Blackout

CHAPTER 20

Robert MacCabe squinted at the eastern horizon, trying to calculate the distance they’d come in almost a half hour of walking.

Maybe a quarter mile. Maybe more.

After a lifetime of backpacking and hiking, taking the lead was a natural role, even if the northern coastal jungle of Vietnam was unknown to him.

Vietnam was someone else’s experience — the name of a war his father had fought as a Navy staff officer in the Pentagon; something that had caused the previous generation to break out in a serious case of hysteria and protesting hippies. The rest was merely a tumultuous chapter in American history to be studied in school. He had been a child when the helicopters plucked the last Americans off the Embassy roof in Saigon.

Robert looked around at Britta as she helped the copilot back to his feet. For the third time in less than ten minutes, Dan had stumbled on jungle undergrowth, his hand slipping away from Britta’s as he plunged forward into the fragrant but insect-laden vegetation. She helped him up, and Graham looked him over.

“Dan, are you okay?” Robert called.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” The copilot nodded, brushing twigs and leaves out of his hair and water droplets off the uniform coat Britta had retrieved from the cockpit.

Robert shivered suddenly, wishing for his sport coat, which he’d put on Rick Barnes, the injured airline CEO.

Robert nodded, checked his watch, and motioned for them to follow.

Dan and Britta moved out, followed by Graham Tash, Steve Delaney, and Dallas Nielson, all of them once again trudging toward the sunlight now streaming over the eastern horizon.

The smell of the sparse jungle in the early morning hours was foreign to all but Dan, who had experienced it before in a far more dangerous time. The cool air, heavy with humidity, melded with the numbing effect of walking as a welcome salve on everyone’s psychological wounds.

A chorus of birds chirped and sang in the growing light, the songs echoing from all angles. The low banana trees mixed with taller trees that rose to fifty feet — not the impenetrable canopy of the tropical rain forests to the south, but a jungle nonetheless, replete with mosquitoes and huge flies.

“Wait!” Robert’s voice rang out as a command, and he held his hand up.

“What?” Dallas asked.

“Sh-h-h!” he replied, cocking his head, listening intently. “I hear something.”

The lights of Da Nang were almost in view down the mountainside in the distance, and the noise was coming from that direction. The faint sound of… something… began to assert itself, the volume growing louder, transitioning to a low-frequency hum of intermittent thumps that Dan recognized immediately.

“Choppers!” he said, excitement driving his voice. “At least one helicopter!”

“Maybe they are aware we’re here,” Dallas said.

The sound of the onrushing helicopter was growing by the second.

“He’s coming from the Da Nang area. Has to be a rescue effort!” Dan added.

“We’re not that far from the crash,” Robert said. “I’d say let’s turn around and get the hell back there.”

“Damn right!” Dallas replied. “But no need to rush, Robert. Once they find the crash, they’re not going to go away.”

The helicopter flashed overhead suddenly as the survivors turned to follow, increasing their pace behind the journalist as he retraced their steps through the jungle.

It took fifteen minutes of forced marching before the distinctive sounds of a hovering helicopter became audible. The helicopter was moving, apparently circling over the crash site looking for survivors.

“He’s… obviously found the main wreckage…” Robert said, puffing slightly as he hurried them along.

The intermittent image of the American-made Huey could be seen in the early light through the trees as they approached the area where the 747 had first struck the tops of the vegetation. Initially, Robert had led them along a primitive path that kept them in the jungle, but parallel to the path of wreckage. They moved back along the same route now as fast as they could.

“Look, I’m going to sprint ahead,” Dallas said over her shoulder as she pulled abreast of Robert. “Y’all follow at a rational pace. I’ll make sure they know where everyone is.” She broke into a run, leaping over branches and snags as she closed the distance to the clearing that held the remains of the cockpit and upper deck.

When less than a hundred yards remained between Dallas and the edge of the clearing, she slowed to a walk and glanced behind her. The others were too far back to be seen. She looked forward again, relieved to see the helicopter touching down. There were still bushes and trees between her and the clearing, but Dallas could make out several figures as they jumped from the sliding door of the Huey and moved toward the wreckage of the upper deck. She blinked in the growing light, trying to focus the image, wondering why Vietnamese rescuers would arrive at a crash site wearing business suits. No matter. She would ask them, if they spoke English.

Where are the stretchers? Dallas thought in puzzlement. Maybe this was just an advance crew, and the main rescue would follow in a few minutes. She was within fifty yards now, and heard the sound of a female voice in the distance — obviously Susan Tash, indecipherable but distinctive under the sound of the helicopter’s idling engine and swishing blades.

Dallas rounded the last berm between the wreckage and a row of banana trees at the edge of the clearing. She could see the men standing amid the wreckage, yelling something to each other. Good! Dallas thought. They’ll get the injured guy out of there quickly, before waiting for more choppers to arrive.

But something ahead wasn’t right, and Dallas stopped without fully knowing why, keeping herself behind the row of trees.

Two of the men were hauling something out of the wreckage, handling it roughly and carelessly, which made no sense. What is that? Dallas wondered. It was hard to see. The men were on the other side and the wreckage blocked her view. She could hear Susan’s voice, yelling, it seemed, as if she were angry about something.

At last the men reappeared around the wreckage, still pulling the object, which finally coalesced into a recognizable shape. My God! That’s the injured airline guy! What in the world are they doing?

The two men reached the Huey and shoved a limp Rick Barnes inside.

Dallas glanced behind her, but there was still no sign of the others. She looked back at the clearing, noting two other men in the wreckage. There was a flash of yellow to the left, and Dallas realized with a chill of terror that now Susan Tash was being hauled bodily from the cabin, protesting loudly and trying to fight the crewmen who were holding her. The other two men returned from the helicopter to subdue her, grabbing Susan by the feet and shoulders and carrying her to the open door of the machine, where they tossed her in like a sack of flour.

Dallas sank to her knees in the undergrowth, completely confused and desperate to remain out of sight. She saw one of the men stand back and draw a pistol, pointing it at Susan, and she could see Susan cower in the corner as she looked around at the motionless form of the injured airline chief who had been her patient. There were sounds in the jungle vegetation behind her, signaling the approach of the others; the trees effectively screened their presence from the men in the clearing. She moved in tighter behind a large group of ferns, watching the men jump back aboard the helicopter, one of them sliding into the pilot’s seat. The engine power increased, and the noise washed out all possibility of being heard. Dallas turned and motioned frantically to the others. Robert saw her first and acknowledged her signal with a worried expression, as he brought the others toward her.

The helicopter was lifting off and moving away, gaining altitude slowly.

“What’s happening?” Robert asked, as he came up beside Dallas.

“Get down!” she said.

Dr. Graham Tash was beside her now, wearing a puzzled expression. She grabbed his arm, pulling him down as she motioned the others to get down as well.

“Susan’s in the chopper. They pulled her in along with Barnes.”

“Okay… but why are we hiding?”

Dallas looked at him, unsure what to say. She could hear the Huey circling overhead. They would be safe beneath the trees, but if they moved into the clearing…

Graham took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. “Dallas, what’s wrong?” There was a frightened, feral expression on his face.

“They handled both Susan and Barnes very roughly,” Dallas said, jumping up and out of Graham’s grasp. She moved forward and motioned for him to follow. Together they carefully moved closer to the edge of the clearing.

The helicopter was hovering directly over the wreckage of the upper deck and cockpit, sitting motionless perhaps two hundred feet in the air.

“I don’t understand,” Graham said. “What are they doing?”

The door to the helicopter had been closed, but as they watched, it slid open.

Arlin Schoen stood in the doorway of the Huey and glanced out at the rising sun. They would have only minutes to get what they needed and figure out the rest on the run. Incredible luck, he thought, that the very passenger they were looking for was right there, still alive, his business cards in the pocket of his coat even if his messed-up face was unrecognizable.

The woman in yellow, however, was a regrettable problem.

“This a good enough altitude?” his pilot bellowed back into the cabin.

Schoen nodded, his eyes darting to the men holding guns on the survivors. He looked at the male survivor and stabbed his thumb toward the ceiling. “Get up!” he commanded.

The man was obviously badly injured, his face puffy beyond recognition. No matter, Schoen concluded. It was MacCabe. There was enough in the coat to positively ID him even if the team had only had a quick glimpse in Hong Kong.

“Bring him over here!” Schoen commanded. One of his men yanked the injured man to his feet and threw him toward the open door. Schoen watched as the man’s arms flew out to brace against falling, his frightened eyes looking at Schoen.

“Okay, MacCabe, where’s your computer?”

“What?” The question was barely audible, and Schoen moved toward Rick Barnes like a striking cobra, grabbing his collar and thrusting him partly out the door.

“You either tell me where you put your damned computer down there, or out you go. Your choice, but you’ve only got ten seconds, and you might think about the fact that what you transferred onto your hard drive is not worth your life.”

“I… don’t know what you’re… talking about!”

What little he could read of the man’s expression bespoke puzzlement. His mouth was moving, but Schoen had to haul him close to hear the words.

“I’m… not… MacCabe. I’m Rick…”

Schoen shoved the man halfway out the door again, watching him flail air until he pulled him close again.

“Where is it, MacCabe? Was it in the overhead? Last chance before your flight lesson begins.”

The man was shaking his head furiously. “I’m… not MacCabe! He… he was in the cabin… I met him… but…”

With an angry heave, Schoen propelled Rick Barnes toward the back of the helicopter, watching as he lost his balance and landed heavily on the floor just in front of the bench seat that spanned the rear of the Huey’s cabin. Schoen glanced at the terrified blond in the yellow dress, felt an uncharacteristic twinge of regret, then motioned to one of his men.

“Bring her!”

Susan reached out to fight off the burly arms that grabbed her, but she was no match for the man as he hauled her over to Arlin Schoen.

“Tie her hands!” Schoen ordered. A plastic tie was produced and cinched around her wrists with her hands in front.

Schoen grabbed Susan by the wrists and nodded toward the metal steps built into the frame of the Huey. “Stand on the bottom one!” he commanded.

“No! Why are you doing…”

A burst of automatic rifle fire from one of the men in the cabin whistled past Susan’s head. Slowly she complied, stepping gingerly onto the top, then the bottom step as she tried unsuccessfully to wrap her fingers around Schoen’s hands.

“Okay, MacCabe!” Schoen shouted at the man in the back of the helicopter. “Answer the question or I’ll drop this pretty woman two hundred feet.”

Once more the man spoke up, yelling with all the volume he could muster. “My name is… Rick Barnes! I’m…”

Schoen shook his head, stopping the protest, and pushed Susan’s wrists farther out until she was too far off balance to recover if he let go.

“Look, PLEASE!” the injured man yelled from the corner. “I CAN PROVE IT TO YOU!”

Arlin Schoen realized with a start that the man was reaching around to the back pocket of his pants. Had they checked there for a weapon? Schoen reacted instinctively. He grabbed with his free hand for the 9mm pistol in his belt, pulled it free, and raised the barrel, letting panic guide his aim as he squeezed off four quick rounds, two tearing through Barnes’s chest, the other two through his already bloodied face.

Schoen watched the body slide to the floor with a thud, a pool of blood forming beneath. His right hand flopped down and released the object that had triggered Schoen’s response: a leather wallet, which now slid toward the edge of the door. The Huey pilot had reacted to the sudden shots by bobbling the cyclic control stick and tilting the helicopter’s deck suddenly to the right, throwing Schoen off balance.

Arlin Schoen fought to regain his footing while hanging on to the woman’s wrists as he watched the object slither toward the abyss. It was a wallet, not a gun, that the man had tried to grab. Schoen thought of lunging for it, but the weight of the woman was dragging him out the door as well. It was an easy decision to let go of her and grab the door jamb as he watched the wallet fly out into space.

The terrified blond began to fall, but Schoen heard a heavy impact on the right side of the Huey and peered over to see that the woman had caught the right side landing skid and was hanging on, even though her wrists were still bound together. Her fingers were white as they held a death grip on the tubular metal.

Too bad, he thought. She’s a fighter, and beautiful, but…

He raised the barrel of the 9mm and aimed between her eyes, using thirty years of professional detachment to ignore her pleading expression. It was more humane, anyway, he thought. Save her the horror of feeling herself fall to her death. They would have to land and bag the body, of course. A dead passenger with a bullet in the brain would be evidence he couldn’t leave behind.

He willed himself to get it over with, but still his finger hesitated.

“WE’RE NOT THE ONLY SURVIVORS!” she yelled, staying his trigger finger.

“WHAT?” Schoen yelled back at her.

“THERE ARE OTHER SURVIVORS! THEY KNOW I’M ALIVE!”

Schoen snorted and lowered the gun, thinking fast. Probably a ploy, but if she was telling the truth, they had some sanitizing to do. He stuck the gun in his waistband and motioned for one of his men to take over and pull her back up and in. The end result would be the same. She would have to die, but he’d let her buy some time until he’d analyzed the situation.

From the point of view of the crash survivors huddling behind bushes at the edge of the clearing, the inexplicable sight of the Huey hovering 200 feet above the wreckage with an open door and Graham’s wife aboard had been as puzzling as it was terrifying.

Maybe they’re just looking for other survivors, Graham had thought, trying to understand how Susan could have been so roughly handled.

Maybe Dallas got it wrong.

They could see one, then two, men in the doorway, but as the helicopter rotated slowly around in a circle, they lost sight of the men altogether.

Suddenly the door faced them again, and Susan’s yellow dress and blond hair were clearly visible. She was being forced to stand on the landing skid outside the chopper while one of the men held on to her hands. The sight was a horror beyond Graham’s worst nightmare. There was no possible reason or explanation, and therefore it couldn’t be happening. What rescuers would threaten survivors of a plane crash?

“MY GOD, NO! DALLAS, WHY?” Graham cried, as he watched, powerless, from below. The sound of gunfire came as distant pops as the Huey bobbled and Susan began to fall.

His heart had all but stopped before he saw her catch the landing skid.

Once again the helicopter rotated around, obscuring the door but not Susan as she struggled to hang on. When the door was visible again, another man could be seen balancing on the skid and reaching down to pull her back to safety.

A bizarre feeling of gratefulness swept through Graham, as if he owed the men who had almost pushed her to her death great thanks for saving her life.

Dallas had been holding Graham down, knowing instinctively that if he ran into the clearing it would mean death for them all. But with an anguished cry, Graham slipped from her grasp and scrambled to his feet, his mind intent on getting beneath the helicopter in a doomed effort to catch Susan if she fell.

Dallas lunged out and tackled him, pulling him to the ground again as Susan flailed the air 200 feet overhead. Susan’s entire weight was supported now by nothing more than the hand of her kidnapper, and he was having trouble pulling her up. Dallas could feel her own legs moving for Susan, as if she could propel her up and get her leg over the skid.

Slowly Susan succeeded, wrapping her leg around the skid and rotating on top of it, letting the man pull her up so she could stand on the skid beside him. She tried to swing her left leg into the door, but her right foot slipped at the same moment and she fell backward in what appeared to be slow motion. Dallas could see Susan yank at the man’s arm and pull him down as well. She saw him lose his balance, unable to shake loose from her desperate grip. Two hundred feet up the man grabbed helplessly for something to hold on to, but Susan’s body was already accelerating away from the helicopter, her iron grip taking her assailant with her as they fell headfirst. Their bodies accelerated toward the wreckage below, legs and hands kicking uselessly.

From Graham Tash’s point of view, the fall lasted forever. He lay transfixed in agony, watching his wife as her dress streamed indecently over her head like a blindfold until she thudded into the mass of jagged metal below.

The sound of the two bodies striking the razor-sharp wreckage at nearly 200 miles per hour permanently imprinted itself on the minds of the observers. It was followed by an unearthly howl that emanated from the depths of Graham Tash’s soul. Both fists were against his mouth, his body shaking, as Dallas held onto him.

“Get down! Get down, Doc!” Dallas snapped. “Or they’ll be back to get all of us! She’s gone!” She enfolded Tash, pulling him down and falling on him.

The helicopter descended. Dallas could feel the rest of her group hunkering down in terrified silence, and she could feel Tash’s grief turning to homicidal rage.

Robert MacCabe had watched the unfolding drama in utter disbelief, too caught up in the absolute horror of what he saw to analyze why. The obscene sound of bodies colliding with the wreckage had all but frozen him in place, his eyes recording what his mind could not accept as real.

The Huey reached the surface of the clearing and touched down. The door facing the hidden group opened, and two men in business suits leapt out, both of them moving toward the spot where the two bodies lay. Halfway across the twenty-yard distance, the first man stopped and looked up, scanning the sky in Robert’s direction, his gaze brushing past their hiding area. His face, for one moment, was clearly visible. Robert could feel his stomach contract into an icy knot. He recognized the face. It was one of his Hong Kong assailants.

Suddenly it all made twisted sense: It was all about him! The attack on the 747, the crash, the loss of over 200 lives, the arrival of the helicopter, and the murder of Susan Tash, all designed to prevent him from divulging information he didn’t possess.

He wasn’t prepared for the tidal wave of guilt that suddenly rolled over him, muting even his fear of the murderous bunch, who were apparently trying to decide what to do with the two bodies in the wreckage.

Robert watched in a fog as Susan Tash’s body was wrapped in some sort of plastic sheeting and carried to the helicopter. He could hear Dallas struggling to keep Graham Tash quiet and on the ground as he tried to break free, presumably for a suicidal run to retrieve his wife’s remains.

The three men came back for their comrade, hoisting his wrapped body to the Huey in the same manner and tossing it in on the blood-slicked metal floor before climbing in themselves. The helicopter lifted off and flew in a slow circle as it climbed, then turned southwest, moving out rapidly over the jungle along the ridgeline, away from Da Nang.

For several minutes there was no sound at the edge of the crash site except the agonized, muffled sobs of Graham Tash. Dallas released him at last and he got to his feet in a stupor, stumbling forward to the spot where his wife’s ruined body had lain.

Dallas got up as well, but could not force herself to move. She heard several of the others coming up behind her, but her eyes remained on Graham and the surreal things she had just witnessed. Her whole body was shaking, her mind reeling. They were survivors of a plane crash, and the men in the helicopter were their rescuers… weren’t they?

Dallas heard someone move beside her. She forced herself to glance over and recognized a badly shaken Robert MacCabe. She looked back toward the wreckage, her voice coming as little more than a strained croak.

“Why in God’s name…?”

Robert said nothing at first, but Dallas could hear him breathing hard.

Dan Wade was on his feet, leaning on Steve Delaney as they came up behind Dallas. Britta had described to Dan part of what was happening before the words caught in her throat. She finished as the helicopter disappeared

“Who,” Dallas said behind a cascade of tears, “who were those animals?”

Robert MacCabe answered quietly, his eyes still on the remains of the 747’s cockpit. “The ones who killed the captain and blinded Dan.”

“What?” Dan gasped. “What do you mean?”

Robert didn’t answer, but Dan grabbed for the approximate location of his voice, finding his shoulders and turning him around. “I said, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHO ARE THEY?”

“I don’t know,” Robert replied, his eyes staring blankly at Dan with a gaze the copilot couldn’t see.

“Come on, man, ANSWER ME! What were they after?”

His face bloodless, his eyes pools of agony, Robert MacCabe sighed and looked down, barely mouthing a reply.

“Me.”