Explosive Engagement (19 page)

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Prologue

February

To Alex Foster, the flight between Blunt Falls,
Montana, and Shatterhorn, Nevada, felt ill-fated from the get-go. The unexpected
deteriorating weather was just the latest obstacle, but at least it was one that
could be managed by some decent flying skills and a deviation from his flight
plan.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes, fighting a growing fatigue he
couldn’t afford. Unscrewing the cap on a new bottle of the vitamin-enhanced
water he carried when he piloted his plane, he took a long swallow. The numbers
on the charts swam before his eyes and he blinked, performed a few fuzzy
calculations and changed radio frequencies to the Bozeman, Montana beacon. He
banked the plane toward the east, hoping to avoid the worst of the system and
arrive just a little late.

No big deal. Nate would explain the facts of life when it came
to flying to their friend Mike. And Mike’s issues would be there in two hours or
two days—they weren’t going away anytime soon. The poor guy had been devastated
by the incident all three men shared last Labor Day when a lone teenage gunman
had shot and killed four kids in a random attack at a Nevada shopping mall.
Since then, Mike had been gathering data he believed hinted at a conspiracy.
This meeting would let them review what Mike had learned and maybe, hopefully,
help him get past some of his wild ideas.

A glimpse out the Cessna window revealed nothing but icy-white
sky that seemed to swirl in his head. He climbed higher, hoping to find less
turbulent air. He was kind of glad Jessica hadn’t come along. She’d claimed she
was fighting a virus and he’d accused her of making it up so she wouldn’t have
to be with him. Maybe some time apart would help, he didn’t know. However, now,
with his vision blurring and his stomach turning, he considered he might owe her
an apology.

He yawned again and took another swallow of the drink as he
tried to quench his thirst.

After thirty more minutes, the break in the weather he’d
anticipated still hadn’t materialized. His eyes drifted shut and he opened them
quickly, making himself sit up straighter. As he did periodically, he glanced at
the control panel. It took him a second to actually register what he saw.

The oil-pressure indicator showed a rapid decline toward the
red zone. He stared at the gauge with disbelief, then tapped the glass. At that
moment he became aware of a burning odor and peered out the window where he
found oil flying over the coaming. Liquid drops hit the windshield and crawled
away, leaving portentous snail-like tracks on the glass.

A quick check of the gauge showed pressure still falling. He
flipped the radio frequencies again, but the unit was now silent. He tore off
the headphones as flames flared from the engine compartment. Almost
simultaneously, he pulled the handle to turn off the fuel tanks and yanked on
the fire extinguisher lever. Smoke billowed from under the cowling, but
dissipated at once.

And then the engine seized.

The fire was out but the plane was dead.

Disaster was imminent. He was off his flight plan, somewhere
over the Bitterroot Mountains in the middle of the Rockies. He had an EPIRB
aboard and knew the emergency beacon would signal once activated by a crash, but
unlike the newer models that communicated with satellites, his older unit
required a search plane to fly directly overhead. Would anyone look for him this
far afield from his expected route?

The plane began losing altitude. He spiraled down through the
clouds, into the storm. Visibility cleared for a few seconds and he saw a large
snow-covered meadow to the north. He quickly corrected his course to aim for
that, going into a glide, pushing the yoke ahead to avoid a stall.

Seconds seemed to drag and then everything sped up as the
ground once again appeared closer than ever. The plane skimmed over the snowy
treetops ringing the meadow and shuddered as it made its first bounce. That was
immediately followed by the scream of twisted metal as the landing-gear struts
tore from their housings. The wounded plane skimmed along the snow on its belly,
racing into the middle of the meadow, snow flying at the windshield.

At last the Cessna came to an abrupt and sudden stop. Alex flew
forward into the instrument panel. His chest impacted with the yoke, his left
leg caught and twisted in the mangled metal below. The outside of the cabin was
covered with snow. He wiped something from his eyes—blood—then immediately
struggled with the door, pushing against the buildup, knowing he had to get it
open before it froze shut. He almost choked on relief as weak daylight flooded
the cabin.

A strange cracking noise drove ice picks through his nervous
system. The noise came again and he recognized it for what it was. With horror,
he looked down to find water rising over his shoes. As quick as he’d ever done
anything in his life, he grabbed his backpack and the medical kit and threw both
through the open door. He undid his seat belt, took a steadying breath and
screamed with pain as he ruthlessly extricated his leg. There was blood
everywhere but he’d have lots of time to worry about that later. If there was a
later...

Clenching his teeth, he used his upper-body strength to pull
himself through the open door.

This was no meadow; this was a lake covered with ice and the
plane, heavy with unspent fuel, had broken through. He scrambled out the door
and landed on his gear. The fall sent a stab of unbearable agony racing from his
heel to his groin, and he had to struggle to keep from passing out. Priority
one: keep himself and his gear from going into the water. Get away, get away, as
fast as possible, beat the cracks spreading out around him. His hands were
clumsy as he tied things together and then he dragged himself away from the
wreck, using his elbows for traction, trailing his gear from his belt, the
fissures continuing to open up all around him.

Chapter One

Three Months Later

Jessica’s cell phone rang as she sat at her desk
grading a math quiz. She jumped in her seat and swallowed a lump of panic as she
dug the device from the jacket hanging over the back of her chair. You’d think
after all this time a ringing phone wouldn’t cause this fearful knee-jerk
reaction, but it did and it probably always would. Until they found his body,
anyway. Or until she knew the truth.

She clicked it on and said, “Yes?” in a breathless voice
because she didn’t recognize the number on the screen and that was always
nerve-racking. How many times had she imagined learning news of Alex’s fate from
a stranger? Almost as many times as she’d imagined him calling her himself from
some secret spot in Middle America where he’d gone to start a life without her.
That was the trouble when a husband simply vanished. You never knew if he was
dead or alive; you lived in limbo. Any closure would be better than none.

The caller was a salesman wanting to know if she needed new
drainpipes and she got rid of him right away. The truth was, her house was in
limbo, too. If it wasn’t for Billy Summers and his sweet-natured persistence in
helping her with chores, she imagined she would just let the place crumble
around her.

And that had to end. She had to get a grip. Maybe it was time
to think about selling the house, getting something smaller. Could she do that?
Not yet. But the question nagged her: What would she do if Alex walked through
the door?

The sun beating through the high windows made the room too
warm. She folded her arms on her desk and rested her forehead against her hands,
closing her eyes. Restless nights usually caught up with her in the late
afternoon, and apparently today was no exception. The school was mostly empty
now, but occasional footsteps moving in the halls gave her a reassuring feeling
of not being alone as did the faint whirring and beeping of distant machines set
to automatic timers.

Thank goodness the school term was almost finished and she’d
been allowed to back out of teaching summer school this year. She loved the kids
in her remedial classes at Blunt Falls High, but she needed time away from them
and everyone else. Who would have guessed constant pity could be so exhausting?
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift for a while.

A nearby noise jerked her out of her stupor and she looked up
to find a stranger standing in her open doorway. As the school was very strict
about allowing unauthorized people on the campus, this man had to be someone’s
father, but he didn’t look like any other parent she’d met at this school. He
was tall and dark, thin, with uncut hair and a full beard. Dark glasses covered
his eyes. His jeans and corduroy shirt appeared too big for his frame, while his
face and hands were weathered looking. There was a healed abrasion across one
cheekbone and another slashing across what she could see of his forehead. As he
moved into the class, she detected a definite hitch in his left leg.

She found herself on her feet without consciously deciding to
rise. “May I help you?”

He took off the dark glasses, folding them away as he continued
moving between the desks. The look in his hazel eyes pinned her to the floor and
she all but stopped breathing as her throat closed.

And then he was right beside her, taking her hands, looking at
her as though he’d never seen her before. He brought her right hand up to his
face and laid her palm against his hairy cheek. His eyes sparkled with
tears.

“Alex?” she murmured, searching his face with a disbelieving
intensity. “Oh, my God. Alex?”

His nod was almost imperceptible. His tears moistened her
fingertips. “Are you real or am I dreaming?” she mumbled.

“If you’re dreaming, then so am I,” he said, his voice choked
with emotion.

She forgot to wonder how she would feel or react and just flung
herself against him. Tears of relief filled her eyes as he held her. She finally
pushed herself away. “How is this possible?” she asked. “Where have you
been?”

He pulled her back against him, burying his face against her
neck, holding her tight as if he’d never let her go. “I crashed in the
Bitterroots,” he said. “I’ve just been trying to stay alive until the snow
melted so I could get back.”

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “Or maybe even worse, that
you...”

She stopped short.

“I can’t believe I’m holding you,” he whispered.

She leaned back to gaze up at him, smoothing his hair away from
his brow with trembling fingers, trying to find the man she married under the
scars and hair. “Are you all right? You’re limping. And your poor face.” She
searched his eyes for answers.

Instead of providing them, he tugged her back to his chest, and
this time his lips landed on hers. Even when times were tough between them, the
physical connection had been quicksilver and so it still was, all the sweeter
for the fact that until a few minutes before, she’d thought she’d never see him
again.

A woman’s voice cut in from the open doorway and they both
turned to find the school’s principal, Silvia Greenspan. “I’m sorry to interrupt
you guys,” she said. It appeared she knew Alex was at the school, had probably
spoken to him when he came onto the campus. She smiled at them both fondly as
she added, “There are tons of reporters outside. Alex, I think someone in the
office got excited and alerted the local television channel that you’d
reappeared here at the school. I don’t know how long we can hold them back.” She
turned and left, her footsteps clicking in retreat as she hurried back down the
hall.

“How did you get to Blunt Falls?” Jessica asked.

“Doris and Duke Booker brought me. They’re the people who more
or less rescued me.”

“Rescued you! Alex, what happened?”

“Later, okay?” He looked at her longingly. “There’s so much I
need to tell you.”

“I know,” she said, her mind still grappling with his offhand
comment about being rescued. “Me, too.”

“I’m sorry about the fight we had before I left. It was my
fault.”

“Not now,” she said, straightening his collar. “You have to go
talk to the press.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? Everyone is going to be so relieved to
hear you’re home safe and sound.”

“They can wait,” he said. He gestured at her cluttered desk.
“Anything here need to go home with you?”

“These tests,” she said, picking up the math papers she’d been
grading. He retrieved her briefcase from the closet and held it open for her as
she deposited the papers. “Why are we running away?”

“Because,” he said, sounding like one of her students. “There’s
a back way out of here through the gym, isn’t there?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing,” he interrupted as he took her jacket from her
chair and draped it over her shoulders. “Where’s your purse?”

“I’ll get it,” she said as she unlocked the desk drawer where
she kept it during classes. “Why don’t you want to talk to the newspeople?
What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, not like that. I just think we have the
right to reconnect before the blitz. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding, suddenly realizing he was right.
There were so many things she had to tell him about the past three months,
things he needed to understand, things that would redefine what he thought he
knew about the world, things she didn’t want him hearing from someone holding a
camera on his face. And, she realized with a jolt of panic, there were things
she needed to take care of, too. Things she didn’t want him to see.

She followed him toward the door, his limp a visual reminder of
the struggle he must have endured. “Hurry,” she added as they raced down the
hall and out the back of the gym toward the baseball field, which they could
circle to access the parking lot.

It was a tremendous relief to slide behind the wheel of her
car. “Duck your head,” she muttered, driving out of the lot. Their path led them
past two or three television vans with satellite dishes on their roofs and a
growing crowd of people milling about. Alex didn’t sit up again until they were
half a mile away and she gave him the all clear. Their gazes met and he smiled
but she knew it wouldn’t be long before reporters figured out they’d slipped
away.

And it wasn’t as though they’d be hard to find.

* * *

“N
OTHING
MUCH
HAS
CHANGED
,” Alex said in wonder as
he followed Jessica into the house and closed the front door behind them. It
seemed surreal that for the past one hundred and three days he’d been living in
the most primitive of conditions while his wife, his house, his job—his
world—existed right here as it always had. At the time, emerged as he was in
basic survival, all this had seemed like a distant fantasy he’d never live to
revisit, but here it had been all along, chugging away without him, apparently
none the worse for his absence.

The same thing had happened when he’d been deployed in the
army, only then he’d been shot at, as well. On the other hand, he hadn’t been
alone and there was a lot to be said for companionship.

The house was a newer one, built in a cluster of similar houses
located in a small wooded area a few miles outside of Blunt Falls. They’d bought
it with plans to fill the rooms upstairs with their children and had pictured
them running through the trees and splashing in the shallow stream at the bottom
of the gulch with the neighborhood kids as playmates. But that had never
happened. Oh, the neighbors’ families grew all right, but theirs didn’t and now,
in some ways, the houses all around them, strewn with tricycles and sandboxes,
formed a painful reminder that things didn’t always work out the way you thought
they would.

Now the house welcomed him back with years of memories, and he
stood by the big rock fireplace just trying to center himself. Meanwhile,
Jessica closed the drapes and turned to face him. She’d deposited her purse and
briefcase on the chair nearest the door, much as she always had and now stood
looking up the stairs as though she wanted to dash up to their room.

He reached for her hand. “We won’t have long before they track
us down,” he said.

She looked at him and nodded. “Good point.”

“I’m a little beat,” he said with a smile. “Let’s go sit at the
table like we used to. Let’s talk.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Okay.”

He claimed the chair facing the living-room door and patted the
one beside it. She entered the dining room behind him, her brown eyes velvety,
enhanced by the oversize cream tunic she wore over slim black jeans.

She looked good, her auburn hair longer than it had been in a
while, combed straight back from her oval-shaped face which was devoid of makeup
as it almost always was. He’d been afraid he’d find her worn-out and grief
stricken, but instead she seemed almost luminescent. His disappearance didn’t
seem to have hurt her.

Well, why should it have? They’d been whisper close to a
separation for most of the past year, so caught up in their different lives that
they’d become like that old saying, “Ships passing in the night.” In fact, for
the past three months his greatest fear had been that she would be relieved he’d
vanished. No more fights, no more disappointments, no stress. Just over. And who
was to say that that isn’t what happened? Maybe she’d moved on, maybe she’d even
found someone else.

Maybe he should stop borrowing trouble....

“Are you hungry?” she asked, standing behind the chair he’d
patted. It provided a good view of the garden and he’d already noticed the
plethora of bushes and flowers that bloomed with an intensity he didn’t remember
ever seeing before. Some plants were absolutely covered with buds, promising
radiant blossoms in the weeks to come. She must have spent hours out there
tending that garden, loving it.

“The Bookers stuffed me,” he said, a bit distracted by the
beauty sweeping across the yard toward the doors. He pulled his attention back
to her. “They grow or hunt just about everything they eat. My poor digestive
tract is probably struggling to cope after existing on three-plus months of
pretty much nothing but fish.”

She slid a basket of clothes across the table and started
folding them. He got the distinct impression she was keeping her hands busy.
Either that, or she was creating a barrier by positioning the basket between
them. “Where did you meet these people?” she asked.

“I literally stumbled into their garden and collapsed in their
asparagus patch.”

She stopped folding a lacy bra and stared at him. He tore his
gaze away from the undergarment and all the memories it provoked as she said,
“You’re not making any sense. Where have you been for three months? What exactly
happened to you?”

He told her about the storm and the dead engine, ending with
the crash far off his reported route and the immediate sinking of the plane. He
touched on his nightmare crawl across the lake to the relative safety of the
shore and how he’d managed to live through the first night by digging out a
trench around the base of a tree and covering it over with evergreen boughs.

“I can’t believe you survived,” she said when he paused. “Did
you ever see a search plane?”

“Once,” he said, all but wincing at the memory. “I woke up to
the sound of an engine and scrambled out of my hole like a crippled badger.”

“When was this?”

“Two days after the crash. I had to grab the makeshift crutches
to get out into the clear where they could see me. The emergency beacon I
carried went down with the Cessna.”

She almost rolled her eyes and he smiled. “I know, I know. You
asked me to update my equipment a hundred times.”

“Two hundred,” she said.

“Well, you were obviously right. Anyway, by the time I got out
from under the trees, they were gone and they didn’t come back.”