A Hideous Beauty

by Jack Cavanaugh

  “Is anyone hurt?” Jana shouted.

  Without exception every child was crying, making it impossible to tell who was hurt and who was just scared. Starting with her row, Jana began checking when a pounding on the back window startled her.

  She turned to see the black suit and dark glasses of a Secret Service agent. His hand moved in a circular motion, as though he was winding yarn.

  “Back it up! Back it up!” he shouted. “We’ll retreat the same way we came in.”

  Retreat. The word sounded ominous.

  Shouting over the din of crying children, Jana relayed the information to the driver, who sat stiff-armed at the wheel. Jana could see the woman’s face in the mirror. She looked petrified. She was crying.

  “I . . . I can’t . . . ,” the driver shouted back. “If I put it in gear, we’ll go over the edge.”

  Her prediction of doom was a stick and the interior of the bus a beehive. The children became agitated.

  “We’re not going over the edge,” Jana cried. “Ease the gearshift into reverse. We have a guardian angel behind us guiding us.”

  Jana thought that sounded more comforting than Secret Service agent, and it seemed to work. At least with the children.

  “I . . . I don’t think I can do it!” the driver wailed.

  “Yes you can!”

  Jana was beginning to wonder if she was going to have to go up there and drive the bus. But the driver managed to calm herself enough to put the gearshift in reverse.

  The bus lurched. Children screamed.

  Jana looked out the back window. The agent was looking at the tires and the length of the bus. He seemed unconcerned about any danger. Jana took her cue from him.

  “You’re doing great!” Jana shouted. “Keep going.”

  The bus moved away from the side railing. And just when Jana was convinced they were going to be fine, she saw a black speck in the sky.

  “Oh no!” she cried.

  “Oh no!” I cried.

  Danny Noonan was coming back for another run.

  Moments earlier I had watched as Noonan pulled up sharply, doing that maneuver Tom Cruise pulled in Top Gun. The two pursuit planes flew beneath him. What was wrong with them? Hadn’t they seen the movie? Once again the bridge was in Danny Noonan’s sights.

  Semyaza observed the maneuver stoically, as though presidential assassinations were daily events. “Did I tell you Danny Noonan is eager to meet you?” he droned. “Let me see if I can recall his exact words. I believe he said he wanted to meet the ‘lowlife scum who immortalized the lie’ surrounding his grandfather’s death.”

  He’d have to get in line, I thought. When the truth about Lloyd Douglas came out, there would be a lot of people eager to take a swing at me.

  I focused on the attacking FA-18’s approach. The pursuit aircraft had circled around, but they were too far away to do anything. The vehicles on the bridge were sitting ducks.

  “One more thing,” Semyaza said, “the school bus driver? One of us.”

  “You mean, an angel.”

  “She took physical form to ensure that the bus’s arrival was delayed long enough to get caught behind the traffic barrier. How else does one get a bus in a presidential motorcade except by invitation?”

  “Why children?” I cried. “Why kill innocents?”

  “It looks good in the history books. Murdering innocents solidified Herod’s legacy, didn’t it?”

  Words exploded from my mouth. “You vicious, cruel, barbarous, diabolical monster!”

  Semyaza smiled as though I’d complimented him. “I’m partial to Old Scratch, myself. Azazel likes Mephistopheles. But then, he was fond of Goethe. You have to remember, Grant, we’re the ones who inspired those names.” As an afterthought, he said, “Oh yeah . . . Jana’s on the bus.”

  “What!”

  I took a swing at him. My fist passed through him.

  “Act two,” Semyaza said, turning his attention to the approaching FA-18.

  Twin flashes lit the underside of the wings, spawning white serpents identical to the previous strikes. This time they hit the east end of the bridge. The explosive force lifted huge chunks of concrete into the air. Gravity reversed their course. They splashed into the bay.

  As before, the rockets missed the vehicles.

  “Another miss!” I shouted. “Looks like your hotshot pilot isn’t so—”

  A blast of machine-gun fire from Noonan’s FA-18 strafed the bay in front of me so close I could hear the bullets sizzle as they knifed into the water. The backwash of the jet knocked me onto my backside, reopening old dog-bite wounds.

  Semyaza stood unaffected.

  “I think he recognized you,” he said.

  Great. Now someone recognizes me.

  I started to get up. The pursuit aircraft knocked me back down.

  Danny Noonan’s FA-18 shot up nearly perpendicular to the ground. This time the pursuit pilots were ready for him and Noonan was forced to bank sharply left. He hightailed it out to sea.

  Semyaza stood over me. “So, Grant,” he said, cheerfully, “enjoying yourself?”

  “This is it!” the wigged teacher shouted when she saw the rockets.

  Jana braced herself.

  The explosion lifted the bus off the bridge and for a moment everything and everyone was suspended in midair. It was one of those heart-in-the-throat moments when you don’t know what’s going to happen next, but you know it’s going to be bad and may even be fatal. It felt as though the proverbial rug had been pulled out from beneath them, leaving nothing but two hundred feet of air separating them from death.

  A moment later the bus found the bridge again, hard, slamming everyone against the seats and floor. The long, bulky vehicle rocked, then settled. Inside, it was battlefield quiet, when the shooting stops and the moans begin.

  With the help of the seat in front of her Jana pulled herself up and looked out the side window. She saw a ragged concrete edge and then nothing but distant bay. They were sitting literally inches from where the bridge ended.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . gone!” the driver cried. “One second it was there and now it’s gone!”

  The bridge wasn’t the only thing that was gone. So was the Secret Service agent. When Jana looked out the back window to see if he was all right, all she saw were sunglasses lying broken on the pavement.

  “We have to get out of here before the bridge collapses!” the driver shouted. She pulled the lever that opened the door and screamed.

  There were three bus steps then . . . nothing.

  “How are we going to get out? We’re trapped! The bridge is going to collapse and we’re trapped!”

  By now the children were gathering enough of their senses to be scared again and the driver’s panic was whipping up a frenzy.

  “We’re going to die!” the driver shouted.

  Screaming erupted the length of the bus.

  “We’re not going to die!” Jana shouted over them.

  But they weren’t listening. Neither were the two teachers. One had curled up into a ball, with a small boy pulled against her chest like he was a teddy bear. The teacher with the bad wig sat on the edge of a seat whimpering.

  “. . . if you get me out of this, I’ll tell him . . . I promise . . . I’ll make it right . . .”

  “Listen to me!” Jana shouted. “We’re not going to die! The bridge is not going to collapse! You’ve seen pictures of it, haven’t you? It must have twenty supports holding it up.”

  “Thirty mission-shaped arches,” a girl with braces said. “We learned about it in class.”

  Jana smiled at her, grateful for the assistance. “Then you all know how strong it is! It was built to survive earthquakes. If it hasn’t been knocked down by now, it’s not going to be knocked down!”

  “What if he comes back?” the driver cried from the front of the bus. “What if he fires more rockets?”

  Jana scowled at the woman, who seemed to be deliberately trying to upset the chil
dren. She was doing a good job of it.

  “What do you do when you’re in bad trouble and need help?” Jana shouted. “Who can tell me?”

  Several kids replied.

  “Stop, drop, and roll!”

  “Call 911!”

  “Hug a tree!”

  Despite the danger, Jana couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the responses. “Those are all good,” she said, “but actually, I was thinking of dialing 911.”

  She reached into her purse for her cell phone. Flipping it open, she said, “Now you all have to be quiet so that the police dispatcher can hear me. Can you do that? Can you be quiet?”

  She had their attention. Not only the children, but the two teachers. The driver smirked sarcastically. “What good will it do to call 911 when—”

  Jana cut her off. “Shush!”

  The children came to Jana’s aid, placing forefingers to their lips and shushing the driver into silence.

  The call was a ruse. Of course it was a ruse. What were the police going to do? Send a gap-leaping patrol car to investigate? But it was the only way Jana could think of getting the children’s minds off being frightened.

  “Hello, police?” Jana said loudly when the dispatcher answered.

  The children let out a cheer.

  Signaling with her hand, Jana urged them to be quiet.

  To the dispatcher she said, “This is Jana Torres. I’m on the Coronado bridge with a busload of schoolchildren and we need help.”

  Jana talked for several minutes with the dispatcher, knowing that dozens of young ears were hanging on every word. At first the dispatcher thought it was a crank call. When she finally became convinced that it was genuine, the dispatcher said, “We’re watching it on television. What exactly do you want us to do?”

  At the same time she was talking to the dispatcher, Jana was looking out the bus windows assessing the situation. The span of the bridge was littered with vehicles. Nearly every door was open. Wherever she looked there was confusion and chaos.

  Jana flipped her cell phone closed. Small faces waited eagerly for her report. “The police said it’s very important that we sit tight, be quiet, and wait for help to arrive. Do you think we can do that? I think we can.”

  She deliberately looked at the bus driver, who appeared angry.

  “Everybody find a seat,” Jana instructed them. “Don’t look out the window at the water. If you’re scared, hold the hand of the person sitting next to you. If you can’t find a seat, raise your hand and one of the teachers will help you.”

  Order had been restored. The children moved methodically, some of them still sniffing and crying softly, but finding a seat nonetheless. The teachers, too, had regained their composure.

  Jana checked on the bus driver . . . who had vanished.

  One moment she was there, the next she was gone. In less than a blink of an eye, the driver had disappeared.

  One of the teachers saw the expression on Jana’s face. Turning to see what had caused it, she screamed. “The driver . . . the driver . . . she fell out the door!”

  Panic swept through the bus, threatening the order Jana had just restored. “Stay in your seats!” she shouted repeatedly. “The police told you to stay in your seats!”

  She worked her way up the aisle, ordering, pointing, physically assisting when necessary, until all the children were back in their seats. Reaching the front of the bus, she swung around. “There’s nothing we can do to help her!” she shouted, even though she didn’t believe the driver had fallen. “But we can help each other and make sure everyone else is safe. Sit quietly in your seats. Look, help is on its way.”

  She directed their attention to bridge-side windows. Four men in suits were running in their direction.

  The wind from the open bus door whipped Jana’s pants legs. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could have sworn she felt the bridge shudder.

  CHAPTER 28

  For all the fire and smoke and drama, miraculously the central portion of the bridge remained intact. The school bus with Jana was perched precariously next to a concrete cliff, but all the bus’s tires were on the road and the children were being assisted out the rear emergency door.

  And while the president’s motorcade was stranded on a newly made island, there appeared to be no real damage. From what I could see no one had been hurt and, most important, the sky was clear of threatening black specks.

  “Well, what do you think?” Semyaza said.

  My heart was doing a drum roll and my knees felt like jelly. But relief is a tonic and I was feeling better by the second. “You failed.” It felt good to say it. “A lot of fireworks, a lot of ooo’s and ahhh’s, but in the end everyone is going home safe. The president is still alive.”

  A roar in the sky startled me and for one frightening moment I thought Noonan had brought company. But it was a news helicopter charging onto the scene.

  The sleek chopper was immediately intercepted by a Coast Guard helicopter with several surface craft speeding to its aid, guns at the ready. A bullhorn voice warned the chopper away. The voice was loud, no-nonsense, but youthful and unsteady.

  The news chopper wisely backed off, but didn’t go away. There is a time to test the limits of free speech and the press, but this was not it, not when a trembling finger is on the trigger of a big gun aimed at you.

  A pounding of boots and heavy, labored breathing approached us from behind, announcing the arrival of a three-man news crew. They’d parked their van on the pier and ran to the end of the flight deck. Paying no attention to us, they proceeded to set up camera and sound equipment with a speed that comes from experience.

  One of them, a man with a steel chin and large forearms, hefted a camera to his shoulders and aimed it at the bridge. A second man plugged patch cords into equipment and donned a pair of headphones, while the third man uncoiled the cord of a handheld microphone. Of the three, he was the only one wearing a tie. I assumed he was the reporter, though I didn’t remember ever seeing him on the evening news.

  “Hey, guys!” the cameraman shouted. “Jana’s on the bridge!”

  Just then a monitor flickered and came to life. The camera zoomed in on a woman running from the bus to the motorcade.

  “How did she get on the bridge?” the tie shouted with a voice that made no attempt at hiding his professional envy.

  “She’s good,” the cameraman said, keeping his eye glued to the eyepiece. “I’ve worked with her before.”

  “This is great!” the wiry-haired technician shouted. From his expression and quick movements it was evident he was the excitable type. “We have a reporter on the bridge! No other station has a reporter on the bridge, not even the networks! We’re gonna scoop the networks, boys! We’re gonna scoop the networks!”

  “How?” the tie countered. “With hand signals? We have picture, but no sound.”

  “Cell phone!” the technician cried. “We’ll call her cell. I can patch it in.”

  “Does anybody have her phone number?” the cameraman asked.

  “They’ll have it at the station. Adrian, call the station and get her number.”

  The tie tapped numbers on his phone without enthusiasm. “What if she doesn’t have her cell phone with her?”

  “She does,” the cameraman said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at the monitor.”

  A close-up image of Jana showed her answering her cell phone.

  “What are you doing on the bridge?” I asked her.

  The three newsmen did a double take. They stared at me like I was Merlin performing a bit of magic. I don’t know why I didn’t think of calling her sooner.

  “Grant? Where are you?” Jana said. She continued toward the motorcade. I followed her progress on the monitor. “Hold on just a second, Grant.”

  Jana lowered her phone. I watched as Christina and Jana met and embraced. I could hear them asking each other if they were hurt. They assured each other they were fine.

 
“Grant, Christina’s here with me.”

  “I know. I can see you.”

  That surprised her. “Grant says he can see us,” she told Christina. Now both women were looking for me.

  “I’m on the deck of the Midway.”

  Jana pointed for Christina’s benefit.

  The wiry-haired tech appeared in front of me. “Hey, buddy, we need to use your phone,” he said. Not waiting for an answer, he tried to take the phone from me. I blocked his arm.

  “Jana, one of your news crews is here,” I told her.

  “It’s me, Jana . . . Craig!” the tech shouted loud enough for her to hear. “We have a crew here. We can have you live in—”

  I turned my back to him and walked away.

  “First,” I said to Jana, “are you and Christina really all right?”

  She assured me they were. Shaken, but not hurt.

  “What do you want me to do about this news crew?” I asked her.

  Adrian, the tie, approached us with his cell phone pressed to his ear. To the tech, he said, “I have Burns on the line. He says if Jana is really on the bridge and doesn’t go live, she’s fired.”

  I began to relay the order. “They say if you don’t go live—”

  “I heard,” Jana said.

  “It’s your call,” I told her. “Right now your first responsibility is to get off the bridge to safety. You can always tell the world later.”

  “No!” the tech shouted, grabbing for the phone.

  To my surprise Semyaza stepped between me and the tech. He was a formidable presence. It wasn’t just posturing; he radiated power and authority. I could feel it. So could the tech. He backed off.

  “It’s your call,” I repeated to Jana. “Give the word and I’ll toss my cell into the bay.”

  “No!” the tech shouted. He had a mind to reach for the phone again, but thought better of it.

  “Give him your phone, Grant,” Jana said. “That’s why I’m here.”