ONE

At exactly three seventeen PM, Eastern Standard Time, the sky fell on the sleepy township of Newhope, just outside of New York City. Flight 703 tumbled out of the sky, like a metal bird caught by a bullet, or some instrument of the Gods that had been brutally discarded. The plane was carrying 300 people, who all perished on impact. The devastation the crash caused was catastrophic; the nose of the plane ploughed into the ground in a built up residential area, and the plane pushed through several apartment buildings, sheared through power poles, and uprooted underground plumbing.

The loss of life on the ground was greater. One thousand people were killed instantly with at least another thousand seriously wounded.

The entire town was effectively shut down by the crash, bringing life to a standstill, as if someone had hit the pause button. Newhope's general hospital was too small to cope with an incident of this magnitude, and temporary morgues were set up in churches, gymnasiums and the town hall. The nation was grieving and when something like this occurs, the nation asks the question, one which comes so naturally to someone who has experienced a shock. It was the question that Dr. Celia Reece was dreading that she would have to answer for the nation, and she didn't know that the cause would be immediately identifiable. As lead investigator for the NTSB, she knew that all eyes were on her when she attempted to answer that all encompassing, grief stricken question that slipped out of the mouths of everyone:

Why?

She arrived at the crash site just two hours after the disaster, and the rescue efforts were still continuing. The news vans had preceded her arrival by at least an hour. The local police were doing their best to keep them at bay, but the response to a disaster of this magnitude was too much to look away from. It appeared as if everyone, even the newsmen kept behind makeshift barriers, was shocked at the scene before them.

Celia was always awed by the scenes that she was called to, and she knew that in a profession such as hers, that awe should have long ago evaporated, as constant contact with this sort of devastation tended to inure one to the trap of becoming emotional when all one's concentration should be on the mechanics, the logistics. God is in the details, her father used to say. But such an indiscriminate loss of life spread over such a massive area was enough to make even the most hardened investigator pause to take a breath.

The crash zone was spread over several blocks. Smoking debris lay everywhere, jagged and sharp and blackened. Emergency workers were pulling bodies out of the twisted wreckage, and bagging them as fast as they could. They were losing light, the afternoon sun dipping behind the buildings slowly, drawing the shadows deeper. Two halogen lights were being set up around the largest piece of the wreckage, which was the almost intact front section of the plane, resting on its side and dwarfing everything around it. It made sense that the front section would be intact. Celia could hear the shouts and curses of the emergency workers as she approached carefully, picking her way through the minefield of debris. She pulled up short as she noticed a man walking towards her, his jacket marking him as a police officer. The man had dirty blonde hair and a blunt square jaw, and as he looked at her, his blue eyes spoke of exhaustion and shock. She showed her ID by way of greeting and the man nodded to indicate that such a gesture was not necessary.

"How are things going?" She asked.

"They're going. We're trying to get the bodies out of here before nightfall."

She nodded and let her eyes wander over the crews of men, some marked as police, fire brigade and medic, and others in plain clothes, clearly volunteers doing their bit to help out. The whole crash site was eerily quiet, save for the sounds of engines running, radios crackling and people communicating in muted tones. "I don't like your chances," She replied. She ran a hand through her short dark hair and fixed him a look with her blue grey eyes. "Looks like this might drag on until the early hours. Then we can start thinking of getting all of this debris back to New York. My investigators are all en route now, and we want to be able to have a good look around. Tell your men to try to leave everything as it is, and if they need to remove or change anything, to come and see me or one of my team."

The other man nodded. "I've given them a run down and what to expect here. We've been just waiting for you guys to show up."

"And you are Chief of Police here?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm a detective from NYPD. Formerly homicide but now I've been assigned to the new counter terrorism unit."

Celia's eyes narrowed. "Then what are you doing here?" She said with an edge to her voice that she did not intend. "We don't know what the cause of this crash is yet. Your presence here is a bit presumptuous."

"Not really. I was passing through when the plane crashed. I was actually due to meet this flight when it landed in New York. I was running late, and then, well, all hell broke loose and here I am. I've been asked to head up things here because the police chief and a few officers are among the dead."

Celia immediately felt foolish. The man was just doing his job when he could have thrown up is hands and told the locals that this was not his jurisdiction. She ducked her head by way of apology and held out her hand. "I don't believe I caught your name," she said.

"That's because I didn't give it. Victor Morgan."

They shook hands. She noticed his fingers were dirty and damp. "Celia Reece."

"I know."

She pushed her hands deep into her jacket and followed as Morgan walked back to where the cockpit lay. All of the ground beneath her feet used to be occupied by mid sized apartment buildings. She could see concrete pillars jutting out of the earth, sheared off at the top so cleanly that a huge sword could have lopped them off. Pipes were exposed and some pieces of furniture from the buildings were lying around, still intact, unscathed. Water was spewing forth from a few of the pipes. She made a mental note to call the Water Company and get them to stop the flow. There was no telling what the water was washing away.

As they neared the huge conical cockpit, the smell of aviation fuel filled her nostrils. She took a deep breath as the familiar fluttering in her stomach started its rhythmic pulse. Morgan stopped short of the wreckage, watching as another body bag was filled and the emergency workers picked their way out of the debris with another wasted life. "What do we know about the last minutes of the flight?" He asked, staring ahead still.

She sighed. "Pilot put a call to air traffic control saying that controls were either non responsive or sluggish. Plane seemed to be functioning properly other than that. Then, just like that, the controls were working again. Control tried to confirm the flight's progress, and the pilot responded that they should be arriving earlier than expected. Air Traffic Control was very worried at this point, because the pilot's voice had slowed, and his response seemed so detached from the urgency of the situation. I think it was a coded message. I think he knew something was very wrong, but for whatever reason, he couldn't say it." She stopped for a moment, took a breath, and then continued. "At twenty thousand feet air traffic control lost contact with the flight. Its altitude was dropping at an alarming rate. After repeated attempts to raise either pilot, Control put a call in to scramble an emergency response team at JFK. But the flight never even made it that far."

Morgan nodded. "So it may have been hijacked?"

"At this point it is dangerous to speculate. Some of the passengers aboard used their cell phones to call loved ones before the plane hit. Seems there was an explosion at the back of the plane, but the source of that explosion, and if there was anyone behind it, is something we will have to establish." She stopped then, and looked at him. Victor Morgan was taller than her by about a foot. Curiosity once again got the better of her. "So why were you due to meet this flight?"

"I was picking up an informant."

Celia could have sworn he stopped himself from saying anything more. Not that he needed to explain to her. There could have been a connection between Morgan's "informant" and the catastrophe that downed flight 703. Perhaps Morgan's presence here was not so inappropriate after all. She would find out more when she had a look at the passenger manifesto. If the flight had been victim to a terrorist attack, Celia knew the FBI would be all over the case, effectively shutting out her own investigation. The FBI did not like to share information, and they became protective of any important discoveries. Celia felt the beginnings of a cluster headache throb behind her eye and she rubbed her temple. This case would be high profile. The eyes of the nation were already fixed on Newhope. Her arrival at the scene had caused a flurry of excitement amongst the press; she had obtained a measure of celebrity 5 years ago when she was lead investigator for the NTSB following a mid air collision between two commercial airliners in the skies above Virginia. She pinpointed the cause of the collision, and was able to reconstruct the events that conspired to lead the two airliners to smash into each other. She had been offered book deals and even an offer to have her life turned into a movie of the week. But the more public interest in her grew, the more she withdrew from the spotlight. Her work was always the most important thing.

"I'm heading over to the command post to get some coffee. Can I tempt you?"

She smiled thinly. "I'd love a coffee, thank you. There's not a lot I can do until my crew gets here anyway."

"Beats sitting on your hands." He led the way to the command centre, which was in fact the church hall across the road from the crash site. The entire street was quiet. Celia assumed Morgan had already cleared the neighborhood. They entered the hall through two huge double doors that were scarred by time. The space inside was quiet and the people inside worked swiftly and efficiently. It was like any other temporary HQ at a crash she'd been to, but she saw now the signs of a resigned familiarity in the faces of those few assembled. It was as if this sort of thing were as common as a five car pile up or a burst water main. Tragedies like this would occur twenty years ago and the people assigned to sweep up the debris, pull the bodies out and work out exactly what happened were all in awe that something so devastating could ever happen. Now the process by which an investigator would piece together the fatal last minutes of an airliner was a science taught at major universities, and even the general public was aware of the inner workings of a major crash investigation.

Celia blamed the violence of the world she lived in, blamed the nonchalance with which humans conducted their daily lives, and the fact that the unpredictability of the current world political climate ensured that people actually expected this sort of thing to happen in their own backyard.

Morgan led her to a small card table upon which sat an ancient coffee machine. He poured himself a cup, added cream and then turned to her. "How do you like it?"

"Strong and black as night."

He nodded and handed her a Styrofoam cup before indicating that they should sit at one of the wooden benches in the centre of the room. The benches faced a small stage, which was now playing host to a huge map, a whiteboard and a model of the very plane that lay in ruin on the ground outside. In its normal capacity it would be the stage for small plays and concerts held for the elderly. Celia sipped her coffee, which was really quite good. "I'm sorry if I seemed abrupt with you before," She said, rolling the cup around with her palms. "I'm always like that when I arrive on a scene. There's a lot to take in, and sometimes you're not even sure if your presence is even wanted. The first couple of hours at a crash site are terribly important."

He nodded. "You don't have to explain to me. Hell, a few years ago I'd have been the same if you had intruded on one of my murder scenes. It was only my dumb luck that I was here when the plane went down." He smirked and took a slurp of coffee, a habit that grated on Celia's nerves. She smiled thinly and wondered whether Victor Morgan was the sort of cop who thinks the first one on the scene owns the whole investigation.

"I didn't know the NYPD had a counter terrorism unit," She said, trying to glean some more information about the man's motives for being there.

"It does and it doesn't. The simple fact is the unit has been set up as more of a placebo than anything else. It is a high profile arm of the NYPD that focuses on crimes of terror within the police department's jurisdiction. The aim is to share intelligence with other precincts, other authorities and international organisations. But as you might already know, some kids don't like others playing with their toys. It's been a real problem to get co-operation at times."

Celia was impressed. The man looked like a high school football star gone to seed, but he was certainly no doughnut chewing redneck. "Do you think the unit will last?"

He gave her a sad, knowing look. "I think while it is politically popular it will stay. Right now, practically, it means twice the work for me for only slightly better pay. The man I was meant to meet at JFK was the first real lead I had on a bomb threat case I had been assigned to. My colleagues in San Fran sent him over as a favor. He was escorted by Mike Leibovitch, one of their guys."

Celia drew a breath. She was already drawing a map in her mind. With one criminal involved in an investigation by a counter terrorism unit, the odds did not look good on this one being mechanical failure. But she could already see that by the scatter pattern of the debris, the absence of the back half of the airliner, and the passenger reports of an explosion. She tried not to make these clues fit into a ready-made template for her to work off. The last thing she needed was to let mere suggestions overtake the facts. She would bring them to consideration, share what information Morgan had given her, but she could not let this one solve itself so easily. She shifted on the hard bench. "Did you see the plane come down?"

He shook his head. "I was travelling in the other direction, out of town. Heard the roar as the plane was falling, and felt the heat of the explosion on the back of my neck, but no, I did not see the actual crash. But we're getting a lot of detailed eyewitness reports. Maybe some footage will show up, I dunno."

"Thank you, Detective Morgan. I appreciate your efforts."

Morgan nodded, and sipped his coffee, which by now was lukewarm. He hadn't done that much to further the investigation. He knew that Celia was just being facetious. But when a plane falls out of the sky, there is not a whole lot of good a cop can do to help out. There are highly trained professionals who swoop in and contain everything, examine the pieces of a disaster and try to put them back together like a jigsaw. He felt as if his immediate presence on the scene was needed only to baby sit the huge broken craft until the emergency workers arrived. Victor Morgan didn't like not knowing what was about to happen next, and he didn't appreciate being made to feel inferior. He stood up and smiled down at Dr. Reece. "It was a pleasure meeting you, doctor," He said as he extended his hand.

Celia stood and shook his offered hand. "Likewise, detective Morgan. Can I ask that you make yourself available for an interview with my investigators sometime in the next few days?"

He nodded and shoved his hand in his pockets. "Call through to the front desk at the station and ask to be put through to me."

She said that she would and handed him her business card almost as an afterthought. "If you can think of anything, call my office or my cell phone. It would be most helpful."

He took the card, slid it into his shirt pocket and nodded by way of farewell. His boots rang out on the cement walls, and as he reached the huge double doors, something stopped him. At first, Celia thought that he had remembered something, but he wasn't looking at her. He was listening to one of the other officers talking on the telephone. The two cops were staring at each other, and both men wore a frown on their face. Celia was too far away to hear what the man was saying into the phone, but from the rapid way he was speaking, and Morgan taking cautious steps back into the hall, she knew something was wrong. She felt that distinct feeling in her gut that said the case was just going to get harder to solve. But what she discovered when the young officer hung up the phone wrapped her case up in a nice neat little bow. He spoke softly, looking only at Morgan. "The…uh…. The New York Post has received a letter claiming responsibility for the bombing," He said, and sat down heavily in ratty old armchair. Morgan moved closer and stared at the phone now, like it was some vicious animal that would strike him at any moment.

"And what did it say? Who was it from?" Celia demanded. Her tone was harsh and clipped.

Morgan met her eyes from across the desk. "The MLF sent the letter; dated two days ago, along with a sizeable document they call their manifesto."

Celia frowned. "Who are the MLF?"

Morgan took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the desk. The fax machine was spitting out pages from the Post's evening edition, plus copies of the original letter. "The MLF are a terrorist group based in the European state of Genosha. They have been involved in a civil war with the Genoshian military regime for the better part of a decade now. That is the condensed version of their history, but you get the picture. Thus far, the MLF have only restricted their activities to domestic terrorism. It appears now they've gone global."

Celia waved all this away with an impatient gesture. "What does MLF stand for?"

Morgan paused for a second to inspect one of the faxed documents. He appeared to forget her question, and Celia's frustration with the man's casual air was at a peak. Without taking his eyes from the page, he said softly, "Mutant Liberation Front."