Jon Land
Vortex
For Ann, who makes my words the best they can be,
and
For Toni, who made it all happen
Prologue
“CA Twenty-Two, we have you on visual.”
Jake Del Gennio glanced up from his console at the 727 sliding toward Kennedy Airport.
“Descend to fifteen hundred. CA Twenty-Two, you are cleared for final approach.”
“Roger, Kennedy Tower. Fifteen hundred. See you on the ground.”
Del Gennio turned back to the screen and watched the blips flash regularly within the circular grid, flight number and altitude shadowing their lapse into the green void. CA Twenty-Two rested on the right of the screen, just off center, edging closer with each sweep of the line marker across the grid.
The blip of Flight 22 flashed 1,500.
Del Gennio moved his eyes to the window and found the jet as it swung into its final bank, gliding in line with runway two-niner. Everything was normal, strictly routine. Del Gennio held his tired eyes closed for an instant, then opened them to look at the viewing screen.
The blip of Flight 22 was gone.
Del Gennio blinked rapidly and rubbed his eyelids. The line marker swept across the jet’s last position on the grid, showing only green as if the void had swallowed it.
Feeling panic rise, Del Gennio struggled from his chair and searched the sky beyond the tower.
Empty. CA Twenty-Two was nowhere to be found.
Del Gennio figured the 727 had already landed. He must have lapsed behind the console, certainly not unheard of in the high-pressured job of an air-traffic controller, lapsed long enough for Flight 22 to find the runway. He looked down.
Runway two-niner was as empty as the sky.
Del Gennio touched his headset to reassure himself it was there.
“CA Twenty-Two, do you read me?”
Nothing.
“CA Twenty-Two, this is Kennedy Tower, do you read me?”
Heads in the control room turned toward Del Gennio’s console. No one moved.
“CA Twenty-Two, this is Kennedy Tower, please acknowledge.”
Still nothing.
“Oh my God …”
Del Gennio hit the red emergency button hard. A siren wailed, earsplitting, seeming to come from the very bowels of the airport itself.
The damn thing went down, Del Gennio thought. I was looking right at it and it went down….
Del Gennio steadied the curved microphone beneath his chin. “Kennedy Emergency Control, Flight 22 is down in western sector, mark 17. Repeat, western sector, mark 17.”
The area surrounding Kennedy Airport had been divided into a number of squares to promote simple and specific demarcation in the event of an emergency. Del Gennio had relayed the area of the jet’s last reported position calmly without so much as glancing at the map posted on the wall. He was a pro. Pros didn’t have to glance.
“Kennedy Emergency Control, please acknowledge.”
The acknowledgment was drowned out by the blasting horns and revving engines of rescue equipment racing toward the scene of the suspected … crash. Del Gennio consciously used the word he’d been avoiding and shivered at the horrible thought he might be somehow to blame. Had his lapse behind the console caused this disaster? Guilt chewed at him.
The emergency vehicles streaked off the runway into a field in the western sector toward mark 17 and a downed airliner, the nightmare of everyone connected with the aviation field. Del Gennio imagined the screams, the sickeningly corrosive smells of burned wires, metal … and flesh. He shuddered, memories of Vietnam hitting him square in a gut already wrenched with knots.
The emergency vehicles screeched out of sight. Del Gennio strained to see them through the window, standing alone. The rest of the tower team worked frantically to reroute or hold other aircraft. Kennedy Airport was being brought to a total standstill.
Del Gennio expected to see smoke, flames, some evidence of the crash. But there was no sign, no sign at all. Might the pilot have made a successful emergency landing? No. If so, he would have established immediate radio contact, unless the equipment had failed. Even in that case, though, the MAYDAY button would still be operational and no such signal had registered on the screen.
It didn’t make sense.
“Kennedy Tower, this is Rescue Boss, please repeat crash coordinates.”
“Western sector, mark 17,” Del Gennio obliged, a bit puzzled. Weren’t the rescue personnel there yet? Christ, people were dying!
“Kennedy Tower, western sector, mark 17 is all clear. Repeat, all clear.”
“That’s … impossible.”
The Rescue Boss dispensed with the formalities.
“Look, Del Gennio, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on up there but down here I can’t find nothing but crab grass.”
Del Gennio’s eyes darted back to his screen, as though expecting Flight 22 to reappear. It didn’t.
“The plane went down,” he insisted, a room full of caustic stares cast upon him.
“Well,” came the voice of the Rescue Boss, “it didn’t go down here.”
“Then what the hell happened to it?”
The First Day:
Bane
Chapter One
When Joshua Bane saw the man in the wheelchair, his first thought was to leave the rally because too many memories had already been rekindled. But it had been the hope that the cripple might be in attendance that had drawn him here in the first place, so he swallowed the past down, tucked his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, and started across the Central Park grass.
It was exceptionally cold for spring, damp and drizzly, and Bane watched his breath misting before him in rhythm with his stride. Perfect atmosphere for a sullen rally of Vietnam veterans the country had done its best to forget. Most came in the uniforms they had worn in the jungles, the pants let out a few inches, the lowermost buttons of the shirts left undone. No one noticed.
Central Park in spring proved a gathering place for just about any group with a cause winter had forced indoors. Some stated theirs better than others, and today’s group was having difficulty stating theirs at all. The moist air was playing hell with the makeshift PA set atop a low stage, and the succession of speakers had to battle feedback just to make themselves heard. Some gave up.
Bane reached the man in the wheelchair and tightened his fingers around the rear handgrips.
“Been a long time, Josh,” the cripple said without turning.
“A year anyway, Harry,” Bane acknowledged lamely.
Harry turned just enough to meet Bane’s eyes. “I saw you over there before. I was hoping you’d come over.” He looked back at the low stage. “What do you put the crowd at?”
“Five hundred maybe.”
“I’d say closer to three. Bad weather shoots the shit out of rallies. In the fall we drew almost two thousand.”
“‘We’?”
“I belong with these guys, Josh. It doesn’t matter that I have to mumble an answer when they ask me what unit I served with.”
Bane released his grip, stiffened. “You served with the best, Harry.”
The cripple swung his chair around. “We made quite a team, Josh, the Winter Man and the Bat — God, how I still hate that damn nickname. Sounds like something out of a fuckin’ comic book.” He paused. “We could have won that damn war.”
“We weren’t supposed to. Politics.”
“Fuck politics.”
“We did … plenty of times.”
The two men looked away from each other, lapsing into silence. Sporadic applause filtered around them as another speaker, this one wearing a green beret, rose to take his chances with the microphone. Bane searched for words to comfort Harry, quick and witty ones, but nothing came, maybe because there was nothing to say and even less to hold them together, just memories going back fifteen years that had dried and warped with time.