Breaking Point (24 page)

When their food came, Renee stared at it for a moment, then stood and walked out of the bar without touching it. Amy Dreyfus cried, the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes.

The waitress sat beside her, one-arm hugged her, and said, “She dump you, honey?”

To her utmost surprise, Amy actually belted a laugh. “Wow, did you guess that one wrong!”

But she hugged the waitress right back. That anyone could bring her a few seconds of laughter was a blessing right now.

HALFWAY TO TWIN PINES

The ride to Twin Pines had been a Bad Idea.

Once in the car, Teresa Santiago never stopped talking. Not even to inhale. Lakshmi Jain was, if possible, chillier. No subject was taboo for Teresa: her energetic love life, her parents' divorce when she was twelve, the lumpectomy her sister had just undergone, the brattiness of said sister's twerpy kids, her dogs. The drive took twenty-five minutes; it just seemed like days.

It was about 8:30
P.M.
by the time the crashers arrived in the sleepy little timber town.

TWIN PINES

Calendar walked half the length of the alley and saw no one. He bounded up the two cement steps to the back door of the meat market and picked the lock in seconds.

There was no alarm system to bypass.

He stood in the dark, listening for human sounds and hearing none. He stood in a storage room with a rolling bay door next to the door he'd lock-picked.

He padded through the largely empty room on his rubber-soled boots, checked the corridor. He turned on his Maglite. Empty. He trotted to the end of the hall, checking every unlocked door. He had the place to himself.

The corridor ended at a door that led to a much larger storage room, and this one he did not have to himself.

It was full of corpses.

A dozen bodies, more or less, were on the cement floor with their feet toward the door that led to the street. They were lined up evenly, but some were cocked at five degrees to the left or the right.

Calendar's breath misted as he exhaled. It was about forty degrees in this room.

The bodies lay on their backs. White bedsheets had been spread out, covering them. That had been a kindness, Calendar thought. He was glad someone had done that. A pile of extra sheets was lumped together in the middle of the room.

Beyond the dozen bodies were another dozen rubber body bags with zippers. They were lumpy and misshapen. Partials, Calendar guessed.

Andrew Malatesta's speech, announcing that he would not be working for the Pentagon after all and that a rogue element in Halcyon/Detweiler was experimenting with banned weapons, was either in this room or in the fuselage of Flight 78. Calendar's instructions were clear. Job one: find and destroy the speech. Job two: find Malatesta's sketch pad, with its vast array of innovative weaponry ideas. Halcyon's R&D boys would gorge on that for years. If the sketch pad had been destroyed in the airliner, well, that would be a shame, but Halcyon/Detweiler could survive without it. The speech, on the other hand, had to be destroyed.

Calendar forced his strong hands into tight latex gloves, letting them snap against his forearms. It was difficult getting the glove over the bandage on his right hand.

He picked the body closest to him, knelt, threw off the sheet. It was a woman, midtwenties and pretty, her right arm missing at the shoulder and a massive, tacky contusion at the very top of her skull. Her eyes were open. She was pale—livor mortis had let her blood pool near the floor. She wore capri pants and one Adidas sneaker, the toenails of the other foot painted fuchsia. She wore a Hello Kitty sweatshirt. Calendar felt her pockets, turned them inside out. He lifted her sweatshirt, checked to make sure no documents had been tucked up into her bra—he'd found Malatesta alive; there had been time. He pulled her belt and pants away from her belly and peered down at her legs. Nothing. He turned her partially over; the backs of her arms were livid with pooled blood.

Nothing.

He covered her again, shuffled on his knees to his left, to the next cadaver, threw off the sheet.

A key rattled in the street door. Instinctively, Calendar drew his six-inch MAC-SOG combat knife from its nylon Cordura sheath clipped to his belt.

HELENA

Kiki urgently wanted to listen to the cockpit voice recording but, when she'd switched from hospital togs to her own clothes, the first thing she'd noticed was blood on her left sleeve, near her elbow. She didn't know if it was hers or someone else's, but it was weirding her out. She tossed the iPod Nano onto the hotel room's bed, picked up the NTSB credit card Beth Mancini had left her.

Beth also had left her a little bouquet of flowers, a subtle explosion of pinks and purples. Her gesture was so simple but singularly heartfelt that Kiki teared up a little.

*   *   *

“Tommy … I tried to save her. Jesus, man…”

“I know. Let's get you outta there.…”

Tommy woke up, his head pounding. He sat up in bed, knees up, arms folded over his knees. He wished his head would stop hurting. At least the vertigo was all but gone now.

There was no earthly way that Isaiah Grey could have talked to Tommy with a crushed larynx. Couldn't be done. Which meant it had been a figment of his concussion.

So why did he remember with such vivid detail the girl with the brachial bleeder, the guy with the open gut wound, the woman with the broken bone showing near her bloody sock? He remembered persuading Kiki to help evacuate survivors.

He climbed out of bed. The vertigo ramped up, but just a little. He threw on a robe and left the room, found the nurses' station. A nurse directed him to room 104.

He knocked, peeked in. The fifteen-year-old girl was watching TV. Her right arm was in a full cast. She turned down the sound. “Oh. Hi.”

“I'm Tommy. Do you remember me?”

She smiled. “You saved my life. I'm Ann.”

Dr. Leitner had called her
Annie
and Tommy noted the difference. “Hey, Ann. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

He entered all the way into her room. “That night, after I left you the second time, I went over to these airplane seats to help a guy. Did you see him?”

Ann shook her head. “I couldn't stop looking at the airplane. It was just so … weird.”

“Yeah. Sure as shit was.” He paused. “Sorry.”

Ann smiled. “It's okay. How's your head?”

“I got my chimes rung, big time. Still hurts.”

“Did they have to shave your hair?”

Tommy's fingers went to the bandage. “You know, I didn't ask. Crap. I bet they did. So where are your folks?”

“They were here but visiting hours are over. Mom's, like, freaking me out worse than the crash did.”

Tommy winked at her. “That's understandable. Cut her some slack, she's a mom. Hey, do you remember another survivor? Tall guy, short, silver hair, wore—”

She nodded. “Blue jeans, a sweater, boots?”

Tommy smiled. “Okay, thanks. Last question. And you don't gotta answer it if you don't want to.”

She nodded solemnly.

“What are you, fifteen? Why's your doc got you on Prozac?”

“He says it's to even out my disposition.”

“How long've you been on it?”

“Since I was eleven.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

She said, “He also told me it would help my mental image of myself if I lost ten pounds.” She blushed.

If anything, Ann looked undernourished to Tommy. He glanced around the room, found a pen, and ripped off a strip from the back cover of a
People
magazine. “Where do you live?”

“Seattle.”

“What's the asshole's name? I'm gonna make 'em yank his license.”

After a longish beat, a healthy smile blossomed on Ann's face. “You can do that?”

“Let's find out.”

The smile spread. “Cool!”

TWIN PINES

The chatterbox in Teresa Santiago clicked off as they stepped into the frigid storage facility. She gasped. The bodies lay on the floor under white bedsheets. Several smaller, rubber body bags were strewn about, too. She covered her mouth with both hands.

It took Lakshmi Jain a second to realize what Teresa was responding to. “Your first time?”

Teresa, wide-eyed, nodded.

“You can wait outside, if you'd like.”

Teresa said, “Split up? You've obviously never seen a slasher movie.”

Lakshmi had not, in fact, seen a slasher movie and didn't get the reference. She was just pleased to have some silence.

She went down on her haunches and pulled back the nearest sheet. Teresa averted her eyes.

Teresa jumped. One of the bodies under another sheet seemed to move, just a little.
Estupidez fresa!
she cursed herself.
Get a grip!

*   *   *

Calendar lay under the sheet and cursed himself. He was sure his foot had moved, just a little. Had these two stupid bitches noticed? If they had, his options were limited. Gut them both, leave them here with the corpses, under two sheets. That would buy him a little time.

The other option, he realized, meant more knife work and the use of the shorter, rubber body bags.

HELENA

The idea of stiff new jeans rubbing against her bandages seemed dumb, so Kiki bought two pairs of identical, cuffed khaki shorts, two pastel T-shirts, a denim shirt, panties and a bra, cotton socks, and lace-up Wolverine boots with rubber soles. It took her twenty minutes. She'd worn the same sizes since high school. She didn't care that the outfit would reveal her leg wound. It was hardly her first.

Kiki took her new purchases back to the hotel room and took a long, hot shower. She dried off, put one foot on the toilet lid, and gingerly replaced the bandage on her leg, hissing in pain a few times. The cut and its sutures looked nasty. She wiped a crescent of steam off the mirror with her palm, turned sideways. She sported a bruise the size, shape, and color of a banana gone bad over her broken rib.

A sudden wave of fatigue hit her so hard and fast that she actually rocked back on her heels. She blinked several times and realized she'd better lie down.

She was asleep within seconds. The iPod Nano with the cockpit voice recording rested by her calf.

TWIN PINES

Lakshmi checked the two nearest cadavers. Both had been set down carefully and were properly covered. Good. She stood and crossed to the wall-mounted thermostat. Forty degrees. Not cold enough to halt all decomposition but cold enough to slow it down considerably. Acceptable.

“This looks fine,” she said.

Teresa stared out the window at the darkened street, shivering. “Good. Good.”

Lakshmi adjusted her comm unit and slipped on her ear jack. She heard Peter say, “Kim.”

“It's Dr. Jain. Teresa and I are in Twin Pines. I wanted to check our makeshift morgue. It all looks acceptable.”

“Okay. We've done all that we can for tonight. The field teams are heading into Helena. Can you join us for a debriefing dinner?”

“We'll see you there.” She disconnected, turned to the uncomfortable Teresa Santiago. “Peter wants everyone back in Helena. Do you mind?”

“No problem,” Teresa said with a shudder and reached into her jacket pocket for the rental keys.

*   *   *

Calendar lay under the sheet and listened as they left.

L'ENFANT PLAZA

The drive from Bellagio to Malpensa Airport was no less taxing than the reverse trip. Susan Tanaka wavered between terrified and livid by the time she got to the United counter. Fortunately, the clerk there was both unfriendly and incompetent, so livid won out. It took Susan exactly seven and one-half minutes with the on-duty United supervisor before she had a seat on the next flight out; it was first class, and it was comped because of Kirk's status as a lead pilot.

From the way the flight attendants glanced nervously at her, Susan thought possibly she had overdone her rant just a tad. As a second glass of golden prosecco arrived, ice-cold, she decided she could live with that error in judgment.

Susan had expected to be exhausted as the Boeing 747 landed at Reagan National but something else took over. She was being called in, like a relief pitcher, to save the game. Susan truly liked Beth Mancini. It absolutely was not her intention to humiliate the first-time intergovernmental liaison. But Susan would have been lying if she'd said she wasn't feeling the adrenaline pumping. She took the Yellow Line from Reagan National to NTSB headquarters. She jogged up to the surface—her suitcase was still back in Varenna with Kirk—and dashed across the square to the building. Her ID got the front door open, even after 10:30
P.M.

Susan took the elevator to her floor, dumped her tote bag on her chair, and called Delevan Wildman's home number to let him know she was back.

“I hated like hell asking you to come home,” the director said.

“I understand. And I'm going to stay here in D.C.”

“You're not going to Montana?”

“No.” Her voice was unyielding. “I can help from here without cutting Beth's legs out from beneath her. At least for now. If I just barge in there, I undermine her authority and piss off Peter Kim. That would just slow us down.”

“Fine,” Wildman said, his voice deep and warm. “I trust your judgment. Susan? I appreciate this more than I can say.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She hung up, sat at her desk, and used her superuser access codes to get into the Go-Team's preliminary reports.

HELENA

The Go-Team gathered at a family-style diner with an improbable Hawaiian theme on the walls and bad country-western Muzak. Jack and Reuben reported their joint teams had saved all of the avionics not destroyed in the first moments of the crash. Lakshmi Jain reported that the local crew set to perform the autopsies seemed to be more than competent. She admitted this to no one, but she'd expected Montana to be a
frontier
state, backwards and technologically behind the curve. Privately, she had to admit that her knowledge of the American West was a bit too influenced by Bollywood films.