Eagle one, p.9
Eagle One, page 9
part #2 of Bugging Out Series
“Mommy, are we going in a plane?”
“I think we are,” Grace said.
“Cool!”
Krista’s excitement warmed us for a moment. Then thoughts of what had to be done rose again.
“The people in the truck,” I said to Jack. “Did you see any more like that in the city?”
“Did you see anyone at all?” Neil asked.
“Not a soul,” Jack answered. “I didn’t even see them.”
I turned to Neil and Grace.
“There could be more,” I said. “The longer that plane sits there, the more chance something happens to it.”
“Not much daylight left,” Jack reminded us. “Flying out today would not be a smart move.”
That reality was disappointing. But being foolhardy could be fatal.
“If we’re going to do this, I want to babysit that plane until we take off,” I said.
“We can head into the city now,” Neil suggested. “Go to the library, get the maps, then pull an all-nighter at the hangar.”
By the look of her, Grace wasn’t loving that idea.
“We’re going to stay there tonight,” she said, no questioning at all in her tone, only dread admission.
I nodded.
“We’ll be fine,” Neil assured her.
She accepted that and shook her head, smiling at us all, amused by some thought.
“It’s odd,” she said. “But being in a city, anyplace with buildings and roads, it makes me feel exposed. But out under the stars...we’re safe there. It’s silly, I know.”
I smiled back at Grace. Our conversation the night before, her condensed detailing of the events that had shaped what still did not exist between Neil and her, had come in a relaxed, quiet moment beneath sparkling heavens. It made sense that the revelation had come there.
We had finished eating. Our plates were scraped clean, bellies full. Gathering our things took just a few moments, and, after offering sincere thanks for the hospitality, we walked through the front door of Jack Miner’s house with maybe four hours of good daylight left.
“Hold on a minute,” Jack said from inside.
The four of us stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and watched as our host came out, a small bag in hand. He passed it off to me and I looked inside.
“Something for tonight,” he said.
The contents were simple. But in these times what he gave us was valued more than gold. A dozen MREs, some flavored drink mix, and two small cans of peas.
“I’m still not big on peas,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and shook the man’s hand. “If nothing else, Jack, you’re proof that good people still do exist.”
He accepted the observation with a warm smile. But the expression dimmed ever so slightly, a wariness creeping settling upon his face.
“I hope you find the same where you’re going,” he said. “I truly do.”
We waved as we walked away, Krista turning back again and again to smile at the man who’d invited us into his home. As we came around the stand of dead woods that hid his house from the highway beyond, the sight of him was no more.
The car started promptly once we reached it, and I turned us around. Kalispell was once again ahead of us. Jack Miner was behind, gone from our lives.
Forever.
Seventeen
It smelled of the old world. Dust and paper. Computers had been looted, tables that had supported them empty, network cables tangled and tossed, like a nest of dead multicolored snakes spread about. But books they’d left. Disregarded. Shelved and scattered across the floor.
“Can we look for a new book, mommy?”
Grace put a hand to her daughter’s cheek.
“Absolutely,” she said, then looked to Neil and me. “We’ll be close.”
“So will we,” Neil said, the protectiveness plain in his delivery.
Grace and Krista walked off, maneuvering over toppled bookcases. Neil looked to a lopsided directory hanging on a wall nearby. We’d entered the library through glass doors that had long ago been broken, glass shards strewn within the space, bits grinding under my feet as I stepped close to the directory.
“All right, we’ve got map books back there,” Neil said.
I nodded, still eyeing the directory. Still looking for something as Neil walked away, noticing after a few seconds I wasn’t with him.
“You coming?”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I want to look at something.”
He laid an incredulous look on me. That sort of dumbshit appraisal we’d volleyed back and forth as teenagers when the other would pull some bonehead move.
“You have a report due I didn’t know about?”
“You know what you need to find,” I said. “I just need a minute.”
He puzzled at me for a moment, then shook off the exchange and made his way toward the back of the library, disappearing down an aisle. I followed the same path, but turned before he did, right instead of left, reaching a section with signage still clear upon the shelving—languages.
Wisps of light barely reached where I stood. I took a small flashlight from my pocket and moved its beam along the rows of books, turning it on every few seconds for just an instant, conserving the battery. At my refuge I’d laid in a plentiful stock of batteries, but most had gone up flames. Here I needed just enough to first find what I was looking for, then a bit more to read within what I hoped would bring some clarity for me.
German. Spanish. And, finally, French. Among the other dictionaries the object of my interest was revealed under the quick burst of light, and, in an instant, I was back in high school, in the nascent internet era, where assignments still required finding and opening an actual paper book to obtain whatever knowledge was required. I slipped the book from the shelf and thought for a moment before opening it, remembering. Recalling. The words that the French helicopter pilot had spoken.
L’enfant est un menteur...
Softly, I repeated it to myself.
“L’enfant est un menteur...”
That was what the dying man had said. That was what I’d heard. How accurate my mental transcription was, I didn’t know. Not yet.
I opened the dictionary and flipped through the pages, searching for the first word—l’enfant. But it wasn’t there. Or was it, I wondered, breaking down the word in my head. Maybe the first part, the ‘l’ sound, was some addition to the rest, which sounded more familiar. Almost like ‘infantry’, except with an ‘e’ at the beginning.
I refocused my search, flipping to the correct section to get the English translation, finding precisely what I was looking for.
“Child...”
I spoke the word quietly, surprised. It was not some military term, which would have made sense considering the attack. It was an innocuous word. Not threatening in the least.
Child...
Not having time to completely immerse myself in French grammar, I made a leap of conjecture and assumed that the ‘l’ sound in combination with the word would roughly translate to ‘The child’.
...est un menteur...
The second word I found on the very next page.
...is...
The child is...
Then the third word, skimming further on in the dictionary.
...un...
...a...
The child is a...
Finally, the last word, located near the middle of the book. No harder to find than any other. But when I laid eyes upon it, I stopped, not wanting to add it to what I’d already deciphered. Its meaning, taken whole, taken in context, chilled me.
I closed the dictionary and slipped it back onto the shelf, standing there, alone, refusing to speak the words aloud, even if only to myself. That expression I could control.
But what churned in my thoughts could not. The words, the phrase, played over and over, louder, until it was screaming within.
The child is a liar...
Part Three
Danger Close
Eighteen
The single engine Piper sat exactly where Jack Miner had told us it would be, nosed into an open hangar, the space invaded by the elements, small drifts of snow piled against the interior walls. I pulled the Buick in next to it, fully into the structure.
Ten minutes it took to drive from the library to where we now were. There, Grace and Krista had found a small armful of books to occupy and educate the girl. Neil, too, had secured a trio of maps and atlases covering the Pacific Northwest and the mountain states inland. I’d brought nothing from the place. Nothing physical. Just an answer. A knowing.
Neil had asked me what I’d gone in search of when I finally joined him where the maps and geographic books were shelved. I shrugged off the inquiry then, telling him that the smallish library didn’t have what I’d hoped to find. On the surface, it wasn’t a complete lie.
Lie...
The child is a liar...
“We can use the car to sleep in,” Grace said as we climbed out.
“Absolutely,” I said.
A liar...
There was only one child the French pilot could have been speaking of. The child whose voice we’d heard broadcasting from Eagle One. But why? Why would a foreign helo jock, flying on what was, or had been, United States soil, use his dying breath to tell us that? What lie could that child tell to elicit an armed strike on those reaching out to Eagle One?
“Small fire at the back of the hangar sound okay?” Neil asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded, transferring our gear from inside the car to atop its hood. “We can heat up some food.”
I couldn’t tell them. Any of them. If I were to breathe a word of the pilot’s translated statement, it could be enough to embolden Grace’s reluctance to head west. Enough, maybe, to even draw Neil toward the side of hesitance.
We had to get there. I felt that. It was a quiet compulsion that churned inside. Whether it turned out to be the ultimate destination, or just a way station, we...I had to find it. See it. Understand it.
“It’s in good shape,” Neil said.
I looked to my friend. He was at the plane, walking around it, performing a visual inspection of the exterior. Some sort of pre-flight check. There was a ritualistic feel to the process, his hand reaching out and touching specific points on the aircraft, feeling along the trailing edge of the wing, checking the tires, the windows.
“Feel better now that you’ve seen it?” I asked.
“I have every confidence in the aircraft,” he said. “The pilot’s just a bit sketchy for my liking.”
“I thought I was the only one who felt that way,” I said.
Neil tossed me a smile and walked to the tail end of the plane, then beyond it, until he stood just outside the hangar. I joined him, looking over the landscape beyond. The day’s last light, peeking through slivered clouds to the west, dappled the snowy expanse with warm light. Were it not for a line of charred buildings on the far side of the runway, the scene would look serenely normal. The new world was like that. Bits of what remained, viewed under the right circumstances, at the perfect moment, seemed to echo the past. As if it still existed.
“We’ll have to do something about the runway,” Neil said.
“Too much snow?”
He shrugged. The layer of winter white upon the long strip of pavement wasn’t deep, but I suspected it didn’t need to be to cause issues with taking off.
“We’re not going to find a plow,” I said.
“We don’t need one,” he told me, glancing back to the Buick. “In the morning we just take that beast and drive up and down the runway, over and over. That should help. That should be enough.”
I eyed my friend for a moment. He’d always been the kind to rise to a challenge, but what he was going to do here, when the sun rose on a new day...
“You are one cool cucumber, Neil.”
“Yeah? I’d be a lot cooler if I’d finished those flying lessons.”
“Life’s tough, my friend.”
He smiled.
“Guess I’ll have to be tougher.”
We joined Grace and Krista inside the hangar. An hour later, after getting a fire going and heating up our dinner, we sat on upturned buckets and cans, talking. Relaxing. Except for Neil. He spent a good two hours inside the Piper, in the pilot’s seat, familiarizing himself with the controls, the systems, even starting the engine and running it for a few minutes. It was a process of preparation. Running through a mental checklist that had as much to do with himself as it did with the aircraft.
In the morning we would leave Montana, in all likelihood for the last time, but we weren’t in any hurry. There was no schedule to keep. No alarm clock to set. We would wake when we woke and be on our way, heading west on our terms.
The rumble of truck engines just after dawn changed all that.
Nineteen
Grace nudged me with her foot. Before I could ask her why, I heard it.
“It’s over there,” she said. “On the highway.”
I’d been sleeping by the fire, along with Neil, while Grace and Krista, as planned, sacked out in the car, mother and daughter curled up together in the back seat. My eyes opened wide at the sound and I sat up. A few feet away next to the embers smoldering low, Neil was just rousing as Grace jostled him.
“What is that?” he asked, shaking the sleep off.
I was already on my feet, reaching for my AR.
“We’ve got company,” I said, and Neil bolted up, arming himself as I had.
By now the sound was the kind you could not only hear, but feel. It reached up through the soles of my feet like the constant low hum of a tuning fork. Neil and I ran to the edge of the hangar door and looked out across the runway. Beyond it, on the far side of burned and rubbled buildings, was the highway. The same one we’d tried to head south on, until the fallen spans crossing Ashley Creek had turned us back. Some distance beyond them, if what Jack Miner had told us was accurate, a sizeable force had been camped. At the time he’d flown over that force included a helicopter, which almost certainly was the one crashed near my refuge. He’d also seen trucks. Lots of trucks. Trucks now loaded with an armed force heading north to search for their missing comrades.
Neil turned fast back toward Grace. She had already kicked piles of dirty snow onto what little remained of the fire, quenching the remnant smoke it was generating.
“Get Krista ready to go,” he told her, then looked to me. “It’s gotta be now.”
I glanced to the plane, and then to the runway. No more snow had fallen. But none had melted, either. It was still a thick, wet layer, several inches deep.
“We can’t use the car to clear the runway,” I said.
“I know,” he said, his gaze swelling now. “We’ve gotta hurry.”
He rushed to the plane as I looked back across the runway. No longer was it just sound alerting us to an approaching danger. The first of the trucks appeared between two collapsed buildings, just glimpses of them as the convoy trundled up the highway. They’d gone off road to get around the downed bridges, and were heading into town, but all it would take was a chance look, or a decision to search the airport, and we’d be found. Our journey west, and likely more, would be over.
“I’m taking the brakes off,” Neil said. “We’re going to have to push it back.”
Without the luxury of being able to drop the aircraft into reverse, muscle would have to be used to get it out of the hangar. I took a position on the leading edge of the left wing, and Neil on the right. Grace hurried to the nose and planted her hands against center of the propeller, leaning hard as we pushed, and shoved, our feet slipping on the icy floor.
“Come on!” Neil half shouted. “Move! Move!”
But the aircraft barely rocked. Grace stepped back, eyeing the landing gear, her gaze fixing on the nose gear, snow having buried it as it plowed to a stop. She dropped to her knees under the nose and scooped away the piles of icy white until the nose wheel was visible—turned sharply to the right. Almost at a ninety degree angle to the plane’s center.
“Turn the wheel!” Grace shouted to Neil.
He left the wing and climbed into the cockpit, cranking some control, the nose wheel inching left, and more left, until it was straight again.
“It’s good!” Grace told him.
In a few seconds he was back on the front of the right wing, and after a quick look to each other to time our attempt, we put our full weight and strength against the plane in unison. At first it moved an inch and seemed stuck. We pushed harder. Neil yelled as he gave it every last ounce of strength he had. I made no sound. I simply drew a breath, held it, and pushed as though my life depended upon it.
Because it did. Krista’s scream made that perfectly clear.
We all looked toward the child, standing just beyond the wingtip, still in the shelter of the hangar, her arms extended, finger pointed across the runway where a truck was barreling across a parking lot between destroyed buildings. Coming right at us.
“Now! Push!”
It was Grace urging us on now, and we pushed. Drawing on every reserve we could summon, the plane finally rolling backward. Steadily.
“Go get our gear,” Neil told Grace. “Everything. Hurry!”
I looked over the wind as the plane continued to roll into the clear. The truck had left pavement and was sending up a rooster tail of snow as it sped across a field. It was close enough now to see that there were people in the open bed of the large vehicle. People holding weapons.
“That’s far enough!” Neil said, and he threw the door open and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
“Here!” Grace shouted, carrying and dragging our packs and weapons, Krista running at her side.
“Got it,” I said, taking the gear and shoving it atop the back seats.
“Starting up,” Neil said, the engine firing a second later, propeller spinning, the wash from it blasting over us.
“Get in!” I yelled above the suddenly thunderous noise. “Here!”
I reached my hand down and grabbed Krista as Grace lifted, almost throwing the little girl into the back seat.
