(Wrath-06)-Smoke & Dust (2012) Read online

  Sam glanced behind him at the map on the wall. “I’m going to Chicago,” he answered softly.

  Bono took a step toward him. “Chicago? Are you crazy? Why are you going there? Why, Sam, would you go up to Chicago . . . .” Bono stopped, his voice trailing off. He stood frozen for a moment, the color draining from his face. Ten seconds passed in silence. “Yes,” he mumbled softly, “yes, that’s what you should do.”

  Sam nodded to him. “Go now,” he said.

  Bono hesitated. “The aircraft won’t wait a second for me.”

  “Go, buddy, go!”

  Bono raced to Sam, threw his arms around him, and drew him to his chest. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why you have to go to Chicago, but yes, I am certain that’s the right thing to do.”

  Sam pushed him away. “Don’t you miss that aircraft.”

  Bono turned and started running, almost getting to the door. Then he stopped and turned around. “Take care of yourself, Captain Brighton.”

  “Roger that. Now go, go, go.”

  Bono gave a quick salute, then ran down the hall.

  Sam stood a moment, silence and peace settling all around him, then walked to the doorway. Bono was already gone, the door that led toward the flight line swinging shut. Looking out, he could see that it had grown dark outside, the lights from the building casting yellow squares across the tarmac.

  Feeling alone, he walked toward the Operations Desk. “You got any flights heading west?” he asked the duty officer.

  The sergeant shook his head. “We’re not opening up any spots right now, sir,” he answered curtly.

  Sam hesitated, still not used to being called “sir” or “lieutenant,” then leaned toward the sergeant. “Come on,” he pleaded. “There’s got to be something. Can’t we work something out?”

  The sergeant stopped his work and looked up. “Are you kidding me, lieutenant? I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me. Look out on the ramp there, look out on the stinking world, then turn back and tell me that you should be my priority right now. The nation has just been kicked in the throat, and you think my most important job is to try to get an aerial taxi for some army puke.”

  Sam was taken aback. “Dude, you know I was—”

  The sergeant slid a notepad across the counter. “Give me your name and information and I’ll put you on the list.”

  Sam glanced toward the notepad, thumbing through it. Five pages long. More than a hundred names already on the list.

  He sighed, his shoulders slumping, and reached across the counter for a pen.

  * * *

  Sam spent the next eight hours stalking up and down the halls of the Base Operations building, talking to every pilot, copilot, or cargo master he could find. He made himself obnoxious, hounding everyone. With each passing minute he grew more desperate to get a flight.

  He felt it, deep inside, a growing twist of worry that pulled his stomach into knots.

  He didn’t understand it. He’d never felt anything quite like it before. But as in a dream, he sensed there was a monster coming at him and he couldn’t turn to run.

  “Come on,” he repeated as he paced up and down the hall. “Come on, come on. I’ve got to find a flight!”

  * * *

  Flight operations continued on a twenty-four-hour cycle, and every hour that went by, the place became more frantic and intense. Sam kept himself awake for as long as he could, terrified of missing his chance, but sometime after four in the morning he finally fell asleep, crashing across a leather couch in the crew lounge with a couple of pilots just in from Germany. As the sun rose, he forced himself awake, washed up in the bathroom (wondering how the military base maintained its water pressure), and resumed his stalking.

  Eight hours later, after hounding, begging and threatening all sorts of things that no one really believed, Sam got the best offer he was going to get. A KC-135 air refueling tanker was heading out to Portland. Yeah, they had some room, and yeah, they’d allow him to take up one of the small seats in the back, but it was a five-hour flight across the States with no stops in between. Sam begged again, but lost the battle. No way were they going make a stop for him

  “It’s cool, it’s cool, you don’t need to,” he pulled back. “Just get me close. That’s all I need. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  The pilot, a pretty major with short brown hair, camouflage flight suit, and puffy eyes from spending too much time in the air, stared at him, suspicious. “Don’t you go fooling around with my sortie, you hear me, Lieutenant Brighton?”

  “No, ma’am. Nothing stupid. But if you’ll just fly a little farther north than you were planning on, it would really help me out.”

  “I already told you, we’re not stopping.”

  “You won’t have to, major. All you’ve got to do is get me close.”

  ELEVEN

  Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

  The afternoon passed, rainy and wet, and dark came quickly because of the low clouds.

  An hour before nightfall, Ammon and Luke set off, hiking north. This time Luke reluctantly carried the pistol at the small of his back. He also wore a poncho, which concealed his hands, allowing him to reach for the pistol without being detected if he needed to.

  He desperately prayed it wouldn’t happen. He had shot a pistol before—their father had insisted on his sons knowing how to handle a pistol—but he was hardly an expert. More, he was completely unprepared to shoot a person. Would he do it? He didn’t think so. When it came right down to pulling the trigger, he simply didn’t think he could. To save his brother’s life? Maybe. But he probably couldn’t shoot to save his own.

  The two young men moved quietly and quickly through the growing darkness, staying near the tree line that paralleled the road. A mile passed and their boots became heavy with rain and mud. The rain let up and, to the west, the clouds began to thin. About a hundred yards to their left the freeway had grown less crowded. There were a few people here and there, but most had given up traveling for the night and were hunkering down, setting up camp inside other people’s cars.

  Approaching the edge of the trees, Ammon crouched and pointed. “There,” he said.

  Luke knelt down at his side. The men were still there, guarding the bridge. They stood together in the rain, baseball hats and wet hair and clinging clothes.

  “Who are they?” Luke wondered. “Where do they come from? Why are they doing this? It makes no sense.”

  “It’s crazy,” Ammon said, then pointed farther up the freeway. “You see that?” he asked.

  Luke strained to see against the growing dark. “Looks like . . . what is that? Is that a car that’s been overturned?”

  “It’s a Highway Patrol,” Ammon explained. “It was easier to see it this morning when there was more light.”

  Luke sucked in a breath. “You sure?”

  “Really sure.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Don’t know. But it leaves a lot of questions. Where’s the patrolman? What happened to his car? You saw what happened—the EMP didn’t cause a big explosion or anything. Everything just quit working, coasting to a stop. That trooper didn’t flip his car. Someone overturned it. Why would they do that?”

  “You didn’t tell Mom anything about this?”

  “No. I was going to, but I changed my mind. No reason to make her worry more than she already is.”

  Luke lifted his hand and pointed to the crowd of men. “Is that the guy I fought last night?”

  Ammon squinted. “Yeah, I think that’s him. I got a little closer this morning, but it’s hard to be sure in this light. I tell you this, though, the guy you took last night had a mean gash down the side of his head.”

  “I whacked him pretty good,” Luke explained with pride. “I had a fist-sized rock in my hand when I popped him.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think he’s very happy. They sure weren’t happy to see me this morning.”

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p; Ammon’s knees began to cramp from squatting. “There is some good news, I think, in what happened to the trooper’s car,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems to me that sometime the authorities are going to realize they’ve lost a man out here. Sooner or later, apparently later in this case, they’re going to notice they have a man down. When that happens, I have to believe they’d send someone out here to investigate.”

  Luke thought, then nodded slowly. “You might be right.”

  Ammon studied the group of ill-dressed men, counting them. “There aren’t as many of them as there were this morning.”

  “Maybe they’ve figured it’s time to head out? Get home to their families or whatever. Take their share of the cash and run.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, especially if they believe the authorities are going to show up.”

  Luke moved his eyes up the road, toward the overturned car. “You never saw the trooper? You have no idea where he is?”

  “None at all. But he’s got to be around here somewhere. Unless he took off.”

  Luke shook his head. “He’s not alive,” he said.

  Ammon shivered. “I was wondering about that.”

  They crouched another five minutes, watching the men guard the road. They saw a dozen people walk up to the blockade. The negotiations seemed to take a long time and were evidently complicated. Of the dozen who approached them, the outlaws let a few more than half go through.

  Ammon shivered again. It was getting cold, but that wasn’t what was driving a chill up and down his spine. “What do you think?” he finally asked.

  Luke reached up and pulled his poncho close, feeling the same chill. “I don’t look forward to confronting those guys we met last night.”

  Ammon grunted in agreement. “I think we should wait until morning. We’ll leave really early, before the sun comes up. Might be these goobers will have dispersed by then. If so, good enough, we head up the road. If not, we’ll reevaluate then and decide what’s best to do.”

  Luke bit his lip, thinking of the little girl huddled in the old car a mile or two behind them. “I heard Mom talking to Mary just before we left,” he said. “Sometime last week, Mary started giving Kelly morphine to control the pain. She doesn’t have any more pain medication with her. Mom thinks Kelly might be going into shock from morphine withdrawal.”

  Ammon nodded slowly. “That and the pain.”

  Luke peered across the empty fields toward the freeway. “If we don’t get Kelly Beth home pretty soon, I don’t think it’s going to matter.”

  “Understood,” Ammon said. He got up. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Capri 44, Thirty-Two Thousand Feet over Southern Ohio

  The inside of the old KC-135 air refueling tanker was cold, noisy and full of light mist from tiny leaks in the pressure and heating systems. The cabin walls were gray-stitch insulated material with the metal ribs of the fuselage showing through, and the floor was scarred and worn from an untold number of cargo pallets being rolled on and off. The main purpose of the aircraft was to carry and off-load fuel for other aircraft, refueling them while in flight, and its belly was a series of enormous, interconnected fuel cells. Tonight, because the old tanker was not scheduled to air refuel, it didn’t carry as much fuel, and so the loadmaster had loaded up the cargo compartment with military supplies needed in the west. Three dozen tightly packed wooden pallets, double-wrapped in thick plastic, took up the entire cargo compartment.

  A row of uncomfortable web and aluminum benches ran down each side of the plane. Sam sat alone, his head resting on his chest, his mind racing behind closed eyes.

  The tension had never left him. It was growing worse instead. A deep sense of, he didn’t know, a sense of lateness crept upon him, making him irritable and intense.

  Time was slipping away. He was falling behind.

  But he didn’t know for what.

  Yet he was growing tenser by the minute, his mouth dry, his muscles tight.

  He felt a gentle push on his shoulder and looked up. The loadmaster was standing there. “Boss wants to see you in the cockpit,” the master sergeant said.

  Sam nodded, stretched to pull the tired muscles in his back, then stood and followed the sergeant to the cockpit. He stepped around the forward bulkhead, between a narrow entry, and through the cockpit door.

  The aircraft commander was sitting in the left seat, one foot propped up against the lower portion of the cockpit display panel. Sam moved forward and stood between the two pilot seats. He was stunned as he looked through the cockpit windows. It was like flying through the emptiness of space. A few stars above them. Endless blackness down below—not a single ground light anywhere. Utter darkness straight ahead.

  He stared until the pilot interrupted his thoughts. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?”

  Sam shuddered at the darkness.

  “So you really want to do this?” the pilot asked.

  “Absolutely,” Sam replied without hesitation. He thought of the growing tension deep inside him. “I’ve got to do it,” he said.

  “You don’t know what you’re jumping into, do you, Brighton? You don’t have any idea what’s going on down there.”

  “Doesn’t matter, really, does it, ma’am? It’s going to be the same everywhere. Here. Portland. Everything in between. Everyone’s going through the same thing right now.”

  The pilot thought again. “We’ve never done this before, you know. We just don’t do such things from a tanker. C-141, C-17, yeah, any day, but we’re a different kind of aircraft, a different system. We don’t have a ramp that can drop down. And we’re supposed to be trained and qualified before we go tossing people out.”

  The radio sounded in her headset, and she paused and listened as the other pilot responded to the radio call.

  Turning in her seat, she looked at Sam. “You understand how many rules and regulations we’ll be breaking?” she asked. “Tons. Way too many.”

  “I understand,” Sam replied. “But I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s no big thing. Descend as low as you can to equalize the pressure and get a little warmer, slow down as much as you can, and give me a thumbs-up when we’re there. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

  The pilot dropped her foot and sipped from a bottle of water. “I don’t suppose too many people are going to be so concerned about peacetime regulations right now,” she concluded, then shrugged and glanced toward the other pilot, who gave her a “whatever” kind of look. “OK,” she said. “If you’re willing to take the chance, who am I to tell you no?”

  “Thank you,” Sam said, his face illuminated by the subdued white and green fluorescent lighting in the cockpit.

  The pilot checked her NAV readout. “Twenty-one minutes, then,” she said. “Go get your gear on. We won’t delay if you’re not ready.”

  Sam nodded, then turned and left the cockpit without saying any more.

  Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

  It was very dark. Luke and Ammon moved silently back toward their cars. Sara was waiting for them, standing near the edge of the trees. Hearing movement through the brush, she quietly called their names. Minutes later, they emerged from the darkness.

  “What do you think?” she asked them as they approached.

  They stopped and explained the situation. While they talked, Mary moved toward them, listening intently.

  “We really ought to wait until morning,” Ammon concluded.

  Mary’s face sank. “Another day?”

  “Another night, Mary. We’ll try to leave for the city in the morning.”

  “We’ve got to leave in the morning. I can’t stay here another day. My baby needs her medicines!”

  Ammon glanced toward Luke, looking for support. Luke shook his head in sympathy. “I understand,” he said, turning back to Mary. “But Mrs. Dupree, we need to think this through and be careful. It’s dangerous right now. It will get better—I don�
�t think it’s going to be like this forever—but right now, with those guys out there, we need to wait.”

  “But my little girl, my little girl—”

  Ammon started to answer her, then fell silent. Mary’s little girl was going to die. He was certain of that now. Kelly hadn’t wakened since midmorning. She didn’t shiver anymore. It seemed she hardly moved. Sometimes she mumbled, but her eyes, when they were open, had taken on an opaque, filmy texture. She hadn’t eaten anything, as far as he knew, and had swallowed only a sip or two of water all day. No, there was nothing they could do now. She was going to pass away. Here. On the road to Chicago. Back at her apartment, maybe, if things went just right, but it was going to happen—that was the dreadful truth.

  He sighed, a heavy sadness creeping over him, then turned and walked to Mary, extending his arms. She stepped quickly back. He took another step toward her and paused. Twenty-four hours ago, she had been a stranger. Now he felt a kinship for her that expanded beyond any emotion he had ever felt before. He wanted to help her. He cared for her. He even loved her.

  But there was nothing he could do.

  He couldn’t help her.

  He couldn’t help her daughter.

  He couldn’t make it go away.

  And he ached, a dull and painful throbbing in his heart.

  He lifted his arms again and stepped toward her. Mary held back for a moment, then fell into his chest. He put his arms around her, almost completely supporting her weight. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dupree, I’m so sorry. If there was something we could do, if there was anything we could do . . . .”

  The small black woman started crying, tiny shudders of emotion in his arms. She knew now. They all knew. And as he supported her weight, his arms around her, Ammon thought he actually felt her heart break.

  Capri 44, Eighteen Thousand Feet over South Chicago

  The aircraft slowed, the engines pulling back to a quiet hum as it descended, gradually slipping out of the dark sky. The loadmaster had already moved to the rear door on the left side of the aircraft reserved exclusively for emergency evacuation situations. The loadmaster had never opened the door even while on the ground, let alone while in flight. In preparation for what he was about to do, he had strapped an oxygen mask with a built-in microphone and headset receiver over his face. He was ready to depressurize.