Orbit

Chapter 24

A stunning young woman with shoulder-length, blond hair has been watching him for the past ten minutes. Jerrod Dawson assumes it’s his uniform, because he certainly isn’t exuding anything but gloom.

She can’t be more than twenty-five, he figures, with a modest, tight-fitting suede skirt and an achingly feminine, well-filled frilly white blouse set off by calf-length high heel boots. Normally, he would be falling in lust. After all, the women at the academy are untouchable. His opportunities for any intimate female companionship these days are severely limited.

But the copy of USA Today in his lap with the headline about his father’s perilous situation has numbed and deflated all that’s normal, leaving him awash with guilt as he waits for his Houston-bound flight to board and tries to keep unbidden tears from showing.

Why he’s even going to Houston isn’t clear, and even as they were granting the emergency leave orders and helping arrange a military fare, he felt reluctant about going there at all, except to see his sister and two half-sisters. The thought of Sharon in the role of his mother is infuriating. He can barely be civil to her. While he likes Sharon’s father, Big Mike, he can’t believe he is actually, voluntarily, going to put himself in Sharon’s presence again—and in Houston, to boot! He couldn’t believe it when he found out Sharon had left his father and run back to her daddy in Houston.

And, of course, there’s the small matter of Sharon never liking him. He loathes her for what she’s done to his father, roping him into having two more children. As if they hadn’t already been a family.

Not that he doesn’t blame his dad, too.

The cute blonde is smiling at him now, making eye contact, the sort of thing that would thrill to him no end if he wasn’t so completely torn up. She’s on her feet and moving toward him like a beautiful wave, a whiff of expensive perfume preceding her as she leans toward him. He knows an encyclopedia of pickup lines, but nothing comes to mind, and he actually wishes she’d go away.

“Hi! Are you from the Air Force Academy?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His response is flat.

“My brother is a senior this year. Maybe you know him? Bob Reinertsen?”

He does, but he’s not going to admit it. Reinertsen is a pompous ass who ragged on him terribly in his doolie year—the label for the freshman hell-in-residence period at Doolittle Hall.

“No, ma’am. I don’t believe I recognize the name.”

“Really?” She slides into the seat next to him. “Bobby’s a cadet colonel. Oh, well. Where are you headed?”

Oh, I don’t know, babe… how about Houston, since that’s where our flight is going?

He’s shocked that he has no desire whatsoever to take this golden opportunity. Sex suddenly seems cheap compared to the responsibilities he’ll now have to shoulder. Especially if his dad doesn’t make it.

“I’m going to my… folks’ house. I’ve got a family emergency.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“And… I’m sorry to be rude. I really am. But… I’d just like some time alone, if you don’t mind.”

She gets to her feet, patting his arm. “Well, if you need to talk to a sympathetic ear, I’ll be around.”

The one I need to talk to is three hundred ten miles above the planet and stuck there.

He fights back tears again and resumes the struggle to hide them.

“Ever hear of someone named Dorothy Sheehan?”

Griggs Hopewell’s voice is too recognizable for John Kent to need even a cursory introduction, and the calls between the two of them have been accelerating during the day.

“Should I, Griggs? Who is she?”

“Well, she’s from headquarters, as far as I can tell. But I’m wondering just exactly what she’s been sent down here to do.”

“I don’t recognize the name, but is she causing problems?”

“Twice today I’ve had safety stops declared out of the blue by people who would normally never pull the emergency brake, and she’s the only new kid in town.”

“I’m not following. Are you connecting dots between her and headquarters safety concerns, or are you just being your usual paranoid self?”

“John, you, better than anyone, know they really are out to get me. I’m a principled, purposeful paranoid.”

“You also ramble a lot, Griggs. So answer my question, please.”

“I’m just suspicious of who she is and what she’s doing here.”

“What’s her security clearance?”

“Total. She can go sit in the cockpit and honk the horn if she wants.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to find out who she works for.”

“I already checked. She’s a low-level safety compliance officer under Dick Whitehead in D.C. A long way down the food chain from our esteemed admini-shredder.”

“So, aside from that, any other show stoppers yet?”

“I love the confidence inherent in your use of the word ‘yet,’ John. No. So far as we know at this moment we will be able to get our bird off the pad in three days. We’ll set the launch window formally in a few hours. You should already have all the parameters.”

“Yes, I do. And our guys should already be there.”

“Your three T-38s arrived in the dark of night some two hours ago. No, my only big worry, John, is that someone’s waiting in the weeds to pull a safety stop at the very last second, and we’ll lose it. The window is very tight, and the long range on the weather is not encouraging.”

“By the way, Griggs, you are aware of what’s happening with that live transmission from the ASA craft?”

“Haven’t seen it but I’m aware of it. The passenger’s the only one left, correct?”

“Yes. Bill’s gone.”

“Instantly, I hope.”

“I’m sure.”

“What’s the guy up there talking about?”

“Personal stuff. He doesn’t know anyone is, ah, watching, or reading, or whatever. But it’s a real weeper and it’s leaching away manpower here. Every woman in the place is glued to CNN.”

There’s a chuckle. “The foxes aren’t watching Fox?”

“All the news outlets are broadcasting it live by now, and I’ve got a few of our number watching in case he says anything that could help us. Also, I’m ignoring your politically incorrect comment.”

“John, find out some more about Miss Fem-de-Dorothy for me, will you? She worries me.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

The chief master sergeant in charge of communications aboard the presidential jet is holding on to the doorjamb as the President looks up from disassembling a ballpoint pen.

“Yes! Jose, come in a sec.”

He does so, standing ramrod straight in an impeccably pressed uniform and smiling as the commander in chief loses control of the parts he’s fiddling with, loosing a small spring which soars past the chief into the passageway.

“Shit!”

“I’ll get it, sir.”

“Spring has sprung, you might say,” the President adds, delighted at the pained reaction.

“I would never say that, sir,” the chief replies, handing over the recaptured spring. “I could get you a few hundred workable pens, Mr. President.”

“Naw. I just wanted to change the innards and keep the shell. I’ve had this one for a very long time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President scoops the pieces together and slides them into an envelope.

“Okay, I need an update on the coverage of that stranded space passenger’s message.”

“Kip Dawson?”

“You’ve been monitoring, right?”

“I’m piping it live through the plane on Channel Three.”

“And everyone but me knows his name?”

“The coverage is exploding, Mr. President. The cable news outlets were carrying it live, but now all three major networks are on and have it as a crawl across the bottom of the screen. They’ve all got air time to fill. ABC, for instance, put on a panel of people to kind of read between the lines. They’re reporting on Dawson’s background, his life, his marriages, family, and anything else they can bring into it. It’s pretty much the same all over the planet.”

“What’s Mr. Dawson saying?”

There’s an unexpected smile from the chief. “Well, let’s say that any of us who are male went through the same female-chasing phases he’s been recalling in… ah… rather vivid detail.”

“Really? Names, too?”

“Oh yeah! Names and dates and where they were parked and whether they used a condom. I mean, he writes well for a guy trapped in space who believes he’s dead, but I mean I’m only thirty-six and I can relate to what he’s saying.”

“I’m not following that.”

“Mr. President, this guy sounds like all of us working stiffs. He’s Mr. Everyman, with… with a sometimes unappreciative wife and the programming to be a good husband and father and provider and forget about anything else. I mean, I haven’t read everything he’s said but he’s already won me over.”

“Won you over?”

“Yes, sir. On an ‘I can sure relate to you, bro!’ basis. You know, the ‘been there, felt that,’ thing where you think you’re the only guy in the world who’s ever had those thoughts and, wow, here’s someone else who’s fought the same mountain lion.”

“I gotta read this!”

“Channel Three, sir. Let me…”

The President’s hand is up in a stop gesture as he swivels around and turns on the flat screen TV monitor.

“I might not be able to fix a ballpoint but I can turn on a TV.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

“No, Jose. Thank you very much for the insight.”

“Would you like a printout of everything he’s sent up to now, sir? Because this is live.”

“Live?” The President looks around, catching Jose eyes. “This… I didn’t understand that, I guess. He’s typing and we’re watching?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. I would very much like that printout.”

From your description, the President thinks, I’ll probably relate to this guy myself.

Jerrod leaves the jetway and scans the overhead signs for the way to baggage claim before recalling that he isn’t carrying more than his roll-on. He starts down the concourse trying to shake off the troubled sleep that carried him here, the takeoff and landing a vague blur and the drinks and peanuts a completely missed experience.

He hasn’t enough cash for a fifty-dollar cab ride, so he’s had to call Big Mike’s house for a pickup, but fortunately Mike himself answered and volunteered to send someone.

He sees large TV monitors broadcasting live coverage from CNN but he pays no attention, knowing that the story of his dad’s plight will be in his face if he does. But there’s a signboard with a newscrawl mounted over the concourse ahead he can’t ignore, and he wonders why it’s stopping so many passengers in their tracks, a logjam of standing people almost blocking the way.

A familiar arrangement of letters catches his attention and he, too, stops, wondering why the name Jerrod Dawson is moving across in front of him.

He turns to a tired-looking man in a business suit next to him who looks less shocked than the others.

“What’s going on? What is that?”

The man barely glances away long enough to discern where the question originated and resumes watching the evolving words.

“That’s a message coming down from that poor guy trapped in space. He’s got an angry young son in the Air Force Academy and he’s talking about how much his son’s rejection and anger have hurt him.”

Jerrod stands stunned and immobile as the man slowly looks back at him.

“Say, you’re from the academy, too, right?”

He can barely nod.

“You know this cadet, Jerrod Dawson?”

The sound of his roll-on slipping from his hand and clattering to the floor behind him doesn’t register, his eyes transfixed on the moving words.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to hug my boy again without the barrier of that anger. What I wouldn’t give to have my little boy back, my firstborn. I’ve prayed myself dry that one day he’d realize that his mother’s accident was not my doing, and that I couldn’t save her, and that I wasn’t rejecting her memory by remarrying. Now, of course, any hope of that grace dies with me in, what, five days.

The businessman next to him is trying again.

“I was asking if you knew his son, Jerrod Dawson? Hey, are you all right?”

Jerrod is sinking to the floor, on his knees, sobbing, and he can’t do anything to stop himself—or hide the name tag that the man is now reading as he turns and leans down to take the distraught young cadet by the shoulders and try to help.

“Oh my God in heaven! You are Jerrod Dawson!”