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—
Kristin's debriefing was short, calm, and—at least as near as I could tell—totally worthless. Jeffers had gotten into his limo with some aides and Secret Service men, gone straight to the semi-private landing strip where Air Force One was waiting, and headed off toward the plane on foot. If there were a banshee or ghost where Kristin was hovering, neither he nor any of the others ever saw it.
Afterwards, Kristin let me escort her back to her room, but she was clearly not in a talkative mood and we reached the door with barely a dozen words having passed between us. She went inside, and I trudged two doors down to where my old room had been set up for me.
It looked about the same as I remembered it, with the minor exception of a new television replacing the ancient model that had been there before. I resisted the lure of the remote control while I got undressed... but even before I crawled into bed I knew I was too wired up to sleep right away. Flicking the set on, I began to scan the cha
Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much on except late-night summaries of President Jeffers's death.
It was thoroughly depressing. The cold hard facts themselves were bad enough, even though the media didn't yet know what we did about the cause of the crash. But for me, the interspersed segments of national and world response were even worse. Mine had been one of the landslides of votes that had reelected Jeffers a year ago, but it wasn't until now that I really understood on a gut level how truly popular with the people he'd been. The cameras showed at least half a dozen candlelit memorial marches from cities all across the country and even one or two from overseas. People talked about the shock and the fear and the pain... and I lay there and soaked it in, hurting right along with them.
Hurting with people, after all, was part of what being a White Knight meant.
White Knight. A college friend had first coined that nickname for me, and for a long time I'd felt proud of it. It was a statement of my ability to care for people; to serve them and to take whatever bits of their suffering that I could onto myself. It was a fine, noble calling—and I was good at it. It was almost second nature now for me to take the smallest piece of meat at di
It had enabled me to quit Banshee almost a year ago. And to not tell anyone why.
I watched the news for another half hour, until I couldn't take it any more. Lying in the dark, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of big-city traffic around me, I finally fell asleep.
—
The news that it was sabotage broke sometime during the night, and by morning the news programs were hauling in experts to give their speculations as to who was responsible and why. Combined with the eulogies still pouring in from leaders around the world, it made it that much harder, an hour later, to watch a man already dead walking casually across the tarmac toward his plane.
And to labor in vain to warn him. The others had been right: the sunlight was far too bright for the President to have any hope at all of seeing anything as insubstantial as a ghost.
Mine, Shaeffer had told me before the Jump, was to be the last effort in this particular slot, and so I kept at it all the way up the stairway. But it was no use. I did every kind of aerial maneuver I could think of to try and get his attention, but not once did he so much as take a second look in my direction. Eventually, he passed the limit of my tether, fastened to Air Force One's door, and vanished into the communications section at the front of the plane.
Third strike, and Banshee was out.
I came back to find Griff and Shaeffer leaning over me. "Well?" Griff demanded.
"Uh-uh," I shook my head. The motion sent a brief spasm of pain splitting through my skull. "He never saw me."
Griff seemed to slump. "Damn," he breathed, "Mr. Shaeffer... I'm sorry—"
"It's not over yet," Shaeffer cut him off, icy calm. "All right; if we can't stop him getting on the plane, the next step is to try and get him off it before the balloon goes up." He stepped back from the couch and gestured, and as I struggled up onto my elbows I saw Morgan standing nearby. "Mr. Portland, you're next. You'll be Jumping as soon as the equipment is ready."
Morgan nodded silently. His eyes met mine for an instant, and then he turned away from us.
I should have realized right then that something was wrong. But with the Jump and my recovery from it taking all my attention, Morgan's odd reaction missed me completely. "If you're going to try and get him off," I told Shaeffer, working myself to a vertical position, "you'll need to have the tether a lot further forward. When I left he was heading into the forward section of the plane."
Shaeffer nodded abstractly. "He'll be back in his private section before take-off, though. That's where we'll have to try and get to him."
"Ah," Griff said, offering me a hand as I swung my legs off the couch and more or less steadied myself on my feet. "You're talking about getting him out during the flight, then?"
"Right. There are parachutes stored near both exit doors. If we can contact him, all he'll have to do is grab one, open the door, and jump."
"Is that all?" an unexpected voice cut in.
We all turned around. "Hale, you were told to stay upstairs," Griff growled.
"So that Shaeffer can dismantle the stability of the universe in peace and quiet?" Hale snorted. "Fat chance."
I looked at Griff. He shrugged fractionally in return, a worried frown starting to settle onto his face. Hale had always been something of a borderline neurotic anyway, but this seemed to me to be a pretty drastic slippage. "Hale—" I began.
"You just shut up," he snapped back. "You cut out on us once—coming back now just because Griff wants a yes-man on his side doesn't win you any points."
I opened my mouth, closing it again in confusion... and only then did I spot Re
And finally understood.
That confrontation among the equipment cabinets hadn't been an effort to convince me to join him in opposing Griff. Instead, he'd been trying to drive me solidly onto Griffs side... so that he could use the others' animosity toward me as a lever to get them on his side.
"Hale, if you have any specifics to bring up," Griff said soothingly, "we're willing to discuss them—"
"I have one," Re
"He was in the Air Force for six years," Shaeffer said stiffly. "He knows how to handle a parachute."
"I'm sure he does. Has it occurred to you that if the pilot radios that they've got an open door the known past will be changed?"
I looked at Shaeffer, the muscles of my shoulders tightening. "Would they broadcast something like that?" I asked. "Or would it just show up on the flight recorder?"
"Depends on whether the pilot was on the radio at the time it happened, I suppose," he said. "If he wasn't..."
"And when someone notices the President is missing?" Hale shot back.
Shaeffer took a deep breath. "All hell breaks loose," he admitted grudgingly.
For a moment we all looked at each other. "Well?" Griff said at last. "What now, Mr. Shaeffer?"
Morgan cleared his throat. "If President Jeffers recognizes us as being from Banshee, as you've suggested he might, wouldn't he realize he has to give the pilot instructions not to mention his departure?"
"Oh, come on," Re