Final Winter

Back in the Operations Center the low roar of phone calls, keyboards being tapped and people talking was starting to subside. Monty sat back, feet up on a desk, looking at the display board and the three icons marking the last of the AirBox flights. Brian Doyle sat next to him, hands folded across his lap. Tuthill and the General were confabbing about something, and Victor being Victor, the doc was keeping to himself.

Monty said, ‘Ever hear the expression “hoist on your own petard”?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Know what it means?’

‘Not sure. I think it means something about getting fucked-up because of something you yourself did. Am I right?’

Monty kept his gaze on the display screen. ‘Yep. Came from a line in Shakespeare, from Hamlet. A petard was a crude explosive device, used to breach gates. But they were tricky to use. Sometimes the fuse burned too quick and blew up the guy setting the bomb, as well as the gate. Hence, to be hoist on one’s own petard.’

Brian said, ‘When this is all done with, I guess the Tiger Teams will be one huge petard.’

‘Yeah. Lots of books and TV scripts will be written about this fuck-up when we’re through — but they’ll miss the essential story.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Which is that we had to do something after 9/11. The Tiger Teams were a great idea. It was the staffing of them that caused this disaster. Always goes back to the people factor. Not the technical factor. It’s the people that make it work, and in this case, it was the people — Adrianna and those CIA people, years ago, who did a shit-ass job of checking out her background — who failed us.’

‘Nice essential story, but I don’t feel too essential. I feel like we came within minutes of killing several million people. Not the kind of way I’d like to spend my days.’

Monty reached over and slapped Brian on the leg. ‘True enough, my friend. And I’ll make you two predictions. By the end of this week, the Tiger Teams will be done. And a week after that, they’ll be planning something else to replace them. For something like the teams are always needed. No matter what we and others did, the main essential truth still remains: there are many, many people who want to do us harm, and the old ways of protection don’t work.’

Brian looked like he was going to say something when a nearby phone rang, and the guy picking it up gave a little whoop of joy.

‘AirBox 15 is on the ground, safe and sound!’

Monty looked up at the display screen. Two icons remained.

He turned to Brian. ‘See? Day’s getting better already.’

~ * ~

Captain Tuthill said, ‘How much longer, boomer?’

‘Another five, six minutes, sir.’

‘Very good.’

He turned in his seat, said to his co-pilot, ‘Travis, minute we’re done dumping fuel, tell ATC we’ll want a rendezvous heading to that last AirBox flight immediately. Got it?’

‘Roger that, sir.’

‘All right.’

The navigator said, ‘Bet your dad will have a story to tell you when this is through.’

Tuthill said, ‘More than one story, I’m sure.’

Good point, he thought. Dad loved to tell stories about all the places he had been, all the aircraft he had repaired, all the pilots whose butts he had saved. God, the hours he had spent in the backyard, those damn tiki torches burning, Dad talking about—

His boomer’s voice, shouting, ‘Captain! Pull up, pull up, pull up!’

~ * ~

So close, Hugh thought, so close, just a few more minutes, and Stacy Moore confirmed it, saying, ‘Hugh, we’re going to make it, just a few minutes more, and we’ve got enough fuel to—’

The KC-135 was there, right in front of him, a huge construct of steel and fabrication and the fuel was dumping out and—

Oh, damn, oh damn—

Hugh’s chest felt like it was exploding, like it was swelling up and he fell forward, choking, and the last thing he heard was his co-pilot, screaming…

~ * ~

An amateur filmmaker from Hobson, Kentucky, caught it on tape, the moment when the AirBox flight sped up and descended, its nose colliding with the tail of the KC-135, the AirBox shuddering and breaking up in flight, the KC-135 catching fire, turning over, and then exploding in mid-air, fuel burning, debris raining down, falling to earth, yet—

Yet not that day, nor ever, did a single spore of anthrax from that aircraft make it to the ground.

~ * ~

General Bocks saw the display screen, heard the reports, sat down. For a moment it seemed as though the phones had stopped ringing, the voices had stopped talking, the keyboards had stopped clacking. All that he saw in his world was the blinking icon of that one single aircraft up there that belonged to him, yet which had been stolen such a very long time ago.

‘One-oh-seven, am I right?’ he asked no one in particular.

‘Yes, sir. One-oh-seven, airborne over southeastern Pennsylvania.’

‘Fuel status?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

He looked at the faces, saw that the night manager, Pam Kasnet, was still there. ‘Pam?’

‘Yes?’

‘Get a phone patch set up. I need to talk to one-oh-seven.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT