Banshee
The bar was a small, roadside spot nestled almost invisibly among the mountains of south-central Wyoming. It had probably once been a tourist trap of sorts. I guessed, before newer roads had drained traffic away and left it struggling to survive on the flyspeck towns loosely grouped around it. How it was managing to do so I couldn't guess; even at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon a decent bar ought to have had more than three cars huddled together in its parking lot. In my mind's eye I envisioned an interior to the place as dreary as its exterior, aching with a sense of failure, and the thought of facing that nearly made me pass it up. But I hadn't eaten since breakfast and my stomach had been rumbling for the past two hours... and besides, perhaps my patronage would help a little. Pulling my old rust bucket into the lot, I climbed out into the hot sun and went inside.
I'd been right about the bar being largely deserted; but on the plus side, the decor was not nearly as depressing as I'd feared it would be. Old and somewhat faded, it had nevertheless been well cared for. Which, coincidentally, was how I viewed the waitress who reached my side as I settled down at my chosen table. "Afternoon," she said with a smile as she set down a water glass in front of me. "Our special today is home-barbequed chicken with..."
"Sounds good," I agreed, when she'd finished her description, "but I think I'll just have a medium-rare burger and a glass of beer."
"You got it," she said, smiling again as she marked it down on her pad and moved back toward the kitchen. The chicken actually had sounded better, but the burger was cheaper, and taking that instead would enable me to shift a little more of my limited resources into her tip. Silly, perhaps, but I'd always felt that a little sacrificial scrimping was well worthwhile when it would help brighten someone's day.
Taking a long swallow of water, I moved the glass across the table and pulled out my map. I'd need to find a motel eventually, but I wanted to get at least a little closer to where I'd be hiking before I quit for the day. If I picked up Eleven and got at least to Woods Landing... "Hey! You!"
I looked up to see the barman waving the phone in my direction, an odd expression on his face. "Phone's for you," he announced.
My tongue froze against my teeth. "It... what?" I managed.
His expression grew a little odder. "Your name Sinn?"
My stomach tightened against its emptiness. No one knew where I was... which meant no one could possibly have called me. But someone had. "Yes... yes it is," I told him. "Adam Sinn."
"Yeah, well, guy wants to talk to you. C'mon—I don't want my phone tied up all afternoon."
I got my legs under me and walked over... and halfway there the only conceivable possibility clicked into place. After nearly a year... For a second I considered turning around, getting back into my car, and heading for parts unknown. I would have a perfect right to do so; neither Griff nor Banshee had the slightest legal hold over me any more.
I reached the bar and accepted the phone from the barman. Licking my lips, I took a deep breath and held the instrument to my ear. "Hello?"
"Adam? God—I was afraid we weren't going to find you."
My jaw clenched painfully, and I knew with absolute certainty that my year away from Banshee had abruptly come to an end. Griffith Mansfield was the archetypical iron-calm man, with a manner and matching voice that were as even and steady as set concrete even at the worst of times. In my two years with Banshee I'd never once heard that voice as shot through with tension as it was now, and it sent an ice-cold spike digging into my stomach. "What's the matter?" I forced myself to ask.
"Full-fledged hell has just broken loose, that's what's the matter," he growled, "and we're right square in the middle of it. Where are you?"
"What do you mean, where am I? You called me, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, let me check the readout." The line went blank for a moment, and the spike digging into my stomach took an extra turn as I realized Griff really didn't know where I was. Checking the readout meant he'd been on something like the FBI's Search-Spot system... and last I knew the FBI was not in the habit of lending their magic phone equipment out to hole-in-the-wall agencies like Banshee. Which meant he hadn't been exaggerating: all hell really had broken out. "Adam? Okay, I got you. Look, there's a small private airstrip about four miles south of you, at the west end of Lake Hattie. Go there and wait; they'll be sending a T-61 from Warren AFB for you."
I licked my lips again without noticeable effect as my intention of pointing out to him that I was no longer under his jurisdiction died a quiet death. First the FBI's phone search machine, now an Air Force general's commuter jet casually laid on to carry a civilian cross country. Whatever was happening, it was becoming less and less likely that anyone was going to let my personal preferences get in the way. "Griff... can you at least give me a hint of what's happening? Has something happened to the rest of the Jumpers?"
"No, no, everyone's fine. As to the rest of it, you'll get everything we know on the plane—if you don't find out sooner. I understand they're going to release it to the media in a few minutes."
"Griff—"
"Look, Adam, trust me; I wouldn't be asking you to come back if it wasn't vitally important. I'll see you soon." There was a click and he was gone.
"Damn," I said softly to the dead line. Laying the phone back on the counter, I looked up to find both the barman and the waitress staring at me with what seemed to be a combination of awe and suspicion... and in the waitress's eyes, at least, I could see the dawning realization that she was about to lose possibly her only customer of the afternoon.
That, at least, I could do something about. Digging out my wallet, I found a twenty and handed it to her. "Keep the change," I told her. At least now I could give without having to take quite so much thought for the morrow: whatever Banshee's other financial difficulties, Griff had always insisted on good salaries for his Jumpers... and it looked very much like I was about to become a Jumper again.
I reached the airstrip in ten minutes, and was sitting in my car listening to the radio when the news broke.
Somewhere over western Colorado, Air Force One had just crashed. With the President of the United States aboard.
—
The T-61's pilot didn't have much more for me than I'd already heard on the radio, mainly because there wasn't much more that anyone knew at this stage. Air Force One had been on its way to Washington from President Jeffers's Sierra retreat when the pilot suddenly announced he'd lost the right inboard engine.
Seconds later the radio went silent altogether, and the jets that were scrambled for an overflight reported wreckage strewn across a large swath of smoking cliffside forest. There had been no confirmation of casualties or survivors as yet, but from the sound of things there wasn't much call for optimism. Little to do now but clean up the wreckage, both physical and psychological... and to find out, for the record, what had gone wrong.
The latter would be Banshee's job.
—
We arrived about an hour and a half after leaving Wyoming. A police car was waiting at the end of the runway for me, a lukewarm box of take-out chicken in the back seat reminding me that I'd never gotten the early dinner I'd planned. Indirect evidence of two things: that Griff was getting his balance back, and that sometime this evening I was indeed going to have to Jump. Two of Banshee's Jumpers did best on empty stomachs, but I wasn't one of them. The thought of what was coming tightened the knot in my stomach; but the hunger down there far outclassed the nervousness, and by the time we pulled up at the familiar nondescript building fifteen minutes later I'd worked my way through all three pieces of chicken and was polishing off the last of the biscuit.