by Mack Maloney
Bates had come upon a clearing in the woods. It was what lay beyond that had caught his attention. It was no longer a forest. It was the remains of a forest. The landscape for the next mile or so looked more like the surface of the moon than some place in the Rockies.
“What happened here?” Puglisi asked. “A bomb hit this place?”
“Worse,” Fox said. “A forest fire ….”
They kept walking, though. Strangely, the path itself was still visible. But they were more careful, more aware, than just stumbling along, still not knowing where it would bring them.
It took them a half hour or so, but they finally found themselves back in the woods. Ryder at least was happy to be under trees again; walking through the devastated forest was one of the creepiest things he’d ever done. But they were in for another surprise, because up ahead was another clearing, and this one had not been caused by the scorched earth of a forest fire.
This was a lake.
And floating on that lake, glimmering in the dark, was an airplane.
A firefighting airplane.
Draped in American flags.
PART FOUR
The Hunn Solution
Chapter 21
Route 27, West Texas
Maria Chunez had never been on a Greyhound bus before.
She’d never had a reason to before today. Growing up in the border town of Mexiras, about forty miles south from Laredo, she’d stayed close to home, never crossing the border or even wondering what Texas was like. But earlier that year, her niece had moved to Oklahoma City, finding a great job right away. As a Christmas present, six months early, she’d sent Maria and her two young sons round-trip tickets to Oklahoma by way of Greyhound.
Maria had spent a lovely week with her niece; now she was heading home. At 35, this had been the biggest event in her life. She loved Oklahoma City; she loved the American people. But most of all, she loved the Greyhound bus.
It was so new and shiny and clean — and so pleasantly cool inside. It had a bathroom onboard, which was just astonishing to her, plus TVs, movies, and radios. All of the passengers she’d met on the ride up to Oklahoma had been very nice to her, even when Muneo, her youngest at two years, got fussy. She liked it all so much, she was already dreaming about another trip to Oklahoma City, same time, next year, riding on the big silver Greyhound again.
It was six in the morning now and the bus was heading south on Route 27. Many of the passengers who got on in Oklahoma City had got off at Amarillo. Since four that morning, it had been just Maria, her two sons, two elderly nuns, and the driver onboard. Maria had slept well in her seat during the night, as had her sons. A rest stop about an hour before had given them a chance to get breakfast, from a vending machine, another novelty Maria had never seen before. Still nearly 20 hours from home, she looked forward to spending the day watching the landscape of West Texas go by.
And Maria was doing just that when she first saw the strange airplane. It was funny that she noticed it at all. She was fascinated by the vast cotton fields, with their red dirt and huge circular watering systems. She was staring out the window, marveling at them, when, off in the distance, she saw the red and yellow airplane. It was very low; that’s what caught her attention. It was out to the east, off to her left, flying very fast and coming right at the bus.
Maria had seen airplanes before, of course, but not one quite like this. Its bottom was shaped more like a boat than an airplane. Its wing looked like it was upside down, attached on top of the plane and not on the bottom, as she had always thought airplanes were built. It had two strange things hanging down from the end of this strange wing. They looked like two smaller boats themselves.
Why would an airplane look like a boat? Maria thought.
She looked around the bus and wondered if anyone else could see it. But the nuns were asleep and so were her kids. The bus was just about the only vehicle on this part of the highway this early morning. She didn’t think it was important enough to bother the driver about it, at least not at the moment.
But when Maria looked out the window again, the airplane had come up on them so fast, suddenly it looked like it was going to crash into them. It was so close now, Maria could see the face of the pilot bearing down on them.
At the very last moment, the plane veered wildly to the right and disappeared over the top of the bus. The noise of its two engines was deafening, though, enough to cause her two sons to wake up crying. Maria blocked her ears. The nuns woke up startled, too.
Just as suddenly, the airplane reappeared. It had turned over and was now riding right alongside the bus, flying so low, it was almost even with them. Planes were supposed to be fast, Maria had always thought. How could this plane go slow enough to match their speed? She had no idea. Its wheels were down now and it looked like parts of its strange wings were lowered and its engines were smoking almost as if they, too, wanted to be moving faster. But the rest of it was a mystery to her.
Maria thought for a moment the plane was trying to land on the highway. Maybe that was it …. But then she saw two small doors open on the side of its skin and two men appear behind them. They were dressed in black uniforms and were wearing helmets. They looked like soldiers, except they had beards and long hair and appeared to be disheveled. The plane was so close by now, Maria could clearly see their faces.
She could also see their guns.
This was frightening, because Maria knew about guns. And these were huge. They were hardly hunting rifles but more of the type she thought the military would use.
Again, all of this was happening so fast that just Maria and the bus driver were really seeing what was going on — and he had yet to react. The unreality of it all had overwhelmed him as it had Maria. She sensed he wasn’t sure what to do, stop or keep going. The plane started shaking. It wasn’t flying fast enough! The men inside crouched behind their weapons as if they were about to fire. She could see them taking aim ….
But then something happened, Maria wasn’t sure what, but the men behind the guns were suddenly distracted. The plane started shaking again, and with an even louder roar from its engines it was gone. Climbing quickly, it shot off down the highway.
But the strangeness was not over. In fact, it was just beginning.
Barely had Maria caught her breath when she saw the airplane coming again. This time it was heading in the other direction, flying close to another Greyhound bus, this one going north on Route 27.
The weird plane was doing the same thing, somehow matching its speed with that of the bus, the men hanging out of the open doorways now on the other side of the plane, their guns in full view. Maria saw all this in the blink of an eye as the two buses roared by each other, going in opposite directions on the highway.
At that point, the man driving Maria’s bus regained his composure. He seemed intent to keep on driving when he looked into his rearview mirror — and suddenly switched lanes. He did this with such speed, everything not tied down on the bus was suddenly airborne. They nearly tipped over, the bus swerved so violently. Maria was just able to grab her kids and hold on, thinking something had just happened to the driver, that maybe he’d been shot. But actually he’d just saved their lives. For not an instant later yet another Greyhound bus went by them, traveling in the passing lane as if they were standing still. It was going at least twice as fast as they, driving wildly down the highway. Had it hit them from behind, at that speed, they would have all been killed.
In the split second it took for this bus to go by, Maria could see its windows seemed to be darker than the bus she was on. And it looked like many people were aboard. But she was amazed, too. She didn’t know America had so many Greyhound buses. They were everywhere!
Finally her bus driver pulled over to the side of the road. It was now obvious that something was very wrong here. Every vehicle on both sides of the highway had stopped by now, too — except the speeding dark-windowed bus.
Suddenly the weird airplane appeared yet again.
It swooped down on top of the speeding bus and, without any hesitation, the gunmen on board started firing at it. Maria’s bus driver was on his cell phone now, yelling to someone about the incredible events they were witnessing. The person on the other end must have told the driver to get out of the area as quickly as he could, because he threw the cell phone aside, put the bus back into gear, and started inching forward again.
But now there were many more cars stopped and pulled over on the highway, creating a small traffic jam at the crest of a rare hill. Maria’s bus stopped, too, and this allowed them all to look out on the airplane and the speeding bus as they roared down the roadway, the gunners on the plane firing away without mercy.
Suddenly the speeding bus wasn’t speeding anymore. It had slowed down so much, the plane had to accelerate or it would have crashed. Finally the plane pulled up and started circling the bus, which by now had swerved onto the median strip and slowed to a crawl.
“They’ve killed whoever was behind the wheel!” Maria’s driver cried out.
Still the plane circled the bus, twin streams of red gunfire tearing up the vehicle in a most methodical fashion. Even with her untrained eye, Maria had to marvel at the person piloting this plane. And the more the men in the plane shot at it, the slower the bus went. Finally it just stopped altogether.
But the airplane dropped even lower now and continued firing into the bus. Suddenly came a huge explosion. Even though they were at least a half-mile away, Maria’s bus was rocked by the resultant shock wave. The flash alone was blinding; it looked like a fireworks display was erupting from the back of the bus. Maria could see colors she never knew existed.
Although many people on both sides of the highway were now getting out of their cars to see these events, some even recording it all with their small video cameras, Maria’s bus driver resumed driving again. They were about thousand feet away when they saw the airplane climb out of the fireball. It circled the devastated bus once more, then, with a roar of its engines, thundered away, heading west.
Not 30 seconds later, Maria’s Greyhound passed the wreckage of the bus. It was totally engulfed in flames. Incredibly, there were some bodies sprawled on the ground outside its front door. Several people onboard had tried to get out at the last moment, but the airplane’s gunners had shot them down as well.
As they drove by, Maria got a fairly close look at these bodies. There were four of them; two were still on fire.
All were dressed like soccer players.
Chapter 22
Virginia
Dave Hunn was a lucky man.
Not many people could take a bullet practically point-blank to the chest and survive, but Hunn did. Three factors helped him. Factor one: the D.C. policeman had shot him with a small .22-caliber revolver. Essentially a popgun, it was probably the cop’s backup weapon, though why he was using it they would never know. Factor two: Hunn was wearing a Kevlar double-weave bulletproof vest given to him when the escapees first landed at Cape Lonely. Thank you, Master Chief Finch. Factor three: Ozzi had somehow stopped the bleeding from Hunn’s wound — more of a vicious bloody bruise than a perforation — during his backstreet odyssey of carrying Hunn up to Li’s house after the shooting.
Hunn was swathed in bandages now, lying atop the mattress that once made up the huge bed inside Li’s master bedroom. His chest was black-and-blue from his collarbone to his navel. He looked like he’d stopped a cannonball and not just a 22. And this was his second wound in the last six months; he’d been shot in almost the same place the day of the Hormuz attack. But he was alive, and at the moment that’s all that counted.
“Are sure you’ll be OK?” Li was asking him now. “You shouldn’t really move around that much.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hunn breathed to her. He really felt that way, though he had no choice, because actually going to a doctor was out of the question. But both Ozzi and Li had received medical training as part of their runup for the DSA, and Hunn knew a little about patching wounds, too. This one would require bed rest and little activity at least for the next couple days.
Trouble was, they didn’t have the luxury of 48 hours to just sit around and do nothing. Everything that was in force the night before, when he and Ozzi went looking to pop Rushton, was still in play today. If anything, the situation had grown worse. Rushton’s security people had to know by now that someone was authentically out to get the general, to ice him just as Palm Tree had been iced. If anything, this would double the general’s security detachment when he was out and about. And if the Rushton kids thought their days of shuttling around with their famous father had come to an end, they had another thing coming.
What’s worse, everything the east side ghosts were trying to prevent or solve was still up in the air. An early news bulletin that morning told about a Greyhound bus being shot up on a Texas highway. It was a scant report, but it led them to believe it might have been the west side crew finally nailing the first bus. How they did it the east side had no idea. But this did nothing to solve the bigger mysteries here: What was up with the second bus? Where was it? What were the people onboard planning? What about this theory of Li’s, bolstered by Nash’s visit, that Rushton not only knew what the second bus was up to but thought the ghosts knew, too?
The walls of the master bedroom were plastered with printout images of the mysterious napkin in all phases of polarities, negatives, false colors, different sizes, and so on. It was such a silly-looking thing, but it was hard to stop thinking about it. Again, if it was inside Palm Tree’s PDA, it must have meant something. But they found the more they dwelled on it, the deeper the puzzle became. It was always on their minds, but that didn’t make any of it any clearer.
So, if the first bus was indeed destroyed, then the second bus was now their number-one priority — that and still trying to put a tap shot into Rushton. And that’s what Ozzi and Li were out to do tonight. That’s why they were contemplating leaving Hunn alone.
“We have no idea when we’ll be back, if ever,” Ozzi was saying to him now. “And if we don’t come back, at some point you’ll have to make it out of here on your own.”
As he was telling him this, Ozzi gave Hunn one of the clean cell phones he’d stolen from the DSG store in East Newark, this just before Hunn had beaten the owner within an inch of his life.
Hunn took the cell and said, “Don’t worry; if it comes to that, I know who to call.” Then he winked enigmatically and added, “In fact, I might just call him anyway ….”
* * *
It was a little before 9:00 P.M. when Ozzi and Li climbed into her “new” Toyota and started down the reservoir road.
They’d left Hunn with little more than the rest of the doughnuts and the TV remote. “Be careful out there,” he said as they were leaving. “The mosquitoes are vicious.”
Ozzi drove; Li was in charge of their weaponry. It consisted of their remaining M16 clone with about hundred rounds left of ammunition. They had no telescopic sight, no long-range capability, nothing in the way of night vision. They had no edge at all in any attempt they might make on Rushton. But they still had to go out and try, mostly because they didn’t know what else to do.
They drove down through the suburban Virginia streets, quickly moving away from the dreariness of the reservoir road. The streets were not as populated as one might have expected on a pleasant summer evening. No doubt the entire D.C. area was still on edge, with so many rumors floating around about massive weapons due to go off, invisible terrorists everywhere, strange doings out west. Ozzi couldn’t blame them for wanting to stay inside.
They got on the Parkway, heading into D.C. itself. The traffic was very sparse. In fact, for the last mile before their exit Li’s Toyota was just about the only car on the road.
“This is weird,” Li said as Ozzi steered onto M street — it, too, was nearly empty of cars. Ozzi and Hunn had told her about the traffic jams that had plagued the district for the last week. But now it seemed as if just the opposite
was true.
“This is more of what it was like when all this first started,” she went on. “When was it? Last week? Or a year ago? Or ten?”
If possible, the traffic became even sparser the closer they got to the center of D.C., down near the Capitol and the White House. They were heading for the EOB, as it was the likeliest place they thought they would find Rushton. But all they saw now was taxis and panel trucks.
They turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and started heading inward. At one intersection that came up to a construction detour, Ozzi commented that the public works people had seemed particularly busy digging up the streets of D.C. this summer. Always very bad, it was at least three times the usual volume these days, strange for a place that normally had very little money to spend on itself.
The detour forced them to turn onto Olsen Avenue. All the streetlights were out here; in fact, for the next three blocks it was dark except for the ambient light coming from the few businesses that were still open this time of night. Ozzi knew his way around D.C. Taking a small side street two blocks down would get them back onto Pennsylvania, where they wanted to be.
This particular side street was an anomaly in D.C., as it went on unbroken for three blocks, very rare in a city that was laid out mostly like a wheel with a lot of spokes. Still in the middle of the streetlight blackout, he wheeled onto this odd stretch of road — and immediately hit the brakes. This alley was usually full of nothing but Dumpsters. But something was drastically different here now.
The alley was filled with military vehicles. Not just Humvees and troop trucks, of which there were many, but huge A1 Abrams tanks, too. And Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and LAVs and Stryker APCs.