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She’s in here! She’s alive!
The side of the file cabinet was warm. He could feel the heat right through the glove on his hand. The fireball.
Using the hook knife from his harness, he pried into the crack along the drawer’s side — hoping at least to bend the drawer outward far enough to confirm his suspicions. The black edge widened to an eighth of an inch.
Snap! The curved blade broke halfway back.
He looked desperately for some way to get the drawer open. Dammit! A whole tool kit in the helicopter, a screwdriver, a pry bar —
Before he realized what was happening, the building’s entire floor suddenly shifted — he felt his thigh and calf muscles react, even before his conscious mind. “Ahhh!” He felt the whole building wobble as if the foundation of life were cracking beneath his feet.
His first thought was to grab for the cabinet handles, but the floor steadied at a slight angle, maybe five degrees. The foundation rumbled deep somewhere below. Damn, this thing could go any time! Why am I swearing? Too much time spent around Everon. Starting to affect me.
He waved frantically for Everon to fly the cable over the cabinet. The dark misty rain looked less than two or three blocks away.
As Chuck lowered the cable, Franklin quickly unbuttoned the middle of his white shirt and stuffed one of the few living creatures he’d seen today, the owl, inside. He used what was left of the hook knife to cut a piece of rope. He looped the rope through the cabinet’s four drawer handles and tied the ends together.
The wind blasted. The cable hook whacked him on the shoulder.
He snagged it onto the rope. Pulled on the handles to test their strength. They looked like they would hold. He stretched the connecting loop of his own harness to the cable hook. The floor shook violently and with a rumble, as if in slow motion — all he could do to throw both hands around the cable, himself onto the cabinet — the floor fell away.
And the building collapsed below.
His arms felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. His body stretched over the top of the cabinet as the lift cable dug through his gloves, into the palms of his hands. He felt a sharp pain beneath his shirt. The owl had latched its talons into his stomach. He moved his knees against the cabinet to keep pressure off the bird. The pain in his midsection eased off.
Overhead blades whipping at his dark hair, the hoist reeled Franklin skyward.
While the cabinet’s handles might have been strong enough to support the cabinet, they now had to carry his weight as well. He couldn’t get enough grip on the hard stainless cable to pull himself away. The angle, the bird, all combined to make it impossible. But he was rising.
Fifteen feet from the opening in the side of the helicopter, unable to see what was happening below his dangling feet, he felt something sag. With a loud BANG! the bottom handle ripped loose. It felt like the cabinet was going to keep going. But the next lowest drawer handle held — and immediately began to bend.
“Oww!” Franklin yelled as the bird dug into his flesh, this time into his ribs. The little owl was getting rambunctious in there, rummaging around under his shirt. He tried to suck in his stomach but it was all he could do to just hang on . . .
Out the open helicopter side door, Chuck could see what was happening. But the hoist had one speed — slow. Chuck mentally willed it to go faster.
He shouted to Everon, “You’d better find a safe place to get this thing on the ground before that cabinet drops off there. Looks like he’s got it connected by its handles. And they’re tearing out!”
The wind blew.
Out Everon’s front window, the deadly black rain was closing. Almost near enough to touch. The weight of the swinging cabinet made the helicopter dance despite radical corrections to the controls in Everon’s hands.
“There’s just no good place, Chuck, the way it’s swinging. The wind’s picking up from the east causing turbulence around these buildings. That black rain’s closing in. We can’t go back to the fountain — there’s no other place the blades can fit around here. Isn’t he almost in?”
As the top of the cabinet cleared the helicopter’s floor, Clarence reached out to swing it in — and slipped. Like slow motion, he was falling out the door — twenty degrees past vertical when the transit engineer snagged a grip on his shirt, and yanked him back inside.
Petre the Russian, on the wide door’s other side, reached for Franklin’s harness. Franklin tried to swing a foot around to step inside.
Plunk!
One side of the second lowest handle — on the drawer he thought she might be inside — chose that moment to rip away.
The rope slipped around it. With a scraping jar, the big metal box slid a foot-and-a-half down against the lower door frame. Now the top two handles carried the load.
If I could just get my weight off it! He could barely hold onto the rope with one hand. The Russian, Clarence, Chuck and the engineer tried to grab the box’s smooth sides to haul him in.
He could feel the rope slipping beneath his chest, the next handle bending. Every time he pulled himself off the cabinet the owl seemed to dig into his stomach deeper. He ignored the talons and hung off the top of the cable hook using only his biceps.
The hoist wound more cable. It was high enough!
Chuck, Clarence, the engineer and the Russian moved fast. The third handle snapped, just as they pulled the box through the door. Bang! — the cabinet fell to the open edge of the helicopter’s metal floor, teetering, twisting on the edge as four pairs of hands struggled to wrestle the tall metal box all the way inside.
“He’s in!” Chuck yelled to Everon, amongst cheering passengers — all but Kone who demanded, “What in hell did you bring that up for?”
Everon stabilized the chopper and climbed gently away from the black mist. They were getting short on fuel. He tapped the oil gauge. It didn’t look like the leak was getting any better either.
Victoria was closest. She leaned her head on the warm cabinet. “I hear crying!”
“What?” Kone yelled.
“Crying! Inside! Here!” she said, pointing at the second drawer from the bottom.
“The second drawer!” Clarence said, “She’s right!”
“Da!” echoed the Russian woman Kat, her head next to Victoria’s.
Franklin was already jumping for tools from the helicopter’s rear wall. Flipping open the toolbox lid, ignoring a hammer, screwdrivers and wrenches, near the bottom he found a two-foot pry bar.
He dropped an ear against the cabinet’s side. To his relief, despite the helicopter blades and engines, he could still hear that crying sound. He put the bar’s edge into the narrow gap along the right side and pushed. The metal side bent outward, creating a small triangular gap. He pulled on the drawer. It still wouldn’t slide open.
He put one eye to the opening. Can’t see! he thought furiously.
He wedged the bar into the slit along the drawer’s top. Its horizontal divider bent as much as the drawer itself, then with a sudden clanggg! — popped outward.
Chuck, Walter van Patter, Victoria, Clarence, the Russians, the transit engineer, even Kone, jockeyed to see as Franklin struggled to scrape out the damaged drawer, screeching metal-against-metal audible above the helicopter’s noise.
Between the fourth and fifth buttons on Franklin’s white button-down shirt, a fluffy brown and white speckled head poked its way out to join the curious.
And there she was, wrapped in a pink blanket, nestled between a few hanging file folders, face-to- face with the exotically colored bird, crying with all the gusto she could manage — Franklin and Everon’s baby niece, Melissa.
Dead Man Walking
He wasn’t sure if the storm outside had calmed some. His cabin was steadier. If anything his stomach felt worse.
Ahmad Hashim rolled his face over the side of his bunk and vomited more of the viscous green and red fluid into a rusty metal bucket. He sucked down ragged gasps of air, trying to relax. More red than green this time. Blood, he knew. The skin across his stomach, chest and shoulders was a boiling rash. He put a hand to his burning forehead.
No! He would not do it again. So many dead. So many brothers and sisters. Why was it only the Jews Allah told the killing of one innocent man was as the killing of the entire world? Why have I done this thing? No amount of money is worth this guilt, this pain. He had made a terrible choice and Allah had made this sickness his price.
Ahmad closed his eyes and lay his dark curly hair and blistering neck back on the bunk. My own guilt it was that allowed such a foolish error.
A criticality accident, it was called. It seemed to be getting more difficult to — his memory seemed to be going — too much plutonium in too small a space . . . trying to modify the device — the halves of the bomb’s core in too close proximity with one another . . . radiation filling the lab. Shooting through the walls . . . anyone within twenty feet in all directions would be as he was now.
Hashim had been the only one. Except for the bird, of course.
The lab shared a wall with the Evil One’s own cabin. Too bad the Evil One was not in there too, Hashim thought viciously. Only the bird, and now Hashim’s friend Taliq had taken it. Does the infidel even know his bird is gone? Hashim certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
His stomach rumbled, ready to release again. Na’am — yes! Eighty, ninety miles. Certainly we are less than a hundred off the East Coast. Allah will guide me. Ahmad would find someone and warn them about what was coming. He had to try. He must remove himself from this ship. If he did not receive outside medical attention he would not last another day.
He slid his feet from the bunk and forced himself unsteadily erect. Struggled into a jacket. Slid the two candy bars, a small bottle of water into his right jacket pocket. His left held the control cards.
As he staggered to the cabin door, Ahmad slipped on the vile green slop. The doorknob caught the side of his head painfully but his hands grasped it and kept him on his feet.
At the stairs he crawled his way up each stair, pulling himself up the railing for support . . .
Up to the starboard side of the main deck — where the four white boats hung from their davits above the water. He looked over the side.
Norse Wind was making more than fifteen knots against a five-knot wind. Even with help, dangerous to launch at this speed. He was alone and he had no choice.
Two days earlier, Ahmad had watched the transmitter men leave. The outdated lifeboat had no upper shell. Only a cloth tarp cover that looked old enough to have come off the Titanic. When Ahmad doubted its condition, the man enthusiastically explained,
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