Charges Read Online Free

charge from a charter service or something, tell them it’s legit.”
    “All right.” She was crying a little, but she sounded a lot more like the old Jessie, ready for action and with her head in the game. She would protect her remaining child with her life.
    “My phone is charged, but I’ll slap it back on the charger when I get back to the condo. You should make sure your phone is charged, too.   I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going to happen, all right?”
      “Tony, this solar flare, if it knocks out all the power, what will happen to an airplane?”
    He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. I’ll try to find out. But I’m coming back to LA, regardless.”
    “If I can’t take any risks, you can’t either,” she said with some real iron in her voice.
    “I won’t be stupid about it, I promise.”
    “All right, Tony. I love you.”
    “I love you too, babe. I’ll try to call again when I know more.”   Vincenzo disconnected and hit the speed dial combination for Grant’s office phone. He got a recorded message: All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later. He tried Grant’s mobile number then his home one but only heard the same message. He dialed Jessie’s phone again but met with the same results.
    Oh, shit. We’re out of touch already?
    There was a knock at the door, and Danny stuck his head in. “Hey, I’m going to go, all right?”
    “Lunch already?” Vincenzo glanced at the clock. It was indeed twenty minutes past twelve.
    Danny’s brow furrowed. “No, we’re all going home. You saw the e-mail, right?”
    “No.” Vincenzo turned back to his workstation. “What e-mail?”
    “We were told to go home. There’s a full emergency in place. The city’s going to shut down. Curfew, too. No one outside after eight.”
    “You’re kidding me.” Vincenzo opened his e-mail program. The last email was a high-priority message from Belinda Frazier, the network president, stating that all staff not responsible for continuing operations were free to leave as soon as they were able to do so.
    “Not kidding,” Danny said, stepping inside the office. He glanced at the TV. “Wow, where’s that?” he asked, pointing at the screen, which was still displaying the fiery conflagration consuming Westlake.
    “Los Angeles,” Vincenzo said. “Riots are breaking out. And someone’s been shooting at helicopters.”
    “Same thing here. Someone shot an NYPD pilot, and his helicopter crashed into the East River just south of the Williamsburg Bridge.”
    Vincenzo was shocked. “What the hell is happening?”
    Danny shook his head. “The city’s panicking, man. It’s everyone for himself.”
     
    ###
     
    There were no flights out of the city. Vincenzo worked the Internet to his full advantage, but whenever he found an opening on any carrier, it was booked by the time he tried to submit his credit card. All the sites kept crashing, as well, including voice and data services, like Skype and Yahoo Messenger, which he tried to use to contact Grant or anyone else in California who might be of some assistance to Jessie and Ben. His parents had moved to Fort Lauderdale, and he tried to contact them as well, but to no avail. The news networks were saying that the extreme leading edges of the corona discharge were already caressing Earth, and it was playing havoc with wireless communication systems. All other modes of communication were essentially gridlocked, and that included air travel websites and credit card processing centers. The charter services were either booked solid or plagued by the same problems as the major carriers. There was just too much traffic hitting the sites, and they were crashing.
    His shiny Samsung smartphone was of no use. He couldn’t make or receive calls, nor could he surf the web. The e-mails he sent through his office system garnered no responses, and his personal web mail accounts were mostly inaccessible, or they timed out when he tried to send