A Hideous Beauty Kingdom Wars I Part 35

"Then stop this!"

Without answering me, Semyaza turned northward. "Ah! Right on time," he said.

I followed his gaze. In the distant sky I saw a speck that at first glance appeared to be a blackbird. But it wasn't a bird. Its flight was mechanically straight. And it was coming directly toward us.

Jana turned toward the front of the bus just as the driver glanced up into the oversized mirror. Her eyes locked on Jana.

Busted! Jana thought.

But the driver resumed driving and said nothing.

Before Jana had time to breathe a sigh of relief, one of the teachers sitting in the front seat checked the mirror for herself. The way she popped out of her seat, you would have thought it was spring-loaded. She charged down the aisle. "What are you doing on this bus?" she shouted.

On both sides of the aisle the kids watched with wide-eyed fear, the expression they get whenever someone is in trouble and they're glad it isn't them.

Reaching the back row, the teacher s.n.a.t.c.hed up the skinny boy, Jana's coconspirator, as though Jana was a child molester. The woman's cheap salt-and-pepper wig was knocked askew by the effort. "Who are you?" she screamed.

The second teacher, shorter and with Chihuahua-like protruding eyes, leaned at a crazy angle from behind to punctuate the question with an angry glare.

Jana smiled her smile, even though she knew it didn't have the same effect on women as it had on men. She decided now would be a good time to play the celebrity newscaster card.

"Maybe you don't recognize me," she said. "My name is Jana Torres, a reporter with the-"

Something out the window caught the second teacher's attention. She used it to distract the kids from the backseat stowaway. "Hey, kids! Look! On this side. Up in the sky. A fighter jet!"

Children poured across the aisle like water sloshing in a tube, plastering their faces against the windows.

"It looks mean," one girl said.

The teacher chuckled at the girl's innocence. "I suppose it does," she said. "But that's only to frighten away our enemies. He's friendly to us."

"Cool! He's coming right at us!" a boy shouted.

"He's probably doing a flyover," the teacher explained. "You know, like they do at parades and football games."

"Why?"

"It's the military's way of saluting the president."

Jana lifted herself up onto the seat and looked out the window. She agreed with the little girl. The fighter looked mean.

"He's the lead pilot enforcing the no-fly zone," Semyaza said, introducing the approaching aircraft. "Thirty seconds ago he broke from his designated flight path. His name is Danny Noonan."

"Noonan . . ."

"I thought you'd recognize the name. After your little jaunt to Montana, you can probably piece together his motive."

The jet was targeting the bridge. I'd found the threat, but there was no alarm for me to sound. It seemed every time I turned around lately I felt helpless. It was getting tiresome.

"He knows, doesn't he?" I said, swallowing hard. "He knows Lloyd Douglas killed his . . ."

I had to do a little generational math. Noonan's son would be too old to be a fighter pilot. That meant that Douglas had killed the pilot's . . .

". . . grandfather," I said.

"Very good, Grant. In case you haven't noticed this about us already, you'll soon learn that angels love irony. When Danny was a little boy, Lloyd Douglas was his hero. Douglas used to parade the boy and his father around the country to political rallies and fund-raisers. It was a great spectacle, the survivors of the Vietnam hero Douglas tried so valiantly to save."

"You told Danny the truth."

"Imagine his disappointment. A patriotic young man, the product of a proud military family . . . imagine how he felt when he learned it was all a lie, that the man he worshipped was in reality his grandfather's killer. For a warrior like Danny, there is only one way to right such a grievous wrong. Blood vengeance."

The blackbird-sized speck in the sky had transformed into an FA-18 Hornet, bristling with armament. Its nose dipped, taking on an attack posture.

Semyaza rubbed his hands together. "This is going to be good!" he said.

Two additional FA-18s appeared from nowhere on an intercept course.

"Don't get your hopes up," Semyaza said. "They won't catch him. Danny has superior skills. Besides, he has an edge. He's their trainer. He knows the tactics. He knows their weaknesses as pilots. He'll exploit them."

Noonan's jet streaked in front of us with such ferocity it looked and sounded like it was ripping open the sky. A rocket flared beneath one wing, then the other. Twin smoke trails looking like white serpents struck the bridge.

I held my breath, unable to comprehend what was happening.

When he is suspended between earth and heaven . . .

Two explosions less than a second apart created a single ball of smoke and fire. The one-two punch took out the section of bridge immediately in front of the motorcade.

Noonan pulled up. An instant later the pursuit FA-18s screamed past us.

On the bridge, the line of vehicles bowed forward with simultaneous clouds of white smoke rising from the tires. Some fishtailed. Others rear-ended the vehicle in front of them. The bus swung sideways, the front slamming against the bridge railing and for a second it appeared as though it might go over. But it didn't. It came to a stop.

None of the vehicles plunged over the bridge's severed end. From what I could see, some limos were crumpled, but nothing serious. There was no serious damage.

"Ha! He missed!" I shouted.

Jana, along with everything and everyone inside the bus, was thrown forward when the driver hit the brakes, hitting her head on the seat in front of her. Already a knot was forming.

It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the aftermath. Children lay scattered everywhere and in every conceivable position, in the aisle, on the seats, under the seats. It looked like a doll factory had exploded.

The teachers had been thrown backward on top of children. Now they were groggily trying to disentangle themselves, sorting out whose limbs were whose.

When the brakes locked, the driver had lost control of the bus. She'd swerved right in an attempt to miss the back of the SUV in front of them. She clipped the SUV and slammed into the side railing. For one nerve-rattling instant it appeared the bus would climb the railing and go over the side. But then it slumped back and came to a halt.

"Is anyone hurt?" Jana shouted.

Without exception every child was crying, making it impossible to tell who was hurt and who was just scared. Starting with her row, Jana began checking when a pounding on the back window startled her.

She turned to see the black suit and dark gla.s.ses of a Secret Service agent. His hand moved in a circular motion, as though he was winding yarn.

"Back it up! Back it up!" he shouted. "We'll retreat the same way we came in."

Retreat. The word sounded ominous.

Shouting over the din of crying children, Jana relayed the information to the driver, who sat stiff-armed at the wheel. Jana could see the woman's face in the mirror. She looked petrified. She was crying.

"I . . . I can't . . . ," the driver shouted back. "If I put it in gear, we'll go over the edge."

Her prediction of doom was a stick and the interior of the bus a beehive. The children became agitated.

"We're not going over the edge," Jana cried. "Ease the gearshift into reverse. We have a guardian angel behind us guiding us."

Jana thought that sounded more comforting than Secret Service agent, and it seemed to work. At least with the children.

"I . . . I don't think I can do it!" the driver wailed.

"Yes you can!"

Jana was beginning to wonder if she was going to have to go up there and drive the bus. But the driver managed to calm herself enough to put the gearshift in reverse.

The bus lurched. Children screamed.

Jana looked out the back window. The agent was looking at the tires and the length of the bus. He seemed unconcerned about any danger. Jana took her cue from him.

"You're doing great!" Jana shouted. "Keep going."

The bus moved away from the side railing. And just when Jana was convinced they were going to be fine, she saw a black speck in the sky.

"Oh no!" she cried.

"Oh no!" I cried.

Danny Noonan was coming back for another run.

Moments earlier I had watched as Noonan pulled up sharply, doing that maneuver Tom Cruise pulled in Top Gun. The two pursuit planes flew beneath him. What was wrong with them? Hadn't they seen the movie? Once again the bridge was in Danny Noonan's sights.

Semyaza observed the maneuver stoically, as though presidential a.s.sa.s.sinations were daily events. "Did I tell you Danny Noonan is eager to meet you?" he droned. "Let me see if I can recall his exact words. I believe he said he wanted to meet the 'lowlife sc.u.m who immortalized the lie' surrounding his grandfather's death."

He'd have to get in line, I thought. When the truth about Lloyd Douglas came out, there would be a lot of people eager to take a swing at me.

I focused on the attacking FA-18's approach. The pursuit aircraft had circled around, but they were too far away to do anything. The vehicles on the bridge were sitting ducks.

"One more thing," Semyaza said, "the school bus driver? One of us."

"You mean, an angel."

"She took physical form to ensure that the bus's arrival was delayed long enough to get caught behind the traffic barrier. How else does one get a bus in a presidential motorcade except by invitation?"

"Why children?" I cried. "Why kill innocents?"

"It looks good in the history books. Murdering innocents solidified Herod's legacy, didn't it?"

Words exploded from my mouth. "You vicious, cruel, barbarous, diabolical monster!"

Semyaza smiled as though I'd complimented him. "I'm partial to Old Scratch, myself. Azazel likes Mephistopheles. But then, he was fond of Goethe. You have to remember, Grant, we're the ones who inspired those names." As an afterthought, he said, "Oh yeah . . . Jana's on the bus."

"What!"

I took a swing at him. My fist pa.s.sed through him.

"Act two," Semyaza said, turning his attention to the approaching FA-18.

Twin flashes lit the underside of the wings, sp.a.w.ning white serpents identical to the previous strikes. This time they hit the east end of the bridge. The explosive force lifted huge chunks of concrete into the air. Gravity reversed their course. They splashed into the bay.

As before, the rockets missed the vehicles.

"Another miss!" I shouted. "Looks like your hotshot pilot isn't so-"

A blast of machine-gun fire from Noonan's FA-18 strafed the bay in front of me so close I could hear the bullets sizzle as they knifed into the water. The backwash of the jet knocked me onto my backside, reopening old dog-bite wounds.

Semyaza stood unaffected.

"I think he recognized you," he said.

Great. Now someone recognizes me.

I started to get up. The pursuit aircraft knocked me back down.

Danny Noonan's FA-18 shot up nearly perpendicular to the ground. This time the pursuit pilots were ready for him and Noonan was forced to bank sharply left. He hightailed it out to sea.

Semyaza stood over me. "So, Grant," he said, cheerfully, "enjoying yourself?"

"This is it!" the wigged teacher shouted when she saw the rockets.

Jana braced herself.

The explosion lifted the bus off the bridge and for a moment everything and everyone was suspended in midair. It was one of those heart-in-the-throat moments when you don't know what's going to happen next, but you know it's going to be bad and may even be fatal. It felt as though the proverbial rug had been pulled out from beneath them, leaving nothing but two hundred feet of air separating them from death.

A moment later the bus found the bridge again, hard, slamming everyone against the seats and floor. The long, bulky vehicle rocked, then settled. Inside, it was battlefield quiet, when the shooting stops and the moans begin.

With the help of the seat in front of her Jana pulled herself up and looked out the side window. She saw a ragged concrete edge and then nothing but distant bay. They were sitting literally inches from where the bridge ended.

"It's . . . it's . . . gone!" the driver cried. "One second it was there and now it's gone!"

The bridge wasn't the only thing that was gone. So was the Secret Service agent. When Jana looked out the back window to see if he was all right, all she saw were sungla.s.ses lying broken on the pavement.

"We have to get out of here before the bridge collapses!" the driver shouted. She pulled the lever that opened the door and screamed.

There were three bus steps then . . . nothing.