Swap Out!

by M. L. Buchman

  “I know you, Eddie. You’re thinking of the show we did after the movie.”

  “Can’t say I’m not. Call if you change your mind, Nellie.” All teasing. Best of friends. But still it was nice of him to lighten the moment.

  “Will do. Thanks, Eddie.” Now there was a good man. They’d dated for the rest of high school after seeing that movie, her only boy other than her husband. She’d gone to Notre Dame and met Tommy. Eddie had gone to West Point and ‘Nam and met June. They’d attended each other’s weddings. She was godmother to both his daughters, one of whom was interning in the White House communications department. She hadn’t seen Eddie since June’s funeral two years ago. But he’d still come through for her.

  She just hoped it was in time.

  CHAPTER 64

  Jeff’s bravado saw him as far as fifty feet from the trees. The plane jumped and twisted as Shelley fought the damaged controls.

  At the last instant, Jeff reached back for her day pack and pulled it onto his lap. Even through the nylon and the heavy shirt, he could feel the crystalline statue.

  Sixty miles an hour.

  He should have told her. And now there wasn’t—

  They smashed into the ground.

  Bounced back up.

  Thumped down again. Another smaller bounce.

  The next thud decayed into a sickening slide that Jeff deeply feared would never end and would be his final memory.

  They headed straight for a pair of trees. The plane swerved and bucked, one moment he was facing one tree, another moment they’d slewed over and he faced the other.

  He screamed, but barely a shout escaped his throat as they glanced off the tree to the right and shot between.

  A horrendous jerk slammed him against the safety belt as the wings were sheared off by the trees. They skidded and slid forward. A loud, “Whump!” sounded behind them and the plane was tumbled sideways. They rolled over twice before the plane finally came to rest upside down.

  They hung upside down, their shoulders touching. No droning engine noise. Nothing but the groan of sagging metal.

  “You first.” Shelley was looking at him as if this was a normal everyday occurrence. As if hanging upside down in a destroyed airplane was as routine as brushing her teeth.

  He knew he should be freaking out. Screaming and waving his arms over his head. Instead, he turned to her very calmly. He was pleased that his voice was steady.

  “No. No. Ladies first.”

  She waved casually out the window of her door.

  “There appears to be a minor impediment.”

  Shelley’s door was blocked by a tree trunk. Its bark was scraped off down to the bright wood where the propeller and the nose of the plane had battered against it.

  Jeff opened his door. When he released the seatbelt he fell awkwardly onto the crumpled ceiling of the plane. He crawled out on all fours.

  Shelley came out close behind.

  “You okay, Jeffrey?”

  “I think so. You?”

  “Good as from the factory,” she replied.

  That was Phillip’s phrase, not his. What a pair of role models they’d been for her. One, a dead man. The other, a middle-aged man who’d abandoned her when she was five and was now putting her life at risk as he was hunted by both the American and British governments.

  They leaned back against a fallen log. It was cool in the shade of the woods.

  He looked back along the swath of destruction they’d carved through the trees. A peach orchard by the look of it. The upside down plane lay beside them. Its broken off tail section a dozen feet away. A hundred feet beyond, the wings, which had ripped off against the tree trunks were still burning, sending clouds of black smoke skyward. One of the trees was burning brightly, but the fire didn’t appear ready to jump to any others.

  “Most of the fuel is stored in the wings.”

  He stared back along their path.

  “That’s why you tore them off with the trees?”

  “I couldn’t be sure of a smooth landing, and I didn’t want all that fuel with us.”

  “This is your idea of a smooth landing?”

  She shrugged.

  He leaned into her and nudged her shoulder with his.

  She did the same back.

  The helicopter circled in the air once, twice and then faded off into the distance.

  “I circled back. We’re only about two miles from the silo.”

  Jeff looked at the tattered socks on his feet.

  “Sure. Good idea.”

  When the helicopter was completely gone. She rose and, giving him a hand, helped him to his feet.

  He was holding something. Shelley’s pack. He handed it to her.

  Her long fingers tested through the fabric for a moment before she pulled it on.

  “Thanks.”

  Together they looked at the remains of the plane.

  “There are no two ways about it.”

  Shelley was right, there weren’t.

  They spoke almost in unison.

  “Anne is gonna be some kinda pissed.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “The plane is down.”

  “Down?”

  Major Jim Browning looked at his hands. He’d always loved flying, especially for the Night Stalkers. Special Operations Forces needed the best transport, the very best and no questions asked. He’d flown Desert Storm, Somalia, Iraq, deep into “friendly” territory in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. He’d delivered medicine, factory parts, explosives, and a myriad of Special Operations Forces teams just to name a few.

  In all that time, he’d never downed a civilian aircraft. Not anywhere in the world, especially not on United States soil.

  “Down hard, Mother.” The taste of bile rose in his throat and he fought it back down.

  “Roger that. Well done.”

  Didn’t feel it.

  Terrorists were supposed to be caught and tried. Not that they hadn’t counter-attacked by ramming their wing into his tail rotor. That had been fast thinking with no hesitation at all, that took training. Damn fine bit of piloting. A white woman. They’d been close enough to see in that instant. A pretty white woman and a scared old man. What was the world coming to that people like that would turn terrorist?

  If they even had. He had no proof of what they’d done, or been going to do, in a Piper Cherokee for crying out loud. Nope. He didn’t like it one bit.

  President Grant was going to be getting one less vote during the next election, that much was for damn sure. There’d been rumors of another SOAR extraction on the Maine coast. Special Operations Aviation Regiment was the transport arm of Special Operations Forces, but that shouldn’t include taking justice so completely into their own hands. Though there were times that was their mission, he’d never heard of it on US soil before. Maybe Homeland Security had finally spun totally out of control as all the hyper-paranoid Democrats were always predicting it would.

  He pulled his helicopter into a hover five-hundred feet over the designated coordinates. There were two domes of an abandoned missile silo, surprising how many there were of those lying around the countryside. He’d always meant to tour one, though apparently most were filled up with ground water seeping in. This one had some solar panels, probably for the old caretaker’s house. Nothing else worthy of note.

  An old man driving a John Deere tractor waved at them as he dragged a manure spreader from one field to another down the middle of the empty road.

  “Mother.”

  “Roger.”

  “Clean up what?”

  “Give me video.”

  Browning nodded at Captain Andrews. Andrews tapped his center screen over to the camera and directed it downward with the small joystick on the console. He started with the old domes and swept a wide arc around the
area.

  “That’s impossible! You must be in the wrong place.”

  “What’s impossible, Mother?”

  He hovered while the control ship figured out whatever they needed to figure out. He was going to take a long shower when he got back to base. Then he’d go to Cindy’s. She always knew how to calm him down, how to bring him back to some sort of center. Time to finally find the guts to pull the ring even now burning a hole in his pocket and see if she’d agree to wear it until the end of their days.

  “Give me an IR scan.”

  “It’s ninety-five degrees out here, Mother. Humans won’t show up on infrared; ideally I need an energy difference of twenty plus degrees.”

  “Do it.”

  Andrews tilted the remote screen toward him. A hell of a heat signature off the tops of the domes, the tractor, and not much else.

  A signal squawked in using base command frequency.

  Browning took it while Andrews mucked about with the IR finding absolutely nothing except the baking fields.

  Encrypted. He punched in today’s code and the message cleared on his side screen. It came right from the top, straight from the old man’s desk in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Keyed rather than verbal no less, only the serious shit came in text instead of voice.

  “This is Mother. I require ground recon.”

  Browning tapped the screen to draw Andrews’ attention before he could respond.

  Stand down from all US-internal operations and report immediately to base. Contact Brigadier General Edward Johns for debrief. And no one else.

  They looked at each other. They didn’t need words to share the thought.

  Suddenly the day went from just plain lousy to right down the crapper.

  “That’s a negative, Mother. SOAR returning to base. Out.”

  He killed the radio frequency before they could respond.

  “Well, that sucked, Major Browning.”

  “You ain’t whistling shit, Captain Andrews.”

  CHAPTER 66

  They had jogged halfway back to the silos when the helicopter flew by overhead.

  “It seems like they’re in an awful hurry. They must have seen us though.”

  Jeff and Shelley had been caught out in the open as it roared by.

  “Coming from the silo. We need to get back there before they change their minds.”

  Jeff kept careful watch over his shoulder, but saw no sign of their return. It did nothing to assuage the itch between his shoulders where it felt as if a bright red target had been painted.

  His feet were bloody by the time they turned off the blistering pavement into the dirt of her driveway. At first the dirt was a relief, but every pebble jabbed horribly against his feet.

  “I’ve really had enough of this.”

  Shelley didn’t respond, not even a word of sympathy.

  He continued to hobble forward. Grumpier and grumpier. That’s how he was feeling. He was so grumpy that he might consider abandoning this ungrateful woman who could have become his step-daughter. Well, good riddance to her if she didn’t want to even speak to him after all they’d been through togeth—

  She broke into a quick trot just to show him up. He could barely walk. And he was so thirsty in the baking moist heat of wherever in the plains of Hell they were that . . .

  Shelley was looking ahead, craning her neck.

  He didn’t see anything. He kept trudging.

  Wait a minute.

  He didn’t see anything.

  He should see blown-up cars at least. Probably some dead bodies, too. Though he wasn’t looking forward to that.

  He broke into a lumbering trot trying to favor his feet with little success.

  He was almost to the silo when Grim slid from the wheat field.

  Jeff stumbled straight into his arms. They thumped each other on the back like long lost friends.

  “You made it, old dude.”

  “I did. My feet didn’t, but I did. Where are they?” He nodded ahead.

  “Come see.” Grim offered him a shoulder and the two of them hobbled forward together.

  “Dave didn’t realize they had stocked their vans with some serious explosives. They must have brought enough to crack the silos. So, when he rigged the gas tanks, the whole mess went up. He said you could set off C4 with extreme heat and pressure rather than a blasting cap. I didn’t know that. There’s almost nothing left.”

  They arrived at Shelley’s side, looking down the last small rise toward the entry to the silos.

  A camouflage net had been spread over an area of a hundred feet square. Even a few dozen feet away it was hard to see beneath it, or that it was even there. But the vehicles poked it up here and there, at least the bigger pieces. The bodies— He turned away quickly.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Davis. There wasn’t much of them left. I covered what there was with a tarp. They went out quick.”

  The trainee squad was gathered around the far side of the net.

  “Penny thought of the net. Dave and Lawrence made it happen. Squad really pulled together.”

  A week ago, Jeff’s world had been so much simpler. Murderers were people caught by police detectives. The Army were the good guys, and everyone in uniform was, somehow, other. A hundred, a thousand times he’d walked past a kid in camo gear on his way through the airport or along the streets. And he’d never understood them. Vietnam had been hell and yet here were people who had volunteered.

  They had just saved his life and Shelley’s home. They’d murdered a dozen good men who were supposedly on the same side but weren’t. And he wasn’t ready to accuse the trainees of anything except an awful job done well.

  Shelley trotted off to the silo’s entry. She came back in a moment with a dozen bundles of black plastic. She shook one out. That’s when he spotted the zipper.

  He remembered them too well and turned away. Body bags.

  Shelley nodded in his direction. “Strictly voluntary.”

  Two of the men and two women from the squad turned away, started gathering chunks of metal that had sprayed into the surrounding fields.

  Grim, Penny, Dave, and Lawrence followed Shelley beneath the netting.

  Jeff needed to go into the silo to take care of his feet, but he couldn’t walk away. These were men who had been sent to kill him. And these trainees were doing the dirty work of cleanup because they’d had the misfortune to be where he was.

  He’d had a television show once. In a different lifetime. Under a different sun. On another world. And he’d owned an apartment. There’d been a world where his biggest worry was getting mugged on the F train and even that wasn’t very likely any more.

  Others shouldn’t have to do his dirty work. A deep breath—and he turned to the net.

  They were emerging, dragging body bags.

  “Not much left to pick up.” The bags were horribly light. Flatter than should be possible.

  A tractor pulled up over the last rise and throttled down from a solid roar to a steady thumping idle. The huge machine lumbered forward until the two small front tires were almost touching the camouflage netting. Dwight looked down at him from atop his big, green tractor.

  He reached out of view somewhere and the engine rattled into silence.

  His eyes flicked past Jeff and then returned.

  “I suppose,” his gaze was somber and serious, “I suppose I shouldn’t be asking after Anne’s plane?”

  CHAPTER 67

  “Um, Shelley?” Jeff kept his voice low.

  She looked at him, a little dazed herself.

  “That message you sent earlier.”

  She nodded and stared down at the body bags.

  “Shouldn’t you send a follow-up.”

  She pulled the phone out of her pants pocket, dialed a number, and handed it to him without t
urning.

  It was ringing in his ear. He moved away and he sat on the front tire of Dwight’s tractor. The blood soared into his feet and he hissed with pain.

  “Hello?” It didn’t sound like Mandy.

  “Who is this?”

  “Clarice. Who’s this?”

  “Sorry. I must have the wrong number.” He moved to hang up, but heard a “No, don’t!” even as he moved it away.

  “Is this Jeff?” There was a sudden scrabbling sound of the phone changing hands.

  “Jeffrey?”

  There was a voice he’d know anywhere on Earth.

  “Hi, Mand.”

  “You’re alive. Is Ashl— Is Shel—”

  “Right here, Mand. Right here. She’s fine.”

  Sobbing was his only answer, a sound he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard from her. She’d always kept those feelings locked away, at least around him. He’d finally decided that she was either a complete stoic true to her Scottish heritage or, when he was being really depressed, that she’d never cared for him enough to show her feelings. If there was a third possibility, he’d never figured it out.

  “We’re all okay. The bad guys lost and we won. There’s a hell of a mess to clean up, but we’re working on that. That’s what Shelley’s doing now.” Actually she was staring numbly at the ground, inspecting the long line of sealed black bags. Bags of men not going home to their families.

  A deeply drawn breath sounded like the first time Mandy had breathed properly in hours.

  “And Mand?”

  “Yes, Jeffrey?” Her voice melted him. It made him feel all soft inside like a perfect soufflé fresh from the oven.

  “Your daughter is a hell of good pilot.”

  CHAPTER 68

  Shelley still remained rooted to the spot after he hung up.

  He slid off the tractor tire and almost cried out when his feet hit the ground. Only after some deep breathing was he able to stand upright and hobble back to her side.

  When he held out the phone, she took it and returned it to her thigh pouch. Nothing more. Hands dropped again to her sides.