“You are more predictable than you are observant, Mr. Bronson.” Tariq held up the device, pointing at the switches. “Aren’t you the least bit interested to learn why there are two toggles?”
Jake tensed. His mind raced through a myriad of possibilities, none of them good. He leveled the wings but edged the throttles forward. He needed to gather as much speed as possible as the plane continued its steady climb.
“That’s better,” Tariq said. “Steer a heading of zero one zero.”
Jake checked his instruments. The new heading would take them over the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Ocean on three sides. That would work.
He complied, adjusting their heading, passing through 2,200 feet.
“Okay,” Jake said, “tell me about the second switch.” He watched as his passenger leaned over the port edge of the cockpit as if looking for something down below.
“There!” Tariq announced. He pointed to a bend in the shoreline ahead.
Jake banked the aircraft to get a look. It took him only a second to realize he was over Malaga Cove.
Francesca’s school!
Tariq held up the transmitter, his thumb hovering over the second button. “Now it’s your turn to pay.”
Instinct took over.
Though Jake knew he was still too low for the maneuver, he didn’t hesitate. Slamming forward the throttle, he dumped the nose and yanked the Pitts into an eighty-degree power spiral.
Chapter 2
Hathaway Elementary School
Malaga Cove, California
FRANCESCA KNEW HOW IMPORTANT routine and structure were to her autistic students. Children who understand the behavior expected of them are less anxious, especially when given visual schedules to remind them as they need to move on to the next task or activity.
It was story time. She read aloud from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—the chapter where Tom and Becky found themselves hopelessly lost in the caves. She sat on the floor with her legs tucked to one side under the spread of her full-length knit skirt, her thick auburn hair spilling onto an olive cashmere sweater. The book was in her lap. Her soft Italian accent caressed each word of the story, punctuating the growing sense of danger in the scene.
“Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles…”
The small group of children, ranging from the ages of seven to ten, was captivated by her words. They sat in a semicircle within the designated “imagination zone” at the back of the classroom, each on a different-colored pillow. A Mickey Mouse clock on a stool next to Francesca allowed them to count down the time until the session was over.
Francesca glanced up to absorb their reaction to the story. She cherished her time with these marvelous children. Her graduate education in child psychology and a natural empathic ability helped her guide them through the challenges they faced.
Unlike most children suffering from autism or other spectral disorders, these children had joined Francesca’s special class because they were all exceptionally gifted in some way. Nature had provided a unique balance in each of them, replacing the loss of their interactive social skills with a genius-level talent. Three of the children were amazing artists, two with oil and the other with pen and ink. The images they created were astoundingly lifelike. Another had a remarkable affinity for memory and numbers, able to perform complex mathematical calculations in his head in a matter of moments. Two of the children were natural musicians, including Francesca’s recently adopted seven-year-old daughter, Sarafina, who could simultaneously compose and play masterful music on the piano, each score reflective of her mood at the time.
Francesca loved them for their indomitable spirits.
A nine-year-old boy seated on a plush green pillow raised his hand. He wore an Indiana Jones T-shirt over baggy jeans and tennis shoes. An unruly mop of blond hair and oversized dark sunglasses covered much of his cherubic face, but twin dimples at the corners of his generous lips hinted of mischief. A golden retriever with a guide-dog harness was sprawled on the floor next to him. As the boy’s hand came up, the dog immediately raised his head.
Francesca glanced at the clock. She closed the book and smiled when she confirmed that story time had officially ended exactly when Josh put up his hand. Though he was blind, his internal clock was every bit as accurate as an expensive timepiece. “Yes, Josh?”
“Miss Fellini, why can’t Tom and Becky just walk out of the caves the same way they came in?”
“That’s a good question. Apparently they couldn’t remember all the turns they made.”
Josh’s face screwed into a question mark.
Francesca shared a knowing smile with the volunteer teaching assistant seated behind the group. The children turned his way when he spoke in a mild-mannered lilt that hinted of his Midwestern roots.
“Well, Josh, not everyone has a memory like yours. Most people would find it very difficult to keep track of every turn.” Daniel Springfield dwarfed the tiny wooden desk-chair he sat on. He was just shy of six feet, with the trim body of an avid cyclist. The rich tan of his skin and a jaguar-like grace reminded Francesca of the star soccer players from her home in Italia. He wore khakis, a button-down white shirt with rolled up sleeves, and an Ohio State baseball cap that he never took off. The children adored him.
Josh scratched his chin as he considered Daniel’s comment. Finally, he said, “Then they shouldn’t have gone in the cave in the first place.”
“I can’t argue with that, big guy.”
“Well, I can!” Sarafina said in a voice that came out much louder than she intended. When everyone turned her way, she immediately dipped her head so that her dark shoulder-length hair hid most of her face. The fingers of one hand danced unconsciously on her lap, playing an unheard melody on an imaginary keyboard. She wore a pink sundress and sandals that were sprinkled with sparkles. Peeking up tentatively with a shy expression that accented her big brown eyes, she said, “I…I mean, sometimes when you’re on an adventure, you have to take chances, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be a real adventure.”
Francesca knew Sarafina was drawing on memories of recent escapades, the painful portions of which Francesca had learned to bury in the past few months. She’d met the young girl three years ago at the Institute for Advanced Brain Studies in Venice, Italy, after Sarafina’s parents had been killed in a car accident. Francesca had been a teacher at the institute, specializing in children with mental and emotional challenges. She’d cherished the position—that is, until she’d discovered that the institute was a cover for an international terrorist organization. When she and Sarafina had been taken hostage and held in the caves of the Hindu Kush mountains, it was the courage of Jake and his friends that had permitted them to narrowly escape with their lives.
“You make a good point, Cara,” she said. “But you shouldn’t take risks that could end up getting you hurt—”
Francesca cut off when she heard the buzz of an aircraft outside. She recognized the distinctive pitch immediately.
It was Jake’s plane.
Chapter 3
Malaga Cove, California
WITH A FLOOD OF CONCENTRATION, Jake swept the plane into a spiraling dive, thankful for the Pitts’s exceptional control response and maneuvering abilities. The move loaded the airframe with over eight g’s—a multiple of the force of gravity exerted on the body—pushing him and his passenger deep into their seats. After the first rotation, he held the turn steady at five g’s.
Everyone had a different tolerance for how much their body could handle before losing consciousness. As a trained fighter pilot, Jake had developed a high tolerance, a factor he was gambling on now. The wannabe martyr in the backseat was great at mimicking a Texas cowboy, but his brain implant wasn’t going to help him now.
Jake let out controlled grunts as he tightened the muscles in
his torso and legs. This inhibited the pooling of blood in his lower extremities and delayed the loss of blood to his brain. In the end he knew it would be a losing battle. He’d have to ease off on the stick before he blacked out. He just needed to last longer than the man behind him.
Jake’s eyes darted from the rapidly falling altimeter to the rearview mirror. Tariq’s eyes bulged under his goggles. His facial skin sagged into his chin. His hands and arms were out of view. They’d feel as if they each had hundred-pound weights attached to them. Jake hoped that the force would keep the man pinned down long enough.
He tightened the spiral. The ground spun more rapidly in the windscreen. Francesca’s school was dead center beneath him. He didn’t alter course. To do so meant reducing g’s.
Passing through seven hundred feet.
The ground rushing up fast.
Jake’s vision began to tunnel. He focused his mind on the school below and screamed a mental warning to Francesca.
There’s a bomb at the school. Get out now!
**
Francesca wondered why Jake was flying so close to the school today. His regular flight-training area was on the other side of the peninsula.
There was a commotion outside. The distinctive sound of the buzzing Pitts grew louder, more urgent. Francesca felt a growing sense of alarm. She rushed to the open window. Josh’s dog, Max, was at her side. Sarafina and several others scurried to join them. Josh beelined to his “safe place”—a large cardboard box on its side in a corner of the room. He curled up in the box’s shadows and pressed his hands to his ears. Bradley moved to comfort him.
Outside, children scattered on the playground. A teacher shouted and pointed at the sky. Max barked. Francesca shielded her eyes from the sun with her palm and looked up. Jake’s plane spiraled toward the ground at an incredible speed. Before the scream could escape her throat, Jake’s urgent voice invaded her thoughts:
There’s a bomb at the school.
She saw from the shocked expression on Sarafina’s face that she’d heard it, too.
**
Jake sensed he wasn’t going to make it. The ground was too close. Tariq’s eyes had glazed over but he wasn’t out yet. Jake needed another second or two. But time had run out.
Two hundred feet. No choice.
In one quick movement, Jake pushed the nose at the ground, leveled the wings, and yanked back on the stick. The accelerometer snapped to ten g’s and the Pitts broke out of the dive barely thirty feet over the schoolyard. Jake caught a brief glimpse of children running across the playground before a welcome blue sky filled his windscreen.
In the mirror, Tariq’s face paled, his eyes lolled, and his head slumped forward in his seat.
Jake pushed the throttles to the max. He put the Pitts into a high-speed climb toward the Pacific Ocean. He had to move fast. Tariq would regain consciousness in less than thirty seconds. He’d be disoriented for a minute or so, but that wouldn’t prevent him from detonating the explosives strapped to his chest.
Or those he’d placed at the school.
At two thousand feet, Jake reduced power and trimmed the nose into a shallow dive toward the water. He unfastened his safety harness and headset, flipped a middle finger to the unconscious man in the backseat, and jumped out of the plane.
Chapter 4
Malaga Cove, California
THE ROUND CANOPY OF THE EMERGENCY CHUTE snapped open above him, jerking Jake from his tumbling free fall into a controlled, eighteen-feet-per-second descent. His pounding heart felt like it wanted to break out of his chest. For just a moment, he felt a slight tingling in his left hand. His breath was short. He sucked in deep lungfuls of air to calm himself. The sensation passed.
The altimeter on his watch read fifteen hundred feet. He was over the water but the breeze was pushing him back toward the shore. In ninety seconds he’d be on the ground, or at least in the breakers. Craning his neck over his shoulder, Jake watched as the Pitts descended toward the dark blue water. The starboard wings of the biplane began a slow dip as it lost trim. In another few seconds, the double wingtips would strike the water and the plane would cartwheel to a gut-wrenching end.
Jake reached for the smart phone he usually kept in his breast pocket. He came up empty-handed. The phone was still in its cockpit holster on the plane. Too bad, he thought. The crash would’ve made a great YouTube video. In any case, the violent scene he was about to witness would be forever ingrained in his brain. Like so many others.
Jake watched in fascination, counting down the seconds to impact. A small part of him would die with the loss of the Pitts, but every part of him was glad to say good riddance to the suicide bomber in the backseat—and the detonator that threatened to blow up the people he loved. He prayed that Francesca had heard his warning.
The Pitts was at eighty feet and dropping fast. The wings dipped farther.
Right…about…n—
The biplane’s altitude shifted abruptly. The lower wingtips jerked upward. The whine of the three-bladed prop surged. The plane leveled off just above the undulating water. Every nerve in Jake’s body seemed to fire off simultaneously. He jerked his head toward the approaching shore, willing himself to fall faster. Five hundred feet above the water. The school’s nearly a mile away.
The drone of the plane behind him increased in pitch. Jake twisted in his harness to get a better look. The Pitts accelerated as it skimmed over the water. It was headed straight for him. It didn’t take a genius to calculate that the plane would be on him before he completed his descent. He pulled down on the starboard riser, twisting to face the approaching plane. With both hands on the risers, he fought to maintain his position against the offshore wind.
At three seconds before impact, Jake was sixty feet over the water. The Pitts streaked straight at him.
Two seconds.
Now!
Jake dropped his hands and snapped open the chute’s quick-release levers. He slipped out of the harness and fell like a stone.
Before he hit the water, Jake saw the Pitts veer sharply away from the collapsing chute. It headed directly toward Francesca’s school.
**
Francesca knew better than to hesitate when she received Jake’s mental warning. “Bradley,” she said as she raced over and pulled the red fire alarm handle on the wall. “Get the kids out of the building now!” She grabbed her cell phone from the desk, punched in 9–1–1, and rushed into the hallway. Sarafina was at her side.
With the phone clasped to her ear, Francesca shoved open the door to the next classroom. The startled teacher and children were lined up at the window. “Quickly,” Francesca shouted, her voice controlled but urgent. “Outside. Now. This is not a drill.”
Before she could elaborate, the emergency operator came on the line. “Nine-one-one. State the nature of your emergency.”
Francesca turned her back to the class. She cupped her hand over the phone. “I’m calling from the Hathaway Middle School. There’s a bomb in the building. This is real. Get here fast!” She snapped the phone closed, took Sarafina by the hand, and ran to the next classroom.
**
Jake’s head broke the surface of the water. He took a huge gasp of air, ripped off his leather helmet, kicked off his flight boots, and broke for the shoreline fifty yards away. He saw the Pitts circle toward the school.
Jake’s brain kicked his muscles into afterburner. The crests of the breaking waves in front of him seemed to suddenly move in slow motion. Licks of foam reached upward like rising oil in a lava lamp. A pair of surfers sat on their boards, their mouths agape as Jake sliced through the water. It must have looked to them like a fast-forward video of Michael Phelps at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Jake embraced the changes that had occurred to his brain. A freak accident during an earthquake had caused the MRI scanner he was in to go haywire and send him into a seizure, giving him incredible mental and physical capabilities afterward. One of the most shocking changes was the a
bility to move very fast for short periods of time. Like the burst of strength a parent might find to lift a car to save their child, it seemed Jake was able to call upon that ability at will. The accident had also sent his terminal cancer into what he prayed was a permanent remission.
As soon as Jake’s knees scraped the sand, he peeled off his soggy socks and charged toward the rocky escarpment that hugged the coastline. The incline was steep. He scrambled upward on all fours as sharp-edged rocks cut into his feet. He ignored the pain, but the swim to shore had sapped his reserves. His heart raced like a machine gun. He couldn’t seem to draw enough air into his lungs to keep up with the demand for oxygen. A wave of dizziness assaulted him.
But he refused to slow. The ridgeline was just ahead. Jake pulled himself over the edge and pushed to his feet. He was at the edge of the hillside neighborhood that fronted the school. A quarter mile to go. He looked up at the plane circling over the school. Jake knew in his gut that Tariq was watching him. Taunting him.
He sprinted toward the road, his bleeding feet slapping painfully against the concrete. The wings of the Pitts wagged in the universal sign of acknowledgment.
Then it dipped from view.
A moment later there was a huge explosion over the ridge. From his vantage point, Jake could see only the top edge of the fireball that rose over the rooftops in front of him. Chunks of debris spewed into the sky.
“Noooo!” Jake screamed.
###
Thanks for reading!
Author Bio
Richard Bard draws on his own experiences as a former USAF pilot and cancer survivor to craft compelling characters who risk it all for love and loyalty. Born in Munich, Germany, to American parents, he joined the United States Air Force like his father. But he left the service when he was diagnosed with cancer and learned he had only months to live. He earned a management degree from the University of Notre Dame and ran three successful companies involving advanced security products used by US embassies and governments worldwide. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Redondo Beach, California, with his wife and remains in excellent health.