Six Seconds

77

Cold Butte, Montana

Struggling to get to the school, Maggie crunched a foot here, banged a shoulder there as she pinballed forward, refusing to be halted.

She was very near to Logan. She could feel it. Nothing could stop her.

A helicopter thudded by at low level going east to west. Then another. The excitement mounted. Maggie contin ued moving through the crowd, listening to fragments of reports spilling from radios tuned to live news coverage.

“…we’re expecting the papal helicopter to land mo mentarily at the Lone Tree County Fairgrounds outside of town…the popemobile motorcade will take a threemile route from the fairgrounds through the town of Cold Butte to the school…after he visits the school the pontiff will go directly behind it to the sweeping valley known as the Buffalo Breaks where he’ll celebrate Mass for a crowd estimated at seventy-five thousand, no, an update, that’s one hundred thousand… among the ac tivities inside the school a children’s choir will perform three songs for the pope…”

Maggie navigated her way to the edge of the school’s boundary and as she looked through the crowd toward the parking lot she saw a flash of yellow.

A school bus fully loaded with parents and children had arrived at the barricaded checkpoint. Police and soldiers armed with M16s and wearing combat gear slowly guided it into the parking lot for inspection.

Two teams of sniffer dogs probed the bus while soldiers used extended mirrors to scrutinize the under carriage, and under the hood. Their serious work con trasted with the ecstatic young faces in the bus windows exchanging joy and returning waves to the happy crowd.

The bus was some twenty yards away across the street from Maggie.

She thrust closer to the barricade, ignoring protests of people who had claimed their spots at sunrise.

She didn’t care.

She pushed her concentration full bore from window to window to window.

She gasped.

Maggie screamed Logan’s name before the cognitive process was done.

He was on the bus!

Waving and smiling from the window, just as he’d done a lifetime ago on the last day they’d been together at home. Only now, Logan hadn’t seen Maggie yet.

“Logan!”

Maggie shoved through the crowd to the barricade.

“Hey, lady!”

“What the-”

“I have to get to my son, please let me through! Logan!”

“Where’s she going? Call that officer! She’s crazy!” The passengers were directed to step off the bus for further inspection. They formed a neat line before entering the school. Parents were formally dressed, children wore their Sunday best-boys in blazers, white shirts and ties, girls in white dresses.

Stone-faced soldiers and police officers guided them through metal detectors, boys and girls extended their arms, removed shoes, jackets as security wands passed over them and dog handlers patrolled at close proximity.

Once he was cleared, Logan moved with the line toward a school entrance.

Maggie was going to lose him.

“Logan!”

He turned at the sound of shouts but did not see Maggie as she launched herself over the metal barri cade, stumbled onto the cleared road and ran toward him calling his name.

People yelled to police and pointed.

At that moment, officers and soldiers rushed Maggie, reaching for their weapons. Radios crackled with rapidfire transmissions. Security breach Sector 27! We have a security breach at 27! A Montana Highway Patrol he licopter turned and pounded toward the scene. TV news cameras wheeled, focused, capturing a hysterical woman running across the empty road to the school live on network television. A cameraman said calmly into his headset, “Alert New York, we’ve got something here.” On the school roof, FBI sharpshooters advised that they had “the target” in the crosshairs of their scope and could drop it in a heartbeat.

“Standing by for green,” one FBI shooter whispered into his headset, then placed his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

A rookie Montana patrolman, who was a former tackle from Missoula, got to Maggie first. He took her to the ground hard. His six-foot-four-inch body covered hers and in one smooth motion he got one metal cuff on her right wrist.

The chopper whooped above.

Other officers swarmed the scene.

Standing there in his new blazer, Logan had wit nessed the incident, but without recognizing that the woman at the center of it was his mother.

Maggie screamed for him, reaching through a forest of legs and boots toward him with her soon-to-be-cuffed left hand. But his eyes never found hers. The prop wash from the chopper was deafening, but Maggie saw a question form on his face just as a hand clamped his shoulder and turned him from her, nudging him into the school.

The hand belonged to the person in the picture in the truck stop restaurant.

Samara.

Across the chaos, the two women met in one intense gaze.

Anguished mothers from different worlds, heart broken by events not of their making, willing to pay any price for their family. Samara’s eyes were fixed with purpose, forged in some hellfire of unwavering love that burned into Maggie’s.

“That woman abducted my son!” Maggie shouted. “She could threaten the pope! You have to arrest her! You have to alert Special Agent Blake Walker! Now! Logan!”

None of the deputies, troopers or agents understood Maggie over the chopper, let alone gave a second thought to her words.

To them she was the threat.

Maggie offered little resistance as they pulled her to her feet, told her of her rights as they completed hand cuffing her hands in front of her.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

“Logan!”

As Samara entered the school with Logan, she took a deputy and a Secret Service agent aside and showed them several badges of identification.

“I’m a nurse with the county helping with this event,” Samara said, then nodded to Maggie. “That woman is psychologically disturbed. She came to the school last week and indicated that she would ‘get rid of the pope’ if he ever came here.”

The deputy and agent nodded as they copied Samara’s ID information, took notes then reached for their microphones.