Fight for Power (23 page)

“Thanks, sweetheart. And did Herb agree to go back up with you on that patrol?”

“He agreed.”

“It always feels safer to me if Herb is in the seat beside you.”

I actually felt safer when he was there as well—although I had to add, “You know, it's not like he can flap his wings and keep us up if we have engine trouble.”

“I don't even like to hear you talk about engine problems, but who would be better to have with you if you had to put down there miles away from our walls?” she asked.

“Some people would say Brett.”

“And some people would be wrong. Nobody has more experience out there than Herb.”

“I guess Brett's on patrol now,” I said. Since the committee had given approval for night patrols he and his crew had been out every night.

“I'm sure he is. Don't get me wrong, he's doing an important job that nobody else would want to do,” she said.

“The way he talks about it, I really think he likes being out there,” I said.

“It's more than that,” my mother said. “It's like he
needs
to go out there.”

“Yeah, he's talked to me about how the adrenaline gives him this crazy high.”

“And that's the problem, Adam, that's what worries me. He's an adrenaline junkie, and all any addict wants is more, more, more.”

I looked at her. “You think it's that extreme?”

“To get the same high he has to keep doing things that are more dangerous, more risky. I just think it's only a matter of time until something happens, either to him or somebody who's out with him, and I don't want that person to be you.”

“Me? There's no way I'd ever go out there at night with him.”

“I'm glad to hear that.” She looked genuinely relieved. “Some other guys have been chomping at the bit, though.”

“I'm not one of them, but I know he's impressed some people. They talk like he's a real hero,” I said.

“I've heard the same talk,” she said. “Unfortunately, so has Brett. It's not just that he's impressed other people but that he's becoming too impressed with himself.” She paused. “I've had a couple of confrontations with him to get him to understand whether he's inside or outside the walls he's still under my command.”

“I get the feeling he doesn't like to take orders,” I said.

“And that's why I don't trust him.”

“Herb says he can control him,” I said. “He understands what makes Brett tick.”

“And that's the only reason I feel any comfort with Brett going out there, because of what Herb has said.”

“And do you really trust Herb?” I asked.

“Don't you?” she asked.

I hesitated before answering.

“It's just that sometimes I wonder about what he tells us and doesn't tell us.”

“You and I both know there are some things that he keeps to himself,” she said. “I don't think we'll ever know everything, either about what's going on in his mind or about his background. Probably you know more about him than anybody else does.”

I wondered if my mother was fishing to get more information out of me.

“I have complete confidence that Herb would do anything in the world to keep us safe. He really does think highly of you,” she said. “I know he still feels bad about that stunt he pulled with the prisoner.” She paused. “I know it was, how shall I say, troubling to me that he did that. I was wondering, are you still angry?”

“I'm not angry—well, at least not that angry—but yeah, that's the sort of thing I mean.”

“I think he's just doing that, holding back information, because he doesn't want to worry people unnecessarily. It's sort of the way a parent does.”

“Are you keeping information from me, too?”

She shook her head. “I tell you more than I probably should. It's just with your father not here…” She let the sentence trail off.

“And you've told me everything about Dad, right?”

“Everything I know, everything anybody
could
know. Which is only a guess. But he was on his usual schedule that day, and wouldn't have been up in the air for his return leg until hours after the grid went down and all the trouble started.”

My mother knew I was still thinking about the downed plane Lori and I had seen and reported back to the committee. It had been five days, and I still hadn't been able to shake that scene out of my head. One more terrible image added to the slide show in my mind.

“I can't help thinking about the planes that were in the air at the time and how they'd have dropped out of the skies all over the world. Do you know how many planes were up in the air when it happened?” I asked.

“I don't know. I hadn't really thought about that,” she replied.

“I've thought about it. A lot. There were over six thousand planes in the air. There were always six thousand planes in the air at any time.”

“Really? Are you sure?” She sounded like she couldn't believe that number, but I knew it was true.

“I'm sure.”

“I can't even imagine that … the carnage … the deaths.”

“There would have been thousands and thousands of passengers in those planes. And they were all gone in an instant. Dad's plane, his passengers, him—they would all have been gone, too, if he'd been in the air.”

“But he wasn't. He was on the ground,” she said. “We know his plane was still on the ground.”

I nodded, in both agreement and hope. I looked deep into her eyes for any sign of doubt or subterfuge. There was none. But that still left one more question unanswered. We had been tiptoeing across an area we'd left basically unspoken. I didn't want to upset her, but I needed an answer.

“Do you think he's still alive?” I asked, my voice practically a whisper.

“Your father is alive.”

“You can't know that.”

“We can't
know
he isn't,” she said.

“But he's out there all alone, so far from home and—”

“And he's your father. If anybody could survive this it would be him.” She paused. “I
need
to believe that he's fine, kiddo, that's he out there, somehow working his way back to us, that someday he's just going to appear at our front gate and come strolling down the street and walk in our front door.”

We both looked at the door, waiting as if on cue for that to happen. The door stayed closed.

 

21

“Couldn't we just stay up in the air a little bit longer?” Danny asked.

“I can do one more pass over the gate on Burnham, and then we have to get down.”

“Lori and Rachel are back inside the walls, so we could go farther now,” he said.

The sky was crystal-clear with no breeze whatsoever. Perfect flying weather. I had been circling lazily over the neighborhood but always keeping an eye on them as they'd been out riding. I just didn't know it was so obvious that even Danny had noticed. That meant the girls would have noticed me from the ground as well. I hoped Lori would see my worrying about her as a positive.

“Could we go as far as the river?” Danny asked.

“We definitely could go that far, but why there?”

“I've heard all about Burnham Bridge, but I've never seen it before. I want to see it with my own eyes.”

“There's not much to see, just a bridge that isn't there anymore … but I guess I can take you there.”

“That would be great, thanks!” Danny exclaimed.

I banked away from the neighborhood and toward the river.

Funny that Danny wanted to see the place. I had watched the bridge's destruction and ever since had worked hard to avoid going anywhere near it if I didn't have to. If I was flying in that direction, I'd make a point of crossing the river valley well north or south of the site. I could even justify it in my mind. North and south were the two bridges that still crossed the river, so it made sense for me to avoid flying over a bridge that didn't exist and instead focus on where trouble could come from. Or so I tried to convince myself.

It had taken a long time to get the scene out of my mind—those trucks plunging down, the plumes of smoke and dust. I didn't want to replay the scene anymore.

“I can see the pillars!” Danny exclaimed after we covered the few miles in silence.

I could see them, too. The bridge's massive supports rose up two hundred feet from the valley, supporting nothing but air.

“It's hard to believe it was destroyed with just some fertilizer and chemicals and stuff,” Danny said.

“I guess. But we used lots and lots of
stuff
.”

“I was at the walls, and even from there I heard it blow. Everybody could see the smoke rising up. Was it amazing for you to see it directly with your own eyes?” he asked.

“I'll never forget it. Never.”

“I wish I could have been there,” he said. “It would have been so cool to see all those—”

“People die?” I asked, interrupting him. “Four hundred people. We can't forget that, Danny.”

“But they were
bad guys
!”

“You bet. But they were still
people
. I know we had no choice … we had to do it, but they were still people.”

I dropped down and banked so that we were coming in right over the river, right between the silent pillars. Below us the river was pooled into a lake, blocked by the fallen concrete and asphalt. We were low enough to see people gathering water and fishing. There were some hints of color in between the trees—tents in ones and twos, or clustered together in little tent towns. What would they do when winter came? People looked up as we passed, and some waved. I might have known some of them. Suddenly I had to get out of there. Now. I pulled back on the yoke to get us higher, to gain some distance. I wondered if I'd be visited in my sleep tonight by the vision of the bridge going down.

*   *   *

I'd put down just long enough to drop Danny off, refuel from one of the canisters in our garage, and then pop back up in the air with Herb at my side. With Danny I had to be big brother, protector, and pilot. With Herb, I was just the pilot. I hadn't realized how heavy a load it had been having Danny with me until I finally landed. Now I felt free and safe—or as safe as I could be anywhere.

Today we were flying well away from the neighborhood, toward the city.

“I'm sorry the Cessna isn't flying yet,” Herb said over the intercom.

“I want them to get it right rather than soon. I know it's coming along.”

“And then we'll need to train another pilot so we can have two aircraft up when needed.”

“Training a pilot is not such an easy task.”

“I'm counting on you to do it. If we have two aircraft, we need two pilots. Maybe three would be even better,” Herb said.

“If my father was here, we'd have a second pilot who was better than the first,” I said.

“Your father would have been a great contribution, but I'm not sure if any pilot could have been better than you,” Herb said.

“Hah! That's nice to hear, even if it isn't necessarily accurate.”

“It's accurate. You've shown real leadership, even to those of us who are supposedly in charge of this crazy situation. You've helped this neighborhood survive, and maybe just as important, survive with its morality intact.”

“My father would have helped with that, too. I just wish he was here.”

“So do I. Sometimes I've felt bad because there were a lot of situations I had to put you in that I wished I didn't have to.”

“I did okay,” I said.

“You did better than okay. I know what you've been up against better than anyone.”

“Does any of it bother you at night?” I asked.

“I've had a lifetime of memories I'd rather forget. At night, in my bed, in the quiet, in the dark is one of the times those things come back most vividly,” he said. “Some things you never get over thinking about.”

That wasn't what I wanted to hear. “I flew over the destroyed bridge today. Danny wanted to see it.”

“That is one of those things that stick in my mind,” Herb said. “I've never seen that much destruction and that many people killed in one fell swoop. If it hadn't been so tragic, that explosion could have almost been beautiful. In a strange way it was like watching a thunderstorm or a waterfall.”

This sounded a little bit crazy to me. Did Herb actually hear what he was saying? I didn't have a chance to argue, because suddenly we were back to the mission.

“Look, there's another one!”

I banked in the direction Herb was pointing. We were out looking for small neighborhoods like ours—places that had banded together, like Olde Burnham before it had been destroyed.

I couldn't see it at first, but then the outline became clear. It was a cluster of houses, maybe three or four dozen, whose residents had built a crude wall. Inside there were obvious clearings where crops were being grown.

“How many does that make?” I asked.

“Over twenty little pockets of civilization. We humans are such industrious little insects. No matter what, we struggle back.”

“Maybe we're more like wild animals than insects. We do whatever we need to do to survive, even if it means others won't.”

“True enough. I guess we always have to be prepared to show a little animal ourselves.”

I instantly thought of Brett, and it was like Herb could read my mind.

“We need people like Brett, Adam, just like the government needed me, to keep us all safe.”

I saw some smoke rising in the distance to my right and banked sharply to head us in that direction for a closer look.

“Do you see something?” Herb asked.

“Smoke.”

“Good thing to check out,” he said. “If there's smoke there's fire, and if there's fire there are people who will want to find a new home.”