The Fall (11 page)

“You okay there, buddy?” Palmer asked. “You've been awfully quiet.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that things aren't the way they should be?” Jack asked before he could stop himself.

It only took a microsecond before the conspiracy theorist nodded and said, “All the time, my friend. All the damn time. I'm telling you, nothing, absolutely nothing is really as it seems. Everything, from the water we drink and the food we eat to the clothes we buy and the girls we date, is carefully controlled and watched by big brother up in the sky. There's really no place to hide. And the Internet only made things worse.”

“How so?”

“It proved that people are quite willing to trade off their privacy in return for things like free Facebook accounts, giving Uncle Sam even more insight into our personal lives.”

“So, what can you do?” Jack asked, choosing to keep stoking this guy as a way to disengage from the reality of his situation. Though in a way, Jack's current altered state of mind only helped give Palmer's view of the world a certain degree of credibility.

“Well, of course you go on,” Palmer replied matter-of-factly. “You keep doing what they're expecting you to do, every day, week after week, year after year. But you do it with full knowledge that the world as you know it is nothing but an illusion created by those in power.”

“An illusion?” The word struck a chord in him.

“That's right, my friend. You see, there ain't no accidents, Jack. Everything, stock market swings, oil prices, and even the news is centrally controlled and managed. Sometimes things gets away from them, shit like 9/11 cybercrime, and AIDS, but eventually Uncle Sam manages to un-fuck its fuck-ups and keep the machine rolling forward.”

Palmer steered the rig from Highway 528 onto A1A at the end of the bridge as it reached Cocoa Beach and the entrance to the Kennedy Space Center off to their left.

“So it's still there,” Jack mumbled, for a moment wondering how his altered mind would see the Cape. But it looked just as he had left it this morning, and for a moment he almost told Palmer to drop him off at the security checkpoint. Walking straight into NASA with his suit in hand would be one quick way to get answers.

“What's still there, Jack?”

“Ah, nothing,” he replied, but Palmer had already caught him looking in the direction of the brightly lit KSC. “Take a right at the next light,” he added, guiding the truck driver toward his home and his wife—at least according to his confused mind.

“You're one strange man, Jack Taylor,” the trucker replied, shooting him another glance before steering the rig onto the right lane as they approached the intersection. “But I still think you're one of the good guys.”

“What makes you think so, Lou? You've known me for less than an hour.”

Palmer shrugged, put on his blinker, and made the turn. “I may not be the smartest guy on the planet, Jack, but I'm a pretty darn good judge of character.”

“Keep down this street for about a quarter of a mile. Take a right on DeLeon Road. It's right before we get to the Cocoa Beach Junior High,” Jack said, before asking, “So, why am I strange?”

“For starters, you're full of contradictions.”

“How so?”

“Well, you're genuinely fascinated by the sky, especially the moon. You've been staring at it most of the way here, like you haven't seen it before. Then you're staring at roads, billboards, and buildings with almost childlike interest. Some signs even make you close your eyes, like their mere presence is shocking you. So that suggests that you're either not from here or haven't been around in quite a while, which contradicts the fact that you claim to live in the area. But you do seem to know where you're going, at least based on the directions you're giving me. And then there's this futuristic suit you're wearing and your comment about the KSC still
being there
.” Palmer made quotation marks with his fingers, returning his hands to the wheel and adding, “Weird, Jack. You're just one very weird dude … but still a good guy.”

Although he found it amusing that Palmer was calling him weird, Jack didn't want to engage this guy any more, chastising himself for having been that transparent. But he couldn't help it. So much just didn't make sense. Why were some things the same while others had changed, and quite drastically? Why was he alone at the landing site? Where had Claudette gone?

“But I respect your privacy, my friend,” the trucker continued, taking a left on DeLeon. “Everyone's entitled to their secrets. I sure have plenty of them.”

Jack's heartbeat kicked up a notch the moment Palmer turned onto his street. In this part of Cocoa Beach, city streets resembled fingers surrounded by the calm waters of the Indian River, the body of water in between the city of Cocoa and Cocoa Beach. The houses on either side had backyards facing the water, where homeowners kept their boats and other water equipment with ready access to the river and the Atlantic Ocean. Jack and Angie owned an old but reliable thirty-two-foot Boston Whaler with a pair of outboards, their weekend getaway with a long enough range to get down to Miami or even the Bahamas for scuba diving.

“That one,” Jack said, stretching an index finger toward a white house with blue trim and a detached two-car garage to their right, about halfway down the block. Relief swept through him as he added, “Home sweet home.”

“It's been a pleasure,” Palmer said, stretching an open hand.

For the second time that evening, Jack shook the trucker's hand before reaching in between his legs for his backpack.

“Really appreciate what you did, Lou,” he said, opening the door.

“I hope you find what you're looking for, Jack,” Palmer replied, producing a business card and handing it over.

LOUIS PALMER

INDEPENDENT TRUCK DRIVER

“If you need anything, don't hesitate,” he added. “I spend my life traveling between Miami and Orlando, so I'm always in the area. Good guys need to stick together. Especially in uncertain times like these.”

Jack narrowed his gaze at this very odd man before pocketing the card, thanking him again, and closing the door.

He waited for Palmer to turn the Peterbilt around and drive off before facing his home, which looked eerily just like the place he had left last night, when Pete interrupted his dinner with—

Get on with it, Jack.

Taking a deep breath, ignoring the increased pounding of his heart against his chest, Jack took a step toward the house. The lights were off, which was no surprise given that it was close to one in the morning. He stared at the garage, which he hoped had their five-year-old Honda and two Triumphs.

Walking up the driveway and onto the small front porch, Jack looked toward the line of bushes hugging the front of the house, spotting the one dead shrub that Angie had been on his case to replace for weeks now.

Jack rang the doorbell, his heartbeat now hammering his temples.

Steady, Jack.

A light went on in the bedroom, then another light in the living room, before the foyer light came on and a half-asleep but edgy female voice shouted, “There had better be blood or broken bones to ring my bell at this fucking hour!”

Jack grinned. “Hey, it's me. Open up.”

He heard the door unlock as she said, “Pete? What the hell are you doing here at this hour?”

He frowned.

Pete?

Jack was about to reply when the door swung open.

Right there, in front of him, stood Angela. Only her hair was no longer short and dark but long and blond, and she now had a little chocolate freckle just above the right corner of her lips. On top of that, Angela wasn't wearing one of her oversized MIT T-shirts as her nightgown but a long pair of silk pajamas.

Sleep rapidly vanished from her hazel eyes as they grew wide, staring at him as if he had three heads. Her lips parted but nothing came out as she pointed a trembling index finger at him.

Before fainting right into his arms.

 

4

CONSPIRACY

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

—General Douglas MacArthur

Dawn in southern Florida.

The warehouse's window panes trembled to the roar of another F-16 on final approach to Homestead Air Reserve Base, home to the 482nd Fighter Wing, reminding Angela of years gone by. There was a time when she had been scared of the rattling glass under the corrugated tin roof of Mickey Valle's Paradise Motorcycle Shop as Air Force jets from another era took off and landed at this base, once America's first line of defense during those dreaded days in October 1962. Back then the world had been on the brink of war after discovering that the Soviet Union was installing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles away, giving it an unprecedented offensive capability in the Western Hemisphere.

Angela closed her eyes, remembering her father's harrowing stories of Castro's Cuba, including his own gut-wrenching escape at just fifteen years old in 1961 aboard a leaky rowboat, drifting north for almost a week before a U.S. Coast Guard cutter plucked him out of a stormy sea a few miles from Key West. Her father had gambled death at sea for a chance at freedom, however small. Anything was better than growing up under the unyielding fist of communism. So he had stolen a weathered dingy from a marina in the middle of the night and rowed north until he couldn't row anymore, finally passing out from exhaustion and exposure. But the winds and the currents had been merciful, carrying him away from oppression and delivering him to the home of the brave. And he had worked harder than hard in this land of opportunity, climbing his way from a mechanic apprentice to shop owner in just ten years—an impossibility in a country where his parents were labeled
gusanos
—worms—and imprisoned for simply complaining about long food lines.

Angela took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the sweet aromas inside the old shop, with the smell of the ever-present WD-40, which brought her back to endless nights rebuilding engines and transmissions. Her nostrils also detected rubber, gas, and paint. But none came close to the amazing fragrance in the motorcycle world of burnt pre-mix, the residue of two-stroke engines that conjured images of the legendary Mickey Valle in oil-smeared coveralls, tools in hand, face deep in the guts of a Harley.

She had been a kid back then, never once expecting that this amazing world of chrome, rumbling engines, grease, tattoos, and leather jackets would meet such an abrupt end when her father died, triggering some of the strangest years of her short teenage life.

But she had survived them and gone on to become one of America's top scientists.

Only to lose her husband, her career, and now be hunted by the very same people she had devoted her life to serve.

But this is far from over,
she decided, opening her eyes and breathing deeply again, but this time filling her body with her father's strength, with his unyielding resolve to fight for what is right, to risk it all for just one chance at a better life.

Now it's my turn,
she thought, surveying the interior of the bike shop once more before settling her gaze on the heavily inked man standing next to a half-disassembled Harley atop a red hydraulic lift and wearing a pair of worn-out jeans, riding boots, and an open denim vest that exposed his muscular arms and chest. A heavy silver chain hung from a bull neck supporting a well-tanned square face sporting a contrasting white goatee and an intense pair of green eyes beneath closely cropped hair hidden by a Stars-and-Stripes bandanna.

Born Daniel Goodwin and known in the Florida biker community simply as Dago, Mickey Valle's former right-hand man and current owner of the Paradise Motorcycle Shop crossed his massive arms while regarding Art-Z with a look that could cut the aluminum frame of the Harley on the lift.

“You have some nerve showing up here, asshole,” he said in a tenor voice custom-made for his six-three and two-hundred-fifty-pound frame. Even pushing sixty, Dago still commanded respect. The man was as formidable now as the day he nearly tore off Art-Z's head when the FBI arrested Angela on hacking charges. “Maybe I'll finish what I started twenty years ago.”

“He's helping me, Dago.”

“He left you holding the bag, Angie,” he replied in a much softer voice, his eyes warming up, even glistening a little as he stared at her with parental concern. After all, it was Dago who had fought like hell to gain custody of the orphan, just as Mickey Valle had stipulated in his will, only to lose her to the FBI on technicalities. Three years later, upon her release from the Feds, it was Dago who'd brought her home from Orlando, given her time to decompress, and taxed the shop's bank account to send her to college. Dago had been there when she graduated from FIT, helped finance her years at MIT, funding the room and board not covered by her scholarship, had stood and clapped when she'd earned that Ph.D. diploma, and had even given her away at her wedding.

Dago's gaze became frosty again as he shifted it to Art-Z, his tone regaining its edge as he added, “This no-good weasel took you from us, taught you to be a criminal hacker, and then ran for cover the moment the Feds showed up. The world would certainly be a better place without him, and I'll be happy to do the honors.”

“I told you I shouldn't have come,” Art-Z said to Angela, taking two steps back while rubbing his neck. “I think I like my head exactly where it is.”

“And I can think of a warmer place to stuff it,” Dago replied, cupping a fist into the palm of his hand.

“Stop it, you two!” Angela snapped. “If you care one damn iota about me, you
will
put your differences aside and help me find my husband! Have you been listening to me? My face may not be in the evening news, but I promise you that I have one hell of a military posse on my ass, and they are
armed and dangerous
!” She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes, feeling a headache coming, then added in a calmed voice, “I'm … deeply screwed, Dago, and I need your help.”