“What’s the matter?” Hiccock said, concerned.
“How do you turn it on?” she asked, looking at the racks, not realizing the power switch was hidden in the design of the twin monitors nowadays.
Hiccock breathed deeply.
“Listen, Mr. Hiccock, you came after me. I didn’t ask you to come here. Now I am sorry if I don’t know how to get this contraption going. In fact, I don’t know why the hell you think I can help you at all. So maybe you just better pack up all this equipment and make sure not to scratch my floors when you haul it out of here.”
Hiccock studied her, trying to figure out if this was her way of signing off or just negotiating. “Admiral, I believe in you and your theories. I want you on my team because I believe you have a contribution to make. The nation is suffering right now. No one has a clue what’s going on. Thirty years ago, you did the basic analysis of what I think might be happening today. I want you to be familiar with what’s gone on since then.”
“Bilgewater!”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s a load of backwash. You happened to pull my report to the Joint Chiefs out of some dusty old pile and now you have elevated it to the status of ‘scripture.’ I think it’s got more to do with your pride than my writings.”
“Fair enough. Maybe I am a little biased toward your paper, but the president has given me the job of finding an alternate causality. My intuition tells me computers somehow play a role here.”
“So why do you think I can help?”
“Maybe you can give this a fresh new look from an old perspective.”
“Old? Try ancient! I can’t even recognize this apparatus here as a computer. In my day they were enormous.”
Hiccock pondered this for a moment. “I got a better idea.” He removed his laptop from its case. “Let’s start small.” He opened the PowerBook and pointed to the “on” button. “You press this circle here; it’s actually a momentary contact push button, they like the design to be sleek and smooth so they hide it.”
Later that evening, as Hiccock was leaving, he said, “I’ll be back from Washington in two days. Just fool around with the laptop before you tackle the big one. These men will camp outside and won’t bother you unless you have questions.”
“I haven’t touched a computer in three decades. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“All I can ask is that you give it a try.”
The smell of burnt flesh, scorched asphalt, spent jet fuel, melted plastic, and halogen foam was nauseating, but after a few minutes of exposure and some retching, the average person would be able to control the gag reflex. The reason for the HAZMAT suits, however, was the unconfirmed whereabouts of three pounds of dicloromonothoromethane that, if it were in the cargo hold of the now-disintegrated 767, would have boiled into a crude form of nerve gas. Cute what they allow to fly on planes these days, Joey Palumbo thought, as he heard nothing but his own breathing inside the helmet of his regulation HM4 plastic disposable contamination unit. As the head of the FBI’s San Francisco office, this was his jurisdiction. Normally, any event at SFO airport would first be NTSB territory, but due to the recent events, any major loss of life was now considered a potential terrorist act. That was fine with the National Transportation Safety Board. If this had been an accident, it was one of the worst ever.
The white foam sprayed from the crash trucks to smother the fire would have given the entire scene the look of a fresh December snow were it not for the twisted, jagged metal struts, charred bodies, and dismembered parts. As he scanned the devastation, there, lying in the “snow,” he spotted something, but couldn’t quite make it out through the HAZMAT plastic face shield. He stepped closer to it. As the shape and texture came into focus, it tugged on a memory string, untying some old recollections.
Gunhill Road provided the perfect sled ride, a quarter-mile straight downhill run. On the morning of the first snow, there was not a car or truck in sight. He was trudging up the steep hill, through the three feet of new snow, his Flexible Flyer skidding along behind him on a frayed rope. The only sounds he heard were the muffled footfalls and squeals of delight coming from kids making forts, having snowball fights, and zooming by him on their sleds and garbage-can covers. Reaching the corner of Decatur Avenue, he turned and saw the great snow-covered way stretching out beneath him. The only mar on the pristine white cover was the dirty brown girders of the Third Avenue El, making a hard left turn south onto Webster Avenue.
Holding the sled up at an angle, he started running as fast as his galoshes-covered feet would carry him. When he reached his maximum velocity, he belly flopped down onto the sled he threw out ahead. Grabbing the steering handles in each hand, he sped down the hill, increasing speed with every second, his body prone on the sled, the cold wind and stinging snow lashing his face. Being an advanced sledder at age ten, he used the more difficult rear-foot-drag method of turning the sled. To do it you had to pull hard on the steering handle while dragging the toe of your foot on that side. The combination of this one-sided braking action and bending the runners in that direction gave the sled the handling control of a Ferrari turning on a lira. As the day progressed, nothing affected him or his friends — not the bitter cold, the runny noses, or the minor cuts and scrapes that were the occupational hazards of belly flopping in the Bronx, 1972.
As the winter sun was setting early in the afternoon, Joey pulled his little sister Gina on his sled while she held her teddy bear, Bobo. Crossing 212th Street, a kid on a sled sped out of nowhere. This kid, not being a master of the toe-drag-turn technique, couldn’t avoid ramming into the sled, sending Gina flying.
Joey ran to his sister as she lay there, still, not breathing. Panic arose within him, but then, almost as suddenly, a new feeling came over him, even stronger — the need for action. He knew he could not just stand there. He immediately scooped her up in his arms and started running back toward Gunhill Road. There he hailed a passing garbage truck and implored the driver to rush him to the hospital. The doctors in the ER resuscitated Gina, everyone involved praising Joey for his fast action and for keeping his head.
The next day, Joey’s mom made him her special, once-a-year, Easter morning blueberry pancakes for breakfast. This was her way of honoring her little hero. Gina was resting now in the hospital, Joey’s mom having spent the night, leaving only to come home to make her breakfast for Joey. She’d be going right back.
After breakfast and more hugs than a guy should get, Joey, all bundled up, left for school. As he crossed 212th Street, there, in the snow, dirty from being run over, lay Gina’s teddy bear Bobo.
Now it was an Elmo doll. There in the white foam, dirty with soot, lay somebody’s little girl’s Elmo. Shit! The FBI agent cursed to himself and the Virgin Mary. He didn’t cry much growing up, but now the man fought back the tightening in his throat and the fluttering in his chest and focused on the next action he needed to take. A shout from behind turned him around.