Flight into Darkness (Flight Trilogy, Book 2) (27 page)

“I didn’t have it. The night they took you to the hospital, they took me to a safe house. The poem was back at my place in Dana Point.”

“I thought you were staying in L.A.” Keri said.

“I was until I took a closer look at the poem. I remembered how the guy had told me that if I didn’t cooperate, he would keep killing—”

“Me too! He told me the same thing,” Keri said.

“Being a total nut job, I figured he must have been committed to the cryptic message in his poem. If so, there was a strong probability he would use our airline again.” Rex spun the poem around on the table so Ryan and Keri could see, and said, “Look at these lines.

On
Angel
wings
,
I
take
flight
,

My
Freedom
from
this
earthly
plight
.

“Angel is the call sign used by Freedom Airlines. I know it sounds like a stretch, but something about the words
Angel
and
Freedom
being in all caps stood out.”

“Even if you knew he was going to try it again using one of Freedom Airlines’ planes, why would
you
want to be near Dana Point?” Keri said.

Rex looked to Ryan. “I didn’t know which flight he would pick next, but based on the poem, I was fairly certain it would be a late night departure out of LAX. And since my bro flies mostly all-nighters, the odds were pretty high it might be one of Ryan’s trips. That’s when I left Hollywood and came down to Dana Point. From Dana Point, I could be at your house in a matter of minutes.”

“What were you thinking?” Keri said. “Were you planning to do this alone?

“No, but I wanted to be close. I planned to call 911 when I was certain something was going on—which is exactly what I did. And as you can see, I was first on the scene—thankfully.”

Anger started creeping into Keri’s voice. “Why didn’t you tell Ryan about all this? Why didn’t you contact him? Why didn’t you contact somebody—
anybody
?”

“I couldn’t chance it. Plus, I couldn’t put Ryan in the position of knowing I was alive, and there was no way I was going to trade my life for a few rhymes about the
Man
in
the
Moon
written by some lunatic. Things were too sketchy. I needed time.”

“Rex, you did the right thing,” Ryan said. “You didn’t have a choice. I would have probably played it the same way.”

“Rex, I’m sorry for jumping on you,” Keri said. “I can’t begin to imagine what you were going through.”

“No worries.”

“While all this was going on, where in Dana Point did you hide out?” Ryan said.

“Interesting how that worked out.” He held back a smile. “By then, I had a full beard with my hair over my ears. I looked like an unemployed surf bum. As fate would have it, I met a chick at the beach—”

“Figures,” Ryan said with a smirk.

“Dude, she was no betty; in her forties, covered with tats, been rode hard and put away wet, but not a total swamp donkey; nothing a good pair of beer goggles couldn’t fix. But I could tell she was still lookin’ for love. Definitely ripe for the pickin’. Sorta like a little Georgia peach I once knew.” He glanced at Keri and smiled.

Keri shook her head with disgust.

“She lives alone in Dana Point and works as a waitress at one of the harbor restaurants. She was lonely, needy, and didn’t have much of a social life. She works in the afternoons till almost midnight. It was the perfect setup. I drove her to work so I would have a car if I needed it. While she was at work, I used her computer to track all the possible departures and crews.”

“How did you access the company website without using your employee information?” Ryan said.

“Easy. I used your name and password. That gave me full access to schedules and crews.”

Ryan scratched his head. “How did you get my password?”

“Dude, we exchanged passwords back when we were new hires.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Okay, let’s get back to the poem. I’m dying to unpack this thing and see how you deciphered it.”

“Some of it jumped off the page. For example,” Rex pointed to a section of the poem.

For
there
is
yet
but
one
more
gate
.

The
third
lies
over
the
narrow
strait
,

He
named
it
golden
and
sealed
its
fate
.

“Where else could it be other than the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco?”

“Yeah, that looks pretty straight forward,” Ryan said. “But who was
He
?

“
He
was John C. Fremont. He was the man that named the Golden Gate Strait. Fremont named the strait after the Golden Horn in Istanbul. I think that is what must have ticked off the lunatic the most.”

“Interesting,” Ryan said.

“I always thought the name was somehow attributed to California’s Gold Rush,” Keri said.

“That’s a common belief,” Rex said.

“And I assume you knew it would be at night when you read the part about the moon,” Keri said, pointing to the line in the poem she was referring to:

Under
crescent
moon
,
death
fills
the
night
,

Keri said. “I’ll never forget watching the minutes and seconds tick away on the computer screen.” She glanced at Ryan and squeezed his hand.

“So you must have narrowed it down to a certain time of the month based on the crescent moon,” Ryan said. “The moon only appears as a crescent for two weeks of the month—the week before and the week after the black moon, or the new moon.”

“Dude, I didn’t know you were into selenology.”

“Well, that makes us even. I didn’t know you were into two syllable words.” Ryan smiled. “I took an astronomy class at the Academy. What’s your excuse?”

Keri said, “What the heck is selenology?”

“A word that makes me look smarter than I am,” Rex said. “Selenology is the astronomical study of the moon—something I did
way
too much of.” There are tons of websites that show the lunar phases for any given month, so that was a no brainer.”

“Why was this guy so intent on taking out the bridge under a crescent moon?” Keri said.

“I’m getting to that. First, you have to understand that this guy was living in another world. He could have easily been wearing a tinfoil hat.”

“Talk about a ‘no brainer’,” Keri said.

“I quickly accepted that our guy was not your typical, radical terrorist simply trying to blow up something for a cause. He was more complex than that—possibly a total psycho. There was no doubt he wanted to make a statement. Based on the poem, his underlying motives were based on a delusional belief he was fulfilling some sort of journey into a past life that was totally from mythology.”

“Mythology? Wow! I knew this guy was delusional, but
mythology
?” Keri said.

Rex pointed to the last line in the poem:

En
ma
Fin
gît
mon
Commencement
.

“Ryan, you mentioned this earlier, and you were correct, it is French. Translated, it means,
In
my
beginning
my
end
lies
, or better said,
In
my
end
is
my
beginning
.”

“You are full of surprises,” Ryan said. “First, two syllable words. Now, French?”

“Bonjour Mademoiselle,” Rex said in a horrible French accent. “The Rexter must always be prepared.”

“Ryan, stop joking around and let him finish,” Keri said.

“Merci, Mademoiselle.” Rex continued. “Notice, also, where he said” Rex pointed to the poem:

This
journey
ends
when
all
is
right
.

“Combined with the last line, it’s pretty clear this guy was into reincarnation.”

“Reincarnation? That makes perfect sense. He constantly alluded to death like it was irrelevant,” Keri said.

“These lines,” Rex said, pointing to the poem, “are the puzzle pieces that led me to his two, key past lives.” He read:

The
first
I
closed
,
the
last
conqueror
through
,

The
second
I
sealed
,
to
stop
the
Jew
.

“What was he closing and sealing?” Keri said.

“Gates—both golden—just like our Golden Gate in San Francisco. When I googled
gate
—
conqueror
through
—
crescent
moon
, Mehmet the Conqueror popped up. I learned that the lunatic was referring to the imperial entrance gate to the city of Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, Turkey, built by Theodosius the Great to celebrate his victory over Magnus Maximus. It just so happened that it was named the Golden Gate. Our guy was under the delusion that, in a past life, he was Mehmet—
the
last
conqueror
through
. It was on Tuesday, May 29th, 1453, and from what I read, it was a bloody mess.”

“Why did Mehmet close the gate in Constantinople?” Keri asked.

“Well, as the story goes, immediately after his victory, Mehmet ordered the Golden Gate sealed, due to a Turkish prophecy that said,
Constantinople
will
be
conquered
,
the
best
prince
is
its
prince
and
the
best
army
is
that
army
. The prophecy declared that through this gate the next conquerors would enter Constantinople.”

“What about the second gate—the one that was sealed?” Ryan asked.

“After I found the first gate, the second one was easy. I googled
Jew
—
golden
gate
—
crescent
moon
. It took me to the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. Mehmet’s great grandson, the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, bricked up the Golden Gate in Israel in 1541, allegedly believing it would stop, Elijah and the Messiah—both Jews—from passing through. How crazy is that?”

“Freaky,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it, either. The Bible even prophesied that the Golden Gate in Jerusalem would one day be sealed—long before it happened. It also says that it will be opened at the time of the New Moon—the waning crescent—when the Messiah returns. I’m not sure, but our wacko might have been into opposites—like a yin for a yang or ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’—that sort of thing. If so, he might have thought that instead of opening gates on the crescent, that it would be the perfect time to close them.”

“The more you get into this, the weirder it becomes,” Keri said.

“Yeah, trust me; this rabbit hole goes as deep as you care to fall. Everything this guy did was motivated totally by his twisted belief in reincarnation, mythology, metaphysics, prophecy, numerology, astrology…you name it. There came a point, once I had what I needed, I stopped digging.”

“That must mean that there was a crescent moon on both July 11, 2002 and May 29, 2003—the dates of our flights,” Ryan said.

“You guessed it. July 11th was a crescent new moon and May 29th was three days before the crescent new moon. For the lunatic, it was more about a common purpose he shared with all of his, so-called, past lives. History says Mehmet sealed the Golden Gate to ensure he was the one fulfilling the prophecy, and Suleyman sealed the Golden Gate in Jerusalem to stop the Messiah. Our man thinks that when he was Mehmet and Suleyman, he sealed the Golden Gate in Turkey and Israel for the same reason he wanted the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco taken out. To him, it has always been the same motive of his soul, even while in a different body.”

“My head is spinning,” Keri said.

“I know what you mean. Like a kaleidoscope. But there’s a big piece of the puzzle I haven’t told you yet. This is where the mythical part comes in, so as our friend, Cipher, said in the movie
The
Matrix
, ‘Buckle up Dorothy, ‘cause Kansas, is going bye-bye’.” Rex pointed to the first and last stanzas in the poem and read:

Dear
Keroessa
,
hair
so
golden
,
skin
so
white
,

Beneath
its
cover
from
captor’s
sight
.

I
curse
my
likeness
,
filled
with
spite
,

One
with
you
is
my
only
delight
.

I’ll
join
you
soon
,
the
hours
thinning
,

When
past
and
future
cease
their
spinning
.

I
leave
this
world
,
forever
sinning
,

My
mother’s
side
,
forever
grinning
.

“Keroessa is the accepted English spelling of the Greek name, Khrysokeras or Chrysoceras. In Greek mythology, Io was a mistress of Zeus that was changed into a white cow in an attempt to hide her from his wife, Hera. The dude should have talked to me before trying such a stupid trick.”

Keri laughed.

Rex shot her a glance and continued. “Hera, like most women, picked up on Zeus’ little trick, pronto.” He looked back at Keri and smirked. She smiled. “Zeus thought he could escape Hera’s wrath by offering the white cow to her as a gift. After graciously accepting it, she cursed the cow and sent it wandering the Earth, tortured by a stinging gadfly, driving the poor cow further from home. The cow eventually crossed what is now the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey, giving the strait its name (boos-foros, which is Greek for cow-ford). The white cow settled on the shores of what is now the Golden Horn River where Zeus supposedly reached out and touched the cow, lifting Hera’s curse and restoring the cow to her youthful beauty.