James Huston: Marine One

Copyright (c) 2009 by James W. Huston.

The rotor blades of Marine One beat against the rain and hail in the black thunderstorm as the helicopter fought its way from the White House to Camp David. The leading edges of the spinning blades smashed the hail into small ice bullets that slammed noisily into the side of the passenger compartment. An updraft bent the helicopter's blades down unnaturally as it raced upward, only to be forced violently down again.

The noise inside President Adams's helicopter grew deafening. The jet engines screamed and the metal bent in resistance to the invisible forces in the darkness. The floor plate in the passenger compartment suddenly buckled and fractured. Vibrations rippled through the sides of the helicopter, first in large waves, then in microscopic spasms that joined to break the aluminum skeleton.

The nose of the helicopter pitched up. The occupants cried out as the helicopter fought valiantly against the wall of water and turbulent air. The helicopter flailed as it rolled over and plunged toward the Maryland countryside below.

IF MY RADIO alarm had gone off, I would have known the president was dead. But we had lost power from the thunderstorm that still raged when I woke up to the beep of my backup alarm, my Ironman watch. I got up and didn't even bother to look out the window. I liked running in the rain, but not in a storm. I shaved in the dim bathroom while the rain pounded the roof. I listened to Debbie running around trying to get the kids ready for school in the dark. They ate cold cereal with warm milk and whined about how horrible everything was.

It was the worst storm I could remember since moving to Annapolis. My commute wasn't far, but the storm turned it into a complete nightmare. I sometimes wonder why I even bother. I have high-speed Internet at home that connects me to my office just as if I were sitting at my desk. But I actually like having an office. There's just a different feel to it when you put on a suit and drive to the office. It feels wrong to sit in my pajamas talking on the phone with a U.S. attorney in D.C., sounding tough about a criminal he's trying to put away. Probably my Marine training. I spent too much of my lost youth deriving comfort from mindless routine.

I drove through the downpour ignorant of the enormity of events that swirled around me. Everyone in the world knew about the crash except me. I sometimes listen to the news while driving, but I had become addicted to books on tape. That day I was deep into a John le Carre novel, which, when I started the engine in my Volvo XC90, picked up right where it had left off.

I got to my office a little later than usual and parked in my space in front of our two-story redbrick building. As far as I knew, it was just another day, with the Big Storm to remember it by. I opened the heavy door to our building and forced it closed against the wind. I put my umbrella in the brass stand near the door and shook the rain off my raincoat.

"Morning," I said to Dolores, our fiftysomething receptionist, who was well-intentioned but didn't really get it.

She had an odd look on her face. "Good morning, Mr. Nolan," she said, pregnant with expectation.

"How are you, Dolores?" I hung my coat on a peg on the coatrack and picked up my briefcase, waiting for the storm questions. Dolores was waiting for something else. " What?" I asked.

"Can you believe the news?"

I quickly realized I hadn't heard any news. "What news?"

"You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"About the president."

The last time anyone had spoken to me like that about the president was when Reagan was shot by Hinckley and I was a teenager. "What?" I asked.

"I thought you must have heard."

"Power went off."

"I thought you'd listen in your car."

"What is it, Dolores?"

"The president's helicopter went down last night."

I felt a sudden dryness in my throat. "Was he in it?" I asked, afraid of what the answer was. I'm not, or I should say wasn't, a fan of the president's. Different parties, different perspectives on pretty much everything. But the idea of the president dying was about the office of the president, the disruption, not the end of a politician I didn't care for.

"Yes. On his way to Camp David in the middle of that storm."

"Why the hell was he flying last night? That was nuts."

"That's what everybody's asking. Nobody's answering, but-"

"TV on in the coffee room?"

"Yes, sir." She frowned.

I started toward the back of the office thinking about what kind of storm it would take to cause the president's helicopter to go down. Last night's storm was just the kind. Lots of wind, electrical storm, nasty rain, hail, maybe even icing. Lots of possibilities. "Anybody get out?" I yelled over my shoulder.

"No, sir. All killed. Pilots, Secret Service agents, president, everybody."

I shook my head. "Vice president been on television yet?"

"Just for a second-looked like he'd seen a ghost. He's being sworn in at ten. Mr. Nolan?" she said, forcing me to stop.

"What?" I said, stopping.

"There's something else."

"What?"

"Kathryn Galbraith called."

She was the vice president of Aviation Insurers International, or AII as it was known, A-double-I. She was one of the people who retained me in cases, who made it possible for my children to eat more than saltines. A lot of what I did was to defend airplane manufacturers in lawsuits when planes crashed, especially helicopters-which I flew, and still did, in the Marine Reserves-and which, coincidentally, crash more than fixed-wing airplanes. In the Marine Corps, we said our helicopters were sixty thousand parts flying in formation, yearning to be free of each other. Sometimes that was more accurate than we liked to admit.

AII probably insured either the helicopter or one of the major parts in it, and they were concerned. "She say what she wanted?" I asked.

"Just that it was about Marine One."

Everybody from our small firm except Dolores was crammed into the squeaky-floored coffee room. A small, round table sat in the middle of the room, and the old television with a built-in videocassette player was in the corner on the counter. "Morning," I said to the group.

They all responded without looking at me. They were riveted to the live images of the crash scene. News helicopters battled each other in the rain overhead the crash site for the best angles to show the wreckage; several had their cameramen hanging out of the doors to zoom in better on the scene. One cameraman was standing on the skid of his helicopter, held on by a rock-climbing harness. They were about to make more wreckage if they weren't careful.

My law partner, Rick Berberian, said, "You lose power?"

"Yeah. All night. You?"

"Pretty much the whole western part of the city."

Two of our three associates were sitting in chairs, leaning forward. If the mood weren't so serious, it would have been comical. Rachel Long, the third associate-who worked exclusively with me-was standing in the corner with her arms crossed. She was also a Naval Academy graduate, surface warfare, who had resigned from the navy after a crushing divorce from a classmate. With her gaze fixed on the television, she said, "You hear Kathryn called?"