Flashback

been, but his chest simply hurt too much.

Gasping for air, Leonard returned to Nick Bottom’s cubie, shoved aside the empty drawers, and sat on the bed. His chest hurt so much that he thought he might faint.

He forced himself up and walked to the desk, looking down at the heap of dossiers.

Val had emptied his pockets of everyday things—penknife, a notebook, other detritus—to make room for the pistol magazines and loose ammunition he’d taken with him. There on the desk was Leonard’s daughter Dara’s cell phone, set down and forgotten by Val in his hurry. With shaking hands, he sat on the bed and activated the few functions that still worked on the phone, clicking to the private text and massive video files.

The demand for the five-letter-digit password came up.

Remembering his lovely, elfin daughter telling her Shakespeare-scholar father why she’d fallen in love with a man with the absurd name of Nick Bottom, Leonard thumbed in the letters—d-r-e-a- m.

The encryption fell away. Leonard opened the video files first but this wasn’t a video diary by his daughter: people whom Leonard could not identify were staring into a camera, obviously a much higher-quality camera than the one on Dara’s phone, and talking about their use of flashback. The video files were huge, but skipping around in them just showed more men and women speaking into the camera. There was no sight of Dara, and Leonard couldn’t imagine why this stuff was on her phone.

One hand massaging his aching chest, Leonard closed the video files and opened the encrypted text files. This was by his daughter—a private diary kept by Dara between the late spring and early autumn of her last full year of life. It was password-protected but Leonard guessed Kildare—the name of Dara’s parakeet when she was eight years old—and the file opened. He read quickly, keying the daily entries faster and faster until he reached the last one, recorded just one day before her death.

“My God, my God,” Leonard said again, his voice filled with infinitely more terror and astonishment.

This changed everything. It made the hundreds of pages of the grand jury indictment information in the dossiers accusing Nick of murder nothing more than a sad joke. It changed everything.

He had to get to a phone and call Nick no matter what the consequences of the police tracing the call. He had to find and stop Val. He had to…

Leonard felt the sudden pain in his chest expand, a pain much more intense than the mere flower-fist of discomfort he was used to, until the pain became a widening cloak of darkness that first fluttered about him like a black bat and then settled tight around him, cutting off his vision and breathing.

I have to stay conscious, thought Leonard. I have to tell Nick. I have to tell Val. I have to tell everyone…

He did not feel himself fall.

1.15 Santa Ana and Airborne—Fri., Sept. 24

John Wayne airport was outside the area of the battle that had raged around Los Angeles for six or seven days, but the heavy amount of National Guard and other military traffic rumbling by on the 405 San Diego Freeway crossing the airport grounds just beyond the northeast end of Runway 1L/19R had been constant for days. No military air traffic was using John Wayne, only the usual commercial freight and occasional passenger traffic that regularly used the small field in unincorporated Orange County. Noise-abatement restrictions that had once made large aircraft takeoff from Runway 19R somewhat problematic for passengers with the required steep climbs and hard banks over Newport Beach had been eliminated in recent years.

Even though no Nakamura-owned commercial or private aircraft were allowed to land in Los Angeles–area airports, John Wayne Airport had for years been a negotiated exception. This Friday evening a modified FedEx A310/360 Nakamura courier-freight flight from Tokyo, with a stopover in Hawaii, had landed, refueled, and was awaiting a scheduled 7 p.m. takeoff, bound for Denver.

At five minutes before seven, the captain of the Nakamura aircraft requested a change in their flight plan to accommodate an 8 p.m. takeoff time. Tower personnel at John Wayne Airport forwarded the request to both the civilian Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale and the temporary Los Angeles Military Region Air Traffic Control located at the former Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, which was currently being operated as regional control center by the California Air National Guard for the duration of the military emergency. Both centers agreed to the one-hour delay. Along with that permission came the notice that military air traffic over the combat area currently centered on Lake Elsinore some fifty miles east of John Wayne Airport was so intense—and the evening military traffic out of LAX so busy—that all westbound commercial traffic from John Wayne was required to fly west out over the Pacific, northwest along the coast to a designated turning point near Morro Bay, and only then turn east by northeast, resuming their usual flight lanes to Denver at a point north and east of Las Vegas. All pilots were notified to refigure their fuel requirements accordingly.

The crew of the Nakamura aircraft was also notified that there would be no further delays granted this Friday night since, under local wartime regulations, John Wayne Airport would be shutting down for the night at 8:15 p.m. PDST.

At three minutes before 8 p.m., the Nakamura A310/360 started its engines and began taxiing to its takeoff position on Runway 19R. It had tested both engines and had requested final permission for takeoff when suddenly a California Highway Patrol cruiser pulled out onto the runway ahead of it, all of the police cruiser’s bubble lights flashing.

The A310/360 received permission to taxi onto the apron, although it was informed that it would have to be airborne in less than fifteen minutes or spend the night at John Wayne. It did not shut down its engines. Ground crews arrived in an old Ford electric pickup with Wollard Truck Model TLPH252 passenger stairs mounted on it and the aircraft opened its left front door. The CHP cruiser approached and stopped, its lights quit flashing, and Nick Bottom got out and came around to the driver’s side to talk to the newly appointed chief Ambrose at the wheel.

“Thanks, Chief,” said Nick, shaking the heavyset trooper’s hand.

“I’ll always be Dale to you, Nick,” said Ambrose. “I hope you find your boy.” The CHP vehicle drove off the tarmac as Nick climbed the steps to the aircraft. He favored his right side because of the injured ribs there.

Three hours earlier, advisor Daichi Omura had said to him, “If you go back to Denver, Bottom-san, you will die.”

“I have to go back, Omura-sama.”

“Hideki Sato will be waiting for you on the aircraft at John Wayne Airport, Bottom-san. You will never be out of his custody again for the short remnant of your life… if you try to go back.”

Nick had shaken his head and sipped the very fine single-malt Scotch Omura had provided. “I don’t think so, Omura-sama. Sato’s in Washington with Mr. Nakamura. They weren’t scheduled to get back to Denver until Saturday… tomorrow sometime. Plus, this flight’s coming from Tokyo via Hawaii. Mr. Nakamura himself told me that they didn’t have any flights going west from Denver to Los Angeles–area airports.”

“Sato will have to be there,” grunted the old man.

“Why is that, Omura-sama?”

“Because if you do not show up at John Wayne Airport tonight, Security Chief Sato’s job—Colonel Sato’s job —will be to enter the firestorm that is Los Angeles—my domain, Bottom-san—and find you, dead or alive. I understand Hiroshi Nakamura well enough to know this for a certainty. He will not let you escape if he can help it. Not now.”

Nick had shaken his head at that, but the words chilled him.