Hot Ice

19

The Gulfstream’s tires kissed the runway an instant before Jason was shoved against his seat belt by howling twin Rolls-Royce BR 725 engines in reverse thrust. Had Momma not permanently sealed the windows, he would be getting his first view of his native land in … what, three years?

He thanked the flight crew and accepted a ride to customs and immigration in the main terminal, general aviation’s version not opening for an hour yet. As the shuttle rumbled across taxi and runways, Jason looked beyond the perimeter fences at what he could see of the western Virginia landscape. It could be anywhere: Europe, Asia, the Middle East, venues where he had arrived and departed so frequently that such facilities and their surroundings took on a certain anonymous sameness. That was both curse and blessing. Blessing because it lessened the acute awareness of how many times he had landed here and over at Reagan National when he had a wife and home to go to. Curse because landing at either reminded him Laurin would not be waiting with cold drinks and the latest neighborhood or office gossip. Now being in the land of his birth had no significance other than the fact he had to leave Iceland and had nowhere else to go. He was as effectively homeless as those mendicants one sees on the streets of major cities. The only difference was that, for some of those, choices made in their lives rendered them financially and emotionally unable to sustain permanence. The choices made in Jason’s had made a permanent residence a liability.

“Where to?” the cabdriver wanted to know as Jason tossed his single bag into the backseat and climbed in.

“The Pentagon,” Jason replied automatically. “With one stop in between.”

The Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project had not visibly progressed since Jason’s last trip in from the airport. A section of Highway 123 between Scotts Crossing Road and the I-495 Beltway was still closed, forcing more traffic onto highways designed to carry far less. Like most residents of DC and northern Virginia, Jason had long ago despaired of the project’s completion within his lifetime — or, for that matter, his grandchildren’s lifetime had he any grandchildren. Between cabdrivers’ vociferous objections to loss of fares inflated beyond reason, local residents’ fears that rail service would spread Washington’s crime into their suburban communities like some deadly virus, and labor unions’ constant push to sup at this trough, the rail line had become a political football in which the spectators, not the players, were the losers.

Nearly an hour later, the cab pulled up to the Pentagon’s south parking lot. Jason, two dozen white roses in the arm not in a sling, climbed out.

“Sir? Sir?” The cabbie asked nervously. “I can’t park here, not without a permit. There is no public parking.”

Jason didn’t even turn around. “So, circle the building a couple of times. I’ll meet you right here.”

“Er, sir, I can’t do that. Company regulations require I collect the fare when you exit the cab.”

Jason stopped, turned, and walked back to the waiting taxi.

He lowered his face until it was even with the driver’s. “I know you don’t make company policy. I also know it’s not your fault that the idiots who designed the memorial I’m about to visit didn’t provide parking. If you do not allow me to deliver these flowers to the site dedicated to my wife, that will be your fault. Do we understand each other?”

The cabbie took one look at Jason’s scowl, weighed the possibility of the mayhem implicit therein against an enhanced tip, and said, “Yessir, yessir. Perfectly. I don’t know how long I can stay here before they make me move but—”

Jason was already striding away.

At the southwest corner of the Pentagon, slightly fewer than two acres were dedicated to those who perished there on 9/11. Crape myrtles in their summer splendor were scattered about the gravel lot as were 184 terrazzo-finished sculptures that resemble diving boards over small lighted pools. Each sculpture bears a name and is arranged in a timeline from the youngest victim of a few months to the eldest in his seventies. If the person was one of the eighty-eight who were aboard the ill-fated aircraft that crashed into the building, the viewer looks skyward to read the name. If inside the Pentagon, one faces the building.

It took Jason only a few steps to stand beside Laurin’s memorial. He had first seen it on that mournful afternoon in September 2008, when the little park was dedicated in front of family and friends of the victims.

Kneeling, he placed the roses beside the small pool. He was fully aware that the park’s keepers would remove all flowers when they shut down for the evening, but he didn’t care. For a few hours, visitors would know someone had cared for Laurin Peters very much. She had no other site to deck with flowers on her birthday or special occasions, no gravestone memorializing the dates of her life. Only this, an abstract sculpture among many abstract sculptures, a pool among many pools.

He stood, his vision blurred. He made no effort to wipe away the hot tears coursing down his cheeks as he turned and walked to the waiting cab without a look back.

“Now where?”

Jason had to think a moment. He needed someone to look at the stick, the piece of metal, and the pictures from the phone’s camera, someone who might have an idea of their significance, of why they were worth killing for. What better place than DC with its universities, government-funded research centers, and laboratories both civilian and military?

“Thirteenth Street, Bolling Air Force Base.”

Between the Potomac and I-295, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling was the base for the Air Force’s honor guard and band. There were no flight operations there. In fact, its tree-lined streets housed far more dependents than service personnel. The BOQ (bachelor officer quarters) just off Luke Street were spacious, anonymous, and usually with vacancies the command support staff would be delighted to have filled by transient service veterans.

An hour later, Jason had checked into a small suite, showered, changed clothes, and made an appointment with the base clinic to have his bandage changed the next day. He was ready for something to eat. The clerk in the lobby directed him to the officers’ club, barely two blocks away. Twice, women pushing baby carriages passed him on the sidewalk, each wishing him a cheery good morning. The tidy individual base housing units with their neat lawns, many displaying Big Wheels, tricycles, and swing sets, gave the impression more of a small town rather than a military base.

Jason would be comfortable there. Better yet, he wouldn’t be there long enough to get bored.