Breaking Point (11 page)

Tak!

He froze again. “You heard that, right? The fuck is that?”

Tak!

A dozen feet away, a wounded, forty-foot-tall Douglas fir went
tak! tak! tak-craaaaack!
and fell over. It crashed three feet from Tommy and the gut-wound guy. Leaves and dirt blossomed. A dead bird thumped against Tommy's chest.

Tommy coughed as the leaves and dirt whirled past him.

Tommy blinked, then pulled a Star of David on a silver chain out of his shirt and kissed it. “Fuckin'-A!”

*   *   *

Far apart in the ruined fuselage, both Kiki and Calendar turned at the sound of the tree falling. Kiki flinched at the loud crash. Calendar did not.

*   *   *

As the rustling ended, Tommy heard more moaning. He grunted, rising, stumbling sideways, climbing over the newly felled fir tree. He circled two more trees, found another survivor, on her back, keening in pain. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.

Tommy collapsed to his knees beside her. She was maybe sixty, heavyset with big, fleshy arms, in a Malibu sweatshirt. She wore ankle socks but no shoes. “Hey. You okay?”

She stirred, eyes fluttering open. “Who … who are you?”

“I'm a doctor. Where does it hurt?”

“My … my ankle.” She began crying. “I can see the bone!”

Tommy wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. He lifted the cuff of her sweats: the ankle was broken, a chalky white stick of bone protruding. She had to be in some serious level of shock not to be screaming.

“This woman pulled me out. She saved me.”

“Gorgeous redhead?”

The woman with a portion of her ankle outside her skin said, “God oh my god oh my god oh my god…”

“Okay. Just … here.”

She lifted her pant cuff, looked at the bit of bone. She cried harder.

Tommy found a man's sweatshirt in the dirt. He brushed it off, looped it softly around her leg. He looked into her eyes—she wasn't in focus, thanks to his concussion. “'Kay, now, I'm gonna push this bit of bone back through the hole in your leg. Breaking the ankle hurt, I know, but this next bit's gonna hurt worse.”

Sweat beaded on her jowly face. She nodded.

Tommy used his thumb to shove the bone back through her skin and she shrieked, eyes squeezed shut. Tommy grabbed both ends of the discarded sweatshirt and yanked them tight around the bleeder. Her mouth fished open but no more sound emerged.

“You okay?” he asked, but she fell back, limp, unconscious.

“For the better,” he mumbled to himself. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled back to the fifteen-year-old girl.

That's when he saw the fire in the not-too-far distance. He was so dizzy, he couldn't be sure, but he thought maybe it was moving their way.

He collapsed to his knees by the girl.

She said, “Did you see that tree fall?”

“That…” Tommy huffed, “was fucked
up.
”

*   *   *

Calendar stepped back into the fuselage and moved forward. He came upon a man strapped into his seat and dangling to his right. He recognized Vejay Mehta, a senior designer at Malatesta, Inc . He was unconscious and unresponsive, but alive. The engineer's chin rested on his chest. Calendar grabbed the man by the scalp, lifted his head, and slammed the length of pipe into his throat.

He looked at the seats across the aisle. They were empty but there was enough blood in the left-hand seat to suggest that it had been occupied and the passenger hadn't survived. He knew from the computers that Christian Dean had been assigned the seat.

The other seat should have held Andrew Malatesta. It was empty, too.

Calendar wouldn't leave until he found both engineers.

He walked up toward the flight deck, stepping over luggage and bodies and bits of the airliner's aluminum skin. He found no more survivors. He stepped over the body of a blond flight attendant. The door to the flight deck had come unhinged, hung at a funny angle. He shone his Maglite through the gap.

A man in the pilot's uniform of Polestar Airlines rose unsteadily to his feet. “Hey. Get me … get me outta here.”

Calendar pulled the steel bar out of his belt and placed it near the one hinge still intact. He applied pressure, put one boot up on the cabin wall. The door clanged open, fell on top of the flight attendant's body.

“Thank you,” the pilot said. “God bless you.”

Calendar stepped into the flight deck, put an arm around Miguel Cervantes's neck, and twisted fast. His spine broke. Miguel died instantly, his body falling back into the sideways ceiling of the flight deck and sliding down to the ground.

Calendar looked around, saw the dead deer.
How odd,
he thought. He moved to the side, lifted part of the right-hand pilot's seat, which had been destroyed. He found part of Jed Holley's cadaver. Satisfied, he stepped out of the flight deck.

*   *   *

Tommy checked the eyes of the fifteen-year-old girl. In the moonlight, it was tough to tell, but they looked good. “How many fingers,” he said, holding up two.

“Two.” She lay as he'd moved her, not trying to get up.

“Straight A's. Okay, you just lay there and be good.”

She said, “'Kay.”

He felt around the makeshift pressure bandage he'd kludged together and didn't feel much blood. He looked around, squinting in the dark. To his right, six aircraft seats sat; three rows of two, each in the right order. The entire deck beneath them must have slid out, keeping all the seats together.

Only one seat was occupied. Tommy forced himself to stand, staggered over to the six seats. A woman sat in the third of three rows. Or most of a woman. She'd been decapitated.

Tommy leaned against the second, or middle, row.

“Tommy?”

He peered down between the first and second row of seats that sat so abstractly on the forest floor. He saw a woman lying there, facedown. But the voice he'd heard was Isaiah Grey's.

“Tommy … I tried to save her. Jesus, man…”

Tommy felt the woman's neck. No pulse. He realized Isaiah was wedged beneath her corpse.

“I know,” Tommy said. “Let's get you outta there.”

*   *   *

Calendar walked the length of the fuselage. He moved past the gaping gash in the roof and disappeared into the dust just as Kiki stepped back into the nightmarish tube of metal and plastic and glass and death. They were back-to-back, moving in opposite directions, she toward the flight deck.

Calendar found Christian Dean's head, neck, and one shoulder halfway back. The rest of the corpse was missing, but Calendar hadn't any more use for it than Christian, himself, had now.

*   *   *

In the food-services nook, back by the toilets, Andrew Malatesta struggled to sit up. He'd hit his head very hard. His back was killing him and he was pretty certain his left leg was broken. He wiped stinging sweat away from his eyes, looked around for anything that could be used as a crutch.

A light shone on his face. He squinted up into it. “Gimme a hand.”

The stranger, oddly enough, sat on the sideways wall next to him. He turned the Maglite on himself, revealing his placid features, his tightly cropped silver hair. “Hello. Andrew Malatesta?”

After a beat, Andrew's shoulders sagged. The whole truth was so obvious. He spoke with sorrow and resignation. “You fucking bastard.”

Andrew's rage began to overcome his pain. No longer looking for a crutch, his eyes cast about for a weapon.

Calendar's light fell on an aluminum attaché case under the food trolley. He leaned forward, pulled on the handle. It didn't move. He tugged again and it came free.

He checked. It was locked.

“This is the sketch pad I've heard so much about?” Calendar said, his voice soft, almost drowned out by the hiss and spark of severed wires. “Word is, you're the sorcerer's apprentice.”

“It was a plane full of … innocent people!” Andrew growled.

“All threats,” Calendar said with true regret, “foreign and domestic.”

“You leave my wife alone…” he gasped.

Calendar nodded. “Oh, I can pretty much guarantee you we'll leave her alone.”

Andrew stared into his eyes. The silver-haired man smiled a slight, almost timid smile. After a time, Andrew shook his head. Just a little.

“No,” he whispered. “No.”

Calendar slammed his elbow into Andrew's windpipe. He sat with the electronics designer until he died. Then he stood, grabbed the titanium case, and headed out.

*   *   *

Isaiah Grey pushed while Tommy pulled and they got the woman out from between the seats. Tommy realized she'd been one of the flight attendants.

Isaiah had lost both of his loafers. “God. Tried to save her…”

Tommy fell to his knees, rolling over on his side. Dizzy, he pushed himself back up, then reached between the seats and ran his hands up Isaiah's legs and torso. “Okay, no blood. No blood's good.”

He stood. “Okay. We gotta … we…” He swayed.

Isaiah said, “Doc?”

“Hey. Ah, sorry … I'm about to—”

And Tommy's eyes rolled up into his head as he keeled over, poleaxed.

Isaiah said, “Doc? Yo, Tommy!”

Nothing.

Isaiah's back was on fire and he was pretty sure he'd broken every bone in his left hand. He shoved against the seat in front of him, groaning in agony. Nothing. He tried again, crying out now.

The seats in front of him gave. A little. He started to pull himself out with his left hand.

A strong arm appeared out of nowhere, lifting Isaiah up easily.

“Here you go.” It was a stranger carrying an attaché case—how odd.

Isaiah winced, the pain in his back serious now. It wasn't his spine. It was low, to the right of his spine. “Damn. Thank you.” He gasped, the pain sending sparks down both legs. “You all right?”

“I'm fine,” the stranger said. “What happened to the aircraft?”

Isaiah took short, tight breaths, cradling his left hand against his chest. “P … powerplant,” he said. “Full shutdown in midflight. Engines, lights, ev … everything.”

The silver-haired stranger seemed saddened by that news. “Oh,” he said.

*   *   *

Kiki found the dead crew members up front. She also saw the dead deer. She turned to the back end of the plane, found several dead, including a man on the floor by the food trolleys with his throat staved in. That was it; no more survivors. She headed for the gap in the fuselage ceiling.

*   *   *

Calendar circled the aircraft, going to the underside. Near the still-stowed tricycle landing gear he found the clay lump adhered to the aluminum skin. If he hadn't fired it himself, he never would have recognized this as the weapon he'd pulled out of the back of the SUV. He used his ragged-ended piece of steel to pry it loose. The size and shape of a deflated basketball, it fell to his feet, inert; the binary chemicals within were now spent. He picked it up and rounded the fuselage, returning to the stolen Dodge Durango just as a surplus U.S. Army jeep screeched into the clearing, not fifty feet away. Three big, white guys dressed for hunting started climbing out.

They hadn't noticed the Durango, their headlights on the few straggling survivors. And just then, Calendar heard the first
whup whup whup
of a helicopter.

He tossed in the titanium case and the misshapen lump of clay. Time to leave.

*   *   *

Kiki limped from the fuselage and her right foot slipped on something. She peered through the gloom and realized it was her own blood, dripping down her calf, ankle, and foot.
Not good,
she thought. But also not the priority.

She heard a jeep's engine and saw the bouncing headlights before she was even in open air. She trudged painfully in their direction, waving her arms, broken rib punishing her.

A spotlight blinked on from above. She shielded her eyes, saw a helicopter hove into view.

She looked at the stump. Tommy wasn't there. Where? She raked the now-well-lit scene, took in the teenager with something wrapped around her arm. Saw a man lying on his side, in the fetal position, with some kind of belt wrapped around his gut. She caught sight of the six seats, sitting neatly and uniformly on the forest floor. Tommy lay on the ground beside them.

She limped up to him, falling to her knees. She started to check his pulse but he groaned. Thank God! He lay with two women, both dead.

Kiki looked to the three rows of seats.

Isaiah Grey sat up in one of them.

He was dead.

14

W
HEN AN AIRLINER CRASHES
in the United States or its territories, a series of calls goes out from the NTSB headquarters to an amazingly dissimilar cast of characters. The first group called up would be the nine team leaders. Beth would be one of them, leaving eight other initial calls.

But before those calls were made, the very first call went to the designated Investigator in Charge, the person who would lead all the subgroup leaders.

Beth Mancini burst into her office and shouted back out through her door to one of her aides, “Hey! Who's on the rotation for IIC?”

“It's … hang on … ah, Peter Kim.”

Beth winced. “Oh, swell,” she mumbled, keeping her opinion to herself.

PENSACOLA

Peter Kim said, “What are you saying?”

At his home in Pensacola, Florida, Peter was packing his luggage, moving quickly, glancing repeatedly at his watch.

“I'm saying I know how you are. You get obsessed. Especially when you're in charge. You say you'll call every evening, but pretty soon it will be every other evening, or every third. You say you'll come home on weekends, but something will come up. A witness, a clue.”

Peter placed three neatly folded white dress shirts into the bag. He turned to Janice, his wife. “When I say I will do something, I'll do it. I would expect you of all people to know that.”