?”
“Why not?” Travis said. “What would you suggest that I use instead?”
“Silk, maybe. Or melted chocolate. You never want to compare yourself to a butt. Anyway, what makes
you the ladies’ man all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know why,” he said, “but lately, some of the girls in my class have been coming up to me before class, smiling and saying ‘Hi Travis’ in some weird girly voice. And some of them come and sit by me at lunch. They tell me that they like my hair.”
“Well, you do have cool hair,” Melina said. “And you are in seventh grade. This is about the time that girls start to show interest. Just go with it. At least they don’t think of you as a pest like I do.”
Melina smiled and mussed her brother’s hair.
“Hey!” he said. “You’re messing with the source of my smoothness.”
Talking with Travis helped keep the situation with her dad and Angela from her mind, but after he was dropped off, and Melina and her dad were alone, there was absolute silence. Melina was still focusing on her dad’s trip. She was never happy when he left on a trip, but this was even worse. He was leaving her with some woman ex-coworker with whom he seemed to be a little too cozy.
She broke the silence. “Are we going to see Mom this weekend?”
“Yes,” he said. “This is a short trip. I should be back before you get out of school on Friday.”
“Great. I figured that, as part of my practice driving, I could drive us out there,” Melina said.
The practice driving. Evan had completely forgotten that he had promised he would help her practice her driving.
“Umm … good idea,” he stammered.
They drove into the high school parking lot and pulled up to the curb out front. Melina got out and came around to her dad’s window.
“Remember, Angela will be at our house after school, so you can go right home,” he said as he rolled down the window.
He puckered his lips, and she leaned forward so he could kiss her forehead.
“Have a safe trip, Daddy,” she said as she walked toward the curb.
“I will kiddo.”
………………………….
“Thirty minutes to drop, Mr. Roberts,” said a voice in Evan’s helmet. The voice came from one of the pilots in the cockpit of the B2 stealth bomber.
Nothing made Evan feel older than being called ‘Mister’ by these young Air Force Pilots. He had tried to get them to call him by his first name, but their military protocol training precluded any sense of informality.
Evan was strapped into the MAC-25 SSC in the bomb bay of the B2. Seated in a chair next to the SSC was a woman with a clipboard. She was Colonel Shirley Beal, the Mission Director.
“How are you doing, Evan?” Shirley asked.
She was regular Air Force but had worked with Evan for so many years first names had long been standard.
“I’m doing as well as can be expected for being thirty minutes away from exiting a perfectly good airplane sealed inside a giant pill,” he said as he let out an uncomfortable laugh.
Shirley smiled and looked down at her clipboard.
“Okay,” she said, “Let’s go over the checklist of your mission.”
On previous missions, he listened to the checklist speech with the attention span of someone listening to the ‘seat-is-also-a-flotation-device’ speech that flight attendants make before a commercial flight. But he had not been on a mission in a while, so he appreciated the focus that would be gained by going over it one more time.
“At 0400 hours, we will pass directly over the Malaz reactor base,” Shirley began. “The MAC-25 SSC will separate from the B2 at an altitude of 44,000 feet.”
Evan thought to himself. What is it with the military and acronyms? Why didn’t they just call it something a little more straightforward like Carbon Fiber Tube instead of MAC-25 SSC? And, now that he thought about it, here he was in the most advanced bomber aircraft in the world, a plane that was almost invisible to radar, and it had the name B2. He thought it should have one of those cool made-up names like the characters in the Japanese anime cartoons his son watched. Something like Bombazar or Stealtheus.
“After the drop, the B2 will continue to circle the area,” she said. “We will have one of its onboard cameras scanning the entire Malaz base and the other focused on the reactor building. I will give you a heads-up if anything is happening down there. The SSC will then descend for 40,000 feet, followed by the opening of the outer parachute. You will hear an announcement of this in your earpiece.”
“Will there be an announcement if the outer parachute does not open?” Evan asked.
Without looking up, Shirley continued, “You then will be at 4,000 feet. Upon successful deployment of the outer parachute, you will be falling at a slow enough rate for the SSC to be released. At that point, it will automatically break free and fall away from you, and you may remove your oxygen mask. Also, once the SSC falls away, we will cease all contact. We cannot risk your discovery with any radio transmissions. David Winfield from the tools group will do his best to keep track of you from our camp just across the southern Malaz border. Can you hear us, David?”
“I hear you, loud and clear Colonel,” David said, his voice booming into the B2 bomb bay.
“You will descend another 1,000 feet under the outer parachute,” Shirley said, “and then at an altitude of 3,000 feet, the glider wings will deploy. This also should happen automatically, triggered by an altitude sensor. The joint that holds the wings together is hydraulic, so it should take about twenty seconds to lock into place.”
“I notice that you have started using the word ‘should’,” Evan said. He heard snickering from David.
Shirley continued, again without looking up. “After the glider has been fully deployed, pull on this handle that is right here above you. That will release the parachute. When you are in level flight with the glider, use the GPS display in front of you to guide you toward the target.”
“What about the radiation detector,” Evan asked.
“It is mounted right here behind your head,” Shirley said. “You need to be below 1,000 feet and directly above the reactor for the detector to record any meaningful data. It is not recommended that you fly below 800 feet because you may not have enough altitude to reach the border. The video camera is also mounted on a swivel above you behind your head. The camera is already on, but the controls for direction and zoom are on the glider handles. The video is displayed on the screen next to the GPS screen. Take video of anything that looks unusual.”
Evan fiddled with the video controls until the screen showed a close-up of Shirley’s eyes and nose.
“Aaaaah,” Evan said. “It’s coming right for me. Save yourselves, everyone!”
Shirley smiled, but Evan was starting to make her nervous. She knew that as the mission start time edged closer, sometimes an agent would make a joke in order to ease the tension. She had never seen Evan do this. She tried to get him to focus on the mission.
“The agency has yet to determine whether this base is equipped with radar sensitive enough to detect you,” Shirley advised, “but they put the probability at twenty-seven percent.”
“How did the geeks come up with that number?” Evan said. “I’ve got a foolproof method for determining whether an installation has good radar – missiles start flying by you.”
This was not what Shirley wanted to hear. More attempted humor. The agency was a little wary of this mission because Evan had not been on a mission since Laura’s accident. Sometimes when something terrible happens to a member of an agent’s family, they will take risks that they may not have done otherwise. Shirley did not think that Evan would take unnecessary risks, but nobody knew for sure until he was in that situation.
“We still have fifteen minutes to drop,” Shirley said, “You seem off today. Is there something on your mind?”
There was a long silence. Something had been on his mind since the morning.
“It’s Melina,” Evan said.
Shirley was confused. Was there some new aspect of the mission that she did not know about?
“My daughter, Melina,” Evan clarified. “She has starte
d driver training at school, and I have to help her practice her driving this weekend.”
More silence. This time, Shirley gave Evan a strange look.
“Let me get this straight,” Shirley said, laughing. “You are minutes away from being sealed in a carbon fiber canister and dropped from a stealth bomber, so high that you need oxygen, all so you can gather intelligence on a potential nuclear bomb facility in Malazistan. And you are worried about your daughter learning to drive?”
“Well…” Evan said. “It sounds different when you say it.”
“Evan, they grow up. They do stuff. What is the problem?” Shirley asked.
“I can’t get Laura’s accident out of my mind. What if Melina got into an accident. I can’t go through that anguish again,” Evan replied.
Shirley understood now. “I am sorry, Evan,” Shirley offered. “I should have made the connection.”
Uncomfortable, Evan shifted in his seat.
“We all have things that scare the heck out of us,” he said. “For some, it is heights, for others, it is hang gliding over foreign nuclear sites. Do you know the most terrifying day I’ve ever had?”
Shirley stared at him strapped into the SSC. “I don’t know, every day?”
Evan smiled. “No. It was thirteen years ago. Laura was eight months pregnant with Travis, and she and Melina and I had gone to the mall for some reason.”
Shirley smiled. “Yeah. I know what you mean. Those malls can be terribly scary. Was it Black Friday?”
Evan arched his brow and continued. “Melina was two and a half with a mind of her own. We were in a store and I turned around just in time to see Melina run out of the store at full speed with Laura trying to catch her. By the time that I got to the front of the store, they were both gone. I ran down the mall in the direction that they went, but I couldn’t see them. I spent the next ten minutes in absolute agony thinking that my pregnant wife was lying passed out somewhere from trying to catch up to my daughter who I was sure was now out in the parking lot getting run over.”
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