The Fall

by R. J. Pineiro

  Born Daniel Goodwin and known in the Florida biker community simply as Dago, Mickey Valle’s former right-hand man and current owner of the Paradise Motorcycle Shop crossed his massive arms while regarding Art-Z with a look that could cut the aluminum frame of the Harley on the lift.

  “You have some nerve showing up here, asshole,” he said in a tenor voice custom-made for his six-three and two-hundred-fifty-pound frame. Even pushing sixty, Dago still commanded respect. The man was as formidable now as the day he nearly tore off Art-Z’s head when the FBI arrested Angela on hacking charges. “Maybe I’ll finish what I started twenty years ago.”

  “He’s helping me, Dago.”

  “He left you holding the bag, Angie,” he replied in a much softer voice, his eyes warming up, even glistening a little as he stared at her with parental concern. After all, it was Dago who had fought like hell to gain custody of the orphan, just as Mickey Valle had stipulated in his will, only to lose her to the FBI on technicalities. Three years later, upon her release from the Feds, it was Dago who’d brought her home from Orlando, given her time to decompress, and taxed the shop’s bank account to send her to college. Dago had been there when she graduated from FIT, helped finance her years at MIT, funding the room and board not covered by her scholarship, had stood and clapped when she’d earned that Ph.D. diploma, and had even given her away at her wedding.

  Dago’s gaze became frosty again as he shifted it to Art-Z, his tone regaining its edge as he added, “This no-good weasel took you from us, taught you to be a criminal hacker, and then ran for cover the moment the Feds showed up. The world would certainly be a better place without him, and I’ll be happy to do the honors.”

  “I told you I shouldn’t have come,” Art-Z said to Angela, taking two steps back while rubbing his neck. “I think I like my head exactly where it is.”

  “And I can think of a warmer place to stuff it,” Dago replied, cupping a fist into the palm of his hand.

  “Stop it, you two!” Angela snapped. “If you care one damn iota about me, you will put your differences aside and help me find my husband! Have you been listening to me? My face may not be in the evening news, but I promise you that I have one hell of a military posse on my ass, and they are armed and dangerous!” She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes, feeling a headache coming, then added in a calmed voice, “I’m … deeply screwed, Dago, and I need your help.”

  The veteran biker, arms crossed again, looked away while leaning against the hydraulic lift and exhaling heavily, dropping his gaze to the oil-stained concrete floor. “Angie, I promised Mickey I’d always take care of you. I love you like the daughter I never had, and you know I’d do anything for you.”

  Angie walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his wide chest.

  “All right, Little Hacker,” he said, returning the hug while patting her on the back. “What do you need old Dago to do for you?”

  * * *

  “What I need, Flaherty, is any information that will tell me where she may have gone,” fumed General Hastings while pacing in his VIP office on the third floor of Project Phoenix’s Mission Control building.

  Pete shifted his gaze to the large windows, through which Angela had made her amazing escape.

  It was midmorning now, and the press was already aware of the mission’s failure. Social media had gone viral with stories about Jack vanishing during reentry and presumed dead. Unlike Columbia, whose large mass could be seen burning up across the skies of Texas and Louisiana, Jack’s reentry burn-up would have resembled little more than a brief shooting star. Fortunately for all involved in Project Phoenix, the news quickly shifted to tropical storm Claudette, scheduled to make landfall within the hour and rip across Central Florida with winds up to seventy miles per hour. Preparations were already underway at the Kennedy Space Center to get the facility ready for the storm, including exiting all nonessential personnel, even the media.

  Pete just wished that included one General George Hastings and his damn entourage.

  Pete regarded the strapping general, his freckles dancing on his face as he tightened his jaw in obvious anger. This man, like so many of America’s top brass, was quite used to getting his way, and he was especially accustomed to stomping on anyone who dared challenge his authority. Angela had managed to give the general’s attitude right back to him and get away with it—at least for now.

  Fucking bully, he thought, staring at Hastings.

  Pete, who used to get picked on in high school for being smart, had spent a lifetime dealing with assholes who loved to steamroll over anyone they considered weak. Fortunately, he had gotten help along the way, first from his blue-collar father, who taught him how to box so he could at least put up a fight, and later on, from Jack who showed him a trick or three about self-defense, SEAL style.

  People like Hastings, however, had elevated bullying to a fine art. The general belonged to a class of bastards who cared about nothing except their own personal agendas, directing traffic from their comfortable Pentagon offices and control rooms while people like Jack risked everything out in the field.

  Unfortunately for Pete, the powers that be had decided that Hastings would be part of Project Phoenix’s overseeing committee, making him his superior. That, however, didn’t mean that Pete couldn’t fight back.

  Though never overtly.

  Although Pete had learned much from Jack in the art of hand-to-hand combat, he also learned to think and act covertly.

  “General, I’ve already told you she turned off her phone and didn’t go home,” Pete finally replied in his best professional voice while mustering savage control to keep his tightening fists from delivering a quick hook followed by an uppercut—though he wondered how much damage he could really inflict on the general while Riggs stood at attention three feet away.

  “We need to find her.”

  Pete looked away for a moment, before scratching the back of his head and asking, “What I don’t understand, General, is why she fled in the first place. What would make my chief scientist—one of NASA’s finest—climb out of a three-story window, hop on her bike, and drive away like a bat out of hell? I mean, the woman has more patents to her name than the rest of my scientific staff, combined.”

  Hastings shrugged, his face awash with innocence. “I was just having a conversation about the incident. I was simply trying to get her to admit that she changed the descent profile, and then I was going to cut her loose back to you to work the problem. God knows we need her to help us solve this mess. But I got called away in the middle of it, and when I returned she was gone.”

  Pete just stared back, his training preventing his emotions from betraying him.

  Had the good general paid closer attention to the detailed monthly billings of Project Phoenix—like he was supposed to as chair of the overseeing committee—he would have noticed the million-dollar closed-circuit monitoring system installed in this building six months ago, which included hidden Webcams in every room linked wirelessly to his workstation in Mission Control, as well as the computer in his office, and the one in Pete’s study at home in nearby Melbourne.

  Pete had seen the way Hastings and Riggs threatened Angela at gunpoint, and he also had been delighted and relieved to watch her escape. He had quickly downloaded the entire video file to a flash card currently tucked away in one of his socks before deleting it from the servers to keep Hastings from knowing he had witnessed this gross act of harassment.

  Pete almost grinned as he wondered how the joint chiefs would react to the video, which he planned to release if things got out of control.

  “General, I’m not sure what to tell you except that Dr. Taylor just lost her husband.” He paused for effect, then lowered his voice a couple of decibels while adding, “Look, I was close to them. They were in love, sir. She has to be devastated—in shock. I’m wondering if your conversation, however well-intentioned, could have been misinterpreted.”

  Hastings crossed his
arms and nodded. “I think I see your point.”

  “Maybe try the local bars?” Pete offered. “I think they used to frequent the Mai Tiki over at the Cocoa Beach Pier. Maybe she just needed a couple of drinks and some time alone to mourn her loss.”

  Hastings considered that for a moment before glancing over at Riggs, who took off in a hurry.

  That should buy some time, he thought, not certain what to do next. They had combed through the telemetry and basically had nothing. Jack was gone, and with him Project Phoenix and any hopes of resurrecting NASA.

  And then there’s Angela.

  Pete was certain that she was anywhere but in a bar. He would put his money on one of the biker or hacker hangouts in the Miami area, but he wasn’t about to tell Hastings that, especially after seeing the way he had treated her.

  No, the general would have to figure that one out all on his own.

  Let him put his so-called military intelligence to the test, he thought, trying to figure out a way to reach Angela, whom he felt was central in solving whatever happened up there.

  Jack’s disappearance didn’t make any technical sense. Angela had already deducted as much by reviewing the video feed before Hastings scared her away. Jack had not only vanished, but the event had taken place just as he’d reached a very strange harmonic to the numeral twelve.

  Hastings’s mobile rang. He pulled it out of his coat pocket, looked at it, and waved Pete away.

  Pete left the VIP office and stepped into his own just two doors down, closing the door and quickly settling behind his computer, where he logged into the video monitoring system and pulled up the feed from the Webcam in the VIP office.

  A window appeared in the middle of his screen, showing Hastings looking toward the parking lot while holding the encrypted phone to his ear.

  “… she’s still missing, but we may know where she is … I’ve already given the order to my people in Miami … she changed the descent profile … but that worked to our advantage. I don’t think she knows how much she’s helped us … all right, I’ll call back again in a few hours.”

  So he knows about Miami, Pete thought, watching him leave the office and killing the feed in case Hastings was heading his way, but the general went back down to Mission Control.

  Pete logged back in and pulled up the very last and very strange telemetry reading from Jack’s jump.

  MACH 1.2

  G-METER 12.0

  TEMPERATURE 1200 DEGREES.

  ALTITUDE 120,000 FEET

  There’s the numeral twelve.

  But what does it mean?

  In addition to a natural tendency to think and act covertly, Jack had also ingrained in Pete the stark reality that there were no such things as coincidences. There was a logical reason for everything—everything—and that included this weird set of numbers that could explain what happened to his best friend.

  The key was knowing how to make sense of them.

  And that key resided in the mind of Angela.

  Pete had seen the gifted MIT doctor at work over the past few years and knew that there was never a technical challenge that she couldn’t overcome given enough time and data. From the mind-numbing difficulties of miniaturizing NASA technology to fit it all in that incredible suit to developing new insertion algorithms and even solving the complexities of delivering jumpers one-hundred-percent combat-ready the moment they landed, Angela had not only solved problem after problem, but had done so with technical elegance. And the enabling catalyst was Pete providing her with plenty of experimentation resources and lots of time to iterate, learn, and improve.

  Time and data.

  At NASA, Pete became adept at giving her both while he handled the impatient and temperamental Pentagon brass, blocking and tackling so she could focus on the technical aspect of this cutting-edge program. This division of labor, plus the fearless but highly intuitive nature of Jack’s ability to become a very consistent and tireless guinea pig, had been the magical combination that allowed this project to make progress at the pace it did.

  Time and data.

  The question now was how to provide them to Angela while she was on the run.

  After considering his options, Pete made a decision that could very well cost him his career—and even imprisonment—if he got caught.

  But I owe Jack that, and then some, he thought, running a hand over the scar tissue on his left thigh, which got mangled during a rock-climbing accident in Colorado eons ago. He had nearly bled out while Jack carried him for two miles on his shoulders down that mountain to the nearest park ranger station, where they airlifted him to Denver.

  Pete logged into the system and invoked a back door installed by Angela to communicate preliminary project results before they made it to official reports. This was a bit of a safe haven to allow open communications of experiments between him and Angela, especially those that didn’t work, without having any government personnel looking over their shoulder. Jack had thought of the concept to keep a covert communications channel between them without the risk of being overheard, especially by those who didn’t understand the highly experimental nature of the scientific learning process.

  Pete finished his short message and logged off before reaching for the bottom drawer in his desk and retrieving a small Taser X2 secured to an ankle strap, a gift from Jack last Christmas.

  Pete strapped this compact insurance policy to his right ankle before turning around in his swivel chair and staring at the heavy cloud coverage over the Cape.

  The KSC weather system reported winds already reaching thirty miles per hour as Claudette’s edge embraced the western portion of the Florida peninsula. The downpour over Tampa had topped five inches of rain and winds in excess of sixty miles per hour.

  Pete stared at it while thinking of his best friends.

  Wherever they may be.

  * * *

  In his forty years of life, Jack thought he had seen everything. From that devastating car accident that took his parents when he was seventeen, to joining the Navy and entering the BUD/S training program at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.

  Jack had clicked with the SEAL culture from the moment he’d stepped into the starting phase of BUD/S designed to eliminate those who didn’t belong with this elite fighting unit. He’d entered the grueling sixth week of training, also called Hell Week, with plenty of steam left in his inner engine, and pushed on to the finish line, graduating at the top of his class. Soon after graduation, Jack was given an assignment with SEAL Team 3 and was deployed to the Middle East.

  He spent the following five years giving the Taliban a taste of its own terrorist medicine, conducting dozens of operations, mostly of the “doing a hit” variety, SEAL speak for eliminating HVTs—High Value Targets. Jack then took a transfer to SEAL Team 4, operating in the South and Central American theaters—a duty that inserted him deep in the jungles of Colombia hunting drug lords.

  It was there, during a special reconnaissance mission south of Bogotá, where the failure of brand-new surveillance gear telegraphed their position, resulting in the slaughter of his SEAL team at the hands of surprisingly well-equipped Colombian cartel militia. Only Jack had escaped, using every trick he knew to slog through four miles of jungle to his extraction point while being hunted like a dog.

  That same evening, as he’d sat alone on the deck of that Navy cruiser on his way home, Jack stared at the vanishing Colombian coastline beyond a turquoise Caribbean sea and made a promise to his fallen warriors: he would honor their deaths by doing his best to keep faulty equipment from ever reaching the front lines. And that promise led him to become the Pentagon’s premier tester of leading-edge combat gear.

  But all of his training, his experiences, his missions—even dropping from the sky like a comet into this surreal world—couldn’t prepare him for the folded American flag and the three shell casings on the mantelpiece next to the framed condolence letter handwritten by the Secretary of the Navy to Angela. In honor of Jack’s death.<
br />
  Five years ago.

  What. The. Fuck.

  Feeling light-headed, Jack held on to the back of the sofa, where he had just deposited Angela, still passed out.

  Breathing deeply, his eyes converged on the framed photo on the cocktail table. It showed Angela holding hands with none other than Pete Flaherty.

  Slowly, Jack sat down at the edge, by her feet, breathing deeply, looking around the room, his hands feeling the fabric of the very same sofa where he had spent countless nights these past two years.

  But how could it be the same sofa? How could this be the same living room? When he left last night for the Cape, he was pretty sure he was alive and breathing.

  And he was damn sure his wife wasn’t dating Pete!

  He briefly closed his eyes, listening to the voice deep in his gut telling him not to buy the PTSD or concussion theories. There was no way he could be imagining this.

  But if he wasn’t delusional, then how could he explain what his eyes were projecting deep into his confused brain? How could he have been dead for five years? How come there was no one waiting for him at the landing site? How could a tropical storm just vanish from sight? And how in the world did Angela’s hair become blond and grow several inches in one day?

  The room started to spin, as confusion led to vertigo.

  Jack closed his eyes again and took several deep breaths, hands gripping the bottom cushions of his sofa.

  But the same voice told him it wasn’t his sofa, and this wasn’t his living room, or his house, or … even his wife?

  But it was Angela. He stared at her features as she slept peacefully next to him. Aside from the hair and that new freckle, she certainly looked like the same woman he’d married.