Just as the sight of Fire Island receded, Roland heard the pilot’s voice. It was a startled command, “Look at that.”
Ten miles away and fifteen thousand feet higher, a fireball like an exploding star illuminated the sea. In the vivid light, the waves resembled molten lead, suddenly frozen.
The object in the sky that created the spectacular glare was a British Airways Airbus. Roland watched as one of its immense wings, all enflamed, detached itself from the body of the plane that, although it was now gradually descending toward the ocean, continued its forward motion on its powerful momentum. Irregular fragments of the plane spun away, all in flames.
What a sight, Roland thought. This can’t be real. And then he was jarred into reality as the calm pilot said, “Traffic control wants to know if any of you saw a rocket or an object hit that plane.”
No one answered. The Airbus had just been one of the many planes in the air, in the beauty of the immense night as they flew above the low-lying cloud cover. Roland had certainly seen nothing rise to or toward the Airbus. It was only when the pilot first spoke out that he became transfixed, horrified, mesmerized.
Without the severed wing that was still dropping, spinning, to the ocean’s illuminated surface, the remainder of the Airbus revolved slowly. The cockpit was gone, plummeting faster than what remained of the plane. The crazed thought occurred to Roland that now the burning, shredding plane could not be saved because the two men or women who knew how to control it were in free fall, doomed.
The burning remnants of the Airbus rolled yet again as it descended into almost an upright, normal position. And then, incredibly, the tail separated from the rest of the fuselage, as if it were made of frail balsa wood.
Then another blast exploded from the bottom of the fragmented airplane, and the contents of the cargo compartment were released from the blazing plane. Hundreds of objects fell like confetti into the ocean.
The helicopter pilot announced, “We have word now that the plane was British Airways Flight 767 to London.”
At that moment, the helicopter tilted radically, as if it was struck. Only the seat belt Roland wore kept him from being thrown from his plush seat and smashed against the other wall. Is this how I’m going to die, too? he thought, near her?
The calm pilot, using his skills to straighten the reeling helicopter, said, “The commissioner of the New York City Police Department has ordered us to return to the city and fly over the middle of Long Island itself, not the shore. Ms. Carbone said a flight over the ocean might not be safe. Don’t be alarmed: you’ll soon see Air Force fighter jets over us, to our sides, behind and ahead of us. The mayor is safe.” Am I? Do I want to be?
Roland Fortune strained to his side to look out the window again. In the distance, all he saw on the remote ocean surface was a faint glow from the remnants of the destroyed plane, like ashes that the ocean would soon absorb.
Paul Batista
EDUCATED AT BOWDOIN AND Cornell, Paul Batista is one of the leading criminal defense trial lawyers in America. He is also one of the country’s most familiar and widely known television personalities, with hundreds of appearances on Court TV, MSNBC, and CNN over the last fifteen years. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of several legal textbooks, including Civil RICO, the leading treatise on the federal racketeering law, now in its third edition. His poetry has appeared in such leading literary magazines as Poetry International, Pegasus, Press, and Parnassus. He served in the United States Army in the early 1970s. An avid marathon runner, he lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York. Death’s Witness was his first novel.
