I fly into the tunnel, dark and damp, scary to me, but not to him. There is debris, mostly rocks and dirt with some six by six wood chunks which probably were once wall or ceiling supports, getting heavier until finally it fills the entire tunnel. I walk back to the entrance, counting my steps, then entice some molecules into returning me to the surface.
My new friends bring the map, and we calculate where the men are relative to the tunnel collapse. It's likely 100 feet from the point where the debris makes passage impossible to the side tunnel.
In the comic books, I'd simply spin really fast and become a drill bit that would bore down to reach the trapped men. Aside from the obvious dust cloud that would result, the light frowns every time I conjure up that mental image. It wants me back in the tunnel. Trust the light.
What I try is simple, and rather boring. I fly over to a backhoe sitting with other heavy equipment to the side of the mine entrance, rip the bolt holding the shovel to the end of the arm, and detach it. With a half hop, half flight, I am heading down the elevator shaft and into the tunnel. There is 100 feet or so from the shaft entrance to the debris, and roughly 100 feet of debris to the miners. By my simple stupid math, I should be able to turn a tunnel which is zero percent full for half its length and 100% full for the other half into a tunnel that is 50% full for 100% of its length.
I use my improvised shovel to move a couple cubic feet of dirt with each stroke, and a half hour in I am nearing my target. I take only one brief break, that to get a new helmet with another light. For the first 80 feet, I encounter almost all dirt, with a few boulders rarely more than a foot in diameter. Then I find myself staring at a boulder six feet high, reminiscent of those I used to toss for practice so many months ago.
I clear away the dirt around it, and rather than move it, hit it hard. Once, twice, on the third hit it shatters, and there is a grumbling rumbling sound from the tunnel. For a second, I am afraid it will be another cave in, but nothing happens that I can see. I throw the pieces of the boulder back down the tunnel, making sure they do not block the escape path.
Five minutes later, I throw a shovel full of dirt behind me, and the side tunnel is open to the air. I can hear the men inside, and see their emergency lights, still glowing softly in the otherwise pitch blackness. I widen the space, and without being told, they start climbing out and crawling backwards toward safety, my new tunnel only three feet high. Two of them are injured, but their comrades work with them, and all I have to do is watch.
The last one exits, and tells me that he is. I only counted 17. I put my hand on the last man's shoulder, and say "
Veinte?"
"No," he says, "
están muertos."
They are dead.
The men are lined up near the opening, looking upward, expecting a rescue basket or elevator. I take the first man, one of the injured, tell him to close his eyes, and fly him up to the waiting rescue crews above. His comrades talk and the folks gathered at the surface talk, but I manage not to hear a word of it. Seventeen. I should be happy, but I'm not.
Sixteen times I repeat the trip, until all the men are safe. When I finish, they are standing with their families just a few feet away from elevator shaft shielded by a platoon of soldiers from the rest of the assembled crowd. I get myself back in the air, floating near them, apologize to no one in particular for not being able to save them all, and then rocket out of there, heading back to the coast.
It is still daylight when I reach the resort, and find the man who only two hours before was chasing me out of his store. I tell him I don't want to take the swim trunks off, but he only smiles and laughs at me, holding another pair in his hand.
"Senor," he continues in Spanish, "I will happily trade you those shorts that you wear for my entire store. Perhaps you would change into these," he holds up the new ones, "and honor me with a present of the ones you stole earlier." I happily agree, popping into the changing room and emerging in a colorful pair of new swim trunks. The store keeper takes my old trunks and carefully places them in a box, wrapped in paper. My guess is that he will quickly be selling those for far more than they are worth.
I nod at him and head off into the sky, turning northward and following the coast, no need to go suborbital, given that I still have 15 hours before I have to leave for work, and I've never seen the Andes close up. I'm off Long Beach in a couple hours, early in the evening, and reverse my previous trick. In the dark, too far out for anyone to see, I plunge under the ocean surface and head toward shore. Close in, I find the trunks I left on the ocean floor, then stick my head above water, grab the light and squeeze. The trunks I have on almost separate themselves from my suddenly smaller body, so I remove them and replace the trunks that fit. Holding the large trunks in my hand, I paddle for the beach.
The sand is empty when I get there, the air refreshingly cool, the wind across my wet skin a little brisk even for the new me that prefers cold to cool. I walk up the beach toward home, and using my hidden key, I am safely in the shower in minutes.
When I haul my naked butt out, I turn the television on, and see him rescuing the miners on every channel, happy that it is old school television quality, and there is still no clear picture of his face. The interviews are all wonderful, everyone so happy, everyone except me.
Perez calls, and we chat for awhile about my adventure. When we're done, she chastises me for being such a glass half empty guy.
"Air Force, you are the only man I know who can save a Los Angeles from a gas attack and be mad the terrorists are dead, or save 17 miners who were rapidly running out of air, and be mad that you couldn't save them all. Seventeen people got to go home to their wives today. Seventeen sets of kids have dads tonight. You should be the happiest man on Earth."
It doesn't help. She eventually wants to hang up, but I won't let her go until I tell her how much it means to me that I have someone to talk to about all this. She gives me more crap about there being two people, her and Celeste Nortin. Then she laughs at me again, tells me she'll see me Thursday, and hangs up.
Tuesday morning I am out early, running across the windy beach. Strong Santa Ana winds are coming down out of the mountains, warming up the LA basin, but putting a fine mist of dust into the air on the beach. A bad omen for another day.
Halloween and I watch SportsCenter together, no Celeste Nortin on today, then I shower and head in to fly out. Taylor Mankat is working the front desk, all smiles when I arrive, lets me know that our least favorite Captain, Matt, has found work at a charter airline in Eastern Europe and is long gone. My captain of the day, Ken Montara, is already there.
Normal takeoffs from LAX are toward the ocean, but because of the Santa Anas we're going to be backwards today flying inland to start, and then turning westward. And, with maintenance work scheduled on our usual runway, we will also be taxiing to the other side of the airport. Not a problem, but we make sure to have a little extra fuel on board just in case there are delays.
We are five minutes early when ground tells us "Taxi via Bravo and Echo to 7 Right" and we begin our trek to the far side of LAX. My job is to watch the right hand side of the aircraft, make sure we don't hit something with our wing, and take an occasional scan of the instrument panel in case some warning light decides to wake up. All is well until we reach the 40 gates, when
my
warning lights go off.
I can't call Perez, because she's spending the morning with the FBI again, which worries me just because I don't want her to go somewhere I cannot follow, and the feds like her a lot. They are trying to follow the money that our dead friend Ali used to pay his dead friends, and they are trying especially hard to find the missing members of his crew. Off chance that they still have some of the magic Russian chemical that turns methane and oxygen into nerve gas. And on chance that they helped Ali kill the four ex-Army assistants.
Reaching into my flight bag, which I am not supposed to do while taxiing, I feel around until I find my new untraceable phone, dial the main LAX police number, and simply tell whoever answers that container AA 38756 at gate 42 has a drug shipment in it. Then I hang up.
Ken is staring at me like I'm a crazy person. I lie to him that in my LAPD other life we were told to watch out for a man, drug smuggler, who I just saw standing next to the container. I'm not lying to him with my next sentence that I would like him to keep my phone call a secret.
Two LAPD cars, sirens screaming, distract him from further questions. They race down the car path next to the taxiway, passing us at high speed, heading for gate 42. Our route takes us to the west of the Bradley terminal, where we make a sweeping right turn, and Ken actually brings us to a stop long enough for both of us to be sure that the two cars, joined by another which came from the south, have surrounded the cargo container at 42. Then we go back to work.
We roll down the runway and liftoff, fighting the bumps from the wind gusts, make a long sweeping turn to the left, overfly Santa Monica airport, then through some scattered clouds to our cruising altitude. The landing in Kona is perfect, in perfect weather, over the perfect ocean, and into the perfect breeze.
We walk to the terminal at Keahole, go play a round of golf at Waikaloa, and I actually forget about everything and enjoy myself for the first time in a month at least. We eat dinner at one of the resorts, and get back to our hotel at bed time. I change into him, but follow Perez's advice and just stay in, which is fine given the backlog of reading I have.
The happy feeling of the day lasts only until I get to the international section of the
Times.
All 20 miners were alive until just a few minutes before they were rescued when a secondary collapse killed three of them. A secondary collapse. Me. I hit that rock instead of finding a way around it, and I killed them. No ifs, ands, or buts.
At six, I change back into me, and go downstairs to run, pounding up Ali'i Drive behind the beach houses until I can pound no more. Mindless I run, letting the ocean sounds and clean morning air take my head away. I know I pass other runners, I know I acknowledge them when they acknowledge me, but that is another part of me. My mind hunts for an equation, something that lets me calculate the balance of my actions, something that can weigh the good with the bad, but I make it back to the hotel with my inner imbalance intact.
A shower, breakfast, and then off to Keahole airport with my crew, I am able to let the routine clean my thoughts, I have switches to switch, radio calls to repeat, entries to make in the logs. We get to LAX, once again forever no Jen. No Perez until tomorrow. No Taylor until I get my shit together, no shit at all after 875.
Chapter 6
Instead of heading home, I head for Anaheim, change into him and into my underwear, and fly less than a mile. I flip open my untraceable phone, dial the number I memorized, and when a voice answers, say simply, "I'm sitting on the roof of the Anaheim Hilton."
"Forty five minutes." I suppose I can wait that long.
I walk over to the stairwell and make sure the door is unlocked. The entrance leads immediately to five steps, then a large landing with a burnt out light, and then stairs that twist away into darkness below. Enough light filters up that she can certainly find her way.
It takes 35 minutes. She has tussled hair under a Dodgers cap, a wrinkled t shirt and gym shorts on, her designer bag completely out of touch with the rest of her outfit. I have no doubt that she has no camera, because no one in her position would ever let themselves be photographed with half her makeup on. I must have caught her getting ready for bed.
I lead her back into the stairwell, remove the cap, run my hands through her hair, then pull her toward me. The kiss is meaningless, that doesn't make me stop. Our tongues meet, she moans quietly, every muscle in her body first tightens, then melts against me, while I breathe in her life force, trying to connect to something, anything.
Her top comes over her head, she pulls and pushes her shorts and underwear down to the ground. I pick her up and put her back against the wall. She looks me in the eyes, says nothing, but I get the request. I am inside her, no muscle in her body now under her control, the beautiful eyes again rolled back into her head. She quivers and shakes with every stroke, moaning. I finish.
I stay exactly where I am, not moving, feeling her pulsate against me. Two minutes later, at most, I am at it again, and then again, and then again. Six times, 60 minutes, until I realize that I can do this all night, and yet I could do it forever and not be where I want to be.
I pull out, and she is limp in my arms. I shift her body, cradle her like an infant, and step backwards to the stairs. Holding her, I sit down and wait. It takes about half an hour until she stirs, and her eyes can once again look into mine.
"Take your time," I tell her, "I can hold you a while."
She snuggles against me, her head on my chest, her naked body against mine, cool, no warmth on my skin, or under it. Her breathing settles down, stronger, and a few minutes later, without lifting her head, she asks a question.
