A Hideous Beauty: Kingdom Wars I

by Jack Cavanaugh

  Eyes fixed on him, I made my way along the wharf to the pier, walking, then jogging, then running. I sprinted down the pier and up the gangplank, past a startled ticket-taker.

  “Hey! You need a ticket to get in!” he shouted at my back. “You need a ticket!”

  I burst onto the hangar deck looking for stairs or a ladder up to the flight deck. I found myself in an enormous metal cavern with several different aircraft on display.

  At the far end, to my right, I saw a man in a Hawaiian T-shirt heading up some stairs. By the time he huffed and puffed his way to the top, I was right behind him.

  The deck was a display area for nearly two dozen jets and helicopters. I started jogging in the direction where I saw Myles last, looking around fuselages and wings and rotors as I ran. Passing the island superstructure, I found him standing at the far end of the deck.

  I stopped running a hundred yards before reaching him, reminding myself of who he really was. Even now, without a ceiling overhead, I glanced up to see if there were any gargoyle demons close by.

  His back was to me. He stood casually as though he was admiring the bay. “Glad you could make it,” he said. “You’re right on time. Predictable to a fault.”

  He was just trying to goad me and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I’d boasted that I would stop him and had failed. Just like in high school, he’d bested me. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of getting my goat.

  I followed the line of his gaze.

  A chill sliced through me and not from the breeze.

  Semyaza wasn’t looking at Coronado.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she?” he said. “I’ve always liked her graceful lines.”

  He was looking south at the bridge spanning the bay, a blue ribbon stretched over a series of arches, suspended between earth and heaven.

  CHAPTER 27

  Her lungs were feeling the burn. With shoes in hand, Jana rounded the bend of the on-ramp, which looked more like a parking lot than a freeway. Bored drivers whistled, honked, or shouted suggestive comments as she ran by them. At the top of the ramp a pair of California Highway Patrol motorcycles blocked access to the bridge. Beyond them the upward slope of the roadway was empty of traffic in both directions.

  Jana slowed to a walk as she passed a school bus of screaming children, first- or second-graders from the looks of them. They were unattended. The door to the bus was open. The engine was turned off. The driver’s seat was empty.

  Between the front line of cars and the roadblock a drama with five actors was taking place, featuring two CHP officers and three women. The hoods of cars served as front row seats for bystanders who had nothing else to do while waiting for the motorcade.

  Of the actors, the most animated was a woman with close-cropped, black hair, barely five feet tall and shaped like a fire hydrant. She stood toe to toe with the officers, waving a piece of paper under their noses. Two taller women who were dressed like elementary-school teachers—conservative style, comfortable shoes—backed her up. From the brunette’s trucker vocabulary, Jana concluded she was the bus driver.

  “Look at it!” she screamed. “Look at it! This is my pass! An invitation . . . on White House stationery!”

  The CHP officers stood shoulder-to-shoulder presenting a united front. With their helmets, reflective sunglasses, and headset microphones, they looked like Storm Troopers from Star Wars.

  The taller of the officers said, “Lady, I don’t care if you have a letter signed by Abraham Lincoln, we’re not letting you through.”

  The brunette’s solo turned to a trio as the women behind her added their voices to the argument. The CHP officers remained unmoved, unfazed by the barrage of arguments.

  “But we have an invitation!”

  “Explain that to a busload of kids!”

  “They’ve been practicing for more than a month!”

  “I want to speak to your supervisor.”

  “. . . a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

  Reclining on the hood of a blue Ford Mustang, a young couple looked on with amusement. Other drivers from the line of cars behind them had filtered forward and were standing around with arms folded, some shielding their eyes from the sun.

  Jana moved among them, doing her best to blend in. She glanced in the direction of the motorcade route, a crazy scenario playing in her head of a black limousine slowing, the back door flying open, and Christina yelling from inside for her to jump in. It was a ridiculous idea, she knew, but nevertheless she positioned herself near the front, hoping that one or two of the bystanders would unintentionally run interference for her.

  “Here he comes!” the man on the Mustang shouted.

  All eyes turned toward the motorcade route as an assortment of limousines and oversized SUVs snaked up the freeway toward them. Six CHP motorcycle officers led the motorcade, their emergency lights flashing.

  To Jana it looked like a funeral procession. She spotted the presidential limousine, marked with furiously fluttering flags that bore the presidential seal.

  She tightened the grip on her shoes. Her heart hammered as she readied herself for whatever would happen next.

  To cheers from the northbound ramp audience, the lead motorcycles zoomed by them impressively.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, the motorcade slowed and stopped. Doors to three limos flew open, disgorging big men in dark suits with dark sunglasses and one attractive blonde in a red skirt and matching jacket.

  Christina.

  “You go, girlfriend!” Jana muttered, impressed.

  All but two of the Secret Service detail surrounded the presidential limousine, looking outward, vigilant, their heads in constant motion. The other two agents approached the roadblock. While they were still a good distance away, the brunette bus driver began making her appeal to them directly.

  “Tell these Nazi thugs to let us through! We have an invitation,” she shouted, waving the letter as though it was a historic proclamation backing a noble cause.

  While everyone else was watching the drama unfold, Christina caught Jana’s eye. With a tilt of her head she motioned Jana toward the school bus. Jana signaled she understood with a nod. Turning, she wove her way through the crowd toward the bus.

  She could hear Christina’s voice behind her. “Officers, we need those children at the rally.”

  A deep male voice said, “Ma’am, we’ll take care of this. Please get back in the car.”

  The now-familiar protest of the bus driver started up again, prompting a response from the CHP officers. The Secret Service agent played referee.

  With everyone engrossed in the Jerry Springer–type drama, Jana was able to wander unnoticed to the school bus. Slipping on her shoes, she casually climbed aboard as though she belonged with the children. Only when she was inside did she risk a glance back at the motorcade through the windshield.

  She saw Christina climbing into the limo as the stout brunette thrust her fists skyward to a smattering of cheers and applause. The CHP officers mounted their motorcycles to move them out of the way. And the Secret Service agents returned to the motorcade, one of them bending down to give a thumbs-up sign to the back window of the presidential limo.

  Maybe it wasn’t Christina’s doing after all. The president wants this bus at the rally. Why?

  The driver and two teachers were making their way back to the bus. Jana turned and made her way down the aisle toward the back.

  Curious eyes watched her. Some of the children smiled and waved. She smiled and waved back.

  “We’re going to sing for the president of the United States!” one girl told her proudly.

  “I know!” Jana replied. “Sing pretty for him, OK?”

  “Teacher! Manuel hit me!”

  Next to the window a boy with innocent brown eyes was sitting on his hands.

  “Stop hitting her!” Jana scolded him. Manuel didn’t fool her for a second.

  Jana made it to the back row just as the trio of adults was boa
rding the bus. She slid down low, displacing a skinny little boy from the back corner.

  She whispered to him, “Thank you for sharing your seat with me.”

  “We’re going to sing for the president of the United States!” he told her.

  “I know.”

  “My daddy said that he didn’t vote for the president, but that I could sing for him anyway.”

  “Can you keep a secret?” Jana said. “I didn’t vote for the president either.”

  The boy grinned.

  “Can you keep another secret?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Pretend like I’m not here, OK?”

  He agreed. She won him over with her smile. Little boys, grown men, Jana knew her smile could get them to do whatever she wanted them to do.

  From the front of the bus, adult voices issued orders for the children to sit down and be quiet. The motor roared to life. With a series of starts and jerks, the bus inched forward, backed up, then inched forward again as the driver maneuvered around the cars in front of them.

  Hunkered down in the backseat, Jana congratulated herself. With Christina’s help she was in the motorcade. Whatever happened from here, she would be there to report it.

  With time to kill, she mulled over the Secret Service agent’s thumbs-up sign. News copy for tonight’s broadcast formed in her head.

  Moments before the assassination the president stopped his motorcade to assist a busload of children who were scheduled to sing for him. Ironically, their song would be the last song he ever heard.

  As the bus picked up speed Jana risked a peek out the rear window. With the city skyline behind them and the bay below them, they were about a quarter of the way across the bridge.

  “Don’t do this, Myles.”

  “Myles is dead. My name is Semyaza.”

  From the flight deck of the USS Midway I scanned the bay bridge and surrounding area for anything that could be a threat to the motorcade. Coast Guard patrol boats plied the waters beneath the bridge, duplicating my effort.

  I felt as useless as the museum aircraft on the deck beside me.

  The president’s motorcade came into view, a long line of black vehicles followed by a yellow school bus.

  “No!” I cried.

  Semyaza grinned. “Nice touch, don’t you think? The school bus was the president’s idea.”

  The motorcade sailed smoothly across the bridge under clear blue skies. It was a perfect San Diego Chamber of Commerce day.

  I had to find the threat and reveal it. What were the possibilities?

  Sniper. No. There were no buildings close enough to the bridge for a sniper. Besides, the bridge was too high, the angles were all wrong.

  Portable rocket launcher. But from where? Again, distance and angles were a problem.

  Explosives. The pilings beneath the water surface could be rigged. But that was so obvious. It was the Secret Service’s job to secure the bridge. But then, it was their job to secure buildings and they had missed the school book depository in Dallas in 1963, hadn’t they?

  Of course, if the president was part of the plot, any of the vehicles in the motorcade could be rigged to . . .

  The school bus!

  No! It was unthinkable.

  I shot a glance at the nonhuman being beside me. Was human life so cheap to them that they would kill a busload of schoolchildren for show? What was I saying? Since when did Satan or demons have any regard for human life?

  I have to warn them. I have to warn the people on the bus. Or maybe . . . maybe I don’t have to warn them. Maybe the answer to putting a stop to this whole thing is standing beside me.

  “You have the power to stop this, don’t you? If not the power, the authority.”

  Semyaza sneered. “You cannot begin to comprehend the power I have,” he said.

  “Then stop this!”

  Without answering me, Semyaza turned northward. “Ah! Right on time,” he said.

  I followed his gaze. In the distant sky I saw a speck that at first glance appeared to be a blackbird. But it wasn’t a bird. Its flight was mechanically straight. And it was coming directly toward us.

  Jana turned toward the front of the bus just as the driver glanced up into the oversized mirror. Her eyes locked on Jana.

  Busted! Jana thought.

  But the driver resumed driving and said nothing.

  Before Jana had time to breathe a sigh of relief, one of the teachers sitting in the front seat checked the mirror for herself. The way she popped out of her seat, you would have thought it was spring-loaded. She charged down the aisle. “What are you doing on this bus?” she shouted.

  On both sides of the aisle the kids watched with wide-eyed fear, the expression they get whenever someone is in trouble and they’re glad it isn’t them.

  Reaching the back row, the teacher snatched up the skinny boy, Jana’s coconspirator, as though Jana was a child molester. The woman’s cheap salt-and-pepper wig was knocked askew by the effort. “Who are you?” she screamed.

  The second teacher, shorter and with Chihuahua-like protruding eyes, leaned at a crazy angle from behind to punctuate the question with an angry glare.

  Jana smiled her smile, even though she knew it didn’t have the same effect on women as it had on men. She decided now would be a good time to play the celebrity newscaster card.

  “Maybe you don’t recognize me,” she said. “My name is Jana Torres, a reporter with the—”

  Something out the window caught the second teacher’s attention. She used it to distract the kids from the backseat stowaway. “Hey, kids! Look! On this side. Up in the sky. A fighter jet!”

  Children poured across the aisle like water sloshing in a tube, plastering their faces against the windows.

  “It looks mean,” one girl said.

  The teacher chuckled at the girl’s innocence. “I suppose it does,” she said. “But that’s only to frighten away our enemies. He’s friendly to us.”

  “Cool! He’s coming right at us!” a boy shouted.

  “He’s probably doing a flyover,” the teacher explained. “You know, like they do at parades and football games.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the military’s way of saluting the president.”

  Jana lifted herself up onto the seat and looked out the window. She agreed with the little girl. The fighter looked mean.

  “He’s the lead pilot enforcing the no-fly zone,” Semyaza said, introducing the approaching aircraft. “Thirty seconds ago he broke from his designated flight path. His name is Danny Noonan.”

  “Noonan . . .”

  “I thought you’d recognize the name. After your little jaunt to Montana, you can probably piece together his motive.”

  The jet was targeting the bridge. I’d found the threat, but there was no alarm for me to sound. It seemed every time I turned around lately I felt helpless. It was getting tiresome.

  “He knows, doesn’t he?” I said, swallowing hard. “He knows Lloyd Douglas killed his . . .”

  I had to do a little generational math. Noonan’s son would be too old to be a fighter pilot. That meant that Douglas had killed the pilot’s . . .

  “. . . grandfather,” I said.

  “Very good, Grant. In case you haven’t noticed this about us already, you’ll soon learn that angels love irony. When Danny was a little boy, Lloyd Douglas was his hero. Douglas used to parade the boy and his father around the country to political rallies and fund-raisers. It was a great spectacle, the survivors of the Vietnam hero Douglas tried so valiantly to save.”

  “You told Danny the truth.”

  “Imagine his disappointment. A patriotic young man, the product of a proud military family . . . imagine how he felt when he learned it was all a lie, that the man he worshipped was in reality his grandfather’s killer. For a warrior like Danny, there is only one way to right such a grievous wrong. Blood vengeance.”

  The blackbird-sized speck in the sky had transformed into an FA-18 Hornet, b
ristling with armament. Its nose dipped, taking on an attack posture.

  Semyaza rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be good!” he said.

  Two additional FA-18s appeared from nowhere on an intercept course.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Semyaza said. “They won’t catch him. Danny has superior skills. Besides, he has an edge. He’s their trainer. He knows the tactics. He knows their weaknesses as pilots. He’ll exploit them.”

  Noonan’s jet streaked in front of us with such ferocity it looked and sounded like it was ripping open the sky. A rocket flared beneath one wing, then the other. Twin smoke trails looking like white serpents struck the bridge.

  I held my breath, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  When he is suspended between earth and heaven . . .

  Two explosions less than a second apart created a single ball of smoke and fire. The one-two punch took out the section of bridge immediately in front of the motorcade.

  Noonan pulled up. An instant later the pursuit FA-18s screamed past us.

  On the bridge, the line of vehicles bowed forward with simultaneous clouds of white smoke rising from the tires. Some fishtailed. Others rear-ended the vehicle in front of them. The bus swung sideways, the front slamming against the bridge railing and for a second it appeared as though it might go over. But it didn’t. It came to a stop.

  None of the vehicles plunged over the bridge’s severed end. From what I could see, some limos were crumpled, but nothing serious. There was no serious damage.

  “Ha! He missed!” I shouted.

  Jana, along with everything and everyone inside the bus, was thrown forward when the driver hit the brakes, hitting her head on the seat in front of her. Already a knot was forming.

  It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the aftermath. Children lay scattered everywhere and in every conceivable position, in the aisle, on the seats, under the seats. It looked like a doll factory had exploded.

  The teachers had been thrown backward on top of children. Now they were groggily trying to disentangle themselves, sorting out whose limbs were whose.