Big Game

by Daniel Smith

  “Is it dead? What killed it?”

  I shook my head and watched in wonder as more fish drifted out of the mist, flickering on the gentle waves. At first there were just one or two of them, then more and more slipped past until we were surrounded by dead fish. There were hundreds of them, glittering and sparkling on the surface of Lake Tuonela.

  “What is this?” The president spun around, staring at all the silvery bodies bobbing up and down.

  “There’s something in the water,” I said, rubbing my fingers together, feeling the oiliness of the lake. I could taste it on my lips, too. “Some kind of fuel.” I could see it now, shimmering across the surface in a rainbow of colors wherever it caught the light. The surface of the lake was covered with fuel. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Right there.”

  As we drifted forward, a huge white-and-blue tail loomed out of the swirling mist in front of us.

  It was bigger than my house, straight and sharp, cutting up into the air like a knife. On the side of it, printed in bold colors, was the American flag.

  “That’s my plane,” the president said. “That’s Air Force One.”

  I stared in disbelief as we kicked closer, steering the freezer chest forward to see the rest of the giant airplane outlined in the mist like a ghost.

  “It must have skimmed across the water.” The president looked behind us as if he expected to see some kind of trail. “Been here all night. I wonder why it hasn’t sunk.”

  Coming closer, though, we could see why. The plane must have landed on the lake, just like the president said, and had skimmed across the surface until it collided with one of the small islands. The nose was wedged at a slight angle in the shallows, pointing toward the silver birch that grew there. The rest of the enormous plane was sitting back in the water, so the engines were completely submerged. Part of the tail was beneath the water, too, and the blue stripe that ran the length of the plane disappeared beneath the lake halfway along its body.

  “It’s massive.” I stopped kicking and shook my head, unable to take my eyes off it. “My village isn’t even that long.”

  “And it’s sixty-five feet high, which makes it like a six-story building.”

  “Air Force One.” I clung to the freezer and let my legs hang still in the water, swaying with the gentle current. “It’s massive,” I said again. “And it’s all yours?”

  “Well, kind of.” He stared at the plane and shook his head. “There were a lot of people on board. Not a full crew, but …” He let his words trail away.

  I tore my eyes from the plane and turned to look at the president, seeing the pain in his expression. “Maybe they’re okay?” I said, but I didn’t really believe it. Half the plane was underwater, and there was a long black scorch mark reaching up from beneath the near wing. It stretched right over the back of the plane, and I guessed it had something to do with those missiles I had seen streaking up into the sky last night.

  “Shot down,” the president said. “Just like you told me.” He took a deep breath and puffed his cheeks as he blew it out. “The front section is above the water — maybe some of them managed to get to safety.”

  His words were almost drowned out by the thudding of the helicopter as it buzzed overhead. The sound didn’t recede, though; instead it continued, right above us, then it began to descend, buffeting the water and sending large ripples ever outward from our position.

  I looked up to see the dark shape coming closer, the haziness of the rotor blades as the main body of the helicopter became more solid and the mist whipped away.

  “Damn it,” the president shouted. “Won’t they ever give up?”

  Ropes dropped from the helicopter, falling into the water beside me.

  “Tip this over!” he shouted.

  “What?”

  “Tip this over!”

  It took a second for me to understand what he meant, but as soon as I did, we flipped the freezer chest over so it was upside down in the water, the lid hanging down into the lake.

  The ropes quivered and I glanced up to see legs and boots appear from the side of the helicopter, then Hazar’s men were rappelling down toward us, weapons ready.

  “Dive!” the president shouted, and we sank under the surface, coming up inside the pocket of air trapped in the freezer.

  “Now what?” I said, treading water in the darkness. “Any ideas?”

  The president spat water and breathed heavily, but said nothing.

  “What about the plane?” My voice sounded flat inside the box. “Can we get inside without them seeing us?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Something moved above us, knocking against the freezer. A rope, perhaps, or maybe it was something else. Boots. Or hands.

  “They’re going to get us any moment,” I said. “Can we get inside the plane?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted back. “I don’t know, Oskari.”

  “Then we have to try. Come on, President, we have a plane to catch.”

  As the freezer chest began to lift away from us, we dived down into the lake and headed for the plane.

  The sound of the helicopter was deadened into a dull, repetitive thump, and the surface rippled above like a moving ceiling. The enormous monster that was Air Force One listed toward us, one wing cutting down into the lake, bubbles rising around it. Its huge bulk hung above the darkness below. It looked as if all it would take was a small push and the whole plane would slide backward and disappear into the cold depths, a place that my imagination filled with terrifying tentacled creatures and monsters with grasping claws.

  I tried not to think about such things as I swam hard and fast toward Air Force One.

  Here and there, sections of the plane glowed in the gloom, shafts of light shimmering from the windows and diffusing into the murky water. Red and green and orange, flickering on and off, reminding me of how I had thought the president’s escape pod held an alien when I first saw it in the trees.

  We passed the wing, where one engine hung useless, dangling over the abyss. The second engine was completely gone, shredded right off by the missile, leaving a tear in the underside of the wing and a black scar that reached up to the back of the plane.

  There was a gaping hole in the fuselage, too, right behind the wing, so the president led me that way, past the twisted metal edges and into the plane. We surfaced immediately in a small pocket of air and I tried to stay calm, to control my breathing, but it was difficult not to be afraid. The thought of becoming trapped here and drowning in the lake kept sliding through my mind like a cold eel.

  “Was it a good idea?” I asked, hoping the answer was “yes.”

  “I don’t know yet. We’re in the secretarial area right now, but it should be dry in my suite and at the upper deck.” The president’s voice was deadened by the cramped breathing space.

  “Can we get to it?” I battled away the creeping feeling of dread.

  “Maybe, but there’s still a little way to go.”

  “Will it be clear?” I didn’t want to drown down there, where no one would ever find me. Dad would never know what had happened to me, and he would be left to search the forest forever.

  “I hope so. Follow me.”

  “Okay,” I said, and we dived back under, forging our way deeper into the belly of the plane.

  Swimming through the plane’s corridors was horrible and otherworldly. Strip lights on the floor and ceiling shone a dull red glow through the water as if it was tinged with blood. They flickered on and off, sometimes with a sudden flash of green or orange that blinked for an instant and was gone. Objects floated in slow motion, swaying in the lazy current. Bags and papers and cases drifted through Air Force One, seeming to hang in midair. A shoe. A jacket, billowing like a jellyfish. A cushion heading at me from the darkness beyond the lights and slipping past like a strange prehistoric animal. Doors swayed open and closed, giving shocking glimpses of men and women still buckled into their seats, arms drifting i
n the current, hair washing about like weeds. There were other shapes, too, just out of sight, bobbing around like monsters waiting in the shadows.

  Coming up to breathe whenever possible, we took a few moments to suck the stale air into our lungs before diving under again and pushing on through the floating debris. We swam deeper and deeper into the plane, moving up through corridors filled with snowstorms of papers, and squeezing through doorways. The tilted and twisted position of the plane skewed everything at an awkward angle, confusing me and scrambling my sense of direction. Sometimes it was hard to know which way was up and which was down, and in places the water was so laden with floating wreckage that my bow snagged, slowing me down, so I took it from my back and swam with it gripped in one hand.

  Every time I took another breath and dived down, I had the feeling it would be my last; that eventually we would come to a dead end, and everything would go black, and we would suck water into our lungs and cough out our last hope of living.

  “Almost there,” the president said when we came up for breath.

  I looked at him in the dim light and nodded without saying anything.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “Pretty scary, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s not far now. Ready?”

  I took a deep breath and was about to nod again, when something brushed against my leg. Without thinking I kicked out and splashed away from it, backing into the president in my panic. A million horrible images flashed through my head, of monsters in the water, of those shadowy shapes just out of sight.

  “It’s all right,” the president was saying. “It’s all right.” But I hardly heard him. Blood was thumping in my ears and I was trying to get away from whatever it was, splashing in the water, making it chop in the small breathing space.

  “Get it off me,” I said as I backed into him. “Get it off!” I pressed him against the wall, fighting to escape, releasing my grip on the bow.

  And then it showed its face.

  The body bobbed up beside me, breaking the surface of the water with a gentle plop.

  The woman’s eyes were open, staring right at me, but she was dead. There was a dark hole in her forehead, clean and without any blood, because it had washed away in the water. Her hair floated around her head like it was alive, swishing this way and that in the current.

  “Don’t look at her,” the president said, taking hold of me. “Don’t look.”

  I turned around to face him, unable to get the image out of my mind, knowing she was right behind me.

  “Just breathe,” the president said. “Breathe and calm down. It’s not far now. The galley is along here, and there are stairs to the upper deck.”

  “Do you know her?” I asked when I started to calm down. “Is she … ?”

  “Her name was Patricia Young. She was on my staff. We’re in the senior staff area.”

  “That hole. She was shot?”

  “Yeah. I think you might be right. I guess Morris did a thorough job of covering his tracks.” The president held on to me. “You ready to go again?”

  “I dropped my bow.”

  “Leave it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “I have to find it.” Suddenly it was the only thing that mattered; the only thing connecting me to home and to Dad. I looked down into the dark water. “You see it?”

  “Leave it, Oskari. You’ll —”

  I dived down, feeling in the darkness. The dead woman washed against me, her legs brushing my body as I grasped for the bow, and I gritted my teeth. I had to find it. It was my duty to take it home.

  I spun in the water, waving my hands around me, hoping beyond hope that I would find it. I grabbed at anything and everything. My fingers touched each object they encountered, checking them and discarding them until … there. At the bottom of the cabin, snagged on something.

  I came up for air, disturbing the body once again, then went back down, finding the bow and working it free. One end of it was trapped under some kind of chair that must have shifted when I panicked, so I wedged my shoulders against the wall and used my feet to shove it. The chair resisted at first, then gave way, and the bow was free, floating away from me. I whipped around and grasped it tight before pushing to the surface, bursting out of the water.

  “Got it.” I held the bow out for the president to see.

  “You ready now?” he asked.

  I moved away from him and nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”

  We took a deep breath and went under again, only this time I knew what those dark shapes beyond the lights were: They were the bodies of the people who had been in the plane, and there were more of them here. Men and women drifting in a tangle, floating among the papers and pens and lost shoes.

  Their arms seemed to reach out for us as we swam past.

  We didn’t stop to rest when we finally dragged ourselves out of the water. The feeling that Hazar and Morris were right behind us kept us pressing on.

  “This way,” the president said, and I followed, trudging along the corridor, water pouring from my clothes onto the beige carpet. Around us, the plane groaned and creaked as if it were preparing to die.

  We passed a meeting room strewn with chairs and files, with a large oval table fixed in the center. There might have been a pair of legs protruding from beneath the table, but I looked away and fixed my eyes on the president’s back as he led me through a large, heavy door. When we were both on the other side of it, he sealed the door behind us and locked it shut.

  “We should be safe in here.” The president wiped his face and ran his hands along each arm to squeeze some of the water from his shirtsleeves. “Even if they come into the plane, they’ll never get through this door. It’s designed to keep terrorists out.” He forced a smile at me. “You’re on my turf now, Oskari.”

  I nodded and copied what he was doing, trying to wring some of the lake out of my clothes.

  “That’s the galley in there.” The president pointed to the room on my left. “The medical office and my suite are just back here.” He pointed over his shoulder. “These stairs lead up to the comms center and the flight deck. Come on.”

  I flicked water from my hands as I followed him, glancing into the medical office and bumping into the president when he stopped in front of me.

  “This is our way out,” he said, putting a hand on the door to our left. The large exit was set into the wall of the aircraft, with a red handle to one side of it. The words TURN TO OPEN were printed around it.

  “We can open it from in here and get out if we need to.” The president looked down at me. “Have you ever seen the President of the United States coming out of Air Force One? Waving to the crowds?”

  I shook my head.

  “Never seen that on TV?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Well.” He sighed. “If you ever did, it’s this door he comes out of — I come out of. Should’ve been coming out of it this morning.” He paused. “Anyway, first things first. This way.” He pushed open the door to his right and we walked through into his office.

  “You ever been in the White House, Oskari?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you have now. If I’m in this room, it’s the White House.”

  The dark wooden desk, set across the far corner, was still fixed in place, but there was nothing on top of it. The papers, files, and laptop that had probably been there were now strewn across the brown carpet or piled on the leather corner couch that was opposite. The president’s office chair was there, too, wheels turned up toward the ceiling like a dead animal. A curtain was pulled back along the far wall, revealing a blue-and-gold presidential seal and a row of five porthole windows. The blinds were all down, letting in only a few cracks of white light. The whole place smelled of wood and leather and polish.

  “Have a look over there.” The president pointed at the couch. �
��See if you can find my cell phone; this one’s ruined.” He pulled the bodyguard’s phone from his pocket and threw it aside as he hurried over to the desk and began yanking out drawers. Above him was a small opening in the ceiling, with a plastic tube hanging down like a thread of spider silk. On the end of it was a yellow face mask that swung and jiggled about when he bumped into it. There were more masks just like it close to me, hanging from the ceiling above the corner couch.

  I rummaged through the papers and files, throwing them onto the floor behind me until I spotted a black smartphone wedged between two of the seat cushions. “Here!”

  “Well done.” The president came around his desk and took it from me. He switched it on and waited for the screen to light up. “Surprise, surprise,” he said. “No signal.” He held it up and turned around a few times, then threw it onto the floor and kicked the desk. “Damn it! Why don’t I have a satellite phone like traitor Morris?”

  “You have any other ideas?” I asked.

  “Right.” He rubbed his face. “What now? Think, think, think. Ah! Upstairs. Comms center and flight deck. If there’s any chance of calling for help, it’ll be up there.” He turned and hurried from the room. “Come on, Oskari.”

  We made our way back along the corridor and climbed the stairs into the communications center where, despite the angle of the plane, the desks were still in place, fixed against the walls to our left and right. Everything else was a mess. Above the desks were large banks of charred electronic equipment, with every screen cracked, as if broken deliberately. There were pieces of broken plastic and wires hanging out of them like entrails. Five large office chairs and other pieces of broken electronic equipment were lying against the left wall, covering what looked like more bodies, and the floor was littered with loose papers and wires and laptops with their screens smashed. Yellow oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling, gently swaying from side to side. A tangy smell hung in the air, mixed with a hint of burning.

  The president stopped in front of me and looked around. He put one hand on the wall to support himself and shook his head in disbelief. “No chance of using any of this to call for help.”