The Signal (The Bugging Out Series Book 8) Read online

  The Signal

  The Bugging Out Series

  Book Eight

  Noah Mann

  Copyright

  © 2017 Noah Mann

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events, locations, or situations is coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Part One

  Numbered Days

  One

  Just in sight of the shore, cruising a thousand feet above the dark ocean with the aircraft carrier a hundred miles behind us, the smell of smoke began to fill the Cessna’s cockpit.

  “That can’t be good,” I said.

  The instant the last word passed my lips and filtered through the microphone to Chris Beekman’s headset, the engine began to sputter, cylinders firing in an asthmatically slowing rhythm.

  “That’s even worse,” Beekman replied.

  He focused on his instruments and adjusted the throttle, attempting to stabilize the aircraft’s power. But whatever he tried, the response was as far from satisfactory as either of us had hoped.

  “It smells electrical,” I said.

  As if to mark my suggestion as accurate, the sound in my headset fuzzed, then ceased with a soft pop that I could feel in my ears. I jerked the device off and saw Chris doing the same.

  “It smells electrical,” I repeated, loudly, speaking above the coughing engine.

  “It is,” Beekman confirmed. “The whole electrical system is failing.”

  Lights on the plane’s dash flickered until, finally, the panel of instruments went dark. A few seconds later, the engine cut out with a final cough, the propeller free spinning for a few seconds before stilling, blades pointing straight up and down.

  “We’re a glider now,” Beekman said as the nose began to tip forward. “A really crappy glider.”

  I looked out the windshield. The delineation between land and sea was plain, foaming whitecaps ending where sand and rock marked the beginning of dry earth. But that clarity in the darkness was not comforting. Not at all.

  “We’re not going to make it to shore, are we?”

  “We’re not,” Beekman said, his hands tight on the yoke, trying to manage the delicate balance between putting the unpowered aircraft into a stall or nosing it into a fatal dive into the sea.

  “How short are we going to be?” I asked.

  Chris shook his head and focused on guiding the Cessna with a dead stick in his hands. He didn’t know. Or maybe he just didn’t want to tell me. In either case, we were going to be swimming.

  If we survived the impact with the water.

  I’d faced death more times than I wanted to count since the blight began its ruin of the planet. The possibility of my life ending had, since that marker in time, become an accepted part of my existence. Risks had to be taken to survive. Missions had to be undertaken for the greater good. Still, I almost laughed when I considered what was about to happen—I was about to be in a plane crash. Again.

  Air Force One plummeting from the sky had nearly killed me and others from Bandon. Angela. Martin. Genesee. Carter Laws. That event was long enough in the past that it seemed just a distant memory now, not some visceral recollection. But those moments of falling to earth were resurfacing now as familiar twins to what I was witnessing through the windshield.

  “As soon as we hit get your belt off,” Beekman told me. “The first hit will be the worst.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “You fly the bush long enough in Alaska and you’ll have a bad day setting down on water,” he answered.

  The nose was tipping more now as the flat black swath of nothingness ahead grew larger. That was land, but we weren’t going to make that. I wasn’t even sure if Chris Beekman wanted to. Depending on where we’d approach the shore, we could be greeted with house-sized rocks rising from the sand. Those existed, too, just off the beach all along the coast both north and south of Bandon, though those jagged features seemed to be outlined by luminescing whitecaps smashing into their razor-sharp sides.

  “Can you get us down between the rocks?” I asked.

  “I’m not worried about the ones I can see down there,” he said. “The ones just beneath the surface are what will tear us to shreds if we land on them.”

  “You’re all good news,” I said.

  “Part of the scenic package,” Beekman said. “Pilot narration of any crash for paying passengers.”

  “I rode for free,” I reminded him, carrying on the attempt at a light mood.

  “I guess I’ll shut up, then.”

  He did right then as the controls of the Cessna grew heavier and less responsive. The churning ocean was rushing up at us. We were maybe five hundred feet above the whitecaps now.

  Four hundred.

  Three hundred.

  “As soon as we hit, count to two and pop your door,” Beekman directed. “Then get out of your seatbelt and swim.”

  Two hundred.

  He put the Cessna into a tight left turn, heading north to line up parallel with the coast now off to our right.

  One hundred.

  The Cessna came out of the bank, wings level again and angled down toward the ocean.

  “Hang on!”

  There was nothing to hang on to. It was an instinctual warning that the pilot gave. And there was no time to do anything other than draw a breath as the nose of the Cessna, rising slightly as Beekman drew the yoke toward his gut, plunged into the rolling sea at the base of a wave, its curl lifting and tossing the aircraft. I had no time to count as Beekman had instructed. As the cabin heaved up and rolled, almost onto its side, I released my seatbelt and kicked the door on my side open.

  “Get out!” Beekman shouted.

  Water rushed in from both sides of the aircraft, washing immediately over me from head to toe. There was no need to fear that the Cessna would sink—it had already done so.

  Of all the ways to die, drowning was my least favorite option.

  There was something about the reality of having the life choked out of me by icy waters. I’d feared the possibility since I was a young boy. No incident had brought me to that feeling of dread. I’d swum in the ocean, across lakes, in rivers and pools, but always in the back of my mind was that nagging little warning that the soothing liquid which surrounded me could, in the blink of an eye, become the bringer of death.

  Those very thoughts flashed briefly in my mind as I struggled to free mys
elf from the aircraft’s cramped cabin. The Cessna rolled to my side, door flapping in the swirling current. We could have been in ten feet of water or a hundred. Either was enough to end me if I couldn’t get clear of the aircraft and swim up to air. With a surge of adrenalin, I heaved my upper body halfway through the door and planted my feet on the seat, pushing off to fully clear the now wrecked plane.

  But I made no progress. Something was holding me back.

  Holster...

  The word popped fast into my thoughts. On my hip was the holster that held my Glock 30 inside my waistband, and the compact weapon protruding from it was hooked on the edge of the door frame. I tried to push my body backward a half a foot, but couldn’t manage even an inch, the rolling ocean surf above creating a suction that was pulling me out now.

  I was trapped.

  What air remained in my lungs was burning to be released. But if I did that, I knew, it was likely I would instinctively take a panic breath, inhaling seawater. And that would be it.

  A few seconds. That was all I had. I could already feel a darkness creeping in from the edges of my thoughts. The first hint of life fading.

  Three seconds...

  All I had left was brute force, or an attempt at it.

  Two seconds...

  I braced my feet and reached for solid holds on the door frame, fighting the swirling waters and the moving aircraft. That was when I felt it.

  So simple a thing it was that my racing mind hadn’t grasped the obvious manner of escape until my hand brushed against the cold metal of my belt buckle.

  Buckle...

  I abandoned forcing my way free and quickly undid the clasp holding my belt snug. As it released, the raging current whipped my body from the fuselage as the belt was jerked through its loops. Somewhere behind me in the dark water my Glock 30, still in its holster, was lost.

  But I was saved. Maybe.

  I kicked and swam up toward light that was barely discernable from the blackness, just an undulating sheen of dappled starlight filtered through the waves. The burning in my lungs clawed upward into my throat, to my mouth, and finally to my lips which could hold back the desire to breathe no more. They snapped open and I gulped.

  A mix of air and seawater poured into my mouth as I broached the surface, a wave slamming me as I coughed the bitter liquid which had snuck in with the lifesaving breath. I fought to stay afloat, my eyes squinting against the stinging salt water, swimming and searching. For land. For Chris.

  “Beekman!”

  I yelled out to him, but the pilot who’d taken us to the ship, and who’d successfully ditched us near the shore, was nowhere to be heard. Or seen.

  But something was out there. A light. More than one. Pinpricks of brightness in the direction the waves were moving. They were coming from shore.

  “Hey!”

  I yelled again, this time toward the lights as I tried to swim, but the current shifted and began to spin, trapping me in an eddy within sight of shore.

  “Hey! Out he—”

  “FLETCH!”

  It was Chris Beekman’s voice cutting me off, almost screaming in my ear, and by the time I turned toward him I felt hands on me, gripping my shirt and jerking me from the spot of ocean I’d become stuck in. He pulled me toward him, just a few feet.

  But that scant distance saved my life.

  I splashed onto my back, gaze cast upward at the wing of the Cessna rotating above and slapping down upon the water where I’d been like the fluke of some angry whale. The remains of the aircraft settled again and disappeared beneath the rolling waves.

  “You all right?!” Beekman asked.

  I nodded and spat more seawater from my mouth, breathing more necessary than speaking right then.

  “We’ve gotta get out of this rip!” he shouted.

  A riptide, or something approximating it, was pulling at us, countering any move we’d make toward shore. It threatened to whip us mercilessly in its current, as it was doing to the battered fuselage of the Cessna just below us.

  “Lights on shore!” I told Beekman.

  He looked and saw what I had, then shook his head.

  “We’ll never make it straight in,” he said. “We’ve gotta swim parallel to the beach until we’re free of this rip.”

  He stabbed his hand toward the south just above the water and pulled at me. I began to swim, following Beekman, arms windmilling through the chop and waterlogged boots flapping almost uselessly behind. Every few strokes I’d steal a glance past the rise and fall of the waves toward shore and see that the lights were still there.

  But we were moving away from them as we swam south.

  “It’s weakening!” Beekman yelled back to me, turning his head only briefly to get the report out before facing forward again. “Start angling for shore.”

  He adjusted his course and I followed. Off to my right a patch of blackness drew my attention because I knew what it represented—one of the towering rocks that stabbed up from the ocean along the Oregon coast near Bandon. The monolith’s shape was blotting out the stars behind, leaving only a silhouette to mark its position.

  “Chris, rocks off to the right!”

  He didn’t acknowledge my warning. But if we didn’t take a more aggressive turn toward the beach, the remnants of the rip current could very easily pull us right into the jagged seascape. We’d be shredded to bits if that happened.

  I swam faster, moving my waterlogged limbs through the icy, churning water, until I was near enough that I could grab Beekman by the belt. He st0pped and looked to me.

  “Rocks!” I repeated, pointing toward the looming obstacle. “We’ve gotta head straight in!”

  “It’s still too strong!”

  I shook my head. We had no choice. Up until that moment, on our entire journey out to the source of the signal and back from the carrier we’d found, Beekman had acted as leader. It was his plane that had carried us there. He was the pilot in command. Now, though, I had to step in.

  “Stay with me!” I told him and turned toward the beach.

  I immediately felt the pull of the riptide trying to suck me back out to sea. Still, I fought it, digging deep with each stroke of my arms and kicking with all my remaining strength. Beekman followed, slightly behind and to my right, the both of us making painfully slow progress. Even with the assistance of the waves rolling past us toward shore, it felt as though we were fighting a losing battle.

  “Fletch, I’m losing it,” Beekman said, his words spat through seawater.

  I glanced back between strokes and saw that he was slowing to almost a standstill. The beach was within sight, the points of light off to our left somewhere up the shore. Just a dark expanse of sand marked our destination ahead. But without help, Beekman wasn’t going to make it.

  The fear creeping into my mind was that I wasn’t, either.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching back and grabbing him.

  “It’s too strong,” he told me.

  He wasn’t giving up—just stating a fact that neither of us could deny.

  “Keep going!” I urged him, and myself.

  It was hard to estimate how far dry land was ahead of us. Two hundred feet? One hundred? That distance felt insurmountable considering the inches it seemed we were progressing, if that much.

  Pure adrenalin was fueling me now. And a desire to live. To see my family again.

  Will...

  That was what I thought: Will yourself onto dry land.

  But it was not that simple. Desire, and guts, alone would not get either of us out of the churning ocean that was trying to swallow us.

  “Keep...keep...”

  In an instant it was as if something threw a switch within. All the energy that had powered me was suddenly gone. My legs turned heavy and my arms moved now only in a motion to keep me afloat, not to propel me toward shore. Beekman had drifted a few yards from me in the dark, but I could still see him, and realized that he, too, had reached a state of exhaustion which neither of us
could overcome.

  Slowly, the rip current began to draw us back out to sea.

  “Fletch!”

  The voice calling my name didn’t belong to Beekman. But I knew it. I recognized it.

  “Paul,” I said, as loud as I could, the volume I could manage nowhere near a shout.

  “Fletch!”

  Before I saw Lieutenant Paul Lorenzen, I saw the light. Not one coming from shore, but closer, moving, its beam being washed in and out of visibility by cresting waves. It was a small flashlight, in his hand, sweeping back and forth until it finally locked onto me.

  “Fletch, I see you!”

  He swam right to me, pausing only to reach back and tug at a length of cordage that seemed to stretch out toward shore. It connected him to more rescuers, I realized.

  Rescuers...

  We absolutely needed rescuing.

  We...

  I wasn’t alone, I remembered in a flash.

  “Chris is over there,” I said as Lorenzen reached me, stabbing my finger off to the right.

  The lieutenant shifted his flashlight beam and found the pilot, bobbing a short distance away, treading water as the current spun him mercilessly.

  “Hang on!”

  I grabbed onto Lorenzen’s collar and kicked as much as I could as he swam the few yards to where Beekman was fighting to stay above the water.

  “Chris, we’ve got you,” the lieutenant said.

  The waterlogged pilot nodded weakly, a hint of anger in his gaze as he latched onto his rescuer.

  “I’ll hold onto you both,” Lorenzen instructed. “And you hold onto me.”

  Our dual death grips on his stripped-down attire, tee shirt and shorts, it seemed, was answer enough for him. He paused and raised the flashlight above his head and flashed it repeatedly toward shore. A few seconds later a volley of gunfire sounded from the beach. Lorenzen tossed the flashlight into the waves and seized each of us with his now free hands.

  “Just hang on tight,” he said.

  Within seconds I could feel it—movement. A steady pull on us. Strong hands were drawing us in from the ocean. Dragging us through steady currents and crashing waves until, finally, my boots dug into soggy sand beneath the water. This momentary battle to survive had been won.