And We All Fall (Book 1) Read online

  “You’re fired,” he said, practicing.

  The anxious and frustrated Sicilian scooted his chair back and winced, battling his gut to upright the trash bin and clean up the mess. All of that bending made it even harder for him to breathe with his overly large stomach pushing on his chest.

  The array of rubbish that spilled on the ornamental blue carpet smelled faintly of today’s lunch special, baked ziti and meatballs. Franco had purchased it from the food truck that opened for business daily in the parking lot across the street. The odor was briefly comforting to him. He picked up a crumbled up napkin on the floor and froze, hypnotized by the arrangement of the garbage. The assortment was eerily symbolic, reminding him of the mess he had conjured in his mind.

  Ring, damn it!

  He tossed the used napkin back into the wastebasket. The dark-haired Italian returned to an upright position and sniffed the air one more time while color returned to his face. He thought about that good ziti as he fondled a paper clip between two fingers and stroked his bushy, black beard with his other hand. He thought about the last time he felt this bad.

  He opened his desk drawer and stared at the pitiful looking toy he placed there a week ago, after his visit to the crash site of a 747 in the lush Pennsylvania countryside. What was left of the small army man action figure stared back at Franco, forcing him to remember the gruesome view as he stood at the edge of the impact’s crater, trying to make sense of the sick feeling that consumed him.

  Three hundred ninety three souls were on board that morning. One was a Marine coming home to his wife and daughter.

  No one survived.

  Franco had taken his first hesitant step into the serene misery, immediately losing his footing in the loose soil at the steep edge. He had tumbled down the decline end over end until blessed gravity finally helped him stop.

  He looked up and saw a hand reaching for his. Blinded by the glare of the sun, he took the hand and struggled to his feet, immediately grabbing his chest once he was upright. Just angina, he hoped.

  “You alright, Franco?” Edward Hutchins asked him as their hands released and Franco started dusting off his clothes (along with his pride) as he stood in the throes of the scorched Pennsylvania earth. Ed was the supervising investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board’s assigned Go Team.

  “Just a little angina. How have you been, Ed?”

  “Been good. DOT has been keeping me busy. So what’s FEMA doing here? Especially you. Shouldn’t you be in Atlanta yelling at people?”

  “Got a call from Washington. Ordered to be here ASAP and look for anything suspicious.”

  “Anything suspicious? What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a plane crash. The whole damn thing is suspicious.”

  It was chaos and death everywhere Franco looked, in every direction, except up, to the blue sky, where white birds glided overhead. It was so beautiful, such a contrast, not a whisper of a cloud or trouble anywhere. Then Franco remembered how many planes were in flight around the world, planes like the one that was now crunching under his feet as he walked next to Ed through the deadly site.

  The smell of burnt everything at this hell on Earth made Franco’s eyes water. He covered his mouth to keep this morning’s breakfast from sullying his clothes or the evidence on the ground, swallowing what had risen into his mouth.

  “Ugh,” he flung the bit of vomit off his hand that had escaped his effort.

  “That’s lovely,” Ed said with a sour look on his face. “Geez, man.”

  “Sorry.”

  The assortment of burned carnage that had been scattered around the crater made Franco uncharacteristically nauseous. This type of scene wasn’t new to him. None before had ever made him sick. This was the nineteenth disaster site visit of his long career.

  He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch anything on the ground, but something about this scene bothered him. He found himself daydreaming about his family, and death, while he did things he was specifically trained not to do.

  “I don’t know,” he replied when his direct supervisor in Washington D.C. asked him to come to his office and closed the door two days later, questioning him as to why he picked up the small camouflaged army figure whose lower half was blown off and laying on the ground at the crash site. “Yes. I’m aware of the protocol. To tell you the truth, I was thinking about my grandson at the time. He has one just like it.”

  At the time on the scene, one NTSB agent he didn’t know asked him in an alarming tone, “What are you doing? Put that back!”

  “Sorry.” He remembered apologizing as he placed it back on the ground approximately where he found it. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He figured he’d end up explaining it to someone of rank.

  He did.

  Back at the crash, Franco shook his head as he continued walking towards the barely recognizable hull of the plane, the largest piece still intact. The look on his face made it seem as if he personally knew everyone onboard the fallen airliner.

  “What’s going on with you, man? You look like you didn’t wipe your ass good enough or something.”

  “Do you have to be so crass, Ed? Jesus. These were people just living their life.”

  “I know that.” Ed grew somber. “No offense. This one is bothering you a lot, huh?”

  “Nothing like this should happen in a place like this,” Franco said. “So beautiful, this place. It’s sacrilege, Ed.”

  Franco stepped away and gazed at the giant pine trees all around him, growing up into infinity. Ed followed his gaze.

  “I don’t know if I can take this anymore.”

  “What are you saying? You thinkin’ ‘bout retiring from FEMA?”

  “Maybe.”

  The heart attack a couple months before the crash left Franco questioning his mortality more than he ever had before. A part of him hoped the final moments of his life would be in a place so belonging on a postcard, though it didn’t today. Maybe it never would again.

  “Dying here,” Franco muttered as what sounded like a thousand birds chirped from their perches in the majestic pines that stretched across the land as far as the eye could see. The sound of the flowing stream nearby could lull any among the living to sleep, as easily as it was moving the pieces of the dead downstream.

  “This amazing view in the window,” Franco continued as he slapped a mosquito that had landed on his arm, “coming closer into view as you fall three hundred feet per second. Knowing this Eden is about to end your life.” Franco turned and looked at Ed as he scratched the bite. “That would be cruel. Don’t you think?”

  Ed didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t bear to look Franco in the eye, his vibe was too intense and apologetic, as if he was responsible for the crash in some way.

  “I still don’t understand why you are here. Nothing emergent here, no recovery efforts in the middle of nowhere. And where is your team?”

  “I told you. Orders. Just me. Nobody else. What do you know about the crash so far?”

  “The crew advised that a passenger on board was sick, apparently losing his shit and they needed to make an emergency landing. The Air Marshall was talking to him. A minute later, massive pressure loss was reported and the aircraft went down. That’s all we’ve got so far.”

  “Okay. I’m going to get out of here. Keep me in the loop if you don’t mind.”

  “Alright. Take care, buddy.”

  “You too, Ed.”

  The two shook hands and Franco climbed his way back out of the chasm, but not until he had the action figure in his pocket, swiping it nonchalantly on his way past it. Troppo vecchio per questo. He doubted his old, heavy body would make it out as each step seemed twice as hard as the last. Giving up seemed the best option as he periodically slipped back down, but he had never been the type.

  When he finally reached the top, his heart felt like it was going to explode. His face was bright red from exhaustion and embarrassment too. He couldn’t ignore the looks his hike back up to f
lat terrain drew from the NTSB team. He swore to himself he would stop eating donuts and start using the treadmill every day.

  So far, he hadn’t done either one. That mosquito bite had long faded.

  Now, at his desk, Franco shut the drawer and held his weary head in his hands as his elbows ground into the polished wood. He caught a whiff of a smudge of chocolate frosting on his hand, sugary leftovers that rubbed onto him after he tossed that breakfast napkin back into his trashcan. He reminisced the devouring of more than his share of a dozen donuts that morning. He loved sweets, but his clogged arteries didn’t. He had thought about licking the remnants of the sweet red sauce from his lunch off the Styrofoam container, but he resisted.

  Almost three hours had now passed since the briefest conversation Franco had ever with his boss, the FEMA Deputy Administrator in Washington D.C., ended abruptly. Frank, as the highest-ranking officer in FEMA always called Franco, was focused on just one word the deputy administrator said. It was a word powerful enough to take Franco’s breath away long after he was supposed to be home for his wife’s regular Monday night Chicken Francese.

  “Armageddon?” Franco asked the deputy as he scratched his head with a scowl on his face all those hours ago. “What?”

  “Stay by the phone and wait for Doug to call. He won’t be calling on your cell, so stay in your office by the phone.”

  Armageddon?

  The word resounded in Franco’s mind. It was the only word he could remember the deputy administrator say before the dead air followed by endless fantasies of dread in Franco’s head. The word accelerated Franco’s already arrhythmic heartbeat. His doctor had been warning him to do something about it before it was “too late.” There was no goodbye from his boss, just a hollowness with the never-ending echo of a word.

  Not on my cell?

  This brand of paranoia was foreign to Franco and to his organization as far as he was concerned. He knew it was a word the deputy would never use.

  Unless…

  Hearing that word made the normally boisterous, old school Italian feel timid. His knees buckled as he tried to stand up to pass more time looking out of the window.

  People watching from his office window was something Franco did whenever he pondered the most important information that crossed his desk. He was an important and powerful man, in an important and powerful position. Every day, an old man he always intended to meet walked around the parking lot tossing peanuts to squirrels. He seemed so happy. It brought a smile to Franco’s face to watch him.

  The old man wasn’t there now. Franco didn’t know if he would ever get the chance to meet him. That’s always the problem with waiting to do anything, Franco thought as he looked around the vacant parking lot now, fittingly void of life. You never know when the world might be ending. No squirrels in sight.

  The phone was ringing.

  Finally!

  It range once, then a second time. Franco was frozen with his glare out the window. He knew he had to answer, but he was scared to hear the news the caller would share. It rang a third time, and then a fourth before he finally managed to shift his bulk towards his phone as he gulped, feeling like someone poured cement in his shoes while he wasn’t looking.

  For a brief moment, the Sicilian became distracted by childhood memories of the old country, the way things worked there. He assumed this had to be what it felt like to stand on the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea, weighted down, looking up at the dishonored Mafioso who put you there as life and the blue sky dissolved away.

  The phone rang an eighth time.

  Franco picked up the receiver on the tenth ring and moved it to his ear at the same time he banged his left knee into the desk and cursed. The caller ID clarified who the caller was, but Franco always answered the phone the same way. Habits.

  “Franco Accossi.”

  “Frank. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to pick up.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “You alright? Sounded like you hurt yourself.”

  “I banged my knee. I’m fine, sir.”

  “I know you’ve been waiting for my call awhile. Please accept my apologies.”

  “Don’t worry about it, sir. I’m just happy to finally talk with you. I’ve been on edge.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “What the hell’s happening, Doug?”

  “You should be sitting down for this,” General Douglas Wingate said with the calm, bitter toughness of a seasoned military leader preparing to lead his troops into a bloody battle.

  He was a retired army general, and the former chief of the National Guard Bureau. He was a hardened, war-torn man of gravity who was also known paradoxically in the media as the most empathetic man in government. He demonstrated his leadership proclivities daily as the man in charge of FEMA in Washington D.C., paid what some had criticized to be an exorbitant amount of money to have the coolest head during any crisis.

  Though, “in all honesty” he would always say to the American media, “I’d do this for free until I take my last breath.”

  “I’m sitting down,” Franco insisted as he walked gingerly to his chair and collapsed into it. “Tell me this is some kind of joke.”

  “I wish it was, Frank.”

  “So the world is coming to an end? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “That’s what they’re saying, but I’m not sold yet.”

  “They?”

  “A new world perhaps.” General Wingate’s tone was grim, ignoring Franco’s question. “A world we need to fight like hell to stop from happening so our grandchildren won’t grow up in...” He sounded as if he had already seen the future, a bleak one.

  Franco leaned back, stretching the leather covering his chair, preparing himself for the news he was sure he didn’t want to hear.

  “I’ve activated ICS protocol. Your team will be assigned to represent FEMA after the briefing tomorrow.”

  “What briefing?”

  “Nine tomorrow morning. We’re going to need Jamie’s expertise on the call.”

  “Her expertise?”

  “Her medical background.”

  Franco fired back. “Why? Is this Ebola again? We already have every protocol possible in place for…”

  “I wish it was Ebola. They’re telling me this scourge is going to make Ebola look like the common cold.”

  “Who is ‘they’? You keep saying that.”

  “The CDC. Top officials with all of the major acronyms will be on the call. Top Secret clearance only. DHHS. DOD. DHS. The Red Cross, ATF and the FBI. Everyone.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The CIA is taking point on the situation intel unit. You’ll be working closely with them and a man named Cavanaugh.”

  “Did you say the CIA is involved? Why? That’s not their gig. FBI takes the lead on domestic terrorism.”

  “The FBI does have the lead, but the CIA has agents in the field all over the country covering the situation right now as CDC investigators. They are the best equipped to deal with the… sensitive nature of things.”

  “Pretext as the CDC? That’s…”

  Franco paused as he thought for a moment, visualizing what could be happening to his world. His training on biological weapons, what to do to protect and serve when they are used had been extensive throughout his career. The CIA? That doesn’t fit at all.

  “Is that what you think, sir? A biological weapon?”

  “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that we need to get out in front of this thing if lives are going to be saved. We will need all of the state’s governors on lock step to move forward with state-specific contingencies after the call. I need your staff to prepare profiles on all fifty of them, and don’t forget Rosselló down in Puerto Rico, for my review before the conference. By seven.”

  “What staff? None of my staff are due back here until nine.”

  “You’d better get on the phone then.”

  Franco gently pounded his fist on the
desk, out of frustration more than anger. He knew the man on the other line at all times demanded restraint. “A national state of emergency?”

  “There is a lot of work to be done. Don’t expect to get any sleep for a while. Your team as well. We have to prepare for madness that the world has never seen.”

  Franco hung his head, keeping the phone to his ear. “Doug.” He measured his words carefully. “I need you to slow down and tell me exactly what we’re seeing. Please.”

  “I wish I knew. We are waiting on some additional intel from D.C. They have no infection mechanism, incubation period or ETA on treatment. Quite honestly, they seem to have no clue what this is or what to do about it. That scares me, Frank.”

  “How many people have been affected so far?”

  “Thirty eight confirmed infected according to CDC records. Most are deceased already. One of them has already been on the news unfortunately.”

  “Why?”

  “Incident in Virginia. Local authorities have everything locked down there. Witnesses there have been quarantined.”

  “Quarantined?”

  “That’s the word they used. Yes. I’m not sure where they are.”

  “You said there is no treatment plan at this time? Right?”

  “Correct. The CDC is running tests for things I can’t even pronounce. Make no mistake, they are desperate for answers. And fast. We all are. I want you to have Jamie liaison with them given her background with contagious disease. I am hoping we can get some of those much needed answers with her help.”

  “I’ll call her as soon as we hang up. Oh wait!”

  “What is it?”

  “I just remembered. Dr. Mills is supposed to be on leave all day tomorrow. Her husband is landing…” Franco raised his hand quickly to glance at his watch. He noticed how haggard he looked in the reflection off the watch face. “Around now, I think. He’s a Marine, decorated, Medal of Honor, Purple Heart.” Franco opened his desk drawer and looked again at the half-gone action figure. “You may have heard of him.”