“Sweetie,” she said sarcastically, tilting her head forwards as though she were looking over the rim of imaginary glasses, “does it sound like I’m one of them New Yorker types?”
Her calling him sweetie made the blood rush to his cheeks, and the resulting blush couldn’t be hidden. It also served to, somehow, relax him and make him drop the façade of trying to sound like, and be, someone he wasn’t. Cal laughed, as she had intended him to do, although with a little more nervous intensity than she expected.
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. Are you from the South then?”
“Honey, you’re in the northeast corner of the States,” she said, “almost errythang is either south or west of here.”
Another pet name, and a deeper blush from Cal.
“Your accent,” he said, giving up, “where is it from?”
“Now you ask the right question!” she said, smiling. “I was born and raised in West Virginia.”
“Ah,” Cal said, taking a polite nibble of salted pretzel and a sip of coffee. Silence hung for a few seconds.
“Y’all have no idea where that is, do you?” she asked mockingly.
“Not a clue!” Cal answered, laughing with her.
“Well, Cal from England—south of London, what do you say we ditch the coffee and get ourselves a real drink?”
And, for the second time in an hour, Cal heard the best suggestion he’d heard in a long time.
TRY ANYTHING ONCE
Thursday 12:30 p.m. - Movement Headquarters
“T-minus twelve hours,” the colonel rumbled to himself as he stood, hands on hips and feet squared apart as he scanned the news channels for any sign of things not going to plan.
“What are you looking for, Glenn?” asked Suzanne, safe in the knowledge he would allow her use of his first name as they were alone in the command center.
“Nothing. Anything,” he answered enigmatically. “Any arrests for treason, any mention of the National Guard being stood down or under investigation. The president announcing a U-turn on defense cuts and standing down from office. Anything really,” he said, explaining his fears as much as he would admit having any to anyone.
“Glenn,” Suzanne began, but changed her approach when he turned to her looking all business again. “Sir,” she said, “if I may?”
“Say what you want to say, Suzanne,” the colonel replied almost testily, annoyed at himself for showing a crack in the armor.
“Sir, everything is in place. The pieces are on the board and they are set.” She swallowed, drawing herself up and placing a hand on his shoulder, intuitively knowing that he was nervous. “You need to trust, Colonel. You need to trust your men, trust your lieutenants, trust me. Sir, with all due respect, will you just take a damned load off and try to relax for five minutes?”
Colonel Glenn Butler, unaccustomed to being spoken to by anyone like that, least of all a woman who wasn’t his mother, smiled.
“Trust other people to do their duty? I’ve been trusting men to follow their orders and die for their country for forty years; trust isn’t my issue here, but relax?” He paused, either unsure of how to say what he meant or unwilling to say it. “Relaxing is not something I know how to do,” he finished.
“Well, sir, if I may,” she said pulling open the door and inviting him outside. “Perhaps now is a good time to take a walk. Maybe you’ll start there.”
“Yes, ma’am. Try anything once,” said Butler, doing as he was told and taking a walk.
Thursday 9:15 p.m. - Chelsea District, NYC
Cal returned from the bathroom to find that Louise had bought them another round. She was approaching her limit, a limit she knew well from too many mornings spent feeling ill and remembering the previous night one awful memory at a time.
She regarded herself as a free spirit; too easily bored to settle down and still so much of the world she needed to see. Everything amused her, even Cal giggling every time she said errythang, and she had enjoyed the city so far. Especially the weirdly hypnotic band playing South American music they saw in the subway on the way there, who had attracted a huge crowd and were selling their CDs right there. She had marveled at the panpipes and found herself almost entranced into staying and listening, as though they had cast some sort of spell over the commuters.
Not all of the city was to her liking though. She found many of the people to be brash and, like city dwellers all over the country, very few of them had time for someone from out of town unless they were getting paid to talk to them. The city was as far away from her upbringing as she could get, even though the distance wasn’t that great—under six hundred miles—which to Cal was huge but then again, she doubted if he had grasped the size of the country he was in.
She doubted if anyone in the bar had ever been horseback riding, or deer hunting. She pitied these urban types, as she called them, whereas others from her hometown, which was little more than a speck on the map nestled between Highway 77 and the Ohio river, envied them.
“Where are you staying?” Cal asked her, far more relaxed and talkative now that three beers and four tequilas had loosened his awkwardness.
“Oh, some dive,” Louise responded with a wave of her hand, throwing back her drink and grimacing before her face cracked back into a smile. “There’s a shared bathroom!”
“Hang on,” said Cal, “there’s not even a toilet in the room?”
She laughed, and repeated the unfamiliar and very British word back to him. Her pronunciation of the word toilet made Cal erupt into more laughter.
“What I say now?” Louise said with mock indignation. “You keep laughin’ about how I talk, when you should hear yourself!”
“I’m sorry,” Cal said, spluttering, “I just have no idea how you managed to put an ‘R’ in the word toilet!”
“It’s true though!” Louise went on, enjoying herself. “I took one look at that sink and I said to myself, ‘Darlin’, you don’t want to use that sink with how far away the toilet is’ if you catch my meanin’?”
Cal did, and he thought this was hilarious not just because she had turned her accent all the way up to eleven to tell him the story, but because she’d said the word toilet again. He stopped laughing as she settled back to lean on the table and tucked her hair behind her ear again. By joint agreement, the atmosphere seemed to change.
“So,” she said, “y’all going to explain why you’re out here all by your lonesome?”
The elephant in the room had been addressed. It was clear to Cal that Louise was one of those free-spirit types who could just set off for somewhere new at a moment’s notice, but it was obvious to anyone that Cal wasn’t alone by choice.
“I’m here on my honeymoon,” Cal announced, raising his glass to her and knocking back the drink. Louise’s face froze, trying to work out if he was serious or not, and hoping that she hadn’t just wasted hours talking to a married man—she couldn’t abide cheating, having seen first-hand the damage it does to people. Cal saw the look on her face and tried to recover.
“But I’m on my own because the wedding never happened,” he told her.
Louise seemed to perk up at this, but still wasn’t sure.
“She walked out on me, five bloody days before the wedding, with my best friend,” he said, the sullen anger returning to his eyes as they watered involuntarily. “They’re probably in my house right now, and you know the best thing?” He paused, making her uncertain whether the question was rhetorical or not. “She wanted to come on the trip and bring him instead!” His anger surged again but he managed to keep it inside as he remembered the text he got asking to buy his ticket from him. He had politely, yet firmly, told her to go fuck herself. His hand twitched toward his pocket, but the part of him that was still sober stopped the movement. Bringing out the little box now would guarantee to scare her off.
“Oh,” Louise said, lost for words for the first time in as long as she could recall. “I just thought you’d argued with your friends or something …”
“Nope,” Cal said, the momentary anger being forced away as he tried to make himself sound jovial again. “Here on my own, seeing the sights, and enjoying all the money I’ve saved up for over a year to put her up in the bloody Waldorf because she had to stay there.”
Louise, despite the high levels of ambient noise, let out a low whistle, which penetrated the din and brought Cal’s smile back.
“The Waldorf?” she said incredulously, leaning forward. “I can’t even afford to park my car near there.” She paused, thinking. “Heck, I can’t even afford a car!”
They both laughed, but Louise was clearly impressed. It wasn’t like he was one of those rich people that Sebastian knew by name, he was just a fool who had worked hard and saved up to impress a girl, but the girl who was impressed wasn’t the one he originally intended. He was okay with that.
“My hotel is like, thirty bucks a night and I swear to god, I take the stairs every time to the fourth floor because I think that elevator might just fall down much as I even look at it!”
Cal laughed again. Her manner, the way she spoke, the way she entertained him with a story when she could’ve offered a boring but short answer, intoxicated him. The alcohol intoxicated him too, but he just couldn’t get enough of her because she was so unlike any woman he’d ever spoken to. She had literally nothing in common with Angie except her species and gender, and even Cal had begun to doubt Angie’s membership of the human race recently.
“So anyway,” he said, “now that’s out in the open, what about you?”
“Me?” said Louise, hand on her chest as though he had accused her of something. “Well I’m just an open book.”
“No,” Cal said laughing, “you’re not!”
“Well,” Louise replied, “if y’all want to get all deep and meaningful, I’m gonna need some more drinks.”
Louise was aware that she was spending more than she had meant to that day, and each day of her trip had a strict cash allowance that had to be kept to or she would have to go home sooner. She had worked as a waitress for months, spending as little as she could, getting by and waiting for the day she could escape again for somewhere different. She had done this a dozen times; saved up and gone on an adventure before having to come back and beg for her job back. She got it back every time, and the owner of the diner just accepted that it was what Louise did. Her feet just didn’t want to stay still.
Truth was that she did have somewhere to be, but she felt trapped by the open air and the same sidewalks under her shoes every single day. As soon as she was back, as soon as she had lied to everyone about how good it was to be home, she was already thinking about where to head next. She would stick her finger on the map of the United States, and she would go there. Six months ago, she had heard someone in the diner talking about their trip to New York City, and about how much they hated it there with the smog and the tourists and the cops on every corner, but Louise had listened and decided that maybe she needed to see that city for herself.
To hell with it, she thought, buying two more beers and two chasers to go with them. If I have to go home a day early to spend tonight getting an Englishman drunk, then god dammit I will.
“So, what have you seen in this fine city, Cal?” she said as she returned to their table with the four glasses held expertly in both hands.
“Rockefeller building,” Cal said, after sketching a ‘cheers’ and taking a pull of beer. “It looked big and busy so I didn’t go in.”
“Well, ain’t y’all the fearless tourist?” Louise said, laughing at him.
“And I went to Central Park and saw the zoo,” he added.
“Saw it or went inside and saw it?” Louise shot back, drinking her beer but keeping her eyes on him.
“I actually went inside,” he said, sounding proud of himself, “and I went on an uncomfortable boat around some big statue thing with a hangover, saw someone playing saxophone in the subway, had a snake draped around my neck, then went up the Empire State building where I saw a man throw his life away.”
They both laughed, both having the same feelings about the proposal. She called it lame whereas Cal said it was cheesy.
“And met a delightful young redhead who then led you astray into a night of ungodly depravity?” she finished for him.
Picking up the chaser in the smaller glass, he raised it to her and said, “Here’s hoping!”
Throwing back her drink in a movement identical to Cal’s, she smiled at him playfully.
“Always wanted to see the inside of a fancy hotel room.”
Thursday 10:28 p.m. - Wall Street
The dull gray van nosed sedately through the late evening traffic, pulling into a manned security gate. The uniformed guard put on his hat, picked up the clipboard with the day’s schedule on, and left his small booth to speak to the driver.
“Hey Gerry. Hey Siobhan,” the guard said, greeting the overnight cleaning crew who worked Wednesday through Friday.
“Hey Simon,” replied Gerry, the balding middle-aged driver, “busy night?”
“Ah, you know,” Simon answered casually, “another day …”
“Ain’t that the truth!” called Siobhan from the passenger side.
Simon checked them off the list on his clipboard, as he had done most weeks for a year, and didn’t bother searching the van as he was supposed to. There was no point, he told himself, eager to get back to his seat to carry on with the book he was reading. It was just cleaning products like always. He only searched them when someone else was around anyway, just for show, and the new supervisor never bothered reviewing the overnight camera footage like the last guy did.
Once inside the gates and through the metal roller shutter Simon had opened from inside his booth, Gerry nodded once to his wife. Silently, they got their equipment from the sliding door on the side of the van and both lifted the heavy trolley to the ground; heavy because wrapped in black plastic sacks and covered by the rest of their cleaning products was the last invention of one Quentin Aaronson. Taking it to the basement where it was tucked inside a large waste bin next to the banks of flickering lights in the air-conditioned section to keep the computers running at optimal temperature, Siobhan peeled back the heavy plastic and checked her watch. She set the timer on the device, replaced the cover and nodded again to her husband. These computer things, whatever they were and not that she cared, were checked and maintained every Monday night and the device would be safe from prying eyes until the timer expired.
Without another word, they went back upstairs and cleaned the offices as they always had.
Above ground outside, Simon leaned back and tipped his hat up a little as he licked his thumb and turned the page of his book in total ignorance as to what his apathy had just allowed.
Thursday 11.46 p.m. - Floyd Bennet Field, Brooklyn
The routine maintenance of the NYPD’s helicopters was a constant task, operating day and night. Gus Daly, a wizened old man who had been servicing helicopters for longer than he could recall, scanned the lines of the NYPD’s air support choppers. The four Bell 412 medium lifts and the smaller, more tactical, Bell 429s were his babies as he called them, and it tore his heart to do what he was about to.
Still the money was good—too good to say no—and he also strongly suspected that saying no wasn’t an option to the guys who had found him at his favorite bar.
Almost all of the aircraft were on the tarmac, with only two on a call and one inside the hangar for a repair. Nobody would think anything of Gus wandering between the helicopters parked up, running a hand along the fuselage almost tenderly, checking his babies over. He fitted each one with a small device, cell phones taped to their exteriors, tucking them away where they couldn’t be discovered by chance. Regretting his decision to conspire with the men, he still couldn’t bring himself to change his mind because he needed that money.
“You promise me they won’t be damaged? And no one will get hurt?” he had asked the frightening men with the bag of cas
h and the bag of devices.
“Nobody will be hurt,” lied the first man, the only one who spoke.
Gus accepted that, because the money had blinded him to the subtext of their conversation. It seemed to Gus that patriotism and loyalty, like everything in life, had a price.
PLANNING THE EXECUTION, EXECUTING THE PLAN
Friday 8:30 a.m. - Waldorf Astoria, NYC
Cal woke with the events of the previous night flooding back to him. With a nervous intensity, his eyes slowly moved to his right where the smooth skin of Louise’s bare back rose and fell gently with each breath. He held his gaze on her back for a while, studying the tattoo on her shoulder.
Creeping out of bed as quietly as he could, he tiptoed to the bathroom where he ran the shower to cover the noise of emptying his bladder after a night of drinking. He didn’t feel hungover, most likely because their night had only ended a matter of a few hours ago and he was probably still a little drunk. As he let the hot water flow down his body, he stiffened in sudden fright as a pair of hands snaked around him. Wordlessly, he turned to face her as she moved closer under the water.
Friday 9:45 a.m. - Waldorf Astoria, NYC
After their long shower together and the resulting activity leaving the hotel room looking like it had been wrecked, Cal led Louise down the elevator and the two sat eating breakfast, stealing shy smiles at one another.
“What do you want to do today?” Cal asked her expectantly.
“I promised a friend I’d catch up with her,” she replied smiling, bursting his bubble that the free-spirited woman would be his for another day.
“Oh, I …” Cal trailed away, not knowing how to ask her if she wanted to spend more time with him. She intercepted his failing good mood.
“Wanna meet up again later?” she asked, making his spirits soar back to their original height and keep climbing.
Burning Skies (Book 1): The Fall Page 5
