What happened? Is he gone for good?
A noise rises on the periphery. It starts as an industrial hum—a distant chain saw maybe, trucks on the interstate (except there is no interstate nearby)—and Scott pays it no attention as he watches the boy dig into the muddy shore and pull out coins of shale and quartz. He begins at a far point and works his way back, searching the mud first with his eyes, then his fingers.
The chain saw gets louder, taking on a low bass rumble. Something is coming. Scott stands, becoming aware of wind, the westward lean of trees, leaves shimmering, mimicking the sound of applause. In the distance the boy stops what he’s doing and looks up. In that moment a Jurassic roar overtakes them as the helicopter comes in low over the trees behind them. Scott ducks his head reflexively. The boy starts to run.
The helicopter swoops through bright sun, like a bird of prey, then slows as it reaches the far bank and begins to circle back. It is black and shiny, like a pincered beetle. JJ approaches at a full run, a look of fear on his face. Scott picks him up without thinking and moves into the trees. He runs in his city shoes through low brush, snaking between poplars and elms, poison ivy brushing his cuffs. Once again he is a muscle of survival, an engine of rescue. The boy’s arms are wrapped around his neck, legs around his waist. He faces backward, his eyes wide, chin on Scott’s shoulder. His knees dig into Scott’s sides.
When they get back to the house, Scott sees the helicopter settle in the backyard. Eleanor has come out onto the front porch and has a hand on her head, trying to keep her hair from blowing into her face.
The pilot shuts off the engine, rotors slowing.
Scott hands the boy to Eleanor.
“What’s going on?” she says.
“You should take him inside,” Scott tells her, then turns to see Gus Franklin and Agent O’Brien climb out of the whirlybird. They approach, O’Brien ducked low, hand on his head, Gus walking upright—confident that he is shorter than the blades.
The engine whirl slows and quiets. Gus sticks out his hand.
“Sorry for the drama,” he says. “But given all the leaks I thought we should reach you before the news got out.”
Scott shakes his hand.
“You remember Agent O’Brien,” says Gus.
O’Brien spits into the grass.
“Yeah,” he says. “He remembers.”
“Wasn’t he off the case?” says Scott.
Gus squints into the sun.
“Let’s just say some new facts are moving the FBI to the front of the investigation.”
Scott looks puzzled. O’Brien pats his arm.
“Let’s go inside.”
They sit in the kitchen. Eleanor puts on an episode of Cat in the Hat to distract the boy (too much TV, she thinks. I’m giving him too much TV), then sits on the edge of her seat, jumping up every time he stirs.
“Okay,” says O’Brien. “This is me taking off the gloves.”
Scott looks at Gus, who shrugs. There’s nothing he can do. The divers recovered the cockpit door this morning, lasering the hinges and floating it to the surface. Tests showed the holes were indeed bullet holes. This triggered a shift in procedural authority. Phone calls were made from government offices and Gus was told in no uncertain terms that he should give the FBI as much operational leeway as they required. Oh, and by the way, he was getting O’Brien back. Apparently, the brass was convinced that O’Brien wasn’t their leak. Plus, it turned out, he was being groomed for big things—Gus’s liaison explained—so they were putting him back on the case.
Ten minutes later, O’Brien walked into the hangar with a team of twelve men and asked for a “sit rep.” Gus saw no point in fighting—he was a pragmatist by nature, as much as he disliked the man personally. He told O’Brien that they’d recovered all remaining bodies except for Gil Baruch, the Batemans’ body man. It looked as if he had either been thrown clear of the others or had floated out of the fuselage in the days after the crash. If they were lucky his body would wash up somewhere, as Emma’s and Sarah’s had. Or, quite possibly, it was simply gone.
The questions as Gus saw them were as follows.
Who fired the shots? The obvious suspect was the security man, Gil Baruch, the only passenger known to be armed, but since none of the passengers or crew had gone through a security screening before boarding the plane, they were all potential shooters.
Why had the shots been fired? Was the shooter attempting to force his way into the cockpit in order to hijack the plane? Or simply to crash it? Or was the shooter attempting to get inside the cockpit to avert the crash? Villain, or a hero? That was the question.
Why was the captain in the main cabin and not the cockpit? If it was a possible hijack scenario, was he a hostage? Had he come out to defuse the situation? But if that was the case…
Why was there no mayday from the copilot?