A Frightened Peace
By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew
Part 3/12
"Mr. McGarry? Mr. McGarry! Can you hear me?"
McGarry roused himself reluctantly from the pleasantly warm cocoon he inhabited. Reality proved to be far less beguiling. He felt chilled and achy all over and there was an uneasily familiar ringing in his ears. For a moment memory failed and panic seized him. What had he been doing to get into this state? Surely, oh God, no… surely he hadn't …not again…
"Mr. McGarry!"
"Ow! Alright, alright!" McGarry jerked upright with a suddenness that turned the ringing in his ears into an outright clamor. Stopping himself just short of swinging, he growled, "I'm up! What the …"
Blinking, his voice trailed off when he recognized his tormentor. Butterfield's suit was torn and smudged and a small trickle of blood was curling down around his nostril from the bridge of his nose. McGarry stared at the agent blankly for a moment, then sucked in a breath in remembrance.
"Sir, are you alright?" Eyes narrowed, Butterfield regarded him intently. "Headache? Any nausea or unsteadiness?"
Trained to quickly assimilate events, he watched as the Chief of Staff gingerly shook his head mutely. Satisfied with his assessment of McGarry's physical well being, Butterfield winced and rose stiffly to his feet, holding his right arm tightly to his side. "Then I could really use your help here."
"Huh?" With that rather brilliant response and holding his hand tenderly to what felt to be a very respectable knot at the back of his head, McGarry looked around vaguely.
The cabin floor lay at a steep incline and the windows above them were cracked, seeping rainwater down onto the men below. The other side of the helicopter seemed to lie on a bed of rock, with mud oozing into the interior. Broken tree limbs projected through the shattered lower windows into the cabin itself.
Blinking, he noted that the chairs he and Butterfield had been seated in and the area in which they rested had fared pretty well. However, across the cabin…
"God! No!" McGarry abruptly flung himself forward, only to be blocked and held back by Butterfield.
"Take it easy, sir! We can't rush into this!"
"The hell we can't!" McGarry was nearly trembling with shock and anxiety. The fear was lodged in his throat. "The President…is the President alright?"
"I don't know yet, sir. As I said, I need your help."
"You mean he's in there somewhere?" Regarding the scene of devastation in front of him, McGarry was appalled.
The opposite bulkhead appeared to have totally crumpled on impact, folding down over itself and against the adjoining cabin wall. To McGarry's eyes it appeared as though everything on that side of the cabin had been swept and compressed into a single corner: metal sheeting, reinforcing struts, seats…and their occupants.
A deep and unaccustomed pain settled in his chest. McGarry knew its source. Josiah Bartlet was under that somewhere.
With Butterfield's help, McGarry climbed unsteadily to his feet. Following Butterfield's lead, he carefully eased his way across the slanting floor to the jumbled mass on the other side. Dropping to his knees, he tried to see through the tangle of warped metal, hoping to catch a glimpse of a white shirt or familiar thatch of dark hair.
Butterfield leaned over McGarry's shoulder and directed the beam of a flashlight, recovered from one of the few remaining intact equipment lockers, into one of the gaps along the base of the pile.
"There!" The agent's hand tightened suddenly on McGarry's shoulder and he directed the man's attention towards a small flash of color in the flashlight's beam. Color that transfigured itself into a red tie; the same color tie the President had been wearing that day.
"Mr. President?" McGarry ducked his head from side to side, desperately squinting along the path of the flashlight beam. "Can you hear me?"
No response.
"Mr. President? For God's sake, please?" Abandoning the protocol that had ruled him the last three years, he raised his voice and shouted frantically, "Jed?" He reached out impulsively to rip away the barrier separating him from his oldest friend, only to have Butterfield's cautionary hand come down again on his shoulder.
"Take it easy, sir," Butterfield warned, a flash of fear momentarily breaking through his usual bland and hard countenance. It was quickly replaced by an expression of grim determination when he said, "We have to proceed with care. That metal is extremely sharp, and we have no gloves or cutting equipment. If you lay your hands open, you won't be of any use to me, or to the President. Until we know their situation, we can't afford to scrabble around in here haphazardly."
Feeling Butterfield's hand tighten briefly on his shoulder, McGarry nodded stiffly, firmly beating down the panic rising in his throat. Working carefully, forcing himself to keep an even pace, he cautiously began to remove items from the barrier. The sound of rain and dripping water joining the creak of broken metal as he and the agent worked.
He clenched his teeth in frustrated anger when thunder, far in the distance, began to rumble an ominous accompaniment to their careful work. Forcing himself to remain calm, McGarry knew what that sound meant. Their problems were about to get worse.
As if they already didn't have enough to deal with.
The bulkhead had folded over to produce a tent-like effect but the upper edge had stopped its descent a little short of the floor, at one point by as much as two feet. It left what looked like a possible access point to the debris-filled area beneath.
It was at this point that the two men began to work more rapidly, in hopes of finding that the 'tent' had created sufficient space to protect the missing men --one man in particular--from being crushed.
As they worked, Butterfield kept up a running commentary. To hear the sound of his own voice, for his own benefit or his companion's, McGarry wasn't quite sure. He suspected a bit of both. In a strange way, the normally taciturn agent's need provided a bit of reassuring comfort. Wincing as the jagged edge of metal sliced into his fingers, he listened.
"As nearly as I've been able to determine since regaining consciousness, our tail section more or less folded over, causing the inner bulkhead to collapse." Pausing to catch his breath, Butterfield waved a tired hand in illustration.
The secret service agent's expression stilled and, although McGarry had thought it a physical and emotional impossibility, grew even more serious. Hope and fear warred for dominance as he listened to the following words.
"I was unable to raise a response from either President Bartlet or Agent Sandler." Butterfield swallowed uncomfortably and continued. "The door to the cockpit is badly warped in the frame and impassable, but I was able to see through a space at the top of the frame. I'm afraid I have to report that it looks as though neither Colonel March nor Captain Johnston survived impact."
McGarry closed his eyes momentarily, hands painfully gripping a torn bit of wreckage. Taking a steadying breath, he asked, "Are you sure? I mean…you weren't able to get in to check."
Butterfield said nothing, but regarded him steadily.
McGarry looked away, for the moment unable to face the dire certainty in the agent's gaze. "Of course you're sure", he muttered. "Sorry, stupid question." He took a deep breath and determinedly bent to his task. "So it's just us? What about the Marine detail?"
Butterfield looked back at the remains of the rear cockpit, the tangled mess of metal and bulkhead blocking the way to the far end of the passenger area. Again, he didn't need to say anything. His eyes, bleak and tired, said it all.
McGarry closed his eyes and whispered a short prayer for all the dead. "So it is just us?"
"For the moment, yes sir." Butterfield pulled away yet another jagged section of metal and carefully laid it aside. Grunting with the effort, he continued, "Because I can't reach the cockpit, I'm unable to access the radio. But this is Marine One. Intelligence and the US Navy always have an exact pinpoint on her location whenever she's in the air. I'm pretty sure that we came down on the other side of the ridge to that displayed on our flight plan. Given the scale of the assistance that will be mobilized on our behalf, I don't anticipate there's much chance of their missing us. We will be located very soon. Any delay after that will depend on the nature of the terrain, and ease of access to our location."
The worsening storm, as if to add it's own terrible voice to the play, chose that moment to rumble its presence. Both men started involuntarily at the sound, exchanging worried glances.
"Or the storm," McGarry spat out, frustrated and angry at circumstance.
"That too, sir." Settling back for a moment, Butterfield slipped his hand under his jacket and closed his eyes.
"So, help's on the way even now, but we still don't know just when it'll get here", the Chief of Staff summarized grimly, pulling away another sheet of metal, all the while hoping to catch a glimpse of Bartlet or Sandler. "We're perfectly well able to wait and those poor devils in the cockpit don't care anymore. But we have no idea how long these two may be able to afford to wait until we get to them."
Butterfield's lack of response signaled his fear that such a concern might well be moot when they finally reached their targets. He continued to work in grim silence, pausing every now and then to add his voice to McGarry's and call out to the trapped men.
Getting a good grip on the edge of one over turned seat, Butterfield pulled then nearly doubled over, grunting as he pressed a hand to his side.
"Hey!" Concerned, McGarry reached out and grasped the agent by the arm. "You alright?"
Shrugging off the hand, Butterfield hitched in a quick breath, grabbed another bit of debris and stated flatly, "It's nothing."
"Ron…"
"I said," he leveled McGarry with a narrow eyed glare that dared him to push the issue further, "It's nothing."
McGarry watched for a moment as Butterfield struggled with a torn bit of seat cushion, favoring his right side as he tossed it aside with a barely contained grunt. The man was in pain. How much or how badly, he knew if he asked he'd get the same response. Nothing. He wasn't a doctor, but a mad list of possibilities ran through his mind. Ribs, internal injuries, nothing good came to mind.
Somehow, McGarry didn't think their luck would hold that it was just a bad bruise, but he could hope. Without Butterfield, their chances of survival were markedly reduced.
Suddenly, Butterfield paused. Eyes narrowing, he leaned in closer and cocked his head to one side, listening intently.
McGarry looked at him, startled and alarmed. "What?"
The agent threw up a hand for silence, but McGarry had already heard a muffled groan sounding from behind the barrier. Hope sprang in his chest, almost suffocating him and his concerns for the agent were replaced with another. "Jed?"
The groan repeated and McGarry winced at the confusion evident in the sound, the bewildered fear in the broken cough that accompanied it. There was silence for a moment, only the sound of breathing and dripping water. Then he heard an abrupt gasp, followed by the sound of frenzied scrabbling as if someone were clawing frantically at something with their bare hands.
"Jed?" Leo was rewarded with even more panicked scratching and shallow, panting breathing. "Jed! Damn it!"
For the first time, Butterfield wore an expression of open alarm. "What's happening? Do you know what's wrong?"
"Not for certain, no!" McGarry nearly snarled his response to the agent's concern. "But I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's that damned claustrophobia kicking in again, admittedly with good cause. It sounds as if he's having a panic attack." He raised his voice again. "JED! Listen to me! Calm down, you'll only hurt yourself or hyperventilate and pass out or something. And you know I'll never let you live that down! We're right here. We're coming for you and we'll have you out in no time. Now listen to me and stay still!"
He strained anxiously for a response, anything that would let him know he'd gotten through to the trapped man. The scrabbling noises slowed until only the sound of heavy breathing remained.
Finally, forced out between gulping breaths, a shaky voice called out, "Leo?"
To be continued…
