Chapter Text
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"Fall into me my arms
Are stretched open wide
You don't have to say
A word 'cause I
Already see that it's
Hard and you're scared
And you're tired and
I know it hurts
Yes it's hard and
You're scared and you're
Tired and it hurts
And I wanna be the
One you reach for first."
Fall Into Me – Sugarland
Love On The Inside Deluxe Fan Edition – Mercury Nashville 2008
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Santini Air
Van Nuys Airport
16461 Sherman Way
Van Nuys, CA 91406
Tuesday April 1 1986
'April Fools' Day. How distressingly fitting. For we have all been fools, and we have been fooled. Badly on both counts.'
In other lives, other cities, he would be known by other names, but he wasn't there yet. Right now – still two months, one week and three days shy of turning twenty – Michael Coldsmith Briggs IV sat in the pilot's seat in a Bell 222A Ranger chopper, painted a disturbingly cheerful red, white and blue. Red and white stripes covering most of the fuselage, fading along the tail boom to a dark blue field spangled with white stars. The motif was repeated on another chopper parked outside, two Jeep CJ-6 Renegade 4X4s also parked outside – even the banner advertising the name of the business housed in the hangar Michael was currently moping around in.
Moping? Perhaps sulking? No, sulking would imply he had done something worthy of punishment. Grieving ... 'Oh, Hell no. Not a chance in Hell will I let those grasping bastards catch me grieving.'
The unmistakable screech of three sets of polyurethane wheels on pavement made him look up, pulling himself out of the chopper when it was punctuated by the rattle-thump-wheeze-growl of a pickup truck ten years past its' prime. This was all that was left, then – two college kids, two high-school kids, and two junior kids. All they had to do was steal a chopper. Not get caught, not get killed. Find a new place to hide. Live. Be.
A literally one-of-a-kind, top-secret, ultra-sophisticated, high-tech, armed warcopter. A helicopter gunship that only ran on one distinctive sort of fuel. They couldn't exactly wander down to the local gun shop and pull boxes of Copperhead, Redeye or Hellfire missiles 'off the shelf.' Thirty-millimeter chain gun and 40-millimeter cannon rounds were likewise going to be rather difficult to procure. A battlechopper only he and Everett really knew how to fly at all, and that only barely. Neither Evie nor Tye had yet soloed in the 222A Ranger. Sam and Le Van were interested, but they were fourteen and thirteen, respectively. Their 'flight hours' were still limited to arcade games.
Hell, only he and Everett were old enough to drive a car, for God's sake! Evie and Tye wouldn't turn sixteen until September! There was just simply no way they were going to accomplish this, let alone get away with it, they may as well just sit and wait for the butchers to catch up with them. 'Oh no! NO self-pity, Michael! Absolutely no self-pity allowed!' Michael looked down at the file folder in his hands. How on Earth it had been smuggled out he could not begin to guess, but it had. Fulfilling the mission contained within would be his final gift to a truly incredible woman, who had possessed the courage of her convictions in sufficient quantity as to allow her to walk away from everyone and everything she'd ever known. To chase a dream that had ultimately resulted in her death.
He looked up as Evie, Tye and Le Van came up to the chopper, Everett and Sam behind them. Everett had possessed the foresight to shut the damn door, something Michael himself had neglected to do. The corrugated steel walls of the hangar wouldn't stop BBs, but hopefully the bastards after them would not merely fire blindly into a building they had not previously ascertained actually held their assigned targets. Which would necessitate opening the door, which would give them time to scramble to some pathetic semblance of safety. Sitting there wool-gathering with the door hanging open, Michael had made himself the perfect target.
Everett started. "I got these two," he chucked a thumb at Evie and Tye, "fake ID's. I've been teaching them to drive Ol' Red. If they can drive him they can drive anything. You and I go retrieve the package, the rest go on to the campground."
Amazing how quickly they'd adapted their speech, naturally presuming they were being listened in on. 'Package' instead of naming the helicopter outright; 'the campground,' as opposed to their intended destination – which they had yet to even intend! Michael passed him the file folder. "Read it. Our first assignment. We'll figure out the rest later."
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Raines Farm
Grayson County, Texas
Wednesday 23 April 1986
Twelve-year-old Vin Tanner huddled miserably under Ol' Man Raines' ancient tool shed, knowing that at any second it was going to be ripped out from over him, leaving him at the mercy of the storm. He didn't even know what he'd done 'wrong' this time, if he'd even done anything at all. Ol' Raines was a drunk, and a violent one at that. How he'd passed the tests to become a foster parent, Vin didn't care to think about.
For the past two years, 'Child Services' had seen fit to place Vin in progressively worse situations, ever since a Texas Highway Patrol chopper pilot with more heart than she'd had good sense had bothered to remember he was turning eleven. She'd picked him up from school the day of, and taken him out for lunch – he hadn't had the money to eat at school – and shopping at NorthPark Center. It had been the first time Vin had been inside the huge mall, only the third time he could ever remember being in a mall in his life. They'd wandered around for hours. But the pièce de résistance of the day had been when Deputy Caitlin O'Shannessy had driven out to the airport, and taken him for a chopper ride. That had been half the reason for staying in the mall so long – she’d wanted to give the mid-spring sun time to go down, time for the lights of Dallas to come up – the Dallas Main Center outlined in green; Renaissance Tower's white X's; the obsidian spire of the Ewing Oil building, somehow even more sinister for being so dark next to its glowing neighbors, save the airplane caution lights at the very top; the glowing ball of Reunion Tower. He'd loved his city before, but seeing her like this ... could there be any finer place to live than Texas?
It had been a night Vin had would never forget. They'd both paid for it. Vin had been removed from a placement that, while certainly neglectful, had never been outright abusive. He'd spent a week in Juvie, then embarked on a series of increasingly crueler 'homes.' Every time he was retrieved to be sent on to the next place, his social worker seemed more and more surprised that she was indeed rescuing a live person, not claiming a body. Culminating in his current situation, stuffed under the tool shed.
Caitlin had been reassigned from the Metroplex to Pope County, in the western edges of the state, under the command of one Sheriff J.J. Bogan. The week he'd spent in Juvie, Vin had overheard Caitlin's former boss laughing with a friend – “I’ve known Jack Bogan since the Republic. He'll put that uppity, overgrown schoolgirl in her place and no mistake!" Except ... he kinda hadn't. Four months after Caitlin's reassignment, Sheriff Bogan, his personal deputy and half the cowboys in Pope County had been dead, the Sheriff's office and department vehicle had been so much smoking rubble and wreckage, and Caitlin had turned in her badge and packed her bags for California.
On the drive out here to Ol' Raines' place back on April Fools' Day, his social worker had informed him – with no small amount of malicious glee – that Caitlin had been killed in a helicopter crash three days' previous. She'd become disoriented in bad weather, and flown into the side of a mountain.
Like Hell she had. But Ranger Cordell Walker was in the hospital recovering from the assassination attempt that had killed his fiancée, and was thoroughly unable to investigate the matter.
Through the storm, Vin heard a new sound, a strange vibrating drone. His heart sank. Here came the twister, he was done for now. From the depths of his earliest childhood memories, a half-forgotten Comanche chant bubbled up. Hell, wasn't like Ol' Raines' was exactly gonna hear him now, and if the Spirits had a care for a boy who was three-quarters White-eyes, it might help them find him.
"He's under the tool shed?!?" Michael's voice damn near hit what could only be described as 'squeak.'
"One of us is gonna have to get out." Everett replied, much too calm for the circumstances. Hail hammered the aircraft's gleaming black hide, having no more effect than any of the rifle bullets currently being fired from the porch. At least, the ones that were making it that far.
Flip you for it! Exclaimed an all-too-excited voice, more inside their heads than their helmets.
"Oh, I'm sure you'd love to." Michael answered the voice. "Keep between him and me, would you? He's an idiot, but he's still dangerous."
The very last thing Vin was expecting was a hand around his ankle and a sharp tug. Or the voice that was decidedly not Ol' Raines. "Come on, hurry! I will not leave you here!"
The only things he was immediately aware of was a pair of stunningly emerald-green eyes, and a Southern drawl equally as thick – if a great deal more cultured – as his own.
"I am a friend of Caitlin's, she sent me for you! Now hurry! There's an F-4 coming this way, and this excuse for a shed will not survive it!"
Hell, any kindergarten kid could tell Vin that. Nothing survived an F-4! There was no room to turn over down here, he had to crab crawl out. The stinging rain and pounding hail nearly made him change his mind, but his savior grabbed him by the collar of his only Rangers T-shirt and hauled him towards a huge black helicopter, like nothing Vin had ever seen before. The door made a strange sighing sound when it opened, and he was shoved across the cockpit to the left-side seat. The young man who had saved him settled into the pilot's seat, and pulled a black flight helmet on that covered his entire head. Only his face between his mouth and forehead were visible.
Rifle rounds cracked off the chopper's nose, and Vin tensed, until he saw the sparks where the bullets were ricocheting off, entirely ineffective. Frustrated and enraged, Ol' Raines reached down and picked up a .357, unloading the entire cylinder directly at the windscreen. Three pinged harmlessly away, two never made it.
"Ol' Raines keeps 'is hammer on an empty chamber, keeps money rolled up in th' empty one." Vin explained.
"I do apologize, that you will be unable to liberate any of your personal belongings from the house." Michael looked at the torn, too-large T-shirt and ragged, too-small jeans Vin had on, the entirely mismatched sneakers.
Vin reached into his right hip pocket, pulling out a battered harmonica. "Got all 'at's really mine, what's in 'th' house came from a church sale, an' I already done outgrowed it, 'ceptin' what I's wearin' now."
"May I remind you that F-4s generally have a wind speed of between 207 and 260 miles an hour? And a damage path of between 400 and 900 feet? I'd rather not be here when that decides to show up." Everett piped up from the back seat.
Me neither, let's go!
"Who was that?" In scrambling across the cockpit, Vin had seen someone wearing a helmet in the rear compartment, but this was a different voice.
"I'll explain later." Michael pulled back on the stick, sending the chopper into the turbulent skies. Ol' Raines tried a few more futile shots, before finally realizing he'd best be diving for the storm cellar. Vin didn't bother looking down to see if he'd made it. He never knew that Ol' Raines was later sent to the state hospital at Waco, insisting to his dying day that aliens had used the storm as cover to abduct the young boy he'd had living with him.