Chapter 4 - The Highway and the Wire
The Suburban didn't use its siren until we hit the state route, but the strobe lights inside the grill turned the wet trees into flickering, white fingers that jumped out of the dark every half-second.
General Vance sat in the front passenger seat, his head tipped back against the headrest, his eyes closed. He didn't ask me about the wound. He didn't ask me about my father. He knew about my father; every commander who had ever signed my efficiency reports had a two-page file in the back of my folder detailing my "family background"—which was military code for father is a civilian rich guy who thinks he owns the county.
In the back seat, a young captain with glasses and three different secure tablets on his lap was tapping out messages with his thumbs.
"The Pentagon wants the third-stage data, Major," the captain said without looking up. "They’re saying the contractor is claiming structural failure in the tail assembly prior to impact."
"The contractor is lying," I said.
My voice was clearer now. The rain on my face during the walk to the car had washed the salt off my lips, and the cold air coming through the floor vents was keeping the grey haze at the edges of my eyes from closing in.
"They're going to say the carbon composite tore at the three-hundred-foot mark," I said. "It didn't. I was looking at the port trim tab when the second charge fired. It was clean. The whole hinge assembly went because the hydraulic line was installed eighteen inches off the schematic to make room for the new cooling pack."
"You saw that?" Vance asked from the front seat. He hadn't opened his eyes.
"I reached inside the housing with my bare hand, sir. While we were spinning."
The captain stopped tapping. He looked at me through his small, square lenses, then looked down at his tablet.
"That's... that's not in the initial report," he whispered.
"It's not in the initial report because my thumb was stuck between the solenoid and the frame until we hit fifty feet," I said. "I didn't have time to write it down."
Silence filled the heavy, leather-smelling air of the truck.
Outside, the highway was empty except for two state police cruisers sitting crosswise at the entrance to the bay bridge, their red and blue bars spinning through the mist to keep the local traffic off the span while we crossed.
"Your father," Vance said after two miles of empty road. "He was in logistics during the sixties, wasn't he?"
"Quartermaster Corps," I said. "Atlanta. Never left the depot."
"I thought so," Vance said. He opened his eyes and looked at the wet asphalt rushing toward us in the high beams. "Men who spent the war in Atlanta always have the cleanest shoes. It’s a disease."
We hit the gate at Andrews eighteen minutes later.
The guards didn't check the driver's ID; they saw the double-zero plates and the red lights inside the grill and lifted the heavy iron bar while we were still fifty yards out.
The base was dark except for the long, low lines of yellow sodium lights along the taxiways and the massive blue glow coming from Hangar 4.
Hangar 4 was where they took the things that weren't supposed to be seen by the people who read the newspapers.
Three satellite trucks with their dishes stowed were parked near the fuel farm, their sides painted with gray, non-reflective enamel. Around them, six men in dark green field jackets with no unit patches were standing in the drizzle, holding short-barreled carbines at the ready position.
"They've got the full committee on the line," Vance said, swinging his boots out onto the concrete as soon as the truck stopped. "The Chairman has four questions for you. Answer the first three. Don't answer the fourth."
"What's the fourth question, sir?"
"He's going to ask if you think the airframe should be scrapped." Vance turned and looked at me, his eyes small under the brim of his cap. "That's a political question. You're a major. You don't have opinions about eighty-million-dollar line items. You only have facts about why forty people aren't at the bottom of the bay."
"Understood, sir."
"And Carter?"
"Sir?"
"Fix your collar. You've got grease on your neck."
I pulled the flap of the flight jacket up and pinned it with the small brass badge I had in my pocket—the one with the two crossed anchors and the eagle that my mother had given me when I cleared the academy twenty years ago.
It was cold. It smelled of brass polish and old drawer lining.
We walked into the hangar.
The room was vast—big enough to fit two Boeing 747s side by side with room for the maintenance cranes—but it was almost quiet except for the hum of three large portable generators sitting near the side doors.
In the center of the floor, under six high-intensity halogen rigs that made the air look white and sharp, was the engine housing from the right wing of my aircraft.
It didn't look like an engine anymore.
It looked like a whale that had been dragged across forty miles of jagged rock and then hit with a sledgehammer. The titanium fan blades were bent back like the petals of a dead flower, grey and coated with salt crust.
Standing around the engine were twelve men in dark suits and three women in tailored jackets.
Among them was a tall man with white hair and a dark red tie who was holding a pair of half-frame reading glasses in one hand and a stack of blue-bound documents in the other.
Senator Vance—the General's brother—was standing beside him.
When the General's boots hit the concrete threshold, the tall man turned.
He didn't look at Vance. He looked at me.
He took three steps forward, his expensive leather soles making a sharp click-click-click on the sealant.
"Major Evelyn Carter?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
He didn't offer to shake my hand. He reached out and touched the small brass anchor pinned to my collar with the tip of his thumb.
"The President has been on the line from Camp David for an hour," he said. "He wants to know if you're the one who pulled the three boys out of the tail assembly before the fire hit the auxiliary tanks."
"I was the senior officer on the deck, sir," I said.
The man looked at my right hip—at the dark, stiff wool that had finally stopped leaking, though it was still stuck fast to the skin underneath.
"The Chief of Staff said you were at a family dinner in St. Michaels," he said softly.
"I was, sir."
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"Did you finish your dinner?"
"No, sir," I said. "The roast beef was cold."
