Free Ghost by Fred Burton

age at the time.”
    “About nineteen,” I interject.
    “Yeah, nineteen. Drunk driver. Threw his life away,” Fred says with a bitter smile. “Dead on the scene. Nothing we could do for him. Blood everywhere inside the car. Even on the radio, but it still worked.”
    “It sure did.”
    “And there we stood at the bottom of this gully, dead kid, smell of booze and blood in the air, listening to ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”
    “Totally surreal,” I manage. Hearing Fred tell the story again brings me right back there to the fog. That was a horrible scene. In our old life with the rescue squad, we saw a lot of ugly things. I didn’t used to think it got to me, but now I think maybe it affected me a lot deep down. I never got jaded enough to get used to such sights. Perhaps this is why I am so moved by the files in the dead bodies cabinets. I can relate, and I don’t need a vivid imagination to envision the horrors that befell those innocent victims in Beirut.
    The evening rolls on unfettered by stilted small talk. The gates are open, and the stories pour out. The
Twilight Zone
night was the foundation for our relationship at a time when we were brothers coming of age together in this unique and terrifying world.
    I relax for the first time in months. I slump deep into my chair, put my feet up, and try to soak up every bit of this moment. It seems like old times as Fred and I regale each other with tales of the macabre. Cop stories. Rescue stories. They spill out one after another, but we never discuss the DSS. That’s off-limits. Before I know it, three hours have gone by and I’ve got to get home.
    With Mullen and Gleason, life is all business. Here, on this porch with Fred, it is all about old friends. Though we never even mentioned Libya or Qaddafi or terror attacks, I feel refreshed. Gleason was right: Sometimes you just have to get away, lest the Dark World eat your soul.
    Brandt Place is my defense against that.
    “Hey, Burton,” Fred calls as I walk through his yard toward the street. I stop and turn.
    “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
    “Don’t worry about that.”
    Later that night, the phone rings me out of the first sound sleep I’ve had in weeks.

six
    NO SPACE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE
    April 4, 1986
    The bodies fell out of the sky and plummeted into a shepherd’s field. A Greek peasant, minding his flock of sheep, discovered them battered and smashed almost beyond recognition. Before this horrible day, the trio had been a family: one grandmother, one daughter, one infant granddaughter. These were terror’s latest targets.
    A fourth body was later found in some bushes, still strapped into seat 10F of TWA Flight 840.
    I sit at my desk behind the big blue door and stare at the photos. They fell from eleven thousand feet. How long did it take? Probably long enough to know the awful fate that had consumed their lives. Did they have time to make their peace with God? Did they shriek and cry until the impact came? My imagination roams. I know that I won’t be able to sleep tonight. The images play in my mind like I was there. The infant is the worst. Nine months old. She died in her mother’s arms. I want to cry.
    I turn next to a small folder of photos that have just come into the office. They show the damage to Flight 840, which was a Boeing 727. A ragged hole, roughly the size of a wheelbarrow, scars the starboard side of the fuselage just forward of the wing. Tattered aluminum strips flower out from the hole, making it clear that the explosion that befell this jetliner came from inside the cabin.
    Flight 840 was en route to Athens from Rome when the bomb went off. The pilot had already started the descent for Athens and was counting on about fifteen more minutes before touching down. A blast, then chaos. People watched as their fellow passengers got sucked out of the cabin by explosive decompression. According to the press accounts of the attack, the cabin filled with smoke and swirling debris, which