Tracie felt the steady descent of the B-52 and her panic began rising again, threatening to overwhelm her. “How much time do we have?”
“It depends on how much altitude we’ve lost. You’ll have to check the altimeter.”
She craned her head but couldn’t read the instruments from her position, crouched over Wilczynski’s seat. “You’re going to have to maintain pressure on the jacket yourself for a second. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Wilczynski answered. He was clearly trying to avoid any movement of his head. He looked pale and weak.
“Okay. I’ll go as quickly as I can.” She waited until the injured pilot had lifted his hands, then removed hers and helped him position his in what she hoped was the best location. The amount of blood soaking the jacket was frightening. When he indicated he was ready, she stood and scanned the instrument panel, amazed at the sheer number of gauges, dials and switches.
Finally she found the altimeter. “Twenty-three thousand, five hundred feet,” she said.
“And how long has the plane been flying itself?”
Tracie thought hard. It seemed like forever, but in reality was probably not long at all. “Ninety seconds,” she guessed.
“Okay,” he answered, then was silent for a moment, obviously trying to calculate a rate of descent. “We have maybe five minutes before we hit the water.”
Shit. At the rate the color was draining out of Wilczynski’s face, Tracie wondered if he would last five minutes. “Where’s the first-aid kit?” she asked, conscious of the seconds ticking away.
He pointed to a metal box clipped to the side wall behind what had been Mitchell’s seat, then quickly returned the hand to his head. Tracie leaned over the dead bodies of Mitchell and Berenger, unclipped the kit, and then returned to Wilczynski’s side. She opened the metal box and rummaged inside, pulling out a roll of gauze.
She gently removed Wilczynski’s hands and lifted the jacket away from the head wound. Blood surged out of a ragged, splintered hole where the side of his skull used to be. For the second time since discovering Wilczynski alive, she wondered how in hell he was still breathing.
She anchored one end of the gauze on the back of his head with her left hand and began unrolling it, wrapping it expertly around and around with her right, moving as quickly as she dared. She finished wrapping Wilczynski’s head and secured the bandage, then examined her handiwork quickly, anxious to move the pilot. The portion of the gauze located directly over his injury had already begun darkening, changing from a pristine white to a frightening maroon, but the patch job looked secure enough, at least for now.
She nodded and forced a smile. “There. Good as new.”
Wilczynski grimaced and the effect was ghastly. A thick smear of blood coated the side of his face and his teeth had been stained a blackish-red from all the blood he had swallowed. “I appreciate the lie.” He closed his eyes and Tracie knew he was steeling himself against the pain to come.
Finally he opened his eyes again. “Let’s take our seats and get this thing on the ground.” Tracie nodded and knelt over his prone body, straddling his legs. She slipped her hands under his armpits. His flight suit was sticky with blood. She eased the pilot’s body up and forward, until she had gotten him into a sitting position on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, next to his seat.
He had maintained a grim silence through all the jostling, despite the pain he must be feeling. This is one tough bastard, she thought. But things are about to get a lot worse. She looked him in the eyes and could see he knew.
“Are you ready?” she asked quietly.
He nodded.
She hooked her arms under his armpits at the elbow, locking the two of them in an awkward embrace, then struggled to a kneeling position and began rising, her legs screaming in protest as they took the brunt of the two-hundred-pound man’s dead weight. When she had lifted his body to where his butt was level with the flight seat, Tracie took a half-step left, then dropped the pilot as gently as she could into the seat.
He groaned and his eyes rolled up into his head and his body began sliding back toward Tracie. She used her small body to brace his larger one in the seat and then buckled him into his harness.
Wilczynski’s eyes were closed and his pallor had turned a sickly grey. A thin sheen of sweat coated his features, mixing with the drying blood and forming a hideous Halloween mask. His head slumped against his chest. Tracie feared he was dead. She placed two fingers lightly against his neck, just under his right ear, and felt for the carotid artery. The pulse was steady but faint. Wilczynski was still alive. For now.
Stay with me, please. I can’t fly this thing on my own. Tracie wondered how fast they were descending. She pictured the Atlantic Ocean, vast and empty, sliding beneath the aircraft, waiting to swallow them whole if they didn’t begin climbing soon. The darkness outside the wind screen was immense, the blackness unbroken. There was no way to tell how close they were to the water; it could be twenty feet or twenty thousand. She fought back panic.
She lifted her head and glanced at the altimeter. Two thousand feet. And dropping. She closed her eyes. Take a deep breath. Steady yourself. Do what you have to do. She had to try to reawaken Major Wilczynski. He had been lucid prior to losing consciousness. If she could wake him, maybe he could fly the airplane.
She hoped.
Another look at the altimeter. Twelve hundred feet. Still dropping.
She bent and slapped Wilczynski’s face lightly, more of a light open-palmed tap than an actual slap. Two taps to the right cheek and then two to the left. Right, left, one more on each side. Wilczynski stirred and muttered, but his eyes remained closed.
Nine hundred feet.
She tried again, this time increasing the force of the blow and speaking loudly. “Stan, wake up! Stan, we’re dropping into the ocean. You need to wake up and fly this airplane!” More mumbling and his eyes fluttered, but they were vacant and unfocused.
Five hundred feet.
Last try. She grabbed his good shoulder and shook him, not wanting to take the chance of worsening his head injury but not knowing what else to do. “Stan, listen to me, we’re going to crash if you don’t wake up right now! Stan!” This time his eyes fluttered and remained open for a couple of seconds. “That’s it,” she encouraged. “Stay with me, Stan.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head again and he was gone.
Two hundred feet.
It was too late. They were going to drop right onto the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, where the giant B-52 would be ripped to shreds by the resistance of the water. Tracie cursed and leapt into the right seat, the one most recently occupied by Tom Mitchell.
She scanned the instruments desperately, trying to remember what she had seen pilots do in the past. Increase power with the throttles. Raise the nose of the aircraft with the yoke. Do something with the flaps — she couldn’t remember what. Raise them? Lower them? Goddammit!
Fifty feet.
Tracie reached for the throttle with a shaking hand. She would shove the throttle forward and raise the B-52’s nose and hope for the best. She would not go down without a fight.
She placed her hand on the lever and was surprised to feel not the cold metal of the throttle but the warmth of another human hand. She turned in surprise and saw Stan Wilczynski staring back at her, his face drawn and grey, his lips trembling from the exertion of staying conscious, but his eyes clear and lucid.
“Get your hands off my airplane,” he said.
16