by Ahern, Jerry
The energy pistol blew a hole in the overhead.
John Rourke’s left fist snaked upward toward Martin’s jaw, catching Martin at the jaw’s tip. Rourke reached for Martin with his right hand, trying to close his hand over Martin’s wrist.
The aircraft shuddered, twisted violently in midair, started into a dive.
Martin’s head snapped back.
Rourke’s hand closed over Martin’s wrist.
Martin slipped backward.
“Son!” John Rourke screamed the word over the howl of the wind.
Martin’s wrist slipped through John Rourke’s fingers.
Their eyes met.
Hatred.
Martin’s body fell away, sucked out into the slipstream. John Rourke lurched after him. The plane was into a dive now.
John Rourke’s hands reached out into the slipstream after his son. The ground, crisscrossed in veins of golden light from the lava, was reaching up to take them.
Hands were on Rourke’s shoulders, dragging him back inside.
Rourke sprawled against the starboard fuselage bulkhead, Rolvaag and Butler, the Navy pilot, grabbing at him, holding him. “You’ll be killed!” Rolvaag shouted.
“I have it under control!” Emma Shaw shouted, the aircraft leveling off, as Rourke and the two men flanking him slammed hard against the bulkhead.
“John! Are you all right?” Paul’s voice.
John Rourke stared out into the purple darkness, where his son had gone.
John Rourke never said to Martin, “I love you.” Now, he never could.
On one level of consciousness, he could hear Rolvaag saying, “It wasn’t your fault.”
He could hear Emma Shaw saying, Tve got radio contact with a helicopter that’ll follow us back to Pearl in case we have to ditch. Major Tiemerovna’s flying it. Your son and daughter are aboard, too, John. It’ll be all right now.”
Son.
John Rourke’s eyes filled with tears. He made the Sign of the Cross. “God forgive me, I killed my own son,” John Rourke whispered, prayed.