The Sleepless Read online

  ‘If only the President were half so pleased,’ smiled John, wryly.

  ‘Oho!’ said Dean. ‘Even the President has to recognize 24-carat excellence when it’s right in front of his nose.’ Then – to Sissy – ‘You’re going to have a real good time tonight. The Beaumonts are throwing a going-away party for Clarissa, and you’re invited, and guess who’s coming? Would you believe – dah-dah! – John Travolta?’

  Sissy slowly wrinkled up her nose. John Travolta? He must be more than eighty years old by now!’

  They all laughed. Dean said, ‘You’re invited anyway, even if there are one or two geriatrics coming along. Now – are we ready? The flight’s scheduled to take off at 11:25 hours and that should give us plenty of time if we leave pretty much now.’

  ‘Sure, we’re ready,’ said John. He turned around to Newton, who was standing behind him, dabbing his forehead with a folded handkerchief. ‘Newton, will you make sure that Jimmy gets the message about reshoeing that grey? And keep your eye on those pool-cleaners, too. The last time they clogged up all the filters.’

  ‘Very good, sir. You and Mrs O’Brien have a safe flight, now.’

  They walked across to the helicopter. The pilot saluted them crisply and then shook their hands. ‘How do you, sir. My name’s Frank Coward. Welcome aboard.’

  Frank was a tanned, leathery man with a cleft-tipped nose and no spare meat on him. He wore impenetrable green-lensed Ray-Bans in which John could see nothing but his own curved reflection and the white pillars of the porch behind him. There was a long white scar running down the inside of Frank’s left arm, and he wore a small enamel pin in his lapel which read ‘Semper Fi US Marines’.

  ‘Shouldn’t take us more than ten minutes to get to Logan, sir,’ he added. ‘Just relax and enjoy it.’

  He closed the helicopter’s door and hunched his way to the pilot’s seat, where he sat down, put on his red-and-white bonedome, and ran deftly through his pre-flight checks, his scarred arm raised so that he could flick switches on the overhead panels. John and Eva sat side by side, buckling themselves into their grey leather seats, while Sissy and Dean sat facing them.

  Dean said, ‘The Post called this afternoon, Apparently they’re interested in running a major analysis of all of your past defences and all of the work you did for Griffin Bell. Especially that schools legislation.’

  Frank said, ‘That’s it, ladies and gentleman. Hold tight,’ and started up the two turboshafts. The helicopter’s engines throbbed and the rotors began to turn. John squeezed Eva’s hand as they gradually rose from the lawn, and almost immediately began to tilt off toward the Charles river. They saw their own rough-mown horse paddocks swivelling below them; then a slanting view of the house, with its shining ivy and its red-tiled rooftops; then the river gleaming like molten gold, so bright that it dazzled them.

  ‘Logan control, this is helicopter Justice Three,’ drawled Frank. ‘Heading sixty degrees east-north-east over Riverdale, altitude one thousand feet, ETA eight minutes fifteen seconds.’

  They flew low over Highway 1 and the shining rectangular blocks of the VA Medical Center, their shadow jumping and hopping beneath them.

  ‘What do you think?’ said John. ‘About the Post, I mean.’

  Dean leaned forward and said, ‘My considered opinion is that you should decline to co-operate. If they want to know why, tell them it’s your future deliberations with the Supreme Court that they should judge you on, not your old defences. The law may be founded on precedent, but the law moves on, and you’re going to be the man who makes it move on.’

  John gave him a wry smile. ‘I think that’s what most of my critics are worried about.’

  ‘Well, for sure,’ Dean replied. ‘But just remember what Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes had to say about it. ‘The Constitution is nothing more nor less than what the judges say it is.” And now you’re one of those judges.’

  ‘I’m about to be one of those judges,’ John corrected him.

  ‘Hair-splitter,’ said Eva, and squeezed his hand even tighter.

  Sissy said, John Travolta! I can hardly wait ... not!’

  They were flackering over the Norfolk County line when without warning the helicopter shuddered and lurched to starboard. Eva gasped and Sissy let out a little yelp. John shouted out, ‘Frank! What in hell’s happening?’

  ‘Just a touch of engine irregularity, nothing I can’t handle,’ Frank called back. For a moment, it looked as if he might be right. The helicopter continued to fly forward at high speed, although the turboshafts were whining and rumbling in a way that they hadn’t been whining and rumbling before.

  ‘Don’t you think you’d better put us down?’ John shouted.

  But before Frank could answer, there was an earsplitting screech of clashing metal gears, and the helicopter dropped two or three hundred feet in a bucking, uncontrolled spiral. John felt as if his stomach had been left somewhere way up in the sky. He clutched the arm of his seat and snatched for Eva’s hand. He saw Sissy’s face right in front of him, her jaw muscles rigid with terror, and his mouth flooded with lukewarm coffee and poisonous bile. He thought he could hear Eva screaming at him, but the helicopter was shaking and roaring so loudly that it was impossible to tell for sure.

  Just when John thought they were going to hit the ground, Frank somehow managed to stabilize the helicopter’s tail, and tilt the rotors to gain a few desperate feet of height. All the same, the fuselage vibrated relentlessly, punctuated by a deep, lumpy sound, and thick brown smoke began to stream across the windows.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’ yelled Dean, his mouth drawn back tight as a toad’s.

  ‘We’re going to crash!’ screamed Sissy. ‘Daddy, we’re going to die!’

  John, helpless and terrified, bellowed at the back of Frank’s head, ‘Frank! Do you hear me, Frank! For Christ’s sake put her down!’

  Eva was gripping John’s hand so tightly that her wedding ring pressed into his nerve; but he was almost glad of the pain because it told him that he was still alive; and that while he was still alive, he still had a chance of survival.

  Jolting, airsick, he tried to peer through the droplets of thin brown oil that were streaking the windows, to see where they were. He thought he recognized Jamaica Pond, and then Franklin Park. He realized that they were turning in a slow, wide circle, eastward toward the sea – Quincy Bay, most likely. He saw buildings, patches of shining water, trees, then the tawny concrete ribbon of the Southeast Expressway. The helicopter was surging up and down like a Boston whaler in a choppy surf. The roaring and grinding of the engines was so loud that, even if he survived, John didn’t think that he would ever be able to hear anything again.

  Eva clung to him, clung at his coat, clung at his arm. Sissy was gripping Dean’s arm and Dean was staring at him in total panic, a dark stain spreading across the crotch of his linen suit. John tried screaming at Frank again, but Frank was struggling for survival in a small deafening hell of his own, and didn’t have time for anything else.

  They were flying so low now that John could see people on the streets and beaches below them, shading their eyes and turning around as the helicopter burped and stuttered over their heads. He saw some people running, obviously afraid that they were going to crash right on top of them. He couldn’t believe that they were still airborne. They were well below the level of the rooftops and the powerlines, but somehow they managed to snatch a few lurching feet of extra lift, and cross the grey sandy diagonal of Wollaston Beach, so that they were flying out over the sun-chipped waters of Quincy Bay.

  Through the oil-fogged window, John saw yacht sails shining, like fresh-laundered sheets, and for a moment he was convinced that they were going to make it, that Frank was going to put them gently down in the sea, and that everything was going to be fine.

  He reached across and grasped Sissy’s hand, too, and said, ‘We’re making it, we’re making it. He’s putting us down in the bay. Just hold on, we’re going to be fine.’
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br />   Dean could do nothing but stare at him in horror, and open and close his mouth. He turned to Eva but Eva had her right hand pressed over her face and she looked as if she were praying.

  John prayed too. Dear God save my family from death. Dear God, just this one time, let us all live.

  The Sikorsky’s turboshafts let out a last hideous grrrrrr! like a pit-bull having its guts torn out, and then it simply dropped. It hit the water at well over 150 knots, and John felt something slamming into his back. Eva let out a scream that was so high-pitched and unearthly that he thought for a split second that it was metal tearing – that the whole fuselage was being ripped in half. Then the helicopter bounced again, and hit something much harder than the sea, although the window burst open on John’s side of the fuselage and saltwater spray exploded in his face.

  Jesus! Wouldn’t it ever stop bouncing and crashing and rolling and bouncing? He saw sea, sunlight, the pink flurry of Sissy’s face, the jolting blur of Dean’s left arm, and all the time Eva was screaming and screaming Oh God oh God we’re all going to die We’re all going to die We’re all going to die.

  The helicopter suddenly came to a stop, three-quarters tilted, like a baseball player who suddenly stops himself on the third base, and tilts, and staggers, still full of momentum, still full of forward motion. Then it rolled with a heavy crunching onto its belly, onto the sand. As it did so, its floor buckled in, and mercilessly compressed their feet underneath their seats, where they had been tucked in the foetal position. John felt his heels forced up against the aluminum rack which held his lifebelt. Then all of their ankles snapped in unison, like a crackle of pistol fire, and they stared at each other and shouted in pain.

  After that, apart from the sound of the incoming tide, and the doleful whistling of the wind, and the stray clanking of cooling metal, there was silence. The whole cabin stank of kerosene, but the smoke seemed to have died down, and there was no crackling of fire. Eva kept pulling at John’s hand and whispering, ‘God, oh God, John. Oh God.’ Her face was grey and her forehead was badly bruised. Dean was shuddering and massaging his kneecaps over and over in pain. Sissy simply stared at nothing at all, and John guessed that she was already lapsing into clinical shock.

  As for himself, his feet were on fire. He had never experienced such pain, even when he had fallen from his polo pony late last year and dislocated his shoulder. Every nerve in his ankles cringed and throbbed, and if somebody had asked him then and there if he had wanted his feet to be amputated, he would have paid them to do it.

  ‘Oh God, John,’ wept Eva. ‘I think that both of my ankles are broken.’

  ‘I think all of our ankles are broken,’ said John. ‘Keep an eye on Sissy ... she’s gone into shock.’

  ‘Where are we?’ said Dean, in a clogged-up, unreal voice. He peered unfocused at the bay. ‘I thought we were over water.’

  ‘We were,’ John told him. ‘But we must have hit Nantasket Beach. It’s kind of a spit of land that sticks out into the bay.’

  ‘They can get to us, though? The emergency services can get to us?’

  ‘For sure,’ John shivered. ‘We’ve made it, don’t worry. They can get to us.’

  ‘What about Frank?’ Dean asked him. ‘Do you think he sent out a mayday?’

  John leaned a few inches sideways in his seat. It was the most that he could manage before his ankles were gripped by intolerable agony. He could just make out the back of Frank’s helmet, and part of Frank’s blue-shirted shoulder.

  ‘Frank!’ John called out, desperately. ‘Frank, are you all right? For Christ’s sake, our feet are trapped!’

  Frank didn’t answer. ‘Maybe he’s concussed,’ Dean suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ said John. From the unnatural angle of Frank’s head, he suspected that Frank might be more than concussed. It looked as if his neck might be broken. But John didn’t want to panic Eva, and he was suffering too much pain himself to want to speculate. As far as he was concerned, their first priority was to lift these seats off their legs, so that the pressure on their broken ankles was relieved and they could drag themselves clear.

  Drag, not walk. No question of walking. He could feel the fractured bones grating inside his skin, like a smashed jelly jar full of crushed-up pieces of glass.

  Eva said, with a curious note of resignation in her voice, ‘John, can you hear me? I can’t bear it. It really hurts so much.’

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ John reassured her. ‘The rescue people are going to get here real soon. You don’t think they’re going to leave their newest Supreme Court Justice stranded on Nantasket Beach, do you?’ He winced, and his mouth filled with metallic, sour-tasting blood; but he managed to turn away from her and spit it down the side of his seat. That slam on the back must have broken some ribs, maybe punctured a lung.

  ‘So long as we don’t burn,’ said Dean. The stench of kerosene was even stronger now, and John could see the fumes rippling in the breeze. ‘I couldn’t bear to burn.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ John told him. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘I saw somebody burn in a Volkswagen once, out on the Rockville Pike. Never want to see anything like that again. Kid went black, like beef.’

  Dean’s voice wandered from high pitch to low, and John guessed that he was going into shock, too. Sissy’s eyes had rolled up into her head, and her breathing was laboured and slow.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, how long are those rescue people going to be?’ John ranted, at nobody at all.

  But almost as soon as he had said that, he saw the shadow of a man pass the broken window.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Hey – we’re in here!’

  ‘Has somebody got here?’ asked Eva, wincing with pain. ‘Has somebody got here already?’

  The shadow passed the window again. Although his image was blurred by the sunlight that was shining from the sea, John could see that he was wearing a long dark raincoat. Thank God, it must be a firefighter from the Fire & Rescue Service.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled out, hoarsely. ‘Hey, we’re all in here! We’re trapped! Can you get us out of here, for Christ’s sake?’

  There was a long pause, but no reply. In the far distance, John could hear sirens, six or seven or even more, yowling and scribbling in the chorus. The pain in his ankles was so intense now that his legs throbbed, all the way to his thighs, and a scarlet mist was blurring his vision. Don’t pass out now, he ordered himself. Your family needs you; Dean needs you; your country needs you.

  He heard somebody tugging away a length of bent window frame. Then a thin dark man appeared in the broken window, a man with cropped spiky hair and intensely black sunglasses. In some oblique, extraordinary way, John thought that he recognized him – but it was probably no more than an overwhelming sense of relief that they had survived the helicopter crash and that somebody had actually come to get them out.

  The man kicked out the last fragments of plexiglas with the heel of a high black lace-up boot. The window frame had been bent too narrow for him to climb inside, but he carefully eased his head in, and peered around the cabin, sniffing dryly from time to time.

  ‘We’re all trapped by our ankles,’ John told him. ‘The floor collapsed. We’re going to need somebody to take the seats out – maybe jack them up or something. Can you be quick please? My daughter’s in a pretty bad way.’

  The man wiped his nose with the back of his black-gloved hand. Then he said, in a soft but rather strangled North Shore accent, ‘This is Mr O’Brien’s party?’

  ‘I’m John O’Brien. This is my family. Come on, please. Get us out of here as quick as you can.’

  The man peered around a little more, up at the ceiling, down at the floor. ‘This is going to take cutters,’ he announced, with great deliberation, like a house painter trying to decide which type of paint to use.

  John said, ‘Whatever it takes. Just do it.’

  He could feel blood running out of the side of his mouth, and dripping on to
his shirt collar. He coughed, and wished he hadn’t, because it hurt, and because it filled his mouth with even more blood.

  The man carefully withdrew his head from the window frame and vanished into the sunlight again. Eva tugged at John’s sleeve and asked, ‘What’s happening? What’s he doing? Can’t he get us out?’

  ‘He has to cut us out.’

  ‘Oh God my legs hurt, John. I can’t stand it. Oh God where are the paramedics.’

  Dean said nothing. His eyes were glassy and his cheeks were grey. His breath came in little painful sips. They waited in agony that seemed to be endless. Where had the man gone now? What was he doing? Why wasn’t he trying to get them out? And where were the rest of the firefighters, and the paramedics, where were the drips and the oxygen masks and the anaesthetics?

  John closed his eyes and thought that he was probably going to die. And when he closed his eyes, he became aware of ‘Mr Hillary’, waiting and watching in the very, very back of his brain, like a grey beetle waiting motionless inside a hollowed-out nut, but ready to scuttle out at the slightest disturbance.

  So you’re here, you bastard, he thought. You were here at the beginning, and now you’re here at the end. I just hope that when I die, you’ll die, too. It’ll almost be worth it.

  John began to slide into unconsciousness, as if he were sliding down a grey greasy slope, into the grey greasy waters of a silent canal.

  Perhaps it would be better, just to go to sleep. If he were asleep, then all the pain in his ankles would vanish, and he would be standing in front of the Supreme Court taking his oath, and everything that had happened this morning would be nothing more than a dream.

  But – abruptly – the morning air was shattered by a loud, rasping roar, louder than a motorcycle starting up. Almost immediately, the man reappeared in the window and he was carrying a pair of huge shining steel pincers, like a grotesque parody of a giant parrot’s beak.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked John. ‘What the hell’s that?’

  With a hiss of hydraulics, the parrot-beak slowly opened, revealing rows of serrated steel teeth. The man looked at John and smiled and said nothing. Then, with laconic expertise, he positioned the beak over the lower corner of the window frame, and twisted the hand-grip. The pincers cut right through the frame with a warping, crushed Coke-can noise. Then the man released the parrot-beak, and manhandled it further down, and twisted the hand-grip again. He cut again and again, and in less than a minute the whole side of the helicopter’s fuselage was cut wide open, and the cabin was filled with wind and sunlight.