Peter Kirsanow: Second Strike

She listened because Ryan happened to be her current romantic interest. She listened because he was endearingly earnest and because there was, frankly, little else to do as they waited for their flight to Reagan National to begin boarding.

Most of all—she admitted to herself with a twinge of guilt—she listened because railing about an impending apocalypse had proven to be remarkably lucrative, and Ryan had spent a not inconsiderable portion of his earnings on Meagan.

They’d met a little more than two years ago when the MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science retained her firm, one of Boston’s most prominent, to sue a Route 128 corridor tech company for appropriating software he’d developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She obtained a sizable settlement for Ryan and shortly thereafter he called her for drinks. They’d been seeing each other ever since.

Her trial lawyer instincts telegraphed that Ryan would propose marriage sometime after they arrived in D.C., perhaps after his testimony later that morning before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, but more likely after his afternoon testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

She would accept, sincerely but pragmatically, knowing that she wouldn’t find a better partner. And he was not unattractive, although his large head, spindly arms, and awkward gait made him resemble a giant marionette. A mischievous and vaguely lustful recess of her mind flashed to an image of his head atop the body of Corey Raines, the brawny Red Sox catcher she’d briefly dated, but she banished the thought with another twinge of guilt.

This would be the fourth time she’d accompanied him to Washington for testimony before some obscure committee of Congress. Each time previously the hearing had been anodyne. Only a few congressmen, a smattering of staffers, and a few other witnesses had been present. No C-SPAN; no print reporters.

Yet after each hearing, Ryan’s speaking fees, as well as the number of requests, rose. After the first hearing, he was tendered a consulting agreement from a defense contractor nearly equal to his annual salary at MIT. After the last hearing, he’d entered into another for more than twice the cumulative earnings from his entire academic career. And DARPA had recently retained his services to develop certain software in collaboration with cybersecurity experts. All because Ryan Moore Hammacher was the Herald of Doom.

As the coffee parted the early-morning fog in her brain, she listened to him finish his latest jeremiad, just as the gate attendant announced that boarding would begin in a few minutes. “…And there’s no way of preventing it, at least not on an individualized basis. They’d become weaponized. Scores of catastrophes combined to create an event without parallel in history.”

Meagan heard herself say “horrible” for perhaps the third time that morning.

“What’s more, they know it. But they haven’t created the systems or countermeasures to prevent it. Unforgivable.” Ryan fished in his pocket and placed a tip on the counter. “Watch my bag? Quick dash to the men’s room before we board.”

Meagan finished her coffee as she watched him cross to the lavatory on the other side of the concourse, politely dodging and yielding to travelers headed toward their gates. She smiled. A kind, sweet man playing Chicken Little on a grand scale. Thankfully, he’d already made his small fortune, because news reports showed that the president, Congress, and the military now were more concerned about the threat of electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attacks, understandable given the recent Russian-Iranian efforts in that regard. It was the EMP experts’ turn to become wealthy preventing Armageddon, while Ryan retreated to the ordinary life of an academic.

A minute later, priority boarding for the flight to D.C. was under way. Meagan gathered her belongings and Ryan’s bag and proceeded to the line at the gate.

As regular boarding began, she glanced back toward the men’s room. Ryan’s dash had stopped being quick several minutes ago. A dozen passengers more and the door to the Jetway would soon close. No time for subtlety. Meagan walked briskly to the entrance of the men’s room and called Ryan’s name.

No response.

She called again. Nothing.

She took a few tentative steps toward the entrance. “Ryan, boarding’s about done. We gotta go.” A beat. “Ryan?”

She cocked her head and listened. “Ryan? Hello?”

She peeked around the corner into the brightly lit, white-tiled lavatory lined with a series of sinks on the left wall and a half dozen urinals on the right. Between them, lying spread-eagled on the floor and staring at her with lifeless eyes wide open, was Ryan, his chin resting in a pool of foamy saliva.

Meagan’s screams echoed off the restroom walls and into the concourse just as a voice announced the final boarding call for United Flight 7181, scheduled for a seven A.M. departure to the nation’s capital.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST,

AUGUST 14, 9:27 A.M. PDT

Sean McDermott hated being afraid. He hated having to concede he was afraid as much as the sensation of fear itself.

He knew that to others he didn’t look like the kind of man who was afraid of much. He was big—a former heavyweight wrestler in college—with a head shaped like an anvil and a face resembling a bulldog’s. In fact, nothing much did scare him. But flying did, even though he had more hours in the air than some commercial pilots. As human resources director for a multinational steel company with facilities across the globe, he flew several days a week.

And each time petrified him. He knew the fear was irrational. He’d read the literature on the odds of a plane crash, that he’d have to fly for centuries before there might be a catastrophic event. None of that mattered when he was in the air.

Turbulence, of course, was his greatest concern. The slightest bump, shallowest dip, weakest shudder, set his nerves aflame. He couldn’t help it, no matter how hard he tried.

During a flight McDermott was alert to every change in speed and altitude, every call button signal, every movement of the flight attendants. He knew when to expect the sound of the landing gear retracting after takeoff and lowering upon landing, the sound of the wing flaps, the bellow and whine of the engines.

Several of his most frequent flight paths had been committed to memory. Looking out the cabin window, he would identify mountains, rivers, lakes, and monuments marking the points at which the plane should be at cruising altitude, banking toward a final destination, beginning initial descent, or making final approach. Any deviation caused him to perk and wait for some sign of assurance that all was well.

McDermott took pains never to betray his fear. Whenever one of his flights did experience rougher than normal turbulence, his face would remain placid, almost serene, the only evidence of tension being the bulging veins on the backs of his hands as they gripped the armrests.

McDermott was on board a 737, the second leg of the flight from Detroit to Seattle, with a connection in Salt Lake City. He’d flown this particular route eight times in the last six months to attend union negotiations at one of his company’s pickling and slitting facilities outside of Tacoma. By the third trip he’d memorized all of the landmarks along the flight path denoting the various stages of the flight.

He could see the Columbia River to the north. By his estimate they were about seventy-five miles south of Pasco, Washington, and little more than a hundred miles southeast of Hanford, which at one time was home to nine nuclear reactors, and now, after their decommissioning, contained much, if not most, of the high-level radioactive waste in the country.