James Huston - Fallout

The lead started working his way through the apartment from the living room. He turned off the television to allow them to listen more easily. The silence was eerie. They could hear their hearts pounding. The lead pointed to the kitchen, where one of the other agents looked, then entered. Nothing unusual at all.

The lead agent headed toward the bedroom. The door was closed. He considered his options. He tried the knob, but the bedroom door was locked. It was a thin door with no internal strength. He stepped back, kicked the door open in one motion, and moved away from the opening in case Merewether was waiting for them with a weapon. There was no sound at all. The lead agent glanced around the door and saw a small white television on a dresser playing to an empty room. He turned it off. There was nothing out of order. They searched the room carefully, checking the closets and the bathroom, but there was no sign of Merewether.

“There any more rooms?” the lead agent asked, confused.

“Nope,” his second replied.

“Where the hell is he?”

They all looked around the three-room apartment—the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. No Merewether. They quickly checked the bathroom. It was empty. They stared at each other.

“Maybe he jumped,” one of them said suddenly.

The lead agent hurried to the balcony off the living room and wrestled with the sliding glass door. He had difficulty pushing the door open. It felt as if the slide rail were made of gravel. He tried to look down to the ground through the white steel railing, but they were too high for him to see the ground immediately.

He noticed in his peripheral vision that a light coming from his left was blocked, then not blocked. He realized that two legs hung in front of him, dangling, lifeless. “Help me get him down!” he yelled as he grabbed Merewether’s legs and pushed up. One of the other agents tried to get at the balcony of the apartment above to release the belt that was knotted to the railing. The end was slipped through the buckle, allowing it to cinch tight when pressure was brought to bear, which it certainly was when Merewether stepped off the railing of his own balcony.

The lead yelled, “Get up there and get the belt off!”

“I can’t reach the other end!” the second agent protested as he considered climbing up on the railing to reach the balcony above.

“Then get up there and get onto the balcony!”

The second agent ran out of Merewether’s apartment and up the stairs to the next floor.

The lead agent and the others tried to keep Merewether from hanging from the belt. They tried not to look at his blue, swollen face.

“Is he still alive?” one asked.

“I don’t know. He sure doesn’t seem to be breathing. Get an ambulance here!” the lead replied.

Finally they heard the other agent above them and two voices they didn’t recognize. “I just need to get onto your balcony,” he was explaining as he pushed by them.

“Hey! What could you possibly need out there? We haven’t been out there all day!”

He ignored them and leaned down to examine the knotted belt. “Shit, this is tight! Can you get any more pressure off?”

“No,” the lead replied.

“I’m just going to cut it,” the second said, pulling a buck knife out of its belt holder and slicing through the leather.

Merewether tumbled into the arms of the three agents waiting below.

They laid him on the concrete slab that constituted the balcony and felt for a pulse. Nothing. “We’re too late.”

The other agents grimaced. They knew that those who had decided to stake out Merewether’s apartment around the clock were much less interested in securing a conviction against him than in being able to question him about the Pakistanis. Now they wouldn’t get the chance.

“We did it right, boss. Thirty minutes—”

“Shut up.” He looked at the body. It was still warm. There was still some color in his hands. They were only a few minutes late. While they were out in the hall, Merewether was ending his life. “We’d better call Li.”

“I’ll call her,” another agent said.

“No, I’ll call her.”

“It wasn’t our fault.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not political with her; it’s getting to the bottom of things.” He finished dialing and waited for the cell phone to connect.

Luke and Vlad walked through San Francisco International Airport trying not to look conspicuous. Every television continued to broadcast the unending news on CNN and every other news station about the attack at San Onofre. The immediacy of it had subsided slightly, only because the nuclear cloud had not yet decided where to go and was hovering over the Pacific. It was apparently caught in the middle of contradicting weather patterns, which resulted in its staying put, a not altogether unpleasant development, although a marine layer was starting to form and threatened to engulf the California coast in a low-hanging, radioactive fog.

The televisions showed nonstop video of the crumpled San Onofre building, with accusatory reports about nuclear waste. Interstate 5, the main artery that ran along the coast from San Diego to Los Angeles, was closed for the indefinite future.

Luke and Vlad stood in line at the gate. The passengers in front of them spoke of little else. The entire world was transfixed by the attack and by following the drifting, dissipating radioactive cloud. Luke tried to count the number of times he heard the words “Chernobyl” or “Three Mile Island” or “malicious,” or some other unflattering adjective applied to the Pakistanis. Luke watched the television out of the corner of his eye, especially when Pakistani officials were answering questions about how their pilots might have pulled this off without governmental assistance. They claimed to be baffled and angry.

His and Vlad’s innocuous bags had been checked, even though they contained flight gear, flare guns, and other things that were never supposed to be checked. They’d been assured that their bags would not be inspected or confiscated. All they carried with them were two small Air India flight bags that contained shaving kits and paperback books that looked to them to be particularly boring and ridiculous.

They stopped at the desk to check in with the airline attendant. Luke started to sweat as he stepped to the counter and handed her his false passport.

Vlad was completely unperturbed behind him, in spite of the fact that his passport read “Billy Walters” and listed an address in El Paso, Texas. Luke glanced at Vlad and whispered, “Do you even know where El Paso, Texas, is?”

“Sure,” Vlad answered.

Luke tried to look bored and preoccupied. Nearly everyone getting onto the airplane appeared to be of Indian descent. There were very few American passports in the group. “Good morning, sir,” the attendant said, taking his passport. She checked it against his appearance, then against the ticket. “We have you assigned to seat 27A,” she said in her Indian accent.

“Fine,” Luke said, avoiding her gaze.

She handed him his passport and ticket and took Vlad’s papers. “Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he replied, trying his hardest to hide his thick Russian accent. He nodded and smiled as she clicked the computer keys.

“There you go, Mr. Walters,” she said, giving him his documents. “You’re in 27B.”

They walked down the ramp into the Indian 747.

They took their seats and put their heads back, gladly accepting a little rest before they would once again be required to fight for their lives.

Cindy Frohm spoke into her phone as she waited for Morrissey’s encrypted digital cell phone to connect, “Come on, pick up, pick up!”

“Morrissey.”