Jenna had watched the collision and had seen the fireball plummet downward.
She had heard Troy call his 'Fox Two' and had seen nothing happen. She knew what he had decided to do, and she had breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the single parachute.
She shared Troy's thoughts about the potential nuclear incineration and orbited the scene cautiously.
Like Troy, she knew that if the weapon had been armed, any second could be the end.
Conversely, they both knew that an unarmed weapon was virtually harmless. Like the black boxes on airliners, they were designed to withstand enormous concussions without breaking apart. There had been a whole series of events during the Cold War, known as Broken Arrow incidents, in which aircraft carrying nukes had crashed and the unarmed weapons had not exploded. There is always the danger of a radiation leak, but only remotely of an explosion.
With each passing moment, both Troy and Jenna breathed easier.
As she flew close and saw the dangling figure wave to her, Jenna felt enormous relief.
However, her relief was short-lived.
What next?
Had this been the pivotal closing scene in a movie, she would return to her base, welcomed by the open arms of her compatriots.
This was not a movie. Jenna had no base, and her only comrade was floating to a landing in the Catoctin Mountains.
What could she do?
Where would she land the surviving one of a pair of stolen F-16s? How could she land in a country now ruled by Firehawk after she and her comrade had just killed Raymond Harris?
Landing amid the pines in the dogwood brush was challenging, but Troy managed to avoid getting his parachute snarled in a tree. He was scratched and bleeding, but they were superficial wounds. All his moving parts moved as they were supposed to move. His bad leg ached, but he recalled the old adage stating that any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
He was also reminded of that day so long ago when he and Jenna had both come down in the inhospitable Denakil Desert. The impulse then, as now — as on that mountain back in the Colville National Forest with Hal Coughlin — was to evade.
He sat on the hillside beneath darkening clouds, listening to an impulse.
Today had been a progression of impulsive acts, unencumbered by contemplation. It began in the dark of night with the impulsive need to have Jenna's body and to succumb to her impulsive need for his. That morning — it seemed so long ago now — they had awakened to their mutual impulse to stop Raymond Harris, to fight Raymond Harris, and to kill Raymond Harris.
Troy had landed in these woods, reacting on an impulse born on those Colville woods.
Evade.
Evading capture was an impulse, but with it also came a moment for contemplation.
Who was he evading? What was he evading?
First there was the impending rainstorm that felt as though it could start any moment.
Next, however, Troy contemplated who he was trying to evade.
The man who had tried to kill him, and who had tried to kill Albert Bacon Fachearon, was no more, but this death did not change the fact that Firehawk and Cernavoda still ruled the United States. What had happened here had bought Fachearon some time. It had probably bought him his life, but it had not bought him back his job.
The death of Raymond Harris had not stopped The Transition.
Removing Harris had done no lasting harm to the cabal of Firehawk and Cernavoda, and certainly not to Layton Kynelty, who would now emerge stronger than ever from Harris's shadow. If anything, Troy had saved Firehawk and Cernavoda the embarrassment of having to justify a nuclear strike within the United States.
As the first cold drops of rain began pattering on the dogwood leaves, Troy headed for the cover of some trees. The forest was thicker over there, and he could probably stay relatively dry as he made his way off this mountain.
He had yet to decide where exactly he was headed. The only thing on his mind at this moment was selfpreservation — the impulse to get as far from the crash site as possible.
Chapter 58
State trooper Ralph Overgeist had been following the news all day on his radio as he cruised up State Route 29. He kept the news channel on low — he didn't want it to interfere with his hearing calls on his two-way radio — but he did keep it on.
How could he not?
Washington, D. C., was in a heck of a pickle this morning. There were tanks on the streets and an arrest warrant out for the president. Ralph didn't care too much for Albert Bacon Fachearon. He had not voted for the man, but it sure seemed that an arrest warrant was a bit over the top.
He hadn't thought too much about the PMCs taking over the federal government. It did not directly affect him. He figured it would be a long, long time before anybody decided to let them take over the West Virginia Highway Patrol.
Hampshire County and Morgan County, which were Ralph's beat, had been real quiet, quieter than normal, today. Of course, it was a Saturday, and he figured most folks were home watching the fireworks in Washington on television.
Ralph Overgeist was a few miles north of Slanesville when he rounded a bend and saw a woman walking alongside the road. She had long, unkempt blond hair and ill-fitting clothes. The boots she was wearing looked a few sizes too big. Of course, mountain people didn't dress all fancy like folks in the cities, like over in Martinsburg.
It seemed a bit out of the ordinary to see her just walking down Highway 29 out here in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people walked everywhere they went in this part of West Virginia, but still, something didn't seem right.
'Good morning, ma'am,' he said, pulling over and rolling down his window. 'Is everything all right?'
'Thank y'all for stopping.' She smiled. 'Everything's just fine… but since you're asking, I was wondering if I could get a lift?'
'Where you going?' Ralph asked. He couldn't quite place her drawl, but she definitely wasn't a city girl.
'Somewhere that I could catch a Greyhound… I'm trying to get back to D. C.'
'What are you doing way out here without a vehicle?'
'It's a long story… I guess you could say that I was chasin' after a fella.'
'He left you out here?'
'No… actually, he didn't even know I was following him. I'm over him now though. He's long gone.'
There was little to do for two hours at the Greyhound depot in Martinsburg other than to watch people or watch the television set that was mounted to the wall. Since most of the people were doing little other than watching television, Jenna wound up watching it as well.
She sat there in the uncomfortable Day-Glo pink fiberglass seat, wearing the clothes that she had stolen from a clothesline as she was hiking out of the woods where her parachute had brought her down.
She sat there watching history unfold on the television — or at least today's crossroads chapter of American history. It was a blizzard of alerts, updates, and breaking news. Reports of Raymond Harris's death were confirmed. He had died in the crash of a highly advanced aircraft that Firehawk was testing. Many people had seen other aircraft in the area, and some had reported missiles being fired. There was speculation that rogue elements within the U. S. Air Force had killed Harris.
