The computer-generated picture assembled itself at last from the transmissions of two different satellites, causing her to gasp. “Am I seeing…”
“I’m afraid so, Janice. This is the hot spot I found a few minutes ago, right on the track they were flying, and there are no longer any airborne seven-forty-sevens within their flight range from the previous contact. They’re down.”
The picture coalesced to a field of intense white images defining the wreckage path of Meridian Flight 5.
“How about survivors?” she asked, in little more than a whisper.
“Could be, but it just happened. So far, I’m not seeing any.”
She whirled around to search his eyes. “That aircraft carried over…”
“Two hundred. I know, Janice. We just have to wait.”
“That’s the best you can do?”
He nodded. “This whole debris field is too hot, too many fires. The heat is masking any survivors who might be there. Remember, we’re looking at infrared.”
She lifted the receiver she’d been holding to relay the news to her senior, George Barkley, then turned back to the technician. “George wants to know if you could bring back the shot of that small jet?”
He nodded, entering a flurry of keystrokes into the keyboard. A still infrared image of a small two-engine jet appeared on the screen.
“Where is he?”
“When this was taken, he was ten miles east of Da Nang, off the coast. But we’ve lost him beneath a thunderstorm that moved over Da Nang a little while ago. He was right over the crash site earlier, but flew back offshore. He’s just orbiting.”
“What’s our confidence level he’s been tailing the seven-forty-seven?”
The technician said, “High. Very high.”
Janice raised the phone to her ear, still curious, reminding herself to feed the latest reports to Langley immediately.
The realization that he was alive came slowly to Robert MacCabe.
Aside from the flickering orange light of countless fires somewhere in the distance, it was dark — and cold. The feel of damp air on his face and the lack of familiar background noise of commercial flight jolted him back to the reality that he wasn’t awakening from a nightmare, he was still living it.
We were trying to fly… no, to land… and something happened…
Robert tried moving his right arm, and found it still attached and usable. He checked his left, and progressively his entire body, finding everything intact.
Where am I? Total confusion reigned for a few seconds until his short-term memory flooded back, causing him to sit bolt upright in what was left of the right cockpit jump seat.
Oh my God! We’ve crashed!
He tried to stand, but couldn’t. I must be hurt! But there was no pain.
Robert reached down with rising apprehension to feel his waist, the concept of paralysis hovering in the back of his mind.
He struggled again, hearing twisted metal parts rocking against one another. Still he couldn’t stand. Something was preventing him from moving his lower waist. Something was binding him to the ruined seat.
The seat belt!
With great relief, Robert reached down and snapped off the belt, standing up gingerly, his mind confused by the flickering images and ghastly shadows everywhere. He was in the remains of the cockpit, and the shell of the window frame was still intact.
There was a form slumped forward just below the broken windows. Robert moved to it, stumbling over debris that held his feet in the darkness. He pulled the body back, recognizing the bandage over the eyes. The copilot.
“Dan! Dan, can you hear me?” Robert doubted he was hearing his own voice at first. It was oddly pitched and strained. “Dan! Answer me!”
The figure stirred and tried to sit up. “Wha…?”
“Dan, this is Robert MacCabe. Can you hear me?”
Dan shook his head. “I… I can’t see you…”
“We’ve crashed, Dan. Somewhere in Vietnam. Do you remember?”
There was a sound to the left, a low moan, and Robert glanced over at the remains of the captain’s seat, now dislodged, the bottom end showing in his direction.
Dan was nodding, his hand on his head. “Oh my God.”
“Stay put, Dan. I’ve got to check on the others.” He picked his way through the jumbled debris on the floor of the cockpit and pulled the captain’s seat back upright, bringing Steve Delaney with it. He, too, was coming around, and basically uninjured except for a few minor cuts to his head.
Dallas was trying to dig herself out. She was dazed and shaking like a leaf.
John Walters had not been strapped in at the moment of impact. He was lying lengthwise on the broken front of the instrument panel. Robert reached for his wrist, aware of the awkward position of the man’s head and neck. There was no pulse.
“Where the hell are we?” Dallas mumbled, holding Robert’s shoulder.
“Dallas, are you okay?”
She nodded, her hand to her head, her dark face barely visible in the orange light. She sat on a remarkably intact jump seat. “Depends… how you define okay,” she mumbled. “How ’bout you?”
Robert sank back on the remains of his jump seat and tried to clear his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re alive.”
Thirty-five feet away in the shattered forward half of the upper deck first-class cabin, Dr. Graham Tash worked to extricate himself from the tangle of wires and tubes that engulfed him, the remnants of the overhead panels. He vaguely remembered feeling the jet pull up from a landing, but what had happened then?
Susan! he thought suddenly. Oh my God!
Graham turned to his left and began pawing through the debris that covered the aisle seat, exposing his wife’s blond hair.
“Susan!”
She stirred, giving him hope as he worked rapidly to free her from the tangle.
“Graham?”
“Honey! Oh my God, are you okay?”
There was a long hesitation as she took inventory, then nodded and opened her eyes, blinking at the reflection of fire on his skin and wondering why there was a campfire nearby. His voice seemed to fade away into a void.
Susan Tash sat up abruptly and looked around in shock. The remains of the 747’s upper deck still resembled a passenger cabin, but it was little more than the shell of sidewalls and windows attached to the floor that remained. Some of the seats were still visible as well, but most of the ceiling had collapsed, and she realized that there was nothing but debris behind her.
She took a ragged breath. “Graham… what… what…”
“We crashed, Suze! We crashed, but we made it!”
The airline CEO who had been sitting in the first row had not fastened his seat belt. The impact had catapulted him into the forward bulkhead where he now lay, moaning quietly.
Susan got to her feet, grabbing for support against rubbery legs, and tried to move toward him. “Graham,” she said, as her husband held her and guided her toward the front, “he’s hurt. We’ll need a flashlight.”
A beam of light snapped on by her shoulder, pointed at the shattered floor.
Susan looked over at the silhouette of a disheveled woman she finally recognized as Britta.
“We always carry these,” Britta said in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Are you okay?” Graham asked Britta.
Britta nodded, a shaky right hand brushing back what had become a wild mane of hair, while she tried to straighten a hopelessly torn white blouse.
There was a commotion ahead of them, and Britta raised the beam of light directly into Robert MacCabe’s face as he stumbled through what used to be the cockpit door.