Breaking Point (9 page)

Tommy checked his watch: 11:15
P.M.
mountain.

*   *   *

The Malatesta team sat together, Andrew and Christian on the port side, Vejay to the starboard. By tradition, they played Trivial Pursuit using the question cards only, not game pieces or the board. Nobody kept score.

Vejay Mehta said, “Ah, science … Okay, this is the hardest material in the human b—”

Andrew said, “Enamel.”

“Right.” Vejay looked up from the card. “Hey, check it out.”

He'd noticed that one of the flight attendants was keeping an eye on them. This happened all the time when they flew: Vejay was Indian but could pass for Pakistani. Andrew was Sicilian but often mistaken for Middle Eastern. It was annoying, but, since September 2001, they had gotten used to people staring at them on airplanes.

Christian said, “So. We're really going to do this?”

Andrew said, “We are really gonna to do this.”

Christian said, “At the expo?”

Andrew smiled at the gangly engineer. “In for a penny … We're giving up the Pentagon contract and we're outing Tichnor and Halcyon for swiping the prototypes to a banned weapon. I've got all the evidence proving they did it.”

Christian Dean shook his head. “Renee is not going to be happy.”

Andrew kept smiling but something in his voice changed. “That's my problem.”

*   *   *

On the ground, Calendar found a spot to park his stolen SUV on the periphery of a state park. He checked his position using the Global Positioning System application in his laptop.

He reconsidered, turned over the engine, and drove another three hundred yards south. He checked the GPS again.

Better.

He climbed out and opened the top-hinged rear door of the sturdy vehicle. Inside were two metal boxes. Calendar pulled one of them nearer to him and popped both of its clasps. The box opened at the top. Calendar whistled a tuneless ditty and began assembling metal pieces.

He pulled forth the second box, unclasped it.

He took the opportunity to marvel at the content.

In less than thirty minutes, he began to hear the drone of an airplane.

*   *   *

Miguel Cervantes adjusted the voice wand, keeping it clear of his mustache. He toggled the internal PA system. “Ah, flight attendants, cross-check and prepare for landing, please.”

To Holley he said, “Extend the slats.”

“Slats are good.”

“Okay. Slowing down a bit. Flaps eleven, please.”

“You got flaps at eleven, boss.”

Cervantes smiled at that
boss.

“Altimeter.”

“Checked.”

“Speed brakes.”

“Armed green,” Holley chanted back. “Good to—”

Thump.

Jed Holley said, “What in hell…?”

Both turboprop engines died, simultaneously. Every light on every monitor on the flight deck shut off as well. The sound of air whooshing around the airframe grew loud.

Miguel Cervantes said, “Hey, hey, hey. What's this … C'mon!”

Cervantes began walking through the emergency ignition system.

Nothing happened. He did it again.

Holley said, “Jesus…”

*   *   *

Tommy brought his head up sharply. He'd heard something go
thump.
He turned back to the notes on the e-reader, just as the device died.

Zip. Nada. Totally blank screen.

Tommy whacked it. “Piece a shit…” he whispered.

And only then did it dawn on him: the engines had died, too.

*   *   *

Both flight attendants dashed for the flight deck. Tommy glanced out the window. Trees were close. Very close.

“Fuck!” He grabbed Kiki by the shoulders, pulled her forward and down, and climbed on top of her, shouting,
“Isaiah! Get down get down get down!”

*   *   *

Isaiah Grey snapped awake when his sleeping brain realized the seats beneath him were no longer vibrating. He craned his neck, swept away his reading glasses, and looked out at the slowing propellers. He took in the lack of lighting in the cabin.

He saw Tommy piling onto Kiki, pushing her down between their row and the seat backs ahead of them: rows 10 and 11.

One of the flight attendants rushed down the aisle but lost her footing. Isaiah reacted quickly, grabbing her and rolling to the floor, he on the bottom, covering her head with his arms.

*   *   *

The three designers from Malatesta, Inc., stopped playing Trivial Pursuit.

Antal said, “What … just happened?”

Andrew Malatesta's eyes grew large as the midsize aircraft grew quiet.

“Jesus. Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.

Christian gasped. He had reached the same conclusion as Andrew. “Is … is this your … it can't be!”

Andrew was ripping at his seat belt. “Fucking … motherfuckers…” He shot up, clawed at the overhead bin, hauled down his saddlebag.

Vejay rose, too.

A flight attendant shouted, “Sir! Sit down! Now!”

Andrew grabbed Vejay's locking, titanium attaché case and sprinted for the back of the plane. In a crash, that's statistically the safest place to be.

At least, he thought he'd read that somewhere.

His two senior engineers sat and gaped.

*   *   *

Calendar broke down the launch tube into its component parts and slid each into the proper slot carved into the black foam rubber that filled the carrying case. He closed the lid, slid the case back into the rear of the Dodge Durango he'd stolen, slammed down the hatch.

Another man might have brought a team for this kind of job but Calendar disliked teams. A solo operation greatly simplifies the questions: Whom can I trust? Who will carry his own weight?

Not that he was working alone. Someone in Tichnor's shop had taken care of the Polestar Airlines booking computers, reducing the collateral damage as much as possible. He had brought on two good soldiers, working under the names Cates and Dyson. He'd worked with them before and trusted them with his life. More important, with his country. They had their tasks cut out for them, later. But for this—for the wet work—Calendar preferred solitude.

He climbed in, hit the ignition, and watched the Claremont VLE glide silently toward a copse of lodgepole pines, Douglas firs, and spruce, a mile in the distance.

*   *   *

At less than one hundred feet over Calendar's head, Jed Holley shouted into the dead radio, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Polestar Seven-Eight declaring an emergency! Repeat: emergency!”

Miguel Cervantes tried the ignition sequence six times. It obviously wasn't going to work. He switched to hauling on the yoke for all he was worth, fighting desperately to keep the nose of his powerless aircraft up.

*   *   *

Kiki, head to the floor, saw a man's legs flash by, sprinting toward the empennage. With her ear to the industrial carpet, she was the first to hear the
snap! snap! snap!
as treetops hit the underside of the airliner.

*   *   *

The Claremont VLE sliced through the fir and pine trees, the tallest trees ripping savagely at the once-powerful Bembenek engines that hung beneath the eighty-five-foot wingspan of the plane. Both Cervantes and Holley struggled with their yokes in the bizarrely quiet flight deck.

Through gritted teeth, Miguel Cervantes said, “Jed?”

Jed Holley said, “I know, man,” as a towering Douglas fir caught the port wing and tore it loose from the airframe.

As the port wing sheared free, the Claremont yawed madly, the starboard wing dipping, hitting more trees, thicker branches. A massive pine caught the starboard turboprop, breaking the downward-facing propeller like a toothpick, before ripping away the entire wing.

The Claremont rolled over, starboard windows facing the ground. The great ship slid lower into the trees, momentum tanking, ablating bits of aluminum and glass and losing altitude but still not nosing over.

A lone lodgepole pine shattered the flight-deck windshield, tearing the copilot's chair out of its floor restraints, sending it and Jed Holley into the back of the flight deck.

Most of the screaming passengers in the left-hand seats dangled to their right, hanging by their seat belts. Passengers in the right-hand seats pressed against the wall of the fuselage. Some sobbed. Some prayed. Others swore. Overhead bins opened, coats and laptops rained on passengers' heads. The three crash investigators, wedged near the floor, stayed in place.

*   *   *

Andrew braced himself, literally standing on the downward-facing wall of the jet, and managed to wedge the attaché case under one of the locked-down food trolleys before losing his balance and slamming against the starboard-side wall, his head banging hard against the airframe.

*   *   *

Still reeling over on its right side, Polestar Flight 78 hit the ground almost horizontally and slid, screaming, another hundred yards, snapping trees and sloughing off bits of both aircraft and passengers.

*   *   *

Doubled over, face and knees to the floor, wedged between rows 10 and 11, Kiki feared her ribs would cave in under Tommy's weight. Part of the seat undercarriage dug viciously into her thigh.

She suddenly smelled fresh air and pine trees. She got a face full of dirt, bitter and foul. She had it in her mouth, up her nose. She coughed, relieved not to have Tommy's weight crushing her anymore—suddenly realizing he wasn't there. Still wedged between the seats, Kiki screamed,
“Tommy! Tommmmmmeeeeeee!”

BOOK TWO

THE CRASHERS

12

J
USTIN OAKES, A MEMBER
of the Montana National Guard just back from a tour in Afghanistan, was first out of his tent, wearing boxers and a Crimson Tide T-shirt. He'd grabbed his hunting rifle by instinct. “What was that!”

His two buddies, with whom he'd played high school and college football, came barreling out of their tents, both men grabbing their rifles.

A geyser of smoke and debris, lit by the full moon, rose out of the forest less than two miles away and about one hundred feet lower than their bivouac.

“Jesus,” Pete said. “I think an airplane just hit!”

*   *   *

Calendar left the Durango a good hundred feet from the crash site, parked on an outcropping of rock. He ran with deft balance through the forest, dodging trees like tackles, comfortable moving at full clip through a forest at night. The full moon and cloudless sky played to his favor.

Steam hissed from vents. Fire crackled nearby. He could hear the
tec tec tec
of expanding metal.

Thirty feet from the on-its-side fuselage, he found a piece of sheared-off steel, the size and length of his forearm. Perfect. He picked it up.

He heard someone crying. A man sat up against a tree, blood flowing from his nose. His right leg was bent at the knee in an impossible angle.

Calendar knelt. “Sir. Are you okay?”

The crying man turned, dazed. “What … I…”

“Sir.” Calendar laid a hand on the man's shoulder. “What happened here? What happened to the aircraft?”

“I … I don't know. I don't know. I was asleep.…”

Calendar patted the man's shoulder. “Don't worry. We'll get you some help. Stay calm.”

He stood and stalked closer to the fuselage. He found a young man, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty, on his back, struggling to rise. The guy was still belted into the bottom part of his seat, which clung to his ass. The rest of the seat was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you all right?”

The kid said, “Jesus, do I look all right?” He spat out a tooth, hands clawing at the belt. “The goddamn plane crashed!”

“What happened to it?”

“I don't know, man.” He finally got the belt unhooked, savagely shoved the seat away from him. Calendar helped him rise to his feet. “The engines just fucking died! All the lights. My iPod, just boom: like flipping a switch!”

His answer was disappointing. Calendar glanced around, saw no onlookers. Lightning fast, he smacked his steel rod against the kid's windpipe, swinging it like a baton. The blow knocked the kid off his feet, hands on his throat, eyes bulging.

It would take him a minute or two to die. The autopsy would show that something from the aircraft had hit the kid at a high rate of speed.

Should have stuck with “I don't know, man,”
Calendar thought and moved on.

*   *   *

Miguel Cervantes hung limply to his right, body constrained by his harness. He grunted, eyes snapping open, the pain in his side bringing him fully awake.

His right arm hung toward the ground, a scary amount of blood drooling out of his brown-and-gold jacket, pooling in his palm, then dripping down to the combination of starboard wall and forest floor below him. Landing right where Jed Holley's seat should have been. Miguel tried to close his palm into a fist. His fingers disobeyed.

Bleeder,
he thought.
Deal with that first. Get that, then get to the passengers.

A grunt sounded behind him. He heard thrashing. He froze.

Jed!

“Hey. Hang in there,” he gasped, ripping at his harness buckle with his good, left hand. “Jed? Hang on, man. I'm … I've gotcha.”

Miguel's words were slurred, almost unintelligible to his own ears. Concussion or blood loss? Hard to say.

The harness buckle gave way. Miguel winced when he tried to move. The harness had broken his clavicle. His left leg hurt, too, but not badly. The pain actually helped sweep away some of the cobwebs in his brain. He rolled to his right, his weight tipping over the starboard armrest. He fell like a sack of cement, past the central control panel, past the place where Jed Holley's seat should have been. He landed with no grace, the wind knocked out of him. He saw stars, blue and red lights at the periphery of his vision.