“Pentagon Tower; the target is no longer a threat. Request permission to return to squadron.”
“Oscar Papa 4, good job! Have you captured this with the Cineflex high def camera?”
“Affirmative.”
“The President has requested that the film be downlinked directly to the Capital, so that he can show it “real time” to the American people. We are retrieving the recording now! Seems that it fits in quite well with his State of the Union message. Dimarco, looks like you are about to become a national hero.”
“Those fucking sons of bitches!” thought Jonathan. “They were going to let it happen. If I hadn’t intervened, all those people would have been horribly mutilated. Mary was right! The White House is behind it all. This stinks of the CIA. Everything they plan is so that even if not successful, the contingency gives them a win. With no intervention, the plant explodes and the President takes absolute power. With intervention it shows the American people that the President’s programs are working, preventing terror and they need to be supported. Absolute evil!”
“This has got to end, the blind and inhumane waste of human lives for the sake of power. It’s time for a contingency that they hadn’t planned.”
He flipped up the red guard, armed the tomahawk missile, and looked through the laser finder searching for the Capitol Building. As he stared through the cross-hairs, he realized that he was still over 100 miles away and was out of range. Without the laser lock he would have to enter the GPS coordinates that he had written down the night before and had stuffed into his backpack. “Oscar Papa 4, this is Pentagon tower, we have a signal that you have armed your missiles.”
“Pentagon tower, this is Oscar Papa 4, I have an instrument malfunction after firing on the helicopter. The system won’t switch off.”
“Oscar Papa 4, return to Andrews base immediately, repeat return to Andrews base immediately.”
“Roger.”
Feverishly, he dug his hand into his small pilot’s bag for his notebook that had the GPS coordinates of the Capitol Building. All he had to do was type in the coordinates, launch a tomahawk missile and wait five seconds and then there would be no more United States Government. All of it would be gone, all the inhumanity, greed, corruption and abuses of power. The House, The Senate, The Supreme Court, The President, Vice President and The Cabinet and now that he was in position, no one could stop him. He hadn’t really thought of what he would do afterwards. There were really no evasive maneuvers to escape from 11 equally equipped aircraft, with equal or superior pilots and certainly he would die. Would he go down in history as the world’s greatest traitor or hero? Would anyone ever understand why he had done it, what he was feeling, the rage! It’s the only way! When he reached his hand into the bag, on top of the notebook he felt something furry and pulled his hand back. He thought for a moment and then stuck his hand back into the bag and grabbed a handful of fur and pulled out Bruiser. Bruiser looked at him with only dangling thread for eyes, half a mouth and a mutilated nose, and immediately Carly was there in the cockpit with him. He froze, stunned, not able to continue his thinking. All of his thoughts were interrupted.
“What if it’s not real?” he heard Carly saying. “Mommy is not real, she lies and she hurts people.” The words were more than he could stand. The slap in the face was cold and hard. As he flew closer to the target, everything became more confused, like silt stirred from the bottom of a lake. The thought erupted in his mind, “Mary is involved, somehow, some way she’s involved!”
His rational mind argued, “But she discovered Lexington, if it wasn’t for her, all those people would have died.”
His instincts screamed, “There was a deeper purpose. It’s too clear, nothing is ever this clear. A new thought exploded in his mind that made him shudder with fear. “Maybe I’m doing exactly what they want me to do. Why should I listen to her? She’s changed! She savagely murdered two agents and wanted to kill the pilots.”
Rationally he thought, “Pull yourself together, finish your mission. Mary’s actions are consistent with a mother protecting her husband and daughter and gaining vengeance for her son.”
His conscience argued, “Something is not right! It’s too clear. What if Reed and Mary are in on this together?”
Carly’s soft voice entered his head, “People who kill other people are not real.”
“Oscar Papa 4 this is Pentagon tower, please report position.”
Jonathan disarmed the missile. “Malfunction corrected, heading in.”
He informed his squadron leader that he was leaving and headed for Andrews, his mind becoming clearer by the second.
When he landed, he felt a vibration on his chest. He reached under his shirt and pulled out the locket. It shook violently. There was a single thought in his mind, ”They have Carly!”
Once in the locker room he plugged the locket into his laptop and it gave him the GPS coordinates for where she was. She was on the move, heading South on interstate 95. He ran out to the tarmac to see his options. A S-76 C++ sat idly in front of a large hangar.
Chapter 29
The big Sikorsky was fast, especially because it was very light with no passengers and only 1000 lbs. of fuel. The Turbomecca engines were smooth as silk and at 80% torque he was cruising at 160 knots. He followed interstate 64E south toward Richmond and then 95 South to Charleston flying about 50 feet above the highway, following the GPS coordinates which were moving at about 80 mph.
Just south of Fayetteville he spotted a Black Suburban in pursuit of a Burgundy Taurus! The Suburban with its supercharged large block engine was more than a match for the Taurus and smashed it from the rear trying to push the Taurus into a spin. Mary was very adept at keeping control of the vehicle and once frustrated with that technique, Davidson pulled alongside and pushed her towards the guard rails. Jonathan lowered the landing gear on the big chopper and came down with a loud thud on top of the Davidson’s SUV, collapsing the roof on top of him. He thumped it again and again until Davidson lost control and flew off the highway. The SUV rolled several times before it came to a stop. There was no movement inside. Mary slammed on her brakes, screeched to a stop, and pulled to the edge of the road. She was quickly out of the car and scampered down the embankment where the Suburban lay smoldering. She pulled out the Glock and emptied it through the driver’s window and then popped the magazine and adeptly inserted a fresh one.
Jonathan landed the helicopter in the middle of the highway, blocking all lanes and stopping all traffic. He drew his gun, ran to the Mary’s car and saw Carly curled up in the back seat sucking her thumb. He screamed at Mary, motioning her to the helicopter; “Mary drop the gun and come with me. You don’t want it to end like this.”
Mary leaned against the Suburban crying. “I am so sorry, I am so sorry.”
“Mary, please, you need to drop the gun!” “I really didn’t mean for it to happen like this,” she moaned. “He wasn’t supposed to die you know?”
Jonathan didn’t answer.
“Bob was the contingency, if anything went wrong he was to make sure that you were all out of the building. I wish I could go back, my life is all back there. Can you help me go back, Jonathan?”
“All you can do now, Mary, is what is right and the right thing to do is to drop the gun before anyone else gets hurt. It won’t bring Matthew back, but it’s your only chance.”
“But now I’m a murderer. I’ve turned into everything that I hate.”
Jonathan walked toward her.
“Can you forgive me Jonathan? Will you ever love me again?”
Jonathan squeezed his eyes closed, knowing the answer, but unable to say it.
“What about Carly? She knew, she knew all along. She’s smarter than the whole fucking world.”
Carly came running from the car. “Daddy!”
“No Carly, go back…..Carly go back!”
“What are you thinking; do you think that I would kill my other baby, too? I’m not going to kill her, I
’m not going to kill you.”
Jonathan charged and grabbed her. The gun fell to the ground. “Are you going to come with me without a fight?” he asked.
Mary nodded.
Jonathan picked up Carly and she nestled into his chest and cooed almost like a chick that had just been returned to the nest.
“You came for me,” Carly said giving him a hug that nearly took away his breath.
“I ran as fast as I could.”
“I squeezed the button and you came.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I was very worried that I would never see you again and that’s why I sent Bruiser with you to bring you back home safe to me.”
“Well he did just that! I think he’s real now….what do you think?”
She nodded and squeezed him again with all her might.
“Do you want to see him?”
Her eyes opened wide as he pulled Bruiser from his pack and handed him to her.
Jonathan buckled Mary into the back seat.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“We’ll talk later.”
She hung her head, “Kill me, please kill me.”
“We’ll decide on that later.”
Afterward
I don’t know how I could have been so stupid! I had been duped not once but twice, into sponsoring something that I ultimately hated. Thank God that Carly had enough sense to see through it all. She proved smarter than all the intelligence in this world.
I sat in the back of that helicopter, completely empty, with nothing to say. I no longer felt like a human being. Jonathan landed the S-76 back at Andrews and led me and Carly back to his car. As we drove I explained the entire plan, my involvement, my life at NSA, Islee and how it had gone wrong.
“So the President was never involved?” he asked.
“I don’t know Jonathan. They never told us everything. Honestly, I thought he was but now I’m very confused.”
“I’m guessing that it was all Reed,” answered Jonathan. “He wanted to be king and used all the CIA’s resources to make it happen.”
“Will we ever know for sure?”
“Probably not. And it was you who sent me the computer and programs?”
“I did. After Matthew died, I needed to give you the tools to fight back.”
“And killing Burton and Bob, was that also part of the plan?”
“No, Jonathan you have to believe me, after Matthew died, I didn’t talk to them. At that point I was trying to help you.”
“You could have helped me the most by telling me the truth!”
“I couldn’t, I didn’t know what you’d do. And the words….I was too ashamed to say them.”
“So Burton and Davidson weren’t in your group?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Burton was going to hurt you. And whether you believe it or not, I love you. It was getting out of hand. I just knew that they would kill you….and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you!”
“And Bob?”
“Bob had always been in. He sold his soul to us for gambling debts and women. He was a pathetic son of a bitch. Jonathan, he was the one responsible for making sure that my family was out of that building. And where was he? Knowing Bob he was out screwing his whore. The thought of that fucking son of a bitch makes me sick! He deserved to die. He had one simple job. I couldn’t stand to look at him.”
“And the man in the street was killed just to have a body?”
“Man in the street?”
“Yeah, there was a guy in the street who got killed just before the explosion. It looked so much like Bob that I called him, just to make sure he was okay.”
“I’m sure it was Bob in the coffin,” said Mary.
“Mary, they can make anyone look like anyone! All they need is the same size body. You saw what I did with the street person.”
Mary nodded.
Jonathan sat mesmerized. “So the whole plan was to make me angry enough to turn against my country. Reed wanted the power: to set me up, make me a traitor and then have me take revenge by killing the President and then my certain death. He’d have everything: evidence, motive and no trial. The other pilots would shoot me down, so there would never be any questions. It was a perfect plan and it almost happened. Mary, I squeezed the trigger! Do you know I squeezed the trigger? Thank God I was out of range of the laser finder. You have no idea how close this came to actually happening! What did you think would be the result Mary? What were you hoping to gain?”
“I didn’t know the whole plan.”
“But if you had, would you have gone along with it?”
“After Matthew died, everything changed.”
“But what if he hadn’t died, would you have sacrificed me?”
Mary sat silent.
“For what? You’d have destroyed this great nation, for what?”
“For a chance at starting over.”
“And you just follow them blindly? Reed is nothing but a self serving, egotistical tyrant who would set himself up as king. And that’s what you killed our son and would have killed me for?”
“I see that now, but we never saw him. All we knew was that someone was presenting the means for us to accomplish the plan. We couldn’t have done it without them. Jonathan, you have to believe me, if I could see that bastard now, I’d kill him.”
“There’ll be no more killing. But, you can do better than that. You can testify against him.”
“No one will believe me or you. Remember, right now we’re still wanted fugitives. And God knows that Reed has covered his ass and we’ll never make it to the courtroom. He’ll use every available resource to hunt us down and kill us.”
“You’re forgetting something. Something that Reed didn’t plan. I’m a national hero. I shot down a helicopter over Lexington, Kentucky. There’s film of me on national television, there’s a cockpit voice recording and there’s forensics. I believe the Washington Post would love an exclusive story with Tony Dimarco aka Jonathan Anderson the man who prevented a terrorist attack and saved thousands of lives. I also have a recording from Reed’s office, in which he confirms that he sanctioned a helicopter to blow up the gas tanks in Lexington.”
“When did you get that?”
“I visited him just before the flight. That will go perfectly with the exclusive you and Islee are going to give the Post on the largest failed coup in the history of the United States.”
“Jonathan, they’ll arrest us.”
“And you’ll confess and they’ll let me go.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Mary, you’re already dead.”
Jonathan was right. All that was left for me was to do something to expose the truth, at least as much as I knew. We had all the information from the CIA’s database, my testimony and Jonathan’s recording. It turned out to be enough.
In hindsight, I don’t know why I was so stupid, and so gullible. I now know what the Tao masters meant when they said that every act of violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon itself.
It has taken this horrible experience to realize that answers never come through anger and violence. I nearly ruined a perfect man to bring about an imperfect end, one that would have resulted in a worse rather than a better situation.
My plea bargain and testimony against the others gained life sentences without parole for Islee and me, at the same minimum security prison in North Carolina. They were much more interested in the big fish in the operation than Islee and me. The trial lasted nearly 15 months and William Reed and PD McVay were convicted of treason in a military courtroom and executed 7 months later. The leaders were arrested and have disappeared, certainly executed. I don’t know what happened to the others. My beloved Jonathan and Carly are gone forever from my life. He was reinstated in the CIA and is recognized as the man that saved this country. Except for Islee, the only one who talks to me is Matthew. He reaches his little burnt fingers out to me every day
and asks, “Why?”
Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist Page 33
