“Nah, the Legion’s a private club. Just vets and their wives.” Watts raised the window blinds. “I’ll take care of you, pal. I’ll make sure you get tucked in if you drink too much. Another nice thing up here is the view — if you’re into flying, that is. That runway is only a stone’s throw away. Jets line up for takeoff just beyond that fence. There’s a radio in the kitchen. You can hear pilot chatter on 88.5 FM.”
Akil briefly glanced outside and then turned away, seemingly more interested in the cleanliness of the bathroom.
“It’s yours if you want it, but I’ll need an answer today,” Watts pressed. “I’ll even give you a break on meals. We cook some good chow for a bar. Where else can you get homemade soup for two bucks a bowl? Tomorrow night’s dollar tacos. What do you think?”
“I love Mexican,” Akil admitted. He walked into the kitchenette and observed a chained door that led onto a small porch. A rusted barbecue grill hid the fact that half the railing was missing. He opened the refrigerator and turned the cooling dial to high. The compressor kicked in with a mild hum. He reached into his pocket. “You got a deal, Chief. Here’s May’s rent plus a deposit. I’ll just need a receipt.”
“Sold,” Watts announced, stuffing the keys and the rental application into Akil’s hand. “You can move right in. I’ve gotta get ready to open. We’ll do the paperwork later.”
Akil listened for the stair creaks and then returned to the front window. He lifted a pair of binoculars. The departure point on Mitchell’s Runway 19R was just five hundred feet away. The morning traffic on East Layton Avenue was mild. It would be less traveled at dawn. The proximity was more than excellent — it was a gift from Allah.
He knelt on the floor.
Surah 84. The Sundering, Splitting Open
19. Ye shall surely travel from stage to stage.
20. What then is the matter with them that they believe not?
21. And when the Qur’an is read to them, they fall not prostrate,
22. But on the contrary, the Unbelievers reject it.
23. But Allah has full knowledge of what they secrete in their breasts.
24. So announce to them a Penalty Grievous.
Chapter 3
Tom Ross, NTSB acting division chief of Aviation Engineering, squinted at his reflection in his computer screen. He licked his palm and tried to smooth down an unruly hair lump. Ross was tall with sandy-blond hair and a fair complexion, and his face blushed every time he felt embarrassed. His female coworkers teased him unmercifully. They said he looked like a boyish Harrison Ford.
He reached into a drawer for a small red bag of Indian brand pumpkin seeds that he had ordered online from a vintage candy site. The white coating fed his salt addiction and, in some quirky way, methodically eating the seeds one by one lowered his stress level. That’s how he rationalized it. The medical facts disagreed. He didn’t want to think about that.
Ross opened a thick document stamped Courtesy Copy in his inbasket. He shook his head at the eleventh revision of the latest Department of Homeland Security organization chart. Thankfully, the NTSB wasn’t part of it. There weren’t many advantages of working exclusively for and under the scrutiny of the United States Congress, but this was definitely one. He wondered how many DHS employees would be physically transferred and on which effective date. Relocation was always rough, especially on families.
Family. Like a powerful magnet, the word pulled his thoughts back to a quiet neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, a connected two-story duplex, and a relationship with Marcia Davies that he had once thought might lead to a family. His first wife of eighteen years had been a kind, small-town Ohio woman with traditional down-home family values. She’d undergone a delicate female operation and, while recovering at home, had died suddenly from a blood clot.
Ross had been devastated by the loss and buried himself in work just to survive. He’d met Marcia at a technical aviation conference in San Francisco and was immediately smitten. He had no clue that behind her sexy smile and her degrees in engineering and accounting lay a brash, spoiled daddy’s girl raised in country clubs, fur coats, and fine Southern estates.
The marriage happened quickly on a luxurious and private Caribbean island. Two years later, Ross knew that he’d made a terrible mistake. His sweet Southern belle had grown into a self-centered, nasty stranger skilled in tantrums and manipulation. Her penchant for materialism grew out of control. She regularly berated him publicly and openly flirted with any male who’d pay attention. Ross had worked up the nerve to divorce Marcia but not the heart to ask her to leave. He simply drifted back into the escape of work.
Marcia continued to live in the upper flat while heading up Deloitte’s Audit Division on 12th Street Northwest in Washington, DC.
Ross was on rotational duty as the investigator-in-charge of the NTSB’s “Go Team,” an elite group of specialized experts, ready to respond to catastrophic aviation accidents at a moment’s notice. During their assigned tours, Go Team members were on call 24/7, expected to arrive at the accident scene as quickly as possible, analyze what happened, and ultimately provide a safety recommendation so it never happened again.
All members understood that nothing short of death or Armageddon should stop them from responding. No personal commitment was unbreakable. Disciplinary measures were routinely threatened and meted out. During 9/11, the US Justice Department took the investigatory lead of the airline crashes, while NTSB provided advice and support. Nevertheless, Ross worked for months on four hours of sleep per night. He took one precious day off for a funeral, only to have it remanded when Flight 587 crashed on November 12, 2001, in Rockaway, Queens, New York.
Field Specialist Ron Hollings poked his head inside Ross’s office.
“Guess where we found the file on that 747 that crashed near Madrid in 1976—the one with the wing failure?”
“The men’s room storage closet,” Ross replied offhandedly, his tongue locked in fierce struggle with a stubborn pumpkin seed fragment.
“How’d you know?”
“It used to be a pre-archive holding room, but no one followed up. Boxes just started accumulating.”
Hollings glanced at the pumpkin seeds — a solid stress indicator. True to his gender (no matter what reality TV writers scripted) Ross, like most men, wasn’t comfortable talking about personal relationships. Hollings knew he needed a shove.
“Did you ask her to leave?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I will, I promise. I just don’t have the energy.”
“You look tired, Tom.”
“Thanks. I know.”
Hollings closed the door and sat down.
Ross rose from his desk and gazed blankly through the windowpane. “Marcia’s always been high-strung. She blames her job. Public accounting firms are ruthless. She drags herself upstairs every night, and I can tell she’s physically and mentally exhausted.”
“Stop rationalizing a nasty situation,” Hollings said firmly. “Marcia’s a nasty ex-wife and a nasty tenant. You need to do two things: tell her she needs to go, and then find a new renter. Someone nice. Then worry about a new relationship. They’re out there; I guarantee it. Maybe even on one of those dating sites.”
Ross made a painful face and spit a seed hull at the wastebasket. He flipped through his calendar. “I need to think. Tell Jenna I’m taking the rest of the — ugh! Is today the fourth?”