Capture (2 page)

What was going on?

Then they both turned to look at me.
No, not at me. At
Hayden
.

Hayden

All thoughts of the tiny, cinnamon-colored freckle just below the glossy black of Tarah's hairline slid right out of my mind as Mr. Sherman took a step in my direction, his face set into a pale scowl that promised nothing but trouble for me.

My body froze while my
mind raced.

Whatever it was, I didn't do it. Not this time.

My next thought was that Dad was going to
kill
me if I'd somehow created another mess for him to have to clean up.

Had Kyle and the other guys from the basketball team finally made good on their plans to steal the Raiders statue from the school's roof?
I
told
them it was a dumb idea.

Knowing them, they'd probably gotten caught then lied and said I was the mastermind behind the whole idiotic plan.

If I got busted for their stupidity, I would seriously make Kyle wish he was dead. If I survived my father's fury first.

I
turned to my left to look at the most likely suspect for clues, raising my eyebrows in silent question. But Kyle shrugged and shook his head, apparently as in the dark as I was.

Principal Thomas stopped Mr. Sherman with a hand on his shoulder.
“Jim, you might as well show everyone at once.”

Mr. Sherman hesitated then changed direction
towards the classroom's flatscreen TV mounted in the upper corner by the dry erase board. He turned it on, found a news channel and hesitated again.

Looking back over his shoulder at us, he said,
“Class, I've got some bad news. Something's happening in Washington, D.C. We're about to see history being made.”

I had one last
second to feel relief as I realized I wasn't in trouble here.

Then Mr. Sherman turned up the volume so we could hear the news station's anchorwoman, who was in the middle of a breaking news alert.

“...if you are just now joining us, to recap, about ten minutes ago there was some type of massive explosion outside the northwest side of the White House, where President McFadden was scheduled to give a speech that would address the rising anger and frustrations over the long continuing high unemployment rate and the ever widening financial gap between the top one percenters and the rest of the country.”

The view on the screen changed to show a huge black cloud of smoke blocking almost the entire west wing of the White House
. The cloud extended across the lawn and out into the street, where fire trucks and ambulances were parked and emergency workers led sobbing, soot-covered people away from the area. Every few seconds, the wind shifted the cloud enough to reveal glimpses of the White House lawn, which looked like a giant meteor had crashed into it.

The anchorwoman continued.
“The explosion occurred just minutes after the start of today's scheduled press conference in the Rose Garden which, as you can see from the live footage, is now covered in smoke and flames. We're still not sure exactly what caused the explosion. We have heard from witnesses at the scene that it did not appear to be an airplane or other type of aerial attack, but we have received no official report yet to confirm or deny this. We're taking you live now to Jennifer Armstrang, a witness who saw the explosion. Jennifer, are you there?”

“
Yes, I'm here!” the witness gasped. There was a loud crackle, probably from interference in the satellite signal to her cell phone.

“
Can you tell us what you saw?”

“
I was down the street a couple of blocks from the White House, and at first there was just the sound of the protesters outside yelling in the street. And then out of nowhere there was this loud boom that shook the whole street, and people screaming everywhere, and thick smoke started pouring in all directions.”

“
Jennifer, did you see any kind of airplane or helicopter in the area before the explosion?” the anchorwoman asked.

“
No! There was nothing in the sky, no sounds of jet engines or anything like that. Just the sound of the protesters yelling outside the White House fence.”

There was a pause before the anchorwoman replied.
“Okay, thank you, Jennifer. Please stay on the line if you can and we'll check back with you in a minute. Viewers, we have just received some video from a surveillance camera that had a view of the explosion. We're going to play it for you now. If you have small children watching with you, please be advised that the following could be disturbing to them.”

Apparently Principal Thomas and Mr. Sherman both felt our class was old enough to handle it, because neither of them made a move towards the TV as if to turn it off or change the channel.

The live view was shifted to the left side of the TV screen so a new, smoke-free view could be displayed on the right. The new video footage showed the White House in the distance and how before the blast the street in front of it had been filled with a huge crowd that had gathered outside the White House's wrought iron fence with signs protesting the super rich top one percent. Keeping the protesters away from the White House fence was a double line of police dressed all in black, each one holding a huge plastic shield in one hand and a black baton in the other.

The constant movement of the protesters made the single unmoving man at the center of that crowd stand out like an island in the middle of a storm-whipped lake.
Also unlike everyone surrounding him, this protester was silent. He held no sign, his arms down by his sides instead of waving a fist or banner in the air. He simply stared with narrowed eyes set within a red face aimed towards the Rose Garden and the president, who was a tiny figure still speaking from behind a podium in the far off distance. The protester's perfect stillness made it hard to look away from him.

Then h
e broke that stillness by raising both his hands straight up into the air like a preacher praying to the heavens above. The video filled with red, followed by two seconds of static.

It took me a second to remember the anchorwoman had said it was a video of the White House explosion.
Which meant most of those people I'd just watched were more than likely either hurt or dead.

The split screen switched back to a single live view of the smoke outside the White House
, and the anchorwoman continued speaking. “As previously stated, we do not yet have any official reports, nor do we have any idea of the total number of injuries or fatalities. We will of course keep you posted with any and all updates as we receive them from White House officials as well as the area hospitals. Until then, we can only speculate as to what might have caused this terrible tragedy. While it seems that an aerial attack might be ruled out, some witnesses at the scene have suggested that the explosion sounded like a bomb going off. Witnesses are also reporting that the blast appeared to extend all the way to the garden of the White House, where it is unknown if the president and others at the press conference were injured—”

Silence for a few seconds
while the anchorwoman paused, then her voice returned. “Okay, we've just received word that an emergency press conference is starting. We're taking you live to that conference now.”

The view on the TV screen changed again.
This time a man in a black military uniform with a lot of colorful badges on the left side of his chest stood before the White House seal, which hung against a wall of navy-colored curtains. At the bottom of the screen the news station listed the man's name as General Bridley.

He
cleared his throat then began. “Ladies and gentlemen, the initial reports have been confirmed. At one thirty-two p.m. today an explosion from an as yet undetermined cause occurred outside the perimeter of the White House fence. The blast extended to the Rose Garden where the president was fatally injured.”

In the silence of my classroom, someone’s stylus fell with a sharp crack onto their desktop then rolled off onto the floor.
Two rows away to my right, someone else whispered, “holy crap.”

The general continued.
“President McFadden was determined as fatally injured beyond all possible resuscitation at the scene of the incident. As the rescue efforts continue, we still do not have an exact count of how many others were also injured or killed—”

“
They didn't even
try
to save him?” some girl whimpered. “Why wouldn't they at least try to save the president?”

“
The blast must have blown off his head or something,” Kyle muttered.

It was as if Kyle's comment slapped the entire room back into consciousness again.
All around me, the class exploded in complete mayhem. Girls burst into tears and covered their faces, many reaching across seat backs or aisles to hug each other. Most of the guys sat frozen in their desks, some shaking their heads in disbelief.

“
It’s another 9/11!” Kyle said, looking ready to tear off the wooden top from his desk with his bare hands. “I can't believe this. The terrorists got us again! We ought to nuke them. Nuke them now and show them what happens when you mess with us.”

Mr. Sherman yelled at us all to quiet down.
It took a couple of minutes till everybody finally settled down enough so we could hear the general as he went on to outline how the vice president, cabinet, and the speaker of the house had all been taken to a secure location during this emergency transition of national leadership.

Suddenly, the screen's view split again, the general muted on the right as the news anchorwoman broke in on the left.

“Viewers, we apologize for the interruption, but we've just received more alarming news. Flight 3233, an airbus coming in on approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport just miles from the White House, has also exploded. The explosion occurred approximately three minutes ago while the plane was preparing to land at the airport. We do not yet know if these two incidents are related.”

The news station switched her side of the screen to a view of a huge passenger jet as it exploded in a fiery ball in mid air.

Several students gasped again, and the room broke out into more chaos.

But like the silent protester on TV, I sat frozen in my chair, unable to speak or breathe
deeply as the rage and tears flowed all around me.

My dad, Senator Shepherd, was in D.C. today in session with the rest of Congress.
If this was all some kind of attack on Washington D.C....

Screw the rules against cell phone use during class.
This was a family emergency.

My desk rocked hard as I fumbled for my cell phone in my pocket.
Kyle stopped yelling with the others long enough to notice my desk's weird movement. He scowled at me with an eyebrow raised as if to ask “what's up with your desk?” I ignored him, searching my phone's Contacts folder for my dad's work numbers instead.

While I waited for the call to go through to my dad's office, Tarah twisted in her seat to watch me.
As usual, the contrast of her dark eyes in that thin, too pale face surrounded by all that long, thick black hair managed to hit me in the gut. And right now, stuck here a thousand miles from D.C. with no news about my dad, I really needed the distraction.

Nothing about Tarah made sense to me lately.
Like now...of all the girls in our class, she was the only one who wasn't falling apart, in spite of how breakable her long, skinny arms and legs always made her seem. While those watchful eyes of hers were as wide with shock as everyone else's, hers were still dry. And she only watched me, making no move to reach out to me or anyone else around her for emotional support.

She was a mystery I'd spent years trying to understand.
And I was running out of time to figure out the answer before graduation.

The answering machine in Dad's office finally picked up.
I ended the call without bothering to leave a message.

In the background, I heard the anchorwoman on TV continue.
“Okay, they're telling me that we now have a cell phone video taken by one of Flight 3233's passengers minutes before the plane's demise. Apparently the person who recorded this was also streaming it live to the internet at the time it was taken.”

The teacher and several students shushed everyone else so we could hear, a few girls’ quiet sobs in the background around us adding to the nightmarish feel that this couldn’t really be happening.

The new video showed an airplane cabin filled with passengers. A high pitched female voice, coming from what sounded like inches behind the cell phone, said, “Oh my God. I hope I'm getting this. I'm on a plane flying over Washington D.C. right now, and if you can see this, there's a huge fire in the city. It...it looks like part of the White House just blew up!”

The girl holding the cell phone pushed it closer to a nearby window, where way off in the distance you could just make out a huge rolling ball of black smoke rising up from the ground, partially blocking out the familiar dome and columns of the White House across the Potomac River.