LOSS OF REASON Page 7

  She gripped hands around her upper thigh, trying to choke off the next wave pulsing through her knee. The worry, the mind-invading fear of further bone and tissue damage, was reinforced by shooting pain at her slightest movement.

  The pain receded. She pulled her jacket collar tighter around her neck. And from the car’s end she recognized another sound. The gurgle of water pouring in.

  “Come on!” she shook the white-haired man.

  His eyes opened and he smiled faintly. There was wet blood matted in his hair. “Hi. My name’s Victoria. We’ve got to move up to the other end. The water’s getting higher.”

  “I know who you are, Miss Hill. I’ve seen you on TV before.”

  A dark-skinned man in a baseball cap with StreetNews! on the front, and another man who spoke no English, pulled her up, while the transit engineer helped the old man. Arms across their shoulders, she hobbled on her one good leg. The screaming pain rolled up in waves: calf-knee-thigh-pelvis-calf—almost more than she could bear.

  They eased her onto one of the plastic seats in the upper third of the car.

  “I normally wouldn’t do this—” the guy in the green baseball cap muttered, “I have to buy these but—” He pulled out several folded newspapers from a large black bag.

  “Ahhhh, thank you,” she said as he eased them gently beneath her knee.

  “I don’t expect to have a lot of customers right now,” he said.

  She spotted her black purse floating in the dark water. “Look in there, will you? There should be a couple of twenties. My phone too.”

  But he didn’t go for the purse. “That’s okay, lady,” he said, an uncomfortable stress in his voice. And then she realized the half-submerged lump floating nearby was a body, a gas-bloated man in a dark suit.

  “We can’t just sit here waiting for the water to take us,” Victoria told the others. There were six of them. The only other woman was shaking her head, pointing at her cellphone, speaking to the man with her in a language Victoria didn’t recognize.

  “Someone will come for us soon!” said a portly man with a high, annoying voice.

  “But how soon, man?” said the newspaper vendor. “Before the water rises over our heads?”

  “What about opening the front door by your compartment up there?” Victoria pointed. “Maybe we can walk up the tunnel. If you—”

  The engineer shook his head. “Cave-in, lady. I can’t tell how much of the tunnel’s blocked that way. My flashlight’s dead. We’re safer in here.”

  They turned back to the rising water, already inches higher in the minute or so they’d spent debating.

  I wish I could look for myself, she thought. I need something to bind my knee. She looked at the newspapers. Her scarf. The lining of her coat. “Does anyone have a knife?”

  The newspaper vendor had a knife.

  She talked him out of a couple more newspapers from which she rolled tight paper tubes on a diagonal three pages thick. Using them like splints, she tied off four above and below her knee with strips of scarf and coat lining. She probably still couldn’t walk on her own, but it did feel better.

  Something cold licked Victoria’s heel and she jerked her swollen leg away. Water! Already? The pain shot right into her pelvis. She gritted her teeth, clamping hands around her thigh again. Not quite as bad. The splints were helping. They’d work for a while. Until they got wet.

  She pulled herself up on one of the train’s vertical steel hand poles and slowly worked her way to the train’s front door. It was locked. She peered through the glass. The engineer’s right. You can’t see anything. She turned to see him watching her. They were all watching her.

  “Do you have the key?”

  “I don’t know if we should—”

  “I know we shouldn’t!” the high-pitched guy interrupted the engineer.

  She held out her hand insistently, waiting, until the transit engineer produced a silver key from his pocket, stepped around her and thrust it into the lock.

  The door slid back with a whooosh! A breeze flowed. And another sound. Behind them. Water pouring in. Fast. The door had been acting as an airlock. Now there was nothing to hold the water back. And just outside, a wall of dirt.

  “Close it! Close it!” the portly man screamed as the transit engineer thrust the door closed and locked it again.

  The breeze was gone. But the water in those few moments had risen a good six inches higher up the low end of the car.

  “Well I guess we know not to try that again,” said the engineer.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” said the old man. “It was a good idea.”

  “Yeah,” said the news vendor. “But how the hell they gonna get us out?”

  Desperation

  At the jet Franklin introduced Chuck to Andréa and began to tell her about the Red Cross clearance. She held up a hand, shaking her head, “I have some bad news for you. I know you guys wanted to go into the city.”

  “What?” Franklin’s breath caught.

  “Everon lost the helicopter.”

  “The one he rented?” Franklin asked.

  “The Army took it.”

  “Damn military just let us in!” Chuck said fiercely. “Doesn’t sound like our clearance will do us much good now, does it?”

  Franklin’s lips silently formed a swear word he didn’t use anymore. He stared at the ground. All he could see was Cynthia, Steve, Melissa—trapped beneath burning beams, surrounded by fire that raged like pain, through the veins of his wrists, the tendons of his palms.

  “At least I was able to get you back in to your jet,” Chuck said. “I’ll leave you some iodine drops.” As he flicked the latches on his case he spoke to Andréa. “You should both take some right away. Protects the thyroid.”

  “Hey!” Andréa pointed over Franklin’s shoulder. “Look at that!”

  Far down the street, in the control tower lights a tree tilted. Its angle slowly increased, picking up speed until it fell behind the tower.

  “Wonder what that’s about.” Chuck said.

  A minute later, a young guy in a shaggy green coat ran up carrying a chain saw, checking numbers on aircraft, breath pumping out clouds of white steam. “Who’s Franklin Reveal?”

  “I am.”

  He threw a thumb over his shoulder, “Your brother’s looking for you. Third building down. He said to tell you: Grab your stuff, and hurry!”

  Franklin quickly threw the straps to his bags over his shoulders, too rushed to notice that airport security guard Vandersommen was back, watching from the shadows.

  The old Coast Guard bird was as ready as Everon could make it with the tools he had available. He gave the starter a try. No less cranky than its owner, the exhaust ports coughed out blasts of thick black smoke. But he kept at it, turning the big turbine over and over. He could hear the starter grinding down as its batteries ran out of juice.

  Hopeless, he thought.

  He switched over to engine number two. It turned over more slowly than the first—

  The old engine made a rattling sound, belched out more of the black stuff and cleared. The big blades began to turn. Their speed increased. The old Pelican was running!

  With the second engine to draw on, he tried the first turbine again. This time it spun up quickly and lit. The rotor turned faster now. Everon pushed up the RPMs until both engines smoothed out. He slid a gnarled old headset he’d found back in the crew compartment over his ears and from the floor between the seats pulled the collective arm gently upward with his left hand, testing the ability of the spinning blades to grab air. Nothing! He cranked on the arm’s motorcycle grip and pulled again. He felt the old rattletrap lighten until he’d lifted her off a few inches. His spirits rose with it.

  A crackly voice came over his headset. “Helicopter near the museum, this is Teterboro Tower. We show no clearance granted to any aircraft at this time.” Apparently the o
ld radio was working too.

  “Engine run-up only,” Everon answered as he put the chopper’s wheels back on the ground.

  The Pelican was giving the impression it might just take them into the city—and back. Now the problem was again to obtain clearance. But one thought filled him: I’m going in this time whether I get permission or not!

  It was cold out. The sun was about to rise. Franklin, Chuck and Andréa found Everon inside a big red and white helicopter, its blades already turning.

  “What is this?” Franklin yelled over the sound of the engine.

  “Helicopter, looks like!” Everon yelled back.

  “This is Chuck Farndike,” Franklin introduced. “He’s the regional Red Cross blood coordinator.”

  “Nothin’ like a Slick,” Chuck yelled.

  “What?” Everon mouthed.

  “Troop carrier. No weapons. Called ’em Slicks in the Army—Hogs, Frogs ’n Chunkers all had missiles or heavy weapons. Here!” Chuck untwisted a cap from a bottle and pushed a dropper full of some brown liquid toward Everon’s face. “Let me put some of this under your tongue.”

  Everon eyeballed the overweight guy in muttonchops. “What is it?” he yelled.

  “Lugol’s Solution. We’re goin’ in, aren’t we? Hospital’s nearly out of iodine pills. It’ll have to do—protect our thyroids!”

  Everon let him put the drops under his tongue.

  From his bag, Chuck pulled an old gray box the size of a loaf of bread.

  “Radiation counter,” Everon acknowledged, surprised. “Good!”

  For Chuck’s part, he was actually covering up the deep twisting dread running through his gut at the prospect of going into the city, something he hadn’t felt since the years he’d last flown on a combat chopper. Diverting his fear by thinking about what he should take, jabbering on like some young weenie about the Lugol’s.

  Then again, some part of him felt more afraid of chickening out. And some part really did want to go, something inside that felt totally underused doing those blood donations. It was this, had convinced him to go in the first place—not the things this wacky dark-haired minister said to him, whatever they were.

  Everon pulled his brother forward by the jacket into the cockpit. “What’s with the bullfrog?”

  “Would Red Cross authorization help us?” Franklin smiled, his first since getting on the jet.

  “He’s our way in? How’d you convince him?”

  Franklin shrugged. “Tell you about it later. Can you fly this thing?”

  “I haven’t logged many helicopter hours lately. Nan usually flies our MD-900 jobs. But this is just a more beat-up version of one I flew down in Houston, a personnel transport out to a couple of oil rigs.”

  “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “How long since you’ve flown any helicopter?”

  “I flew our MD-900 last year.”

  “And one of these?”

  Everon was busy checking fuses when he said it. “Fifteen years.”

  Franklin shrugged. Better than nothing I guess. He’d never seen an aircraft their older brother couldn’t fly.

  Franklin took a look through the rear cabinets. Beneath one bench seat he found four thick stainless cables, each terminated in an eyelet. Their other ends were joined by a large hook.

  “There’s a cargo hook back there!” he told Everon. “Do we need it?”

  “Maybe.”

  Chuck Farndike pulled out a folded pair of huge Red Cross stickers. Shoved his heavy green suitcase under a bench. What they didn’t use they could leave in Manhattan.

  There’s a problem, Franklin realized. He looked at Chuck. “We have to switch the tail number!”

  “Damn,” Chuck said, “you’re right! What’s the—” he stepped outside, a moment later back in. “Two-Two-Bravo-India. Twenty-Two-Bravo-India,” he repeated. “Man, I’ve got Six-Six-Six-KI on the brain.”

  Franklin let Chuck take the helicopter’s left seat and Everon handed Chuck another old headset. Keeping his eyes on the radio, Franklin spoke in Chuck’s ear, softly yet forcefully, gripping Chuck’s right collar bone, “Really happy you gotta be able to get that clearance!”

  “Right!” Chuck answered. He reached overhead to dial in a frequency and began calling the tower.

  Franklin threw his duffel bags under the seat in the crew area. He and Andréa went outside and began applying Chuck’s huge Red Cross stickers to either side of the Pelican’s fuselage.

  When they came back in, Chuck dropped his headset on the seat. “I’m going over and talk to those bozos myself!”

  He ran off for the tower.

  Did our original clearance get approved because Chuck requested a Red Cross mission, Franklin wondered, or because somebody knew the Army had already requisitioned Everon’s helicopter-from-Hell?

  Andréa climbed in the back of the blasting Pelican with a case of bottled water and a box of energy bars, moved up into the cockpit and pulled the headset away from the left side of Everon’s head. “Do you really think they’ll let you go in?” she shouted.

  “We’ll see. You fly the company choppers, don’t you? Do you know how to fly a Sea Pelican?”

  She eyeballed the ratty old gray-metal cockpit dubiously. “Do you?”

  “Well enough.”

  “I’ve got to stay with the jet and try to contact Mr. Williams.”

  “I could use a co-pilot.”

  She shook her head. “This old derelict may not have much performance left in it. You’ve already got Franklin’s big Red Cross guy. If I go with you, it’s another survivor you can’t bring back.”

  He frowned and adjusted the throttle, trimming back power as the big engines smoothed out.

  “I put a case of water and some snack bars off the Learjet in back.” Her eyes looked up at him. “Be careful, will you?”

  Everon nodded. “Yeah.”

  She kissed his lips hard and left.

  Hunt would want her to stay with the plane? If he really thought about it he was probably better off without her.

  Chuck ran back breathing hard from the control tower and got in.

  “Fuck it!” he yelled. “It’s in the pipeline. I called the first number in over the hospital-military radio. Now they’re giving me a hard time. Trying to reach some general—guy named Anders, military commander appointed by the President to oversee all airspace in the vicinity.”

  Franklin stared at him. “That was Anders before—at the gate!”

  “Shit!” Chuck yelled. “Well, I’m not sitting around all day watching blood drain out of people’s arms like I did when the Trade Center went. Felt damned out of touch. I was an Army medic—really happy you boys asked me into the thick of things. We get hassled on the way in, I’ll get on the radio, see what I can do. Waiting for clearance! What stupid bureaucratic bullshit at a time like this!”

  Franklin couldn’t agree more but rose both eyebrows to Everon. Everon shouted at Chuck, “So we act like we have all the clearances in the world—and hope for the best!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Works for me.”

  Watching the turbines’ temperatures, Everon brought them up to speed. The blades were really womping now.

  A female voice came from the tower. “Helicopter at museum. You’ll need clearance to lift off. All Teterboro Airport flights are restricted today.”

  “Sue?”

  “Yes?” the voice came back.

  “This is Everon, the guy whose radio you’re using? The guy who fixed your generator? We already have Red Cross clearance for our old chopper. Apparently there’s been some delay switching tail numbers to this one. They haven’t sent it over yet.”

  “Oh. Let me check on that. See if I can speed it up for you.”

  Franklin looked at his brother. “She sounded friendly!”

  Everon shrugged. “She knows what we’re trying to do.”

  Chuck ta
pped him on the shoulder. “Screw the clearance. It’ll come through on the way in.”

  Franklin shrugged. To hell with waiting, he mouthed silently.

  Clear to fly or not, Everon wasn’t going to take a chance shutting the big Pelican’s turbines down. Prepared to feign ignorance on the next radio call, he began to lift off anyway.

  Up in the tower, Sue eyeballed Colonel Marsh who was busy talking to his men. She whispered to John, the other controller, so the military wouldn’t hear. “We have to stop him. Nobody should go in there!”

  “Especially not him, right?” John looked at her sideways. “Jesus Christ, let him go. What if it was your sister! Hell, he gave us his radio, fixed our power! For fuck’s sake, Sue!”

  Flames burning above the city. It’s death to go in there. So maybe his sister is in there. She couldn’t admit to John or even to herself the deeper reason. She just didn’t want something to happen to that beautiful man.

  Her eyes shot to the museum again. Shit! In the morning twilight, the helicopter’s white pontoons were gapping air above the corner of the museum’s roof—He’s lifting that damned old red and white death trap off the ground!

  She glanced at John. He knows the chopper’s rising! He isn’t even looking out the window. He was staring at her. Watching her eyes. She hesitated, unsure what to do. She held her breath . . . and decided, giving only a small nod of her head.

  If it was really what that blond-haired man wanted to do, she wouldn’t say anything.

  An airport security guard ran up, now bending forward breathless. “Colonel!” he gasped. Marsh seemed to remind himself of the man’s name from the silver nameplate. VANDERSOMMEN.

  “That guy who was up here has another helicopter and is attempting an unlawful flight from the museum!”

  Marsh glanced at the two controllers with irritation, and hesitated. An innate sense of fair play held him back, a growing respect. He’d heard about the four-place helicopter the man had rented, the one his men appropriated. The same man who had fixed the airport’s generator. And re-established communications of a sort. None of it the Army had been able to do. What if it was my sister!