The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) (10 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Shortly after I went inside the house, I turned on the television and sat down on the sofa in the front room. I lowered the volume so as not to wake my parents, and scrolled mindlessly through the guide, searching for a good film.

I remember precisely what time it was at that point, because I had checked the clock on my phone, which indicated 10:17 p.m.

About ten seconds later, a terrible noise erupted somewhere, far off in the distance. I stood up instantly, moved to the window, pulled the curtains aside, and looked out.

It sounded like thunder, but I knew it was nothing of the kind.

My stomach dropped—a typical response for me, because I’d suffered some post-traumatic stress after my accident. A sudden loud noise would often cause me to jump and relive the terror of the Hummer flipping over repeatedly on the road in Afghanistan.

But it had been nine years since then, and I was mostly over it. On that particular night at the window in my parents’ living room, I knew, intellectually, that I was not in the middle of a war. I was in Cape Elizabeth, enjoying the peace and quiet of the seaside community that was like a second home to me.

Although it was not so peaceful at 10:17 p.m.

The noise grew louder, and the walls began to shake. I quickly grabbed my phone and pressed record. I filmed the vase teetering on the coffee table and noticed the lights starting to flicker.

“Mom, Dad! Get up!”

My father ran out to the front room, tying the belt on his navy terrycloth bathrobe. “What is it?”

“I don’t know yet.” I ran to the kitchen and whipped open the front door, recording everything the entire time. I stepped onto the deck with my father close behind me. We both looked up to find the sky over our heads bright orange.

“Oh, no,” I said, filming the glowing clouds, wondering if we should go back inside or run for our lives.

“What’s happening?” Dad asked, staring upward with wide eyes.

My mother shouted at us from behind the screen door. “Get inside!” She opened the door, reached out and tried to pull me back by the fabric of my shirt. I stumbled as I fought to keep my camera focused on the sky.

The house began to shake, and the terrifying noise was back, only it was different this time, as fire and fragments of steel and metal began to rain down onto the beach and into the shallow waters in the cove.

“I’m standing on my deck in Cape Elizabeth, Maine,” I said for the benefit of the camera, “recording something that appears to have exploded in the sky.”

A sudden gust of wind rose up and nearly knocked me over, and I felt the heat from the firestorm.

The noise became deafening as a huge silver engine dropped out of the sky and landed on the beach with a thunderous impact, causing the sand to splash up like water. I was too stunned to comment on what it might be, although I was certain it was a commercial jet engine.

Half a second later, another structure crashed to earth, landing in the wooded area just behind the Kettle Cove parking lot. The ground shook beneath my feet, and I had to shield my eyes from the wind, dust, and burning sparks that flew toward the house. Bits of red-hot metal tore through the air, barraging cars and lighting wooden fences on fire.

When I uncovered my eyes, I recognized what had landed in the trees: the front half of a giant commercial airliner. Around me, the neighborhood was burning, people were running and screaming, and I felt as if I were standing in the middle of the apocalypse.

All I could do was leap over the deck rail with my camera still running. I began to describe what I was witnessing as I sprinted toward the crash site where the fuselage had landed.

Chapter Eighteen

Meg Andrews

National Transportation Safety Board Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

“Did any of it go down in the water?” I asked Gary, the investigator in charge, as I followed him down the hall to his office.

Every phone at every desk was ringing, and the office had gone from quiet to complete pandemonium in a matter of minutes. The other on-call members of the Go Team were still arriving, but I had been in the office from the outset, working late, polishing the prose on my section of an open accident report.

When Gary called me on my cell to ask me to come in right away, I told him I was already there.

“Why aren’t I surprised?” he asked with a defeated sigh. “Go turn on CNN, Meg. There’s been an accident with Jaeger-Woodrow Airways—Flight 555. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

Since that moment, I had been on the telephone, fielding calls from the media and different government authorities. I had never been so glad to see Gary walk through the door. He was a tall, large African American man in his early sixties, with a voice like James Earl Jones. As soon as he entered a room, it felt like everything was about to be wrestled under control.

On top of all that, he was like a father to me.

“That’s what’s still not clear,” he replied as he moved behind his desk, sat down and booted up his computer. “From the video, it looks like some of it went down in the water just off the beach, and other parts, on land. And there are some reports of more wreckage a mile or two off the coast, which suggests the fuselage broke apart at high altitude, long before impact. Those are rough waters off Cape Elizabeth, so the crash site will be a challenge, if that’s what happened.”

“So there might have been an explosion,” I said, already considering the implications of that.

Gary gave me a look. “You know better than that, Meg. Don’t make any assumptions until you see the evidence.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I’m just eager to get there.”

“Me, too. Hannah’s working on our flights and hotel rooms, and we need to find a suitable location to set up command headquarters. You can help out with that. You know the drill. We’ll need plenty of phone lines and scanners.” His cell phone rang and he checked the call display. “Shit. It’s the FBI. I have a feeling this one’s going to be complicated.” Before he answered the call, he waved a hand to usher me out of his office. “Keep your eye on CNN and everything Jack Peterson is reporting. He saw the whole thing and he’s right there. Let me know if they find any survivors.”

I hurried out of Gary’s office.

o0o

While I worked at getting our team assembled to leave for the crash site, I continued to watch CNN, and was amazed at the footage Jack Peterson had managed to capture—which they replayed constantly, over and over—not to mention the fact that the plane had gone down, practically in his front yard. At times I had to stop, shut everything out, and focus my eyes on the television screen, because I was a structures specialist and the footage was giving me a sense of the timing and direction of the aircraft’s fall from the sky.

I was looking to determine how much of the plane was intact when it impacted the ground. I listened carefully to the roar of the engine just before it landed—which suggested that the problem had not been engine failure. But we wouldn’t know anything for sure until we arrived on site and the systems specialists got to work on the evidence.

There was no question in my mind that we were going to need a copy of that video, so our specialists could analyze every detail.

It was now 11:25 p.m., and Peterson was broadcasting live from the site with a professional cameraman and a satellite van nearby. He was capturing more footage of the firefighters combing through the wreckage for survivors, all the while speculating about what might have caused the crash.

“So far, we don’t know exactly what happened here, but based on reports from eyewitnesses, myself included, it appears that there was an explosion, which occurred while the plane was still in the air. We do not yet know if there was some sort of explosive device on board, or if it was caused by a mechanical issue. We hope we will have those answers soon, when the investigators arrive. But the first priority is, of course, the continuing search for survivors.”

I shook my head at him, wishing he wouldn’t start suggesting that there might have been a bomb on board, when we had no idea—at least not yet—what happened, or why. The last thing we needed was the media fanning flames of panic and suspicion before we even got there.

As far as survivors were concerned…

Based on what I had seen so far, I knew there was very little possibility that anyone could have survived that crash. Although, I never stopped praying for miracles.

Just then, the phone rang at my desk. It was Gary. “We have a government plane waiting for us on the tarmac,” he said. “Grab your bag and tell the others. It’s time to go.”

“I’m on it.”

With all the chaos in the office, I realized I hadn’t yet called Malcolm to let him know I was leaving town. I felt guilty for a moment, for not thinking of him right away, but then I brushed that off because he rarely called me either, when things got crazy for him at work.

Sometimes I wished it were different between us, but this was the way it was.

At any rate, I was relieved when I called his number and it went straight to voicemail, because I didn’t have time to chat.

Chapter Nineteen

The flight from Washington to Portland would last about ninety minutes, and Gary insisted that all members of the team try and get some sleep. He was a stickler about that and believed none of us would be any good to the investigation if we couldn’t think properly because of sleep deprivation.

Knowing that I would have to hit the ground running, I tried to close my eyes after takeoff, but couldn’t—because despite the fact that I had conquered my fear of flying and had logged nearly 2000 hours as a pilot myself, my heart still raced whenever I felt an aircraft pick up speed on the runway and lift off the ground.

So instead of relaxing and falling asleep, I found myself discreetly opening my laptop and slipping my headphones on to watch Jack Peterson reporting from the crash site.

It was odd, how he always reminded me of Kyle, my first real boyfriend in college. Jack had the same dark hair and similar facial features, the same muscular build and physical charisma. He even sounded the same when he spoke.

But that’s where the resemblance ended, because Jack Peterson was an extraordinarily intelligent man with class and sensitivity. There was something mature and worldly about him. He was the polar opposite of Kyle in every other way.

Beauty is only skin deep. It’s the soul that matters.

Sometimes I wondered whatever became of Kyle after graduation. Maybe he eventually grew up and stopped tipping over mail boxes. It was just college after all—a time for us to spread our wings, experiment a little, and figure out who we truly were.

That’s what I had done. I came out of my shell and figured it out.

Maybe one of these days, I would look Kyle up on Facebook, just out of curiosity.

But not today. There were other more pressing matters on my mind.

I watched Jack Peterson for the duration of the flight, and just before landing, I felt a sick knot in my belly as he spoke about a teddy bear he found in the wreckage, not far from the burned body of a young child.

At that point, Jack paused, swallowed hard, and turned his face away from the camera. He bowed his head and exhaled sharply, cleared his throat and then collected himself, faced the camera again, and continued.

Something in me broke apart in that moment, and I swallowed over a jagged lump of sorrow that rose in my throat.

The female anchor at the news desk at the CNN station was sympathetic. They took him off the live feed and switched to another reporter at the Portland Head Light Museum, where a number of news vans were set up to report on the search over the water. Helicopters circled overhead, shining lights on the black ocean. Local fishermen and yachtsmen had also volunteered to aid in the search.

I felt for Jack Peterson, because I knew exactly what it was like to work on a crash site where you had to force yourself to detach emotionally from the stressful, disturbing reality of what you were seeing—because you had a job to do. An important job.

But every once in a while, something hit home, and it would crush you.

I was fully aware that Jack Peterson was a man who had witnessed his own share of trauma and disaster. We’d all watched him recover from that near-fatal bombing in Afghanistan. Ever since that day, he’d become one of America’s favorite sons and a prominent host at CNN.

In that regard, his fame didn’t surprise me at all. Not only was he handsome, intelligent and charismatic, but there was something accessible about him. I think everyone in the country felt a connection to him. I certainly did.

Sometimes, when he spoke directly into the camera—which he always did as host of the news show—I felt as if he were speaking directly to me, and that he was a cherished friend I’d known forever. I’d seen him in the hospital, after all. We’d
all
seen him.

We’d all been there when he recovered from multiple surgeries and took his first steps. We saw his burn scars and felt his pain.

It was strange to imagine that I might meet him in person in a few short hours.

If I did, I would thank him for capturing the footage of the crash, which would be a crucial element to help us piece together what had happened, exactly.