A Time for Patriots

“Roger,” Turlock said. She started scanning the devastation around her. The right wingtip of the King Air had sliced an entire hallway wall open, and at a desk in one of the offices, Turlock found a young woman, half burned, still sitting at a reception desk. “One casualty found. I’ll set up the sling.” She withdrew a large sling, cable, and pulleys from her bag, rigged the pulley up on a support beam, looped the cable through the pulley, recovered the body of the young woman, put her in the sling, and lowered her to Richter on the ground. He carried the body over to the rescuers in hazmat suits outside the cordon while Turlock pulled the sling back up.

She found no one else as she carefully made her way down the ripped-apart hallway, then down one collapsed floor to where the burned hulk of the King Air rested. “I’m at the plane,” she radioed. “Radiation levels are very high here. I’m going to take a peek inside, and then I’ll probably have to get out.”

“Roger,” Richter said. He was watching a video feed from Turlock’s CID unit. “Be careful — that floor looks very unstable.”

“Yes, Dad,” Turlock responded. She was able to climb up the left side of the fuselage. The entry door was partially unhinged, most of the glass throughout the entire plane had shattered, and the cabin of the plane was charred and melted — but, surprisingly, the cockpit appeared to be in better condition. “Hey, we may have lucked out — I think the pilot is still in here, and mostly intact! I might be able to get him out… or pieces of him, at least. Stand by — I’m going to open the door.” Turlock grasped the air-stair hatch in her armored hands and pulled. The door broke free… and then the entire fuselage rolled left and fell about three feet. Turlock was able to twist away, narrowly missing being trapped between the fuselage and the crushed concrete floor.

“You okay, Charlie?” Richter asked.

“Yeah, but the entry door is blocked now,” Turlock replied. She checked forward. “Okay, I’m going to try one more thing, and then I’ll have to get out.” She moved forward and stood over the pilot’s windshield. The remains of the pilot were barely recognizable as human — the body was badly burned and half smashed against the control wheel and instrument panel. “The pilot is one crispy critter, but I think he was wearing a fireproof flight suit, because most of the torso is intact. Let’s see if I can yank him out.” Turlock first used her powerful armored fingers like the Jaws of Life to cut the control wheel free, then reached through the windshield, grasped the pilot’s seat and as much of what was strapped onto it as she could, and pulled…

… and as she did, the fuselage and the smashed building roared like an angry lion and the floors gave way. The plane dropped straight down two floors, then slid forward twenty feet, crashed through the front of the federal building, and fell the remaining six floors to the street.

“Charlie!”

Richter shouted. He used every erg of energy in his CID unit to dash around to the front of the building. The plane was underneath a mass of rubble. Richter began furiously digging through the debris, appearing as if he were wading through waist-deep water, throwing chunks of concrete and steel in every direction until he reached the plane. The fuselage was upside down — he couldn’t see Turlock, and her video feed was dark.

Like a scrap-cutting machine gone berserk, Richter began plunging his superhydraulic hands and arms through the underside of the nose section of the King Air, ripping pieces of steel and aluminum away in large sheets and chunks. In seconds he had torn through the entire left side of the plane and, like a wrecking crane, ripped away the entire nose section. He finally found Turlock’s CID unit underneath what was left of the cockpit and instrument panel. “Jesus, Charlie, can you hear me? Charlie…? ”

“I’m… I’m okay,” Turlock responded several tense moments later. “Wow, what a ride!” She raised herself up to a sitting position and threw the pilot’s seat and pieces of the instrument panel away. Richter pulled more debris from her legs and tried to help her up, but she stopped him. “Wait… oh, yuk !”

“What the hell is it, Charlie?” he asked.

“It’s the pilot.”

“The pilot?” Richter looked around. “I don’t see anyone.”

Turlock motioned to the thick mass of charred debris covering the entire front of her CID unit. “ This is the evidence we were looking for,” she said. She pulled a piece of fireproof flight suit off her armored chest. “Looks like they’re going to have to swab me for his

DNA.”

Four

I don’t think change is stressful. I think failure is stressful.

— Bob Stearns

The White House, Washington, D.C.

Later that day