A Hideous Beauty (34 page)

She whispered to him, “Thank you for sharing your seat with me.”

“We're going to sing for the president of the United States!” he told her.

“I know.”

“My daddy said that he didn't vote for the president, but that I could sing for him anyway.”

“Can you keep a secret?” Jana said. “I didn't vote for the president either.”

The boy grinned.

“Can you keep another secret?”

The boy nodded.

“Pretend like I'm not here, OK?”

He agreed. She won him over with her smile. Little boys, grown men, Jana knew her smile could get them to do whatever she wanted them to do.

From the front of the bus, adult voices issued orders for the children to sit down and be quiet. The motor roared to life. With a series of starts and jerks, the bus inched forward, backed up, then inched forward again as the driver maneuvered around the cars in front of them.

Hunkered down in the backseat, Jana congratulated herself. With Christina's help she was in the motorcade. Whatever happened from here, she would be there to report it.

With time to kill, she mulled over the Secret Service agent's thumbs-up sign. News copy for tonight's broadcast formed in her head.

Moments before the assassination the president stopped his motorcade to assist a busload of children who were scheduled to sing for him. Ironically, their song would be the last song he ever heard.

As the bus picked up speed Jana risked a peek out the rear window. With the city skyline behind them and the bay below them, they were about a quarter of the way across the bridge.

“Don't do this, Myles.”

“Myles is dead. My name is Semyaza.”

From the flight deck of the USS
Midway
I scanned the bay bridge and surrounding area for anything that could be a threat to the motorcade. Coast Guard patrol boats plied the waters beneath the bridge, duplicating my effort.

I felt as useless as the museum aircraft on the deck beside me.

The president's motorcade came into view, a long line of black vehicles followed by a yellow school bus.

“No!” I cried.

Semyaza grinned. “Nice touch, don't you think? The school bus was the president's idea.”

The motorcade sailed smoothly across the bridge under clear blue skies. It was a perfect San Diego Chamber of Commerce day.

I had to find the threat and reveal it. What were the possibilities?

Sniper. No. There were no buildings close enough to the bridge for a sniper. Besides, the bridge was too high, the angles were all wrong.

Portable rocket launcher. But from where? Again, distance and angles were a problem.

Explosives. The pilings beneath the water surface could be rigged. But that was so obvious. It was the Secret Service's job to secure the bridge. But then, it was their job to secure buildings and they had missed the school book depository in Dallas in 1963, hadn't they?

Of course, if the president was part of the plot, any of the vehicles in the motorcade could be rigged to . . .

The school bus!

No! It was unthinkable.

I shot a glance at the nonhuman being beside me. Was human life so cheap to them that they would kill a busload of schoolchildren for show? What was I saying? Since when did Satan or demons have any regard for human life?

I have to warn them. I have to warn the people on the bus. Or maybe . . . maybe I don't have to warn them. Maybe the answer to putting a stop to this whole thing is standing beside me.

“You have the power to stop this, don't you? If not the power, the authority.”

Semyaza sneered. “You cannot begin to comprehend the power I have,” he said.

“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 snatched 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.