“Vince.” She broke away from me and walked toward the man, led him to a private space we claimed in a nearby corridor. “Thank God you were with him.” She took hold of the man’s hand. “My God, look at you. You’re soaking wet. Are you all right? What happened?”
Vince nodded at me, and only then did Katelyn realize that we had never met before.
“I’m sorry. Vince, this is my brother-in-law, Jack Peterson. Jack, this is Vince. He works closely with Aaron at the factory.”
We shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you,” Vince said. Then he turned his attention back to Katelyn. “Have you seen him yet?”
“No,” she replied. “They won’t let us in. I don’t even know what happened to him. Can you tell me?”
Vince regarded her with a look of regret. “He took a bad hit, kiddo. That speedboat came at us like a torpedo. It broke a giant hole in the hull. The boat’s gone.”
“It sank?” Katelyn asked, taking in the enormity of the situation, then shaking her head as if to clear it. “But I don’t care about that. I just want to know what happened to Aaron. You said he was distracted.”
Vince nodded. “Yes, ma’am. He was having a rough time today, even before this happened.” Vince glanced around to make sure no one was listening, and lowered his voice. “We were working with the Coast Guard, fishing out small pieces of floating debris, bagging everything and labeling it to deliver to the investigators, when Aaron spotted something more substantial than a scrap of metal. We both had a bad feeling as we motored closer, and sure enough, it was what we thought.”
Vince paused and looked down at his feet. “It was a little girl with curly blond hair. She couldn’t have been more than three.”
Katelyn covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no.”
“We were surprised to find her all in one piece without a single cut or bruise. Aaron leaned over the side to grab hold of her by the shirt collar and lift her aboard. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but when he looked down at her face, I think he saw the faces of his own kids, Katelyn, and he lost it. He completely lost it.” Vince bowed his head.
“We’d both seen a lot of bad stuff over the past few days, but this was… It was tough on both of us.” Vince’s eyes lifted. “Aaron cradled that little girl in his arms and he wept with a despair I’ve never seen in another human being, not in all my God-given days.”
Katelyn covered her face with both hands and sank onto a chair, shaking with quiet sobs.
Vince sat down beside her. He put an arm around her to offer some comfort, while I just stood there, imagining my brother holding that little girl in his arms. I knew the feeling. I had seen a child, too, and a battered teddy bear…
Katelyn looked up. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Is that why he was so distracted?”
Vince nodded. “He was on his knees, rocking that little toddler in his arms when the speedboat came out of nowhere. I turned around at the last second and had a chance to grab onto something, but Aaron didn’t see a thing until it was too late. They rammed us on the port side and Aaron and the girl were catapulted up into the air. He struck his head on the way down, on the side of our boat as it was tipping over. He landed in the water. I dove in to get him, and but I got tangled up in the rigging and I thought for sure we were both goners. The only blessing was that there were enough rescue boats around to come and help us out. People were diving in, left, right and center. They pulled us aboard a fast little cruiser that took us over to the Coast Guard vessel where a chopper flew us here.”
“Thank God,” Katelyn said. “Was Aaron conscious at all?”
Vince hesitated, then shook his head. “It wasn’t good, Katelyn. They had to do CPR when they pulled him out of the water.”
She blinked a few times. “He wasn’t breathing?”
“No, but they got him back. I swear, I met some amazing heroes today. We were as lucky as two men can be.”
It was my turn, then, to sink onto a chair and comprehend everything Vince had just described. I thought of Aaron, the brother I’d always resented, grieving so deeply for the death of that child.
I thought also of the day I woke up in the hospital in Germany, and he had been there, at my side.
I had made some effort over the years to forget about the past—for the sake of my nieces and nephews, and Katelyn—but it was only a surface forgiveness. Deep down, I still clung to grudges and age-old conflicts.
I realized suddenly that I had not called Aaron to try and connect with him the day before, as I had promised Katelyn I would.
I wished, in that moment, that I had kept my promise. Because how many second chances could one man possibly be given?
Chapter Thirty-eight
Meg
By late afternoon, Gary and I were settled on board a Coast Guard vessel approximately twelve miles east of Kennebunkport, watching a row of video monitors.
A submersible remote control camera had been sent down to the murky depths where the wreckage had been found. With bated breath, we watched the screens as the camera lights illuminated the sandy bottom of the ocean, now a somber, lonely graveyard for what remained of BSA Flight 555.
Fish swam about, curious perhaps.
It wasn’t easy to behold the evidence of all those lost lives—broken pieces of luggage, a woman’s shoe, a busted laptop, a pair of white plastic sunglasses.
And body parts.
I swallowed uneasily and turned my face away for a moment, then forced myself to focus on what I could make out of the aircraft.
“There she is,” Gary said, pointing at the tail, which was painted with a cartoonish image of fluffy white clouds against a turquoise sky—the recognizable logo of Jaeger-Woodrow Airways.
I sat forward in my seat. “There’s not much left of it, but at least it’s something.” I pointed. “Look, there. The way the metal is twisted. That’s likely where the explosion occurred, on the port side, to the rear of the cargo hold.” I turned to Gary. “We’re definitely going to have to bring her up, and every piece of her that we can get our hands on down there.”
The camera continued to cruise along the length of the hull, shining its light on the exterior.
“Can you get some footage of the inside?” I asked, pointing again. “Go in right there. Yes. Good. Now can you turn the camera to the right?” I squinted to try and get a better perspective on the damage.
“Do you see what I see?” Gary asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Look at that molten metal. There must have been a fire before the explosion, but what caused it? And why didn’t the pilots notify air traffic control? Were the smoke detectors not working?”
“We should know something about that fairly soon,” Gary said, “now that we have the CVR.” He checked his watch. “They’re probably listening to the cockpit recordings this very minute.”
“In the meantime, let’s keep looking,” I said. “It’s a pretty large debris field down there. Can we go explore a bit, just follow the wreckage.”
The tech guy maneuvered the camera to travel along the sandy field of mangled metal and scorched electrical wires. We passed a few more busted laptops, and more burned up rubble from the cargo hold—suitcases, shampoo bottles and all sorts of devices like tablets and cell phones.
Then all at once, the beam of light from the camera illuminated what appeared to be a wide, dense field of shiny silver objects, gleaming as the light passed over them.
“Oh my God. Do you see that?” I asked Gary as I bent forward and inclined my head. “What the heck? No way.”
Gary removed his glasses and bent to peer more closely at the screen. “No, that can’t be,” he said. “There are thousands of them.”
We stared at the screen while the camera panned from left to right and floated over a dense expanse of lithium-ion batteries of all types and sizes. There were button batteries, 9-Volt batteries, double and triple A’s, rechargeable battery boxes… Some were shiny and new, while others were black and burned.<
br />
Each one had the company logo Oxy-GeoTech emblazoned on the surface, and there was no sign of any protective packaging. Not that it mattered. With or without packaging, the air transfer of lithium batteries for further sale or distribution was strictly prohibited by the FAA.
“If this is what it looks like,” I said, “and Jaeger-Woodrow Airways is shipping these things in the cargo hold, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”
“You’re telling me.”
Gary picked up a phone and called headquarters.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Jack
Katelyn and I had been sitting at Aaron’s bedside in the ICU for five hours straight when she rose from her chair, squirming.
“I can’t hold it anymore,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom, but I don’t want to leave him. I want to be here if…when he wakes up.”
I recognized an undertone—that she didn’t want to be gone from the room if something else happened.
“I’ll be right here,” I told her, rising to move to the chair she had been occupying, closer to the head of the bed.
“I’ll be quick,” she said. “If he wakes up, tell him I’m here.”
“I will.”
She hurried from the room.
All I could do was sit and listen to the sound of her anxious footfalls, beating quickly down the hall to the nearest washroom. Then there was only silence, except for the steady beeping of the heart monitor.
I looked down at my brother’s pale, still face behind the oxygen mask and was struck by my keen awareness of Katelyn’s unconditional love for him and his love for her. There was a permanence between the two. Something unbreakable and eternal that would continue beyond this life and this world.
It was a glimpse at something I had never truly considered before now—that Katelyn had found it in herself to forgive all imperfections and petty arguments and whatever else might have stood in the way of their undying devotion to each other.
I felt suddenly inadequate, because I had never known such a forgiving love.
Aaron wasn’t perfect. She knew it as well as anyone because he had, in the past, fallen from grace, as we all have at one time or another. He had been unfaithful to her. On that day, when she learned of it, I tried to convince her to choose me over him, but instead she had chosen to forgive.
I had walked away from them, putting distance between us, while resenting Aaron for his triumph, which was undeserved, in my mind.
As far as my brother was concerned, I could never think of anything but his missteps, and how it was unjust that he always won, in spite of them.
But wasn’t it true that sometimes, the most important lessons are learned from our most regrettable mistakes? He had said that once—that regret is a powerful teacher.
Katelyn had forgiven him eons ago, and look at them now? Aaron was a good man with a good heart, as loyal as they came. There was no doubt in my mind that they would be together forever, more deeply devoted to each other than anyone I’d ever known.
I couldn’t deny a momentary flash of jealousy. Not because I wanted Katelyn for myself. What I wanted was what they had.
Love. Unconditional love. The permanent, soulful connection that could never be severed, not even under the most dire circumstances, including death.
Aaron and I had grown up together, for better or worse. As children, we started out on a rocky path with a dark history. But maybe we had been placed on this earth as brothers for a reason.
Maybe this time, I was the one with lessons to learn.
Katelyn returned to the room just then, and I stood up to give her chair back to her. As I watched her take hold of Aaron’s hand, I prayed that he would come back to us, because for the first time, I felt as if my fate with my brother was not sealed, that the past did not dictate the future. Every day was a new day, a new opportunity to start fresh. Intellectually, I’d always known that, but why had I never been able to apply it to my relationship with Aaron?
My cell phone rang, and I saw that it was Meg. I left the room to answer it. “Hello?”
“Hi, Jack.” Just the sound of her voice was a comfort to me. “I heard about your brother. It was on the news. Are you okay?”
I leaned against the wall and tipped my head back. “He’s not doing so well.”
Meg was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? Would you like me to come over there?”
I pushed away from the wall and walked slowly toward the visitors lounge. “No, we’re all right. I’m here with Katelyn, and my parents are on their way. Besides, I imagine you’ve got your hands full. I heard they found the black box earlier today.”
“That’s right,” she replied.
I glanced at the clerk at the nurses’ station as I passed by. “What’s going on with that?”
She sighed. “Do you really want to hear this?”
“Yeah, I could use a distraction.”
“Well. We’re still waiting for the data from the black box, but I just got back from the Coast Guard vessel where they found the rest of the wreckage. There’s going to be some news about that at the press conference tonight. Are you planning to be there?”
I walked into the lounge and sat down on a sofa. “No, I called my producer to get Joe to take over for me and do my show tonight. I just need…” I paused. “I need to be here right now.”
“Of course.” Meg hesitated. “Listen, Jack…I’ve never met your brother, but…I wish I could be there with you… Just to be there.”
We were both quiet, and I swallowed over a thick lump that rose up in my throat.
“Can you tell me what I’ll be missing at the press conference?” I asked, because I knew that if I started talking about Aaron, I might not be able to keep it together.
Meg cleared her throat. “I probably shouldn’t reveal this yet, but the whole world is going to know pretty soon anyway.” She paused again. “There were some developments this afternoon. We can’t say for sure if this is what caused the explosion—we’ll need to bring up the wreckage and do a formal examination of the damage to the plane—but when we sent a camera down to film what was on the ocean floor, we found something we didn’t expect to see.”
I frowned. “What was it?”
“Brace yourself.” She sighed with a note of defeat. “There were thousands of lithium-ion batteries down there. You wouldn’t have believed it. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like a giant field of shiny, silver grass.”
I pressed my hand to my forehead in disbelief. “You’re kidding me. That’s breaking a few rules, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Everyone in the aviation world knows that lithium batteries are strictly prohibited in the cargo holds of aircrafts because they can combust. I can’t even begin to comprehend their blatant and totally careless disregard for FAA rules and regulations.”
“How in the world could that have happened?” I asked.
“We’re still trying to figure it out. What we do know is that the battery shipment wasn’t listed with the airline, so someone was obviously getting around security, sneaking it on somehow. The FBI and our team at the airport are looking into it now, interviewing the airline employees, baggage handlers, and everyone else who played a part in getting that flight off the ground. They’ll get to the bottom of it, I swear it on my life. But either way, Reg Harrison has a lot to answer for, because guess what company manufactured those batteries?”
I sat forward. “Please, tell me it wasn’t Oxy-GeoTech.”
“Bingo.”
I sat back and let out a breath. “That man needs to go to jail.”
“I agree. But listen, I have to get going. We have a team briefing before the press conference and I have to make a few calls about the black box. But will you call me or text me later about your brother? I’ll be thinking about you, Jack, and saying prayers.”
I felt a wave of calm move over me, and a strong desire to be with her again. “Thank you Meg. I’ll be thinking a
bout you, too. Good luck tonight.”
We hung up and I returned to Aaron’s room in the ICU.
When I entered, I found Katelyn in tears. My stomach dropped.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
She turned to me. “I don’t know. Why won’t he wake up, Jack? What will I do if he doesn’t?”
Chapter Forty
Meg
It was nearly midnight when I finally slid my key card into the lock of my hotel room and pushed the door open. I couldn’t wait to get into my pajamas and brush my teeth—maybe pour a glass of wine from the minibar—because it had been that kind of day.
The press conference that evening was pure pandemonium after Gary and I revealed what we’d seen at the bottom of the Atlantic. Questions were asked: How was it possible that a major commercial airliner, taking off from a major U.S. airport, had managed to get a shipment of potentially explosive, restricted materials into the cargo hold? Was no one paying attention? Was no one doing their job? There were nearly two hundred souls on board that doomed flight. Innocent passengers. Mothers, sons, daughters, husbands. How could this have happened?
I had no explanation for those who wanted answers, and it was probably the most trying, discouraging moment of my career—to face the family members and tell them what we still didn’t know.
The investigation was far from over, and we would need to examine all the evidence to determine what exactly caused the plane to crash, but no matter what we concluded in the coming weeks and months, it was impossible to reverse what had occurred. The end result would be the same. A plane had crashed and innocent people had died.
I closed my hotel room door, locked it, and flopped onto my back on the bed. I felt numb all over. Disturbed and full of grief.
Staring up at the ceiling, I tried to calm my mind and rein in my emotions, and even so, there was something about this particular crash that was hitting me harder than any other.
The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) Page 16
