Reed looked at Foster. Foster looked at the diagram already pulled up on his display and traced it with a shaking finger and his face changed. The aft accessory bay, Foster whispered. They run within about 8 in of each other through the aft accessory bay. Right next to the Oh my god.
Next to what? Reed said. Next to a rotating component that if it threw a piece, Foster couldn't finish. "Then that's where we look first," Jack said, standing back up and his knees popped and it broke the spell just enough for Reed to remember to be a captain. "I can't authorize a passenger onto that ramp. " Reed said, "There's protocol.
There's the base has to. I'm not asking you to authorize anything. The base is going to send a crew chief and a maintenance team out here in about 90 seconds. And when they do, I'm going to be standing at the bottom of the air stairs, and I'm going to say six words to the first sergeant who walks up, and after that, it won't be your problem or mine. " Jack almost smiled. "Trust me, this is a very small world I'm walking back into.
It's not going to take long. " Reed looked at him for a long moment, then slowly, he stuck out his trembling hand. "I don't know if any of that's true," the captain said. But if it is, thank you for coming up here, for telling me it was clean. His voice cracked on the last word. I've been sitting here for 2 minutes thinking I got lucky.
I needed somebody to tell me I flew it. Jack took his hand and gripped it hard. "You flew it, Reed. Luck doesn't hold a center line through a hydraulic slew. You flew it. " Now, let's go find out what tried to stop you.
He turned and made his way back down the aisle. And the whole cabin watched him. Now, the whole cabin because word travels through 200 people packed into a metal tube faster than any airplane. And the word was already spreading in whispers from row three forward. The mechanic, the one with the kid.
He went up to the cockpit. Ashley said he called himself something. A pilot word. He said he flew those jets outside. That one.
The dirty one. Him. Diane grabbed his sleeve as he passed. Jack. Jack, what's happening?
Is it bad? It's fine. We're down. We're safe. The airplane's not going anywhere.
I just need to help them figure out what broke. He crouched by Noah, who was practically vibrating in Diane's care. You did good, co-pilot. I'm going to go outside for a few minutes. Miss Diane's going to keep you company.
Can you hold down the fort? Are you going to tell them your Hawk One? Jack went still. How do you know that name? Noah's chin trembled.
And then he confessed at the thing he'd been holding since before the flight even began. The shoe box in the closet. I climbed up last year. His eyes filled. I wasn't supposed to.
I saw the pictures. You in the with the helmet and the medals and a paper that said Hawk One. I never told you cuz I thought you'd be mad I climbed up. The tears spilled over. But dad, you were so cool.
You were so cool and you never even told me. Why didn't you ever tell me? And Jack Miller, kneeling in the aisle of a crippled airliner on a military base he'd flown out of a thousand times, felt the box come all the way open, and there was no putting it back. Because, he said, and his voice was thick. I didn't want you growing up thinking your dad was some guy in a picture.
I wanted you to know the dad who makes your breakfast and takes you to school and reads you the same book 40 times. I thought I thought if you knew about Hawk One, you'd think that was the real me and this was the leftover and it's the other way around, buddy. It's the exact other way around. That guy in the picture, he was just a job I was good at. This he pressed his forehead to Noah's.
This is the real me. You are the real me. You understand? Noah nodded against his father's head, crying and grabbed him around the neck. And for the second time in 10 minutes, the whole business cabin lost its composure, watching a grease-stained mechanic and his little boy.
Except now it was for an entirely different reason because now they were starting to understand. Robert Chen was on his feet. He didn't know why he was on his feet. He just was. Jack stood kissed the top of Noah's head and went to the forward door where Ashley had already gotten the all clear from the crews outside to open up.
The air stairs were rolling up. The door swung open and the outside air came in warm and smelling of jet fuel and hot brakes and something else. Something Jack hadn't smelled in 4 years. The specific smell of this base, this ground, this air. And it hit him like a hand on the chest.
Down at the bottom of the air stairs, a maintenance truck had pulled up and out of it climbed a first sergeant, a stocky man in a flight line vest with a headset around his neck, mid-40s, moving with the brisk, non-nonsense stride of a man who ran a flight line and took no guff from anybody. He looked up at the airliner. He looked up at the big man standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, and he stopped dead. For a second, the sergeant just stared. Then his mouth opened.
Then it closed. Then it opened again. "No," the sergeant said loud enough to carry up the stairs. "No way. No damn way," he took a step closer, squinting into the light.
"Hawk? Major Miller?. Is that Alvarez? " Jack said, and he was smiling. "Now really smiling. The first full smile in a long time. " "Marco Alvarez, you made staff sergeant.