A Christmas of Ending Consequence

A Christmas of Grave Consequence

Snow and ice peppered Harry’s exposed skin as he walked back toward his pickup. It burned as it hit his pock-marked face. After what he had just been through he was glad to at least have the benefit of feeling the pain.
His mind drifted back to the beginning of this terrible ordeal. “God,” he thought, “all I wanted was to have a nice Christmas with Marie.”
The call came in at 10:30 pm. December 24th. The tower supervisor, Mike Lands, sounded shaken. This was not a trait they looked for when hiring air traffic control personnel. It wasn’t really a call requesting that he come in. Mike had already called the boss and it was his order that FAA Detective Hannibal Harrison come in ASAP and get the investigation underway. People were going to need answers, and they were going to need them fast.
Hannibal Harrison, or Harry as everyone knew him, was as hard-boiled a detective as they come. He was retired military, Marines, Force Recon unit, did two tours in Viet Nam. Upon retiring he went to work for the Chicago Police Department as a Detective. Thirty-three years from where he started his working life he was offered the Detective Chief position with the FAA for the entire upper Midwest. He had really enjoyed the life, up until this night.
The trip to O’Hare was next to impossible. Snow, sleet and still liquid rain fell in torrents. He was actually relieved to see the security gates that would lead him to the air traffic control tower. As he drove the access road he could see the crash-site to the left of runway two-niner-niner. He could still hear Mike’s voice echoing in his head, No chance of any survivors.
Harry made his way into the ground floor of the tower. Every time he was confronted with the choice, his logical mind told him to take the stairs, but his forty-two inch waist told him to take the elevator (no matter how rickety it may be). It moaned and groaned as it made its way to the top. Harry had always envisioned being nearly to the top, hearing the cable of the antiquated passenger car snap, and then feel the steel box plummet to the ground floor ending in his death. He was always thankful that he made it to the top one more time unscathed.
Exiting the steel box he was greeted immediately by Mike Lands. Harry could see out the tower windows. “Jesus, what a mess! Looks like the debris must be scattered over at least a half-a-mile. 747?” Harry looked out at the still raging fire of what was left of the plane. His memory banks inundated him with mental pictures from the hell that he had lived in Viet Nam.
Mike looked out the window also, “Actually it was a 727. Hard to believe you could scatter one out over that distance. To maybe answer one of your first questions before you ask it, this thing came down out of the sky like a fireball. There couldn’t have been any survivors.”
“Did you have video running on that runway when it happened?” Harry was still looking at the burning wreckage.
“It’s right here. I’m no plane expert or bomb expert, but damn Harry, this doesn’t look like a bomb.” Mike was pulling the last few moments of the flight before the crash up on the monitor. His hands were still shaking hard enough he found it hard to thread the video tape in the viewer.
As he watched the footage Harry could faintly see the lights of the doomed flight. Making the final turn to connect to the runway of destination Harry saw a flash of light at the nose of the plane. Then it was as if the plane was an eggshell full of fire with all the bits and pieces falling towards the earth in its own blaze-enraged Armageddon.
“The families were on the M concourse.” Mike couldn’t even look at Harry. “Damn, all the families with kin on board flight 5221will be changed forever because of this one night.”
“The M concourse, isn’t that the international entry point?”
Mike was shaking his head, “Ya, it was the last commercial flight coming in so they could make it by Christmas. There were at least two dozen Russians on board. There’ll be hell to pay if it is terrorism. The whole freakin world will be in an uproar.”
“Who was following this flight on the radar screen?” Harry rubbed his whisker-stubble on his chin. Wrinkling his forehead up the skin furrows pushed his bushy grey eyebrows into a tiara of steel-colored brush. He thought out loud, “Damn, that didn’t look like a bomb to me. The plane blew up at the nose, and then disintegrated from there back.”
Mike was walking toward the break area, “Benny Richards was the man on that screen. He’s right in here. You two know each other don’t you?”
“Ya,” Harry was walking behind Mike, “We go all the way back to the years in Nam. We were in the same unit you know. It gave us all a different outlook on life when you were faced with so much death. We came to the belief that even if we were killed we died making the world a better place.”
Benny was looking out the window at the still burning mass. He turned to see Harry standing behind him. He looked as if he had aged ten years since the last time Harry had seen him. “God Harry, I’m glad it’s you.” Even though it had been over an hour since the crash Benny still shook as if he was afflicted with some sort of palsy. His head trembled like he was making the ‘yes’ gesture, “I need to talk to you Harry.”
“Simmer down some Ben. Let’s look at the tapes of the radar and go for there.” Harry was trying to keep his personal friendship out of the path of the professional one. Harry looked at Benny. He saw a fear in Benny’s eyes that he hadn’t seen since the days in Nam, “Okay, okay Benny, let’s go grab a cup of joe and just relax a bit before we look at the tapes.
Sitting down with vending machine coffee that was more like battery acid Harry tried to make small talk to possibly unwind Benny a bit. Still, in his mind he could still see that look of fear that was on Benny’s face. He had seen that look before. In fact he could vividly recall the last time. Benny had been working the radar for their encampment. The Russian made Viet Cong fighter jet had come in low, below the radar field. Benny saw it just as it was wiping out half their unit.
“So, what’s up Benny?” Harry was almost afraid of what he might hear.
“We’re off the record here, right Harry?” Harry thought for a minute, and then nodded his head. “Harry,” he said in a whisper that was barely audible, “Harry, I saw something on my radar screen that, that, well, that isn’t there now, I mean, on the tape I mean.”
If Harry hadn’t known Ben so well he would have written him off as a crackpot. As far as Harry was concerned if Benny said he saw something, even if it didn’t show up on the tape, he believed him, “What exactly did you see Ben?”
“Remember that morning in Nam? I said I saw something on the screen just before the Cong dumped their missiles on us. I saw the same thing just before that damn jet fell out of the sky. We didn’t have tape in Nam, but when they shut me down after the crash here I went back over the tape, Harry, it wasn’t there. I saw that blip go across my screen just as sure as I’m sitting here. Then that friggin plane went off like a stick of dynamite and just fell for the sky.”
“Terrorists?” Harry looked at Benny, “Christ, even terrorists have Christmas, don’t they?” Harry had his mind in a rage. “I guess I better get my ass down on site. If there is any clues down there I had best be coming up with them ASAP. At least so I can tell somebody something!”
Harry braved the severe weather of the December night. It was apparent that the wind was still carrying the long arm of the winter terror in from Lake Michigan. Armed with nothing more than a billy-club style flashlight loaded with a staggering ten ‘D’ sized batteries he headed to the tarmac. Parking on an un-littered piece of runway he exited his truck. He was at what looked to be the front cone of the plane, or at least what was left of the front of the plane. He didn’t want to disturb any of the pieces before the crew was dispatched to map the crash area but at the same time he did have to look, to find something, anything.
He walked a zigzag pattern, all the while thinking of what Benny had said. With the advent of nine-eleven and the war in Iraq he knew everyone was seeing terrorists under their beds. It turned out to be something equivalent to the communist scare of the 1950’s. If this was terrorism it would only fuel the war in Iraq. If it wasn’t terrorism then he had to get those facts to the public as quickly as possible. Was it terrorism or just a freak accident? No matter the cause, he had to provide a reasonable answer as soon as possible. “But Benny said the blip was there!” He mumbled almost incoherently, “What the hell do you suppose that was?”
The scene was self-illuminated by the fires that were fed by seats and baggage that had come from the fuselage that lay some distance farther back. Harry did his best to make something sensible of it all. The wreckage appeared to be hanging together by pieces of the skin of the aircraft. As Harry ran his light beam over the twisted wreckage he stepped on something that nearly sent him soaring to the ground.
Picking up the twisted piece of the wreckage, he shined his light on it. He rolled it over and over in his palm. Looking harder and harder at the piece of debris tears began to streak down his face. He slid the baseball sized fragment into his pocket and slowly began walking towards his pickup. He was forced to wait until his eyes cleared enough for him to drive.
Entering the elevator he started the accent to the top. In a way he almost wished the cable would break on this trip, at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with any of what was to come. Zombie-like he exited the elevator car and walked to the break area. Benny was still sitting where Harry had left him.
“Christ Harry, you look like just saw a ghost. What the hell is wrong?” Benny had begun to shake all over again.
“You know Ben, when all this investigation crap started tonight Mike said because of the lives lost in the crash all those families that were gathered on the M concourse would be changed because of it.” Harry’s voice dropped to a low raspy whisper, “Because of this crash tonight, Christmas will be changed for the entire world… forever!”
Harry pulled the lump of matter he had picked up at the crash site from his pocket and dropped it on the table in front of Benny. Reaching out and picking it up, and then slowly rolling it over in his palm Benny examined it. His eyes began to water as he became aware of what it was. He was holding a singed, knotted piece of polished black leather with a blackened silver buckle on it. Intertwined in it was a piece of bright red crushed velvet with a tuft of white hair protruding from one side.
Looking out the north facing windows, his back to Benny, Harry shook his head and sighed, “Nope Ben, because of tonight Christmas will never be the same again,for anyone!"


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