October's Ghost

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THUNDER

Frankie closed the front door easily, only a soft click from the lock signaling that she was home. A single light was on in the living room to her left, and she could see her mother stretched out serenely on the couch, a blue-and-yellow afghan covering her from knee to shoulder. She smiled and took a blanket from the closet and laid it over the woman who had always been there for her and was still, planting a soft kiss on her forehead that caused a slight stir.

She switched off the light and made her way down the hall toward the back bedrooms. Hers was on the right, the door open, and she went to it and tossed her jacket onto the unmade bed. Her penchant for cleanliness and order had been superseded by events. Next she unclipped her holster and laid the weapon in the recessed shelf of her nightstand. There it would be close, not so much because she feared intruders, but she had learned early from the needless deaths in her old stomping grounds that a gun in the wrong hands, of the little variety particularly, was deadly. On the few occasions it was not with her — agents are never really off duty — she kept the weapon in a locked safe high on a shelf in her closet. Little Cassie would someday learn about guns, something Frankie believed was much preferable to her picking one up at a friend’s house and not knowing what it was capable of. Knowledge was power, and it was safety.

Little Cassie. Frankie pushed the cracked door open enough to poke her head in. The Winnie the Pooh night light cast an angelic glow on the singular, constant beauty in Francine Aguirre’s existence. She was still a mama’s girl, barely four, a quietly intelligent child who never complained when Mommy had to work late but was as possessive as a pit bull when she knew it was “their” special time together. There was never enough of that. Never would be. Looking down on the slender face and the thumb that still found its way to the mouth despite all the talk of being a big girl, Frankie wondered if there ever would be.

She wouldn’t disturb her angel’s sleep with a kiss, which would surely wake her. It always had. The light sleeper syndrome, just like her mother. But she didn’t really mind those few times when Cassie would awaken. In fact, she had to selfishly admit that it was a purposeful plot on her part sometimes. But not tonight. It was late, actually early, and her daughter was an early riser. Frankie would give her the biggest hug she could in the morning before she went off to preschool. The biggest hug from her, and one from Art, and…

Frankie shrank back from the opening, the tears for some reason spilling as though a dam had burst. She backed into her own bedroom and pushed the door almost closed, leaving enough of an opening so she could hear if Cassie started fussing. Her hands came up and covered her face, save the eyes, to muffle the quiet sobs that accompanied the tears.

Why again? she silently asked the darkness. Why was she still hurting so much? Hadn’t it all come out the night before? Thom was gone. Gone! She would grieve, she knew, just like she had when her brother died in the car accident a decade before, but why the flood of emotions? It was supposed to ease, wasn’t it? Yet it wasn’t. It was getting worse. Almost two days later the pain was coming from a deeper place. She remembered the place, but strangely it wasn’t where the sorrow had emerged from when her older sibling, her only one, wrapped his new Camaro around the light pole on Mulholland. That was pain. True pain. So was this, but there was something more, a mix of feelings and clouded thoughts that somehow made it worse.

Worse than Johnny’s death? How could that be? They were both senseless, stupid things that shouldn’t have happened because the victims were both good people. Very good people. Beautiful people. Why?

Frankie sat on the bed, falling against the massive stack of pillows that were balled up against the headboard, her face half-buried in one that smelled of the tears from the night before. There was no rhyme or reason to it. None. Johnny had just not been aware enough of his own limitations. He just had to try out that damned new black beauty that he’d scrimped and saved to buy. Had to push it up past seventy-five on a curve that was rated for thirty-five. It was just stupidity. His own…

At his own hands. A mistake. An accident. Not by design.

Thom’s was, she thought, the back of her hand wiping away the wetness under her nose. She sniffled into the pillow and rolled onto her back. It was Johnny’s time. Was it Thom’s? Could it have been? Could it be considered fate when men took the existence away from an innocent person?

No! NO!

Was that where the hurt was coming from? Frankie stared at the ceiling for a time that she could not measure, her eyes blinking more rapidly than the flow of tears had caused. The colorless, featureless world narrowed as she continued to search the emptiness above for something. Anything. A form. A spark of light. Something to keep her attention. To keep her from drifting. She wanted to think, to analyze, to investigate, to…

Was it really that strong? The hate? That strong? There’s someone to blame for this. Not just an immortal young guy with a fast car and no sense. This hate was tangible. It had a face. Two faces. Two identities. One victim. One…

Avenger?

Frankie let the thought slip away, knowing her subconscious was striving to take over and let sleep come. She wasn’t thinking rationally or clearly. Things were affecting her that she could not… could not…

Frankie Aguirre descended into a light, restless sleep that began, almost upon her eyes closing, to tempt her intellect with sweet dreams of vengeance.

There are four rooms in the executive mansion that the President of the United States traditionally uses for quiet contemplation or private meetings between a few advisers. The Oval Office is first and notable among those. Connected to the Oval Office by a short passway is the second of these rooms, the President’s West Wing study. In the main building, near the opening to the East Terrace that leads to the East Wing, is the Library, which contains volumes of the finest of the written word, all by American authors. When the hour permits — tours frequently are coursing through the ground floor on their way to the main attractions one level above — this room can serve as a very private getaway. Finally, on the second floor, with the first family’s living quarters, is another study for the chief executive. This room, just off the Truman Balcony, is most often utilized by the President in the wee hours before turning in for the night. Of the four rooms it is the least often used, the most secluded, and the least likely to have attention drawn to it.

Bud DiContino and Joe Anderson skipped the elevator and walked directly from the NSA’s office out to the colonnade that was arguably one of the most inviting walks on the eighteen-acre grounds. They passed the Rose Garden on their right, the South Lawn beyond, and the ivory spire of the Washington Monument in the distance, and continued into the ground floor of the main building, turning left after a short jaunt down the vaulted-arch corridor to the stairs.

“You’re making me walk?” Joe protested mildly.

“Kitchen staff will be in.” Bud checked the time. Breakfast for the President was usually at seven, which was now, though that had been pushed back by the chief of staff. The first lady dined with her husband on most days, though she was away on a trip supporting her cause — adult literacy. Worthwhile and plenty of candidates, Bud thought. “The elevator lets off right near the kitchen and dining room. This way is more discreet.”

They continued up, ascending another level after a quick 180 where the stairway opened into Cross Hall on the first floor. Directly opposite the Treaty Room, Bud and Joe ended their climb to the second floor and made a right turn into Center Hall, walking west past the Yellow Oval Room to the President’s study on the left. A Secret Service agent gave them a quick look and opened the door.

The President was already there, sitting in a large leather chair, the dark surface of which stood out in a room where light wall coverings and decor complimented the morning just begun. Joe had the strange desire to salute as the Commander in Chief stood to greet them, but offered his hand instead.

“You must be Mr. Anderson.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a mystique about meeting the President, even for someone with the brash quasi-cynicism of Joe Anderson. “Glad to meet you.”

The President motioned to two chairs that faced his. He was jacketless, just a crisp white shirt and a red-striped power tie accompanying the dark gray trousers. “I never had the chance to personally thank you for…” for what, giving your life? “…your service. Especially for the work you did on the hijacking.”

My pleasure, Joe almost said automatically before his brain cut off the ludicrous statement. “Just doing, my job.”

“Mr. President,” Bud began, “Ellis suggested moving the meeting up here because he and Jack started getting questions from some of the late birds in the press pool about all the lights on last night.”

“That was smart. We don’t need to worry about the press right now,” the President commented. “Have we received confirmation yet?”

“Not yet, sir,” Bud reported. “But we need to be prepared for that eventuality. All indicators are pointing to this being very, very real.”

The President tried to mask his expression with confidence, but dealing with incidents such as this twice in his young presidency was wearing on his ability to believe that there was any mode other than “crisis management” in which to operate. That could get to one’s manner of dealing with the everyday ins and outs of governing. Not every world leader was filled with such vengeance that he would do something such as that which his country now faced. And not every world leader that might wish to do harm to the United States had the wherewithal to do such. But one apparently had both. And was being backed into a corner. SNAPSHOT no longer had the feel of a great victory to it. Instead, it burned like a sore.

“This is a big one, correct?” the President asked, looking to Anderson.

“One megaton, sir,” Joe answered, sensing something behind the President’s words. A slight trepidation. Strange, maybe, for the man was known as an excellent debater, able to stoneface his opponents into wondering what was behind the steady eyes. But it was there. Fear. The man was afraid, and that gave Joe cause not for concern but hope. It was a healthy emotion in this situation. “That’s the equivalent to the combined explosive force of one million tons of high explosive.”

“Uh-huh.” The President tried to imagine the power of such a weapon but couldn’t. Truly, he did not want to. “I understand from the brief I read this morning that you believe the Russian…”

“Anatoly Vishkov,” Bud prompted.

“Vishkov. That he could have seen to the maintenance of the missile.”

“And the warhead,” Joe added.

“Yes. The important part.” The President studied the man across from him. “Frail” could not be used to describe his condition, though his physique had taken on a wasting appearance. There was a fire in this man. A drive. Character. A brutal honesty that the President needed at the moment. “The CIA says this isn’t a credible threat. You’re aware of this?”

“I’m aware that someone over there has his head in a hole.” Or up his ass. The briefing the NSA and DDI had given him said enough about this Merriweather fellow. “And anyone who goes along with that line of thought is kidding himself.”

Bud leaned back a bit, feeling the heat of the comment directed at the President. He silently willed Anderson not to push the limits of respect for the Man.

The President, however, took no offense. The warning had been reassuring, in fact. “So it’s true what they say about you?”

“They say lots of things about me,” Joe responded. “Most of it can’t be printed, though. But if you’re talking about me sparing the bullshit, then, yeah, that’s true. And there’s twice the reason now to say it like it is. Having to answer only to myself and you know who kind of clarifies everything. Lets me speak my piece.”

“We’re not entirely used to plain-speak around here,” the President said.

“That’s one reason I don’t mind retirement.”

Once you were part of the D.C. machinery, you realized how much you wanted to be out of it. Or at least how much you wanted to change it. A nice thought, the President had realized long ago. “One of the reasons I wanted to see you was to thank you personally for doing this. The other was to get a straight analysis of what could happen. I can get the rosy picture or the doom and gloom from any one of a dozen specialists. It’s like pressing a button. Unfortunately Bud here doesn’t know everything about everything, so I have to go out of the circle occasionally. When you’re President, you start to realize that a lot of people tell you what they want you to hear, which isn’t necessarily the way it is. So, Anderson, I want you to tell me the way it is.”

“You may get gloom and doom,” Joe warned him.

“At least I won’t have gotten it from a cookie-cutter expert from some think tank. Straight. What can this thing do?”

“It can kill a lot of people. What more do you need to know?”

“How accurate is it?”

Joe wanted to stand up and shake the man. Details didn’t matter. Couldn’t he see that? “Accuracy does not matter when you’re talking about a warhead this large and a soft target. That thing does not have to take out a silo, or some command post buried under a thousand tons of concrete. We’re talking about a city, and lots of little cities around it, and millions of little people in millions of little buildings. It does not have to land on the South Lawn here to do its damage.”

“How far off could it be, Joe?” Bud asked.

All right, if you want the numbers. “D.C. is at the outer-range limit of the SS-4 of the day. Let’s assume a major miss. A three-mile miss, which isn’t an exaggeration, knowing their targeting systems back then.” Joe stood and extended his left hand, pointing to the wall that separated them from the Yellow Oval Room. “That’s east. Three miles that way, or thereabouts, is RFK Stadium. Fidel aimed it right here, but ground zero is there.

“So RFK is dust. I’m guessing a surface or near-surface burst, because that would do the most long-term damage, so there will be a crater over two hundred feet deep gouged out of the earth. All that good stuff will come down later as fallout. But that’s later. The real damage comes in the first seconds.”

“Heat and blast,” the President said, displaying his rudimentary understanding of the process.

“The correct term is thermal pulse and blast,” Joe explained. “Blast can actually be subdivided into several distinct phenomena, but for the purpose of explanation, just “blast” will do. Down here, three miles from GZ, the first real effect — other than mass blindness for those looking that way — will come from the thermal pulse. The energy liberated by the detonation, about seventy percent of its total release, heats the air in the immediate vicinity to create the fireball. This fireball emits energy outward in the form of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared radiation, which move at the speed of light away from GZ in all directions. These constitute the thermal pulse that can initially ignite fires miles away. Within three miles, any object with a direct line of sight to the blast will receive a minimum of fifty calories per square centimeter of thermal radiation. That’s sufficient to spontaneously ignite just about any material that can burn. Those heavy curtains in the east-facing rooms will spark. The same effect will happen farther out, too, but it degrades with distance. The air will diffuse and absorb more and more energy as it moves farther away from GZ. The actual fireball, which is made of superheated atmosphere, will stop expanding somewhere around the Capitol.” Joe paused. “Fire. Not a pleasant way to go.”

“The blast wave follows,” the President said.

“Basically, yes. A few seconds after the fires ignite, the blast wave will hit here with a force of four-pounds-per-square-inch overpressure. Normal atmospheric pressure is about fourteen psi, so this overpressure will do some nasty things.” Joe knew that “nasty” didn’t covey the true picture. “Here’s a tangible representation of overpressure for you non-engineering types. First, think of it in larger terms. A twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-high wall — just like the side of a small house — has one hundred and sixty square feet. That’s over twenty-three-thousand square inches. Multiply that by the amount of overpressure — four psi — and you get more than ninety-two-thousand pounds, forty-five tons, of force applied to that wall above what it normally holds. That is a devastating amount of overpressure to most buildings in and around D.C. Every window this side of the Potomac will be shattered and a good number on the other side. Wood frame houses will collapse like matchstick houses in a strong breeze, though the breeze that follows the blast wave will come in here at over a hundred and forty miles per hour. All these big reinforced stone buildings will act as wind tunnels after their windows and doors, inside and out, give way. Any fire started by the thermal pulse will be fanned into an inferno inside those buildings. All the wood ones farther out, too. It’ll be a big one.” Joe sat back. “But I don’t have time to get into firestorms and conflagrations and all that stuff. Get Glasstone and Dolan from the library if you want a more technical picture. Suffice it to say that little will be left of this city.”

A phone rang in the background as Joe finished, and Bud went to answer it.

The President said nothing. The fear that Joe had sensed now showed plainly in the chief executive’s eyes. Everyone here could be dead, he thought. Except me. It was a privilege of the office that made him feel small at the moment.

“Sir.”

The President looked up to his NSA.

“Langley just received a confirmation from Moscow Station,” Bud said. “The names on the headstones are of a Russian missile crew reported killed accidentally in Cuba on October twenty-eighth, 1962.”

“My God.”

Joe didn’t react. He had already resigned himself to the fact that this nightmare was real.

“Bud, what about SNAPSHOT?” the President asked. “I mean, if need be, shut it down. It could push Castro over the edge before we can do anything.”

Bud shook his head emphatically. “Drew and Jim and I discussed that possibility, but it could send the wrong signal to Castro.” He didn’t want to try and explain that the rebel commanders would probably just ignore the directive. “We keep the pressure on.”

The President agreed with a nod, then looked to Joe. “You’re going to pull another one of these off for us, then.”

The attempt at levity was shallow but well intentioned.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir,” Bud began. “I suggest you keep your schedule normal. We don’t want to let on that anything out of the ordinary is going on. That could push Castro into firing the missile.”

“Very well. Anderson…good luck.”

Joe shook the President’s hand, then he and Bud headed back the way they had come.

“You have a plane to catch,” Bud said as they emerged to the colonnade.

“Yeah. I hate these damn connecting flights.” Joe would be flying to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina to link up with a plane heading farther south.

“Security,” Bud explained unnecessarily. “The DCI went down earlier in a pretty blue-and-white from the Eighty-ninth.” The 89th Military Airlift Wing was the unit that provided transport for the President and other government officials, the majority of its aircraft sporting the brilliant white-and-blue paint scheme and “United States of America” designation. “We don’t want to flood the Cape with too many suits.”

Joe looked at the NSA with some distaste for the remark. “I take exception to that, DiContino.”

Bud smiled as they walked. “I knew you would.”

They continued back into the West Wing. Joe Anderson went to a waiting FBI Suburban for the twenty-minute drive to Andrews. The NSA watched from his office window as the black Chevy carried the acerbic scientist off for…the last time? He pushed that morbid thought aside and picked up the phone. It was answered in the Pentagon instantly by a secretary and put right through to another secretary.

“Meyerson.”

“Drew, I need a few things.”

The Secretary of Defense recognized the voice, and possibly some urgency in it. “Shoot”

“Get a chopper over here and park it on the South Lawn. Use the off pad.”

“The off pad?” The presidential helicopter normally used an area on the South Lawn closer to the mansion than the auxiliary pad.

“Yes. Don’t use Marine One. Use Crown Helo. It’s smaller.” And more appropriate, Bud though to himself. Crown Helo was a heavily modified command-and-control variant of the VH-60, the VIP version of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter used by all the military services. Marine One — the designation of the VH-3 when the President was aboard — was a much larger bird that would draw attention if kept ready and waiting on the White House grounds. It — there were actually three identical helicopters — was normally based at Anacostia Naval Air Station when not in use.

Crown Helo? “No problem. I’ll have it sent over. And…”

“Get Kneecap ready.” Kneecap — or NEACAP — was the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, the President’s plane to be used as a secure base of operations during extreme national emergency. “Ready” was a relative term for it. It was always in that state, but the NSA’s words were meant to ensure that the secretary of defense would make certain that there was nothing that would delay its use.

“My God. Confirmed?”

Bud nodded to himself. “We got the word a few minutes ago.”

“I’ll have Granger put it out on a readiness check. You want him on board?”

Having the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on board was not generally planned for, but it would definitely be a plus, especially if the worst happened. “Brief him and do it quietly.”

“All right. Is that it?”

“I damn sure hope so.”

The night had kept its hold on the island long enough for the convoy from Los Guaos to complete three quarters of its journey in darkness. This time, though, there was little fear of a rebel ambush, at least one that would end as the previous one had. An escort of ten BMP-2 MICVs (Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicles) were spread out among the twenty tank trucks, a larger number than the first convoy because of the lack of sizable transports. Ninety percent of the refinery’s fleet of large tankers were destroyed in the ambush. Overhead, prowling the treetops like an angry avian hunter, the Havoc ensured that no rebels would be allowed any hope of escape if they were foolish enough to show themselves as before.

Major Orelio Guevarra landed his aircraft between two buildings after the last of the convoy vehicles entered the complex. The Havoc’s pilot climbed out of the rear seat and ran to a group of officers standing in the long shadows cast by the newly risen sun.

“General Asunción?”

“Yes.”

Your eyes are as cold as they say. “Major Guevarra. I am instructed to defend your… command?” He looked around, wondering what sort of unit could possibly be based here. Possibly one guarding the fuel supplies he had just escorted in. Was the petrol shortage really that severe that it was now necessary to stockpile away from the refinery?

“Yes.” Asunción looked at the mechanical sculpture of green-and-black metal sitting in the canyon of pavement that separated the rows of buildings a hundred meters away. “You can operate from here.”

“Yes, sir!” The major pointed to two covered trucks that had joined the convoy north of Cienfuegos. “A full ground crew, ammunition, and fuel in one of the trucks. I can fight from anywhere.”

Asunción nodded. The abilities of this zealot would only be of consequence to him if there became a need for him to use his beloved helicopter. The general was a foot soldier through and through. These pilots were too full of themselves, he thought.

“General,” one of Asunción’s assistants called from the row of tank trucks. They had formed up along the tree of pipes where they emerged from below ground.

“Yes, Captain.”

The officer looked to the tangle of pipes and valves nearest the lead truck, which had a huge gas-powered pump and a refrigeration unit between the cab and the tank. “This is going to take some time.”

“Why?” the general asked, his exasperation with the delays becoming almost unbearable. Answering to the presidente was not an enjoyable task.

“The pumping equipment on the lead vehicle is not completely compatible with the inflow valves on the tree. The outflow valve on the pump is a different size than the receptacle on the tree. “The larger trucks that were destroyed had the proper equipment, but not these. We have only two trucks equipped with pumps, in fact — one for each type of liquid. We cannot mix the two, of course. The NTO is refrigerated. It must be to maintain it as a liquid. Each truck will have to connect to the respective pump truck to unload its cargo.”

“And there is a solution, I anticipate.”

The captain nodded emphatically. “We will cut a new inflow valve into the tree using components from one of the trucks.”

“Cut into a fuel line?”

“General, it is not as dangerous as you must think. I have myself done it before. There will be no combustibles flowing through the line, of course, so—”

“But the vapors?”

“Yes, there will be vapors, but we will purge those through the vent valve on the tree and then pressurize the line with nitrogen. Nitrogen is an inert gas that will prevent combustion as the torch cuts through the wall of the pipe.” The captain noticed the continued worry on his superior’s face. “It will work, General. As I said, I have done it before.”

“And the time?” Time was everything now, as evidenced by the thunder in the distance.

“Several hours. Five, possibly six, before we can begin fueling.”

There was no other way, Asunción knew. He could not just wish away the delay. “See to it.”

“Uprange five minutes,” the pilot warned the RSO. Aurora was three hundred miles from the target and closing on it at a speed of 3,675 mph.

“Systems are synched,” the RSO reported. All his sensors would be focused on a relatively small area in central Cuba, though he knew not what the importance of any particular target was. Neither did his pilot They just took the pictures and let someone else handle the analysis. Those people, of course, would know little of the platform from which the data was collected. Such was the practice of SCI, or sensitive compartmentalized intelligence. It was different from the precept of need-to-know in the fact that the many components of an intelligence-gathering operation were known to many people, but few knew more than one piece, and fewer still knew the whole picture. It was a cumbersome, stifling, sometimes inefficient system, but it worked, provided that the natural curiosities of the involved parties did not get the better of them.

“GPS interface ready.” The RSO activated his Global Positioning System interface, a delicate, computer-controlled aiming system from the sensors that used positional readings from satellites to let the image computers know the exact location of both target and platform. It was less for the visible-light sensors than for the SAR, particularly when the mission called for narrow observation, as this one did. The basic premise was that clarity in the representation of the data gathered was dependent upon two things: knowing precisely where the platform and target were at all times during the pass. Knowing the location of just the platform was not enough, as the target was also not in a consistent location, a problem caused by the simple fact that the earth moves, and, therefore, every point on it follows the motion. If the position of a GPS ground station was known in relation to a target that has none, the location of the unknown could be determined. Noting the position of the platform was just a process of taking GPS readings forty times per second. These positional readings were then used to correlate the “picture” created by the SAR and place landmarks and geological features within an overlay of the area of observation. Because of the precision allowed by the GPS interface, the SAR could begin imaging the target while still approaching, giving oblique views that were combined with the overall data package to give extreme three-dimensional detail.

“Uprange three minutes.” The pilot checked her performance readings. Everything was fine. This was not the time for a minor glitch to disrupt the mission. “Systems are nominal.”

“Shooting now.” The RSO activated the SAR with just the touch of a button. Target information had been fed in before takeoff. Three feet below him, and running toward the rear of the aircraft another thirty feet, the powerful radar-imaging system focused on a point 180 miles away. Seventeen-thousand-two-hundred-eighty inch-square planar radar transceiver/receivers protected within the graphite epoxy housing swiveled toward the target in fractions of a millimeter until the computers decided that the energy was properly focused.

“Receiving data.”

The pilot again checked the systems. A bunch of microprocessors told her everything was A-OK, and there was no arguing with that. Flying sure had changed from her days at Colorado Springs and, later, piloting the TR-1, the updated version of the famed U-2. She barely touched the stick — a six-inch form-molded handle on her right console — during flights in her present ride. But looking through the tiny viewport above her head — the windscreen was covered by a retractable shield during the climbout to altitude — she could think of no complaints. Day was breaking 130,000 feet below her, but straight up, a direction she hoped to go one day in the right seat of the Space Shuttle, it was a beautiful indigo with flecks of white still visible. Low and slow was the way some fighter drivers liked it, but not her. High and fast, riding a rocket, was the only way to go. Someday. This would do for now, though.

“That’s a wrap,” the RSO reported five minutes after the pass began. He immediately began compiling the data for relay to NPIC. He’d have to do no preprocessing on this package.

“Okay.” The pilot took one last look upward. “Let’s head on home.”

Why was he driving like that? The needle was passing fifty, then sixty, then seventy, then eighty.

Johnny, slow down.

He turned and smiled at her, his face as young and smooth as ever. She looked back at him from the passenger seat.

Sis, hang on. This is fun. He glanced into the backseat. Right, Thom?

Frankie’s head jerked to the left. It was him! Sitting there, just fine! Tommy! You’re all right.

But he didn’t answer. He just smiled, looking like a little boy. Tommy, why won’t you say anything?

She felt the car go around the corners at a speed that seemed impossible. Her stomach twisted and turned as the speed increased. Johnny, please.

Easy, Sis. You’re such a crybaby, just like when Mom used to go to work. Stop your worrying.

She looked out the front window again. Telephone poles rushed past and the brown walls of dirt lining the roadway seemed to be one long…what?…tunnel. No, it couldn’t be a tunnel, because she could see the sky.

Hey, who are those guys?

The car stopped instantly, going from a hundred to zero in the blink of an eye. Frankie felt her insides jump, but it wasn’t from the motion, or cessation of it. No!

Johnny stepped out of the car first, followed by Thom. They walked to the front of the Camaro and waved at the two men approaching them.

Frankie tried to undo the seatbelt, but there was none. Then why couldn’t she get out? Why were her legs frozen? Johnny! Thom! Stay away from them! She reached into her pocket and pulled out the folded pictures. It was them! The men who had…were going to kill… She shook her head, trying to drive the confusion away.

Hey, fellas. Johnny motioned for Thom to follow him.

No! “Johnny! Thom! Don’t!” Frankie could see the men. They had guns! She reached to her hip for her weapon, but it wouldn’t come out of the holster. Looking down, she could see the top strap undone, but it still wouldn’t come out. She pulled hard on it, her teeth gritting, as she watched the distance decrease between those scum and two men she cared about. Please! Please! One of the men started to lift his gun, pointing it at Thom and Johnny.

“No!” There was a loud sound, a sharp crack, just as her weapon came loose from its holster. Frankie drew it up and pointed it toward the… “FREEZE!”

A soft whimper broke the grip of the nightmare. “Mom-ommy…”

Frankie saw her little angel past the sights of her gun, which was trained on her crying face. “Oh, my God.” She moved the gun aside and laid it on the bed before slinking off the mattress to Cassie.

“Mommy. Mommy. Why did…?” The tears were coming in sobs now, from both mother and daughter. A second later the first of three generations of Aguirres rushed into the bedroom.

“Francine, what…?” Amelia Aguirre saw the gun on the bed and the small lamp lying on the floor near the door. Her daughter had always told Cassandra to open the door gently, as it easily hit the dresser when pushed too hard. But why was her gun on the bed? Oh, no. “Francine, what happened? You were yelling.”

“Oh, Mom. I’m sorry.” Frankie looked up to the woman she worshiped as she hugged Cassie as hard as she could without hurting her. “I didn’t mean to do it. I was dreaming about Johnny and Thom, and they were…” She couldn’t explain anymore.

Amelia Aguirre went to her knees and wrapped her arms around her two little girls. “It’s okay, mija. She is all right. She is fine.”

“But I could have…” Frankie collapsed into the arms of her mother and little girl, they now consoling her. There was something not right about it, but also something completely right about it. It was familia. It was safety.

“Mommy, are you okay?”

Frankie laughed through her tears at the question. “Yes, sweetie, I’m okay.” Her eyes apologized for what she had just done to her daughter, but the responding look told her that none was necessary. “I’m really okay.” She looked again at the face, wondering why the expression had changed. “Really, I am.”