The Fall (13 page)

Five years ago.

What. The. Fuck.

Feeling light-headed, Jack held on to the back of the sofa, where he had just deposited Angela, still passed out.

Breathing deeply, his eyes converged on the framed photo on the cocktail table. It showed Angela holding hands with none other than Pete Flaherty.

Slowly, Jack sat down at the edge, by her feet, breathing deeply, looking around the room, his hands feeling the fabric of the very same sofa where he had spent countless nights these past two years.

But how could it be the same sofa? How could this be the same living room? When he left last night for the Cape, he was pretty sure he was alive and breathing.

And he was damn sure his wife wasn't dating Pete!

He briefly closed his eyes, listening to the voice deep in his gut telling him not to buy the PTSD or concussion theories. There was no way he could be imagining this.

But if he wasn't delusional, then how could he explain what his eyes were projecting deep into his confused brain? How could he have been dead for five years? How come there was no one waiting for him at the landing site? How could a tropical storm just vanish from sight? And how in the world did Angela's hair become blond and grow several inches in one day?

The room started to spin, as confusion led to vertigo.

Jack closed his eyes again and took several deep breaths, hands gripping the bottom cushions of his sofa.

But the same voice told him it wasn't his sofa, and this wasn't his living room, or his house, or … even his wife?

But it
was
Angela. He stared at her features as she slept peacefully next to him. Aside from the hair and that new freckle, she certainly looked like the same woman he'd married.

Am I imagining her long hair?

Jack reached down and felt it, running his fingers through it.

Nope, that's real.

The hair was real, the chocolate freckle was real, the letter from the Navy was
very
real, and so was everything else he had seen since waking up alone in that field. His SEAL training, ingrained in his DNA, told him to trust his instincts, his senses, especially that sixth sense that had kept him alive for longer than he probably deserved. That inner voice had gotten him through extremely rough and gory times in the Middle East and South America, especially during his last mission, keeping him frosty, thinking, always one step ahead of that ruthless Colombian posse shouting at him across the jungle how he would be fed his own genitals and eyeballs when captured. But the voice had kept him going, kept him ignoring the threats, kept him anticipating, striking, and evading, even after he'd long run out of ammunition, until he reached his extraction point with nothing but his SOG knife, its partially-serrated steel blade stained with Colombian blood.

Jack felt the handle of the same weapon that had saved his butt in that nightmarish mission, gripping it, curling his hand tight around the deep finger grooves until his knuckles turned white. And that same voice shouted at him now from the deepest corner of his mind, noisier than the loudest gunfire, that this world, as he saw it and felt it, was very,
very
real.

So the next question that suddenly flashed in his mind was—

“
Jack?
”

He let go of the handle and turned toward her, not knowing what to say.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed, sitting up, throwing her arms around him, hugging him tight, burying her face in his chest like she used to do long ago. “Oh, Jack! Oh, my God! You're
alive
!”

Emotions boiled inside of him as he returned the embrace, kissing the top of her head, smelling her hair, reawakening feelings long dormant in their relationship.

She pulled away, gazing at him with wet hazel eyes, taking him in, lips quivering as she mumbled, “It … it
is
you.”

Angela clung to him again, and all Jack could do was hug her back, his mind in turmoil.

“I … I always wondered … hoped, even
prayed,
” she said, face still pressed against his chest, before looking at him again. “But the mission … in Afghanistan … they had eyes on you … Pete was there … but they never recovered your body … I … oh, Jack.”

“Angie, look, I need to tell you—”

“I imagined this,” she said, hugging him hard again. “I dreamed about this moment. Prayed that you managed to survive … somehow.”

Jack pressed his lips together, searching for the right words. Unlike Angela, he'd had some time alone to start processing this, to digest the clues and slowly get past denial and into reluctant acceptance of this unbelievable reality, though he still had no explanation. Angela, on the other hand, had been hit cold and hard across the face by his sudden appearance, coming back from the dead. Yet, he had to tell her that things were not quite as they seemed. And the sooner the better.

Gently, he pushed her away and held her at arms' length, fighting hard to stay focused as his eyes drifted to that chocolate freckle. She put a hand on his face, fingers running over his lips, his chin.

She was obviously still very much in love with him, while the Angela he had left at the suit-up room had probably been one fight away from filing for a divorce. Still, he needed to come clean with her and perhaps they could figure this out, together.

“Listen, Angie,” he finally said, mustering enough strength, deciding there was no easy way to say this. “I'm not sure what's going on … and although I can't explain it, I may not be the same man you married.”

Surprise gave way to confusion as she dropped her eyebrows at him.

Jack continued. “I was in a—”

“
Honey,
” she interrupted, a hand on his cheek. “I don't care what happened out there … what those motherfuckers did to you. I just care that you made it back to me.”

“No,” he replied, hands on her shoulders. “It's not
that
 … look, I need you to listen to what I'm saying. And I need you to trust me. Okay?”

She swallowed, slowly regaining her composure before giving him a slight nod.

“Yesterday morning I left you in the suit-up room at the Cape and climbed aboard a capsule on top of an Atlas Five rocket that injected me into a suborbital flight for the purpose of testing an Orbital Space Suit.” He pointed an index finger at his chest. “A suit that
you
designed.” Angela stared at his battle dress before narrowing her gaze and running her fingers over its smooth surface.

“Carbon fiber laced with Nomex and Kevlar,” she mumbled.

He smiled. “It's your design, Angie. This is the combat battle dress. The outer layer that got me through reentry's over there.” He pointed at the silvery shape in the foyer.

She looked over to it and back to him. “Jack, I stopped working on it after … after you died …
five years ago
. How is it possible that you—”

He gently pressed a finger over her lips.

“I have no way to explain that,” he said. “All I know is that yesterday morning I climbed into a capsule, got shot sixty miles up into the sky, jumped, and after a very,
very
weird ride, I ended up pretty much where I think I was supposed to touch down, in a grassy field northeast of Orlando. But there was no one there to greet me, and believe me when I tell you, the whole world was watching this jump. NASA had cameras mounted on the capsule, which followed a parallel reentry to capture me heading down. And after it burned up, high altitude balloons picked me up. The FFA had issued a TFR over the area. The Air Force had helicopters and jets all over the place scaring off seagulls and waiting for a visual on my parachute. Even the Boy Scouts of America were tracking me. And yet, I woke up all alone a couple of hours ago.”

Angela closed her eyes, a finger stabbing the middle of her crinkled forehead. “That's … the strangest story I've ever heard.”

He gave her a half smile and said, “And that's not even the strangest part.”

“You mean weirder than showing up here after five years?”

Jack tilted his head. “When I left the launchpad less than twenty-four hours ago, tropical storm Claudette was about to make landfall and rip through central Florida. That's why NASA pulled in the launch schedule by twenty-four hours. But the skies are clear out there.”

“There are no storms in the forecast, Jack,” she replied, twisting her lips and putting a hand to his forehead.

He gently took her hand in his while looking into her eyes. “I'm
not
feverish. I'm
not
sick. I'm
not
delusional. Yesterday morning you had short auburn hair and slept in an oversized MIT T-shirt. Yesterday morning I got into this suit and jumped from a capsule as high as Alan Shepard's flight and landed two hours away from here. I'm not making this up.”

She stared at his suit, then back at the foyer, before asking, “All right, Jack. What else is different?”

He tilted his head and said, “You've transitioned to the metric system.”

“Yep. Back in the seventies. Ancient history.”

“In my world, Jimmy Carter couldn't get America to transition. We're still using miles, gallons, and pounds.”

“What else?” she asked, the look on her face matching his altered state of mind. But in some way he felt a bit relieved to be sharing it with her.

“Well, there's Cuba,” he said.

She took his hands and placed them on her lap as she sat cross-legged in front of him. “That's where we went on our honeymoon.”

Damn, she's gorgeous,
Jack thought, having forgotten just how wonderful Angela could make him feel.

She added, “Did we also…”

“Um, no. We went mountain climbing in Yosemite National Park. Cuba fell to Fidel Castro in 1959 and has been a communist state ever since.”

“Really?” she said. “Now
that's
screwed up. Castro did win the revolution, but he was ousted from power during the Bay of Pigs invasion a couple of years later, and it became a U.S. territory, like Puerto Rico and Guam.”

Jack shook his head. “That mission failed. JFK didn't provide the invading troops with air support. Poor bastards got stranded on the beach and couldn't drive inland.”

She made a face. “You're talking about John F. Kennedy?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Oh, well, here Kennedy did win the election in November of 1960 but was assassinated before he could take office. LBJ became president, and he overwhelmed Castro and his communist regime during that invasion. The place's been a paradise since, Jack. It's got some of the world's most beautiful beaches, great music, shows, gambling, boating, rain forest retreats. You name it, they got it there.”

“Well, in my world, your dad escaped from that hellhole in a rowboat when he was seventeen and made it to Miami, where he built a life for himself,” he said, spending a few minutes telling her about her upbringing, her father's death, her hacking years as well as those with the FBI before heading to college and eventually NASA, where they'd met.

“Well, everything except for Dad escaping from Cuba matches. He started a motorcycle shop in South Miami and he died from lung cancer. After hacking and the FBI, I also went to FIT and MIT and worked at NASA, where we met and married,” she said, still holding his hands in hers. “I was in the midst of developing the OSS, as well as finalizing the weapons systems when Pete was pressured by General Hastings to perform an actual field test of the combat gear.”

Jack made a face.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just hoping that Hastings didn't exist here.”

“He does, and he put the screws on Pete to test the gear in a real scenario. Up to that point you had run a bunch of combat drills following HALO jumps at the Cape as well as in the Arizona desert and the jungles of Cuba. But it was time for the real thing, and you … you kept insisting that you needed to run the first field test yourself. So you and Pete headed for Afghanistan. But only Pete came back.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged, glanced over at the mantelpiece, and said, “You know the Pentagon. They gave me the bullshit line that you'd died in a training mission, never mind that you were my husband and were wearing the combat suit that I designed.” She paused, then added, “But Pete told me later. You performed a HALO insertion over the mountains northeast of Kabul to join your old buddies in SEAL Team 3 in an operation underway. Pete was accompanying them as the official NASA observer. Apparently the winds shifted and you ended up on the wrong side of a ridge and came under heavy fire. The battle dress protected you for a while, but the Taliban overran your position before the SEALs could get to you.”

She dropped her gaze while lifting his hands and pressing them against her chest.

“I … damn, I was
devastated,
Jack. I felt I'd let you down. I should have designed the suit better … stronger.”

“Angie,” he said. “That wasn't your fault. That's the nature of military operations.”

She nodded slightly, then said, “Well, in any case, I couldn't work at NASA anymore. Everything about that project reminded me of you. So I retired and eventually took a teaching job at FIT.”

Jack had no idea what to say.
How could this be really happening?

“But you came back,” she said, staring at him just like she used to during the early years of their marriage. “You came back … to me.”

She embraced him again while rubbing her face against his chest. The emotions twisting inside of him nearly made him wince in pain. A part of him wanted to take her right here, on this damn sofa where he had been relegated to spend the last two years sleeping alone. But his inner voice told him that doing so would be cheating on
his
Angela.