Noah followed, running beside the jet to lift and fasten the stairs before he closed the door to lock the exit behind him. As the jet rolled on he crouched down low and dashed toward the spot where he’d last seen his two friends running.
Chapter 53
When Hollis returned to the major-appliances area of the warehouse he found young Tyler completing his assigned work on the last of six fifty-gallon water heaters.
The tall white cylinders had been arranged at strategic points around the huge floor space. Each was tipped forward at a shallow angle and aimed toward the glass atrium at the front of the place and the parking lot out beyond. They were supported in place by many stacked bags of dry quick-set cement to the side and behind.
From where he stood it all looked something like a complement of field artillery, and so it should.
“How’re they doing in the back?” Tyler asked.
“They’re doing fine. Right on schedule.”
The two of them went down the checklist on each of the prepared tanks in turn. They’d been filled with water to the level directed, relief valves disabled, feed pipes permanently sealed, and thermostats recalibrated to allow for extremely hazardous but precisely controllable settings.
Tyler had done the math again and again and Hollis rechecked it himself; eighty-five thousand pounds of pressure would not forgive much of an error. There were variables and unknowns aplenty, but these improvised weapons seemed as ready as they would ever be. All the calculations said they should perform as expected if called upon. His hope, of course, was that they’d never have to find out.
“Time to give these bad boys the smoke test,” Hollis said.
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s crank ’em up.”
These were premium commercial water heaters with digital readouts for internal temperature and stress. All were hooked to backup generators in case the power failed, just like the equipment being used by the team in the back.
As the tanks began to heat up Hollis adjusted each of the units identically and he and Tyler worked to reinforce the surrounding sandbag supports while periodically watching the numbers climb.
When the PSI gauges neared 250—far above the manufacturer’s rated safety zone but still within worst-case specifications—the controls were reset to hold that high-pressure condition perfectly stable. Out of caution, though, he would leave some of their helpers stationed with instructions to watch those readouts and call out immediately if the pressure on any of the heaters should suddenly start to climb.
The survival bags they’d brought with them had included pay-as-you-go cell phones, to be used sparingly and for emergencies only. The phone in his pocket had begun to vibrate and he took it out and read the screen. The unsigned message there said: check the news.
“What now?” Tyler asked.
“Come with me.”
On the way to the back they stopped into an unoccupied office where a series of monitors were set up and ready for viewing. There was an old TV and a DVR with basic cable channels and a number of flat-screens showing insets of the various security cameras around the warehouse. A ham radio transceiver was also up and running for code and voice transmissions, and a laptop with an Internet connection sat right beside.
When Hollis saw what was dominating the news he raised the volume and they both watched and listened for a while.
“Oh man,” Tyler said.
The country had been shaken in recent days by a wave of shootings and other violence, all of which were being attributed to a single domestic militia group. Now the evolving reports were hinting that this group had ties to practically every prominent person and organization right of center. On one of the more obedient channels, Molly Ross and her people were actually being named as key players behind these terrorist acts.
And there was something new: a specific, imminent threat had reportedly been uncovered. Within the last half hour the entire country was put on high alert, with all flights grounded, mass transit halted, and citizens directed to stay in their homes as the authorities and their armed security partners combed the streets to try to find and eliminate the danger.
There was more. Even if the DHS and the FAA hadn’t shut down air traffic, the worsening weather probably would have. By all reports, conditions were fast developing that could usher in a line of major storms across the Midwest of a severity seen only once in a century.
His phone rang, a voice call this time. Hollis checked the caller ID and then motioned for Tyler to come near.
“I have to take this alone. Go and see how your mom and the others are getting along,” he said. “There’s no need to mention what we saw there on the news. Not yet.”
When the boy had left, Hollis answered the call, and it brought only more bad tidings.
All the stores in the HomeWorx chain had been visited by agents from a private security firm, a big one with deep government connections. The various stores were many miles apart, some entire states away, and these teams had descended on them all almost simultaneously. Uniformed, armed men were in the process of searching the places and questioning employees, and they weren’t leaving when they were done. While there was no sign of them yet in this area, it was surely only a matter of time.
Hollis ended the call and sat down, feeling another wave of dizziness and fatigue. Despite the aspirin he’d been swallowing by the handful, he felt worn down to a shadow; his fever and its underlying cause were still worsening. His eyes took a while to focus on the television screen. He watched with only half his attention as he tried to work his clouded thoughts through the dire situation at hand.
Facts were facts; there seemed to be no way that Molly could get there now, much less arrive before they were all found and apprehended. Judging by when they got started, she and the others would be grounded somewhere out west, lucky if they’d avoided capture, but with no hope of getting any farther.
Along with his withering fatigue, reality was settling into him now. He sat there for some time, feeling only weakness and defeat and the weight of the losses already suffered and a gathering dread of those yet to come.
Could they all really have come this far only to have it end this way?
As if in answer to this question, what came upon him then was neither sound, nor touch, nor any other humble sense of the physical world.
But without any doubt it was an answer, one so clear and certain that its truth would not tolerate denial. It was a sudden knowing from some source so sure and supreme that to even ask for further evidence would be an insult to its majesty.
Hollis looked again to the television screen, and a single, quiet word materialized and voiced itself in the center of his mind.
behold
The station’s chief meteorologist stood before a moving satellite image of the continental United States. The man seemed quite astonished by what was happening—he’d actually called it a miracle—and he was working hard to maintain a scientist’s demeanor as he spoke. Using the map projected behind him, he explained the three unlikely and converging elements of what he’d begun to term the perfect storm.
A powerful cold front driven by something called the Colorado Low had rapidly developed in the mid-latitudes. This alone was very unusual for that time of year; an unprecedented late-April snow was already being forecast in Dallas. The second element was a strong jet stream that had suddenly begun to dip far southward, its track shifting from a nearly straight path across the country into a rolling curve that resembled a turbulent sine wave spanning many hundreds of miles. And last, pushing in from the west, the effects of a strong El Niño were jamming all these forces together, smashing the descending cold air masses against the rising warmth at the front. The result, the man said, could soon be an impenetrable line of violent thunderstorms stretching two-thirds of the way across the country.
The enormous natural forces he’d described were replaying over and over in animated graphics on the map. The weatherman had said the indivi
dual principles at work were well understood, of course, but it was the sudden appearance of these three phenomena together that practically defied explanation.
Hollis reached out and gently touched the weather map on the screen, tracing the movements there, and as he did this, right down to his soul, he understood.
“What are you doing?”
The lights clicked on, and it was Tyler’s voice he’d heard from the doorway behind him. Hollis turned that way but didn’t answer.
“You look pale, man. You’d better take a rest.”
“I don’t need to rest,” Hollis said.
“So, what are we going to do?” the boy asked. “Nobody’s asking me, but it looks like we’d better call this whole thing off while we still can, right?”
“No,” Hollis said. “Molly’s on her way here now.”
“How’s that even possible? Aren’t you watching? There’s not a plane in the air across the country and the weather’s getting so bad they couldn’t get here even if they were allowed to fly.”
“She’s on her way, under God’s protection.”
“Look, this is the fever talking. How the hell could you even know that?”
“I know it.” Hollis stood, and though the flesh was weakening there was also a new strength in him that he hadn’t felt before. “I don’t know when, or how, but I know she’ll be here. So let’s you and me pull up our socks and get ready for hell and high water, son, because until she arrives, this is where we’re going to stand.”
Chapter 54
For what seemed like an eternity the three of them could only wait as Noah watched the now-vacant jet taxi very slowly toward the main terminal. The pilot was apparently doing what he could to buy them time as he was escorted all the way, hemmed in on every side by a small fleet of security vehicles.
The only cover they had was a low runway marker they were huddled behind; that, and the driving rain and midday gloom the lingering storm had brought in with it.
When it seemed safe enough, he and Molly and Ellen left their hiding spot and ran. They had no destination in mind and no goal but to work their way farther and farther from the lights of the airport, sprinting and stopping again from one bit of cover to the next. They crawled down a series of shallow ditches and then through a buried drainage duct with churning water rising up to their chins. They stumbled across a runway through the swirling wake turbulence of a landing jumbo jet. They ran into the open when they had no other choice, certain as they did so that they must be standing out starkly against the flat and deserted terrain toward the outskirts of the huge property.
After scaling a chain-link fence at the end of what seemed like an hour of muddy, grueling struggles, they managed to reach the shoulder of a multilane road that was packed bumper to bumper with slow-moving traffic. Noah held out his thumb in the universal sign that they needed a ride. A number of drivers went out of their way to ignore them but at last a man in an SUV stopped and motioned for the three to walk over and get aboard.
As they climbed into the rear seats and closed the door, the driver smiled and said, “Having some trouble?”
“Don’t get me started,” Noah replied.
Their driver had a few fresh towels in a gym bag and he cranked the heater to such a level that it must have been uncomfortably toasty for him. While nothing was going to dry them completely, the steady blast of warm air began to beat down the chill.
Talk radio was playing as they settled in; the driver was intent on the broadcast discussion, so there was only a little light conversation with his new riders. Thankfully he didn’t ask any probing questions, though early on he did inquire as to where they were bound. Noah simply answered that they’d been stranded on their trip across the country and were trying to reach a friend to stay the night. This did nothing to explain the condition in which he’d found them on the side of the road, but their rescuer only nodded and left it at that.
Traffic continued to be stop-and-go until it finally eased to the point that they could begin to make some real headway. They’d hardly traveled thirty miles, though, when everything ground to a halt again. The cause of the snarl was just barely visible far ahead. At first Noah thought it was an accident, but no; there appeared to be a highway patrol roadblock extending across all lanes in both directions.
“Could you take this exit right here?” he asked, keeping his tone as casual and unconcerned as he could.
“Here? Nobody’s going to be flying tonight—”
“I know, it’s okay, this is where you can leave us. You’ve been very kind but we don’t want to wear out our welcome.”
The driver flipped on his signal and eased his way across two jammed lanes of unhappy motorists to take the off-ramp for Centennial Airport.
As they rode Noah leaned down to Molly’s ear and described what he was seeing. Centennial was a major hub in its own right, high security and all, so walking into the main terminal was out. They drove on down the access road with Noah reading her the signs as he looked for any promising place where they could just hole up for a while and take a breath so they could plan.
“That’s the one,” Molly said. “Let’s go there.”
From near the bottom of a list of far-flung airport facilities on the very last sign, he’d just read her the name of Blue Sky Air Charters. It seemed as good a choice as any and Noah let the driver know.
Down the side road the whole area appeared to be under construction or major renovation. When they’d been let out, the three of them took shelter under the awning of an unmanned security booth outside the long, wide Blue Sky hangar. The lit interior of this giant enclosure seemed like a semi-organized flea market of aircraft parts with a single, partially disassembled vintage plane being worked on at its center.
Soon they noticed that an elderly man in coveralls was gesturing for them to come in out of the rain. There was no other nearby option; as they approached the man he wiped his oil-smudged hands with a rag and then held out his right for Noah to shake, which he did.
“I’m Bill McCord,” the man said. “Goodness, you three look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet. Are you lost?”
“A little bit,” Noah said, smoothly bypassing his own introduction. “We need ground transportation. If we could make a call from here it would be an enormous help.”
Mr. McCord nodded thoughtfully, and then he gave all three of them the once-over, first Noah, and then Ellen Davenport, and then Molly.
“I think I know that pretty face,” he said.
Chapter 55
Mr. William McCord was not really the aged grease monkey that his first impression had suggested. He was a war veteran of distinguished service, in fact, though he spoke of this humbly. He was also a man so full of stories that he seemed to have a very hard time containing them all.
The plane under restoration was being prepared for the air-show circuit and he’d been brought in to oversee the final detail work. It was an old Lockheed Lodestar C-60, a relatively rare item, and once finished it would duplicate the very craft that Mr. McCord had flown as a command transport pilot through the end of World War II. The first official flight was coming up soon; it was to be a ceremonial trip to ferry a few of the most decorated surviving American aces to the war memorial in Washington, D.C.
Though long retired, he was one of a fast-dying breed and the last of his kind who’d actually served aboard this particular plane while it was active in the U.S. fleet. He was at Blue Sky only as a consultant, he’d said—some worsening health problems had ended his barnstorming career—but the owners of the C-60 were kindly allowing him to putter around the old girl on his own time as the real work proceeded by day.
It was a beauty all right, though one had to look past the missing engine housings, the half-finished paint job, and the many leaning ladders and gaping access panels to really get a feel for what the final result might be.
They’d been scheduled to run up the rebuilt engines that afternoon but the bad weather had
put a stop to that. When everyone else had gone home and called it a day, Mr. McCord had stayed behind, leaving the hangar open in front so he could watch the advance of the oncoming storm.
This chatty old gentleman had managed to cover all these and other subjects on the short walk as he brought them inside. When they’d nearly reached the twin tail of the parked aircraft, Molly stopped and held out her hand for him.
“Mr. McCord?” she said.
“Yes, dear.”
“You’d said you know who I am, is that right?”
“I do, Ms. Ross.”
“Then I think it’s important that we sit down for a few minutes and have a serious talk.”
“Why, that would be my great pleasure. And hey, later on let me show you all around my baby here.” He patted the side of the plane. “We finished the inside first; out here it still doesn’t look like much to write home about, but she’s gonna be a peach. You know, I flew MacArthur all over Japan in a bird just like this one. That was 1946, when I was just barely old enough to buy myself a beer.”
“Before we get the tour,” Noah said, “is there a telephone we can use? A landline?”
Bill McCord pointed toward a small cluttered room in the far corner. “Be my guest, the phone’s right in the office on the corner table. There might be a box of sweatshirts in there, too, so you all can shed some of those wet clothes.” He took Molly’s arm then so he could help her up the couple of stairs into the passenger cabin of the C-60. “Now, young lady, you come along right this way.”
Ellen went straight for the phone as soon as they reached the little cubicle in back. She hadn’t spoken in a while, and all things considered, Noah couldn’t blame her for what she must be feeling.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said.
“That makes two of us.”
“Ellen, look—”