Page 97 of Gryphon

“Got me a bar to open.” He shook both their hands and strolled off whistling.

“What was that about?”

“Just an idea. Can we get out of here?”

Mike hadn’t heard such a good idea in a long time.

82

Mike and Holly sat side-by-side on the couch in the Pacific Northwest team house. The space between them close enough to reach across, yet neither of them did.

The flight back to Iceland had passed in silence. Dropping off Jeremy in DC, and the final long haul back across the country, not an unnecessary word had passed between them.

He expected to feel disappointment or affirmation or something other than a bone-deep weariness. He couldn’t convince himself to buy in that the dozen time zones from Georgia to Gig Harbor, Washington, were the problem. He’d felt this way for four days now and it showed no signs of abating.

He also saw no signs of himself leaving and that was even more worrisome. Not as if he had all that much to pack, his life on the street had taught him to travel light through life. Even during the height of the Advanced Ads era—the day before it was erased from the face of Denver—he’d had an office with a studio apartment in the back, his car and plane, and a Premier season pass to the four Aspen ski mountains.

Yet each time he thought about packing, the prelude to walking out the door, he simply couldn’t find the energy. If he stood up, he’d barf from the sheer weariness with it all. He was so sick of himself—but even that didn’t get him to his feet.

It would help if Miranda came out of her room for more than meals and to walk Meg. But since their return from the conference, she didn’t. And he couldn’t bring himself to knock on her door to tell her he was leaving. He couldn’t imagine which one of them would take it worse.

Instead, all he could recall was the line of body bags that would forever be on that Swedish ski slope. The look on Liisa Salo’s face as she mourned a Swedish pilot she’d never met in the flesh. The pilot shot out of the sky on a quiet winter morning at Storuman. The final carnage on the rooftop in Georgia.

That was done, finished.

“Hey.”

“Huh?”

Holly punched him on the arm and pointed at the TV screen.

A bright red Breaking News banner flashed upon the screen. Below it in the biggest font that would fit: Plane crash in Georgia (country).

He hit the volume. They’d both been such zombies since their return to the US that they hadn’t even bothered to turn on the sound. Staring at the screen like monkeys watching a digital clock, that’s how functional they were.

“We have limited information at this time,” the voiceover snapped and crackled like it was only a marginal connection. The video had none of those issues.

It was a longshot view of a wide, two-lane road running straight into a towering cliff. Where you’d expect a tunnel, there was nothing but a wall of flames.

The words Roki Tunnel, Georgia, flashed up on the screen.

At the base of the cliffs to either side of the tunnel lay airplane wings, big ones—commercial-jet sized.

“Are those…” Mike couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the wings, except how rapidly fire was taking hold of them. They were white.

“The winglets that curve up at the ends,” Holly pointed. “Those are from a 737.”

The winglets were red with white bands. “That’s Fly Georgia’s colors.”

“But where’s the plane fuselage?”

In answer, the film clip started over. Someone must have known ahead of time and set the camera in place.

The whole plane showed for just an instant. Then the wings slammed the cliffs and the fuselage of the plane shot into the tunnel.

The wings had time to become engulfed in flames.

Four seconds later, a blast of fire shot out of the tunnel and straight toward the camera, like it had been fired out of a cannon—or a tunnel.

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