Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  “I’ve got it,” Everon nodded from the controls. He dropped the jet’s nose ten degrees and rapidly clicked the mic button on his yoke seven times. Two long rows of runway lights burst the darkness.

  The two brothers looked nothing alike and were in fact not even directly related. Nine years older, Everon’s green eyes and wavy blond hair lent him the look of a well-groomed surfer. A bit heavier built than Franklin, he was by no means stocky. A strand of Franklin’s long dark hair fell over the baby against his shoulder.

  His niece’s eyes were closed. Calm. Peaceful. Asleep. How could I have found Melissa and Harry so close together, he asked himself. One apparently sick — the other unaffected?

  It was Harry, the owl Franklin had rescued, that softly voiced the question in all their minds: “Hup-hup-hup-hup-Whoooo!” Who has done this to us? The owl, shaking in his cardboard soup box on the floor. Short trails of brown color streaked down the fluffy white of Harry’s chest.

  Franklin frowned at the shaking bird. Is it radiation? Two million. How many more will die? How many of the refugees and hospital workers we left behind in that black rain at Teterboro?

  Franklin and Everon had seen through the smoke and flame for themselves. Two million souls lost. The number being passed around. A giant’s hand had pushed flat the buildings of Lower Manhattan — Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island hadn’t fared much better. Worse, probably. Not so tall. Less resistance.

  But of the two million dead, Franklin only really cared about two. In the dim cabin lights, his cobalt-blue eyes moved to the rear cabin door.

  The big jet’s engines slowed. In the moonlight out the right side windows, red cliffs appeared. “Tell them to buckle up,” Everon said.

  I doubt any of them ever unbuckled, Franklin thought, rising from his seat. He only recalled one or two of them using the bathroom the whole way out.

  Most of the survivors in the plane’s passenger compartment had been crying. A woman had her head on a man’s shoulder. There were tracks down her face but her eyes were dry. The four-hour flight west had tired most of them. A child’s eyes stared forward into nothing.

  He had them check their belts then quickly returned to his own seat next to Everon.

  Off the end of the runway more lights glowed around a wide single-story ranch house. Standing bent as ancient palace guards along a quarter-mile drive, spotlights highlighted two long rows of trees — the hanging branches of wide wind-blown willows, interspersed by tall eucalyptus. Car and truck lights moving way over the speed limit ran past the drive’s entrance where it bisected the two-lane Route 160, the road between Las Vegas and Pahrump.

  On the opposite side of the airstrip sat a brick and metal industrial building, its flat roof projecting here and there. The building had been added on to a dozen times. In the broad space beyond the building, hundreds of slanted objects reflected Nevada moonlight. Solar panels. Nearby, a dozen huge wind turbines turned slowly in the evening air.

  Franklin watched his brother turn at the far end of the strip, leaving extra room for the dark cliffs he knew were off the right wing. He could feel Everon crabbing the jet against the wind.

  Everon straightened the wings and put the big jet down smoothly on the runway. They slowed. Rolled to a halt. Fifty feet behind the white ranch house.

  Before Everon’s hand had left the throttle, Franklin stood, Melissa in his arms. It would be the first time their grandmother had seen her great-granddaughter. Cynthia and Steven had planned to make it out here soon. This was the worst possible way it could have happened.

  Franklin said, “I’ll go talk to Del.”

  Revenge

  Norse Wind’s bow sliced beneath the surface. On the ship’s bridge black water smashed out every window. As the dark liquid rushed in, the men drowned.

  Less than eighty feet of stern was still above the surface when the big ship slowed . . . and halted. Propeller spinning high in the empty air, the massive tail hung suspended.

  And the wave pushed on.

  Gradually, slowly, as if being driven in reverse, Norse Wind backed out of the water. Higher . . . higher, until far overbalanced, her keel rotated . . . and slammed down with a tremendous SPLASH!

  Water drained from the wheelhouse. Three corpses, the ship’s bridge crew, lay scattered on the deck. Everyone on the bridge had drowned — with one exception:

  Struggling to his feet, Pang Zhou thundered, “TING!”

  He knew something had gone wrong. No wave of such magnitude should have escaped the harbor where the second bomb was supposed to detonate. Some error in programming, the fish must have detonated short. Without Ting he had failed to take down the White City.

  Face contorted in anger, Zhou shouted violently, “The dark-haired man will pay!”

  With a deep and shuddering breath screamed again: “T-I-I-I-I-ING . . . !”

  Minutes after the giant wave sailed through, the dark sea flattened. Gentle rollers, but for a trail of bubbles in the moonlight.

  With the BOOF! of a torpedo launch, and a splash, a small white tarpaulin-covered lifeboat broke the ocean’s surface.

  Water drained away. On one end the tarp loosened, folded back. A man raised his head.

  Ahmad Hashim was doubtful Allah would ever forgive him. But he would tell his story.

  To anyone who would listen.

  Del Meets Melissa

  On the back porch of the white ranch house stood a very old dame elegánt. Though her shoulders had taken on a slight hunch, her short hair gone gray, her face more than a few wrinkles — any eye could see she’d once been a beautiful woman. She was still beautiful in her way.

  She hurried out to meet Franklin.

  “You’re here,” she sighed with relief. “You’re okay.” She put an arm around him, looking down to smile at Melissa. “Oh, she’s beautiful.”

  Del watched the people coming up the walkway toward them. “Who are they?”

  “We picked them up at the airport, just over the river in New Jersey,” Franklin explained.

  She frowned, looking suddenly back at the big jet. Everon was still highlighted in the cockpit’s window. Adults and children were following Franklin along the narrow asphalt walkway to the house. None of them looked familiar to her.

  “Where’s Cynthia? Where’s Steve?” she asked, her face a mixture of worry and confusion.

  Franklin shook his head, mouth grim. Warm tears formed along his lower eyelids.

  “What? What!” He stood there as she gripped his leather jacket, shaking him violently, head turning back and forth, eyes closed in denial.

  The old woman fell against him, her arms around him, head pressed against his soiled white shirt. Her pain began to overtake him. He fought against its pull.

  “I’m so sorry, Grandmother. They were both taken by the blast.”

  Two million, he thought. Only a number. Meaningless until it’s someone you care about. “Everon and I found them. We brought their bodies back. We thought Steve would want to be laid down here too. They’re inside the plane.”

  She was shaking, her old fingers clutching his shoulders, her grip softening until he could only feel her shudder and sob. Like the wind had gone out of her. The pain in her face when she let go. She suddenly had never looked so old. Without a word, before she could react, he handed her Melissa and led the way inside.

  Failure Mode

  It was twenty-five hours since detonation of the first nuclear attack on U.S. soil. In the cavernous basement Operations Room, completely sealed against any outside listening devices, operatives ran frantic around desks and dividers. Echoes of “Shit!” and “Fuck!” bouncing across the broad space — half the time phones didn’t work — trying to pump sources for information, staring into computer screens, pounding keyboards, sorting through emails and old intelligence reports. If 9/11 had been their most colossal failure, this was the total destruction of their universe. A sense of vulnerability, of standing naked to a world of unstop
pable bombs and unleashed terror which held them now.

  The highly efficient spy organization was in disaster mode.

  Massive power and communications failures up and down the Eastern Seaboard, bumper-to-bumper traffic, had made The Agency slow to react. Slow to make their way through snowy surface streets into headquarters. Slow to gather data. But the elephant had rumbled to its feet, its unstoppable mass gathering speed. Central was the first word in The Agency’s title for a reason.

  If you focused only on the United States, connections were obscured. Homeland Security had actually been created to confuse the public. For the world as a whole — the U.S. as one of many — The Agency was the center. FBI, NSA — truth was, CIA still ran them all. Always has. Always will.

  The huge glass-enclosed conference chamber took up the Op Room’s center. All deputy, associate and assistant directors, and their senior staffs, were gathered around a hundred feet of sparkling glass table.

  “How did we fail to see this coming?” Director William Sloat glared from one end. “Goddamn it, where exactly were they centered?” Grayish mottled skin in his flappy old suit, Sloat, it was often remarked, looked quite similar to a very fat toad, an opinion never verbalized inside. Electronic ears were everywhere.

  Sloat’s body remained stationary. His head pivoted to the Deputy Director. But the DD remained silent. The Assistant Deputy of Digital Innovation answered instead. “New York Harbor — just off Wall Street.”

  The back wall opaqued — white. An image appeared.

  “This is the latest flyover, sir.” Infrared digital from seventeen minutes ago. Fifteen thousand feet.”

  The color spectrum was unnaturally dominated by reds, oranges, yellows. Darkest red at screen’s bottom in what looked like a hole cut halfway into a ragged shoreline.

  “Notice what used to be the Manhattan Financial District — the deep crater here in the right corner. This color deviation corresponds to an estimated 450 kilotons.”

  Intakes of breath hissed across the chamber.

  A similar colored map appeared on the right, this one of the Virginia-Maryland coast. Here, another darkened hole appeared in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

  “The dark red there is where the Bridge-Tunnel used to be,” said the Associate Deputy Director of Operations. “Norfolk and Virginia Beach on the left. We suspect that whatever the device was, it missed the bridge and hit one of the tunnel islands, that it was designed to continue up the bay to Washington.”

  “Shit!”

  “Goddamn!”

  “What do we know about these devices?” Sloat demanded.

  “The size seems to dictate Russia,” replied the Assistant Director of Analysis. “Devices of Russian origin. But analysis of the nuclear residue actually points to a reactor outside Rawalpindi.”

  “Pakistan?” Sloat frowned, “They’ve never had bombs this big.”

  “No, sir, they haven’t.”

  “In the next twelve hours, I want to know where the fuck,” Sloat croaked, “Pakistan got atomic bombs this big, how the fuck they got them into New York Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. And how many more of these fuckers are on the way!”

  No one said anything.

  “Move!”

  The room broke up quickly. Chairs scuffling, the sound of ruffling pages, someone’s cough.

  Sloat scanned their faces, looking for one in particular. “Where the hell is Greg Claus?” he called out.

  “Uh, on special assignment,” answered the Deputy Director, speaking for the first time. “In Saudi Arabia.”

  Golden Tablet Of The Glorious Qur’an

  The burning afternoon sun beat down mercilessly on Imran’s pudgy body. His small sandaled feet were sore and blistered. Like the thousands of pilgrims in the ribbon of white that surrounded him.

  Each year, the season during which was held the great journey each Muslim must make once in a lifetime — the Hajj — changed by about a week. If the Hajj took place in fall, a few years later it would happen in summer. Eventually it would shift to spring. Why Allah saw fit to move a month around the way he did year after year, Imran would never know.

  Though this year’s Hajj took place in winter, it was still hot as hell. Despite the white garments they wore, sweat dripped down his neck. He shook his head.

  Why ever did I agree to walk?

  Already the five-day journey seemed like ten. Imran still couldn’t understand how he and Mustapha had let Nasir persuade them to go on foot while thousands in buses passed them by.

  Imran’s mind drifted to the delicious handfuls of camel meat he would stuff into his mouth at the End-of-Hajj celebration tonight. He grinned to liven the ponderous mood, “Baby camel tonight, my friends! One hump or two?”

  Slim and goofy, Imran’s friend Mustapha laughed along infectiously, always ready to join in one of Imran’s jokes, or to tell one of his own.

  Dark and brooding, their third friend, Nasir, only grimaced. “You would do better to set your minds on Allah,” he admonished them both. Privately, Imran admitted he would be glad to be done with the entire boring journey.

  Twelve long and tiring miles out to the Plain of Arafat — to stare at the tall white obelisk upon the Mountain of Mercy. What excitement — not! Then back to camp on the ground at Muzdalifah. Not exactly a fun-filled location. Scorpions, snakes, camel spiders? Who knows what else?

  Three more days of throwing stones at what — Satan? At least when they’d been stone pillars­­ — before the Saudi king had them turned into walls — it would have been possible to imagine them as devils. But a wall? How is a wall like a devil?

  Now, finally, they were nearing the end. In a few hours they would arrive once more at the Grand Mosque and walk seven times counterclockwise around the Ka’aba; try to touch Abraham’s shiny black stone. At least something to brag about, anyway, when they got back home to London.

  As Imran and his friends walked along the densely crowded road’s west edge, voices were growing louder. People were excited. He heard the word “qunbala!” — bomb — several times. “Infijul!” — Explosion! “Mufajjir?” — Suicide bomber? — others asked.

  “What’s going on?” Imran asked two men walking on their right.

  “The Americans! Someone has bombed New York City! An atom bomb!”

  “It is a sign. The Great Satan brought low!” the man’s friend shouted.

  “Even more to celebrate tonight, eh Nasir?” Mustapha suggested.

  “Na’am — yes!” agreed Nasir, smiling for the first time in days. “A gift from Allah!”

  “Imran?” Mustapha asked.

  But Imran’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.

  From the sand fifty yards left, a blinding glint of desert sun flashed into Imran’s eyes. What is that? he squinted. It stopped and then — there! flashed again.

  Imran glanced at the faces of his friends. Did Mustapha see it? Nasir? They looked blankly back at him. No.

  Imran turned to his left again, caught the flash a third time and detoured out onto the sand for a closer look.

  “Where are you going?” Mustapha called.

  A moment later Mustapha was next to him, passing on his right to arrive at the object first.

  At the spot of reflection, Mustapha fell immediately to his knees and began digging. Imran knelt down next to him and scooped handfuls of hot sand away from the object too.

  Nasir was last to arrive. He did no digging but simply stood above, watching.

  Rapidly a bright corner became the top of a large object buried in the sand — faintly carved with symbols.

  “Gold!” Mustapha exclaimed.

  “I know!” Imran added. “Dig!”

  Nasir frowned and said nothing.

  As the hole around the object grew, it became clear the flat metal tablet was quite large.

  Mustapha grabbed the top and pulled back and forth trying to break it free of the sand. Imran continued digging. Slowly it worked loose.

 
With a tremendous tug, Mustapha tore it from the sand. He moved the plate’s bottom edge tightly against his stomach. “Heavy!” he said. “It must weigh twenty-five mahnd — fifty pounds!”

  “I was first to see it,” Imran said. “Allah has given it to me.”

  “I reached it first,” Mustapha cried.

  The two men began to wrestle. The heavy tablet pulled the men back down to the sand.

  “Shame upon you both!” Nasir yelled severely. “Look where you are! On Hajj, nearing the holy city! First the bomb in New York, now this golden tablet? This gift is from Allah to all of Al-Islam!”

  “Yes!” shouted voices around them. “To Al-Islam!”

  Imran and Mustapha stopped pulling against each other and looked up. A crowd of more than fifty had circled around them.

  A sudden forceful wind rose up, surrounding them all, silencing every voice. The wind increased, blowing, whirling, wiping the tablet’s deep letters clear of sand and dirt, until, as the wind died off, the golden tablet gleamed bright like the day it was carved by some ancient hand.

  “Look!” Nasir said in a hushed voice, pointing to the symbols on its surface. “These are as the words of the Prophet! It must be taken to Mecca and turned over to someone at the Mosque,” he stated flatly.

  More voices joined in murmured agreement.

  Imran and Mustapha looked at each other, nodded, then joined together in gently lifting its sides, holding the heavy tablet aloft.

  “For Al-Islam!” they said together.

  A cheer from the crowd went up.

  Together Imran, Mustapha and Nasir looked upon the words, their eyes found each other’s and they smiled.

  Two hundred yards south, tire tracks trailed into the desert. A mile farther, the tracks stopped where a short man with fair, razor-cut hair and a thick bulldog neck watched through a pair of high-powered binoculars from the top of a small hill. The man smiled. About time! “The rest is up to Al-lah!” he said softly, sarcastically.