copyright ©2001,2019 arden henderson
APD Unit E27 was rolling up I35 when the radio call arrived. That’s what they called IH35 around these parts: “I35.” Unit E27, a police issue 1998 Ford Crown Victoria with two officers assigned, operates out of the Austin Police Department’s Northeast Command.
On this New Year’s Eve in Austin, Texas, 1999, APD Officer James K. Bedford drove and Lee Joun-Yung rode shotgun. Both were twenty-six with about three years on the force; they had been in the same recruitment class. Each had been transferred in from other commands.
It had been a busy night. Call after call. Downtown, the street party had turned out to be everything everyone predicted. Thousands mixed on Congress Avenue, enjoying the bands.
The two officers glanced at each other as the APD dispatcher called out the details. Their expressions did not change. They turned and looked back down I35.
Bedford picked up the mike and clicked the button. He called in the affirmative, and hit the lights and sound, accelerating due north on I35 towards Exit 240B.
As they cruised to the scene, Lee peeked out the side window at the black night sky. A spectacular meteor traced across the sky in the distance. Except it wasn’t a meteor.
Lee commented to Bedford that this was the fourth satellite they had seen fall. Some, they knew, did not completely burnout in the atmosphere. Impacts were incredibly spectacular. They knew from background radio chatter that, far away, in New Jersey, fire fighters were summoning help from nearby states.
Oddly, it wasn’t even Y2K yet. Maybe the crashing satellites had something to do with the recently reactivated Mars lander – thought to be lost forever – and the stream of yet undeciphered gibberish it was now beaming to the Earth. And the Eve was still young.
Lee wondered aloud what Kelso would think about all this. Bedford smiled a tight smile. Each wondered privately if the Austin-American Statesman would arrive the next morning.
Exit 240B routes westbound traffic to US Highway 183 from northbound I35. It is a single lane exit that rapidly climbs up into the sky and veers to the west to join 183 high overhead. The wandering 183 is elevated and east-west oriented at this juncture.
Highway 183 is affectionately known as Research Boulevard in Austin, Texas. 183 meanders across Austin in a haphazard north-south direction, lazily becoming east-west, taking time to cross I35 and Loop 1, before resuming north-south again.
Loop 1 is otherwise known as Mopac for the freight lines that run between the north and sound roadways of Loop 1. The inside joke is that Loop 1 is not really a loop.
Unit E27 came upon the scene in no time, threading past the stalled vehicles, winding past the wrecked and overturned hulks of what used to be cars, trucks, SUVs, eighteen-wheelers, coming to a stop the front of the pileup. They had arrived at the I35 Exit 240B.
It was just as the dispatcher described. A 747 straddled the steep 240B exit ramp perfectly, the tail down near I35 pavement, the nose aimed off the ramp at the top into the black sky, as if the jet was designed to shoot off the ramp like some sort of 1950s space ship contraption.
Apparently the Texas Department of Transportation had built the exit ramp to withstand even impromptu jet pancake landings. At this perspective, in this odd environment, outside the usual expanse of airport or sky, the 747 looked larger than ever. It was gigantic.
Lee noted it was a Boeing 747–400. He recited the specs from memory: Typical empty weight of 398,780 pounds, 231-feet 10-inches front to end, 211-feet 5-inches wingtip to wingtip. But not this 747.
One of the 747’s huge wings was broken off, crumpled across I35 amidst shattered cars lying on their sides. It must have been the right wing. The left wing pointed oddly down 183, as if to indicate all cars should now go west. But they would west anyway, cars would, if on the elevated ramp, since it only merged west. There was cosmic satire buried there somewhere.
The plane was dark, a huge freaky shape in the night. The I35 street lights were dark in this section. Part of the damage. About a mile down the road, the lights resumed.
There was no traffic left northbound past this destruction. All northbound traffic ended here. I35 northbound was eerily deserted except for the multitudes of emergency vehicles in the distance, going south on this northbound, coming towards them.
In the frozen southbound lane, it seemed as if a million headlights were aimed at Unit E27. People stalled directly under the 183 overpass had already left their cars.
There were little fires everywhere. People from the I35 pileup wandered about in the dark, those that could, crying and shouting with faint voices. Some were trapped. Many of the dark vehicles had no movement inside and no sounds. It was not clear if anyone had evacuated the plane yet. The plane windows were dark.
APD Unit E27 was the very first on the scene. But not for long. Cruising south the deserted northbound lane towards them with full strobes and sound was a Texas DPS black-and-white. Sirens and banks of flashing lights in the distance behind the black-and-white promised more company. Soon, it would be very busy here.
Bedford and Lee opened their doors and stepped out. Inside Unit E27, the radio was heating up with calls from Austin-Bergstrom airport. Trouble was increasing. Radio traffic indicated Central Command was releasing about one hundred officers from the AY2K celebration to help.
Bedford paused, surveyed the scene, and asked rhetorically if it was midnight yet. Lee didn’t reply. They moved rapidly to the first car.
About fifty vehicles back on the northbound lane, Carmen Garza was completing her tenth Hail Mary and twelfth Our Father. Her car was nudged up against some sort of SUV in front. A late model Ford pickup was squeezed up against the back of her 1997 Chevy minivan.
Carmen was in her forties and had been on her way to a party. In the back seat, the carefully prepared flowers and party favors were now all jumbled together. Ruined. Carmen owned a catering business.
It had been a wild night. She had already been hopelessly late. Traffic had been fast approaching gridlock status. Now, of course, it was exactly that.
Carmen pushed back the air bag, now deflated, glancing out past her shattered windshield. Some sort of debris lay on the hood. She didn’t want to study it closely. She checked in the rear view mirror from sheer habit and routine. She felt as if she was on autopilot.
The scene was eerily quiet compared to minutes before where the screaming tires and collision after collision echoing into the night had created a sort of mad symphony.
Carmen was in the tail end of the pileup line, a long line of cars that had managed, by mere coincidence of position, to shriek to stops, colliding into each other in slow motion, staying on all wheels in cascade arrangements. Up ahead, the wreckage was far worse. Smoke drifted across the jumbled shapes.
As the slo-mo pileup had occurred, Carmen saw one car ahead twist sidewise into the air, propelled by the tremendous impacts, popped into the air like a watermelon seed.
Even as the car arced into the night on its side, illuminated by a hundred headlight beams now slashing in improbable angles for the northbound roadway, she could see the driver talking on his cell phone. Or, rather, screaming.
The car then bounced across several other car roofs, and, inexplicably, burst into flame. Explosion quickly followed. The wreckage still burned in a huddle over by the interstate’s concrete divider. It was one of many fires in that scene.
Later, via dental records, it would be determined the driver of that car was one Spencer H. Davis, age 35, father of three children ages three to seven, married to Julie, age 31, and recently transferred from the eastern seaboard in a web-based startup acquisition.
It would never be known that his death was relatively merciful in context of his otherwise future. Preoccupied with the conversation, hampered by the distraction, crucial split-seconds were missed and velocity was not reduced. The subsequent short abrupt flight to hell was unavoidable.
It was of no matter. Davis was already a walking dead man though symptoms had not appeared yet. Some two years later, after this New Year’s Eve, Davis would have died after a long painful session with inoperable brain cancer; just another stat in the leading edge of the Epidemic of 2005 resulting from customer critical mass.
The Surgeon General’s warning of 2002 would help reduce the onslaught and hands-free phone headsets would already be in major use by 2004. This would not have saved Davis. The resulting thousands of lawsuits and the load on medical services would later bring several manufacturers, HMOs, and insurance companies to their knees, causing a ripple effect, a subtle prelude to the Crash of 2009.
Carmen shook her head to clear it and tried her door. She felt okay. The belts and airbags had done their job. Fortunately no fire though the car was thick with gasoline fumes. Her door was jammed; this was not unexpected.
Brushing off endless broken safety glass crystals, she made her way across the car to try the other side. She could hear the approaching sirens. The initial aftermath silence now was ending with the din of commotions everywhere around her.
She thought of her family, of her five children. She especially wondered how her son Jose was doing so far away on the other side of the world.
But there were far larger problems beyond the local mayhem here. She looked up. There was no sound yet so it must have been instinct that caused her to look up, her fem instinct now sweeping into the red. Carmen’s dark eyes glittered as she looked out of the car to the north.
Past the hulking 747, silent and dark on the steep exit ramp pointing into sky, past the endless flashing blue and red strobes of AFD trucks, police cars, and emergency vehicles now arriving, past the graceful arc of Exit 240B as it merged with the high overhead 183, north past the sea of waiting southbound headlights, past Roundrock, past Georgetown, toward Dallas, there was the dull orange glow.
Like a premature dawn.
Sergeant Jose Garza walked to the north perimeter of DMZ Checkpoint #4 and peered into the low lying fog. Fog and ice. Snow.
It was very cold here. Snow had long since arrived for another bitter Korean winter. He shrugged and burrowed deeper into his thick Army-issue parka. White vapor puffed out into the dim morning light as he breathed softly. It was very quiet out here this day. He put the MIL–340 high-resolution digital binocs up to his eyes and adjusted the focus. Nothing out there.
The DMZ (demilitarized zone) between North Korea and South Korea was established at the end of the Korea War in 1953. The war had never really ended. Technically, the North and South were still at war some 46-years later. It was an uneasy “peace” marked by “incidents.”
Two kilometers wide and stretching zigzag across the country’s width, the DMZ hosts around two million troops total for both sides, primed for war.
The United States stations around 35,000 troops with the South Korean allies here. Seoul, capital of South Korea, was only forty road miles away from this border, one of the most dangerous borders in the world, forty miles away from North Korea’s million-man army.
A favorite North Korean pastime in the decades following the armistice was the creation of tunnels under the DMZ. The tunnels were awesome efforts of construction, permitting the silent underground passage of entire invasion troops complete with tanks. Using sound detection equipment, the South would methodically locate each new tunnel and blast it. It was a real live endless war game.
Recently, North Korea began to look at the skies as an alternative. In August of 1998, North Korea had successful launched multi-stage missile across Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Japan was not at all happy about this turn of events. China seemed somewhat embarrassed by its junior communist ally, distancing itself carefully. North Korea seemed almost Cold War retro in comparison to the rapid changes in China.
A year later, all reports had indicated North Korean now owned advanced missile versions capable of hitting the western seaboard of continental USA. Most military experts believed North Korea to be the proverbial loose cannon. (As it turned out, Russia would better qualify for this title. But that would be later on.)
New Year’s Day had already arrived in the DMZ when Garza heard the first sounds in the distance… from the south. Behind him.
Later it would be determined that the North Korean missile activities had simply been a cover up for advance tunneling techniques that included sound cancellation technologies.
It appeared North Korea had become more resourceful as China relations cooled and famine raged across the tiny country due to the decades-old international embargo. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Directly under Garza’s feet, far below the snow and ice, some one hundred feet down and ramping up to a point south, was a relatively new tunnel that could easily accommodate several Austin-style Friday I35 vehicle loads all at once.
Garza ran to join the others already bunkering down in preparation for an enemy now squarely inside their perimeter scant kilometers south. He could see the distant clouds of dirt as the awesome North Korean Army burrowing equipment made short work of the tunnel termination, arriving inside South Korea.
The NKA was back in town, big time.
Hundreds of NKA helicopter gunships hurtled out of the huge ground opening like angry wasps, their roar pounding the cold air. Four gunships twisted, turned, separated from the pack, and thundered back low and hard towards Checkpoint #4.
Garza swung over the sandbags, primed his weapon, looked up and back, watched his fellow soldiers rapidly wheel around the machine guns. Radio traffic was hot and loud. The NKA tunnel south of Checkpoint #4 was one of many tunnels opening suddenly that New Year’s Day in South Korea just past the DMZ.
In the mayhem and noise and cold, as the NKA gunships roared towards them from the south, rotating cannons flashing, as North Korean troops and vehicles poured out of the distant ground opening, as the hundreds of missile vapor trails traced the gray skies, fanning out south and east, Garza wondered how his family was doing back in Texas, and, for some reason, in this mad chaos, as explosions geysered in front of the bunker and yells and gunfire surrounded him, as the NKA gunships thundered towards them, Garza recalled his carefree childhood days during those hot Austin summers of years ago.
…and of the little grocery store on 38th.
Herbert’s Groceries, on 38th not far from Lamar, was established long before Austin’s high tech industry changed the sleepy capital to a fast-moving expensive rush of a city. It was the last of its kind, a snapshot of an era gone by, swept away by megastores and malls. Herbert’s carried everything a grocery store should have and more.
Old man Herbert Janskowska himself still worked the store six days a week. There was some pride the store was still open six days a week.
Sundays found Janskowska at his church of almost sixty years, Saint Timothy’s, a few minutes away. His wife of forty years, Mary, had passed away in 1995. Not a day went by where he did not think of her. Two sons had stayed with the store, returning after their graduations. Another son and two daughters had gone on to Houston and San Antonio. The entire extended family was back in Austin for Christmas and the New Year, complete with spouses and small children.
In the last ten years or so, very year, especially at the first of the year, the old man could be heard proclaiming that this would be the last year, that he would be closing The Business this time. No doubt about it. That’s how the family referred to the place. As “The Business,” capitalized.
Yet every year, The Business somehow remained open, a contrary grizzled survivor like the old man himself against the tide of the discount pricing and massive inventories from the chain grocery stores and crushing megastores.
Someday it would close. The children (he still thought of them as “the children” though they were all adults with their own families now) had already said they would move on when that happened.
Janskowska often said he wanted more time to spend with the grandchildren, go fishing, and retire to long-time ranch near La Grange. The Hill Country ranch was almost paid off. In the last months, Austin developers had begun to approach Janskowska and others in a campaign to raze three blocks, including The Business, and build a hotel and entertainment center.
The developers had been quite insistent. Janskowska gone to the initial neighborhood meeting with the developers, and, since then, the developers had visited and called endlessly. He had taken to ducking out the back with his faded well-worn hat tucked down low over his eyes. He secretly enjoyed the chase. It was all rather Bond-like. Espionage and stuff. He loved Bond movies.
As the store’s many clocks ticked over to fifteen after midnight, the year 2000 (all precisely at the same second for the old man ran a tight ship), Janskowska wandered through the dark aisles to the front.
He had worked late and then decided to keep watch this night after the store closed at the customary 8pm. In the back, the two sons played cards and drank beer with several friends from the old neighborhood. They had just toasted in the new year.
The old man shuffled to the front, past the silent checkout lanes with their infrared scanners, past the specials. Though a cold wind whistled outside, the old man reflected on summers past, where kids from the neighborhood would wheel their bicycles to the front and rush in to buy ice-cold pop and snacks. He thought of these things as he looked out the window at the deserted street. There were no cars. There was no one. That was strange.
Herbert’s Grocery faces the north. Across the street was the obligatory row of shops, the beginning of a ’60s era strip mall. The area was a mixed zoning – homes and businesses. Some leafless trees peeked over the building roofs. Behind them, more trees. Austin has lots of trees. And, shining past those dark limbs, in the wee hours of this dark night, the orange glow of a too-early sunrise in the north.
Janskowska cleared his throat and blinked. Some said he was a hard man, a man who had survived much, including a tour of duty in WWII. He had been disciplined, worked hard, created and ran his own business, and took care of his family.
As he stood in the dark store, the slight glistening of his eyes sparkled with reflections of the dull orange glow in the north.
Behind him, in the distance, in the rear of the store, past the half-closed doors, he could hear the card game had ended abruptly, the radio now louder, turned up, mixing with distant sounds of dismay never heard before.
Herbert Janskowska did not turn around. He adjusted his thin spectacles, crossed his arms, continued to stare out the store front window, and pondered. He wondered what Kelso would have to say about this. He wondered if there would be a morning paper.
The Austin-American Statesman did arrive later that morning. The paper guy, out of breath, was running late.
Stacking papers from the van, as he told Janskowska, who looked far more weary and sad by then, the traffic was incredibly bad for 6am. Everyone seemed to be driving out of town.
Due south.
From the December 30, 1999 weekly blip. Back when cellphones were just starting to be a distraction device.