By the time I get back in on Tuesday night, file my paperwork, and get airborne on my own, all three houses are empty, no return notes, no nothing. I fly around until nearly dawn, but nothing, and the houses have the same empty feeling I have in the pit of my stomach.
Wednesday I go running, a double loop, watch SportsCenter twice with Halloween for the first time in ages, then hit the shower. My phone rings in the middle of it, and the Mysteriously Dripping Man is hearing that he needs to get his uniform on and get to the airport. I tell Perez I'm on my way. She doesn't say it, but the tone of her voice is more than enough.
She's sitting in the flight deck at gate 72, waiting for me.
They were half way to Vegas, actually taking my advice and getting out of town. Witnesses say three of those frakkin big black SUV's caught them from behind on the Interstate out in the desert and turned them into the proverbial Swiss cheese. Broad daylight. I was in the air when it happened, an hour out of Kona on my way home. No one has put together who they were yet.
Of course, despite there being six cars full of witnesses, not a one of them can remember even one letter or number of the license plates. I don't know if I would be able to in their situation either. Who wants to go through life looking over their shoulder all the time? Speak the plate numbers and die? Fuck me.
Perez doesn't have the full files, gathering just what she could without drawing attention to her attention to the matter. She offers to walk across that line if I want the full file. I ask her not to, thank her for what she's done.
"You're going to do something stupid, yes?"
"Probably. I know where those two assholes live, though they could never have been the leaders of this pack."
"Be careful. Do some research. Don't end up regretting something you did. This is not your fault."
"How many times can you or fog dude tell me it's not my fault before you start to realize that they are all my fault?" Without thinking, I squeeze the control yoke, jerk it back like I'm trying to get us out of here. Then I realize what I did, take my hands off and stare at them. "Fuck it. Maybe it doesn't matter."
She puts her hand on mine, pushing it back down. "It does matter, and it's not your fault. You told them to stop. They chose to keep going. You can't protect everyone every second of every day."
Her radio blares, she has work to do. We exit the aircraft, and I watch her handle two lost little kids in her perfect way. Calms me down. A lot.
She has another call at the far end of the terminal, she looks at me, lets me choose.
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"Do I have to say it?"
"No, but I like it when you do."
"Don't do anything stupid." She runs off.
MFM forgets that advice by the time he gets home. I put my swim trunks on, grab his underwear, and head for the beach. Not too many people around, it still being March, not really beach weather yet except for the few diehard types. I swim out into the ocean, sure that only one person saw me go, and she was walking away down the beach.
I dive for the bottom, take off my trucks, put them under my favorite rock, put on my underwear, climb back to the surface, then it's "
assholes"
so full of intention, and rocketing skyward and tilting into town.
It's daylight, and I am floating above the house, the bad house, the only thing I know is connected to those deaths. The door is gone as soon as I hit it. The house is empty, I mean really empty, can't even tell anyone lived here recently empty. Five minutes later it's a pile of used building materials.
No where else to go, I get into the air and circle looking for a brown Ford, but no luck. Tomorrow, somehow, we will need to get an APB out for it. I have way too much anger though, and no where to put it.
So I launch, Alan Shepardish, letting the light take me, though I know where we're going. The near space arc and the roller coaster flight are as fun as always, made more so by my impending mission. Once again, I marvel at the view from altitude, and wonder why I have yet to do it just for fun.
It's still dark at the Chinese air base, a few hours before sunrise. Seems to be an actual guard patrol, and maybe even a camera. I sneak up on the unsuspecting video unit, and crush it from behind, wait until the guard drives by in his knock off Jeep, then fly across and grab a rack of the same bombs I used last time.
In the next 30 minutes I take out every building in the complex I hit last time, plus the two buildings down the road. I even blow up the rails for the trains in between. Takes three racks of bombs from the air base. I briefly consider other damage I might do, but decide that I should stick to my anti-nuke campaign.
The light agrees with my choice, and together we rocket back into the something sphere, I used to know when I was in school, but it's not the strato, maybe it's the photo, or the tropo or the groucho. We're heading further west, to the other place Perez laid out in detail to me.
This time, I use their own weapons from their own airbases. Bomb after bomb, nuclear facility after nuclear facility, rubble upon rubble. A piece of my anger flies out of me with the toss of each bomb, until strangely I am at peace.
Having no where to be for another 12 hours also frees me. I have done a great deal of damage, and it only took three short hours. I steal some clothes, fly into Egypt, take a look at the pyramids, visit Rome, north to Paris, across the Channel into London, not worrying about whether or not someone sees me go.
A quick suborbital hop to New York, wave at the statue, then head for the west coast, arriving about midnight. Naked now which minimizes my radar reflection, out to sea 20 miles, under water back to my swim trunks, become smaller, but not less happy, then onto the beach, back home, and drop onto my lumpy sofa.
There is fog. Dark, swirly, smoky. The evil grass, apparently not recently mowed, is two feet tall and waving in the breeze. Beckoning me. I hear the boots, wonder for a second if he's going to be mad, then decide I don't care.
He's standing there, and I have the total urge to pull back the hood so I can finally see his face. He points his staff at me, perhaps thinking that will fend me off.
"Not exactly how we would have liked it to go, but we liked it. We have some other ideas if..."
Yes. You know what happened. Halloween the Wonder Cat to the rescue. Of the two of us, she's the one who never fails.
I make my run down the beach, across restaurant row and around the light house. I jog in place for a minute at the spot where almost a year ago I watched the river flow into the ocean and made my choice. If it was a choice. No new insight flows into my head.
Shower (at home, I skipped that part), put on my blues, strap on my weapon, and drive for the airport. It occurs to me on the way that I did not check the ereader for news, or switch on the television. Does that mean I am really at peace, or afraid of what I might see?
Chapter 11
Perez is shaking her head as she watches me walk into the terminal. Maybe I should have checked the television before I got here.
"Holy Mary Mother of God, when you do something stupid, you really do something stupid." She's laughing. Smiling and laughing. "About time you broke loose a little."
We start walking together down the terminal.
"I got home just in time to come in. What do you know?"
"Oh, nothing really." She laughs again. "A house you remodeled in Compton, three nuclear sites in North Korea, four more in Iran, pictures of you in half a dozen other cities."
"So, pretty much everything."
"Yeah. Around the world in 80 minutes. You did circumnavigate the entire planet last night."
"I did, didn't I." Hadn't occurred to me.
We've reached the food court, and something's going on. Everyone's clustered around the televisions. I, he, we, are on every screen.
Some newscaster is there, but they've turned the sound down and it's impossible to hear. Thanks Fog Bastards for the normal hearing. Eventually, we manage to get close enough to read the scroll bar on the screen, which says that China, North Korea, and Iran have banned me from their countries. The US has disavowed any knowledge of my actions.
I get to see photos and video of him flying in Egypt, Rome, Paris, London, and New York. Camera phones have changed the world forever; I can't. Go figure.
Perez and I get back to work, walking the terminal from end to end, dashing over to help out with a tour group threatening to riot in Terminal 6 over a three hour delay, even being called to Bradley to provide extra security when a China Air 747 and a Korean Air 777 both need to unload at the same time. Some serious irony in my being there.
No time for lunch or much of a break all day, until finally we are relieved, and relieved, if you get my meaning, and meet up at the usual restaurant for some large tacos and larger beverages.
Perez's
tia
has the TV on there as well, usually for soccer matches, but tonight for the news. The closed captioning comes in handy. Forty countries have joined in with the three from this morning and banned me. Israel, South Korea, and Chile have offered me citizenship. Israel padded their offer with a fancy seaside house complete with servants if I will move there. South Korea should have offered me a golf club membership, but no such luck.
Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum like me, hate me, don't know what to make of me. There are protests in a half dozen cities, both fer me and agin me. Ariela actually joins us for a drink at closing, tells us she wishes he would clean up her neighborhood, not realizing, of course, that I am two feet away.
Finally, she closes up, and the three of us walk out into the almost empty parking lot, and then it's just me and Perez.
"What's on the agenda for tonight?"
"Don't know. Hard to be more stupid than last night."
"Nothing you did yesterday was stupid. You want to change the world, don't you?"
"Yes I do."
And then we're getting in our cars, and she leaves me with her blessing, "Don't do anything stupid."
I head for Upland and into downtown to visit Celeste. Does that qualify as stupid?
We play another hour of ride the salami, including 20 minutes of me, naked, holding onto the unconscious, naked, Celeste, on the stairs, in the dust, of the stairwell, of a skyscraper. Another nonsensical thing that seems perfectly normal to me now.
I don't realize she's awake until she asks me, "Why that particular house?"
"The three motorcycle riders out in the desert? You know about them?"
"Shot up, I heard road rage."
"No. Those were the Mysterious Motorcycle Men. The guys at that house were responsible for their deaths. I didn't find the men, so I took down their house."
"And then you took it out on North Korea and Iran?"
"Exactly. You know me too well."
"And next?"
"Don't know. Keep fighting."
"You are not responsible for those dead men. You asked them to stop, they didn't."
She thinks just like Perez. And she does know me pretty well for the little actual conscious time we've spent together.
"I inspired them. I am responsible."
"No," she says, kissing my cheek, "They were responsible for themselves, same as you. So," she changes subjects, "What was in the General's letter?"
I start laughing. "It was an order to stay away from China and North Korea."
She starts laughing too. It feels good, her naked laughing body against mine.
"Guess you were never in the Army."
"Nope. "
We kiss again, then I move to let her know it's time to go.
"Two weeks?," she says as she walks out.
"I'll be here."
And she's gone again.
I fly to the house I leveled yesterday, not caring when the drone comes along for the ride. Nothing there now but debris and yellow tape. I fly around LA, Orange County, even out into Riverside, but it's quiet, and my brain is scrambled enough that I can't think of anything else to do right now. Finally, I hit the jets, lose my aerial tail, and go home to play with the cat.
Turn on the TV in the morning after I get back from my run, and there's Celeste letting the world know that the motorcycle men died for my sins. But once again she defends my honor, if I have any left. I spend so much time listening to all the wacky commentary that I am almost late getting to the airport.
Taylor is pissed, possibly because I haven't called, and I promise to make it up to her, except that I'm on my way to Hawai'i. We agree to golfing on Monday, and then Ken and I corral the flight attendants and get to work.
